Crane wall marks segregated past

CRANE H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger said what he saw in Crane 20 years ago was a first.

"I was shocked," the Pulitzer Prize-winning author said in a recent phone interview. "I was floored."

Bissinger is referring to the Crane Segregation Wall, which divided the city along racial lines.

The wall, and the life L.V. Miles had to live around it, is detailed in Bissinger's 1990 book "Friday Night Lights," which told the story of the 1988 Permian High football team.

"His life had been defined by a 5 foot high wall of rock and concrete," Bissinger wrote. "It ran along a street and had been built so the whites who lived on the edge of Niggertown would not have to see it."

But Evelyn Stroder, a Crane resident for 52 years, said the reason for the wall's existence is not so clean cut.

"I'd never heard anybody say that was said," Stroder said of Bissinger's position. "But Bissinger was a pretty objective reporter, so he probably got that from L.V."

And the word of Miles is respected. Bissinger said he was one of the most decent people he's known.

"L.V. didn't talk about ‘This is the most racist thing I've ever seen,' " Bissinger said. "He just pointed it out."

While Stroder said some in the black community felt the wall was built to keep them isolated, it could have also been built because of Federal Housing Administration regulations requiring separation when blacks were moved from the center of Crane to the northwest area of town.

"There are a lot of different takes on why it's there," she said.

Such a physical reminder of the segregation era was something Bissinger had never seen.

"Obviously, racism exists in a lot of places," he said recently. "Racism is definitely not exclusive to West Texas, but I've never seen anything like that."

But Stroder said many cities in the South had some sort of "demarcation," like railroad tracks or a river, separating communities.
"In Crane, the wall turned out to be that," she said.

The book details L.V. Miles, the uncle of former Permian running back James "Boobie" Miles, attending Bethune, the black high school in Crane. There he was cramped in a small room with 20 other students from the 10th, 11th and 12th grades.

Miles, who died at 54 in 1998, played basketball in a "tiny and suffocating" gymnasium, while the gym at Crane High was "as impossibly huge as a big-city arena," the book said.

Jo Ann Davenport Littleton, who grew up in Crane, said she knew her mother, the first black baby born in Crane, had a tough time growing up. But she never heard her complain about it.

"I think all parents want the best for their children," said Littleton, now president of the Black Cultural Council of Odessa. "They want to encourage them to do their best."

Littleton, who was born in 1976, said she had a much different experience growing up in Crane than that of her mother, who was also a student at Bethune.

"The fact that the wall is there didn't affect me growing up," she said. "To me, it was just a wall."

Today, part of the wall remains intact and is commemorated by a plaque.

Stroder, a school board member and longtime teacher, said she worked to have an official recognition of the wall because some wanted to tear it down.

"That bothered me," she said, "Because once that wall's down, some people will pretend it never existed."
And, so, a few years ago, the plaque was dedicated.

Stroder said many who were affected by the wall on both sides attended the ceremony.

The plaque explains that the FHA mandated the wall in the 1940s because some physical designation of the separation of races was required.

It also notes the wall's place in "Friday Night Lights," the book named the fourth best sports book of all time by Sports Illustrated, which also inspired a movie and television show.

"It came to symbolize the racial segregation prevalent in the South, and caused great resentment among African-Americans," the plaque reads. "It stands today as a reminder of a more intolerant time in Crane's history."

Bissinger said the plaque is a positive.

"I do think the fact that Crane has acknowledged it and put a plaque on it says a lot about Crane as a community," he said. "I applaud them for the acknowledgement."