Rock and roll, civil rights and the ‘H’ class of ‘58

A few of us in Central High School’s Class of 1958 had grandparents in the first graduating class of what was then “The High School” in Memphis.

Central’s top athletes and cheerleaders hence received a letter “H” instead of “C” for their sweaters or jackets. Some of us had the same teachers as our parents, understandably leading parents to expect we would walk their same line.

Boys in our class didn’t sport ducktails or wear jeans to school, only khakis with little silver buckles in the back. Cheerleaders wore straight skirts pleated above and hemmed below the knee. When their gymnastic routine had them squat to the ground, each girl demurely kept skirt pressed to derrière.

The Central High baseball team won the 1958 state championship, and our basketball team won the city championship that year. We played home football games at Crump Stadium, where its east-west axis brought blinding afternoon sun into the coin-toss decision.

Our initial culture shuffle came with Elvis Presley, who first appeared on national TV at the beginning of our freshman year. The Civil Rights movement had not yet arrived in Memphis, but our American history class did debate issues raised by the confrontation at Little Rock’s Central High, which took place at the beginning of our senior year.

Gym sock-hop dancing morphed from jitterbug to bop to -- gasp! -- rock ‘n roll. Local DJ Dewey Phillips broadcast black R&B to a growing white teenage audience, and Wink Martindale blasted WHBQ-TV Teenage Dance Party into living rooms once a week.

Parents were certain that rock and roll was the evilest influence that would ever infect teenagers. Too many of us smoked cigarettes. Our only other drug was alcohol -- cheap beer or Mogen David wine, as I recall.

Students came from several junior high schools, lending our segregated student body a false impression of diversity.

Central High prepared us well for college. Boys became coaches, teachers, doctors, lawyers, real estate moguls, physicists, judges, and more. After college, sometimes before, girls became housewives and mothers first and career women later. One income was enough for a family.

We look back with pride, nostalgia, and gratitude on our Central High years. Age softens edges and leaves us the memory of perfect time and place.

We will remember all of this and more next week when the Central High Class of 1958 holds its 60th reunion. We will spotlight the inspirational lives of four classmates:

Karl Edmond Shenep, first U.S. military physician killed in Vietnam combat; Avron B. Fogelman, businessman, educator, and philanthropist; Richard Tillinghast, poet, writer, musician, traveler, and college professor; and Jocelyn Dan Wurzburg, civil rights and women’s rights activist, and member of the Tennessee Women’s Hall of Fame.

For more information about the reunion, call 901-684-1332.

Don Nicholson, Central High Class of 1958, is a retired professor of ophthalmology who lives in Florida.