In the small community
called "Bricks" just outside Whitakers, North Carolina is a
partly pre-civil war, partly contemporary burial site. The site
became part of the tract of land where, in 1895, the American
Missionary Association established eastern North Carolina's first
accredited school for former slaves. The Old Bricks Cemetery is on
land that was once the Garrett slave plantation and includes an
unknown number of unmarked slave grave sites. The cemetery continues
to be the final resting place for members of the surrounding
community.
“During the boyhood of one still living, students at Bricks were told how this farm was once a place where 'unruly' slaves were sent to be subdued and 'broken in.' A spot was pointed out to us where the 'whipping post' stood – just in front of what is now the Guest House. It was impressed upon us that this was still a place where people were sent to be 'broken,' not as slave for a slave state, but as free men and women for a place of service in a free and democratic society.”
– Ross W. Sanderson, President Board of Trustees, Franklinton Center, Inc. at Bricks
(There is a companion piece to this blog entry. You may find it by clicking here: https://allthingswildlyconsidered.blogspot.com/2018/04/bricks-north-carolina-whipping-posts-to.html. If you find this of interest, please read the April 9, 2019 entry. Thanks.)
A Look Back
A long time ago – if my memory serves me right it was the summer of 1971 – while I was working as director of West End Ministries Tutoring Program and serving as youth director for Bigelow Methodist Church, I accompanied a group comprised of Bigelow and United Church of Christ youth on a mission trip to a place called “Brick, North Carolina.” We were serving to help make improvements to what was once known as Franklinton Christian College. We worked there helping restore the campus of an old Black institution located in Edgecombe County between Enfield and Whitakers.
Influence
This experience – a couple of weeks living and working in the Black community – was profound. To this 20-year-old White Appalachian, the setting and the people I met forever influenced my understanding of race relations in the South. Also, I found many new cultural experiences there that enriched my life.
The pastor of the Portsmouth United Church of Christ and his wife who escorted us on the trip had been a part of the fight for equal rights there in North Carolina earlier in the 1960s. Through this trip, they wanted to continue their mission while exposing our group to a new view of civil rights. This was quite a mission for our twenty or so young people. Life-changing and deeply personal, our stay expanded our horizons.
Make no mistake – that experience put us in the middle of a place and a people still fighting for equality and justice. To many, we were interlopers from the North. We could feel the tension as we arrived, and as we lived in the Black community, we listened to story after story of mistreatment and violence against them. How different to hear history from those who were actually living it. Anyone who believes equality existed then should do some research. The teacher in me feels obliged to set up the visit with some history pertinent to the times. Please, let me expound.
North Carolina
The Ku Klux Klan was still very active in North Carolina in the 1970s. Their influence was palpable then, and oppression in Black communities was everywhere. For a state that viewed itself as more tolerant than the Deep South, North Carolina, especially in the rural Piedmont, was not progressive.
North Carolina saw a boom in Klan membership under the leadership of Bob Jones (1930-1989), the most influential Grand Dragon in the country. In just three years in the 60s, he grew the North Carolina Klan from a handful of friends to some 10,000 members – more than the Klans of all other southern states combined.
(Alexander H. Jones. “The Ku Klux Klan’s long history in North Carolina.” Politics North Carolina. July 28, 2020.)
History Note:
Ku Klux Klan membership spiked as token integration attempts continued during the late 1950s and 1960s. Crosses were burned in front of several schools in Greensboro and in the yard of Superintendent Ben L. Smith.
In October 1957, a bomb detonated in front of the home of a black family whose children attended an all-white school in Greensboro. After an investigation, police told Governor Hodges the culprit was “the negro element of the NAACP.”
During the same month, the Klan held a rally in Robeson County and tried to hold another a few months later, in January 1958, but were thwarted by a group of Lumbee, the local Native American tribe. Embarrassed by that defeat, the North Carolina Klan vowed to take its violent resistance underground. Rumors spread in Greensboro and Charlotte that the Klan had amassed arsenals of automatic weapons and would use them if necessary. Tensions were rising.
By 1958, there was ample evidence the Klan intended to make good on their threats. In February, Charlotte police stopped a car of white men loaded with dynamite after a tip came in that the Klan was planning to bomb the Woodland Negro School. Klaverns were uncovered throughout the state, and public Klan rallies took place throughout 1958, including a public rally of 75 to 100 Klan members in Greensboro in June. At a July rally, one speaker threatened, “If the Pearsall Plan doesn’t work, the Smith and Wesson Plan will.” t
(The Pearsall committee proposed a plan that shifted student-assignment authority from the state board to local districts, effectively giving local districts exclusive power to maintain segregated schools. The plan also allocated public money for school relocation.)
(Alexander H. Jones. “The Ku Klux Klan’s long history in North Carolina.” Politics North Carolina. July 28, 2020.)
