After two degrees from Baylor University, and two years teaching at Gardner-Webb, a Baptist college in North Carolina, I was invited to be a member of the Baylor Drama Department. Life Magazine, Saturday Review, Reader’s Digest, and other magazines and newspapers had given the department and its theater productions an international reputation. I was going to join my mentors, Paul Baker and Eugene McKinney. The impossible dream, had come true.

I had a wife and two young children and my first year I taught in summer school because I needed the income. That meant teaching three classes and directing a play in the summer theater program. My plan to write full-time in the summer was severely curtailed, especially since directing required the same kind of work as writing: creating the setting, selecting the costumes and props, developing characterization, making certain that plot details were clear without being overstated, in addition to blocking scenes and encouraging the actors. Plus three classes a day.

In the morning we had classes, in the afternoon the cast and I built sets, constructed costumes, and bought, borrowed or made props for the play. At night we rehearsed. The play I selected, Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth,” had more characters than I had actors. I had two excellent leads, James Ragland and Synthia Rogers, and I persuaded faculty member Jearnine Wagner to take the third of the lead roles. Jearnine directed Baylor’s Childrens Theater and I asked if she had any mature actors in the program. She had a young man and a young woman, both mature and good actors. There was some background singing in the play and they were much needed to help with that. The cast worked well together and worked hard and the two teenagers were as mature and as disciplined as the Baylor students. My directing problems were solved. Save for one. It was 1960.

Baylor Childrens Theater was integrated. Baylor University was not. The teenagers were black, but working and rehearsing together, it did not take long for everyone to forget to identify by race. One afternoon during break time one of the students returned to say, “I think you’re in trouble.” “How am I in trouble?” I asked, not believing it. He explained that they had all gone to Baylor Drug Store, adjacent to Baylor Theater for coffee but couldn’t get service. When they complained, the owner of Bayor Drug told them he was not having a sit-in at his drug store and that he was calling the Baylor president, Abner McCall, to report the incident. The owner of Baylor Drug Store was a Baylor Trustee. 

I called departmental chair, Paul Baker who was in New York and told him what had happened. He told me he would take care of it. And he did. The moment passed without ever becoming an event.

Perhaps it should have been. Perhaps I could have persuaded the black students to return for a real sit-in. Perhaps some of the Baylor students would have returned with us. The black students would have been arrested, expelled from high school and faced more harassment and job discrimination for a long time. I would have been fired. The Baylor students would likely not have been allowed to return for the fall semester. We knew the consequences and how many had braved much worse. But if we had taken a stand, regardless of the outcome, today it would be a medal of honor.