In traveling back in time to Chatham Central High School nineteen hundred and sixty-nine, the year of integration, I expected to find a history of race riots, several protests, and perhaps even a couple of discrimination stories. To my surprise, I found none of the above. The first year that Central integrated could not have gone better for some students, if it had been written in a storybook. Mrs. Sherry Gray, Mr. John Taylor, and Mr. Ronald Taylor, tenth grade, eleventh grade, and first year students respectively at the time, remember a smooth sailing transition from an all Black k-12 school to an all white high school. However, thirty some years later, things at Central have regressively changed. From integration in 1969 to May of 1999, race relations at Chatham Central took a turn for the worse.
In 1969 Chatham County Schools decided to integrate its school system. Mrs. Gray, currently the librarian at Central, attended J. S. Waters High School in Goldston, North Carolina. In an interview with Mrs. Gray, she said that her principal, Mr. McLaughlin, at J. S. Waters tried to prepare his students for the transition to an all white school. He would tell them, “You people are going to find out that it’s different when you get to Chatham Central. It’s different…it’s different.” Mrs. Gray mentioned that hearing this scared her and made her feel as if success at a predominately white school would be impossible. She recalled the day that her bus from J.S. Waters drove up to Central:
I remember being really, really nervous when our bus from J. S. Waters came up here and I didn’t know how we were going to be received, but for the most part, I don’t recall a lot of incidences happening. There were a couple of fights that were racially motivated, but I don’t remember too much happening with my grade.
Mrs. Gray did recall one occasion when her teacher told her that she did not belong in her class. The teacher said, “You should not be in this class. You need to be in another one.” This was the point where she was supposed to had felt discriminated against and called her parents to come to the school to demand her civil rights. “So she moved me,” Mrs. Gray said. “She sent me to the office and had the principal change my schedule.” Then, to my surprise, she followed with,
[They] moved me to what I found out was an honor’s class, and I was the only African American in that class. It really was the most uncomfortable feeling that I had ever experienced because, like I told you, I was already nervous and timid to be in a class where everybody was looking at me. But it didn’t take long for them to accept me. I guess that’s the right word to say.
Looking back, Mrs. Gray realized that her teachers were very affirming and encouraging to her. She was very active and involved in school. From being on yearbook staff to different honor’s groups, Mrs. Gray stood out from other African American students.
I asked Mrs. Gray about the issue of race relations and about how students acted outside of the classroom. She said that when they did have a chance to be together they were “polarized.” Everybody who was Black would sit on one side of the cafeteria and everybody who was white sat on another side. Mrs. Gray added, “I guess the teachers didn’t want to do too much to rock that boat because they didn’t know really what the effect would be if they had forced us to sit differently. So we sat pretty much the way we wanted to for a long time.” One of Mrs. Gray’s teachers, Mrs. Honeycutt, an honor’s English teacher, didn’t care what color a person was; she would tell people what she thought. She made a conscious effort to insure that her students interacted with someone of another racial group. Mrs. Gray said, “She probably created cooperative learning before it became popular. Anything we did as a group, we had to be racially mixed. She was a good teacher, and she was a tough.”
Mrs. Gray really didn’t have any negative things to say about her experience in the integration year. “Ronda,” she said, “honestly, maybe it was my own naivety, but I really didn’t notice any racism or impartial attitudes. I don’t think we were as aware as we are now because we were nervous, and I didn’t know what it would be like those first two years. And when I look back on it now, I realized that I was the token. You know what I mean?” Mrs. Gray realized that something was special about the way her teachers treated her after she received salutatorian:
I had another experience that terrified me. I was the salutatorian. I think this was an example case of tokenism. They were afraid I believe, that everybody in charge of graduation would be white. And they wanted some kind of minority representation, and I was the one they chose. I didn’t write the speech. Somebody else wrote the speech and gave it to me. I practiced it and practiced it and delivered it that night. Lord have mercy! I could not tell you how scared I was. I have never been a real assertive, outgoing person anyway, but to be cast in those roles and positions at a time when everything was so tenuous, it was real uncomfortable. It was an honor, but real uncomfortable.
Mrs. Gray knew that she didn’t deserve to be salutatorian. She was not good at math, and always made C’s. Her math teacher even told her that she would not make it in college because her grades in math were not that good. I asked Mrs. Gray thinks that her experience was different from a Black student who was not an honor’s student. In general she felt that all the teachers made an effort to keep the peace at school. No one wanted something bad to happen. She definitely believed, however, that her teachers treated her differently because she was involved and was smart. “My experience was different because of what they perceived me as,” she said.
