-The following program is brought to you by... ...and by... A complete list of funders is available at... [ Mid-tempo music playing ] [ Finale plays ] [ Slow music plays ] -My name is James W. Wilson, better known as "Chief," and I've been at Jones High School since 1950.

That's when I started my teaching career.

[ Music continues ] I worked very closely with the parents, which also brought in the community.

-If something was happening in this community -- I don't care if it was the white population or the black -- they were trying to figure out a way to get Jones High School band involved.

[ Music continues ] -I got a telegram from the principal of Edgewater saying he's got a job for me.

I said, "Okay, fine."

And we just sort of fell in love with it.

-I was in the Edgewater Marching Eagle Band back in 1964, when we went to the World's Fair.

We all went a little crazy 'cause that was exciting.

-We knew that we were pretty good at what we did, and we just wonder why we were not invited.

-The City of Orlando was facing a real dilemma at that time -- to send the Edgewater band or to send the Jones band or to send both.

What was a city to do?

[ Drumsticks clicking rhythmically ] -1, 2, 3, 4!

[ Drum cadence playing ] [ Jazz music plays ] -This is Orlando, Florida, the city beautiful in Orange County, action center of one of the fastest-growing states in the union Jim and his wife know that their children's future depends on the kind of education they get today.

Before moving, they investigated the educational climate of the area thoroughly.

[ Mid-tempo march playing ] -You steered away from anywhere that you felt uncomfortable.

When you went downtown, you knew to kind of watch yourself, be on guard.

You know, you didn't want to say or do anything wrong to bring attention to yourself from -- I'm sorry -- from any white person -You know, I look back, and I think I must have lived in in a cocoon.

-Blacks with blacks, whites with whites.

Never the two shall meet.

-I never, ever went to school with a white kid.

-There was segregation.

I had never heard of it before because I was raised in the air force and I didn't know that black people and white people couldn't go to school together -I didn't see any African-American faces in the school, except for the janitor.

-I never had a new book.

My book always had some other high-school name in the book, so we got the leftovers.

-When I arrived in 1950, we didn't have nothing.

We had nothing.

-Music has always been a vehicle for academic excellence.

And that's been recognized for many, many years.

So Chief Wilson coming to Jones High was, first of all, to bring a level of academic excellence to that high school, and this was a way for the Jones High family to communicate with the larger Orlando community.

-The very first set of uniforms that we got was from Orlando High School.

And my parents got together, and they took the white stripes off it and then they put -- made them orange and green, and we used those for a couple of years, and then we started raising monies.

They started cleaning out their attics and finding old instruments.

We had band parents' money that we would have them repaired.

[ Slow music playing ] -My understanding is that Jim Wilson grew up in Sanford, Florida, with a very supportive family.

He was a standout musician, and he had a very entrepreneurial spirit.

-Dad was gonna stay in Sanford, and he was making a lot of money shining shoes for those sailors coming into port from Sanford.

And my mom was in big ol' pigtails and saddle ox shoes and was a country girl and my daddy was a zoot suiter and a jitterbug, and she didn't know what hit her.

He wanted to stop school and marry her and take care of her, but all four grandparents said no.

The best that they could do at that time was to get their education.

They picked them up by the scruff of the neck and put 'em on a train to Tallahassee, so Daddy finished college and, in 1950, got his first job at Jones High School, and they've been marries 60-some years -- 63 years -- but they've been sweethearts since the age of 13.

My dad would go out, drive his Model A Ford out to the country to see my mom.

She's a preacher's kid.

[ Slow piano music playing ] My father, James "Chief" Wilson, was a member of the Florida A&M Rattler Marching 100 Band.

[ Mid-tempo march playing ] -In every community, especially the African-American community, every person has a mentor, and in this case, Doc Foster was the mentor to Chief Wilson.

Up until the time that Doc Foster came to Florida A&M, much of what was done in the band field was sort of regimental and military.

It was very strict.

And what Doc Foster brought to it was a whole new style.

He brought a lot of the roots and African tradition to the American pop culture and brought a new style to the marching band.

[ Mid-tempo music playing ] -He was new to the South.

My father was born and raised in Kansas City, Kansas.

