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I became a joke in the class. She made what I was doing, in the other classes, she made them aware of what I was doing. So I became sort of a little joke around the school. This was kind of bad. Well, all these things led to, as I say, again with not being able to participate in certain social clubs in the school, like the drama...led to this truancy I referred to. So I fought for a whole year. The only classes I passed in were art classes and English Literature. And in my second year they introduced sociology and philosophy classes. Yow, I passed in those. But what it winded up meaning in the end was that I was...it took me five years to get out of high school, so I was nineteen when I graduated from high school.
...It was. For the first time I met other artists. I met white artists that I had never known before, people whose names were important locally there. And I used to go around and clean up the studios of Edward Nilman Francis who was very important muralist at that time, and did one the most important murals of that time.
...Well, most of the teachers were more sensitive about this. My art teachers, well, they were very sensitive about every facet of me, so to speak. And I think if it hadn't been for them, I wouldn't have survived. The only reason why I finished and finally got down to business and finished high school was the fact, because of their sensitivity and because they

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