Somewhere in there, yes.
But the NAACP had sued the Durham County schools for integration of the
schools. The School Board, when I became a member of it, had had an
integration plan accepted by the Federal District Court in Greensboro in
1968, which said that the high schools and junior high schools would be
integrated in the fall of 1969, and because of space limitations
Page 12 and the need to purchase some mobile units to
accomplish integration at the elementary school level, the Federal
District Judge in Greensboro had given then a year's delay for the
integration of the elementary schools. So the elementary schools were to
be fully integrated in the fall of 1970. In October, well, let me go
back. So the high schools and junior high schools were integrated in the
fall of 1969 as the court order directed. I remember thinking at that
time, we had three high schools, Southern High School, and Jordan High
School, and Northern High School, and based on the principals that were
employed in those high schools at that time, I remember speculating in
my own mind as to how successful the integration of these high schools
would be. There was a lot of discussion in the community that there
would be problems at Southern High School because the Southern High
School mascot was the rebel, and they use the rebel flag, and there was
a lot of concern that that would be, and it was pretty much that the
community thought of it as the red neck part of town. There was less
concern about Jordan High School because primarily, Jordan High School,
over the years, has been attended by pretty affluent families, both
black and white. And there the aspirations of the parents are in
concert, their expectations of their children, and something like ninety
percent of Jordan's youngsters go on to four-year colleges and that kind
of thing. So there was not much concern about how integration was going
to work at Jordan High School because of the backgrounds of the children
who went there. And Northern High School, nobody really knew how it
would go there. You had quite
Page 13 a mix. But I
remember thinking that we had a principal, Sidney Ray, at Southern High
School who is probably one of the most sensitive and compassionate
people that I know. At the opposite end of the spectrum, at Northern
High School, we had one of the toughest, old line, hard-nosed, rigid
principals in the system, and I remember thinking to myself, "There will
never be a problem at Southern High School because Sidney Ray won't let
there be a problem. If there's going to be a problem, I'm going to bet
it's going to be at Northern High School." We'll come back to that in a
minute because I need to go back to the chronology of what happened
next. At any rate, the high schools and junior high schools were
integrated in the fall. Then we had the
Alexander vs.
Holmes decision out of a court in, I think it was Alabama, in
the Circuit Court in Alabama, which said not only will you integrate,
but you'll do it now. The "all deliberate speed" rationale is over, all
deliberate speed is not taking place, and the Supreme Court spoke very
forthrightly and Alexander-Holmes said you'll do it now. The very next
day, the NAACP filed suit in the Court of Appeals in Richmond, and said
based on the Alexander-Holmes Decision, we want the elementary schools
in Durham integrated now. So the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed
to hear the case in December. I believe it was the eighth, and I went
with our Board attorney to Richmond, and our whole approach to the
Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals was that it would not help any child,
black or white, to integrate the schools in the middle of the school
year, that it would cause tremendous disruption, whether they be black
or white. [Students]
Page 14 form attachments to their
teacher. The teacher spends the first three or four months getting to
know the children and evaluates them and figures out how they're going
to teach them, and to undo all that would be a terrible disadvantage to
all the children, to play "turn over the fruit basket" in the middle of
the year. That was the first case that Clement Haynsworth sat on in the
Fourth Circuit Court after he was turned down as a member of the Supreme
Court. Remember, he was a Nixon appointee. And, at any rate, despite all
of our pleadings, and it was a sincere pleading. It had absolutely
nothing to do with trying to drag our feet about integration. Our
elementary school plan was already drawn up. It was already in the hands
of the Federal District Court in Greensboro, and we had simply been
granted one year's reprieve for the other half of our school system. At
that point, integration in Durham was a fait accompli. There was no
resistance to it, but we did argue long and hard. I remember sitting in
that Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond on the eighth of
December with tears rolling down my face because I knew what we were
going to be faced with, and to have them sit there and not listen to
what we were saying I found to be very cruel. But at the same time, the
judge's point was that you'd had fifteen years to accomplish this and
you haven't done it; don't blame us because now kids are going to be
made to be uncomfortable. At any rate, before we could get back to
Durham the next day, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision was in
our attorney's office, so there was no doubt in my mind that that
Page 15 decision was made before we ever made the
arguments in court on Tuesday.