Dorothy Counts (1942- ) was the first Black person to go Harding High School in Charlotte, North Carolina in the southern US. That was on September 4th 1957. Pictures of her first day made the news worldwide, calling James Baldwin back from Paris:
“I could simply no longer sit around Paris discussing the Algerian and the black American problem. Everybody was paying their dues, and it was time I went home and paid mine.”
On that morning she put on a blue dress her grandmother had made her, prayed and remembered her father’s words:
“Hold your head up high. You’re not less than anyone else.”
Streets near the school were blocked. She had to walk the last two blocks. Whites were spitting on her, calling her names, throwing sticks and stones and milk cartons, telling her to go back to Africa. She was not afraid. She did not get angry. She just kept walking. By the time she got to the front door, spit was dripping off the bottom of her dress.
Once in school it got no better. People pushed her, jeered at her, threw things at her when she was not looking. Teachers acted like she was not there, even when she raised her hand, even when boys were spitting in her food.
Two White girls befriended her – but then unfriended her when they started getting harassed too.
On the fourth day someone hit her in the back of the head with a sharp object. Now they were trying to actually hurt her. When she got to the car to go home she saw the back window smashed – with her brother inside. Now she was afraid.
Counts:
“I did not feel I was being protected in any way within the confines of the school because there were adults there and they did nothing.”
Neither the school nor the police were willing to protect her. Unlike Ruby Bridges there were no US Marshals. Unlike the Little Rock Nine, there was no army protection. So her father sent her north to live with relatives to go to an already integrated high school near Philadelphia.
The experience made her not bitter but better, determined “to make sure that bad things don’t happen to other children.” She went to university and became a preschool teacher and social worker. She still lives near the high school.
Two Whites asked for her forgiveness in later years. She told them she had forgiven them long ago.
Desegregation: The county schools would go on to fight school desegregation all the way to the Supreme Court, which forced it on them in 1971 in Swann v Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education. But then in 1999 the courts overturned it.
By 2010 Counts was saying of her granddaughter’s high school:
“At the beginning of the school year, they would go for weeks without books, for weeks without enough chairs for everyone in the classroom. When I heard about that I thought, Lord, this brings back memories.”
Now in her 70s, she is still fighting for desegregation, frustrated but determined.
– Abagond, 2017
See also:
- Elizabeth Eckford – of the Little Rock Nine walked to school on the very same day. The governor’s soldiers blocked her, but later the president’s soldiers would protect her.
- That Norman Rockwell painting – of Ruby Bridges
- school resegregation
- James Baldwin
- Charlotte, North Carolina
573
Can we really blame these white folk when, after all, they have a separate heaven all to themselves in the next life …..
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Ab; I’m curious to know how many of your readers have been ‘ the first’ or ‘the only’ in any of their endeavors. It seems that my whole life I’ve been ‘one of the good ones’ to liberals and ‘uppity’ to conservatives.
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Did integration stem or correct the effects and ravages of slavery, Jim Crow, white riots, sundown-towns?? Are we really a better, more cohesive Black community AFTER the Civil Rights era (desegregation and integration has come)??
What’s the point of living with people that hate you, or sitting next to them in a classroom? To prove that we are as good as them? Please!
Much respect to Ms Counts – but I ain’t buying what you’re selling: DESEGREGATION. Rather let’s fight for learning how to get and keep our own RESOURCES – beginning with our brains.
@Joe
“after all, they have a separate heaven all to themselves in the next life …..”
Yes they do, complete with a WHITE Jesus!
AND Sunday is still home to the most segregated time/hour in Amerika!
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@UBJ
“It seems that my whole life I’ve been ‘one of the good ones’ to liberals and ‘uppity’ to conservatives.”
Don’t be shy sir. Please inspire us with your anecdotal stories equivalent to white people’s spit dripping from your clothing, and so on.
Don’t leave out anything. There’s no faint of heart here.
