He's an educator and a facilitator, opening doors and making his mark on area history from TV host and a teacher to a civil rights activist.

That's what made Howard School so unique.

With the class of 1960 and that we did initiate the sit ins here in Chattanooga.

Meet Booker T Scruggs, the second coming up on the A-list.

And.

Booker T Scruggs the second.

You could say he was born with musical notes pulsing through his heart, translating into sweet sound for captive audiences all around the Tennessee Valley.

Born and raised in Chattanooga, Booker attended Howard High School and is a member of the graduating class of 1960.

He also holds fond memories of his time with the Howard High School Band.

You could say the reach of his knowledge and experience has impacted hundreds of area residents.

Well, thank you for being on the A-list, Mr. Scruggs.

Or can I call you Booker Booker's fan?

Booker T. Booker T. Even better.

It just rolls off the tongue.

Okay.

Okay.

So you have been in Chattanooga your whole life?

Not yet, but.

Well, so.

Far.

So far.

So far.

So far.

Your life.

So far.

And you've had quite a life here.

I know you were in the Howard High School class of 1963, which played a very active role in the civil rights movement.

Correct.

You're a musician.

You're an adjunct professor.

But first, I want to talk about probably, I guess, the longest point of your career, which was your position with Upward Bound here in Chattanooga right now.

Do you think your time at Howard High School inspired you to get that sociology degree and then the master's degree in sociology as well?

Actually, I went to college.

I went to college with the intention of majoring in music.

I played the clarinet and bassoon in high school, in the Howard School band, and I really saw myself being a band leader or a band director, either in high school or in college.

That's really what I went to college to do.

But the summer prior to my entering college, I came down with appendicitis and I did not practice my horn pretty much that entire summer.

So I thought maybe my music career was shot because I was taught that you really need to practice pretty much on a daily basis if you really want to be good at what you do.

And I just didn't practice basically that entire summer because of my appendicitis.

So you dropped music altogether because it was inside us?

Well, no, no, I still played in the band.

Okay?

I had a music scholarship to go to college.

And in order to keep that scholarship in conjunction with my academic scholarship, I had to play in the band.

So I played in the marching band and I played in the concert band in college.

And even even after graduating from college, undergraduate college, I went to graduate school in steel plate in the Clark Atlanta University Band because they were just right down the street from each other.

So I continued playing my horn, I continued playing music, but I just didn't major in music.

I majored in sociology because I basically just like observing people, I guess.

Well, you're now an adjunct professor at UT.

That's correct.

You teach a few courses.

What's the best part about your job there?

Well, the best part of it, I guess, is interacting with students and teaching students and giving them what I have learned in sociology.

And also one of the benefits of teaching sociology at UTC is I periodically do a television program called Point of View, the longest running, locally produced television show in the world.

In the world, in the world.

So I think it's ironic you host the longest running locally produced television show in the world, and now you're on the shortest running locally produced television show in the universe.

Okay, well.

We make a good team, which.

Will eventually become reality.

That you're you're now my role model.

I aspire to be you now.

But once a month we take point of view at UTC and the topics that we tape all that we have and the issues that we discuss on point of view are usually sociology related.

And the students in my sociology classes are the audience at these shows that we tape at UTC.

That's great.

And they're normally, as we say, sociology type topics having to do with the family.

We've done shows on persons who have been incarcerated.

We've done shows on single moms.

We've done shows.

This is dealing with people and dealing with sociology type issues and concerns.

The last show we talked had to do with aging and aging gracefully.

And so we had persons who deal with elderly people on the air and had an elderly person on there herself who happened to have been my mother, as a matter of fact, on that show.

And so students get a chance to actually talk with people who theoretically we talk about in sociology.

So that's one of the good reasons why I like teaching sociology at UTC, because I do that in conjunction with other things that I like to do.

Do you see the impact of that show on your students or do you hear about it from the public in ways?

Well, yes, especially the last show that we did.

As I mentioned, my mother was on the air and she has just recently reached 100 years of age.

And one of the students actually emailed me who was in the audience, said, how much of an inspiration my mother was to her because of what my mother said on that show in terms of how you should treat people and what she has done pretty much all of her life in terms of her longevity.

So we get some real positive reactions from students in terms of their being in the audience and meeting and actually talking to and asking questions of folks who are actually on the show.

Is there a show you wish you have done or wish you could do that you haven't done yet?

Well, we've done a show just about everything, probably having you.

Well, there you go.

I'll make sure we book that.