I think that, because of his background, that he felt that "Let me show them that we can do anything that anyone else can do."

[ Up-tempo march playing ] And what many people don't realize is that when they would play football, half the stadium -- There was segregation.

But half of the stadium would be filled with whites, and the other half of the stadium would be filled with blacks in Tallahassee.

So there was integration.

At that time, it was separate, but there was sort of integration because they came to see the band.

So Chief Wilson realized that, even in the '40s, that this is something that maybe can bring us all together rather than separate us from each other.

Music can do that.

-Let's go!

-Hey!

-Let's go!

[ Up-tempo music playing ] My father's idea about a performance was to make sure that the audience was wowed, that it was something that they had never seen before.

[ Music continues ] So, his main focus was to perpetuate a blueprint for success.

My father trained two-thirds of the black high-school band directors in the State of Florida, and Chief Wilson, being a part of this, a part of the patch, a part of the group, was able to perpetuate education and excellence with marching bands and with students in life.

[ Music continues ] -My father, in organizing the band at Jones High School, had to work with businesspeople in the community, both black and white, and a number of white businesses, because of segregation, could not tell their counterparts that they were supporting this black band because it would not be good for them.

[ Up-tempo march playing ] -The African-American teachers did not get the same salaries that the white teachers received, and I think being devoid of some things made our students work harder.

I really believe that.

-Anybody growing up in this time period knew the limitations that they were facing before they went to college and after they came out of college.

So the real important thing, and I think that was the important thing about Chief Wilson and all the other band directors that I knew during that time in the State of Florida, was their biggest concern was raising another generation of people that would be caring about other people.

-There used to be a time in Orlando, there was not a place that a black kid could go downtown for a sandwich, a drink.

-We sat down at the counter, and we attempt to order, and they say, "Well, we cannot serve you.

We're gonna ask you one more time to leave."

And so then they said, "We'll just -- We'll take you to jail."

So that's what they did.

And they put us in one cell.

All of us was piled up in one cell, girls in one, boys in another.

That was the frightening thing -- to be in with the real criminals.

We didn't know what they would to you.

-You know, we were growing up thinking that we were inferior.

[ Slow piano music playing ] -All of us were acclimated to the social status -- what's expected, you know, at this particular time -- so we didn't push the button on anything.

-The eatery to the south had a policy of making the Jones High School students go in the back door to order, and one day, a group of students decided, "If you're gonna take our money, you're gonna take it from the front."

So the owners call the police.

The police showed up at our band rehearsal.

They didn't find anything.

They didn't find out any information.

But that really pushed Chief that day.

-The kids came up, young people came up, and stood their ground.

Not disrespectful, not Uncle Tomish, but stood their ground that people may know this is important to them that they have their freedom.

-It was peaceful, to a certain degree.

We didn't have any hoses and dogs and all that sort of thing, but it was a subtle -- more of a subtle, um...fight.

I was told that Dr. King was coming in and if I wanted to meet him, that we could, you know, go down, and we were introduced to him, and I shook his hand.

So I ended up on the picture with him.

-I remember at Tinker Field when Dr. Martin Luther King was there.

I enjoyed what he said.

I thought it would be a bigger crowd.

I don't know if people feared coming, you know, to Tinker Field.

-Well, when we saw the way that blacks were being treated in St. Augustine, my mother wouldn't allow us to go.

-Orlando was moderate when compared to places like St. Augustine or other areas where there was a lot of violence.

That's not to say that it wasn't segregated, it's not to say that there weren't problems, but I think that Orlando was a bit more progressive than other parts of Florida that were much closer to the attitudes of the Deep South.

-Well, we always had to be in a separate line and do this, that, or the other, and so, basically, we took care of that by preparation.

We'd try to pick everything before we left so we wouldn't have any confrontation.

-He often had to walk a fine line between the rigid laws of segregation and his role as a pioneer in opening doors for the students.

Chief Wilson did that with the band and the music.

[ Mid-tempo music playing ] -My father didn't dwell on the negative and the things that were not open to us.

We were always just motivated, encouraged to be the best that we are, and let the merits of our performance carry us.

-I enjoyed going to Jones High 'cause I didn't know any other -- any other school.

We were not allowed to go to the other school, so Jones High was all we had.

