Burnice Hackney - on his educational experience post-integration (clip)
Interviewed by Bob Gilgor on February 5, 2001
BG: Did you feel that you were treated the same as a student as the white teachers as the whites were treated when you went Chapel Hill High in '66?
BH: I don't have a recollection of being treated differently, it's just maybe a sense of identifying with their teacher or the teacher identifying with me. Basically, I went to a class and I tried to grasp what was being disseminated and tried to score as well as I could on the tests and that was it. There was no attachment beyond that as far as myself. I can't imagine and I could even be a minority among the blacks, I can't imagine the whites taking a sullen approach, it had to be more of an identification there. They probably knew the teachers prior to that particular time but I didn't really identify with them and I don't feel that they identified with me. I don't have a bad memory of a particular teacher of just this person being a racist. Racism still was something that wasn't really dealt with on a personal level that much. It was more like a societal type thing that certain things had to change within society and not this particular individual has got to change. I didn't really have a racial problem with any of the teachers that I was aware of at that time.
BG: How about with the white students, was there verbal taunting or physical abuse that you saw or felt?
BH: There was some but I gathered in '66 and '67 it was mainly everybody just kept their distance. We were here but you go your way and I'll go mine. It was more mutual respect or mutual disrespect. There were a few individuals, a few confrontations, very few that occurred of a racial nature. But then later on tensions did develop up to a higher level in subsequent years.
BG: When you went to Chapel Hill High, your Coach Peerman was now the assistant head coach and your principal was the assistant principal and the core curriculum teachers were almost all white, was this something that was noticed or discussed among the black students?
BH: Of course, even had it not been discussed, that's like an object lesson, you see that this is how it's going to be. You bring me in but I want to be second fiddle and so that was not a lesson that anybody wanted to learn but it was very obvious that this is the way that things are played out. I think that it may have even been more noticeable with Coach Peerman in that he had been so successful that it didn't seem to be a question that qualification could possibly have been the criteria. In some of the other cases, maybe who knows? Some of those other teachers may have been from better programs, some of the white teachers maybe their high academic credentials may have been better, not to say that they were more skilled teachers, but I certainly will find it hard to believe that anybody could be a better principal than Mr. McDougle so I guess we could see it there also. So that was a good quick lesson that we did learn in terms of reality that hey, you still have got to work harder at whatever you do. You still might come in second.
