Desegregating the University of North Carolina, 1951–1955
Five Black students began law school classes on June 22, 1951, after the courts barred the university from refusing them; the first Black undergraduates, the Frasier brothers and John Brandon, followed in 1955.
28 indexed records are connected with this event.
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Related works found in catalogs and archives across North Carolina. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it.
To Drink from the Well: The Struggle for Racial Equality at the Nation’s Oldest University
Kapur, Geeta · 2021 · Blair
Foreword / by Rev. Dr. William Barber II -- Chapter 1: New Hope Chapel Hill -- Chapter 2: The Black Wall Street of America -- Chapter 3: The Great Depression controversies -- Chapter 4: Hot as blazes -- Chapter 5: The u…
Oral history interview with Daniel H. Pollitt, February 15, 1991: interview L-0064-4, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Pollitt, Daniel H. · 2008 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
This is the fourth interview in a nine-part series of interviews with civil liberties lawyer Daniel H. Pollitt. In this interview, Pollitt discusses his thoughts on race and athletics at UNC, as well as his involvement …
Oral history interview with Floyd B. McKissick, Sr., May 31, 1989: interview L-0040, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
McKissick, Floyd B. · 2007 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
Floyd McKissick was born into a prominent black family in North Carolina. The racism he witnessed and experienced during his formative years and early adulthood--including during his tenure in the Army--had a profound i…
Oral history interview with Bob Scott, April 4, 1990 interview L-0193, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007).
Scott, Robert Walter · 2007 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
The son of former governor Kerr Scott (1949-1953), Robert W. Scott served as governor of North Carolina from 1969 to 1973. He begins the interview with a brief discussion of his education at North Carolina State Univers…
Oral history interview with Harvey E. Beech, September 25, 1996 interview J-0075, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007).
Beech, Harvey E. · 2007 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
Harvey E. Beech was born in Kinston, North Carolina, in 1923, the youngest of five children. Although Beech's father could not read or write, he saved his money and opened barbershops throughout the Kinston community. H…
Pauli Murray, who grew up in Durham and lived in New York, applied to UNC's graduate school in 1938 to study with Howard Odum and Guy B. Johnson. On December 14, two days after the Supreme Court's Gaines ruling, Dean W. W. Pierson rejected her because of her race, and her appeals to President Frank Porter Graham became national news.
On October 25, 1949, Harold Epps and other law students at North Carolina College in Durham sued for admission to UNC's law school. A federal district court ruled against them on October 9, 1950, but the Fourth Circuit reversed on March 27, 1951, and the Supreme Court refused to hear the university's appeal on June 4, 1951.
About a week after the Supreme Court refused on June 4, 1951, to review McKissick v. Carmichael, Black students registered for summer session at UNC's law school, the first African Americans to enroll at the university. UNC Law names them as Harvey E. Beech, James L. Lassiter, J. Kenneth Lee, Floyd B. McKissick and James R. Walker.
After a 1951 federal court decision in McKissick v. Carmichael, five Black students began law school classes at UNC on June 22, 1951. In September 1955, again under court order, LeRoy and Ralph Frasier and John Lewis Brandon of Durham registered as the university's first Black undergraduates.
A year after they entered as the first Black students at UNC's law school, Harvey Beech and J. Kenneth Lee received their law degrees. UNC also lists James Robert Walker among the 1952 graduates.
LeRoy and Ralph Frasier and John Lewis Brandon, all of Durham, became UNC's first Black undergraduates when they began classes on September 19, 1955. A three-judge federal court in Greensboro had ordered the university on September 10 to process their applications, and they registered in the General College.
Karen L. Parker, who transferred from the Woman's College in Greensboro in 1963 as UNC's first Black woman undergraduate, graduated in journalism in 1965. She was the first African American woman to receive an undergraduate degree from the University, and as a student she joined Chapel Hill sit-ins and was arrested in December 1963.
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Background reading at OCPL
Held in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection. Selected because their titles or catalog subjects provide wider historical context for this event; they may not discuss the Orange County event directly.
Background reading · Rebecca Wall CollectionOur Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North CarolinaGreene, Christina · 2005 Subjects in the Library of Congress catalog record: African Americans -- Civil rights -- North Carolina -- Durham -- History -- 20th century; Civil rights movements -- North Carolina -- Durham -- History -- 20th century; African American women -- Political activity -- North Carolina -- Durham -- History -- 20th century