-We could compete with the blacks, the other black schools, but not with the white schools There was no competition between, say, for example, Edgewater and Jones.

-This is Sunday, May the 24th, 1964.

[ Up-tempo march playing ] -I was a no-foolishness band director, and they knew that.

I had very close contact with the parents.

They said, "Do anything you want with them.

Just don't stop them from breathing."

And they knew I was really tough.

-I was getting burned out.

I was tired.

And I woke up that morning knowing we had to go on a trip, and I said, "I'm not going.

I'm just not going.

I'm gonna pretend I'm sick this morning."

My door opened to my room, I would say about 30 minutes later, and I look up, and it's Chief Wilson.

He just looked at me, and he said, "Get up, put your uniform on, and get out here to the bus."

When I stepped on the step, they started laughing so hard, some of them were under their seats laughing.

And it was just something I just never lived down.

I just thought, "When he says, 'Move,' you move."

Because we were all trying to improve our image in the community.

We had the best cooperation.

We didn't want to ruin that.

-He said, "Practice doesn't make perfect.

Perfect practice makes perfect."

-Not only did these kids have this opportunity because they were black, but they were good.

These kids could play anything, you know, and they were considered the best band in the community.

[ Up-tempo march playing ] -We had rules.

We had dress codes.

We dressed a certain way that was always decent and respectable.

No one had to tell us, "Do not do this," 'cause we knew better, and if a teacher or any adult told you what to do, you always did it.

-We were taught that we had to be 10 times better.

[ Music continues ] -I would think it was more from the standpoint of expecting the most from you and not accepting mediocrity.

-We wanted to dance and twirl, but Mr. Wilson would not allow.

[ Music continues ] I was captain.

We were coming off the field.

They said, "Barbara, let's do the Birdland."

You probably don't remember.

It was a dance.

And we came off the field dancing.

He took me in his office, you know, and he really scolded me.

Chief would paddle.

He had a paddle.

-Now, I never met Justice myself.

[ Laughs ] I was too afraid.

If Chief say, "Sit there," I think I sat there.

If he said, "Go this way," I went that way.

-He has this old car where you let the seat in the back.

He didn't believe in anybody waiting on their parents, and so whoever was left waiting on your parents, he would pile all of us in the back, but it was so much fun to ride in it.

-The white students in the area, the majority of them that made the top band, took private lessons.

Well, at Jones, there were no private lessons.

Chief taught 'em all.

-I insisted that they learn how to read music.

-So, I was a 7th-grader, and I had to play with a senior.

And all of us had to play our parts, and everybody played their part.

I remember this guy was a tuba player and he was a senior and I had to play with him I had to hold my part up, and when we got through, I held my part up.

-Each person in the band had to prepare a solo... [ Up-tempo clarinet music playing ] ...because if your name was called in front of the audience, you had to perform.

The challenge was received and taken, so this made a difference.

-The was a personal pride that we took when we played with a white band and we played better than they did.

[ Laughs ] -There was one band, and that was Jones band.

[ Mid-tempo music playing ] -[ Shouting indistinctly ] -♪ To get the wrong idea about me ♪ ♪ I ain't got nothin' to hide ♪ ♪ I want the world to see ♪ ♪ Whoo!

♪ ♪ Marching Eagle through your game ♪ ♪ Your game ♪ ♪ Marching Eagle through your game ♪ ♪ I don't want nobody ♪ ♪ To get the wrong idea about me ♪ ♪ I ain't got nothing to hide ♪ ♪ I want the world to see ♪ ♪ Whoo!

♪ -As soon as I stepped on this campus, many people called me to let me know about the tradition here between Chief Wilson and Del Kieffner.

-This is a rug that was made for my dad when he left Edgewater High School.

It's made out of the braids from the uniforms that they were wearing at the time in the '60s.

Dad began teaching at Edgewater High School in 1957 all the way through until 1973.

[ Mid-tempo guitar music playing ] My dad grew up in Jasper, Indiana, and began at a very early age to have an interest in music.

He started playing the trumpet early on, and he began actually performing at local dances.

He was actually the first member of his family ever to go to college.

Mom and Dad met at Indiana State University, where they were both on music scholarship, and they met in the band.

