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A legend, yet a mystery
By KATHRYN WEXLER, Times Staff Writer TAMPA -- It was raining fiercely that June day, but Pauline Grant had waited years for this moment. So she shed her simple skirt for a dressy black one with a blazer and set off for the Hillsborough County school administration building.
Pauline Grant was in the company of nine other black people, most in their 70s and 80s. A half-century ago, all were students at Don Thompson Vocational School. Although segregated and little nothing more than a converted warehouse, the school was their own. It meant a whole generation of black children had gone past ninth grade. In letters and phone calls, they had urged the board to make sure that Don Thompson, the school, would not be forgotten. And that Don Thompson, the man, would not go unheralded. Some took seats with Grant. Others stood in back with their arms politely folded. Keep a dignified silence, they reminded one another. But Grant, a 1948 Don Thompson graduate, didn't want to stay quiet. There had been too many years of quiet. She printed her name in the log for public comment. The School Board's vote was quick and unanimous. The Don Thompson Theatre it would be. Still, Grant rose to say her piece. Her voice was soft, her words were sharp. "We appreciate your having done this," she said, "even though we feel it's past due and it's our due." Don Thompson has been a household name among black people in Tampa for years, a legend even. "We've been trying to find him," Grant said after the meeting. "We would like to honor his family or him." The Don Thompson students had never met the man for whom the school was named. They did not know who he was, the battles he had fought, or what became of him. He was a mystery. All they knew for sure was the color of his skin. White. * * * How could so little be known about a man whose reputation was so large? It would seem that Hillsborough County school records should yield a road map of Don Thompson's life. Summaries of every topic the School Board has discussed in the past 130 years have been bound in fat tomes and locked in a steel vault at school district headquarters. The thick, white pages list names of pregnant instructors who requested temporary leave. They note the names of children who refused to salute the flag. Until a lawsuit was filed for equal pay in 1942, they list salaries for white teachers that were three times those of "Negro" teachers. But Don Thompson's name appears only nine times. The first was in 1934, when he taught at Brewster Vocational School for white youths, and told the board he was owed for six hours of unspecified work. They paid him $9. Within five years, Don Thompson was overseeing vocational education for the entire county. "Mr. J. MacDonald Thompson sent board a letter asking to operate a commercial department at Brewster," read the minutes of May 7, 1942. "Action deferred." He asked for money so a coordinator could travel to state meetings and was denied. He wanted to sell an outdated milling machine used by Brewster students, and the board agreed. He showed board members a job offer in 1942, and they swiftly voted to increase his salary by $500 a year. But there are gaps in his work history and background. The school district cannot fill them. "Our personnel records go back to the beginning," said district spokeswoman Linda Cobbe, "and his are missing." * * * It was unheard of in Tampa for a black school to be named for a white man. And yet, there it was. The Don Thompson Vocational School opened on Morgan Street in 1945, its name boldly displayed in block letters. At the time, a hodgepodge of dense, black neighborhoods had sprouted up around Tampa, squeezed by the pressure of white boundaries. In the poorest sections, blacks lived in squalid rental homes and shotgun houses. Trash collectors ignored black sections, forcing residents to bury refuse. The city allowed no blacks in public parks, pools or beaches. Black children got textbooks discarded by white children, with pages missing and racial epithets scrawled in the margins. "Unspeakable condition" was how many black schools were described in a 1945 survey. It was against this bleak backdrop that one man emerged like the North Star. "I heard that Don Thompson was a person who championed vocational, technical education (for blacks)," said Norman A. Jackson, a 1948 Thompson graduate. "I wonder where I would have been if he had not been so strong in what he believed," said Julia Cobb Barnes, a 1954 graduate. "They named the school, Don Thompson, for him," said Grant, "because he begged for a school for "niggers.' " Don Thompson Vocation School had none of the spiffy trappings of Brewster Vocational School across town, but its impact was huge at a time when only two high schools admitted black teenagers, Middleton and Plant City Negro High. "We're aware it was not a nice, bright, shiny school," Grant said. "But we didn't care. We were thirsty for an education." Black students could finally learn tailoring, sheet metal, carpentry and auto mechanic skills. They could get a diploma at Don Thompson and go on to black colleges. It didn't seem so important, then, that they had to drag their chairs into the hallway for schoolwide events because there was no auditorium. Or that they had to walk a mile to Meacham Elementary, also segregated, to play sports on blacktop. Despite meager resources, the Don Thompson Yellow Jackets basketball team shot their way to glory, winning the state championship. "Unfortunately I would say this, but we could beat (whites-only high schools) Plant, Hillsborough and Jefferson, all in the same day," said Harry Morris, a 1946 graduate -- had they gotten the chance. White administrators came periodically to check up on the school. But Don Thompson never set foot there. * * * Old Tampa city directories are a historian's best friend. They divulge professions, spouses, even race -- "w" for white, "c" for colored, "m" for mixed. From 1915, the Thompson Electric Co. is listed next to J. MacDonell Thompson, vice president, a man whose name would evolve in public documents into Don Thompson. His father, Samuel Boteler Thompson, was president of the company. The store was on Lafayette Street, a bustling strip of white businesses, now Kennedy Boulevard. For nearly 15 years, father and son toiled side by side, sometimes sharing the same home address, along with Ella or Mrs. Samuel Thompson. Their store grew, and so did their homes. They ended up in Hyde Park at 834 Dakota Ave. By 1929, the name Margaret appeared next to Don Thompson's. His application for a marriage license is preserved on microfilm at the Hillsborough courthouse. It shows Don Thompson was born in Lake City. He was 33 when he wed. Margaret Herring was 23, and a Plant City native. She came from a family of pioneers, who are listed in old