Separate and Unequal

20.11.14 Separate and Unequal Hour SM Sarah McConnell AS Audio Sample PJ Philicia Jefferson OC Owen Cardwell BD Brian Daugherity DW Dwana Waugh [00:00:00] SM Mr. Winfrey's course program was the pride and joy of Dunbar High School. AS [Choir singing] SM But everything changed in 1971 when the Dunbar student body was forced to integrate into the all white high school, E.C. Glass. AS Everybody wanted to be in Mr. Winfrey's chorus, and to learn that they had no spot for him at E.C. Glass was just devastating. We were angry. We were sad. We just couldn't believe it. His music, our music was basically, you know, our soul, a sense of our soul. It was that medium in which we felt and continue to feel somehow God is in it and therefore with us. And we could endure all things with our music. AS [Choir singing] SM From Virginia Humanities, this is With Good Reason, I'm Sarah McConnell. Today on the show, the history of school desegregation. In 1970, Philicia Jefferson was a bright, popular student at the all Black Dunbar High School in Lynchburg, Virginia. It was her senior year and she was poised to become student council president. But her time at Dunbar was about to end. She and her classmates were forced instead to integrate into the all white E.C. Glass High School. And Philicia says she never felt like that school was her own. That's one of the reasons why she avoided class reunions until 2011. And that was a decision she wouldn't regret. Philicia, what was it like that first day of your senior year going to the formerly all/white high school E.C. Glass? PJ Well, I do remember being bussed to E.C. Glass, and I don't remember how I felt sitting on that bus. But I do recall just a stream of busses with a lot of little brown faces pulling up to the school. And there were police officers and white parents that had gathered around to make sure, I guess they had some anxiety about Black students converging down on their school with their children. And so I recall the anxiety about going into a school where, you know, we weren't wanted and it was frightening for a little 17 year old kid. But I think the hardest thing was leaving Dunbar was not just leaving a school. It was leaving a Black community, it was a cultural center for us, you know, a place where all the great minds and the intellects and the visual artists and scientists and literal artists and mathematicians and religious leaders - we all came together, and they nurtured the next generation of young minds. So when we lost Dunbar High School, we lost our family and we lost our culture center. SM Do you remember what it was like in the early days of high school at the E.C. Glass school? PJ You know, that first year, 1970, fall 1970 to spring 1971, it was a turbulent year. The first few months of school, there was a lot of unrest in the hallways. Even the teachers were a bit anxious. And I can recall being in my senior English class and a fight breaking out. It was just chaos had broken out in the hallways and students got up to run out and to find out what was going on. And so if you had the opportunity to have a Black teacher, you know, my teacher said, no, don't go, don't go. You all stay right here. Your college bound students don't go. And I recall taking my seat. I didn't go. And that was the saving grace for me because all my friends that had gone out in the hallway and joined the chaos, they were kicked out of school. So I was grateful to have been in Ms. Olbi's classroom at that time because I was an obedient kid. And if the elders say don't do something, then I didn't do it. I stayed right in my seat. But it was a year of turbulence, the classroom experience. It was just so ironic because they had mandated the desegregation of the school. But the classrooms within the schools were segregated. The Black students sat on one side of the class and the white students sat on the other. And so the teacher and I don't think this was a conscientious decision, but I think just out of natural orientation, the teacher would gravitate over to the side of the school where the white students clustered. And so then the Black students were huddling together, trying to help each other to understand the subject matter, which was just really devastating. SM How did things go for you and your classmates? And that senior year, as far as the usual fun things of high school, like prom and sports and clubs and things of that kind? PJ The principal at that time, he did not allow - he made it very clear he didn't want any social activities because he said he did not want the Black boys dancing and socializing with the white girls. SM He said that? PJ Yes, he did. And so we two of my friends and I, we organized a Black prom. So we had our own Black prom where we could socialize and dance with each other at the Ramada Inn. So we had to create our own social world, because it just was not an inclusive social environment at E.C. Glass at the time. SM So how did that year go as far as kindness, reception by the teachers and the white students, your feeling of this being your school? PJ Well, I didn't see any acts of kindness. What I saw was accommodation. We were mandated to be there. That was the law. The Black teachers, they were just as, you know, distraught as the Black students. And so when you had the opportunity to be in one of their classrooms, it was like, oh, thank God. But I don't recall any white teacher extending a hand to help us adapt to that new environment. I was elected as the president of the Student Council for the upcoming senior year at Dunbar. And since there was no Dunbar my senior year, I maintain the title and there was some collaboration with the administration that I would be a co-president with Mike Schul. And so Mike was accommodating. He was very polite and I appreciated that. But it still didn't mitigate the feelings of fear and anxiety and 'not good enough' and 'not smart enough' to lead or co-lead, a huge student body such as Glass with African-American students and white students coming together. But I do recall that Mike was very cordial and very respectful of our presence. SM Forty years later, there was a high school reunion for that class. 