Mom played the clarinet.

Dad played the trumpet.

The engagement came, I believe, in the fall or Christmas of 1950.

He was then called to the military, made his audition, and was accepted and made a member of the Marine Corps band.

Dad was a very multifaceted musician.

He could play at least a little bit on most all of the instruments within the band.

Both Kay and I played the clarinet, just like our mom.

They had 65 beautiful years together.

[ Music continues ] -Del Kieffner was a monumental influence on my life.

My parents had a business in College Park which afforded me the opportunity to go to Edgewater High School.

[ Up-tempo music playing ] -The only thing that I recognize is these bleachers were the practice field where we would march.

I was in the Edgewater Marching Eagle band.

-I was Edgewater's first girl drummer.

[ Drum cadence playing ] -I had the opportunity to meet Del Kieffner.

Very soft-spoken, but whenever he spoke a word, it was very direct, and he would talk to me about the bridge that he tried to build.

-I remember so much about Dad collaborating with other people and other musicians and band directors.

I think that was one of the things about his line of work that he loved the most.

They all worked together and shared ideas and relationships.

I would say all of his best friendships were a result of those working relationships.

[ Mid-tempo march playing ] -Right there, in 1968, the John Philip Sousa Award.

-I wanted my band to sound like the Marine band... [ Music continues ] ...clean, concise, precise sound that the Marine band had.

[ Music continues ] -Every single one of those halftime shows, he handwrote where everybody was supposed to go and what they were supposed to do.

He was an inspiring person.

He would bring the best out in you.

-Of course, he had that short, military haircut, you know, being an ex-Marine, and he looked like a Marine standing on the sidelines.

I mean, you just -- You did not want to mess with him at all.

-Some of us that year called him "Little Napoleon" -- his left hand inside his shirt with a megaphone in his right hand, screaming at us, and if he really got mad, he'd take his megaphone and throw it down on the ground.

-Behind his back, we called him a little banty rooster because he was an ex-Marine and walked with strut.

He was demanding, but he knew we had it in us.

[ Up-tempo march playing ] -Our fears, our happiness...

He was there to protect us.

-He was a very good friend of mine, yes, and we always protected our relationship, too, and we fostered the integration of our professional organization because of our relationship with each other.

-Jim Wilson, "Chief," we had -- we've always been friends.

-And my sister reminded me this past week that they were invited to both our weddings, so they were personal friends of my parents.

-He would call on the phone.

I knew him by voice before I knew him by face.

And he would, you know, competitively encourage.

We were archrivals.

To this day, we're archrivals.

If I see too much red and white, it really upsets me.

It really does.

You can document that.

-If they had lived in a different time, they'd be great, great buddies, and they were still great friends for the times that they lived and worked in.

-We would tease and kid and everything like this, but if I really needed anything, Mr. Kieffner would help me.

-So there were times when, you know, you said, "Well, then will you listen to my band?"

[ Mid-tempo music playing ] -To make sure that we realized where we were in terms of our performance, he would have the conductors from the Florida Symphony Orchestra to come in and conduct us.

They were always on the same page.

[ Fanfare plays ] -We invite all of our friends throughout the United States, Canada, from all parts of the world to come and visit the New York World's Fair.

-The Florida pavilion is unique at the fair.

It's featuring some seagoing smiling jokers as part of the exhibition.

This is where the action is.

[ Up-tempo march playing ] -So what you usually do is send a film of your performance, and they say, "Yea" or "Nay," and if it's "Yea," you start making your money, and away you go.

-We had been invited to the New York World's Fair.

-I only remember that it was taught that Edgewater had been accepted to go to the World's Fair, and I remember it was some discontentment about Jones not attending.

-The secretary from L.A. Johnson's Fuel Oil wrote a letter to the Sentinel asking why was Edgewater going to the World's Fair and not Jones High School since everybody in Orlando knew that Jones was the best band in the city?

-Oh, yeah.

You know, that was the general perception, because I could remember so well when I was a small child about how exciting it was to see the Jones band in the Christmas parades.

They just created an air of wonder, you know?

Their marching was so good, their playing was so good, their drum major was such an effective figure -- huge hat, you know, that made him look like he was about 10 feet tall.

