Parades, a copter and 30,000 fans
Yates, Wheatley alums recall larger-than-life rivalry
Yates and Wheatley will face off on the football field Saturday with identical 2-2 records, rekindling a rivalry that dates back nearly a century to when they were two of only three Black high schools in the city’s segregated system. Between 1946 and 1966, the Turkey Day Classic was more than just a matchup between two top-tier football teams; it was a referendum on Third and Fifth. There was a football game, yes, but there were also parades, halftime shows and bragging rights to last a year.
This is the story — in the words of the people who lived it — of how two Black neighborhoods rallied around their high schools to make a football game larger than life, and how the integration of public schools ended the holiday tradition.
Interviews have been edited for length and clarity. ‘The event of the year’
For over 30 years, Fourth Ward’s Booker T. Washington High School, built in 1893, was the only secondary school for Black people in Houston. That changed in the late 1920s with the construction of Jack Yates High School, named for the Black minister and post-emancipation community leader, in Third Ward, and Phyllis Wheatley High School, named for the prominent Black poet of the colonial era, in Fifth Ward.
The schools were built to serve Houston’s rapidly growing Black population. They immediately joined the Prairie View Interscholastic League, the governing body for Black high school sports in Texas. They exclusively played other Black high schools in the state, with holidays reserved for matchups between the three Houston teams.
Each time Wheatley and Yates played, the crowds would get larger and larger, so the principals of the high schools successfully petitioned the Houston ISD school board to make the Thanksgiving Turkey Day game an annual event. In 1945, Yates played Washington on Thanksgiving for the last time, and from then on Yates and Wheatley would play.
Thurman Robins, Yates ’58, author of “Requiem for a Classic: Thanksgiving Turkey Day Classic”
Wheatley and Yates was “money day.” HISD probably made enough money on those games to support the whole damn athletic department all year. Jeppeson Stadium seated 20,000, but you had 30,000 people out there with all the people standing on the side
lines.
Charles Herbert, Wheatley ’53, principal 1978-1983
It was just the event of the year. If you weren’t in the drill squad, or band, or on the football field, everybody got their clothes ready for the football game. They would put clothes on layaway and come out in their finest. Deloris Johnson, Yates ’58, drill team
‘So much joy’
In its heyday, the Turkey Day Classic was an all-day affair that started hours before the 2 p.m. football game. The trash talk could start weeks or months earlier. The players were neighborhood stars.
Both schools started to have what was called a “breakfast dance,” where they’d meet up the morning of the game and have breakfast and a pep rally and all of that, and that became so lively that it started to be broadcast on several of the Black radio stations in Houston. Thurman Robins
The parade started at Dowling and Gray, and then came down Dowling Street (now Emancipation Avenue) and went into the school (Yates). You passed all the businesses — and there were many on Dowling Street — and all the churches, and people were lined up on all sides of the streets, and they would bring their children and everyone would be cheering and shouting.
Deloris Johnson
The band would lead out, and then our drill team, the Ryan Kadettes, would follow, and then the cheerleaders and the decorated cars, and a float for the queen. And of course, the cars had to be the most classy cars that existed at that time, convertibles with the whitewall tires.
Thelma Robins-Gould, Yates
’58
That Thanksgiving Day parade, as a junior high schooler, with everyone marching down the street and all the crowds screaming and shouting, it was one of the most exciting times you could see. From a child’s standpoint, that’s what I felt. So much joy, so much community, so much camaraderie, and I’ll never forget that, the beautiful majorettes coming down the street, it was all wonderful. Bruce Austin, Wheatley ’71
Whenever we’d go out on the town, we’d get our haircuts free, we’d go to the pool free, we’d go to the theater free. The bad side of that was if anyone saw you out past curfew, they would tell Coach Walker.
Dr. Voris Glasper, Wheatley
’57, football player
Some of my teammates decided one night they were going to drink some beer, and they were drinking on the train tracks not far from where Coach Patterson lived. One of the boys went over and told the coach that his boys were down there drinking beer, so coach Patterson walked down the track and caught those boys drinking beer. He didn’t put them off the team, but the next day at practice, he ran them until they threw up. He just kept running them; he ran them almost till dark. They didn’t drink beer no more after that.
Donald Dixon, Yates ’59
Third Ward people would be roaming the streets the nights before the game, trying to draw the Wheatley kids into fights and stuff, and so the merchants in Fifth Ward would donate money, and my dad, coach Walker, would rent the use of a YMCA camp, and he’d take those boys and coaches out of town and get them away from here.
Etta Frances Walker, Wheatley ’61, drill team member and daughter of
coach Frank Walker
They did a lot of betting on that game. Y’all remember that policeman? He was at every practice, and after each game he’d give us a little money, so we thought the world of him, he had the Cadillac car and blah blah blah. We won every game except Turkey Day, and he came in and started to curse us out. Mr. Walker told him to get out, and we didn’t know what was going on, but we later found out he was betting, and we lost that game and he lost his money.
