By Andy Rieger
Transcript Managing Editor
In 1967, George Henderson’s faculty mentor at Wayne State University in Detroit told him not to pull up stakes and take a teaching position complete with $5,000 pay cut at the University of Oklahoma.
The state is full of rednecks and was a “second class place,” the mentor told him. “You can do better,” he advised. Besides, Norman was a known “sundown” town where African Americans were expected to be out of town by sundown or suffer the consequences. George and Barbara Henderson’s children voted the move down.
Henderson didn’t listen to the mentor or his children. On a plane, flying over the red-dirt Midwest headed to an Oklahoma interview, an inner voice took hold and Henderson made the decision to come to OU as one of the university’s first African American faculty members.
“It wasn’t my decision,” he told members of the Norman Rotary Club this past week. “A force much greater than George Henderson made that decision.”
Rotarians gave Henderson a standing ovation but the community’s welcome wasn’t always friendly.
“Norman was a place that prided itself on not having Negroes,” Henderson said.
Housing for the family of seven children and a mother-in-law was difficult. Homes suddenly became unavailable and off the market when the sellers learned the buyer’s race.
Henderson was ready to turn the offer down and return to Detroit. Realtor Sam Matthews, Dr. George Cross and members of the OU Sociology Department finally found a willing seller. Matthews was eventually blacklisted and suffered financially. Henderson called the Realtor and willing seller the real heroes.
“It wasn’t about money. It was about belief and integrity. It was about doing the right thing,” he said.
Once settled in their home on Osborne Drive, the Henderson family endured crank telephone calls, insults, egged cars, garbage thrown on their lawn, police and merchant harassment and one death threat. Why did they stay?
“For every nasty, surly incident, two to three good things would happen,” he said.
He described architecture professor Fred Shellabarger redesigning and supervising contractors enlarging the family’s home. Shellabarger wouldn’t take payment.
“Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. You put it on the scales and you say there is more good than bad.”
Henderson, founder of OU’s Human Relations Program, was dean of the OU College of Liberal Studies 1996 to 2000. He is a nationally-known civil rights scholar and lecturer and author of more than 30 books.
He spoke of OU First Lady Cleo Cross opening her home to his daughters for a tea party and some neighbors bringing welcoming gifts. After about five years, the children became comfortable and didn’t want to leave Norman, the place they initially resisted.
“What kind of place was this? It was my place. It’s a wonderful frontier. We were strangers and people like you opened their arms and homes to us,” he told Rotarians. “Nothing that I have accomplished — and I have accomplished a lot — have I done alone. In this Black History month, thank you for helping us make some history of our own.”
Andy Rieger
366-3543
editor@normantranscript.com
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