The year is 1974. The lights of Berton A. Yates stadium power on for the first time, welcoming their new players. A newly integrated and unified high school football team steps onto the grass, freshly cut and painted. As the new team begins to play their first game, the memories of the champions of the past and the promise of the champions of the future play with them.

As the lights of Berton A. Yates power on once more on Friday, those who fill the stands on homecoming night may not know the history of A. R. Turner, the segregated high school and the stories of the people who went there.

Wildkat Jerry Blair, who was 10-years old at the time of the A. R. Turner State Championship run and attended both A. R. Turner and the newly integrated high school, saw that though the players of the 1967 A. R. Turner champions had received some recognition through the efforts of the A. R. Turner Willis Reunion Committee, the school as a whole has never been recognized properly or has had a reunion.

“The group I’m a part of is the A. R. Turner Willis Reunion Committee,” Blair said. “It’s where the students from A. R. Turner could come back together during the summer and have a reunion with each other. As a group of students that finished from there, we’ve never been invited back. The class of A. R. Turner has never been invited back other than the football team.”

This forgetting of history troubled Blair and led him to help found the A. R. Turner Willis Reunion Committee alongside other students of A. R. Turner High School.

“That’s one of the things that hit me hard,” Blair said. “When I was in school, they did something for the class of 1956. Just about every person of my race was at the football game, so I can imagine how they feel. We were at A. R. Turner in 56’, and there was nothing for us. So that’s how I looked at it. I feel bad, and I figured something needed to be done.”

For black members of the community, the prospect of the championship game acted as a final achievement for the segregated A. R. Turner team and a way to send off the team on a high note.

“Turner won that state championship back in 67’ because it was a school thing, and it was a community thing,” Blair said. “In the neighborhood everyone was pulling for that one thing because at that time next year we would be fully integrated. It was the last year and they were trying to make it happen and they actually made it happen.”

Following the integration of the high school, Berton A. Yates stadium began construction, with it eventually opening its gates for the first time not to an all black or all white school, but to an integrated Willis. 

“We opened up the new stadium in 1974, my senior class,” Blair said. “We were the first team to play in that stadium and unfortunately we only had one year in it. The first three games the stadium wasn’t completed but by the fourth or fifth week it was ready. When we opened it up the lights made it just like daytime.”

The remembering of the 1967 champions at the first game this season served as a way of reminding the community of Willis that it has won a state championship before, and that it will do so again.

“Willis High School does have a team that has won a state championship,” Blair said. “At that time A. R. Turner was part of WISD. That’s why we at the A. R. Turner Willis Reunion appreciated Coach Glenn for getting this going.”

One piece of history contained in the concrete pillars of Yates is the first touchdown scored on its field, an accolade held by Jerry Blair.

“I had the first passing touchdown, the first running touchdown, the first punt return touchdown,” Blair said.

History is just that: history. In order to fully understand the present, one must have a complete and unbroken idea of the past, regardless of what that history is. Segregation is a terrible part of our past as a nation and if we forget it, we leave ourselves open for something similar or even worse to reemerge.

“We can’t make all of history good,” Blair said. “We have an ugly past, and if we don’t know about our ugly past, we will keep repeating it. As long as we face it, and stop trying to sugarcoat it and deny it, we will make ourselves a better nation.”