Since this is your lifelong dream, since.

This is the shortest running locally produced show that will eventually come the longest.

Run.

Thank you.

That would give us the necessary push that we need, I think.

All right.

I'm.

I'm holding you to that.

But you're in your primary stage here and will run this 50 years later in sleep.

What has happened to you?

He currently teaches sociology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, but is known to many across the Chattanooga area for his long term commitment and dedication to young people.

Scruggs recently retired as the director of Upward Bound at UTC after 36 years with the program.

Tell me how you got involved with that.

Well, Upward Bound is a program designed to get high school students into college with good grades and with financial aid that would bound came out of the old War on poverty programs out of the Lyndon Johnson era.

And I worked for a program called the Community Action Agency, which was an agency here in Chattanooga designed to address the needs of the poor persons who have not finished high school and persons who are really not making the wages and the income that they should be making.

Well, Upward Bound was sort of an offshoot of that of the Community Action Program and the Office of Economic Opportunity.

So this was 1970, I guess it was.

And one of the persons at the university then who was one of the deans that could feel overall knew that I worked with these kinds of programs.

And he was also the person over Upward Bound at UTC.

And it just so happened that the person who was the director of what was bound then resigned and he knew that I worked with the War on Poverty program.

So it was a kind of a natural for me to just come on over and work with Upward Bound.

So that's how that started.

So that was, as I said, back in 1970, and I was with Upward Bound until the 66 and no.

2006, I'm sorry, 2006.

For 36 years.

For 36 years.

That's correct.

And we've seen many, many successes of students who otherwise would not have gone to college and who actually actually made it.

How did you see that program change from your start in 1970, all the way through?

Pretty much present day.

Well, primarily it changed because of the economy changing.

It is a federal program still a federal program.

And of course, you need the money is to really get a program like that started and continuing to actually have an impact on students as it did.

So the real change I saw in it with Brown is that we were not able to give students, for instance, field trips like we used to.

One of the big perks in Upward Bound and one of the reasons that a lot of students joined is because we took trips out of town, and most of the students we end up with never saw anything else, any other city other than Chattanooga, Tennessee.

I mean, this was their whole life.

So we were able to take trips to New York, to Detroit, to Cincinnati, to New Orleans, to Miami.

And but all those kinds of so-called perks are pretty much cut out now because of the economics of it all.

And do you think programs like that, have you seen them expand?

Have you seen them dwindle?

Do you think that there needs to be more programs like that here in Chattanooga, especially.

Of course, the need there need to be more programs like this, and they are dwindling here again, because of a lack of funding and because of the economy and the just the emphasis on those kinds of programs.

But I do see a need for more programs like Upward Bound and programs that address the needs of low income, underachieving students.

Definitely.

Scruggs says his knowledge and background in sociology helped him during his nearly four decades with Upward Bound.

But there are some key experiences he has held in his memory that he's built his values upon and that he shares as life lessons with others because they are the same lessons he too, learned these experiences that are now part of American history also give him a unique vantage point that brings forward the importance of goals and hard work to young people everywhere.

Tell me about how music plays that significant role in your life.

Well, I guess music continued.

Even though I majored in sociology.

It continued after my college because primarily my grandmother, my grandmother, Mrs. Mamie Walton, for whom one of my CDs is dedicated, usually encouraged me to play at various teas that the churches would have at various church activities.

And she actually bought me my first clarinet.

She she bought it for me to play because she wanted me to continue playing my horn after I had graduated from college.

So she inspired me to continue playing, and that's what I've actually done.

And as I said, I dedicated one of my CDs is entitled Let Not Your Heart Be Trouble to my grandmother, who lived to be 105 years of age.

Tell me more about your grandmother, Mamie.

Yeah.

Mrs. Mamie Walton.

She's a former teacher.

I'm a principal of at Bakewell School.

She used to drive from Chattanooga all the way to Bakewell, Tennessee, and I don't think she ever missed a day.

She used to have a a family that she would potentially stay with if the weather were inclement or she just couldn't get there for some reason or other.

But I don't think she ever use it.

But she used to drive one of those tea mile Ford type cars back in the day.

All the way back will be principal of that school.

And she, as I said, was a principal.

And she's in her career substitute teaching at Riverside and in some of the other schools here in Chattanooga.

But she inspired me to do the CD.

Let Not your Heart Be Trouble, because she was a comforting individual.

She touched the lives of a lot of students, of a lot of persons in terms of her particular life.

And my grandmother was really an inspiration to me academically.

