As a student in 1960s Beaumont, Zenobia Bush took the bus with other Black students every day from Hebert High School across town to attend a computer science class that was offered only at a school in the predominantly white South Park ISD.
“I remember when I first walked into Forest Park High School, seeing their facility versus the facility I had come from, it was a whole different world,” she recalled. “It was like I was on a college campus compared to where I was coming from.”
It was a crystallizing moment for young “Zee” Bush, who would spend the next five decades breaking barriers.
“When you don’t know better you just assume everything is the same,” she said. “So certainly, when I got an opportunity to be able to stand for equity, I wanted to be the face for that. And it is not always race that is the determining factor, I just wanted to make sure that children that have less still were afforded everything that they could to be successful.”
As she prepares to retire from the Beaumont ISD school board, where she made history as the first Black woman to be elected in the city, Bush spoke with The Enterprise about her life and her accomplishments.
A proud beginning
Bush, 70, was born in Kilgore to Clifton and Arthur “Coach” Randall, who would go on to work with notable Southeast Texas coach Willie Ray Smith in Orange.
“And then Smith got hired to be the head coach at Charlton-Pollard here in Beaumont, and he brought my father along with him, which is how he got planted here in Beaumont in 1957,” Bush said.
Coach Randall was proud and encouraging, attributes he instilled in his daughter at a young age. He was also active in the civil rights movement, a cause she would pick up later in life.
“My father wasn’t strict, but he was a very proud man and he instilled a lot of pride in us and I got to see him be very active in civil rights type organizations like the NAACP,” Bush said. “So, I became active in the NAACP because of my dad.”
Bush would go on to serve as the education chair for the local chapter of the NAACP and was given a lifetime achievement award by the organization for being an outspoken voice for equity for black students.
But early in life, her parents shielded her from the harsh realities of racism in America at the time.
“I was kind of sheltered from a lot of things because we didn’t get to go a lot of places. We were kept at home by the parents,” she said. “But I would say I had a pretty good life. I wasn’t exposed to a lot of racism.”
Yet during shopping trips to Sears she had to use the bathroom in the basement. Signs for “colored” and “white” customers were still ubiquitous.
“Over time that ended as well,” she said.
The pride and culture of achievement Bush developed at a young age pushed her to excel in the classroom and out.
She was a National Merit Scholars finalist. She was in the band, the math club, Student Council and the Honor Society and she graduated as salutatorian of her class in 1968.
She went on to study math and French at Lamar University before taking after her parents to become a math teacher at French High School.
“Both my parents were educators,” Bush said. “My mother started teaching when I was 10 or 11. We had a good life. We weren’t rich, but we just felt like we had everything we needed.”
After several years of teaching, Bush left to achieve another first, becoming the first Black woman to work in business services as a computer programmer at Dupont, one of the largest chemical companies in the world at the time. She never took that path, or her position as a pioneer for granted.
“I took that as an opportunity to do well, so that others can come behind and do well,” Bush said. “I think that is just the way I was brought up.”
But Bush’s true passion of teaching brought her back to education in 1985.
A time of great promise
She ran for school board the first year after Beaumont ISD merged with neighboring South Park ISD, a key step in the district’s long road to integration, and a decision that bitterly divided the community with some animosity to this day.
The district would not be certified as integrated until 2007.
Irmalynn Thomas, a classmate of Bush who graduated a year after she did said the election came at a time of hope and promise for Beaumont, and particularly for the Black community.
“It was a time of great promise,” she said. “We were saying, ‘Yes, we are going to make it, we are doing better,’ and all of that, a very exciting time.”
Bush’s early years on the board were spent parsing through the difficult process of splicing two school districts together, and going head-to-head with O.C. Mike Taylor, the superintendent of South Park ISD.
“Oh, O.C. Mike Taylor, he was a character in himself and we would bump heads,” Bush said. “He would laugh at me because he knew I couldn’t really do anything because I didn’t have the votes to really make a lot of change, but he knew I was going to at least speak my mind and eventually, I wouldn’t say we became friends, but there was a respect between the two of us.”
Just a few years later, Bush’s campaign manager Bobbie Patterson became the first Black woman elected to City Council.
While fighting for children was always Bush’s goal, her election paved the way for representation in the district.