Well, I talked to two other students from Chatham Central High School, both Black males, who were on a non-honor’s track. John Taylor and Ronald Taylor are two brothers who both previously attended J. S. Waters School, as well as Mrs. Gray. John was a junior, and Ronald was a freshman in 1969. Both described their experiences at Central as very much similar to Mrs. Gray. The Taylors said that they never had any problems with anybody at school. People treated them fairly, and their teachers never made them feel any different from the white students. John said, “Most of them [white people] were scared of me. I did not have any real problems out of any of ‘em.” John is dark skin, about 6’4, and 230 lbs. He added that often times people would leave little notes around that had “Nigger” written in it or would make little nooses and leave them around school, but no one was ever vocal around him and no one ever confronted him. Ronald corroborated the story of his brother, however, he added that there was one incident that occurred his junior year, after his brother had graduated. This event marked the beginning of the regression from the calm that was established in 1969.
Homecoming 1971 was different from any other Homecoming that Chatham Central had previously seen. It was homecoming queen voting time, and everyone was antsy to see who the winner would be. At Chatham Central, they had an assembly where the homecoming queen candidates gave speeches in hopes of winning the votes of the judges. The judges were a selected group of faculty members. Out of the six judges, only one was Black. Two candidates ran for homecoming queen, Sheila (white) and Luanne (Black). They were asked a series of questions by the judges. Ronald said that Sheila stumbled over several of her answers, and repeatedly said phrases such as, “You know.” Luanne on the other had, answered her questions without stumbling and gave good responses.
After the assembly, the winner was announced over the intercom, and to the surprise of many of the Black students, Sheila won. Ronald said that the Blacks were enraged, and they felt that this was clearly an act of racism. They knew that Luanne had done a much better job than Sheila, but because Sheila was white, she won. The Black students were so mad that they decided to leave class and march to the County Seat in Pittsboro, which is about 20 miles from the high school. “We knew that Luanne should have won. We felt that this was an obvious act of discrimination, and we weren’t gonna stand for it,” Ronald said. Most of the Black students refused to return to class as they plundered out of the halls of CCHS. Some walked while others caught rides in the cars of people who were driving. Most of the white students and faculty were scared because they did not know what was happening. The police were called in to guard J. S. Waters School to make sure that none of their students left to join the march. This was the first time this small town of less than 500 people had seen such a political, militant, and mobilized action. The students’ anger was felt at the county office, and their protest was very successful. While Sheila remained the Homecoming Queen for that year, every year after that year, for homecoming queen elections, a white and a Black student had to be chosen. One was called Miss. Chatham Central and the other Homecoming Queen. One year the Black student was named the Queen and the white student named Miss. Chatham Central. The titles would alternate each year. It is still this way presently. “I think the people at the county office were afraid of what might happen if they didn’t make some kind of change,” Ronald said.
Even though Ronald had a slightly different story to tell, he, John, and Mrs. Gray each had a similar component to their stories. They all stressed that the way they were treated was directly related to the way they acted. None of them were so-called troublemakers; therefore, white students and faculty members treated them with respect. Each interviewee hinted that if someone looked for trouble or if someone had behavioral issues, their experiences with the white people were different. Of course a student who always gets in trouble will have a different story to tell than a student who didn’t, but this difference may be more related to race than the other typical cases of bad behavior. Their comments based on behaviors made me reflect on the theories of the “good Negro” and the one that “knows his place.” Those Negroes were always more accepted within the white community because they never presented a threat to the white power structure. I asked each of the interviewees if they knew of an incident of someone being treated differently, but none of them could recall a story, and none of them were actually looking for something to find.
In 1999, thirty years after integration, Chris Taylor found something to talk about. On Yearbook Signing Day at Chatham Central, he noticed a little something peculiar about one of the senior advertisement pages. He found that a group of white male seniors had purchased two ad pages, which contained a plethora of pictures. In the pictures, some of the males chose to toss up their middle fingers and wore nooses around their necks. The nooses appeared around more than one person’s neck in the photos, indicating that it was passed from one person to the next in between pictures being taken. One would assume that the photographer would have said something about the nooses, considering the fact that she was the editor of the yearbook and the soon to be Valedictorian of their class. However, the pictures were taken around the time when she was running for Homecoming Queen. Isn’t that ironic? People assumed that she didn’t say anything to the male students because she wanted their votes and didn’t want to mess up her chance at becoming Homecoming Queen. Chris reported the pictures to the principal’s office and demanded that some sort of disciplinary action be taken.
