2— In the Beginning Was “The Letter”

Two

In the Beginning Was “The Letter”

LaHoma

The summer of 1970 was a long and agonizing one for me. There had been talk—rumors—that the Durham City School System was going to make changes and that some students were going to be reassigned to go to schools with “the Whites.” The grownups in my life didn’t talk about it with me much, but I could hear them talking about “it” to each other and how “it” was going to change everything. I didn’t like the uncertainty I heard in their voices, but I tried not to dwell on it too much. I was secretly hoping that the changes they were talking about were not really going to affect me, that I would just be able to continue to go to the best school in Durham with my friends.

I had spent my first year of junior high school at Shepard, a relatively new school for black students. The school was named after Dr. James E. Shepard, the president and first chancellor of what is now called North Carolina Central University. Shepard was THE place to be if you were a gifted black young person in Durham, as I believed myself to be. Shepard was located between the vibrant and prosperous commercial district on Fayetteville Street and the residential area of Alston Avenue and close to prominent black churches, including Mt. Zion Baptist Church, White Rock Baptist and St. Joseph AME Zion. Close by Shepard were also the Rosewood and Emory Woods neighborhoods, communities for upper middle class and affluent blacks where, if you lived there, in my young mind, your father was probably a doctor or a lawyer or worked at North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company or Mechanics and Farmers Bank, the most prominent black-owned businesses in Durham. These businesses had given Durham its reputation as the home of the country’s Black Wall Street.

My family lived in the opposite direction, in Southeast Durham only a block or two from McDougald Terrace and Lincoln Apartments, a community of blue-collar and lower middle-, working-class families. Most of my friends came from these neighborhoods.

I believed that the best teachers taught at Shepard, and the school certainly had the resources and support of the surrounding black communities. Shepard was also the place where all my best friends were. I could not imagine what good would be accomplished if I were forced to go to another school to be with strangers, even if they were white. What were “they” thinking? My godmother, Mrs. Smith, an English teacher at Shepard, explained to me that officials were trying to make things better for Negro children, but I couldn’t understand what was wrong with the ways things were. I longed for nothing; I lacked nothing. My parents, my extended family, my godparents, my neighbors and my church family provided everything I needed. I had always been encouraged to excel and was shielded from the era’s negative depictions of Negroes. I was an avid reader, and the library in McDougald Terrace was one of my favorite places to spend my afternoons, walking slowly among the shelves, careful not to miss the latest books to arrive.

My father worked as a medical technician, a full-time, state employee at Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill, but he always had two part-time jobs in addition to his main one. My mother, a licensed practical nurse (LPN) at Duke Hospital, was also an excellent seamstress who made all my clothes and took in repairs to “make ends meet.” We owned our own home with a big backyard in which to play. How could going to school with white kids make the world any better for me?

Life in seventh grade at Shepard Junior High School was idyllic. I was a good student, full of potential—and, yes, college bound. Everybody told me so. I knew I was smart—but so were a lot of us, and we were all treated as if we were “somebody” and expected to do well. Even though many of us came from families with modest incomes, our principal, Mr. Schooler, teachers and parents worked hard to provide us with the resources we needed. It is only now that I can acknowledge that perhaps our parents and teachers saw what we didn’t see—that we didn’t have the same access to books, materials, supplies, and other resources in our schools that the white students had in their schools. These adults yearned for access to those resources for us.

We were so proud of the school field trip to Nags Head organized for all the seventh graders. Our teachers and families had raised the money so we could all go regardless of where we lived or what our daddies did for a living. The teachers had emphasized how important it was to get us out of the classroom so we could see North Carolina, not just read about it in textbooks. So we traveled, two busloads of 12- and 13-year-old Negro children to what I now understand is exclusive beach property. We visited the inland sand dunes and Kitty Hawk, and I learned about the Wright Brothers and the importance of aviation. The bus ride home was long, but I was thrilled to be sitting next to Derek, the cute boy whom my best friend, Skeeter, and I both had a crush on. I was secure in feeling that I was where I belonged.

I tried to think practically about the logistics of a move to a new school. How would I get there? I had to walk to Shepard because of my parents’ work schedules. But it was fun. Almost every day a group of us would walk the two to three miles home along busy Alston Avenue to the side streets of Rosewood. Now who would I walk to school with?

The arrival of “the letter” confirmed my worst fears. My mom says I brought the notice home from school that “it” was coming soon, but we didn’t receive official notification until early August. The knowledge that the unwanted school re-assignment was coming hovered over me like a pesky fly, ruining that summer for me.

I read through the short form letter several times, but it still didn’t make sense. I could no longer go to Shepard Junior High, just because I lived on the wrong side of Plum Street. Friends on the same street but on the other side of the arbitrary line drawn through the heart of McDougald Terrace could remain at Shepard. If you lived on the “wrong” side of the street, as I came to see it, you were assigned to Whitted and now were forced to trek to the end of the earth to go to school. “It is so dumb,” I thought, “this whole integration plan.” The adults in my life tried to console me, but I refused to oblige them. Nothing they could say would convince me that this decision had not ruined my life. I did have a few friends who also were reassigned to Whitted. We called one another, cried, and commiserated about our fate—why did this have to happen to us, why couldn’t we go to the school we wanted to go to, and why were some of our friends allowed to stay but we weren’t?

