T.C. Williams's Class in History

Alumni From 1968 Reflect on Integration and a Triumph Over Turmoil

John Mitchell had never gone to school with black students, let alone played sports with any. So in 1966, when he noticed the basketball court at T.C. Williams High School crowded with more faces that didn't look like his than did, he sat alone on the bleachers. Then Sam Zellars, an African American student, reached out a hand and invited him to a game.

"It was the beginning of my two years playing on the varsity team there," Mitchell said, adding that he is still thankful to Zellars for it. "That moment when you're feeling lost or a bit bewildered by everything around you, and all of a sudden there is a friendly hand, that is a very poignant moment. And it's the way the school was."

This was T.C. Williams's Class of 1968. They were eighth-graders when John F. Kennedy was assassinated and seniors when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. The civil rights movement, not yet a history lesson, played out every day in their integrated halls.

"I think, as a group, we felt connected and incredibly optimistic about our ability to change things," said Mitchell, who became class president. "You have a theme for graduation every year, and our theme was 'To Dream the Impossible Dream,' which I think was reflective of the attitude we had at the time."

On the first weekend of this month, the class once again came together. Now 58- and 59-year-olds, they celebrated their 40th reunion. They were one of several alumni groups to do so. Hundreds were expected at a joint celebration for the graduating classes of 1958 and 1959 from Francis C. Hammond and George Washington, which were high schools at that time and are now middle schools. Hammond's Class of 1963 also celebrated its 45th reunion.

But the Class of 1968 at T.C Williams stands out.

It was only the second class to graduate from what was a new, state-of-the-art school. And although the movie "Remember the Titans" focuses on the racial struggle of its football team years later, the graduates of '68 describe a time when diversity was already being embraced. Theirs, they say, was the one truly integrated high school in the city at the time.

"T.C. Williams was sort of an experiment. Nobody really knew how it would turn out," said Meg Bryant, who was named homecoming queen. "It was just a wonderful experience right from the start. There was just a real bond between members of our class, and there still is."

The first time she felt any real racial tension, she said, was the day after King was killed.

William D. Euille, who is Alexandria's mayor, said he remembers getting to school early that morning and suggesting to the principal and an African American teacher "that we needed to do something to calm the waters." Euille, an African American, was a student leader and had formed the human rights club at the school.

"We knew people wanted to release their anger," he said. "It was really an opportunity to call for peace."

So as riots erupted in the District, T.C. Williams's students assembled in the auditorium. Euille said there was a moment of silence, an explanation of what it all meant, and then he pleaded for his peers to follow King's message of nonviolence.

Mitchell said he recently came across a letter he wrote to his mother in North Carolina at the time, telling her that the school did not have a riot, as some newspapers had reported.

"I just remember being so taken by what a wonderful coming together in a time of crisis that was," Mitchell said.

On Saturday, before a main celebration at the Carlyle Club, some of the alumni took a tour of the new T.C. Williams, a modern building fashioned in step with the green movement. Then they went to the homecoming game, where Euille was announced as Bryant's escort, just as he had been 40 years earlier.

"As I look back 40 years ago, I have lots of robust and continued enthusiasm and excitement about that high school," Euille said, adding that his class was instrumental in coming up with the words to the school song, its colors and the name Titans. "We were part of all that."

Pam Walkup, who helped organize the event, said that in addition to a mayor, the class produced doctors, lawyers, college professors, economists and at least one children's book author.

"We have many PhDs and people who have gone on to try and make a difference in the world," she said. "By and large, we are a fairly socially conscious class. We were then, and it's interesting to see most of us still are."