Forward! Black drill teams marched with community pride
Aside from athletic success, the city of Beaver Falls was once home to two of the state’s top drill teams. With sponsorship provided by the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World, the Beaver Falls lodge formed a drill team comprised of Black teenage girls in the 1960s.
Katrina Mention Mincy, now 74 and living in Cincinnati, was a member of the Scot-Etts, the founding unit formed in 1964. She was a 14-year-old freshman at Beaver Falls Jr. High School at the time.
The Scot-Etts gained national acclaim while performing military-style-drill steps in other cities that also housed Black Elks lodges, including Reading and Harrisburg, Chicago, Indianapolis, even Dallas.
“We had quite a winning reputation,” said Mincy, who is now a pastor.
“Mr. Arthur Lindsay was our first drill master,” she said. “He was a tall, good-looking man — and demanded our respect.
“After he died, Mr. Jimmy (Wallace) Sr. took over. He, just like Mr. Arthur, looked out for us young ladies. They were very respectful and protective of us, as if we were their daughters. They taught us drills, but also self-respect and pride.”
Jason Wallace, 58, of Newark, New Jersey, was a banner carrier for the Scot-Etts and also a member of the Jr. Herd. His father, “Mr.
Jimmy,” served in the Army during World War II and the Korean War, he said.
Annette Johnson-Jackson, 73, is another founding member of the original Scot-Etts.
“I recall this as a very special time in my life,” she said. “I appreciated growing up in Beaver Falls. A small town, but we learned the importance of treating people like we wanted to be treated.”
Before she could graduate, Jackson’s parents relocated to South Central Los Angeles, where she graduated from Crenshaw High School. Now a grandmother, she returned to Western Pennsylvania 10 years ago and lives in McKees Rocks.
In the late 1960s, an Army recruiter from California settled in Beaver Falls to work at the city’s
recruiting office on 7th Avenue.
Robert Jackson, a sergeant firstclass in the Army, was approached by Black Elks officials to help start a boys version of the successful Scot-Etts. By 1971, several teenage boys had been recruited for what was dubbed the Jr. Herd. The name reflected the Elks’ involvement, said Mark Jackson, 68, one of the group’s founding members.
“Sarge was a special guy,” he said. “We had about 20 guys initially, but as time passed, by the mid-’70s, we were up to nearly 50 members.”
The experience had a longtime impact on the younger Jackson and another 1974 Beaver Falls High classmate, Rufus Ford.
“We decided to join what was then called the VOLAR, or Volunteer Army,” said Jackson. “My drill team experience definitely had a positive impact on me.”
After 30 years in the U.S. Army, Jackson retired and settled with family in Augusta, Georgia — near the former Fort Gordon, recently renamed Fort Eisenhower.
‘Girls went crazy’
James “JC” Caracter, of Somerset, New Jersey, also fondly recalls his youthful days in “The Falls.”
“I remember when we first started the Jr. Herd. We were influenced by a drill team from Reading, Pa. They came to Beaver Falls during an Elks convention. We saw them marching and were overly impressed. And the girls went crazy. So you know we were ready to start our own team.”
Caracter, a three-sport athlete at Beaver Falls and Blackhawk high schools, joined with several of his past teammates and friends from Harmony Dwellings and under Sgt. Jackson’s tutelage, the Jr. Herd became a popular entity throughout the city.
By the mid-1970s, the Jr. Herd had earned a strong reputation as one of the premier drill teams in Pennsylvania. They also earned national status by winning tournament competitions in Chicago, St. Louis and at regional and statewide Black Elks clubs.
Alexander “JP” Pugh fondly recalls his days as one of three main cadence “callers” leading the drill team in parades. Edmund Dreher and Terry “Booker-T” Wiley were the other two parade callers, he said.
Both Dreher and Wiley enjoyed successful military careers — Dreher in the Air Force and Wiley as a decorated Army officer. Wiley’s two brothers, Desi and Kevin Wiley, were both Herd members who also served lengthy stints in the armed forces.
Pugh says the drill team had lasting positive impacts on its members. The callers often incorporated the “Jody: Sound Off” call during parade routes. The Jody cadence was created by a Black World War II veteran named Willie Lee Duckworth Sr. of Sandersville, Georgia.
