Segregation’s sons

[Times photo: Ken Helle] Michael Haygood, left, and Bill McBride chat after giving the keynote presentation recently at "A Leadership Symposium on Race Relations," sponsored by the Sylvia Rodriguez Kimbell Race Relations Task Force.

By DONG-PHUONG NGUYEN

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 29, 2001

Perception creates different realities for each of us. Take, for example, two successful men who grew up a world apart in the same small town.

TAMPA -- In the small southern town of Leesburg, Michael Haygood grew up with a paper route and a fondness for books. In high school, he was voted Best Personality.

A few miles away, a boy named Bill McBride played high school football and was voted Mr. Leesburg High.

Both saw movies at the Fain Theater. Both munched hamburgers at Nick's Cafe.

In high school, both excelled academically and athletically. They got law degrees from the same school, same year. They eventually landed jobs at the same prestigious firm.

But these two men did not meet for decades. Their paths did not cross until 1998, when Haygood joined the state's biggest law firm, Holland & Knight, where McBride was already a managing partner.

How could two boys from the same hometown, with so much in common, lead such separate lives?

The answer lies in the the American south of the 1950s and '60s.

Haygood is black. McBride is white.

"(Segregation) was so pervasive, it was almost invisible," said McBride, who is considering a run for governor. "It depended on total adherence. Any breach could have bred familiarity and understanding."

Michael Haygood was born in Leesburg in 1950 to a beautician and a waiter. His father moved away to Washington, D.C., when he was young.

He had a simple childhood, playing with friends on unpaved streets, learning in an all-black school, using second-hand books that already had the names of white students scribbled inside.

He didn't know who they were and didn't care.

"Ignorance is bliss," said Haygood, now 50. "We were happy."

But as he got older, the divide became noticeable. He rode in the back of the city bus. His mother warned him not to cross the red line. He swam at a community pool built for blacks only. It didn't matter that the pool for whites was closer to his home.

When he was 12, Haygood took a job tossing the Leesburg Daily Commercial onto lawns and porches in black neighborhoods. One year, the newspaper threw a Christmas party for the paperboys. Haygood and two other boys were not invited because they were black.

Instead, the paper gave them each $10. They spent it on sandwiches at a black restaurant.

Bill McBride was 9 when he came to Leesburg with his parents, a television repairman and a stay-at-home mom. The roads around his house were paved, and he went to all-white schools.

His opponents during his football glory days were from white schools. The bands played Dixie.

One Friday night, in a game between two black schools, one player scored six touchdowns to win the conference championship. That same night, McBride ran for 61 yards but didn't score a point.

His picture appeared on the front page of the sports section the next day. That was the way life was in his town of 15,000 people.

Now 55, McBride can recall just two black people in his childhood: a friend's maid and a man who stood in the back of his church to open and close the door for parishioners.

Haygood and McBride went to the same movie theater, but Haygood had to sit in the balcony. At Nick's Cafe, McBride ate inside while Haygood ordered from the back door.

But Haygood broke the rule when it came to segregated water fountains.

"What is it about that water?" he wondered. "Is it colder?"

A quick sip from the fountain for whites gave him the answer: "Nothing."

When John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960, African-Americans celebrated.

"We saw him as the key to the end of segregation," Haygood said.

But Leesburg was in Lake County, whose most powerful political figure was Sheriff Willis McCall. During his 28 years in office, McCall got international attention for racist incidents, including the shooting of two black defendants who were handcuffed and the beating death of a retarded black prisoner -- which forced him from office in 1972.

When Kennedy was assassinated, the flag in front of the Sheriff's Office remained high.

The Civil Rights Act passed in 1964, a year after McBride graduated from Leesburg High.

Two years later, Haygood decided to leave the all-black Carver Heights High and join a handful of trailblazing students at McBride's alma mater. His guidance counselor at Carver Heights wept, afraid of the risk he was taking.

"I wasn't intimidated by being different," Haygood said.

But the first year was especially difficult.