-You know, it had to be the spirit, it had to be the precision, it had to be tempos and things of that nature, because that's what makes the -- you know, it was exciting.

-I had some very good friends at the Orlando Sentinel -- Charlie Wadsworth, who was one of the favorite columnists at the time -- and we just had an overwhelming -- We were just a fortunate group at the time.

Mr. Wadsworth and the Hush Puppies in the Orlando Sentinel made our effort so popular, people were volunteering to get on the bandwagon to get the publicity for participating in this particular effort.

-One of the things that helped the Orlando area really get through the process of the civil rights movement and integration and desegregation in a positive way was Orlando Mayor Bob Carr, who started an interracial committee to help the two -- the predominantly white community and the African-American community -- communicate better, and there was a large-scale effort as early as the 1950s to make the relationships between these communities stronger.

-Everybody in the white community, I think, would have just said, "Sure!"

because they were great.

-And that's when the city decided to send both groups.

-I don't think it's surprising that the white band was invited first.

However, under Chief Wilson, the Jones High School band was very successful.

They had been winning many competitions, they were an award-winning band, they'd gone to state competitions, so it was also not surprising that, eventually, they were able to be invited, as well.

-Well, he announced it to us in the band practice, and, of course, we were excited.

We didn't really know the magnitude of what it would be like, but we knew it was gonna be different and interesting.

-Nations from around the globe pledge to a theme of common understanding at the New York World's Fair.

-The price tag to send both bands to the fair was $25,000, but they all worked together to raise the total.

-Everyone was working for that effort, and they tried to make it as easy for people to do as possible.

-All members of the band had to participate in, you know, selling whatever items we had to sell.

-Well, first of all, I have no idea how any of us graduated that year... [ Mid-tempo piano music playing ] ...or even passed a class.

We had candy sales... -Light bulbs, toothbrushes... -...magazines sales... -...locks, everything we could think of.

-We all had cans that we would go to different sites and stand.

-We were on the streets of Orlando specifically in front of Morrison's Cafeteria, and as people would come out of the cafeteria, we would be there in our uniforms and our little tin cans.

-I do remember going door to door with our band hat.

-Ebenezer United Methodist Church -- they used to make dinners.

They would stand outside and ask people that were walking down the street if they wanted to buy dinner.

-Mr. Kieffner came to us and said, "Okay, we're doing a good job on raising money, so how do you feel about our band getting together with Jones to raise the money to go to the World's Fair?"

-When the suggestion was made that the community have this fundraiser for both bands, it sort of made perfect sense.

-We also did a series of car washes at the Shamrock gas station.

I remember L.A. Johnson Fuel Oil being very supportive of us and allowing us to use his lot.

-It was just a mix of the Jones band and our band together, washing cars.

We played mainly the music that the Jones band brought because their music was jazzier and a lot more fun to wash cars with.

We had soap-suds fights.

We had water fights.

I don't think any of us went home dry.

We had a good time.

-We sort of did them separately.

There was Edgewater's band, and there was Jones High's band.

-The Sentinel -- they had a segregated section.

That's where anything about black people was.

-They decided that two of us from Edgewater and two from Jones should be in the paper to -- I don't know how I got asked, to be honest with you, but I did -- and another woman named Charlotte Lee, who was also in the Edgewater band, and then two young ladies from Jones.

-Chief Wilson remembers this as the first picture in the paper in which African-Americans and whites were in the same photo.

-Martin Andersen, the owner of the Orlando Sentinel, sat at the top of the pyramid of power, and he wanted to grow the paper.

They had to attract people from up north, people who would have a different view of race relations.

[ Mid-tempo music playing ] -We integrated the system, more or less, and by the kids and other bands seeing us working together, it made a very harmonious thing in this particular district.

Then we started meeting together, and we broke down a lot of barriers.

[ Music continues ] Whenever I see the Tabebuia trees, immediately, I have real warm feeling because I feel that it changed the tapestry of this particular town.

-The Sentinel supported Jones High and Edgewater's participation in this trip by selling these trees as seedlings.

-They had pictures of cars lined up downtown at the Sentinel, and they sponsored that, almost sort of themselves, and they raised most of the money that sent both of us to the World's Fair.

