TEXARKANA MAGAZINE
Perhaps the desire to stay grounded and connected to her hometown has to do with the fact that her teachers and family members served as her mentors and role models in life. When reflecting on the influence they had, she says, “Against greater deprivations and resistance than I’ve ever faced, they achieved success in various fields. They included teachers, preachers, principals, social workers, nurses, a chemist, a physicist, a Texas and United States legislator. Even a ne’er-do-well or two served as object lessons. They not only laid the groundwork for me, but insisted that, with determination and hard work, I could do anything that I set my mind to.” Following in the footsteps of her mother and her mother’s siblings, McKee attended Paul Lawrence Dunbar, the all-Black school in Texarkana, Texas, before relocating during her junior year when her father’s job required a move. Despite not graduating from Dunbar High School, her loyalty to the school remained steadfast. Over the years, when the Dunbar reunion conflicted with that of the Catholic school she attended for her senior year, McKee always chose Dunbar, missing only one or two reunions in half a century. She remembers her time at Dunbar with great fondness. “At Dunbar, my grades were based purely on merit—not race,” she says. “Those were times I didn’t have to question the fairness of my grades. They reflected the effort that I had put into the material and nothing else.” “Dunbar had its own stadium, so our football games were on Friday nights. In many towns, the Black school had games on Thursday nights in the ‘white’ stadium, as Friday nights were reserved for the white school. Michael Hurd, a Texarkana native
and sportswriter for large periodicals, wrote a book called Thursday Night Lights about those times,” she explained. McKee was fortunate to have taken piano lessons and could read music. Going into seventh grade, her parents gifted her with a flute and a book. “You can teach yourself to play the flute,” they said. She became active in the band and was a majorette, a role she loved. However, she recalls less glamorous moments, like marching behind horses in the Four States Fair Parade. “The experience put some steel in my spine that allowed me to recognize and resist intentional, or thoughtless, cruelty for the rest of my life.” Recently, McKee was thrilled to be honored as a TISD Distinguished Alumni. Imagine her joy in having her second-grade teacher, Mrs. Essie Dodd, and many former schoolmates present at the ceremony! Judge McKee was very impressed with the festivities coordinated by Shawn Edmonds and the plans Superintendent Brubaker laid out for the new Dunbar campus and the improvement of Texas High. She notes that, in her experience, the time between bond approval and the opening of new facilities has often been significantly longer in other places. Because of the move at the end of her junior year, McKee was not in TISD during integration. She attended a small Catholic school where the majority of students were white. She then went to a small Catholic college before attending Southern Methodist University (SMU) for her post-secondary studies. According to McKee, “SMU allowed Black students into theology school in 1951. The undergraduate school did not allow integration until 1962,” she explained. “By 1968, when she arrived, around 30 Black students were among the 10,000-student body.”
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COMMUNITY & CULTURE
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