The Equity Project Alliance's 2025 Conversation in Black and White is being held this week. This year’s event highlights the experiences of Ernest Dawson and Dick Appleyard, who came of age and became friends in the late 1960s, one of the most racially-turbulent periods in American history.
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In particular, the standout athletes are reflecting on their time attending Pensacola High, during the integration of Escambia County Public Schools.
Dawson and Appleyard are members of the PHS Class of ’69 and attended 10th – 12th grade together.
“My best friends were friends with him in football and I was friends with him in the hall ways and in classes, but we played different sports,” said Appleyard, who is white and was a basketball star at Pensacola High. “I played a lot of basketball young, and when I got to PHS I was told what sport I was gonna play. And it wasn’t football, because I weighed about 110 pounds and I didn’t need Ernie Dawson running over me.”
As alluded, Dawson was a star football player and he was the first African American to play on the PHS football team.
“There was a lot going on in the school system, and Ernie was a trailblazer,” Appleyard declared, who recalled that Dawson was immediately accepted within the school, largely because he was involved in sports.
“I think sports played a huge role. And I can tell you the guys that were on every team that I played at Pensacola High School, white or Black, it didn't matter; you either run fast or you don't.”
Dawson acknowledged that sports did help to bridge the racial divide, but recalled his integration into the school a little bit differently.
“Well, he's been optimistic about how many people I was accepted by,” Dawson stated. “Yeah, most of the people in football and athletics recognized and were friendly with me, but there are a lot of haters out there and, unfortunately, it never quite all went away. My focus became on the people that I did connect with, rather than dealing with these guys who had negative things to do.”
Both Dawson and Appleyard give credit to their mutual good friend from high school, Mike Green, a leader who helped to set the tone for team interactions and encouraged Dawson to join him on the Student Council.
Dawson added that life in a military family also helped him to adapt.
“I was sitting next to guys that didn't quite look like me in the first and second grade,” he remembered. “So I didn't focus on some of the stuff that people saw because their backgrounds didn't educate them that these people are just about the same. You just need to treat them well, and you'll be able to spot who's not kosher. It was an interesting time and I had to do a lot of things to deal with it.”
While Dawson was integrating the football team, Appleyard said there were no blacks yet on the PHS Tigers' basketball team. But, he added that he met a lot of Black athletes during summers at the school.
“I was a white guy in there with all the blacks,” he recalled. “That's how I got to be really good friends with an awful lot of the players at Washington High and Wedgewood and others, just guys from around the neighborhood.”
For Appleyard, one of the big turning points came in their junior year, when PHS basketball played Washington High, when it was still an all-Black school.
“I got there early for the JV game, and there was not an empty seat on either side. It was all Black on one side and all white on one side,” he recounted, adding that he could name every player on Washington’s team.
“But that's the first time Washington and PHS ever played sports against each other. Anyhow, soon thereafter, we were around when Washington became an integrated school, and I have thoughts on the success of that was because of some strong Black leadership and some really strong white leadership.”
Appleyard praises the efforts of people like Daniel “Shorty” Ward and Sherman Robinson for making the transition successful.
On a personal level, Dawson expressed gratitude for his former football assistant coach, Eugene Key, for helping him get through it.
Since their time together in high school, Appleyard rose through the ranks to become president of his family’s advertising firm, now known as Appleyard Duncan McCall.
After attending the historic Tuskegee Institute, Dawson served eight years in the U.S. Air Force and worked in city government in Anchorage, Alaska before returning to Pensacola as Director of Regional Services for the Emerald Coast Utilities Authority. He retired from the post in 2018.
Looking back, Dawson said he could understand some of the difficulties between blacks and whites in the late 1960s because of the lack of knowledge and preconceived notions that each had about the other.
“If you came up in a school in Pensacola, where you went with black kids all your life, and you look to the white kids and you don’t really know. You know what you hear from your family and your friends,” he said of how it was. “That’s how you saw them, until you’re right next to them and if you have to interact. And, many times, because of that distance the interaction wasn’t positive because you came in with a certain mindset and so did they.”
While there has been progress in race relations over the decades, Dawson conceded that the current political climate has led to some regression. He believes learning from our history is important for our future generations.
“They need to understand what really happened,” he stated. “How do you improve on something if you don’t know how it was made that way.”
In this year’s Conversation in Black and White, Appleyard and Dawson are following Julian MacQueen and Dr. Lusharon Wiley, founding members of the Equity Project Alliance, who were featured in 2024.
The PHS alums believe they are a tough act to follow, but know there is a lot that can be learned from their own path to friendship.
“I’m honored to be up there talking, but if we walk out saying ‘high five’ to each other, we haven’t done a decent job,” said Appleyard. “At the end of the day, there’s so much to be done in the communities and in education, in particular, because I’m a believer that the solution comes through children learning at a very early age and being ready for school. If you get that kind of education, when you get to high school, you’re gonna work out your relationships with people.”
And Appleyard maintains that race relations can be enhanced through the shared experience of sports, which he’d like to see more of at the middle school level.
Having forged a relationship during the racially tense period in Escambia County in the 1960s, Appleyard and Dawson want to make it clear that they’re not the “poster boys” for integration and they’re not “best buds,” but have remained friends for more than 50 years.
“Why are Ernie and I friends, it’s because of his personality.” Appleyard stated. “He knows how to deal with people and to make you feel included and a part of it and I hope he would say the same thing about me.”
For his part, Dawson suggested they’ve been able to maintain their friendship because it’s based on trust and respect.
“It’s changed a little bit, but my outlook about what kind of person he is — is high, because I know his mindset,” said Dawson. “I know he’s not gonna do some of the stuff that a lot of these trifling dudes do, and I hold him in high regard because of that.”
The Equity Project Alliance Conversation in Black and White, set for tomorrow evening at the Jean and Paul Amos Performance Studio, is sold out. But the full program will be posted on EPA’s YouTube channel.
Looking ahead, interested individuals are invited to EPA’s upcoming Party in the Park Story Slam on Saturday, Aug. 9, from 3-4 p.m., at Hollice T. Williams Park.