In 2019, Bush was part of the board that selected Shannon Allen as the first Black woman to serve as superintendent of the district.
Bush said she is proud to see greater representation and equity in BISD today, though there is still room to improve.
Allen lauded those initial steps.
“Bush’s role as the first Black (woman) elected to public office opened the door for many more minorities to follow in her stead, myself included,” Allen told The Enterprise. “Without her election to office, I may not have been privileged to serve as the first female superintendent in Beaumont ISD. Bush changed the perception by which African Americans were portrayed. She showed the community that the color of one’s skin shouldn’t overshadow their skill and ability.”
She was also instrumental in selecting the first Black superintendent for the district in 1996, Carroll A. Thomas, one of her proudest achievements.
In his 16-year tenure, Thomas oversaw the rebuilding of many of the district’s poorest schools using a $388 million bond issue, and he increased academic performance.
Well received when he was first hired in 1996, Thomas eventually would become the focus of intense scrutiny over mismanagement of those same bond funds and the hiring of several officials who would later serve time in federal prison for embezzling millions of dollars.
A confluence of events
Thomas left BISD with his reputation plummeting as the district plunged into a “budget crisis.” Two top officials were indicted for embezzling millions, and allegations of cheating were referred to the Texas Education Agency. A rift between teachers and the administration was emerging as well.
“I am very proud of having been involved in the hiring of Dr. Thomas,” Bush said. “I know there is a lot of controversy around him and I know that when he came in, he was embraced by everyone. But as things progressed, there was a movement that caused a lot of issues.”
The TEA inquiries eventually led to a contested state takeover of the district and ouster of the board.
“I think that anyone on that board, you could have asked them, they were very upset about what was being done when they found out,” Bush said of the theft and embezzlement. “We were all just kind of shocked. We had come from a trusting environment and trusted everybody was doing what they were supposed to do, so it was kind of a shock and a painful revelation when we found out they weren’t.”
Bush said the board acted quickly to remove those accused of wrongdoing, adding that the episode “gave credence, some felt, to oust the board because they felt like we should have known.”
“I don’t know how we should have known at the level that we were. As a matter of fact, I can remember our board president meeting with the FBI investigators who said that it would have been hard to find. It took the FBI to come in and find it because, you know, we have audits and the auditor didn’t find it, so how was the board supposed to find it?” she said.
In the three decades she served on the board, the rebuke by the state and the public backlash stung the most.
“I know my feelings were hurt by the fact that people thought I was stealing,” she said. “That type of stigma just didn’t sit well with me because I knew, and I still know what my character is. And I hate the fact that we got labeled as thieves, when we know that none of us were.”
Bush said the media framed many of the events that bookended the Thomas administration unfairly, a criticism Thomas himself noted in an exit interview with The Enterprise in 2012.
The inquiry into the district, which later led to a state takeover was just one of a confluence of events that distressed Bush during this time period.
In 2011 a contingent of mostly white politicians and board members began a campaign to form two at-large seats for the seven-member board, which had single-member districts at the time. The effort was twice struck down by courts citing the 1965 Voting Right Act, which allowed the federal government to intervene when election laws appeared to disenfranchise racial minorities.
But after that law was gutted by a 2013 Supreme Court ruling, the election plan for the at-large seats was implemented by a court ruling.
“In the Black community, we all felt that was a plan to give white representatives a majority on the board,” Bush said, “because they could get the two at-large because of low voter turnout and they already had two seats in the West End.”
The movement, coined the “better” vs. “best” movement at the time, split along racial lines.
“It was heartbreaking,” Bush said of the experience. “I wonder if it is too late to go back to seven single-member districts.”
As the election drama and state takeover took place, Bush was dealing with personal adversity as well.
In 2014, one of her four children, Byron Bush, was arrested after an altercation with Jefferson County sheriff’s deputies, which led to him firing several shots at them.
“It is heartbreaking to see a child that you’ve raised, particularly in the church, get off on the wrong track and get involved in drugs,” Bush said. “And the drugs give over to violent things. It hurts your heart.”
After several mistrials, he was found guilty of attempted murder in 2017 and sentenced to 40 years in prison.
During the jury seating, someone made a comment in the courtroom about “his mother being a thief,” a comment that stung Bush and that she remembers years later.