I was not at all curious about what it would be like to go to school with white students, and I had no feelings of apprehension about their presence or absence in my life. I just couldn’t believe that race was the reason I needed to change schools. “I have been around white kids before,” I reminded my mom. “Remember, Camp Mary Atkinson—the Girl Scouts camp in Johnston County?”

My mother, in early attempts to expose me to white people, had packed me up for two weeks of tent camping when I was in fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. More often than not, I was the only black girl there. I hold mostly positive memories from camp, and the young, friendly camp counselors really protected me. Some of the little white campers, curious, wanted to touch my hair and feel my skin to see “if it was real.” But mostly, I learned to swim, hike, canoe, and cook over a campfire, all skills that have served me well throughout my adult life. My positive interactions with the Girl Scouts left me with the impression that I knew everything I needed to know about white people. Why did I have to be the one to leave the school, friends, and teachers I loved?

My resentment toward Whitted Junior High School grew as the first day of school loomed. Whitted was in an older school building that had originally been Hillside Park High School, Durham’s first high school for African-Americans. Whitted School, as I came to learn, began in 1887, when Durham established the first black grade school in North Carolina. In 1922 older students moved into a new building, Hillside Park High School on Umstead Street, named for the public, all-black park next to it. By 1949, the city school board decided to make a swap and moved the high school, along with its name, to the newer J. A. Whitted Elementary school building near what is now N.C. Central University. The elementary pupils were moved to the building on Umstead Street, keeping the Whitted name for the elementary school, but changing the building name. Later, Whitted Elementary became Whitted Junior High (3). Whitted was also near many black-owned businesses, including the Imperial Barbershop, the Carolina Times newspaper, and the Stanford L. Warren library.

Though I later grew to appreciate the historical importance of the area, at that time I didn’t know or care much about it. I did know and care that in 1970, Whitted was not close to my house or my friends. I justified my anger by putting down the neighborhood surrounding Whitted. As a black kid, I knew which white areas in Durham to avoid; likewise, I knew where my friends lived. And I didn’t know a lot of black kids who lived over on that side. I just felt more comfortable walking through my side of town.

Tensions ran high those first few weeks of school that fall, as black students newly assigned to Whitted from around the city joined the black students from that neighborhood. The new students were indignant at being forced into this new arrangement, and the neighborhood students felt that their turf was being invaded. Either way, the anxiety levels were palpable as we all tried to adjust to our new circumstances.

And then of course, we had to get used to going to school with the white students.

Cindy

A new court-ordered desegregation plan in the works for the 1970-71 school year was about to wreak havoc on my middle school dreams of attending Durham High School. The alternative to Durham High would be Hillside High, a historically black high school, which I had never seen and knew nothing about. I would be a racial minority for the first time in my life.

My three consecutive years at Rogers-Herr Junior High—from seventh to ninth grades—were an unusual time of geographic stability for me. Before then, I had moved to new cities and changed schools almost every year since the first grade because of my father’s job as a telephone installer. I had rarely let myself imagine where I’d be going to school the next year, much less in three years, but this stay in Durham had lulled me into feelings of certainty and continuity. Now, external forces were about to change my plans.

Junior high school had been a difficult transition for me. The social environment at Rogers-Herr was more complicated than what I had known in any of the elementary schools I had attended; social class determined so much of social life—something I had rarely thought about before starting to school there. This uncharted territory and my painful shyness made it rough going for a while, though I eventually found a group of friends. By the end of ninth grade, I finally felt comfortable in my space and was imagining my life at Durham High—hanging out with my friends, joining a few clubs, going to basketball games and dances, and maybe finding a boyfriend among the upperclassmen.

* * *

During the spring semester of ninth grade, however, it became apparent that something was going on that could disrupt my plans. A new, much-discussed desegregation policy might require a new school assignment. Everything was in process, and there was no way to know who would be going where. Anxiety ran high, but no specific information was available. The real tension, among the grownups at least, was about race and what was about to change and for whom.

A citywide hearing at the beginning of summer vacation gave Durham parents their first glimpse of where their children might be assigned to go to school in the fall. The map from the first draft plan indicated that I would be assigned to Hillside High School. Neither I nor my parents attended this meeting, but the map was printed in the Durham Morning Herald the next day with a report on the meeting reflecting the unhappiness expressed by both black parents and white parents and other adults who had been there. Representatives from black community organizations spoke of concerns about the proposed closing of an elementary school in a black neighborhood. Representatives of white supremacy groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Citizens Council spoke about fears for their children’s safety and anticipated violence. White parents wanted to understand better the reason for the plan and the process undertaken by the school board to meet the district court’s requirement (4).

At the end of the meeting, school board members promised they would take another look at the plan to see how they might address some specific issues. So, though this first map provided a pretty strong indication of my school assignment, the matter was not completely settled, and there was some hope I still might go to Durham High.

