ScienceMakers Toolkit Manual - The History Makers

William Lester, Jr. - Video Clip Transcription
Clip 1 - Residential Segregation: Well, growing up on the South Side was a lot of fun, you know, especially
[in] an all-black community. When we went across Cottage Grove, 63rd and Cottage Grove, my mother would
shop at the High-Lo, east of Cottage Grove we went to another world, a fair number of white folks then. So it
was residential segregation of Chicago at that time, which was a primary aspect that one encountered growing
up and… something which I saw as I grew up in Chicago, how the boundaries would shift. The notion of
blockbusting was real, which you may recall is the aspect of city blocks shifting and realtors coming in and
scaring white folks to move out so they can make money by selling homes and all that sort of thing. So that was
really something I would really strongly emphasize, a colored one’s existence as a young child growing up in
Chicago.
Clip 2 - Memories of Grandmother: My maternal grandmother was a businesswoman, and I subsequently
have gained a sense of what that meant, because she bought large homes on then South Park, now Martin Luther
King Drive, and converted those to small apartments which took on the term kitchenettes, and was profi table
in doing that sort of thing. She had a large apartment, and I recall the address: 5936 South Parkway, and
the family one fl oor above were the Hansberries, Lorraine Hansberry’s parents [playwright who wrote the play,
A Raisin in the Sun] and that family and so forth, and I remember my…maternal grandmother was a successful
businesswoman.
Clip 3 - Integrating High School: Calumet High School, which was the neighborhood high school for where
I lived. Princeton Park had been built during World War II, and with this creation, students were being fed then
into Calumet High School which did not have black students prior to the creation of this particular development.
And so, my sister and I, sister Florence and I, were some of the earlier students to attend that high school.
And my graduation class from that high school was 365, of which 13 were black, ten girls and three guys. There
were a few more that started, but what happened to them, I don’t know, but that was the nature of the racial mix
that existed at that high school at the time.
Clip 4 - Chemistry Teacher: My senior year, I took chemistry as I mentioned to you, and I had Mr. Schlessinger.
And [he] used to have competitions, divide the class up in two and have competitions between one side
of the class and the other, and answering questions about chemistry. I used to win these things routinely, and
Mr. Schlessinger suggested I should go to the Little Red School House on the Midway [Midway Plaissance],
alluding to red being the schoolhouse but also the Communist infl uence at the University of Chicago which was
there in that time frame, you know, and so forth, but that it was a good education. Not that he was Communist
or anything of that sort, but he was a guy that called a spade a spade. He was very interesting, a very interesting
guy and… then I did win the history scholarship and so forth. So, he was a very supportive individual. In high
school, these were all white teachers at that point, and I’m sure they were instrumental in my winning a scholarship
to the University of Chicago as a matter of fact, ‘cause that’s the only way of course, aside from grades,
that such things would happened, by recommendations of teachers.
Clip 5 - College Sports: Well, the single game record was broken. I set a record of… The last record was 42
points per game. That was broken last year; somebody scored 44 at the University of Chicago. I still hold the
record for the most fi eld goals in a game, because I played in the era of two points, not two and three points. So,
I had 19 fi eld goals in a game, and also I hold the record for the highest average. I averaged 25 and a half points
[25.5] my senior year, ‘56-‘57 academic year, and made Little All-American. Little meaning that small school
and that sort of thing. And the coach, the assistant coach at that point had played professional basketball back in
that era said, “Well, are you interested in pros?” “Well, no, not really.” It didn’t pay anything. I mean, if indeed
professionals earned what they earn nowadays, I would have been there in a heartbeat to try and compete for
that kind of money, but at that point they made about what a second-level manager would make in some company.
The money wasn’t there, you know. Where there was this exotic dimension of going on to the Ph.D. and
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Chemistry