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Oral History Interview with Leroy Campbell, January 4, 1991. Interview M-0007. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#40007).
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  • Abstract
    After traveling the world, Leroy Campbell entered the education field motivated to share his experiences. He became a high school principal at the all-black Unity School in Iredell County, North Carolina, in the mid-1960s. In this interview, he responds to the interviewers' checklist of questions and offers his thoughts on the effects of desegregation on Iredell schools. Understaffed and underfunded, Campbell found support in a cohesive black community and a relationship with a county official who provided him with new school buses to drive the convoluted routes necessary to maintain segregation. The core of this interview may be Campbell's description of the black community's anxieties about desegregation, including the fear that the process would splinter the community and affect the quality of education. Their fears were well-founded, and Campbell ends the interview by recalling the closing of Unity School, the dispersal of its students, and his departure from the profession.
    Excerpts
  • Segregated schools enjoyed stability and community cohesion
  • A unique relationship with a county official results in extra buses for a black school
  • General poverty means inequality between white and black schools is not dramatic
  • Anticipating the ill effects of desegregation
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  • Finding aid to the Southern Oral History Program Collection
  • Database of all Southern Oral History Program Collection interviews
  • Subjects
  • African American high school principals--North Carolina
  • The Southern Oral History Program transcripts presented here on Documenting the American South undergo an editorial process to remove transcription errors. Texts may differ from the original transcripts held by the Southern Historical Collection.

    Funding from the Institute for Museum and Library Services supported the electronic publication of this title.