It was exciting because it was something that had not been done before ever.

-He told us what this meant -- see both bands up there.

See both bands up there.

Orlando is a great city.

-There was a smart strategy at work here, I think, on the part of the political leadership of this city that they needed to have stable race relationships if they wanted to succeed in their growth agenda, attracting people to come on down here and live in Orlando.

-I think the thing that's hard to understand from this perspective is what a big deal it was.

-We were the catalyst for the integration of the community.

[ Mid-tempo guitar music playing ] -We're talking about 1964, one of the most tumultuous years in American history, and in the middle of all that, these kids from Orlando headed up to the New York World's Fair, where, even there, civil rights protest were going on.

Edgewater went in May, and Jones went in July.

Jones made a stop in Washington, D.C. on the way, and they were there the very week the Civil Rights Act was signed.

-We took the train from Orlando to D.C., which we loved.

-We were supposed to be studying on the train.

I don't remember opening a book.

Then we went to the World's Fair in the middle of May, right before finals.

[ Music continues ] -Mr. Kieffner had it organized to the minute.

-I wish I still had that booklet.

[ Chuckles ] -We had two cars.

The boys were in one car, and the girls were in another.

-We were not supposed to intermingle on the train.

-They had almost, like, constant chaperones in between the two cars.

-I'm not going to say who, but some people found a way to intermingle.

-My mom was a chaperone.

We left Nina at home because she was a baby.

-And for over a month after they returned, I just wanted everybody in my sight because I had never been away from my family, and my mother didn't travel anymore after that because she was traumatized, too.

She missed me desperately.

[ Music continues ] -We had dinner at Union Station because Mr. Wilson knew he was bringing a bunch of country bumpkins out of the State of Florida for the first time.

To prepare us for eating en masse in public, the home-economics teachers would come up and give us etiquette lessons -- which fork to use at which point in the dining affair.

-There I remember the Lincoln Monument.

I had no idea that I would get a chance to go there.

I like the history of it.

I like the idea of seeing what I had not seen before.

Then it kinda brings you closer to what it is.

-But to ride the train to Washington, D.C. and then to take a picture in front of the Capitol -- that was really an experience.

[ Mid-tempo guitar music playing ] -The 1964 World's Fair, as I recall it, was quite a big deal.

It ran for two summers.

I knew people who delayed college and would -- took a year off and went up to be in New York to work at it.

It was seen as a sort of outreach, tourist outreach, for Florida.

-The New York World's Fair of '64-'65 was really a proving ground for the Walt Disney Company.

They wanted to test, to see, whether there was a market for an East Coast Disneyland.

So, at the same time, we have these bands from Orlando showing that if you really had the right stuff to strut and march and show what they could do to a national market outside the Deep South.

-I remember the sign from Orlando was behind us.

-Half of us were under a building, and the other half were out in the sun in 100% wool uniforms.

it was awfully hot in May in New York.

But we did good.

We were proud of our performance.

[ Mid-tempo march playing ] -Number one, I was so happy to be out of the state and to go all the way to New York.

And I had no idea what it was going to be like.

-Most of us had never been out of the State of Florida, and to see these big buildings, these tall buildings, you know, and I wanted to be cool.

Everybody was looking up, but I looked at the buildings before I got there, like I knew what was going on, you know?

I didn't want anybody to know, like, "Oh, this is my first time!"

You know?

-And when we got there and then I was in awe, surprised.

"Oh, my goodness!"

It's all of this is here?

-Now, at the World's Fair, you have to keep in mind that we were there principally to play at the Florida pavilion, so we had several shows a day.

-Performing at the World's Fair, where people were from everywhere -- that was a real experience, you know?

-And it's inconceivable to me that the Disney folks would not have noted that there were these two bands, and a black and a white one, symbolizing that there's progress being made in Orlando.

-My band is performing, my band is great, and then... "When do I get a break so that I can go to the next event?"

[ Mid-tempo march playing ] -We rode the log flume ride probably 50 to 100 times.

-I've told many of my students that always go to Disney and marvel at Disney -- I say, "I rode on that It's a Small World when it first premiered at the New York World's Fair," and they look at me and say, "Wow.

You're that old?"

[ Chuckles ] -I remember going to one.

