From a W.T. White yearbook, when Hollie spent his final years in DISD as a math teacher (Courtesy Danny Hurley)
Following Wednesday’s contentious, occasionally comical council meeting, Dallas City Council member Dwaine Caraway has pulled his proposal to rename South Lancaster Road in honor of late South African president Nelson Mandela. But he’s not done trying to slap a new moniker on six miles of hard road: Caraway says today he now wants to rename Lancaster in honor of the late Raymond Hollie, who coached track and football at Booker T. Washington and Roosevelt High Schools for 33 years beginning in 1939.
“After all of the comments and all of the shenanigans,” says Caraway, he told the city secretary to toss the request Thursday morning. But refuses to back off his efforts to rename the street. The reason, he says: “My passion is simply about making sure that we bring about hope and prosperity here in this community, which I represent the majority of. At the end of the day, when you see the development we currently have going on Lancaster, when you see the excitement and the revitalization and the building of town homes and closing of motels, we can ill afford to let a name change hamper that momentum regardless of the name of the street. It’s what the name change does for the community.”
About a dozen speakers, most veterans, told Caraway and the council they opposed renaming the road in honor of Mandela. They said, look, if you want to rename it, rename it for an American and a veteran. So that’s what Caraway is now proposing.
When Hollie was inducted into the Texas High School Coaches Association Hall of Honor in 1989, this is what we wrote:
Hollie was a native of Calvert, Texas, the same town that produced Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley. As a youth, “Kid’ Hollie excelled in football and track under A.W. Brashear, another pioneer black coach in the Dallas Independent School District. He went on to star at Bishop College. But much of Hollie’s real fame came as a coach. He began coaching at Dallas’ Booker T. Washington High School in 1938. The Bulldogs won state championships in football and track in the 1941-42 school year.
After serving in World War II, Hollie returned to Booker T. Washington, coaching the Bulldogs to an unprecedented 12 state championships in football and track in the Prairie View Athletic League. Ernie Banks, who went on to play with the Chicago Cubs, is among the players Hollie coached.
Hollie, who retired from DISD in 1981 as a math teacher at W.T. White High School, was such a big deal that when he was shot in 1952, it was national news. And when he died in September 1985 of a heart attack, Dave McNabb of The Dallas Morning News called Hollie “one of the state’s most respected and successful high school coaches.” Hollie won four state football championships and 11 track titles, and, as McNabb noted, Hollie “also established the state’s longest running track in 1942, which is now called the Raymond Hollie Relays.” In his autobiography Negro Leagues pitcher-turned-newspaper publisher William Blair wrote lovingly of Hollie.
“We missed the mark” with the Mandela proposal, Caraway says now. “The veterans say, ‘Let it be named after an American.’ The veterans say, ‘Let it be named after a veteran.’ So I took all that under consideration. Let’s take the politics out of this and do what’s right for the community and best for the city. What I’ve done is say, let’s let the people make a suggestion. And the first suggestion — one of many — will be Raymond Hollie, the greatest coach in Dallas ISD, who coached at Booker T. We’ll see what needs to happen to make this happen, but we’ll start moving forward. We need to start moving forward.”
As for naming a street after Mandela …
“Vonciel Jones Hill proposed naming the Trinity Parkway for Mandela,” Caraway says. “I will say to her, ‘Go for it.’ I don’t think it will ever happen.”
At which point was asked: What will never happen — the Trinity River toll road or naming it for Mandela? At which point Caraway just laughed.