Valerie Foushee - On how the first students integrated Chapel Hill schools (clip)

TB: So when you went to Frank Porter Graham then, at that point was your decision to go there that at that point that it was the closest, and so it was this sort of idea of a neighborhood school—

VF: It wasn’t a decision.

TB: Ok, so they districted—

VF: We were still segregated—

TB: --still that way. Ok.

VF: Frank Porter Graham was an all-black school, it was the only one, for us. So like I said it was, they had started some integration but there were only a few students, a few black students, who were going to schools between 1962 I guess, when I started in ’62, through ’65 or so because when I was in sixth grade I went to Lincoln. Lincoln then was like four to six for one year and then the next year or the year before it was like all sixth grade and then it was like four to six, and so by that time we were almost fully integrated if not fully integrated, but the decision to go to Frank Porter Graham was not one of choice, it was where you were assigned, because all African American children were assigned there. And so I went there again until I was in fifth grade and then at sixth grade I was at Lincoln, and that was while they were transforming Lincoln into an administrative building, and then after that I was at Phillips, Phillips Junior High for a year and a half while they were building Grey Culbreth, and so after the winter break of my eighth grade year we started at Grey Culbreth. And we didn’t have a gym and a cafeteria, but the crowding was such that they went ahead and opened the schools, and I recall “Here we are again, eating bag lunches.” We ate bag lunches for the rest of the year. But that was why I was there. The “neighborhood school” was a school of many black neighborhoods, but we all had a relationship in some manner.

TB: Right, so for the students who were one of the first ones to integrate, how were they chosen, did they, were they recruited by the school system--

VF: No—

TB: to be sort of the first ones to enter, or were they not given a choice, and they were told “You’re going to be the first ones,” or—

VF: No they were- that was a result of a court case involving a kid who went to church with me, Stanley Vickers, and when the Vickers family won that court case, that made for students being eligible to go. And so some parents made the choice to enroll their children into those schools, but some parents didn’t make that choice. For one thing they would have to be responsible for the transportation.

TB: Of course...

VF: My parents didn’t have cars, my dad rode my bicycle to work for a while, and so that, I don’t think that was ever a thought for my parents. They may have been afraid of what may have or may not have happened, but it wasn’t a decision that, I don’t even think they had to make, it was “Ok, why wouldn’t she continue to go here,” or “Why would she go to school when she can walk, with her friends, and with black teachers who will like her?” I don’t think it was a decision. I think that my parents were not reluctant to send me to an integrated school for integration’s sake, I just don’t think it was, they thought, probably thought about the convenience of it, and probably not seeing a whole lot to be gained.