‘Valuable reflections’
Pugh also served in the Army as a medical specialist. Now 68 and retired from the auto sales industry in Detroit, he and his wife, Ola, own a successful child-care facility on Detroit’s west side.
Caracter recalls older Beaver Falls men who ran the Black Elks Club. “Men like Leon Glover, Gus Green, Howdy Mason, Calvin Smith and J.T. Brown — they were influential in the city and kept a certain order at the club,” he said.
While all those men are deceased, Linwood Alford, 80, confirmed the importance of elder leadership in keeping order among the young people.
“I was a member of the business and entertainment committees,” recalled Alford. “Both drill teams were valuable reflections of our Elks Club and our city — especially when we traveled to various cities,” said the Vietnam War Army veteran.
Desiree Lindsay, 66, said her father, Arthur Lindsay, had a major impact on the Scot-Etts. She also credits her aunt, Thelma Lindsay Barrett, and Margaret Anderson as being instrumental in the Scot-Etts origin and as chaperones for the young ladies.
“My dad was an Army veteran and really took his role seriously and had a passion to instill leadership qualities in our members while he was alive,” she said.
Arthur Lindsay died not long after the Scot-Etts were conceived, she said. Two other sisters, Denise Lindsay-Tapp and Doretha “ReeRee” Lindsay were also members. Her brother, Lawrence “Bugga” Lindsay was a Jr. Herd member.
“It was definitely a family affair for us,” said Lindsay, a former Beaver County courts official.
Anthony Mitchell, professor emeritus of African American Studies at Penn State University, suggests that drill team marching, or “stepping,” has origins in traditional African cultural expression and combined military-style stepping with intricate, synchronized movements using the feet, hands and body.
‘Young, Gifted and Black’
Mitchell, 68, noted that in the early 20th century, African American fraternities and sororities performed “step shows” by infusing singing, spoken word, chanting, clapping, and complex footwork in competitive performances.
“In Beaver Falls, the Scot-Etts and Jr. Herd were exceptionally well-trained drill teams and competed against the best teams in the nation,” said Mitchell.
“Their dynamic execution of precision drills and creative Black dance styles fostered racial and community pride among youth and adults, were highly entertaining and very competitive.”
While boys’ uniforms and tam hats resembled the Black Panthers political party of that era, both drill teams were apolitical and of course, non-violent, said Mitchell.
“They embodied the ‘Black is Beautiful’ and the ‘To Be Young, Gifted and Black’ spirit of the times.”
Connie Anderson, 73, was a member of a girls drill team in Pittsburgh’s Homewood neighborhood.
“Mainly, we had lots of fun. I also recall how spectators would follow us down the parade route, along with the Westinghouse High School Band,” she added.
“That’s when parades occurred in Homewood on a regular basis, on Frankstown Road and Hamilton Avenue.”
The Rev. Alvin Jerry Walker, 67, was a proud Jr. Herd member and recalls the positive influence membership had on young African American teens at that time.
Fall of the Black Elks
“It was definitely a good influence on us. It provided a sense of camaraderie and brotherhood that, sadly enough, is missing from many of today’s youth,” said the pastor of Love Hope Fellowship Church in Winchester, Virginia.
Walker, also an Army veteran, recently invited several of his fellow Jr. Herd members to his home and churchfor a reunion.
“It was certainly good to see the guys again, considering we’re now older and life’s not promised to any of us at this stage in our lives,” he said.
In 2016, the Black Elks Club on 7th Street was razed and burned down after city officials deemed it a “nuisance bar.”
“It’s sad,” said Alford. “We no longer have our own private social club.”
By the early 1980s, both male and female drill units had run their course in Beaver Falls.
Mark Jackson and Caracter agree that once older members graduated from high school and college, neither drill unit was able to recruit enough young members.
Darryl “Boogie” Dunn, 78, a Black music historian and Homewood native, said drill teams organized by Elks clubs were unique to the Black community.
“During that era, mostly all the area Elks clubs sponsored drill teams. They were in the Hill District, Homewood, East Liberty, NorthSide and especially in smaller towns like Clairton, Duquesne, Aliquippa, Rankin, “Little” Washingtonand McKeesport.
“Unfortunately, most of those Elks clubs suffered the same fate as the Beaver Falls club,” he said.