When Walter Hawkins thinks back on being a kid in Orlando, he remembers the differences.
He had to use bathrooms and water fountains that were marked “colored.” Going to the movies, he had to sit in the balcony seats, and was not allowed on the main level. At certain restaurants, he had to get his food to go - out the back door.
And of course, his school was segregated.
“Jones (High School) had been one of the schools that was, politically, on the drawing board to be closed,” Hawkins said. “There were several walkouts in the 60s that went down to the Orange County School Board and said no, you can’t close Jones High School. And because of that effort, Jones is still standing today.”
All this month, Central Florida Public Media is bringing you conversations around Black history. Hawkins, who is the president of the Jones High School Historical Society, sat down for a conversation with Prateek Seela, a current senior at Lake Highland Preparatory School.
“I didn't even think about the idea that the community I'm standing in today could have been segregated once upon a time,” Seela said. “And so I will definitely keep the weight of that, and the weight of our history in Orange County, definitely, in my mind going forward.”
Meet Walter Hawkins
Hawkins is retired, and was the former Director of Urban Development for the City of Orlando Community Redevelopment Agency.
He has also been a member of the Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church in Parramore since he was eight years old.
That means he was in charge of overseeing the revitalization of the historic Parramore district he grew up in. He’s a longtime advocate of youth programs and volunteerism.
Hawkins said growing up, he didn’t think of school as segregated: “We just called it a school.”
But there were differences.
“They did not give us brand new books like the other schools were getting down the street in white neighborhoods and communities,” Hawkins said. “But that did not stop us from learning.”
Meet Prateek Seela
Prateek Seela is a senior at Lake Highland Preparatory School.
Starting at the age of 12, he travelled across the country to compete on the national circuit for Lincoln-Douglas debates. As a high schooler, he’s interned for both Democratic and Republican members of Congress, and also worked with the Orange County Supervisor of Elections on Florida's first youth-poll worker initiative. He has a podcast called GenZ Votes.
Like Hawkins, Seela doesn’t think about his current school as an integrated school.
“I have friends from Pakistan, China, from Colombia,” Seela said. “And I have all of these different perspectives, which maybe, you know, if it was 70 years ago, 50 years ago, it wouldn't have been the same, right? And so I think that brings me a great deal of pride for going in the future of demonstrating that we can really bring progress to things like that.”
The Takeaway
After listening to Hawkins talk about growing up in Orlando during the time of segregation, Seela had a question.
Seela said when he gets into a fight with his friends, he usually carries a little resentment afterwards. Hawkins experienced that on a much larger scale.
“How is it that you were able to go from living then to now, living in a completely different world, but not have - and maybe you might - but not have that stubbornness or resentment or that closed mindedness towards those people who were also during that time existing, but on a different side of the community?” Seela asked.
Hawkins said simply that his faith helps him there. He said when he fights with people, at the end of the day he tries to treat them fair.
“And if I can treat you fair, I think you would also do that with me, you do that with your brothers, your sisters, with your family. And that's what we should be about,” Hawkins said, tapping his chest. “Love. Working together. We may have some differences, but we have more likeness and more togetherness than we have division.”
