SENIOR KAPPA SPOTLIGHT HAROLD ALDRIDGE, JR.

Harold Aldridge, Jr. was born in San Francisco, California and reared in Oklahoma. He became an All-State high school basketball player and participated in several athletic programs including Oklahoma State University, Bacone Junior College, where he became a JUCO AllAmerican, Drake University, from which he received the B.A. degree in Biology. Aldridge received the Masters in Biology Education from Northeastern State University, and the Ph.D. degree in Educational Psychology from the University of Oklahoma.

He was one of the first African Americans to break the color barrier in high schools, teaching at Memorial Senior High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, as well as at Northeastern State University, in Tahlequah, OK, where he taught for twenty seven years. He continued to break these barriers in high school and collegiate basketball, officiating throughout Oklahoma

Aldridge officiated in the NJCAA, NAIA, NCAA D-I and D-II and also served as a professional referee in professional basketball in the ABA His father was the first coach in Oklahoma, after desegregation, to win three consecutive high school state basketball championships.

Dr. Aldridge has a third degree Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do karate, plays and sings country and Delta blues, and breeds, trains and shows Tennessee Walking Horses. He has written numerous articles and two unpublished manuscripts. Currently, he is involved in compiling his years-long research, including personal interviews, on the segregation/desegregation of Oklahoma Public Schools.

More recently, Dr. Aldridge has been an emissary, historian and entertainer of blues music, presenting at the Oklahoma Historical Society, and a long list of musical events across the state of Oklahoma.