chronicles of high society. Her father was mayor of Plant City. Don and Margaret's union was notable enough that the Tampa Morning Tribune devoted an article to it. Thompson, it said, earned a degree from Tulane University and took a graduate course at the University of Florida in Gainesville. His social status was impeccable: member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity, Tampa Yacht and Country Club and Palma Ceia Golf Club. In fact, his stature was even more elevated. The most exclusive social club in town was Ye Mystic Krewe, organizers of the homegrown pirate ritual called Gasparilla. In 1928, the common folks who had stolen away from the cigar factories, warehouses or household drudgery to line the streets and watch the parade of privilege, would have seen one club member in the snappy outfit of a conquistador. He had a long face and strong chin. He jauntily held a pistol in his right hand. His hat was pinned up on the left. He appeared to be enjoying himself. Click. Someone snapped his picture. It was filed away in the archives of the Hillsborough public library downtown. Don Thompson was more than a member of Ye Mystic Krewe. He was a leader. A pictorial of the krewe shows he held high-ranking positions in the club for five years, culminating in 1927 with the title of King Gasparilla XIX. When Samuel Thompson died in June 1929, his obituary made the front page of the daily newspaper. He was a city alderman. Chatting with friends at City Hall, the elder Thompson was overcome with severe chest pains. He spoke with his only son before dying at home, seven hours later, according to the obituary. Mayor D.B. McKay was a pallbearer. In 1929, Thompson Electric Co. disappeared from the city directory. There was a new business the following year: the Don Thompson radio shop. Don Thompson's mother, Ella, died a few years later. Although her obituary oddly makes no mention of a surviving son, Don Thompson was living in Plant City with his new family, beginning what would prove to be a very good career with the Hillsborough school district. It would be short-lived. After eight years with the school district, Don Thompson suffered a massive heart attack in his Plant City living room. His obituary appeared Oct. 28, 1942. He was 51 years old. In death, a curious thing would happen to Don Thompson's reputation. He would end up recast as a champion of black education. Seeds of the legend were planted a week after he died. The School Board owned a warehouse called the Levy Building, which was being used as a trade school for black veterans. Unanimously, the board declared the warehouse "be dedicated to the memory of J. MacDonald Thompson and that it be designated as "The Thompson Vocational Educational Building.' " It wasn't until three years later that the School Board officially turned Thompson into a vocational school for black youths. The recommendation for the school came from a group of four elected officials who oversaw school finances -- the trustees of District No. 4. * * * It seemed there was one living link to Don Thompson. His widow, Margaret, died in 1964, and her obituary listed a survivor, a son, Phil. If he were alive, what might he reveal? But Phil Thompson had vanished. His name disappeared from Plant City property records shortly after his mother's death. Margaret, however, had a sister. When she died in March, her obituary listed a son, Daniel Turner of Murrells Inlet, S.C. He had the number for his first cousin. In San Antonio, Texas, Phil Thompson answered the phone, friendly and curious. He owns a real estate company. He has a wife and two grown children. He is 61. Don and Margaret Thompson adopted him, he said, after their two natural children died, one as an infant, another at 7 from leukemia. Phil was only 2 years old when Don Thompson passed away. What he has learned about his adoptive father has come in scraps, forming something hazy and incomplete. Don Thompson met Margaret Herring in his radio shop, so goes family lore, and instantly swore he would marry her. He had served in the military and wanted to get out of education and back into the service. The son knows nothing of his father's politics. Phil Thompson had never heard of the Don Thompson Vocational School. "Mom never talked about the school," he said. "I promise you, Margaret would never have held that up as a red badge of courage. She was extremely prejudiced and extremely Christian. Back then, those two things weren't contradictory." Don's biggest accomplishment, said his son, was helping to start a radio station. "Somewhere I have an old silver trophy cup giving gratitude for it." * * * A reporter has come to bring some of the details of Don Thompson's life to Pauline Grant. Grant sits this evening in the small foyer of Tampa's NAACP, an organization she has served for 50 years. "I'm shocked to hear that he died in 1942," she says slowly. She takes in the fact that nothing suggests Don Thompson established the vocational school that bears his name. She doesn't know exactly how or why Don Thompson's reputation grew, but for a moment, her words are heated. "Black people didn't make that up. White people gave us that information." Someone should have kept better records about schools that mattered to black people, she says. She learns of Don Thompson's membership in Ye Mystic Krewe and other social clubs. "Elite," she says, and chuckles for a moment. Thompson's grandfather, it turned out, owned a plantation in Middleburg. That's also where Don Thompson's father was born. "It's strange, isn't it?" Grant says, rolling her eyes. Just about as strange, she notes, as the time years ago she went to get her driver's license and didn't notice she was sitting in a whites-only section until her husband hissed that she could get him killed for that. "Ahhh . . . I'll tell ya," she says. It seems Don Thompson's legend was a historical fluke. Grant considers this. "The school existed. It had a name. That's part of our history." Some minutes pass, and she says perhaps there's more to the truth than what's found in records, documents and news clippings. "I feel he was an educator, and educators have a line that run through them that makes education more important than anything else." She still would like to contact Don Thompson's son. Maybe the alumni will invite him to the naming of the Don Thompson Theatre. "Do you have his address?" * * * Don Thompson Vocational School stood at 1309 Morgan St. from 1945 until 1956. A jail ringed with razor ribbon was built on the site decades ago. No trace of the school remains. Don Thompson and Margaret Herring Thompson are buried side by side in Myrtle Hill cemetery, Tampa. Their graves are unmarked. -- Kathryn Wexler can be reached at wexler@sptimes.com or at (813) 226-3383. Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report.
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