It was the African pavilion.

And we were eating at the top one when a giraffe peeked in the window from the compound where all the animals were kept, and it was like -- really, this was amazing.

-And then there were areas when they had these places that people would be dressed in their country's attire, and I would walk around, looking.

I got that from Chief, too.

He was somewhere on the fairground, and we were.

He never took a break.

-We were fortunate to have had some beautiful experiences.

I can't say there was so much about the fair that really enthused me as being in New York City as our taking a trip to Lincoln Center, which was new then, and saying, "Well, one day, I'm going to be on the stage at Lincoln Center."

Of course, that did happen -You knew you were at a different place.

You were in New York!

-We got to go to Radio City Music Hall.

We also went to a Broadway play.

We, of course, saw the Statue of Liberty.

-We were running up and down the streets in New York as though we were New Yorkers.

We wanted to believe that's where we belonged.

It was so free.

It was just a free feeling of you were somewhere else, doing something else.

-We ate at the Horn & Hardart restaurant.

It was like a à la carte service, put your money in the little slot to get your food.

-I remember that we stayed at the Great Northern Hotel, which, for a lot of us, was the first time ever being in any kind of a fancy hotel that had more than two or three floors to it.

-Running down the hall and making a bunch of noise, being able to stay up past 10:00 -- oh, my goodness!

-We were not all together on one floor, and everyone was subject to bed checks in the evening to make sure that no one skipped out or did anything horrible.

-Of course, as teenagers were, we, uh, had a lot of fun and got into a lot of mischief.

-As hard as Chief may, he -- I think he stayed up most of the night.

But we were a lot of kids in a number of different rooms on different floors all over a hotel.

He couldn't keep up with everything, and a bunch of us one night were dropping water balloons out of the window down on some of the passersby.

[ Laughter ] -Doing typical high-school pranks with each other, and we got into a pillow fight, and the pillows break, and there's feathers floating all over the room.

And then, all of a sudden, there's this knock at the door.

[ Knock on door ] And it's Del Kieffner.

And he says, "Open this door right now."

[ Chuckles ] And the feathers hadn't even settled yet.

They were still floating in the air.

-Mr. Kieffner had to walk away to break out in laughter so that the boys wouldn't see it.

They were down on the floor with hairbrushes, sweeping up the feathers, and Mom sewed the pillows together.

[ Laughs ] -Our hotel was right next door to Carnegie Hall.

But when we got off the bus when we got there, there was a man laying in the street.

Most of us had never, ever seen a homeless man.

Some of the kids were taking pictures.

Mr. Kieffner said, "Put your cameras down.

That man does not have a home, and you are not to disrespect him."

Being raised in a very small, working-class factory town in Indiana, he experienced division of classes and found himself, many times, being discriminated against because he was of the perceived lower class.

-The very next year after the World's Fair, I found myself seated in the downtown's theater on Orange Avenue here in Orlando, Florida, with white teenagers.

-I think the trees are a real symbol of when the community came together.

I think it's a real symbol of unity and of change.

-If Orlando had had the kind of conflictual race relations of another Florida city, St. Augustine, it's really inconceivable to me that the Disney Company would have carried through in their plan to choose Orlando as the site for the East Coast Disneyland.

-Del Kieffner organized the huge marching band parade for the opening of Walt Disney World in October of 1971.

Just imagine trying to organize 1,000 teenagers playing "76 Trombones" and marching together down Main Street USA at Walt Disney World.

It was a huge undertaking -So, of course Del called his old friend Jim Wilson to help him out.

-The Orange County School Board gave him a retirement party, but the Division of Entertainment at Disney wanted to be a part of it, so they came and brought mermaids in costume and lots of characters.

Four trumpeters got up and honored him and sort of kicked off the whole party.

[ Up-tempo march playing ] [ Cheers and applause ] -I received a Bachelor of Science degree in music education.

I attended VanderCook School of Music in Chicago and received a Master's degree.

I retired in 1998 after being band director for more than 40 years.

Jones Alumni Band -- I am the assistant director there.

[ Mid-tempo jazz music playing ] -You gotta understand that when you're dealing with music, the art is so profound.

You don't worry about who's playing if you're playing well.

You know what I mean?