“This was a comment made about something that happened four years ago, and people still feel that way about me,” she said. But in 2017, as the first elections were held since the state takeover, Bush ran one last time, and won.
“I wanted the community that I serve to let me know whether or not they felt like I could still represent them, or if they had no trust in me,” she said. “So that is why I went to them.”
Bush is still in regular contact with her son and visits with him once a month.
“He is still my child. I don’t justify what he did, but I am going to stand by him,” she said.
She paused her visits this last year for COVID-19 restrictions but returned when visitation began again in March.
“I was there at 1 p.m. on March 15,” she said. “People that know my son from when he was in school talk about how smart he was — he really was the smartest of my four children, but he also was the one that had the tendency to experiment, and lean towards trouble.”
Strength through faith
One central thread that has guided her through her struggles and successes, career goals and personal goals has been her involvement in the church.
“I grew up in the church, I was baptized at 7 over at Morning Star Baptist Church,” Bush said. “Then when I got grown, I went through a divorce and ended up going to a church where my father and mother went, which was Starlight.”
Several years later, when she was in her early 30s, Bush said she was “saved.”
“That is when I got actively involved and made sure that I was there every Sunday.”
She joined Starlight Baptist Church in 1975 and has served in several ministries over the years such on the hospitality committee, as Sunday School superintendent and teacher, vacation Bible school and children’s church teacher, vice president of women’s choir, past president of the General Mission from 1998-2005 and a trustee.
“Everything I have done, this path I am on is one that God sent me on,” she said.
That faith, she said, is what gave her the strength to stand up when the right position was not the popular position.
“Even when I was in the minority I stood, whether people liked it or not,” she said.
One last term
In 2019, the school board returned to local control after five years of state operation. During that time, the district was recovering from steep financial losses, in part related to the financial mismanagement, leading to cuts in workforce that were accompanied by declining morale, failing schools and increasing discipline problems.
“I think we are still trying to recoup from that,” Bush said. “I think we are moving in the right direction with Dr. Allen, and I pray that we get our campuses moving in the right direction and bring the pride back to BISD.”
Some of the progress that was made in the first months of a fully local board was blunted by the coronavirus pandemic.
Zenobia Bush’s tenure on the board has been hallmarked by brash advocacy and good humor that developed early in her career, with a collegiality formed with even her staunchest foes, such as O.C. Mike Taylor when she was first elected.
BISD board President Thomas Sigee pointed to her incessant advocacy, and penchant to lighten the mood at the end of long and sometime contentious board meetings.
“This is serious business, and we are dealing with millions of dollars,” Sigee said. “But at the same time, you have to be able to laugh a little bit about what is going on.”
Board meetings, sometimes stretching late into the night, have always ended with Sigee offering Bush the last word.
In the most recent meeting, Bush pressed Athletic Director Ron Jackson to consider individuals who don’t have access to credit cards and ensure online ticketing policies are inclusive of everyone in the district, including those who are elderly and socioeconomically disadvantaged.
The exchange was typical of Bush at the monthly meetings and ended with assurances that all options would be explored.
“I think she will be remembered as someone who always asked the tough questions, and expected an answer,” said Tillie Hickman, the most recent addition to the board.
Even as she prepares to spend more time at home, Bush is looking for ways to make the district better.
“I do think that we can do a better job in making sure that our best teachers go to the campuses with the most need,” she said. “That is something that I think we can do better.”
Allen credits Bush with helping achieve many key goals in recent years including making sure employees were paid during all disasters, advocating for all students to have devices, ensuring that all campuses have the support and resources needed for student success and making sure that neighborhood schools were in every community.
“From her first stint on the board until today, Zenobia has been passionate about student achievement and providing opportunities for children of all races to succeed,” Allen said. “Thousands of children over the years have been impacted by the decisions that she made as a board member and the resources that she has advocated and voted for being placed in the classroom.”
The election for District 2 will be on May 1, and Bush said she will be an open resource to whoever succeeds her.
“I want the people to know that I have enjoyed serving them, even through the trouble,” she said. “I have still enjoyed being able to represent them, and I hope that I served them well and have been a voice for them. I thank them for their confidence.”
isaac.windes@hearstnp.com
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