2011 was 40 years later. Do you remember how you felt about what you might encounter? PJ You know, I was hesitant to attend and my girlfriend, because I, you know, hadn't been - hadn't lived in Lynchburg for several years and my girlfriend reached out to me. She said Philicia, you just you got to come. You just have to come. And I, I didn't know what to expect. I know that those classmates would be the same classmates that didn't welcome us in - in 1971. And so when I walked into that place, it was therapeutic to be honest with you, because they mingled - Black alums were mingling with white alums and we sat at their table, they sat at our table, we we chatted and Mike came in and came over to our table and you know, and for the first time, you know, I felt like we had a sense of healing because now not only could we feel comfortable being in the same space, we could also dance together. That - that was very helpful. It was a good experience for us, but I haven't returned since. SM What do you think had changed in those 40 years? Was it just everybody wised up? PJ Well, I think we were all older, you know, and had experienced life, and many of us who were there had succeeded in whatever we wanted to, you know, to pursue. And we were no longer frightened children. We had a better repertoire of skills and tools to deal with adversity and conflict. We were more articulate. We didn't have to be prisoners of our emotions. So I think that the thing that had changed is that we had changed. The individuals there were no longer children. We were adults. SM Do you think after the summer, after the social justice movement that came after the slaying of George Floyd, that you see your experience at E.C. Glass and that traumatic year with different eyes, that you have a different view of what was happening then and where we are now? PJ No, I don't see a different view. To be honest with you, 50 years later. I still see that same spirit of hatred. And even when I think about E.C. Glass now and sometimes I go back and do things in the community and I see them struggling and I see E.C. Glass being majority minority now. There is a change in the faces and the majority faces at E.C. Glass, because when Blacks move into a white community in Lynchburg, the white people tend to move out. And so here I see the same persistence of resentment, but coming in a different way, it's more subtle. And when they closed Dunbar High School, that was our area to empower and to support and to nurture. Now, that's not there in Lynchburg anymore. And so because we don't we don't even have a mechanism in which to continue to foster the development of the young minds there. We're in worse shape now. A few of us have been able to be successful in this capitalistic society. But when you think about how to defend for ourselves and how to empower the Black community and how to foster a sense of self-respect and self-esteem and authenticity of the culture, that's not there anymore. SM It's - it's considered unthinkable, but I'll ask, do you ever think you wish we hadn't desegregated? PJ You know, I don't wish we had not desegregated. I just wish we understood the depth and the root of why it was needed so that we could have put in place other areas and other institutions then and support systems to make it successful. There's no such thing as separate and equal. So we needed to desegregate. But that wasn't the answer. We can mandate desegregation, but laws cannot mandate a change of heart. And so as they made room for us to be in the same space, there was no room for us to be in the hearts of the people of Lynchburg. So segregation was a step toward a collective success of a city, but they halfway did it. SM Dr. Philicia Jefferson, thank you for sharing your insights with me. PJ You're welcome. It's been a pleasure. SM Dr. Philicia Jefferson is a licensed professional counselor and a professor at the Pentecostal Theological Seminary. [00:13:55] SM The Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision mandating desegregation passed in 1954, but it didn't take hold in Lynchburg, Virginia, until years later. Owen Cardwell was one of the first Black students to attend E.C. Glass High School years before Philicia Jefferson arrived. He and four other African-American students were part of a landmark lawsuit which led to the 1962 integration of E.C. Glass. Today, Dr. Owen Cardwell is a leadership studies professor at the University of Lynchburg, where he continues to work on improving equity in public schools. Dr. Cardwell, how did the decision to get you and other African-American youngsters be the first to integrate glass come about? OC Well, there was a young preacher who had come to town to pastor Diamond Hill Baptist Church. His name was Virgil Alexander Wood. And Dr. Wood and my father became close friends. It turned