In 1954, the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka declared that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. That decision laid the groundwork for students like Dorothy Counts-Scoggins to be one of four Black students who integrated Charlotte Public Schools in 1957.
Prior to that decision, there were significant inequalities in the education system, public spaces, and business that Black leaders in Charlotte were already organizing and mobilizing against.
One triumph, in 1948, was when President Harry Truman issued an executive order to desegregate the armed forces, a result of the “Double V Campaign,” linking victory over fascism abroad with victory over racism at home.
At the time, Charlotte’s Black residents, who represented just under a third of the city’s total population, nearly doubled their numbers between 1940 and 1960, growing from 31,000 to 56,000 residents. Kelly Alexander would go on to revitalize Charlotte’s NAACP and launched projects that included a “Votes for Freedom” campaign that registered more than 5,000 new Black voters.
Now, nearly 70 years since Counts-Scoggins took that historic walk into Harding High School, certain schools like West Charlotte High School have seemingly become resegregated with as little as a 2% white student population and nearly 75% Black student population. How we teach history has also become a point of contention in the state legislature, with bills aimed at how schools teach certain topics like race and American history.
Mike Collins and our panel of guests revisit Charlotte’s past with desegregation and integration leading to Counts-Scoggins pioneering walk. We also look at where we are today as far as equity in public schools, and what a future could look like depending on how history is remembered for students.
GUESTS:
Dan Aldridge, professor of history & Africana studies, Davidson College
Dorothy “Dot" Counts-Scoggins, Charlotte civil rights figure, she was of the first Black student to integrate Harding High School in 1957
Dr. James E. Ford, executive director of the Center for Racial Equity in Education (CREED)