Valerie Foushee - On attending segregated elementary schools (clip)

Valerie Foushee (VF): When I started elementary school I started at Northside, which has just been deconstructed. First grade at Northside, and when I went to Northside the district was preparing to close that facility and when I was there there was no cafeteria. And so for one whole year—now I don’t know if it was like that the year prior to—but certainly when I was six, and I was there, there was no cafeteria. And so we ate bag lunches every day. It was a fun place, I recall. I had really really great teachers, my first grade teacher lived on Graham Street and she visited students, it’s what they did at that time I guess, because that’s what I remember. I remember we all walked. Because it was a “community school,” but, for us-- it wasn’t a community school for everybody because we were at segregated schools at that time, so African American children from all over the district went to Northside. But during that same year they were building Frank Porter Graham Elementary, and so my second grade year I went to Frank Porter Graham. My family moved from Merritt Mill Road that year, my first grade year, to Johnson Street. And because there were no buses, I walked—this is not a tall tale—I walked from Johnson Street to Northside Elementary, every day.

Tracey Barrett (TB): How long did that take?

VF: It took a long time. What I remember is that it took a long time. I can’t tell you, you know, in minutes—

TB: Sure.

VF: But my grandmother, my maternal grandmother who lived with us, walked with my cousin and I to Northside Elementary from Johnson Street every day until the end of that school year. The next year I started second grade at Frank Porter Graham, and so it was a hop skip and a jump from where we lived, I lived on Johnson Street. There was a footpath through the forest that led us from the end of Johnson Street which is now Lincoln Lane to Roberts Street, which comes out at the end of Merritt Mill Road, but we didn’t have, you know, it’s really dangerous, they don’t allow kids to walk to school—

TB: Right, I wouldn’t think—

VF: But we walked every day. The Pine Knolls community walked every day down that dangerous street, down Greensboro, and then, you know before it becomes Smith Level, it may be Smith Level right there, and then we walked straight up to Frank Porter Graham.

TB: And this is you’re seven years old or six years old...

VF: Yes! Yes, so at that time, Frank Porter Graham was grades one through seven, and then after that you attended Lincoln until the full integration occurred, and those students I think in 1966 went to Chapel Hill High. So at Frank Porter Graham, you know it was still segregated and everybody knew everybody because most of us lived in that community. I had friends who had begun the real integration process and they were attending Glenwood and Carrboro- my husband attended Carrboro Elementary- and probably Estes Hills.