out that Dr. Wood had just a couple of years before coming here, met the young Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Dr. Wood became a civil rights leader here in Lynchburg, Virginia. There was a mass meeting and a call was put out for those who would be interested in trying to attend E.C. Glass and it out with 30 plus kids. But that number quickly got whittled down to four, primarily based on the fact that the parents of - of the other 28 kids all depended upon the majority population for their income. My father and - and the parents of Lynda Woodruff, Cecelia Jackson and Brenda Hughes all received their income from the - from the Black community. SM So you four kids became part of a lawsuit to say, let us in. OC That's exactly correct. SM And so how did your father come to you and said, "son, I want you to be one of these young people in that lawsuit, who appeals to be the first to integrate the white high school"? OC Well, my father used to tell the story that I approached him saying that I wanted to be able to take a course in mechanical drawing. I cannot imagine me asking him to take a course in mechanical drawing because I am not mechanically inclined. But that was the story that he told and he stuck with it. SM How old were you and what year was this about this time? OC Well, we actually desegregated E.C. Glass on January 29th, 1962. I was 14 years old at the time. SM And I understand around this time you actually met in Lynchburg, Martin Luther King himself. OC Yes. Later in March of that same year, Dr. King came at the behest of Dr. Virgil Wood. And interestingly enough, the rally was held in E.C. Glass auditorium. Because it was a public school, it was a public auditorium. We could use the auditorium, but we had to sue the school system to go to the school. And after the rally at E.C. Glass that night, we were gathered at Dr. Jackson's house and - and sat on the floor with - with Dr. King singing freedom songs. SM What were some of the freedom songs you all sang? OC See you - you're really pressing me now. I was I was 14 then. I'm - I'm 73 now. So you're asking me to remember something 60 years past? I would imagine that we sang something like, oh, freedom, oh freedom over me, before I'll be a slave, I'll be buried in my grave and go home to my Lord and be free. That song seems to kind of stick out in my memory. Paul and Silas bound in jail, got no money to go their bail, keep your eyes on the prize, hold on. And of course, there was - there was really kind of the anthem of the civil rights movement that was - that was sung very often when we would gather and that was We Shall Overcome. SM Tell me about that first day attending E.C. Glass, January 29th, 1962. Were you nervous? OC Well, Mr. Barksdale, who was Lynda Woodruff's father and I believe her mother was also with us in the car, and my father drove us to E. C. Glass High School, and it was determined that we were going to arrive after the tardy bell to eliminate any unnecessary exposure. Interestingly enough, Lynchburg's newspaper had a morning and afternoon edition. And so in the afternoon edition of the - of the newspaper that day, there was a picture as the primary headline, there was a picture that showed E.C Glass students waiting for us to arrive that day. And there were white people everywhere. Hanging out of windows, standing in doors. If I had seen that, of course, because of the tardy bell, they were all back in their classes by the time we got there - if I had seen that, I'm not so sure I would have gotten out of the car that day. I don't remember a whole lot about the movement that day, except Lynda and I had our gym class just before lunch and we were unaware that there were two cafeterias in E.C. Glass. And Lynda went to one cafeteria and I went to the other one. And when she did not see me, she tells the story and several others do, that she kind of freaked out. There was an African-American woman named Thelma Campbell who worked in food services there, and she saw Lynda in a bit of distress. And she went to Lynda and told her and directed her to the cafeteria where I was seated. And an incident happened with me in the cafeteria on that day. I went to a table of - of white boys and as soon as I sat down, they all gathered up their trays and left the table. SM What - what sort of interactions did you have with your white high school classmates on that first day and in the months that followed? OC Well, there were three - three categories. One were those that were that were kind and outreach and made it clear that, you know, this could be the beginning of - of a long term relationship. There were others who were extremely hostile, not in a physical way, but in an emotional and psychological manner. But the vast majority of people were just kind of indifferent. SM Were you lonely? OC Yes, and just because we had each other did not mean that we were not lonely together because I was a boy, she was a girl, we had different experiences because of our sexual makeup. But we did have the - the backing of the community. We still had our friends and connections at Dunbar High School. We were still popular students, so we got invited to the parties and those kind of things. And - and that helped us through. SM And do you think, looking back on all the decades since you first went to the all white E.C. Glass, that the school has been as well funded even as it became predominantly African-American students? OC Well, there is a complex answer to that. We have this construct