ScienceMakers Toolkit Manual - The History Makers

Life Science
Clip 2 - Integrating Boynton Beach: Mr. Willie Miller was something of a civil rights leader, and he decided
that whites should not keep us away from the local beaches. We had as much right to go there as did they. And
he decided to lead a group of big boys, I call them big boys, a group of young men, young boys. Most of them
were in junior high or high school, over to the beach for a wade-in; not a sit-in, but a wade-in, just go in the
water and swim like anyone else. And I recall wanting to go and I knew my mother would never let me go, so
I went anyway without telling her. And so we went over and we walked across the bridge. We went over to the
section where only whites were allowed to go and I remember we walked to the beach just like any beach in the
world and we, about ten of the big boys, Mr. Willie Miller and myself. They waded in and we were frightened,
no question about it, and I was terribly frightened, but I was also determined to stick with the big boys there
and to go into the water. We all went into the water and started to swim, and once we got in, it was delightful.
But what happened was there were some two hundred or more whites on the beach or in the water. And they
all came running out as if they had seen sharks and I remember being so tiny that they were running toward me
and I was fearful I was going to be trampled, and one of the big boys grabbed me and held me so I wouldn’t
get trampled. And we went into the water and there we were swimming and we kind of stuck together in an
area, and Mr. Miller was swimming. And all of a sudden within about fi fteen minutes or so, white policemen
came there and drew guns, and the epithets they shouted and everything, I can remember to this day. They were
vicious. And they said they were gonna kill us, and of course we were frightened. But we looked at Mr. Willie
Miller and he said, “Don’t get out, boys, you don’t have to get out, you have the right as citizens of America
to swim in this water, to be here at this beach, you do not have to get out.” And they were saying, “Well, if
you don’t get out, we’re going to kill you.” As we came out of the water, we followed Mr. Miller back up, you
know, to the shore, and I recall seeing the mayor of the town, because he had on a white suit and a big white
hat, I’ll never forget. And he used a word that I’d never heard before. He said, “You boys should not be following
this rabblerouser.” And even at about six years old at that time, six or seven, I went, rabblerouser, I’d
never heard that word before. “You boys should not follow this rabblerouser.” And I remember the policemen
still wanted to harm us but I recall looking up and about one hundred black citizens from our community had
marched down right behind the policemen to where we were. And I remember the security that I felt at that
moment, seeing all of the black people from our community coming there to defend us, to be there with us, and
then we relaxed because the policemen knew, you know, at that time that they could do nothing with much of
the community coming there.
Clip 3 - Good Science Teachers: I had good science teachers. I remember one woman, Ms. Julia McQueen
was her name, very inspirational woman. She was a great science teacher and for some reason, she really encouraged
me to study science. I think partly because she was very pretty and I remember staring at her a lot as
a little boy thinking how pretty she was, and she was so bright, and she encouraged me to do science kits and
biological sciences. And she would bring speakers in. I remember she brought a man in who talked to us about
how airplanes lifted off the ground. And that fascinated me, about the air getting under the wing, and being able
to lift the plane and it was the fl ow of the air and I got so fascinated about this.
Clip 4 - Experiments with a Frog: I remember that I brought a frog home and I’d read this experiment that
I thought I understood. Where if you froze the frog for a certain period of time, then you could later melt the
ice and restore the frog. I didn’t know they were talking about liquid nitrogen, I had no access to liquid nitrogen.
So I took the frog and put it in our little freezer and I had it there freezing and my mother opened it and it
jumped out on her and my mother screamed. And I’ll never forget I ran in the room and she was screaming and
she looked at me and oh, did she give me a little whack as I ran back toward my room, saying, “don’t you ever
do that.” I remember that very vividly because, and she later talked to me and she said, “You know, it’s okay to
do these experiments but don’t bring them in the house like this. Go to your teacher; tell your teacher what you
want to do” and so forth. But I’d either seen that, there was a show, I forget the name of the show right now, it
was a science show on television, and it was something like Mr. Science or Mr. Wizard I believe it was called,
something like that, and he would do these science programs and we would read these experiments. I had an
interest, I didn’t have a lot of talent in it, but I had an interest. And I found science teachers who were willing to
teach me things about it.
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