Forty Minutes of Hell Read Online Free

Baptist Church was a hub, as were places like Rusty’s Playhouse, Gillespie’s Steak House, and the Square Deal Barbershop.
    On one scorching afternoon, when Richardson was thirteen, a teacher named Mrs. Johnnie Calvert closed the doors and windows. That got the attention of everyone in the class. “We knew that something important was up,” Richardson says.
    Mrs. Calvert cleared her throat and spoke softly to her subdued class. “There’s going to be a big change coming to this country,” she said. “Soon, Negro children and white children will be going to school together, and all of you will have a choice to make.” There was a Supreme Court case, the teacher said, in which a Negro family had challenged the laws, hoping their daughter could go to the same school as the white kids. The Douglass students looked at each other but didn’t speak. “You can stay at Douglass, or you can go to the school in your neighborhood,” Mrs. Calvert said.
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    Douglass School’s 1954 valedictorian, Thelma White, decided to test that Supreme Court decision. With the help of the local NAACP, she applied at Texas Western College, but was denied admission. She took Texas Western to court and won. The following year, she was admitted, along with twelve other black students. But Thelma White, put off by the snub and subsequent delays, had enrolled at nearby New Mexico State University by the time the case was decided.
    George McCarty, the Texas Western basketball coach at the time, realized that the college’s decision to admit blacks might be used to his advantage. He signed up a junior college player named Charlie Brown in 1956 to be the first black athlete at any mainly white school in the old Confederacy. Richardson, a high school freshman, was intrigued by the news.
    El Paso during this era was torn. While the influence of the Klan had long faded, this was still Texas. The town remained segregated and blacks had to ride in the back of city buses and trolleys. Unlike most of the South, though, blacks could shop and feel welcome at premier places, such as the Popular and White House Department Store. They could even try on clothes and hats before making a purchase, something that was denied them all over the South.
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    The peculiar combination Richardson absorbed—the community and tradition at Douglass School, and his soulful Mexican neighborhood—gave him a unique view of the world. Richardson was the only Douglass student who lived in the Pujido section, part of the Bowie High School district. Bowie was virtually one hundred percent Mexican-American. That didn’t worry Richardson. He chose Bowie and became their first black student. “All the kids I’d known forever from the barrio were going to Bowie,” he says, “and I knew I’d be fine. I didn’t have any kind of chip on my shoulder, because in that neighborhood, I was just Sam.”
    Richardson loved nearly everything about his time at Bowie. “The Mexican kids treated me so well,” he says. “I was an athlete, of course, and that helped.”
    There were some problems before Richardson established himself as a sports hero, though. During his freshman year, he was called to the main office by an assistant principal, named, of all things, Patton. “Raymond Patton,” Richardson recalls. “And he was mean.”
    Richardson looked down, shuffling in place as Patton chewed him out for an overdue library book. “You’re not allowed back in school until this fine is paid and I see your parents,” Patton said.
    Richardson made the long trek home in the heat to tell Ol’ Mama. She grabbed her purse, and the two walked back to Bowie to meet Patton.
    â€œHow much do you owe?” Ol’ Mama asked midway to the high school.
    â€œSix cents,” Richardson said.
    Ol’ Mama’s pace quickened. When they got to Patton’s office, Ol’ Mama