that - that I think is faulty, that's being used all over the country called the achievement gap, where it is noted that students of color, particularly African-American males, seem to perform at a lesser degree than their counterparts. So funding, particularly at the federal level, was utilized to try to diminish that gap somewhat. And I think that there's been a bit of exhaustion on the part of - of government, local governments in continuing down that path. So it's interesting. I just had a conversation with one of - one of my colleagues here at the university. I'm in the College of Education, Leadership and Counseling, so I had a conversation with one of my colleagues who's a special education professor, and we were talking about the need to maybe totally restructure the way that we - we look at education, that we have the wherewithal and the infrastructure to essentially be able to provide an individualized education plan for every single student. We have Khan Academy, we have all of these boot courses online where people can take - kind of take charge of their own education. And why is it that because I score better on a cognitive exam and somebody else might have higher scores on the spatial concept on that exam, that I'm smart and they're not smart. And so there are different kinds of intelligences that we need to take into consideration. And I'm a strong proponent of individualized, strength-based education. So that's the connection that I see between the early civil rights movement and what we're dealing with today that has never been fully corrected. SM What has been your take on the social justice movement begun after the killing of George Floyd? OC Well, I'm both supportive and critical. I'm supportive and understanding of how visceral having to watch newscast, after newscast, after newscast of these kinds of injustices taking place. Because of my experience in demonstrations and the civil rights movement, I'm aware that anytime you make a determination to have a public demonstration, you are going to attract the fringe groups from either side. And so there is a kind of a responsibility of those who set the goals of the demonstration to make sure that at the very least, that they are aware of the potentiality of those extremists coming in, kind of taking over. SM What do you think is missing in the movement today when you think back to the leadership and teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King? OC What I think is missing is - distrust might be a little too strong, but - but it's bordering that. A distrust between those who have had experience in Dr. King's civil rights movement as opposed to the civil rights movement that's taking place now. There was a distrust in these young leaders of those of us who have the experience. And of course, I'm just not going to go out in the street anymore. I can't run fast enough to get out of harm's way. But, you know, I could contribute to some of the strategizing that of necessity needs to take place if we're going to be heard beyond the - the very divisive pictures that come across on our screens of, you know, fires burning and - and the message gets lost when they're broken windows of businesses and fires burning. And it's very easy for those that want to dismiss us, to dismiss us. SM Well, this has been wonderful speaking with you, Dr. Owen Cardwell. Thank you for sharing your insights with me on With Good Reason. OC I'm delighted to have spent this time, I think is still important for the stories to be told. SM Dr. Owen Cardwell is a professor of leadership studies and co-director of the Center for Education and Leadership at the University of Lynchburg. This is With Good Reason, we'll be right back. [00:28:01] SM Welcome back to With Good Reason. At Virginia Humanities, after desegregation became federal law in 1954, Virginia adopted massive resistance, a series of measures to undermine the ruling. Rather than integrate, counties all over the state, cut off funding and shut down public schools. Brian Daugherity is a history professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. He explains how Prince Edward County became a particular hotbed of massive resistance. Brian, how did such a small rural county in Virginia come to play a role in the national fight to end segregated schools? Why Prince Edward County? BD Prince Edward County is both unique and typical during this time period. The school systems were separate but not equal. Segregation was pervasive throughout the county. Most African-American voters had been disenfranchised. But in other ways, Prince Edward had a unique trajectory. I think that's partly because many of the African-American residents of the county had been able to obtain land. Landownership meant that the Black community had some freedom, if you will, to act in a manner that was not beholden to the white community. SM So tell me about Barbara Johns in the 1951 walkout that she led of all the Black students at their segregated high school because they were fighting for equal funding. BD So Barbara Johns and a small group of student leaders at Moton High School in Prince Edward essentially became fed up with the inequities in the public school system. And so they organized a student strike in the spring in 1951. They walk out of school and at the same time contact the state NAACP to seek assistance with their quest. And so when NAACP attorneys met with the student strike leaders and then their parents and community leaders, they began to organize