At ETSU, Langston Alumni Find Their Place in Collegiate History

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In the mid 50's, four graduates of Langston High School made the fateful decision to continue their higher education as many of their fellow classmates did. They decided to follow in the footsteps of one of the Langston teachers, Eugene Caruthers.

Tbese intrepid four could have easily chose traditionally black colleges like Howard University in Washington, DC, Tennessee A & I State in Nashville, or Morehouse or Spellman in Atlanta.

Instead, they chose, as Caruthers did, to attend East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, their hometown. The problem was, before Caruthers, African-Americans had never attended ETSU before. There was no law that said they couldn't.. it's just that nobody did it.

Change was coming, after Elizabeth Watkins, Clarence McKinney, George Nichols and Luellen Owens stepped onto the campus, on a cold January day in 1956.

Langston alumni on a tour of ETSU during their 2014 school reunion, found a newly-placed marker from the Tennessee Historical Commission, displayed prominently on the grounds of the university library.

"Breaking the color barrier at ETSU was not something that any of us expected to do," says Nichols, who joined his fellow Langston alumni to view the new historical marker. "We only wanted to get a higher education."

Nichols says, they were not concentrated on making history.

"It wasn't a stand we were taking," he says. "It was nothing like what happened at other schools in the South, or what would eventually happen in Alabama and Mississippi. We didn't think of it in terms of making history. Look at what was happening during the time.. this was the year after the high school was blown up in Clinton, Tennessee.. It was the time before UT had its first black athlete. This was before Governor George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama.. before the killings at the University of Mississippi. Our integration of ETSU occurred before any of the integrations at any of the colleges and universities in the South. Again.. we just wanted an education, and we wanted to get it at home."

Unlike the other schools, there were no mass protests when the group integrated ETSU. Nobody standing in the doorway to block their entrance.. no riots, no marches, and no lives were lost. Nichols says, he knows why.

"I think the reason there were no incidents at ETSU, is because the university did not notify the news media," he remembers. "There were no TV cameras, no reporters, no lights, no national press, no stories in the papers. Nobody knew we were doing it, and it was done before anybody was aware of what had happened."

"I think that's why it was so peaceful."

CLARENCE MCKINNEY, ELIZABETH WATKINS CRAWFORD, GEORGE NICHOLS, AND MARY LUELLEN OWENS WAGNER RECEIVING RECOGNITION AT THE 2012 LANGSTON ALUMNI REUNION BANQUET

Nichols says, he and his fellow classmates were part of history, but he downplays the fact that they changed it.

"I can only speak for myself, but as Luellen (Owens, his classmate) recalls, 'we didn't have sense enough to be scared' at the time. Each of us had different experiences. Since I'm an introvert, my experience was that I felt alone. Initially, in ROTC class, I could remember the names of all of my military classmates' names. But in all of the other classes I had at ETSU during those four years, I could only remember the names of two classmates. I felt by myself most of the time."

The decisions and actions made by the ETSU Five were indeed heroic and groundbreaking for the time.

Nichols says, the message for young people years later, is a simple one.

"Stand on our shoulders," he says. "Keep carrying on the impact of what we did. If we could do what we did, they can do something just as significant, or even bigger."

"Keep going.. the door has been open for years."

"Don't let the impact die."