Initially, the boys were suspended from school for ten days and had their privileges of walking across the stage at graduation taken away. All of the boys hired lawyers to have the school’s decision reversed. The NAACP came down to investigate, and the story made the headline news feature for several television stations including WRAL TV5 and FOX 50. In the meantime, the school held an assembly to discuss what had happened. The principal, Mr. John Glover, gave a speech on how neither he nor the school condoned acts of racial discrimination. Directly after the assembly, students were allowed to go to classrooms with counselors to talk about how they felt about the noose situation and how it affected them. Teachers encouraged everyone to keep the peace. Some even tried to say that the offense was not even that serious. Mr. Pinnock, the Spanish teacher, mentioned that he saw the incident as a joke and that kids do stuff like that. Students talked about how they felt the boys should be punished, but no one talked about starting a riot or even seeking revenge on the boys. Some did jokingly mention beating the five students up, but nothing ever came of that. Many of the Black students felt that if the yearbook incident had of occurred at a predominately Black school or even a school where Blacks made up more than 12% of the overall school population, more of a retaliation would have occurred.
The Black students were angry about the incident, but they chose to take their frustration out nonviolently by speaking out against the act through various avenues, including being interviewed by the news stations. Chris was one of the students who appeared on the news. He was especially offended because he had known of previous instances where those same boys made racial comments to some of the Black students. Also, one of the seniors in the ad page was accused of and supposedly admitted to writing a list of names on the male bathroom wall. The list was titled, “Noose list: People to be hung.” Chris’ name was the first to appear on the list. I asked him why he thought he was targeted. He replied, “The white guys don’t like me because I talk to white girls.” Chris had also reported this incident to the principal’s office. Without a thorough investigation, the principal ordered someone to paint over the list, and the whole matter was swept under the rug, without anyone being punished. “I couldn’t believe they [school officials] didn’t do anything. They got over the intercom and offered a reward for someone who could provide evidence of who vandalized a drink machine, saying ‘We will not tolerate vandalism,’ but would not offer a reward to find out who put that list up,” vented Chris.
In the end, the courts ruled that the boys were not responsible for the pictures being put in the yearbook. Their ten-day suspension was reduced to 3 days of In School Suspension (ISS), and they were allowed to walk across the stage at graduation. The following year, the air was very tense at Central. The principal resigned under pressure after evidence was presented of how he covered up many acts of racism at the school. Everyone walked on eggshells making sure the school didn’t have another fiasco like the yearbook incident. No Homecoming speeches were given that year, but Central still had its two queens, one Black and one white. The school even hired a token Black English teacher. Previously, there were zero Black teachers, aside from Mrs. Gray the librarian, at Chatham Central. When investigators came to look at the school, the county wanted to make sure that Central had at least one Black teacher to help its self-image.
The 1999-2000 school year went without any observable incidences of racism. However, the following year, the newly installed principal was forced to resign after a taped conversation emerged of him using “Nigger” in a phone conversation while on school property. That year, a student run organization was created in order to restore good race relations in the school community. The current principal is serving his fourth year, and everyone seems to be getting along…
No overt acts of racism were ever observed by Mrs. Gray, John, and Ronald while they attended high school right after desegregation. John attributes the heightened racial issues at Central that occurred after he graduated to the lack of Black students, particularly Black males, which are attending Chatham Central High School. Back in 1969, the racial makeup was around 60% white and 40% Black. In contrast, in 1999, Chatham Central was 82% white, 12% Black, and 6% Asian and Hispanic. John stated,
“If the racial problems that took place today would have taken place back when I was in school, they would’ve had to call in the National Guard. We would have never stood for anything like that. Back then, there were a lot of Black males in school. Now, there are few. It’s a lot easier to take advantage of them because they can’t stand up for themselves.”
This is very true, in 1997, fewer than five Black males graduated from Chatham Central. The class started out with more, but most of those were viewed as “troublemakers” and were expelled repeatedly or simply dropped out. John believed that Black males were targeted, and often received harsher punishments, such as being expelled from school, than white students who committed the same offense. Slowly but surely, Black males rejected the school system, leading to the eventual decrease in their representation at the school. Furthermore, John added that the faculty was more diverse when he attended Chatham Central. He named at least 6 Black faculty members, including at least one male teacher. In 1996 or 1997, this same male teacher was the lone Black teacher at Central. One day, a white female student accused him of looking up her skirt, and he was fired. He had been at the school for over twenty years.
Chatham Central High School has had its ups and downs when it comes to race relations. After the infamous yearbook episode in 1999, everyone assumed that because Central was a predominately white school, it had always been a high area of racial conflict. Most people do not know that in 1969, the actual year of forced integration, the school year passed without any catastrophic damages. Over time however, race relations have gradually worsened. Some of the interviewees attributed this worsening in race relations to the fact that the number of Black males and the Black population as a whole had decreased significantly. Another factor that can be thrown into the mix of variables is the lack of Black faculty members. Currently, Chatham Central is not experiencing any race related problems. Homecoming Queen elections are passing by without protest. Once again, the calm has been restored to the student body, at least on the surface…
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