the community around a challenge to segregation itself. SM How big was the NAACP in Virginia? BD The NAACP in Virginia was the largest southern collection of branches that the organization had. It had personal ties with the national NAACP. Some of the lead attorneys in Virginia had been educated with attorneys that worked in the national NAACP. I'm thinking specifically of Oliver Hill and Thurgood Marshall. The two graduated from Howard University's law school in the same year, the class of 1933, and they remained lifelong friends. And so the Virginia NAACP was not only involved in the litigation leading up to Brown v. Board of Education, but also intricately involved in the implementation of Brown v. Board Education after 1954. SM So when Barbara Johns led fellow students on the strike, how did these attorneys like Thurgood Marshall and Oliver Hill see that as a chance to bolster their own case? BD The NAACP in the early 1950s was pursuing a variety of different legal cases to overturn segregation in education. We had already seen one case filed in South Carolina. Prince Edward County was not on their radar. And when the NAACP attorneys originally met with Barbara Johns and the other strike leaders, they strongly discouraged them from continuing the strike and they minimized the idea that litigation would be in the interest of the community. Oliver Hill later recalled that Prince Edward County was one of the last places that he would have preferred to have filed a lawsuit challenging Virginia's segregation laws. He knew that the - the retribution would be strong and swift, and he feared that the response among white community leaders would reduce the likelihood of a lawsuit succeeding. However, once Hill and his fellow attorneys met with Barbara Johns and the student strike leaders and their parents and other community members, they realized that the community in Prince Edward County was firmly committed to racial equality and that the support needed for this sort of a lawsuit was there. And as a result, Hill and Spottswood Robinson and other key attorneys reconsidered their initial hesitation and decided to move forward with the case. SM Help me understand what they meant by worried about the fierce white backlash that might happen, especially in Prince Edward County. What was the white backlash there and what was the white population like? BD White resistance to racial change was fairly common in Virginia throughout the Jim Crow era. The most extreme examples would have been racial violence of one form or another. There were other forms of retribution that were also fairly common. Litigants would sometimes lose their jobs once it became public knowledge that they were behind a lawsuit challenging, let's say, segregation or perhaps disenfranchisement measures. There were stories of individuals being evicted from their housing or, you know, being forced off of property that they resided on. There were all sorts of different measures that were employed against African-Americans and to some extent, a lesser extent, to be sure, to white Virginians who were opposed to the Jim Crow system. SM So when the student complaints were taken up in the form of a lawsuit that ultimately became part of the five cases that went on to be known as Brown v. Board of Education, which was a Supreme Court decision ultimately overturning segregated schools. What happened then? BD Once Brown v. Board of Education was handed down, resistance to the decision developed throughout the state of Virginia, including among the state's political leaders, most notably Harry Flood Byrd, who was the U.S. senator from Virginia and a former governor and who became a figurehead of the movement to resist the implementation of Brown v. Board of Education. That movement is typically referred to as massive resistance. And so white resistance to Brown v. Board education was common and pervasive throughout Virginia during this era. SM And what did the school board there do once faced with the mandate to integrate it schools? BD The county school board did what many counties in Virginia did, which was it passed a resolution stating its opposition to Brown v. Board education and its opposition to the desegregation of public schools in the county. Soon thereafter, the county moved to change its funding mechanism for the public school system, switching to a month by month funding system that would allow the county to close its public schools at virtually any point that the county might be ordered by federal courts to comply with Brown v. Board of Education and begin the school desegregation process. After many years of continued litigation, a federal courts ordered Prince Edward County to begin the school desegregation process in the summer of 1959. Prince Edward County at that point decided to cut off all funding to its public school system, effectively closing the public schools in Prince Edward County. Those schools would remain closed for the next five years until additional litigation led to a Supreme Court decision in 1964 requiring the county to reopen its public school system on a desegregated basis. SM What was school like for Black students during those five years? Did any of them get an education for five years? BD Yes, some of the children did. Some of the children enrolled in public schools in nearby counties and either went to live with family or commuted to the county line where they could obtain access to public schools that had not been closed. And the NAACP partnered with African-American