In our last submission, I was attending a Southern institution of higher learning that was ahead of its time in that it did admit some African Americans, allowed them almost equal rights with their white(and asian and middle eastern counter-parts), even though all other surrounding schools were strictly segregated, as was the town of Raleigh, NC, where the college was located.
When I say almost, that is to be taken seriously. But it was also the signs that things were about to start changing.
I am of course fond of ribbing graduates of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill about many things. During the period I was at NC State, one or more African Americans attempted to enroll at the University of North Carolina. There was a huge student demonstration to prevent this from happening, and only police intervention prevented violence. Now, at NC State the dormitory officials(most schools would call them head residents or some such) were elected by the residents of the dormitory in which they lived and would serve and the College administration would then appoint them to the post. During the same year as the UNC incident, the residents of one of our dormitories elected an African American as their president and therefore Dormitory Manager. Well, he was supposed to be Dormitory Manager, only the administration refused to appoint him, not wanting to take this step at this time, and told the residents of the dormitory involved to elect someone else. There were scathing editorials in the college paper, student demonstrations, only in this case, directed at the administration. The residents refused to hold another election, and the administration was forced to appoint the originally elected African American. All this is not as simple as it sounds, as my next anecdote might indicate. Remember, this is a state institution in a solidly segregated state. Publicity of incidents such as this could effect the willingness of white students to attend the school, or even more likely, incite their parents to prevent them from doing so, and also affect state funding.
While at NC State, I took the mandatory 2 years of ROTC. I also was a good enough trumpet player to qualify for the nationally recognized ROTC Drum & Bugle Corps. I enjoyed this so much that took all four years of ROTC and thus graduated with a commission in the US Army. I enjoyed the many parades to which we were invited and especially the travel to many cities on the East Coast, including Washington DC and New York. ROTC, being compulsory for the first two years, was naturally integrated: the Drum & Bugle Corps was not. I remember many black drummers & buglers trying out, some much better than any of the rest of us, only to be told that we had all we needed at the moment, thank you.
Then in my Junior year I was cadet First Sergeant of the corps and the cadet commander of the corps was my roommate. from Brooklyn. During the try-outs, we discovered an extremely talented black bugler. My roommate and I informed our Army Cadre adviser that we wanted to admit this cadet to the corps. He, a Regular Army Major, absolutely refused using the old standby phrase “not at this time.” My roommate and I did what no-one that cared about his military career would do, and ignored him and admitted said bugler to the bugle platoon. The Major never brought it up again, and kept referring to me as the “best First Sergeant in the Army.” so he couldn’t have cared too much. Those with a military background might be horrified at what we did, but unless people did things like that, nothing would have ever changed.
Is this the end of the story? Not on your life. The good news is that we were never harassed while in a parade, and there seemed to be no resentment among the 60 other cadets in the corps. Quite the opposite. The bad news is that many members did not want to parade in their hometown as they did not want to be seen, especially by their parents, associating with blacks.
Amazingly enough, when we had social functions for the cadets, the cadets themselves would not attend if the function was off campus since then our black member could not attend. Then, during my senior year, there was an incident that showed me there was hope for the racial situation, where before I saw none.
During a trip to perform several hundred miles away, we naturally had to stop to eat. We had previously arranged to stop at a country bar-b-que shack(you can’t imagine how good the food can be at these places). Upon disembarking from the busses, we were told that our black member could be served, but he would have to go to the back door to be served and eat outside. Without any prompting from us officers, every single corps member went to the back door to be served and formed a circle on the lawn around our black member to eat with him.