Students and faculty joined outside the front doors of D.H . Hill Library Monday to take part in the Red, White & Black tour of N.C . State’s African-American history.
The tour, organized by NCSU Libraries in collaboration with the African American Cultural Center and the Department of History, took the tour group for a walk through campus in an African-American’s shoes during the height of segregation and racial inequality.
Walter Jackson, advisor for the Department of History and one of the tour guides, said until the 1950s public universities in the South were segregated by law. When N.C . State was founded in 1887, the only African-Americans employed by the University worked as janitors and maids. African-Americans were not permitted to cross campus, they were told to walk where they would be seen by the least amount on people.
“I always knew there was segregation on campus, but never thought it was so bad that African-Americans could not even cross campus,” Joshua Andrews, a senior in psychology, said. “I love the brickyard and can’t imagine being banned because of my race.”
Jackson and Toni Thorpe, program coordinator for the African American Cultural Center and Jackson’s fellow guide, said universities didn’t react well to integration. When the University of Alabama admitted a female, African-American student in 1956, Thorpe said, the student was taunted by mobs of white people and suffered attacks of violence on campus.
NCSU admitted its first four African-American undergraduate students in 1956 as well, but they did not suffer nearly as much harassment as the young woman at the University of Alabama, according to Thorpe.
“There were a few cases of students leaving when an African-American student entered the room, but other than the occasional hostility there was not as much violence as I think everyone expected,” Toni Thorpe said outside of Holiday Hall.
Thorpe, a friend of Erwin Holmes and Ed Carson, two of the first four African-American students admitted to the University, said there were certainly rough times.
“Erwin Holmes told that he went to class on the first day, but when he came back for the next class the original instructor was gone and had been replaced with another,” Thorpe said. “He discovered later that the instructor refused to teach a black student.”
Despite the tough times, Thorpe said they focused on the positive experiences of their time at NCSU rather than the negative. Holmes favorite memory, she said, was of going to a restaurant with the N.C . State tennis team and the waiter refused to serve them unless they kicked Holmes out.
“Holmes said he would never forget what his team mates told the waiter: ‘If he doesn’t eat, we don’t eat,'” Thorpe said with a gleam in her eye.
The tour visited Brooks Hall, the former home of the African American Cultural Center in the 1960s before it was burned down, as well as the Free Expression Tunnel, the site of racial graffiti toward President-elect Barack Obama in 2008. Thorpe said it pushed the University back in its progress towards racial equality.
The tour ended in Witherspoon Student Center, the only building on campus named after an African-American.
“The tour was really interesting,” Joseph Darsey , a sophomore in mechanical engineering, said. “It made me think about segregation in a way I’ve never thought of it before. It was inspirational for change.”
Thorpe and Jackson reflected on the progression of racial equality throughout the University’s history.
“N.C . State has a lot to be proud of,” Thorpe said, “but we still have a long way to go.”
In order to keep moving forward, Thorpe said people need to learn to listen and understand the feelings of others.
“We are born physical, spiritual and mental beings but we only see each other in the physical. We need to internalize, realize we are wrong and be open to change. You have to be brave to change,” Thorpe said.
During post-tour refreshments at Witherspoon Student Center, participants discussed their thoughts and shared laughs, reflecting on what they had learned.
“It’s incredible to think that N.C . State used to be involved in these types of issues, it all seems too distant,” Hayden Brislin , a junior in plant biology, said. “We have come so far from those dark times.”