Teachers Association to establish what were called training centers that took place during the school closings in Prince Edward. Those centers were meant to provide a basic level education to the children that were put out of the public schools. SM Do you see ramifications and the sort of legacy of fighting for and against integrated public schools? Do you see vestiges of it in what we're experiencing today? BD There are certainly the legacies of this time period, and the struggle for equal opportunities and racial justice are still with us in Virginia in many different ways. You can see the continuation of disparities with regards to economics and other indicators of the standard of living. Those present day disparities have their roots in the historical inequities of slavery and also the Jim Crow Era. It's also worth noting that there's a certain amount of community division in Prince Edward County that I think reflects the battles over segregation versus integration in the public school system. There's a level of distrust and frustration and I think lingering anger over the way that African-Americans felt that they were treated by white community leaders during this period of civil rights and school desegregation. SM Brian Doherty is a professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University and the author of "Keep on Keeping on: the NAACP and the implementation of Brown vs. Board of Education in Virginia". Coming up next, token desegregation in North Carolina. Of course, Virginia wasn't the only southern state to resist integration. My next guest studies wide efforts to block desegregation in both Virginia and North Carolina. Dwana Waugh is a history professor at Sweetbriar College. She says while Virginia opted for massive resistance, North Carolina took a different strategy, which ultimately proved even more devastating to the integration process. [00:40:30] SM Dwana, your current work focuses on comparing the process of integrating the schools in two different communities in the south. One was in Farmville, Virginia, the other in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Why those two different locations? How do they differ from one another when it came to ending separate schools for black and white children? DW It's kind of one of those stories of happenstance. So one semester I happened to take this American studies course about American memory. And one of the assignments was looking at some aspect of local memory. And at that point, there was a fairly recent collection of oral history interviews done about an all Black high school in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. And I was really fascinated by the stories I was hearing coming from this all Back high school in Chapel Hill. And so one of my high school friends, her mom had a very frustrated perspective and actually hated the public school system and had a bit of an ax to grind with white people. And I found that very curious. And so I found that she was from Prince Edward county. And the reason why she had such a negative view about public schools and some issues with white people was because of what happened with Farmville schools and their closing. And so doing some more research in that course over the semester, it seemed like a nice comparison to compare Chapel Hill to Farmville, Virginia. SM How were Virginia, North Carolina different when it came to resisting integrating their public schools? DW So Virginia had a policy where they wanted to use massive resistance and to outright shut down some school districts, which did occur for a brief period of time, with the exception of Farmville, Virginia, which had its schools closed for five years. And North Carolina, on the other hand, had what was known as token desegregation. And so their policy was to integrate piecemeal on a very low level, African-American students into predominantly white schools. And as a result of that strategy, they were able to have less measurable desegregation over time. SM So - so what did happen in Chapel Hill? Brown v. Board comes down. People put their heads together. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh, how can we avoid integration? And they came up with something they called token integration? DW Yes, it was part of a legislative plan. You know, most states had these legislative plans and in North Carolina was known as the Pearsall Plan. And this plan allowed local school districts the ability to shut down the schools if enough parents did not want their child to go to a desegregated school. It was a way to save the public school system in the long run, because the idea was that no parent is really going to want to shut down the entire school district and that we can only have a small number of students go into desegregated schools. And so in Chapel Hill, the same story applied where you have very few African-American students that went to the all white Chapel Hill High School. And by the time the Chapel Hill schools desegregated, it was in the fall of 1966. SM So how many years had they been doing this slow, slow integration? DW You know, Brown v. Board of Education happened in 1954. Many states, including Virginia and North Carolina, began to gather forces to figure out how they were going to address this problem that the federal government was pressing down through this court decision. And Virginia leaned more to where we'll just close our schools if necessary, and we'll provide these tuition grants. North Carolina had a similar idea, we'll