[1] Six months after Douglass was born in Sherman, Texas, his extended family relocated to Los Angeles in an effort to escape Jim Crow laws.
"[3] Douglass met and befriended Dexter Gordon while attending McKinley Junior High School in Los Angeles, at which point he first began playing drums.
[4] At Jefferson High School, both Douglass and Gordon began taking band under teacher Lloyd Reese, who encouraged the rudiments and private instruction.
[7] Along with Gordon and Lammar Wright, Jr., Douglass began playing night clubs while still in school and frequently haunted Central Avenue, an important nexus of African-American jazz music at the time.
[10] Fifteen months after enlisting, he was shipped overseas, serving in such diverse locations as Casablanca, Oran, Algiers, Naples and Rome.
[13] Lloyd Reese encouraged Douglass, along with fellow musicians Buddy Collette, Charles Mingus and Chico Hamilton, to work against the discrimination in the unions, which they did along with Marl Young and Benny Carter.