The days that followed were nightmarish for Wallace, an honors student at the top of his class. He was cornered in a school bathroom and threatened by seven white boys. Friends rescued him before violence could erupt. He, his sisters, and their mother received threatening phone calls at home. "The farmer kids were bringing guns to school," he remembers. "You know, guns in the pickup trucks. The school wasn't protective in those days."
School authorities set up meetings among parents, students, and teachers, but administrators did not change either the mascot or the band uniforms. So members of SOUL and their families packed into cars, convoyed up to Miami, and spoke before a meeting of the Dade County School Board. Wallace's eloquent speech made an indelible impression on board member Jack Gordon, who would later be elected to the state senate. Recalls Wallace: "I said, 'How would you like it if you were playing tuba in the band and it had a picture of a swastika on the side and you were dressed as storm troopers?' After the meeting, Gordon told me it hit him like a lightning bolt."
Despite the impassioned speeches and the sense of outrage from students and parents, the school board chose not to force any changes on South Dade High. Disgusted with the board's lack of action, and feeling increasingly unsafe on the school grounds, Wallace and more than 55 other black students were allowed to transfer in midsemester to Mays High, a predominately black school in Goulds. (Gordon would later explain to Wallace that he and other board members feared that if they had imposed changes in the heat of the controversy, reaction among white students might be violent. A year later, however, the school dropped the Confederate emblems.)
Although Wallace never had a chance to complete his band class because he transferred to Mays High, he still received an F from South Dade. That failing mark lowered his grade-point average and prevented him from graduating as valedictorian from Mays. He finished third in his class.
"He recognized his rights, and he didn't want them trampled," recounts Raymond Larry, chairman of the Vanguard Committee, a South Dade watchdog group founded in 1977 to lobby politicians on minority issues. (Larry and Wallace are cousins by marriage.) "He wasn't adamant or anything like that. He was just about the business that he believed and what was a fair treatment to all students."
While at Mays, Wallace was chosen to be a page in the Washington, D.C., office of Rep. Dante Fascell, an honor that ended up being less exciting than he'd hoped. "I grew up so fast," he says in reference to his leadership role in the dispute at South Dade High. "After that incident, I learned so much that becoming a page was anticlimactic. When people talk about high school, they don't talk about the same things I talk about. I can't even remember the goddamn prom. I feel cheated."
Heading south on U.S. 1, back toward Florida City, Wallace is lost in thought. He rarely talks about those days nearly 30 years ago when he was so full of youthful ambition. But recounting his experiences has prompted him to consider the lectures he'll soon be giving at local schools as part of black history month. "There's nothing like having a measurable impact in the community where you live," he says. "That's what I always emphasize when I speak at the schools. Fine, go away to school. Get a college education. But bring it back home. For years we've been growing a whole lot of talent, but it never comes back home. What's the point of going to Louisiana and making things better there? We need you here.
