What Evil Depends On: 'Good People To Be Quiet'

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http://www.npr.org/2017/09/29/551235513/-evil-depends-on-good-people-to-be-quiet


What Evil Depends On: 'Good People To Be Quiet'
3:17
September 29, 20175:02 AM ET


William Lynn Weaver was one of the first black football players on the team at his Knoxville, Tenn., high school when it integrated in 1964.

The mascot for the West High School Rebels back then was a Confederate colonel.

"At football games, when you came out on the field, the crowd would be hollering and the 'Dixie' would be playing and they'd hold the paper flag up and the team would burst out through the Confederate flag," he tells StoryCorps in Fayetteville, N.C. "The black players made a decision to run around the flag."

Weaver remembers there were teams that refused to play the Rebels because it had been integrated. "There were always racial comments, banners with the n-word, and, at one point in time, there was even a dummy with a noose around its neck hanging from the goal posts," he says.

He remembers an incident playing an all-white school.

"The game was maybe only in the second quarter. My brother tackled their tight end and broke his collarbone," Weaver says. "And when they had to take him off the field with his arm in a sling, that's when the crowd really got ugly."

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"Normally when you're with a team, you feel like everybody's going to stand together, and I never got that feeling that the team would stand with me if things got bad," Weaver says. "I think a number of the white students who were there with me would say now, If I could have did something different, I would've said something. But that's what evil depends on, good people to be quiet."

Weaver has never been back to West High School since graduating 50 years ago. After hearing a StoryCorps interview that aired on NPR last month, the current principal reached out, and Weaver says he will return to the school in early 2018 to talk to the students about his experiences with integrating the school.


StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps.org.