Kathy Atwater - On school desegregation (clip)
Interviewed on April 16, 2026
Kathy Atwater: Well, I know, I grew up, like I said, over here on Lindsay Street and we went to Northside Elementary and I went there until the sixth grade. And the only reason why we left Northside is because that’s when it became mandatory integration. So, they closed down Northside and then we were having to go to either Estes Hills, Glenwood Elementary, the white schools. And in those schools, there were maybe one or two Blacks in a classroom. We were wanting to go to Lincoln because that’s where the high school was and all of our peers and family went to Lincoln but they closed down Lincoln so we couldn’t go there. So it was a challenge. It was some riots going on in the high school during that time because of, again, the racism and inequality that was experienced.
