Frederick Allen soon will return to the Broward County classrooms where he once made history. But for him, the return is bittersweet.

Now 58, Allen is about to become a substitute teacher in Broward County — the same district where he was a plaintiff in a landmark 1970 lawsuit to desegregate schools. The suit was filed by his father, well-known civil rights attorney W. George Allen.

Looking back, though, Frederick Allen said those days were a "horrible" experience.

He remembers kids telling him their parents didn't let them play with "N-words."

He recalls learning to shoot a gun at a young age, because of the death threats. He says he was shot at once walking home from school.

He was isolated and he stood out, he says, when all he wanted was to fit in.

His brother Timothy, also named a plaintiff in the lawsuit, says he's proud of his role in Broward's history. However, Frederick Allen's feelings are complicated.

"I feel more like a tragic figure than a historic one," he says.

Allen is not the pot-stirring civil rights activist that his father was. W. George Allen, now 78 and retired, was the first African-American to graduate from the University of Florida law school in 1962. A former law partner of U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Miramar, he is considered a civil rights icon in Florida.

And he was unafraid.

"I had young kids, so I taught them how to shoot. I made it known that I don't believe in non-violence like Martin Luther King. You bother me, I'm violent," Allen wrote in his autobiography "Where the Bus Stops."

But Frederick is uncomfortable living in the shadow of W. George Allen, and carrying the mantle of desegregation.

He still hurts from being uprooted so many times, sent to nine different schools, and running back and forth between Broward and his hometown, Sanford. He is not proud of his many fistfights with classmates.

"He might as well have thrown me in the midst of a Ku Klux Klan rally," Allen said this week. "At the height of the civil rights movement, all this hostility in the country about integration, my God."

Though the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in 1954 in Brown v Board of Education that "separate but equal" schools were unconstitutional, Broward County didn't earnestly desegrate until Allen's lawsuit 16 years later.

"The present desegregation suit was filed by Negro plaintiffs on January 9, 1970," a court order in the Allen suit reads. "[The] district court found that the Board was operating a dual school system. The Board was ordered to file by February 16, 1970, 'a comprehensive plan to establish a unitary school system' in Broward County."

W. George Allen challenged the Broward status quo right after arriving in town with his young sons in the 1960s. They lived in a racially mixed neighborhood. A little boy named Carlos who lived next door was white.

"My dad said, 'Well, where does Carlos go to school?' " Frederick Allen recalled. "Carlos' parents said, 'Right around the corner, to North Side.' My dad said, 'Well, Fred's going to go there too.' "

School officials resisted, but Allen insisted, with the threat of a lawsuit.

"The kids, they wouldn't play with us. We were ostracized. We were isolated. And it was a very hostile environment," Frederick Allen said. "And I complained to my dad about it all the time."

Indeed, in his book the senior Allen writes that his son complained the teacher was "prejudiced against him because he was the only black student in the class."

Allen had many conferences with the teacher and principal, he wrote.

"We knew that Fred was not a passive student, but one who would challenge anyone," he wrote, "and we also knew that our job was to protect him, shield him from mistreatment and insure that he received an education."

W. George Allen couldn't be reached for comment, despite a call and email.

Timothy Allen, a detective for the Hillsboro County Sheriff's Office, said he remembers one thing vividly.

"We would go wash our hands before going to lunch," he said. "I guess we were the first brown kids those white kids had ever seen, because they were saying, 'Doesn't any of that brown stuff wash off?' "

He says he's more "laid back" than his brother, and is thankful to have been a part of desegregation history.

"He believed in education and that you were just as good or just as great as the next person," he said of his father.

After the lawsuit, Frederick Allen was forced to switch from all-black Dillard High School to what was then a new school, Boyd H. Anderson. The practice was dubbed "starbursting," dispersing black students into white schools, to achieve diversity.

"I cried like a baby," Allen recalled. "I loved Dillard. I was somebody at Dillard. And with segregation, I got thrown in this melting pot where I wasn't as popular."

Allen hated the attention that came with being the plaintiff.

"When you're a kid, you just want to fit in," he said. "I guess that was my desire my whole life — just to fit in and be treated like everybody else. That was my goal in life."

Younger brother Jonathan Allen, 43, city manager of Lauderdale Lakes, says he is grateful for what his brothers did.

"I can only speak of being the beneficiary of some of the sacrifices they've made and some of the experiences they've endured," he said. "I'm grateful to my father and I'm grateful to my brothers for being on the front lines of civil rights for Broward County as we know it."

bwallman@tribune.com or 954-356-4541