provide these tuition grants and will close the schools if enough parents disagree. But we really want to keep the schools open, so we'll - we'll end up having just fewer numbers of Black students attend all white schools. And by contrast, in Virginia, if we're looking at Farmville, and we're looking at Chapel Hill and Farmville - the schools were desegregated or reopened in the fall of 1964. That doesn't happen for another two years in Chapel Hill in 1966. Part of that delay was in part because of these token integration efforts that North Carolina used. SM So what do you mean by token? How many children would go to the all white school? How many African-American children? Would go in any given class or year? DW Yeah, so it could be as few as three students in the entire school district. So North Carolina had its first token desegregation in 1957 and three school districts and, so the numbers would be pretty negligible. So you may have, you know, much less than about five to 10 percent max of students who were able to attend desegregated schools in North Carolina during this 10 year, roughly 10 year period since the plan went into place. SM You listen to oral histories of students who'd been high schoolers back during the early days of integration. What did you hear that fascinated and touched you about experiences you might not have understood had you not heard them describe them themselves? DW I'll share that one of the stories, and this is a story I usually will tell students in talking about this idea of school desegregation, which is echoed in a lot of these oral histories. Until high school, I didn't have a very huge awareness about race and how my race fit into this educational arena. And so I was very involved in lots of extracurricular activities. And I remember this one chorus performance and my mom saying something on the way back home that integration cost us a lot. And that stood out to me and I didn't understand what she meant. What about integration cost anything? And she was saying that in contrast to what she remembered of her high school chorus and her high school band, that was very lively and had more soul and rhythm than the choirs that I performed in as a student myself. And one of the things that comes out in these interviews is this painful sense of loss. This idea of often the band was jamming and the chorus could really sing, that those things don't exist anymore. And so when you ask about oral histories, one of the most tragic parts of the story in Chapel Hill is when the school district decided to desegregate, they decided to close this all Black high school that had been a source of pride. I mean, they had one, it had one of the winningest football teams. And here this school is closing. And now all of a sudden the entire student body has to move into this school that was newly built, but white students have been in that school a year prior after the all white high school had burned. And so now this was a space that was supposed to be kind of a equal footing. But Black students felt as if all of the memory they had of their old Lincoln High School was lost. And instead what was brought was what was at the White Chapel Hill High School. Even the name Chapel Hill High School was retained. And so just hearing and listening to former Lincoln High School students, these Black students who had so much love and admiration for their high school, feeling some sense of loss and tearing up, and you can hear the voices breaking. And if you see them talk, to see them cry at what was lost in in their educational process through the course or at the costs of desegregation. SM What did you hear from the white students who'd gone through this integration process? Had they also felt a sense of loss? DW No, the story that often, time after time, you would hear in many of these stories, or at least the oral histories that I've listened to mostly are in the 1960s and 1970s onward, and those are more stories about the benefits of diversity and how it was advantageous to have African-American students come into these schools because they were able to learn and they were in a workforce after they graduated where it was very beneficial for them to know how to interact with people who were nonwhite. Some of the more positive stories come through sports teams and the team building exercises that were done among athletes, for example. But for African-Americans, what for many seemed more of a story of loss for whites seem more of a story of progress. SM Do you think Brown vs. Board of Education was the right decision? DW That's a really tough question. In terms of impact, I think that Brown v. Board of Education didn't go far enough and that these discussions about equitable access to resources, these questions about parity for curriculum is not always part of that discussion and should be. SM Dwana Waugh is a professor of history at Sweetbriar College. Major support for With Good Reason is provided by the University of Virginia Health System, a National Cancer Institute designated cancer center researching and developing the treatments of tomorrow. UVAHealth.com. With Good Reason, is produced in Charlottesville by Virginia Humanities, which acknowledges the Monacan nation, the original people of the land and waters of our home in Charlottesville, Virginia. Our production team is Allison Quantz, Matt Darroch, Lauren Francis, Jamal Millner and Aiden Carroll. For the podcast, go to withgoodreasonradio.org. Iím Sarah McConnell -- thanks for listening.