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Dorothy Counts-Scoggins, thank you for inspiring hope when there was none; thanks for enduring hate-filled days at school in order to turn a page in history; thanks for exuding dignity when confronted a horde of ignorance. I want you to know that you was not alone on September 4th, 1957 as you walked to school, because God held your hands. Thank you Madam!
May He continue to bless you and may he keep you as well!
“In 2008, Harding High School awarded Counts an honorary diploma.[6] In 2010, Counts received a public apology from a member of the crowd which harassed her in 1957. In 2010, Harding High School renamed its library in honor of Counts-Scoggins, an honour rarely bestowed upon living persons.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Counts
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I would like to see those same teenagers in that photo as senior citizens assuming some of them are living and ask them what motivated them to act like monsters. The hate in their hearts twisting their faces into hideous mask. I read her dress was covered in spit. None of the teachers or adults would protect this young girl. So now I read that some apologized and gave her an honorary diploma. I am glad Dorothy Counts was brave and she found it in her heart to forgive these monsters. As Langston Hughes said “It’s The Ways of White Folks.”
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Seems to be some confusion here between desegregation vs. integration. They are two different concepts. Integration (particularly regarding all white schools in the US during this time period) involved forceful, intentional placement of non-white students into white schools. Desegregation however is the elimination of the all-white restriction to attend schools. You can go there if you want or choose some other alternative. I’ve always been a proponent of desegregation rather than integration as all it really means is I am not limited by my race to learn, live, shop, sleep, eat, etc. . . I can go wherever the hell I want – if I choose to. It’s MY decision and no one else’s. That is true freedom. Integration means I must go to places I am not welcome because someone else made the choice that it would be beneficial to me or those who are used to their exclusive lifestyles. Although I have never agreed with integration, in the South during that time, I’ve come to believe that it was necessary. Mere desegregation would not have been honored or upheld down here. There must have been forced integration first to get to desegregation. If Counts is in favor of desegregation in 2010, I am all for that. Integration is no longer necessary – as far as race is concerned.
And it would behoove us to remember that neither concept would have been required if “separate but equal” was really equal. Even in this day and age, self segregation can’t be completely achieved – you’ll have to interact with the others eventually. And forget about the funding issues or even problems with location. I doubt my father fought for us to not have to walk or be bussed to the closest black school 2 towns away when a perfectly suitable school was just a two to five minute trip only to return to shipping your kid far from home (and your personal protection) again. Might be desirable for some – for the rest, don’t hold your breath. Further, the point was to get access to equal education not to form a ‘cohesive black community’. When Black people have the full ability to achieve whatever they want in whatever way they see fit, obviously there will not be the same level of cooperation, camaraderie, or overall togetherness in purpose as existed when everyone is corralled into a pit of nothingness/insignificance with little to no chance of escape. Regardless, the fact that despite our now far flung presence in all types of settings and communities in this country we still overwhelming share the same beliefs and sentiments when it comes to government policies and local/personal issues says much about Black folks. We can still thrive outside of our formerly enforced confines and yet essentially speak as one voice (with compassion and empathy) although we are now free to live and think as individually (and selfishly) as the average white American.
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I’m glad abagond was finally able to sneak in a second “black history” post before the month’s over so he can hurry back to obsessing over Trump.
“Now in her 70s, she is still fighting for desegregation, frustrated but determined.”
Yes, schools remain segregated today because whites as a group simply do not want their children going to schools with blacks. They can tolerate a token or two, and they can tolerate slightly more brown and yellow faces. But whites have to be a near majority or white parents will send their kids to a white majority school or move to a different school district. If that’s too inconvenient or unaffordable, then they (involved parents) will create a “school within a school” for the white kids or create separate charter schools altogether.
Code words are key here.
@Fan…
“What’s the point of living with people that hate you, or sitting next to them in a classroom? ….Rather let’s fight for learning how to get and keep our own RESOURCES – beginning with our brains.”
