Voices of Civil Rights

'The Principal Told Me Not to Get Involved'

Igalious Mills
Port Arthur, Texas

I am one of 10 children raised on a small cotton farm in Nacogdoches (the oldest town in Texas). After Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, there were marches in Nacogdoches as there were all across the country.

At that time, I attended Central Heights High School and played varsity basketball. Classmates and teachers wanted to know why African Americans were marching and rioting. At the request of some fellow students, I went room to room attempting to explain why these marches were taking place.

One day, the principal ordered me to go with him out to the bus barn because he wanted to talk with me about these marches. He told me not to get involved with racial protest marches. The principal stated I was "too good of a basketball player to get caught up in that type of situation."

"I went room to room attempting to explain why these marches were taking place."

I told the principal, "If I'm too good of a basketball player to get involved with peaceful marches and to talk with students in school, then I'm too good to bounce this basketball up and down the court." I explained to him that it was important for me to be involved in the Civil Rights Movement.

Later, I attended Lamar University, located in Beaumont, Texas, and became the first African American to receive the bachelor's of fine arts degree from the university.

Mills, 51, briefly played semiprofessional basketball after he left Lamar University in 1977. He’s now executive director of the Port Arthur (Texas) Economic Development Corp. A fine arts major in college, in his spare time he paints portraits of hate crime victims.