As the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s gained steam in North Carolina, and as African Americans continued to push for integration, white backlash and resistance took extralegal forms. The state became an educational battleground. All around the state, black students who tried to enter white schools were physically and verbally assaulted. State and local governments were forced to increase the police presence at several schools.
(John E. Batchelor. Race and Education in North Carolina: From Segregation to Desegregation. p 69. December 16, 2015.)
In February 1960, riots in Greensboro were held at middle schools as well as high schools. Schools such as Dudley High and North Carolina A&T State University protested when administrations wouldn't let a black male's name be on the ballot for students body president.
The Greensboro sit-in was a civil rights protest that started in 1960, when young Black students staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave after being denied service. The sit-in movement soon spread to college towns throughout the South. Though many of the protesters were arrested for trespassing, disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace, their actions made an immediate and lasting impact, forcing Woolworth’s and other establishments to change their segregationist policies.
By 1963, the Civil Rights Movement was reaching a climax in North Carolina. Thousands of demonstrators in cities such as Raleigh and Greensboro marched, demanding the integration of public spaces and accommodations – and that the federal and state governments finally grant African Americans all of the rights of first-class citizenship.
This massive display of resistance and civil disobedience sparked yet another spike in Klan membership and activity. More than 2,000 Klansmen gathered outside Salisbury in August 1964 to hear Grand Wizard Robert Jones rail against Governor Terry Sanford. Klan members bombed a black church in Craven County and a black elementary school in Smithfield in 1965. That same year, the homes of civil rights leaders Frederick and Kelly Alexander, Julius Chambers, and Reginald Hawkins were bombed. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but the cases went unsolved.
(John E. Batchelor. Race and Education in North Carolina: From Segregation to Desegregation. p 69. December 16, 2015.)
Klansmen burning a cross in the daylight in Pitt County, N.C., not far from Ernul, in March 1966, a month before the bombing of the Cool Springs FWB Church. From The Daily Reflector Image Collection, ECU Digital Collections
When Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law on July 2, 1964, the U.S. Attorney General had the power to bring lawsuits on behalf of African American plaintiffs in local school districts still practicing segregation. This tool proved critical in North Carolina, where local school districts had been given considerable power under the Pupil Assignment Act nearly a decade earlier.
(Frank Brown. “The First Serious Implementation of Brown: The 1964 Civil Rights Act and Beyond.” p. 182. Journal of Negro Education. 2004.)
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Green decision in 1968 finally gave the federal and local governments the legal teeth to implement desegregation. Most of the black community applauded these developments, but not all of the impacts positively affected them.
Says historian David Cecelski …
“Black communities repeatedly had to sacrifice their leadership traditions, school cultures, and educational heritage for the other benefits of desegregation.”
(David S. Cecelski. Along Freedom Road: Hyde County, North Carolina, and the Fate of Black Schools in the South. 1994.)
While most public school districts desegregated their schools between 1968 and 1976, white parents left public schools for all-white suburbs or private schools – a process now known as white flight.
(Frank Brown. “The First Serious Implementation of Brown: The 1964 Civil Rights Act and Beyond.” p. 182. Journal of Negro Education. 2004.)
Here is the flip side – Many Black educators lost their jobs, and more and more Black students sat in classrooms led by teachers who did not look like them, could not share their experience of being black in a white-dominated world, and often did not have their best interests in mind. Countless black students suffered academically as a result.
Black educators bore perhaps the most negative outcomes of desegregation. There were 620 black elementary school principals in 1963 in North Carolina; by 1970, that number had plummeted to 170. By the end of the 1970s, there were no black superintendents in any of the state’s 145 school districts, and 60% of those districts employed no black administrators, even though black students made up 30% of the student body.
Black teachers, to a lesser but significant degree, suffered as well, becoming expendable as black and white schools merged. By 1972, more than 3,000 black teachers in North Carolina had lost their jobs to their white counterparts. Only in Texas did a higher number of black teachers.
(David S. Cecelski. Along Freedom Road: Hyde County, North Carolina, and the Fate of Black Schools in the South. 1994.)
By September, Black citizens of Hyde County had taken to the streets in protest and made good on their threat to boycott the school system — very few black parents sent their children to the white schools at the start of the 1968–69 academic year.
As the boycott went on, racial tensions continued to rise. After four weeks, Hyde County’s black parents, concerned about the amount of instructional time their children were missing, developed a short-term plan to re-open the black schools and maintain segregation until they could pressure the school board to develop a desegregation plan that would save their schools for the long term. (One-way desegregation was not a long-term option.)
However, HEW refused to go back to the “freedom of choice” plan, and the boycott continued through the fall. As winter arrived, blacks in Hyde County upheld the boycott with more conviction than ever, and more protesters were arrested. Hyde County became a powder keg of racial tension, ready to blow at any moment.
(David S. Cecelski. Along Freedom Road: Hyde County, North Carolina, and the Fate of Black Schools in the South. 1994.)
Klu
Klux Klan sign on road into Ayden, N.C., 25 miles from Ernul, Aug.