She was one of the first, I guess, African-American women, especially down this way, to go to Columbia University.

And in New York, she received her master's from Columbia.

And she was just a remarkable lady.

And as I mentioned, she lived to be 105 years of age.

So talk more about your music.

You play around town.

You have some cronies that I see with like Rosalynn Carter and others who see you on stage with.

There's some YouTube videos of you out there.

You're pretty hip.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes.

Rolling in.

I did a concert a couple of years ago for Black History Month at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

We played songs written by African-American composers.

And in fact, that particular concert is on CD and on DVD and as you mentioned, is on YouTube.

We are playing my tribute, which is actually the title song of the CD that I made in reference to my father.

How often do you play around town?

Well, I'm at Blue Island.

It's just about every month and a half.

I think I'm in a rotation of six other bands, so I'm playing there and I'm playing with a group called the Booker T Scruggs Ensemble.

And we're finding that a lot of churches, especially the churches, which have a kind of a senior ministry which meet during the week, usually on a Tuesday or Thursday at noon, we've been invited to play at a lot of those kinds of functions, and that's where we primarily play gospel music.

We play music written by African-American composers and anybody else that has written gospel music that might be popular.

So we do a lot of that in addition to Blue Orleans.

Now, I'm also playing with a couple of other groups called the Chattanooga Gospel Orchestra under the direction of Danny Sample, and we play maybe once a month at various churches and nursing homes and any place that anybody invites us.

The Gospel Orchestra has been around over 25 years here in the city, also play with a group called the Spectrum Jazz Band, which is actually the house band for the Bessie Smith Hall is under the direction of Erskine Peoples, and we play jazz.

We play wherever we are invited to play.

Yeah, it's the big band jazz sound like what?

Duke Ellington and Count Basie and many others back then?

Yeah, so I do that.

So that's that sort of keeps me busy in terms of the.

Mix a little bit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I think you're missing a contingency.

I hear about all the seniors that you play for, but what about the kids?

They need to hear these sounds.

They need to appreciate the sounds of not only our heritage, but sounds that are slowly getting overplayed by the hip hop fans or kind of the New Age music.

But still that still take a cue from the Duke Ellington's and the Jazz great that that I don't think our children are exposed to now.

Yeah I really need to do more of that.

I'm hoping to find the time to do that.

I have done workshops or seminars, I guess at some of the schools or some of the elementary schools to talk about jazz and to educate our young people about that kind of music.

But I wish I could and hopefully will do more of it in the future.

But the path for Booker has not been an easy one.

Growing up during the heart of the civil rights movement taught this humble musician much about the profound value of equality, education and the pursuit of one's dreams.

Now, when you were growing up in the fifties and sixties in Chattanooga, College or funding for college wasn't really probably the greatest challenge you had back then.

It was a little different growing up in Chattanooga in the fifties and sixties, right?

Yeah, a little bit.

A little.

Bit.

Talk to me about that and specifically how kind of the atmosphere and the civil rights atmosphere back then and the way that African-Americans were treated both in education and just in public life in general, really had an impact on your life?

Well, fortunately, I had parents who emphasized college.

Both my mother and father graduated from college.

They received their masters degrees, and I always had information about college.

And as I have said on various occasions, one of the colleges that I knew about or universities that I knew about growing up in Chattanooga was the University of Chattanooga then, and I would pass by the University of Chattanooga from my home on Riverside Drive to go to Howard School.

And someone asked me, Where would you want to go to college?

And I said, Well, how about the University of Chattanooga?

Then somewhere along the line, my father said, Well, son, you can't go to the University of Chattanooga because of your color.

I didn't quite understand it then.

I guess I was in the seventh, eighth, ninth grade.

But then I begin to realize the fact that there were differences between black and white back in those days, because my father told me I couldn't go to the University of Chattanooga because of my color.

I said, because of my color.

He said, Yeah, because of your color.

And then as I continued to attend Howard High School and the 11th and 12th grade, this is when many of the sit ins and the boycotts and protest movements begin to take place in other parts of the country.

I still have a dream.

It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.

Had you heard about Martin Luther King?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, okay.

We heard about Martin Luther King.

In fact, Martin Luther King visited Chattanooga back in those days and had made speeches.

And what did you think of him?

I mean.

Well, I thought he was a most inspirational.

He, in many cases, challenged many African-Americans to do your best.

And if you do your best and if you're in the right place at the right time, you just might get a few perks that everybody else would be getting.