"You were ostracized not only by students at your white high school, you were ostracized by friends at your black high school," he said. "They felt we had been through all that and now they weren't good enough."

One day, a white history teacher asked him why he was sitting in the front row.

"Because, Mr. Nelson," he replied. "I'm tired of sitting in the back of the bus." The class broke up laughing.

"We were innocent teenagers, trying to figure out what all the hubbub was about," said Illania Hofler, Haygood's friend, who was known as Janice Gehrke then.

Despite McBride's popularity, Haygood hadn't heard of him. He was busy making his own mark. He was the school's first black athlete, wore a suit to class every day and, in 1968, became one of the first blacks to graduate from Leesburg.

He went to Hampton University, a predominantly black school in Virginia, and returned to Florida in 1972 to get his law degree from the University of Florida, where 5 percent of the law students were black. The numbers encouraged him.

"It allowed me to grow, to understand that there were African-Americans that were making a difference in society, despite what the white world thought," he said.

McBride also attended the University of Florida. One college summer, he worked in a grove loading oranges and was the only white worker. The others were from Barbados and spoke English with a British accent. He was struck by how sheltered his world was.

In the middle of law school, he joined the Marine Corps and served in Vietnam. He resumed classes at the same time Haygood was there. Both received law degrees in 1975.

McBride went to work for Holland & Knight, where he eventually rose to managing partner.

Haygood joined Florida Rural Legal Services, representing the underprivileged in Belle Glade, and later became a partner in his own all-black law firm. In 1998, he took a job at Holland & Knight's West Palm Beach office.

During his first days on the job, an office manager heard Haygood was from Leesburg and mentioned that it was Bill McBride's hometown, too.

"Who is Bill McBride?" Haygood asked.

They finally met at a meeting to introduce new hires to the firm's bigwigs.

Haygood, tall and slender with a faint moustache, walked up to McBride, a bespectacled man built like a fullback.

"I hear you're from Leesburg, too," Haygood said, shaking hands. It caught McBride by surprise.

"I was a little intrigued, a little puzzled," McBride said.

They reminisced about favorite hangouts, local landmarks, high school. Both had married, had two children each and were active in the community.

McBride, who lives in Thonotosassa, drops his children at school each morning, cheers on his daughter at track meets and coaches his son in Little League.

Haygood, who specializes in housing and community development law, also takes his children to school. He grows orchids as a hobby and serves on various boards including the Non-Profit Resource Institute and Leadership Palm Beach, a group to shape future leaders.

Two years ago, McBride and Haygood decided to team up for a traveling symposium as part of the Florida Humanities Council's Parallel Lives series, to give a personal, two-perspective history lesson. To illustrate, they took a trip to Leesburg and made a video of themselves in front of their childhood homes, the movie theater and Venetian Gardens, a popular hangout.

"Michael and I probably played and fished at Venetian Gardens about the same time," McBride said. "It's a great loss in your life when someone just as smart, or smarter, someone who could have been a great friend, was closed off to you because of rules that don't make sense."

Some people have joked that Haygood would make a good lieutenant governor if McBride indeed runs. Haygood said he's not interested.

Others have accused McBride of using the symposium as a political horse, a charge he denies. McBride approached Haygood about the symposium in early 1999, when McBride sat on the board of the Florida Humanities Council.

"That was long before any talk of politics," McBride said.

Today, Haygood works in the firm's West Palm Beach office. McBride is based in Tampa.

Because of the distance between their homes, the only time they socialize is when they meet for symposiums.

Both say it's like reuniting with a childhood friend.

For information

Bill McBride and Michael Haygood are taking their "Same Town, Different Lives" symposium to cities around Florida. They have appeared in Leesburg, Jacksonville and Tampa and will speak at Amelia Island June 8 and Coral Gables July 26. Call the Florida Humanities Council at (727) 553-3800 for information.

Bill McBride	Michael Haygood
1967	1967
Bill McBride, left, and Michael Haygood have lived parallel lives from their childhoods in Leesburg to attending the same high school and law school a few years apart, to working for the same law firm, Holland & Knight.

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