March 1984: Track Season, The Streamliners and The Renegades

When March of 1984 came around, I was on the junior varsity track team at Bartlett. I wanted to do the sprinting events, but I really wasn't fast enough to do them, and I should have focused on cross country instead. But I still had fun, and I recall one track meet at Christian Brothers High School that we had with Fayette-Ware, where I met a young girl on their team named Brenda Anthony. While waiting for our events, we ended up sitting on a levee behind the track, talking and I came to find out that she was from the Good Springs community of Fayette County and was a cousin of my friend Jessie Yancey, who was on our first-string track team. I was looking forward to our next meet with Fayette-Ware at Millington on March 19, but it ended up being cancelled, because Fayette-Ware students had gone out on strike.

At Bartlett High School, we had an official organization called the Streamliners, which was a predominantly-Black organization. Mrs. McKinley, one of the women's coaches, was the faculty sponsor, and the organization sponsored a number of dances during the school year. On March 24, they sponsored one in Bartlett High's cafeteria which was extremely well-attended, and most of my friends were there. Also there was an unofficial organization that had debuted that week, known as The Renegades. Taking their name from an Afrika Bambaataa song called "Renegades of Funk", they had come out in the hallways of Bartlett High School before class on the day before the dance, wearing yellow brim hats. The founding members included Patrick Jordan, Joe Phillips, Michael Branch, Hernert Jones and Bobby Merriwether, all of whom were at the dance, and the DJ played the song and saluted the club. Our school did not have fraternities or sororities, so these kinds of social organizations formed from time to time among the students.

As the weather heated up, there were more activities outdoors, especially pickup basketball games. Games could jump off out on Appling Road, or at Shadowlawn, but a favorite place was at the new courts in Bartlett, behind the city hall and library on Stage Road at Altruria. Ricky Fields and Darryl Carroll were often out there practicing their game.