[ Music continues ] In the early '90s, I was appointed assistant principal at Jones High School, and Chief Wilson was still there, and, eventually, I became his boss.

But, I tell you, whatever he asked me to do, I probably still would do.

[ Laughs ] [ Playing scales ] -I have been blessed to be a musician all of my life.

Since graduating from Jones, I pursued music in college and as a career, and not unlike Bach, I am a composer, and my bread-and-butter job is the Director of Music at St. Richard's Episcopal Church in Winter Park, Florida.

[ Organ playing ] -♪ We praise You for the glory ♪ [ Mid-tempo music playing ] -I spent two years at St. Pete Junior College and two years at University of South Florida getting my music-ed degree.

[ Music continues ] But I probably learned more from being around Del Kieffner and being in the Edgewater High School band than I ever did from any class that I took at the university level.

Now I currently serve as the executive director for the Florida Bandmasters Association.

Chief Wilson was the first black band director to become president of FBA.

-Watch.

Shh, shh, shh.

Ready, and... [ Drumroll ] -After I graduated from FAMU with a degree in mathematics, math education, I taught in California four years.

Then I came back to Orlando, and I didn't come to teach to Jones High.

That was in '76.

I wanted to, but they would not allow me to come to teach at Jones High School because they had a quota on the number of black teachers they wanted at Jones High School.

[ Mid-tempo music playing ] -As it turned out, many African-Americans were shifted to white schools, but few white students were shifted to Jones.

It's still that way.

Jones is still as segregated today as it was in 1960.

-My husband was teaching at Jones High School during that time, and they called him one day into the office and said they were moving him to Oak Ridge High School.

And he was like, "You're moving me to Oak Ridge High School?"

-In 1970, the effort to desegregate schools led to a really traumatic thing for teachers.

It was this fishbowl lottery that was broadcast on local television, and they put the names of black teachers in one series of bowls and the names of white teachers in another series.

It seemed as though the less experienced and not-as-good white teachers were the ones that were assigned to the African-American schools and that the very best African-American teachers were assigned to the white schools.

-They did that overnight during the Christmas holidays, and we went to a new school that January.

-They sent Jim Wilson to a white school.

-The principal of Jones High School, Wilbur Gary, fought that and was successful in the effort to have Chief Wilson return to Jones High School, where he remained very successful until 1993, when he retired.

[ Up-tempo march playing ] -Alright, Chief.

-You the man.

-Take care, alright?

Yes, sir.

Thank you so much.

[ Music continues ] -He was one of the first students in Dr. William P. Foster's incomparable Marching 100 in 1943 as a member of the tuba section.

If you would please show love for Chief, James Wilson!

[ Cheers and applause ] -Have a seat.

-Whew.

Oh, boy.

-Can you get in there now?

-[ Chuckles ] -I don't know if you can get in there.

-I want to throw it to you.

-Alright.

You talking trash, you might hit it.

-Jones -- Jones is home to a great many people.

The fact of the matter is that there was a time once when Jones High School was the only school that students of color were allowed to attend.

If it were not for Jones, they wouldn't have received an education at all.

-Okay.

Yeah, that's one of my first uniforms, too.

This seems to be something we used for the World's Fair in '64.

Mm-hmm.

It's my old hat.

[ Mid-tempo music playing ] [ Music continues ] -Those two men were band directors who were devoted to their students, and if we had more people like that leading the world and understanding what we need to do as people, life would be a lot different than it is right now.

-Rather than see color differences, they saw band kids.

[ Music continues ] -The band in itself was a legacy.

If he didn't do anything else, that would have been enough because it opened so many other doors.

[ Music continues ] -We can all get around the fine music and performances that those students put on, in spite of the color of their skin.

[ Music continues ] -And so I think what Chief did at the time he was doing it should be inspirational to all, all band directors of any color, 'cause we know here in our -- what we like to call a postracial society, examples like Chief and the work that he did are certainly contributing factors to why it is I'm able to do what I do.

[ Music continues ] [ Finale plays ] [ Mid-tempo waltz playing ] [ Music continues ] -The preceding program was brought to you by... ...and by... Closed-caption funding provided by... A complete list of funders is available at... For more information on this topic, please visit our website...