Manatee High was already a tinderbox, about to explode, and one day it finally did. Race was the match that lit it.

A verbal confrontation in the lunchroom between a black student and a white student evolved into a fist-flinging brawl involving hundreds of kids. It grew so crazy, said one former student, the police were called and some of the officers were even attacked.

Gail Shannon-McKinney, a sophomore at the time, remembers sneaking across campus and hiding in the music room. She called her mother to pick her up. She was terrified.

"It was a total eruption," she said.

Integration came to Manatee County with a bang and brawl in 1969. Students from all-black Lincoln Memorial High in Palmetto were reassigned to all-white Manatee High in Bradenton. It didn’t go well.

There was racial discord, with all its complexities, but underneath was something much simpler that many failed to see: Lincoln's identity had been stripped, and no wonder there was anger and resentment boiling over the edge.

Almost everything Lincoln had was no longer theirs, and with nothing to cling to, you are certain to fall. Lincoln’s student body president was no longer president at the new school, for example. Lincoln lost its mascot. Players from Lincoln’s football team, one of the best all-black teams in the history of the state, were standing on the sidelines at Manatee. Even players like Henry Lawrence, a guy who went on to win three Super Bowls with the Oakland Raiders.

The answer to the problem was found inside Manatee’s trophy case, where there was not a single trophy of Lincoln’s on display.

"It was like we never existed," Shannon-McKinney said.

And then someone — no one’s quite sure who — had an idea.

Why not bring Lincoln’s football trophies over to Manatee and put them in the case? Mix them in. Make the statement that one school’s accomplishments are equally as important. So maybe one trophy stands taller than another, it doesn’t matter. Inside the case every trophy signifies an achievement and honors the character of those who earned it. No one ever notices the color of a trophy. Only what it stands for.

And that's exactly what happened.

"When we got those trophies and mixed them in, that changed a whole lot of things," said former Lincoln football coach Eddie Shannon, who was reassigned to Manatee.

Morale went up. Fights went down. Subtle changes took place, but they really mattered. Now, instead of one student body president, there became two — one from each school. Slowly, everyone became a little more accepting, not as resentful. There was progress.

"The trophies were very important because that was who we were," Shannon-McKinney said. "Then we became Manatee, one school."

So why bring this story up now?

Because 50 years later, there is a large racial divide in this country, and it seems to be growing.

But maybe it's not too late to change.

There is plenty of room in the trophy case.


Email Chris Anderson at chris.anderson@heraldtribune.com.