Skip to content
  • About
  • Events
  • Old Crime
  • N'At
  • People
  • Places
  • Sports
  • Yinz
  • About
  • Events
  • Old Crime
  • N'At
  • People
  • Places
  • Sports
  • Yinz
October 1, 2014 / Events

Oliver High School gets out of control

Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
The trashed cafeteria at Oliver High School. (Pittsburgh Press photo)
The trashed cafeteria at Oliver High School. (Pittsburgh Press photo)
After trouble in 1967, police walked the halls of Oliver High School. (Pittsburgh Press photo)
After trouble in 1967, police walked the halls of Oliver High School. (Pittsburgh Press photo)
In 1968, Oliver Principal Frank Crowley tried to persuade wary students to attend classes. (Edward Frank/The Pittsburgh Press)
In 1968, Oliver Principal Frank Crowley tried to persuade wary students to attend classes. (Edward Frank/The Pittsburgh Press)
Violent clashes erupted outside of Oliver High School in Sept. 1969. (Al Herrmann Jr./The Pittsburgh Press)
Violent clashes erupted outside of Oliver High School in Sept. 1969. (Al Herrmann Jr./The Pittsburgh Press)
Police rushed to the school to quell the disturbance. (Al Herrmann Jr./The Pittsburgh Press)
Police rushed to the school to quell the disturbance. (Al Herrmann Jr./The Pittsburgh Press)
In Sept. 1969, a few months after a massive student fight in Oliver High School’s cafeteria, violence once again erupted at the school, this time spilling out onto the grounds outside. (Al Herrmann Jr./The Pittsburgh Press)
In Sept. 1969, a few months after a massive student fight in Oliver High School’s cafeteria, violence once again erupted at the school, this time spilling out onto the grounds outside. (Al Herrmann Jr./The Pittsburgh Press)

In the cafeteria, where the trouble began on Feb. 13, 1969, the floor was slick with milk spilled from those small cartons ubiquitous in American schools. Windows were broken. Tables overturned. Pieces of broken glass crunched under the feet of investigators trying to figure out what happened, and how things at Oliver High School had gotten so quickly out of control.

The anger that had flared in the room just a short time earlier had gone from the place and now there was mostly sadness. A 17-year-old senior named Ed sat by himself and did not look up at the mess around him. He was part of the school’s Grievance Committee, which had tried to head off the clash. He admitted that his group’s efforts “just turned into a big nothing.”

His friend Greg stood nearby. “I thought we were there,” Greg said. “I thought we were getting things fixed up pretty well between blacks and whites.”

Audrey Beverett agreed. In sewing class and gym class, white girls and black girls laughed and joked with each other and “it really seemed like school again.”

But then, at noon, words were exchanged in the cafeteria. Students separated. Whites at one end, blacks at the other. Stools and trays and fists flew through the air. This went on for 15 minutes. In the end, two students were taken to Allegheny General Hospital and the cafeteria was a shambles.

Oliver had experienced trouble before. In Nov. 1967, a 45-minute melee between white and black students ended only when 150 police showed up. School officials were shocked. They thought Oliver was a place of “good race relations.”

A year later, brawling students shattered dishes and tore out light fixtures in the cafeteria. The rukus spilled onto the streets outside, where teenagers lobbed rocks and bricks at each other.  Students were getting accustomed to seeing lines of police officers in the hallways.

One parent at Oliver worried the kids were becoming “monsters.”

It’s not the students, said the school’s new principal, Dominic Iannotta. It’s not the school.

“The adults have taught these kids to hate,” he said. “Every time there is a disruption at Oliver, people ask the question, ‘What’s wrong with Oliver?’ Instead, they should be asking, ‘What’s wrong with the community?’”

You might also want to see...

Topics related to this:1960s Photographer Al Herrmann Jr. Photographer Edward A. Frank schools tragedies

Steve Mellon

Steve, a writer and photographer at the Post-Gazette, has lived and worked in Pittsburgh so long that some of his images appear on "The Digs."

Old Pittsburgh photos and stories | The Digs

Browse by topic

  • Events (150)
  • Greatest Sports Photos (5)
  • Old crime (37)
  • People (107)
  • Pittsburgh n'at (138)
  • Places and landmarks (120)
  • Sports (102)
  • World (3)
  • Yinz (18)

Follow The Digs

RSS feed RSS - Posts

Find old photos

Most read this week

  • Father Cox and his army of unemployed
  • Memories of a strange confinement
  • The Allegheny County Morgue on the move
  • Stanley Hoss: A most wanted man
  • History Unfolded: U.S. newspapers and the Holocaust

Archives

Tags

"wow" photographs 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s baseball bridges Civic Arena Downtown Pittsburgh football Forbes Field historic moments holidays industry music and musicians North Side Oakland oddities Photographer Darrell Sapp Photographer Harry Coughanour Photographer Morris Berman Pittsburghers you know Pittsburghers you might not know Pittsburgh Pirates Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Pittsburgh skyline Pittsburgh Steelers Pittsburgh traditions Pittsburgh women politicians pollution and smog rivers stage and film street scenes The Pittsburgh Press Things that are gone Three Rivers Stadium tragedies transportation University of Pittsburgh urban development weather and seasons

Tracks WordPress Theme by Compete Themes.

 

Loading Comments...