It took a full 11 years after the landmark Brown v Board of Education Supreme Court Case for it to be accomplished in Aledo, and even longer in other Texas school districts. Brown overturned then then-prevailing notion of “separate but equal,” which had segregated school districts throughout the state.
Texas Governor Allan Shivers was strongly opposed to desegregation, and the state resisted implementing the Supreme Court’s ruling. It took until the 1970 United States v Texas decision by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas to get the state fully on board. That decision ordered the Texas Education Agency to assume responsibility for desegregating Texas public schools.
It was in that context in Texas that those students began their studies in Aledo.
Jeff Brazzell and Alice Trishell Cain, both of Weatherford, were two of the students who got off the bus that day, and they have shared their story.
Jeff was going into fifth grade. He lived on a farm off FM5 in Annetta. The summer after the fourth grade he did the things boys did who lived on farms: he did the chores, he fed the pigs and the chickens, and he had friends over to play when he could.
“I had the freedom to rip and roam on the 100-plus acre farm,” Jeff said.
Alice, a couple of years older, also lived on the farm. The students were accustomed to riding the bus together because Jeff’s uncle, Roy Gratts, drove them to school at Como in Fort Worth.
“He [Roy Gratts] carried the black kids from Annetta, and we would get on Highway 80 and head east,” Brazzell said.
He recalled stopping in the Linkcrest area to pick up two black students, Calvin and Cullen Lambert, who also could not attend Aledo schools at the time.
Gratts would return to Annetta after dropping the students off at Como to work at “The Castle” on FM 5. He would return after school to pick the students up.
Alice got the news from her mom in the summer of 1965 that she would not be attending Como anymore, and would instead go to school in Aledo.
“I was feeling kind of excited and scared at the same time,” Cain said, “because it was going to be a white school.”
Jeff and Alice had a connection to some of the Aledo students.
“There were white people that were friends of ours and we would mingle and play together on the weekends,” Brazzell said.
If you have ever walked in a room and realized you are the only person there of a given physical characteristic, you can feel uncomfortable.
“I felt some of that, sure,” Brazzell said. “At that age, you wonder why; you go home and ask your parents — it’s a different feeling, and that’s why I always tell people, until you walk in somebody’s shoes, you don’t know what you don’t know.”
Alice was involved in FHA (Future Homemakers of America) and Jeff, being a farm boy, joined FFA (Future Farmers of America).
“I dabbled in football and track, and one year I thought about basketball, but wound up serving as the manager of the basketball team,” Brazzell said.
One of Jeff’s best friends in school was Alice’s younger brother, Roger. Jeff characterized himself as an A, B, and C student, while Alice and her brothers were A and B students.
During their sophomore year, Roger told Jeff he had enough credits to graduate early, mid-term 1973.
“That shocked me,” Jeff said. “It just threw me for a loop.”
That, along with some of the other things he was feeling at that time about Aledo, led Jeff at the end of that year to tell his mother he was either going to quit or transfer to another school.
“I knew more blacks in Weatherford, and I felt I would be a little bit more comfortable finishing my high school there,” he said. His mother was able to convince Superintendent Charles McAnally to get Jeff transferred to Weatherford, where he finished high school.
Jeff’s discomfort at Aledo sprung from his daily experiences.
“It was daily, whether it be on the bus or whatever,” Jeff said. “You could hear the ’N’ word and stuff occasionally coming from somebody. There was always somebody in one of the classes who would throw the word around. You know, didn’t have that coming from the teachers.”
Jeff’s striving for acceptance led him to be among the top finishers in the spelling bee.
“It was a victory, but the victories were short and far in between.”
Alice stayed in Aledo schools until she graduated in the Class of 1971.
After high school Alice enrolled in Weatherford College and became a nurse, an occupation she practices to this day. She and her late husband had six children (all now grown).
Jeff had a bit of an issue figuring out who he was. He had a wife and daughter by the time he was a senior in high school.
“I felt the need to get back to my people from whence I had come. We moved Fort Worth and — quote, unquote — lived for the city. That’s what I did early on until I got a grip.”
Jeff had a number of different jobs in those years.
“My sense of direction was still a little out of kilter. But, once I righted this ship and really figured out what I wanted to do, after working in construction for a few years, I finally went to college. My kids were growing up, and I wanted them to go to college, but neither my wife or I had a degree, so I went to college in the 80s.”
Jeff started his college career at Weatherford College and then graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington.
Jeff graduated from UTA in 1990, and his daughter graduated from high school in 1991, “just in time for me to have that degree slapped on the wall. And having preached that you’re going to college, I told that to my two girls, you’re going to college. And how can you tell somebody they’re going to do something when you haven’t done it?”
Jeff spent his working career with AT&T, where he retired in 2013. He also recently retired from his own DJ business, which he did for 42 years.
Aledo athletes and coaches recognize Jeff for his involvement in athletics and because of his Coaches Outreach ministry in Aledo.
Recently in the news it has been reposted that the administration wants to tone down displays of slavery in Smithsonian museums because of how far we have come. Jeff and Alice replied to a question about that.
“Do you feel like we’ve advanced to a degree, or we’ve taken baby steps in America?” Jeff said. “Yeah, that’s it in a nutshell, growing up through segregation and seeing the advances that were made through the Martin Luther King marches and this and that of the 60s, we’ve come a ways, but not as far as we should have come.
“I’m 70 years old, and I’ll stand on the top of the tallest building in this country and speak this truth: in recent times it has really gotten bad due to social media. We don’t talk anymore, and that’s very sad. Everybody’s in their own bubble. You got a certain segment of society that’s in a bubble that refused to come out of that bubble. And we are waxing. The Bible talks about, we will wax worse and worse. We’re waxing worse and worse.
“I never thought that I’d live to see us taking steps backwards in society versus going forward.”
Alice agreed.
“We are, most people, in our own little world. We need to get out of our own little world and be kind to each other. We need to love each other. You know what the Bible says — love your neighbor. Who is your neighbor: the person next door to you, the person next to you, the person who you meet. People don’t love each other. People want to kill. It’s all of us that have to come back to the Lord. We all have gotten away from God, from Jesus. Yeah, Jesus loves us, and commanded us to love each other.”
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