Helen Hamilton Holloway recalls being among the first Black students at ECHS

Helen Hamilton, bottom left, as she appeared in the 1946 El Camino, the El Cerrito High School yearbook. Photo courtesy Helen Hamilton Holloway.

Today’s El Cerrito High School has a notably diverse student body, with just over 70 percent of the students falling into categories other than “white,” according to the California Department of Education. Hispanic and Latino students lead at 30.4 percent, followed by whites at 29.2 percent, Blacks at 17.2, and Asians at 14.5, then other categories at lesser percentages, according to numbers from 2022-2023.

Back when the school was new, though, opening in 1941 it was almost entirely white, the waning days of World War II and the earliest post-war years – not just the student body but teachers, aides, bus drivers., its student body looked entirely different. Today,

Black people were among the tide of newcomers who had flooded the Bay Area during the war to build ships, tanks, and work in other war industries. Many longtime residents of what had been largely white communities adopted attitudes towards their new Black neighbors that combined fear with loathing.

Helen Hamilton Holloway, who is 96, remembers what schooling was like at El Cerrito High, where she was among the first Black students to integrate the school. She and her younger brother Willie may have been the very first. She believes they were the first, both starting in 1944, shortly after Helen Hamilton moved to Richmond at age 16. She graduated two years later.

Helen Hamilton and her brother Willie Hamilton in high school. Photos courtesy of Helen Hamilton Holloway.

The family – there were also two younger children, Maurice and Emma Lee (who died as a girl) – migrated to Richmond during the 1940s from Wellington, Texas. Helen’s mother, Glossie McKellar, and Helen’s stepfather, Claude McKellar, came to Richmond first, soon sending for their children, who had stayed behind with their grandmother.

Helen, who lives in her longtime Oakland home with family, shared her story recently with the historical society, recalling incidents of racism by school employees and fellow students, but also mentioning friendships with white children who may never have met Black people before.

“There were quite a few” incidents of racial animosity at her new school, she says. It was “Just making fun of me, that’s all. Your color.”

“But me,” I looked the other way,” she says., “I just looked at them and smiled and put my hand on my hip.”

Helen says she became friends with many white girls and boys, even those who berated her at first. “I just did fine. I got along when they were evil to me, I got along with them.”

It’s hard to say for sure whether Helen and Willie Hamilton were the first Black children at El Cerrito High, but there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Helen’s belief.

Leafing through the earliest editions of El Camino, the school’s twice-a-year “yearbook” of the time, does show how few Blacks, or ethnic minorities of any kind, attended the school.

The June 1944 book, which leaders of the El Cerrito High School Archiving Project believe may be the publication’s first edition, pictures no Black students – which doesn’t mean there were none; the book notes that some students were “camera shy.”

There are some children with black faces, however – the white girls of the Tri-Y Club, who are seen in theatrical blackface for some celebration.

Helen is not seen in the 1944 or 1945 books, but that isn’t surprising as she wasn’t a senior until 1946, and the books focused on senior portraits, showing other students either in passing or in club groupings.

The June 1945 El Camino, shows one Black student in the senior class, Dorine Hawthorne. The Fall 1945 El Camino shows another Black senior, Alverse Gardner; a handful of other Black students can be seen in group photos.

Besides Helen, the senior class seen in the June 1946 El Camino includes four Black students: Lessie Davis, Charlie Mae Freeman (“honor society,”) Wilma Shepherd and the only boy, Ira Waller (“junior statesman, art club, rally committee.”)

A group photo of juniors shows a handful of Black students.

As Helen tells the tale, she and Willie were the pioneers. Unable to attend Richmond High because the south Richmond war worker housing where they lived with their parents, Seaport, was outside of that school’s district, their father was given a letter (it’s not clear from which jurisdiction) essentially demanding that El Cerrito High admit them.

Administrators at the school did not want to, Helen says. But her stepfather, Claude McKellar, insisted.

“When we got to El Cerrito, they told us, ‘No, no Blacks, no Black kids go here,’ ” Helen says. She says her stepfather then produced the letter and told the school, “it says we’ve got to come here.”

“That’s how we ended up in El Cerrito, me and Willie Hamilton,” she says, adding, “There were no other Black students there at that time.”

“But later, in 1944, some other Black kids joined us,” Helen says, adding, “Some of them lived in the projects where we lived, and we told them. And within two weeks later they joined.

“After one year,” Helen says, “they started getting (Black) kids from all different areas of Richmond.” Helen is clearly proud of the role she and her brother played in opening El Cerrito High to Black students.

But being accepted into the school wasn’t the only challenge. There was also getting there. A public bus took children from Seaport, which was near the shipyards across the then Hoffman Boulevard, to San Pablo Avenue in El Cerrito, where a school bus awaited for the last leg to the school.

“Lots of times they wouldn’t let the Black kids on,” Helen says. “They would say it was too much (for the size of the bus.) So I just started walking up the hill.” Soon, she says, a handful of other Black children were walking with her.

Helen’s brother, Willie, who was younger by a year, “was quite an athlete,” she says, and became a standout on the school’s football team – but not without resistance from some teammates. “They’d beat him up,” Willie told her at the time. Still, Willie Otha Hamilton became the first Black youth to play on the high school varsity team.