Dr. Voris Glasper
I went to church out at Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in Fifth Ward because my mother wouldn’t let me change churches, and at Pleasant Hill, all the church members and their kids went to Wheatley. So on the first of November every year, we’d stop talking to each other. It was just, “I’ll see you Turkey Day.”
Jesse Hurst, Yates ’59
I never went to Third Ward during the daytime. I had a young lady over there that I was kind of dating for a minute, so I went but it was under the cover of darkness. I had no kind of clothes or sweater on that was purple and white, because Third Ward was off limits. If you were with quite a few of your fellas from Fifth Ward, you could kind of stick your chest out and walk around, but you didn’t go over there by yourself.
Willard Butler, Wheatley
’62, football player
‘Spectacular performances’
Amid all the pomp and circumstance, it might be easy to forget that there was still a football game to be played.
We would come back into town from the YMCA camp on Thanksgiving and things would be totally out of control. Trying to get to the stadium, we had to leave at least two hours in advance because of the traffic and the people, and once people identified the team bus it was people honking their horns and waving out of their convertibles.
Eddie Henry, Wheatley ’62,
football player When we came out of the dressing room we could not hear anything on the field because there were not less than 30,000 people in the stands on both sides. What we worked on, maybe two or three weeks before that big game, was “silent snaps,” because we couldn’t hear anyway, so we just had to watch the center. Once the quarterback got under the center, we had to watch the movement of the center and when the ball snapped, then we went.
Donald Dixon
We just knew we had to win, and when we lost it hurt us. My mother always fixed a Turkey Day dinner, and I remember the year we lost in 1958, I didn’t eat dinner that night. I couldn’t keep anything down because Wheatley had beat us.
Jesse Hurst
Some of the most spectacular performances were by the drill teams at halftime.
Isaac Bryant, Wheatley ’55
We were in the Ryan Kadettes, and we had the fabulous red and gold uniforms, red skirts with a gold jacket and white boots and white gloves. Red-and-gold trimmed hats with the plume.
Thelma Robins-Gould
‘Descending from heaven’
Every alum who spoke with the Houston Chronicle recalled “The Helicopter Game” in 1958.
My senior year, they flew Miss Yates in on a helicopter, and nobody had ever seen that. Her name was Carolyn Wilkins; she was one of the most beautiful girls at Yates.
Jesse Hurst
I was just euphoric, but being the kind of person I am, I didn’t want to show but half of it, and I wanted to be a cool, calm and collected sort of person. Carolyn Wilkins-Santos, Yates ’59
When Miss Yates came down in a helicopter, they titled it “Descending From Heaven,” but the thing is the idea was stolen from Wheatley.
Isaac Bryant, Wheatley ’55
I was in my first year at Hampton Institute in Virginia, and I called home to find out what happened in the Turkey Day Classic. My mom said, “You guys won the halftime, but Wheatley won the game.”
Thelma Robins-Gould
‘It all came to an end’
The Turkey Day Classic continued to draw sell-out crowds through 1966. The next year, the all-Black Prairie View Interscholastic League was absorbed into the white University Interscholastic League as public schools in Texas began to integrate. For the first time, Black and white schools were competing head to head on the football field. Wheatley and Yates still faced off once a year, but those games were no longer held on Thanksgiving. The ripple effects of integration were, and continue to be, felt in the schools and Third and Fifth Ward.
For Yates and Wheatley to continue playing on Thanksgiving Day, that wouldn’t have fit into the UIL’s schedule, because that’s when they’re in their state playoffs. Not only did the game come to an end, but you start to see great, Black blue chip talent going to previously all-white programs. It starts to dilute the talent pool for the Black high schools, the Black high schools start to decline. and then the Black neighborhoods start to decline because Black families start to move out to “better neighborhoods.”
Michael Hurd, author of “Thursday Night Lights: The Story of Black High School
Football in Texas”
We got the opportunity to get out of Fifth Ward and socialize and buy homes, and saw opportunities we thought were greater because of the material gain, but we lost the focus on what we had. In Fifth Ward, we had a bonded community. We had a bloc of voters that would have given us governmental strength and a stronger voice, we had Black business owners who would hire us and train us and fire us if we didn’t do right. We lost all of that.
Eddie Henry
There were no white kids coming to the inner city schools, but there were plenty of inner city kids that should have stayed at their school that got dragged out to the majority white schools, and of course they were good athletes.
Etta Frances Walker
The rivalry still exists, but it’s not nearly as fierce as it once was.
Thurman Robins
The young men now, I’m proud of them, but I would like for them to have the kinds of opportunities that we had. A lot of people want to put the kids down, but if you go over there and meet those kids and show them a little interest, they really take that in.
Willard Butler
The Classic will always be with us, and everybody who lived that period will always remember it. People always tell you to create good memories. Well, we created excellent memories for a long time. Deloris Johnson