This uncertainty continued until the Durham City School Board sent out “the letter” to each student on August 7, only a few weeks before school was to start. The notices we received were form letters with blanks to be filled in: “Your child, ________, has been assigned for the 1970-71 school year to _____________ School. Yours very truly, Lew W. Hannen, Superintendent, Durham City Schools.” The letter I nervously retrieved from my front-porch mailbox late that summer had “Cynthia Claire Stock” and “Hillside High” handwritten in green ink in the two blank spaces. I was disappointed but not surprised.

This letter was the final word on the matter—I would not be going to Durham High School. I did not feel angry nor especially unhappy about the fact that it was Hillside per se. I just felt disappointment and that teenage sense of injustice about not getting to go where I wanted to go. All of my close junior high school friends—Judith, Beth, Brenda, Jen, Chris, and Lynn—also were assigned to Hillside. We took some comfort that we all would be going to Hillside together.

* * *

At age 15, my friends and I were not civil-rights activists, nor were we overtly racist. Talk about our new school assignment was not couched in racial terms, though we must have felt somewhat nervous about being the new white kids (and lowly sophomores on top of that!) in a previously all-black school. None of my friends left the city school system or went to a private school because of the assignment. We knew that some students from our school—but not my friends—were going to go to prep school because of this assignment plan, but they were children of wealthier parents—lawyers and doctors and businessmen—who did not figure into my world view.

My friends and I knew that black schools were not as nice—not as well-maintained and did not have the same kinds of equipment or educational materials as those that were mostly white—and we realized that this policy was an attempt to fix this inequity. I am sure we wanted to be part of the solution, even if we did not discuss this aloud. But we still had feelings of regret, frustration, and anxiety about the school board’s decisions.

* * *

My parents and their friends thought it was unfair and wrong that, to avoid participating in the desegregation plan, some parents moved their families out of the school system or sent their children to prep schools or the “Christian” academies supported by the “Christian Councils” with what we perceived as thinly veiled associations with the Ku Klux Klan. My working-class parents and their friends believed that people should do what the government asked them to do. They also believed in public education, so there was no doubt that our family would comply with the new assignments.

My parents’ sense of duty notwithstanding, they were not exactly happy about my going to Hillside, either. Some of my mother’s concerns (and they were always more her concerns than those of my father) were not any different from those she would have had about my transitioning to any high school from junior high. Any high school would have been a bigger school, farther from home, and would have meant being around older students with whom I could get into more trouble. But, added to this list now were worries about how unknown everything about Hillside was to us and about how being a racial minority might affect my school experience.

Their primary fear was about my safety. Was Hillside in a safe neighborhood? Could they let me stay after school to participate in extracurricular activities? Could racial tensions at school flare up and erupt into violence? My parents never spoke this last question out loud as some of the white parents had at the public meeting in June, but in light of televised news stories from previous summers about crime and rioting in poor black neighborhoods, I knew this was part of their fear.

My parents and I were also worried about the quality of my education. Though it embarrasses me to say this now, there was a perception that black teachers would not be as good as white teachers, and that they would not hold us to the same high academic standards as those in the predominantly white schools in other districts. I was a serious student, and academics were important to me. I worried that I would fall behind my white peers at other schools whom I would be competing with for college admission in three years.

* * *

On my first day of school at Hillside—and every school day for the next three years—my mother drove me and my friend and neighbor, Judith, to school in the morning and picked us up in the afternoon. Though “busing” became synonymous with desegregation in the 1970s, busing was not an essential feature of the Durham plan for junior high or senior high school students. I could have gotten vouchers to take the city bus—a trip that would have required changing buses in downtown Durham—but my parents vetoed that plan (and I didn’t argue with them) because of their worries about safety and the time it would have taken me to get to and from school.

I had never even seen the Hillside school building before “the letter” brought me to my first day of classes there. It was no farther from where we lived than Durham High, but it was in a part of town we never had any reason to visit. When we drove up that first day, we saw a big brick building with lots of students, black and white but mostly black, standing around outside waiting for the bell to ring. The building was not very different in appearance from Durham High School, other than possibly being a little older. If you walked through it while it was empty of students, I doubt there would be anything about it that would have made you think, “This is the black high school.” Even if you looked from the front steps out at the houses that bordered Hillside’s campus, you might wonder which middle-class neighborhood this was and be surprised you had not seen it before.

That first muggy September morning at Hillside, my mother marked our arrival at my new school with her usual lump-in-the-throat, tear-in-the-eye goodbye, and a series of “behave yourself,” “be safe,” “stay away from trouble” admonitions. I was well practiced in being at a new school, and whatever her reservations about the whole situation were, she was sure I would be all right; I’m sure I thought so, too. Not because I was especially outgoing or self-confident. On the contrary, it was because I was shy and did not want to stand out—I was happy to go unnoticed and fit in and do what high school students do, whatever that turned out to be. I stepped out of our blue Pontiac that morning focused on finding my way into this new and different world.

Photo courtesy of Shepard Yearbook, 1969-70

LaHoma Smith in seventh grade

Photo courtesy of Rogers-Herr Yearbook, 1969-70

Cindy Waszak in ninth grade