Sister and brother had different personalities that complemented each other. They were close throughout their lives. Willie was active in school, particularly football. “After school,” Helen says, “I came home.”

Patricia Hamilton Bolds, Willie’s daughter and Helen’s niece, who with other family members and a friend attended the historical society’s interview, says: “One thing to know about Helen's personality, some personalities would fight, (but) Helen has a sweetness. She's going to try to make sure everybody gets along. So something that would be really a slap to someone else, Helen would take it and smile.

“My daddy was a little bit more of a fighter because he was not supposed to be on the football team, but he decided that he was going to do it no matter what,” Patricia says. “And so the two of them together made a unit.”

“Wasn't it so that people knew that if they messed with you,” Patricia says, addressing Helen, “what would your brother do?”

“He’d beat them up,” Helen replies.

Patricia concludes, “A lot of things did not happen to her because people knew who Willie Hamilton was.”

Helen recalls attending all the school dances, mostly sitting in her seat but watching as girls – the white ones too – lined up to dance with Willie.

Sweet she may have been, and an occasional wallflower, but Helen showed leadership skills early on.

After three months in the school, she says, “It was nice, because so I got in with the PE teacher. I was doing PE (physical education) and kids would make fun of me doing PE and everything. So I just would stand up and just stop.”

The teacher stepped in. “She told me, ‘I will give you a job. You take the roll of everybody who is present.’ ”

The role of gym teacher’s assistant was one of the first leadership roles she would adopt.

She attended dances and other events for young people at a community center at Seaport. “The guy at the center asked me if I would like to help out. Yes I would like to help out,” Helen recalls. Soon she was helping supervise events there, and the fact that she could call on her stepfather to step in when things got out of hand added to her qualifications for the job.

A year after graduating El Cerrito High, the war newly over, Helen says, “I did something wrong and I got pregnant and I got married.” The father was Robert Holloway, just home from the service. The couple had six children.

Robert worked as a civilian for more than three decades at the Naval Air Station in Alameda. The family moved to the Pullman Project in Richmond, then to Alameda, and then to Oakland.

Helen was very much a churchgoer, Robert not so much. His passion was fishing.

“He would go out on boats, would do sea bass, and he would bring striped bass home on Fridays,” daughter Doris Holloway recalls. “We knew we’d be having fish because he'd get off work and go fishing. He would go out on big boats or he would go down near Emeryville. He would go to Tracy, all over. It was his hobby. He loved it.”

At Oakland’s Bethel Missionary Baptist Church, which Helen joined in 1961, “I became a member of the Usher Board there for years. But then I became the president. And I stayed president almost 10, 12 years, president of the Senior Usher Board.”

The Usher Board of Oakland’s Bethel Missionary Baptist Church. Photo courtesy Helen Hamilton Holloway.

Ushers greet people, keep order, organize events, including anniversaries that pull in people from churches throughout the Bay Area. It’s a position of responsibility. Helen recalls supervising dozens of people. “I enjoy meeting people and greeting people and telling people about the Lord,” she says.

Helen Hamilton Holloway at a church function in the 1980s. Photo courtesy Helen Hamilton Holloway.

In addition to her church duties and raising a family Helen worked for more than 20 years as a janitor at the Del Monte cannery in Emeryville, worked in school cafeterias and cleaned homes.

For many years she was primary caregiver for her ailing mother, her family members say. And then there was the care she devoted to her brother Willie after his service with the Army during the Korean War.

“A bullet went across the top of his skull and paralyzed him. But when he came out, she was the one who took care of him and refused to give up on him,’ says Patricia, Willie’s daughter. “And he ended up with a limp. But he walked and he worked. And he and his sister stayed in touch with each other every single day until he died.”

Willie, who raised a family with his wife in Richmond, worked for 30 years as a custodian for the U.S. Postal Service and was a commander with the VFW, died in 2010.

It was a friend of Helen’s, Jocelyn Foreman, who serves as her caregiver and works as a family engagement specialist with Berkeley Unified School District, who brought Helen’s story to the El Cerrito Historical Society.

During the conversation, Helen’s daughter Doris, grandchildren Robert Turner and Katrina Williams, and Willie’s daughter Patricia listened as Helen recalled the old days, asked questions themselves and filled in information as needed.

Katrina concluded the formal interview when she was asked what makes Helen Hamilton Holloway special.

“She is very loving, but she gives you boundaries and structure. She's always been a straight shooter for me as a granddaughter and as a girl. She always taught me about being ladylike, but also showing up as my best self at all times. Even on my down days, I make sure that I show up as my best self.”

“I did a lot of stuff because my grandmother always made sure to support me. She showed up. She was there every graduation from preschool to my doctorate,” Katrina says.

“She corrected us in love, and made sure that when we walked out of here, we didn't feel like we were less than, even if we were in trouble.”

“And most importantly, it was her love for God. I'm still very active in the church. I am on the senior usher board now. … There are only eight of us, and I'm the youngest, and I still wear my grandmother's uniform …. It doesn't fit, but I still wear it.”

This article by Dave Weinstein appeared in the Fall 2023 issue of The Forge.