Youth battled to integrate school

Braxton Foushee remembers his high school as a place where families came together.

The Chapel Hill resident was one of many students who attended Lincoln High School in the late 1950s, when the all-black institution struggled to meet the needs not provided to it by a predominantly white school board.

“It brought the whole community together,” the 1960 graduate said, recalling fund-raisers the school held in order to make ends meet.

But only one year after Foushee’s graduation, black students would see a vastly different educational system. The Chapel Hill-Carrboro school district became one of the first in the South to voluntarily place students in schools based on geography rather than race, The Chapel Hill Weekly reported at the time.

The Chapel Hill Board of Education voted 4-1 in July 1961 to integrate all schools, beginning with first-grade students.

Later, toward the end of the 1960s, the district opened a new site for Chapel Hill High School, which would be integrated.

While integration occurred after Foushee graduated, he said students of his generation generally supported the ideal.

“We knew we were doing some good things,” he said about the work he and his classmates did to fight segregation.

“We were in it for the long haul,” he added. “We just stuck with it.”

The achievements leading up to and following integration were magnified by the work of local black leaders and educators.

Reginald D. Smith served as vice principal at Chapel Hill High School, as well as a driver education teacher and Town Council member.

When he came to the school system in 1942, he said, he already had his teaching philosophy in mind.

“If I were to be a good teacher, I had to make a difference in the lives of the students I taught,” he said.

Smith said he accepted a position as vice principal of Chapel Hill High, but had two conditions before he would accept.

The first was that the administration would always listen to its students. The second was that their doors must always remain open.

His wife, Euzelle P. Smith, spent years as a teacher and a guidance counselor in the district.

A Jan. 9, 1966, article in The Chapel Hill Weekly noted that Euzelle Smith had been named teacher of the month when she was teaching first grade at Frank Porter Graham Elementary School.

Euzelle Smith said she realized she wanted to be a teacher when she was in the third grade.

Her elementary school teachers were a driving force in that decision, she added.

Smith Middle School, on Seawell School Road, was named in honor of the Smiths’ contributions to local schools in November 2001.

The first black board of education member, Rev. John R. Manley, spent six years on the board and was part of the majority that voted to integrate in 1961. And Orange County commissioner Valerie Foushee served as the senior class president of Chapel Hill High School.

But despite all the strides made by black educators, integration was not without its struggles.

From the get-go, frustrations mounted among former Lincoln High Students about the lack of equal representation at the new high school, eventually leading to protests and riots.

Manley said that the district was not ready for integration, and that that led to some of the unrest.

“It was pretty rough,” he said.

Lincoln High School students conducted the first area sit-ins at the Colonial Drug Store, where for many years blacks were not allowed to sit down and eat.

They came shortly after the nation’s first sit-ins, performed by students at the historically black North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University.

Braxton Foushee said he was involved in many of the protest movements, as were most of his classmates.

Valerie Foushee recalled a protest she and fellow students staged against Chapel Hill High School’s all-white cheerleader squad.

“Our first resistance, you could say, was to integrate the cheerleaders,” Foushee said.

After what appeared to be a step back, the integration movement regained momentum in 1961 when the final decision was handed down in the Stanley Vickers case.

The Chapel Hill school board had ruled that Vickers, a black student, could not attend the all-white Carrboro Elementary School.

But after a two-year battle, The Chapel Hill Weekly reported on Aug. 7, 1961, that a court ruling would allow Vickers to attend an integrated school.

The battle for full equality continues today, as the school board is working to close the minority achievement gap.

But the changes in the district have not gone unnoticed.

“It has steadily improved since I came here,” Euzelle Smith said.

She added that the district has come a long way, and the changes have all been for the better.

City Editor Ryan C. Tuck contributed to this article.
Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.