“During all this time away from Greensboro, my junior and senior years at Dudley High School stayed in my thoughts and my soul.”
— John Allen Wall, one of the first white students to attend Dudley.
Fifty years ago, Greensboro graduated its first fully desegregated public high school classes.
Until that time, what then were called the Greensboro City Schools were only minimally mixed. Under a “freedom of choice” plan, small numbers of Black students attended predominantly white schools, though in most cases they were responsible for their own transportation.
But under pressure from the courts in 1971, the city undertook a wholesale redistricting plan that affected all of its public schools, including those that had been historically Black.
The Class of 1973, which was the first to graduate under that plan, will gather this year for a series of reunions, including Grimsley, Page and Smith.
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Among the biggest of those celebrations will be the one for Dudley High School, which begins today.
Dudley was one of only a few predominantly Black high schools in the state that were allowed to remain open during desegregation in North Carolina. More often, those schools were closed and the students reassigned to majority-white schools.
So, in the fall of 1971, the unimaginable became reality: Dudley had its first white athletes, cheerleaders, majorettes, Junior ROTC cadets and student leaders.
It was hardly a perfect transition. There was some tension and awkwardness, especially in the beginning. Some students resented having to leave Dudley and some resented having to come to Dudley. But in time friendships were forged, some of them lasting.
And, in the spring of 1973, the first racially mixed class in Dudley’s history received diplomas.
Many of those students will convene at the Marriott Greensboro Downtown this weekend to reconnect, to reflect and, of course, to party.
The Dudley Consolidated Class of 1973, as it calls itself, is especially unique because it involves an “extended family.” Among those who have taken part in the planning of this year’s reunion:
Thus there will be three speakers at Saturday’s banquet:
- A white graduate, Leann Nease Brown, who now practices law at a Chapel Hill firm, Brown and Bunch PLLC.
- A Black alumnus, Thurman Guy, Ph.D., who attended Dudley as a sophomore but was redistricted to Page High School, where he graduated.
- And Black alumnus Howard “T.Y.” Moore, Student Council president in 1973, who spent all three of his high school years at Dudley.
As for John Allen Wall, now a Chicago attorney, he not only plans to attend the reunion but is working on a book about his experiences at Dudley and is conducting a survey of fellow alumni.
Wonder what they’ll say.
In 1971 Greensboro was considered a national model for school desegregation.
It had been unified, intentional and proactive in making the plan work. The Chamber of Commerce and Black clergy played a particularly instrumental role.
“Within a few months, experts were citing Greensboro as proof that blacks and whites could come together to make desegregation work,” William H. Chafe wrote in his 1980 book “Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina and the Black Struggle for Freedom.”
After studying desegregation in 43 communities, five organizations, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, declared that Greensboro’s process was “probably superior to that of almost any other city in the South.”
But as Chafe noted and we’re bearing witness today, it didn’t last.
Thanks to white flight to the suburbs and private schools, the diversity in Greensboro schools plummeted. Chafe wrote: “Over a period of seven years the school population declined by 5000 students and the ratio of white to black shifted from 68/32 to 55/45.” By 1978, four schools had become majority-Black.
Fifty years later, our brief flirtation with racial diversity seems quaint and oh so distant.
Today, what are now called Guilford County Schools are more than 60% Black and Hispanic and 27.5% white. The current Dudley student body is 2% white.
Meanwhile, state lawmakers are poised to make a bad situation worse by offering taxpayer-funded vouchers for private schools regardless of income.
So, while the Class of 1973 will no doubt celebrate and reminisce this weekend, it also may wonder whether the upheaval of 1971 was really worth it.
And what could have been if only we had stayed the course.