School integration controversies in Asheville made little practical difference to black students
School integration did not seem noteworthy to Bowman and other black students at the time because their schools already used long-distance busing. Some of the black students in Asheville used dilapidated buses left over from the white schools as transportation from the outskirts of the city.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Richard Bowman, July 8, 1998. Interview K-0513. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- KELLY ELAINE NAVIES:
-
You had support and guidance there-um, this was-so
you were there between what 47 and 51 about and this was a little bit
before the 1954 decision, but I'm wondering was this anything that was
discussed at all in school?-that the end of segregation might
be coming or anything like that?
- RICHARD BOWMAN:
-
No
- KELLY ELAINE NAVIES:
-
It was never-
- RICHARD BOWMAN:
-
We never even thought of it-I mean we'd see the students uh
come in and not realize what they were going through the students from
the outskirts of Asheville-Black Mountain, Weaverville, Mars
Hill and these used school buses that had been given to them by the
white schools-some of em had no windows or broken windows
whatnot and the students had to ride those buses and that's why when
people would start talkin about busin, I said, gee we've been doing it
for years with us-they've been busin us all over the
place.
