
Portion of ‘Heart and Soul’ mural by Raul Valdez.
By Alice Embree | The Rag Blog | May 6, 2024
This article originally appeared in Alice Embree’s Substack.
AUSTIN — I attended University Junior High (UJH) as did my mother-in-law and my sister. I was a ninth-grade student during a pivotal year in UJH history, 1959-60. It was the year UJH desegregated. I wasn’t an activist then, but I could sense that the times were changing.
Now the times may be changing again, as the historic structure and it’s landmark murals are threatened with demolition.
I feel fortunate to have maintained a friendship with one of the African American students who transferred to UJH. It has allowed me a glimpse into what it was like from her perspective. Saundra Kirk wrote this account:
Top-down integration reached my level in 1958, just in time for me and other transfer students from Kealing Junior High in East Austin to attend the 9th grade at University Junior High School. So, Vicky Kirk (as I was called then) along with friends, Sandra Anderson, James Means, Lois Lyons, and Clarence Holmes became token black students amidst a large student body of white and Hispanic children.
Our ninth-grade experience was pleasant and relatively uneventful, until toward the end of the school year, when our principal, Marshal Ashley, called the black students into his office for a quiet meeting. He told us that we were lucky because we would have a certain day off from school. But, we knew that was the day our other classmates would attend the long-anticipated senior picnic in Zilker Park. At that time, blacks were not welcome in Zilker Park, and Barton Springs was still not integrated. — Saundra Kirk