29-30, 1966. From The Daily
Reflector Image Collection, ECU
Digital Collections
Ethan Roy and James Ford write …
“The spark occurred in July 1969 when a sniper fired on a car carrying four young black passengers as they drove by a Klan meeting at the Middletown crossroads. As word spread, 185 black citizens, many of them armed, confronted the group of 80 Klansmen in a two-hour standoff. As the Klansmen set a cross on fire, shots rang out and a hail of bullets ripped through the air. No one was seriously injured, but a black girl and several police officers suffered minor injuries.
“Desperate to ease tensions, the state superintendent named a new Hyde County superintendent, R.O. Singletary, who had experience in desegregation. A two-man team of state-appointed desegregation experts, Gene Causby and Dudley Flood, arrived in June to begin the work of traveling the county, listening to residents, and learning their history. This team spent months as liaisons between the protesters and the county school board, opening up lines of communication in hopes of reaching an agreement …
“Voters took to the polls on November 5, 1969 and defeated the bond by a four-to-one margin. Both of the county’s historically black schools would be included in the desegregation process; the boycott was successful.
“For white voters, the tax increase needed to pay for the bond had proven too much to stomach. But local whites also liked the idea of a more community-based school district and lamented the fact that a handful of powerful white men had been making decisions for the whole county populace. Others were simply moved by the conviction of their black neighbors.”
(Ethan Roy and James E. Ford. “Deep Rooted: A Brief History of Race and Education in North Carolina.” https://www.ednc.org/deep-rooted-a-brief-history-of-race-and-education-in-north-carolina/. EducationNC. August 11, 2019.)
By 1970, more than 230 new private academies, most enrolling only white students, had opened in North Carolina. More than 35,000 white students had enrolled in private, all-white schools by 1971. These schools did not hide their intentions in efforts to recruit white students — one promotional brochure from Halifax County read …
“It is the earnest conviction of the trustees of Enfield Academy, Inc. that the integrity and improvement of the different races can best be accomplished by maintaining a segregated school.”
(Ethan Roy and James E. Ford. “Deep Rooted: A Brief History of Race and Education in North Carolina.” https://www.ednc.org/deep-rooted-a-brief-history-of-race-and-education-in-north-carolina/. EducationNC. August 11, 2019.)
The overall state of civil rights in North Carolina in the 1960s and into the early 70s? The evidence may surprise you. Remember, most speak of the racial injustice in the Deep South at this time.
Read on …
According to the The Carolina Times, the Halifax County Voter Movement’s demands had grown by the last half of 1964 to include some other, very basic rights of American citizenship:
The right to serve on juries;
The right to work at more than menial labor jobs;
The right not to have signs like “White” and “Colored” on water fountains, rest rooms, waiting rooms, courtrooms and other places in public buildings;
The right of black patients to be treated at the same hospitals as white patients, and the right for elderly black people be cared for in the same rest homes as elderly white people;
The right of black families to have police protection at their homes and businesses, and especially protection from Ku Klux Klan attacks;
The right of black children to attend school with white children;
And lastly, the right for African American elders to be addressed in a dignified manner (as “Sir” or “Ma’am”).
(David Cecelski. “Freedom Days –Halifax County, 1964.” https://davidcecelski.com/2019/02/26/freedom-days-halifax-county-1964/ February 26, 2019.)
Even in the 70s, North Carolina was politically slanted toward White control. Jesse Helms was elected to the Senate in 1972. Conservatives there used language that appeared neutral, yet it carried racial undertones. He and other Republicans like him were able to associate Democratic opponents with “black causes and cultural radicalism.”
Helms had opposed busing, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. He once called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress", and sponsored legislation to either extend it to the entire country or scrap it altogether. In 1982, he voted against the extension of the Voting Rights Act.
(Kyle Longley et al. Deconstructing Reagan: Conservative Mythology and America's Fortieth President. M.E. Sharpe.2007.)
Of course, the Greensboro Massacre of 1979, in which Klansmen shot and killed five members of the Communist Workers Party, shocked the nation. The shooting was retaliation against anti-racist protesters associated with Workers Viewpoint Organization who disrupted a screening of The Birth of a Nation in China Grove, North Carolina in July 1979. Two days prior to the proposed march in Greensboro, a police informant who was also a member of the KKK obtained a map of the march route with the intention of violently confronting the demonstration.
Our group of high school students and chaperones went to Brick and Franklinton College in North Carolina when racial tensions were still very high. We were young and not fearful of any retribution by locals. To us, the experience was part of the times. In fact, the trip became a fantastic connection between youth from Ohio and young people from Carolina. We did lots of hard work from landscaping to painting to construction; however, the fellowship proved to be the most memorable aspect of our trip.
The friendships we made are beautiful memories of the past. The love we shared lives on, and the lessons we learned – from so many Black residents, young and old – remain. Looking back today, I can still see those faces in my mind. Fate surely blessed me as it opened new doors in my deepest perceptions.
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