King: first Black to integrate Buena Vista High School in 1966

Staff Reports
ON THAT FIRST DAY in the fall of 1966, when 16-year-old Alfonzo King entered Marion County High as a senior, he wasn't thinking about making history. He actually had signed up by mistake when he was asked who wanted to be one of the first blacks to integrate the school.
Much to his surprise, the school days, classes and hallways weren't that bad, especially with a principal who had made a promise to help protect him. Principal George McGlaun Sr. quickly suspended two white students for calling King - that N-word. "The principal made me feel confident no one at the school was going to mess with me," said the 58-yearold King.
He even dated a white girl one time, in secrecy. But, it was the school's basketball team where King got pushed into finding out just how much hatred whites could inflict. It was a region where separate, but equal was still the mindset, not the Brown vs. Board of Education decision to desegregate America's schools. It was a time sandwiched between the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.,
said his teammate, George McGlaun Jr.
"We would soon be experiencing some of that violence firsthand…" said the younger McGlaun of an away game. His father also coached the team. "Alfonzo had both speed and agility that proved helpful on the court as well as after the games as we ran the gauntlet to get back to our bus for the return trip."
When King joined the team, basketball against other schools became a full- ontact sport. King took a lot of hard fouls, some just nasty. Once, King was trying to guard a Leslie High School player, just to have him throw the ball in King's face. But King, a point guard, beat them at their own game. When the ball rolled away from his face, he grabbed it and ran down the court for a lay-up.
"It was frightening," said King. "I knew it could get out of hand at anytime." The violence wasn't limited to the basketball court. Sometimes, the fans would rush the locker room at an attempt to get King. And, when the team walked together, King stayed in the middle, as some of the white fans would come up pushing, shoving and reaching to hit King - hurling racial slurs.
"Every place we went, something was there," King said. King didn't have a lot of black friends in the crowd as blacks were allowed to attend the game. Some police even kept blacks out. At the Leslie High game, a fan
threw a coke bottle at King. When the team tried to leave the gym for
home, some of the white fans tried to block Marion High's bus as it tried to leave the gym.
The elder McGlaun told the bus driver to run over the car. "We got insurance," McGlaun recalled his father saying. McGlaun was part of several players who recalled King's first year in letters sent to a Buena Vista newspaper in celebration of this year's Black History Month. King integrated the school with two other blacks, including Mike Gibson, who also serverd as the team's trainer.
"A lot or things that happened then I have forgotten," Gibson recalled in his letter. I guess as one gets older, memories start slipping away." But Gibson quickly pointed he could vividly remember some incidents at the away games.
"This presented a problem not only for Al, but also for the rest of the team," Gibson wrote of the away games. "People in some of the cites we played were not very acceptable of Al being on our team. A few of the cities sent word they were going to get him after the game."
King did have times he said he had to play smart, off the field. Death threats made him stay home at least one game.
"My mom and I took those threats seriously," King said. King would attend Fort Valley State for a couple years before he was drafted into Vietnam. King now works at the Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins as a civil service employee, but still lives in Buena Vista. He still goes to Marion County High occasionally. His daughter is a student there.
One former classmate, Joe Webb, still recalls King's courage in his letter. "Thankfully, times have changed, and our country has progressed," said Webb. "But we will always need pioneers like Al for the rest of us to ride on their shoulders."
So how does King feel about making history, inadvertently or not? "It taught me a lot about life and people," King said. "But I did learn that everyone wasn't prejudice."