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RILES,From Page 1Flagstaff d u ring the dep re ssion years so Mr. Bryan t could join his brother at the sawmill. “I knew I wanted to go to college but I didn't have any money and I knew 1 needed a job,” Riles said.Platt Cline, author and Flagstaff historian, said “In the old days, black families lived in Flagstaff and their children attended school with even-mbody else’s.“In 1924 or 1925, the state ruled all of theschools had to be segregated so they (the state) started Dunbar School, named after a popular black writer, he said.While walking by Dunbar School, in search of work, in 1936 Riles said he metone of the school's teachers. She encouraged him to talk to theschool registrar at die time.Riles said he was thinking, She must be out of her mind — I don’t have a dime,” he said.Riles could not have arrived at a better time. The government had just established the National Youth Administration grant, a program that helped students pay for their education while they work on campus.“He told me, ‘We’ll pay you 25 cents an hour and up to S15 a month — this will be enough to pav for your fees and books. If you ’ re in terested, you can enroll as soon as we get your high school records,’ ” Riles said.Riles en rolled in September of 1936and found himself in a foreign environ menu He said he probablv would have made friends faster if he had come from a different background.T was very fearful because I had come fromMthe South and all of my schools were segregated, he said. “I found myself in a school whereall the students were white. There were noother blacks I could relate to.”Riles said his instructors never made an issueofhisrace. “Teachers were very’understanding and never brought up the issue.” In fact, he said, many of his teachers we re very supportive. “My English teacher knew 1 was conscious of my southern accent and she did everything shecould to put me at ease by helping me pronounce my words better,” he said.Cline has fond recollections of NAU’s first blac k student “He made good grades, was verymuch admired and was well liked bv all the/students. However, Riles said it took a confrontation for him to trulvbelieve his friends atJthe school were genuine.“I was in down town Flagstaff with some college mates when someone challenged me,he said. “My coLiege mates stood up for me. That’swhen I felt mv friends were real.”■
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Mon, Jan 01, 0001
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TX, USA 28 Jul 2020
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