+1000. And I would never in a million years send a daughter of mine to school with those savages who tormented Dorothy Counts.
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An Scríbhneoir Gael-Mheiriceánach
needs a link
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“Seems to be some confusion here between desegregation vs. integration. They are two different concepts”
Not according to TheSage’s English Dictionary. The meaning of the two words are identical.
http://www.sequencepublishing.com/1/thesage_documentation.html
@scib
“What dignity and grace Ms. Counts displayed.”
How would YOU know or recognize dignity or grace???
You’ve never displayed a nano-speck of either one since your pathetic behind crashed landed on this site of normal people!
People from your WARPED world (of Necro……..) are odd and not accepted here! You should go and be amongst your own kind.
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@nomad
“An Scríbhneoir Gael-Mheiriceánach
needs a link”
No, that rule does not apply to him because he and abagond campaigned for the same racist candidate.
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@ Scribh
#1. Please do not spam my blog with that stupid link to Horseshoe Theory. You did it before and here you are doing it again. For whatever reason, my spam filter does not like it. You will just have to be patient.
#2. Even if the spam filter was not allowing the actual link through, you could still describe where to find the quote, like “From the RationalWiki article on Horseshoe Theory”.
#3. Why in the world are you bringing up Horseshoe Theory yet again?
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If there were such as thing as REPARATIONS for individual contemporary Black people who suffered/suffers from extraordinary racism, I would nominated Dorothy Counts to be among the (long list of) recipients. But as resw observed, knowing what Ms Counts endured, who here would have sent their child to endure such hate from monsters??
This type of racist HATE is on par with some unabashed white irish dude (now calling himself scrib, formerly known as LoM) coming to a primarily Black site(?) and telling a Black woman here to have sex with a dead white person … among other indignities. That would have been the time for a sincere heartfelt REAL apology, a lengthy leave of absence AND a name change.
It’s no wonder why so many people suspect his rank presence here to be that of Xp… Mr. Racist extraordinaire.
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Those stinky PORKskinned creatures that called themselves whites when it’s convenient for them are just PURE EVIL. Their visceral HATRED will never be MATCHED by anyone on this planet.
As far as I’m concerned, as a human being, I will never comprehend why those white creatures HATE so much the HUMAN BEINGS they brought in heavy CHAINS & VICIOUSLY tortured for over CENTURIES.
This LOVELY girl didn’t do ANYTHING to them!
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After reading all the treatment that Dorothy Counts went through, it makes me believe that white people have a need to fear and hate. It sounds crazy as one may think that no one wants to feel those emotions. But white people seem to want to relentlessly and without reflection.
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How come u name urself after a porn star?
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It helps if you have a non-American accent. Helps them with the divide and conquer.
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@”#3. Why in the world are you bringing up Horseshoe Theory yet again?”
Because it’s a post on how terribly a black person was treated by her white classmates. As usual, your racist campaign colleague is just deflecting.
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Really insightful and inspiring stories especially for us who live in Africa.
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It would be interesting to know the names, fates and progeny of the whites in the photos. Every single one of them.
I can just hear it now, if a journalist were to confront them:
“I am not a racist.”
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@ Fan …
Some of us long to prove just that. Others believe our progress is impossible to achieve or maintain without white cooperation.
Some of us fear that reverting to a “voluntary segregation” of sorts (where we keep our money in our own communities, build and rebuild our own institutions and essentially disengage from the bulk of whitedom) will do nothing more than signal to whites that it’s okay to resegregate and exclude blacks from their social and economic spheres, whether its intentional or coincidental.
Frankly, I wouldn’t give up my child to people who hated her to the point where they could barely restrain themselves from killing her. I can’t imagine what was going on in the heads of Mrs. Counts-Scoggins’ parents.
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@Butthenwhy
“It would be interesting to know the names, fates and progeny of the whites in the photos”
+1000. I’d also like to know the names of their generation X and millennial children too because racist scum breed racist scum.
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