Sunday, May 9, 2004 - Page updated at 12:00 AM

The teacher: 'We haven't overcome yet. And the struggle still goes on'

By Sanjay Bhatt

Seattle Times staff reporter

Audio essay
Four talk about what Brown v. Board means to them.

Listen to their stories

Books cram the shelves and peek out of every nook in William Huelett's apartment. This is the library Huelett never had at his all-black schoolhouse in segregated East Texas, where his illiterate father worked for 35 cents an hour at a sawmill to raise six children.

The musty odor of aging paper perfumes an apartment conspicuously adorned with portraits of Jesus Christ and the crucifix, articles of an inner faith of one of Seattle's first African-American teachers, hired two years before the Supreme Court struck down legally imposed segregation.

"We were supposed to do away with all segregation in schools, but it hasn't done it," said Huelett, 79.

Students need to realize how much more opportunity they have than his generation had and do the best they can, Huelett said. Too many young men hang their dreams only on pro sports, he said.

"We haven't really overcome, like Martin Luther King said, we haven't overcome yet. And the struggle still goes on. We have to do everything that we can in the right way to overcome the difficulties that we still face."