But at high school in the class of 1968, doing my senior year, we began to realize that there were some students, especially in Greensboro, North Carolina, who were sitting at a lunch counter to try to bring attention to the fact that there were differences between blacks and whites at that particular time in terms of opportunities.

So we decided as a class in 1960 to go downtown and to sit at a lunch counter, a place where we had never actually sat before.

We could go into the store and we could buy clothes, we could buy all kinds of items.

But when it came to sitting down eating a hamburger or when it came to even going to a restroom, you had to go to a separate facility.

You had to go to a separate place in order to get that hamburger or in order to go to a restroom.

And so what we did as a class, we sat down at the actual lunch counter not to get the hamburger, but to show and to demonstrate the fact that some folks can sit down there and get their lunch and some can't.

And we wanted to take that opportunity to sit down to show that there were some disparities within society.

And what was the reaction when you sat down?

Well, let me make this clear.

First of all, I was not at the counter.

I was down there in the crowd that was taking place outside.

But the reaction at the counter from my classmates who were there, they closed the counter down because they did not want to serve African-Americans.

But that's what made Chattanooga so unique and that's what made Howard School so unique with the class of 1960, and that we did initiate the sit ins here in Chattanooga.

How did your parents know what you were up to?

Well, they, of course, found out.

After the fact.

Well, you know, while it was going on, this was on the news.

The newspapers wrote about it.

And that's a good way for your parents to find out.

Yeah.

And I was sort of naturally come downtown anyway, to go to the West Side.

The kids read with my father to come home.

So I was that I just happened to be there in the crowd.

So, yes, they found out about it.

What did they think?

Well, they were supportive.

In fact, my father and I, after this took place, we went to a restaurant on Market Street.

It was the SE and W Cafeteria, and this was before integration.

And we went, my father and I as a kind of a test case, to see what the reactions would be to actually sit down and eat in restaurants where blacks had never eaten before and it worked out okay.

People stared at us.

But my father definitely was supportive, my mother.

But my father had also participated in some similar activities.

He was one of the first persons to actually fight for the rights of African-American teachers to get the equal pay that whites got.

Booker certainly had large footsteps to fill.

History seems to right itself with each new day.

He's a participant and an observer.

It's hard to imagine what goes through his mind as he sees the nation's first African-American sworn into the presidency.

Even more so, the generations preceding him.

The president elect of the United States, Barack Obama.

Well, I have to tell you, I think it's incredible that your mother is celebrating her 100th birthday in March, March 29th.

Right.

I'll say happy birthday to her for me.

I think it's more incredible also, though, that she lived to see the day where an African-American was elected as president of the United States.

Yes.

How did that affect you and your mother?

Well.

My mother was just elated.

Obviously, she grew up, I guess maybe a generation or so out of slavery, even though her mother was a generation from slavery.

And this was just unthought of.

I mean, you just thought.

I mean, my parents used to encourage me and say that you can be basically anything you wanted to be when you were growing up.

But as I reflect on that, I'm almost sure that they, in the back of their mind, said, you could never become president of the United States.

So this is I mean, it's just seeing her and the amazement that she got in, seeing Obama take the oath of office.

I mean, that was this just it's really amazing.

What do you think that means for the students you teach for your own child, for the future generations who will never know a world without an African-American president and in that possible?

Well, I hope that that will mean, especially to our young people, that, yes, you can do just about anything that you want to do with hard work, with dedication.

I hope that that's what this whole presidency of Obama is really generating to this particular phase of our young folks.

And in the spirit of hope and aspirations.

I have to ask if there was one venue you could play in the whole world.

Where would it be?

Where would it be?

I thought I had actually fulfilled all my desires when I went to Vienna, Austria, and played in 2006.

I played for the Methodist Church.

That conference at in Vienna, and I thought that was pretty much the apex of what I wanted to do.

And as I said, you asked that question.

And since I had never really thought of an answer to that question, I guess, playing at the White House.

Well, there you go.

Well, I'll have to set that up right.

Might be the ultimate now.

I guess that would be it.

I think anything is possible.

As you said.

Maybe at the second term of Obama, maybe I can take the place of Aretha Franklin or some of those other folks.

There you go.

You got to find a nice hat.

Oh, yes.

Well, I have enjoyed getting to know you today.

And I hope you won't leave without playing a little something for us as well.

Oh, any request?

Well, let's see what you got.

Okay.

Well, one of my albums is called Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled.

I played a song that was a song of inspiration called The Impossible Dream.

A long, long, long, long held.