By Sally Tippett Rains
Virgal Tyrone Woolfolk, who has recently retired as a business owner after a career in the Navy is settling in to enjoy retirement, behind the gates of his upscale community in Innsbrook, Missouri. At age 70 he lived through Segregation and just in time for “Black History Month” has penned a book called, “Back When We Were Colored; Helping Black Baseball Players During Segregation, And Being Helped by Some ‘Decent White Men’ Along the Way.”
With his experience as a child who attended a Black-only elementary school and then was the first class when the local high school became segregated, he has lived through much of what would be considered “Black History” but it is his life and the life of those of his age. In the 1950’s and ‘60’s he or anyone in his family could never have imagined the life he has built for himself.
The Civil Rights movement began around the year he was born, in 1954, and was an organized effort to end legal segregation and discrimination against Black Americans, primarily occurring between 1954 and 1968. During his lifetime people of his color were called “negroes” or “colored” until the terms of “Blacks” or “African Americans” became accepted.
The book, which just came out this year has already won an award: The Ella Dickey Literacy Award; and he will recieve the award at the Missouri Cherry Blossom Festival on Friday, April 24, 2026, at 2:15 pm at the Marshfield Assembly of God in Marshfield, Missouri.
“The book is the history, not only of my family, but Missouri and the nation,” Virgal Woolfolk told STL Sports Page. “Because Missouri has historically been a battleground for racial equality, Black History Month is a key moment for unity, acknowledgment, and enabling institutions to confront the state’s ‘long, troubled racial past,’ such as the segregation of schools that persisted when I was growing up.”
He’s seen and done a lot in those seventy years, including some terrible personal experiences that are hard to believe today but happened due to prejudice or as better described today: racism. He has faced terrible situations due to as he calls it, “being colored” yet paradoxically, he has many happy childhood memories and as well as exciting and wonderful experiences.
“I decided to write the book due to the encouragement of business associates, family members and friends who said I have lived this amazing life from attending school in a one room schoolhouse to earning my law degree and being one of the first Black Disabled Veteran firms to work with NASA and other agencies on high profile projects.”
Woolfolk, who has lived a book-worthy life was one of the first black Sailors to control the aircraft in the movie “Top Gun” and he has met presidents Harry Truman and Barrack Obama, and he writes about that in the book. He also writes about being protected as a child by Senator Jack Danforth at a Woolworth diner when he was assaulted for reaching for a bottle of catsup from a “Whites Only” table.
He tells of meeting comedians like Elayne Boosler (shown in photo, left,) Moms Mable, Sinbad, and more; baseball players like Willie Mays, Stan Musial, Curt Flood and Ozzie Smith here in St Louis as well as with cowboy heroes like Roy Rogers, James Drury, Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, and James Garner. He was Navy buddies with Tina Turner’s son and in turn shared birthday cards with Tina Turner.
He met many of the famous people while he lived in California, first when he was in the service and then running a business. He still continues to know television stars, and author Laurie Jacobson, who wrote a book called “TV Dinners” about many childhood stars. Jacobson, who is originally from St. Louis, is married to Jon Provost who played “Timmy” on the Lassie Show years ago.
“Laurie Jacobson who is accomplished in her own right, said I had a story to tell,” said Woolfolk. “She is a sweetheart, and being a writer, born and raised in St Louis, she told me my story of growing up in the St Louis area was worth telling.”
Jacobson introduced Woolfolk to this reporter who worked with him to get it published. Growing up in the Wright City area, Virgal Tyrone Woolfolk, who was known as Tyrone to his childhood friends until he started going by Virgal in the Navy. One of the big stories in the book and a major event in his life involved the Park family. Don Park, who is 93 years old today owned a grocery store which eventually went out of business partly because he wanted to hire Blacks (including Woolfolk) to work there. Though Don Park was white, there was a powerful woman in town who Woolfolk remembers threatening to tell townspeople to boycott his store if he hired Blacks.
As it turned out Virgal left for the service before taking the job, but he had become best friends with Sam Park, the son of Don. That friendship remains today but the story as he portrays it in the book is worth reading years later and especially during “Black History Month.”
There is also a chapter where Woolfolk tells of sitting next to The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s father on a plane. It was on that plane that he learned that besides King’s son being assassinated, his wife was also murdered. It all came together for him, this week about the tragedy that King, Sr. faced losing two of the most important people in his life.
“Within the last few weeks, my younger sister Donna passed away,” said Woolfolk.
She had suffered from poli0 when she was younger and wore leg braces growing up.
Donna, shown in the photo, right, developed lupus and never married.
“She never drove a car, never had children and spent most of her adult life in a nursing home,” he said.
When he was told about his sister’s death, he was devastated.
“It made me think,” said Woolfolk. “I can only imagine the heartache that Martin Luther King, Sr. had with navigating through life after losing both his wife and son to senseless acts of violence. I cannot image the immense grief. If I could talk to him today, I would let him know he set a ‘high bar’ to not succumb (to the tragedies) and still move on with life and do good.”
King, Sr. gave Virgal some advice that day on the airplane. If he could talk to him again, he says he would have a lot to say to him. Based on his life as a child during the Civil Rights Movement, much of what he would say is based on the current political climate, but he leaves the politics out of the book– which is a fact-based, historical chronicle of his life. One of the things he would tell him is the fight for Civil Rights is not over in his eyes.
“I’d tell him we are still believing and continuing he and his son’s mission of preaching and living the gospel of love,” said Woolfolk. “And that we will are being advocates for justice and love. In and out of uniform.”
During these trying political times, he says a conversation with Martin Luther King, Sr. would be regarding (the administration) and would likely be framed around race.
“I remember hearing Martin Luther King Sr. say at the political event where then presidential candidate Jimmy Carter had in San Diego that ‘a man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice not only for himself but for others when he sees wrongs occurring.'”
As it turned out the assassination of Dr. King, which happened when Virgal Woolfolk was a child, is in his memory for more than one reason.
“The day Dr. Martin Luther King was shot my life changed in a significant way—and it wasn’t just his death,” Woolfolk says in his book. “Turns out it was personal in an odd way to me and my friends.”
To find out more you’ll have to read his book.
“I want folks to imagine having to enter a building where you knew you were not wanted or valued,” he said. “It can mess you and scar you, even if you overcome the process. We can do better.”
For more information on “Back When We Were Colored; Helping Black Baseball Players During Segregation, And Being Helped by Some ‘Decent White Men’ Along the Way,” CLICK HERE.
