Remembering What you Can’t Forget

Non Fiction article for the Class of ’66 Alumni Class Newspaper possible to become class book

Purpose – An article telling how the “Unified Class of ’66 came about. The question is, “What is the origin of the a Unified class of ’66 when there are ten other separate but equal high schools in Knoxville, Tennessee. The clincher is that all of those school were predominately White.This article will answer who? What? Why? When? Where? How? What is remembered after 55 years?

More than 150 classmates have died and unable to voice a remembrance.

Conversations with five trailblazers with authenticate unanswered beginning of the Unified Class of ’66.

The Unified Class of ’66 came into existence because of progressive thinking. The founding Austin High School classmates came together in response to the open mindedness that permeated the liberal mindset of the free thinking Knoxville Tennessee community. Let’s stop here to point out that everything said thus far is a spin. Let’s start here and now to tell the true story. The Unified Class of ’66 was born as a result of blatant systemic racism and it continues to exist for the same reason.

This story belongs as part of the Knox County Public Schools educational archives as well as the Beck Cultural Exchange Center, Museum in Knoxville, Tennessee. To date there is nothing about the birth of the Unified Class and how it came to be