Categories
African Americans Charles Adams Edward Kidder Graham Jackson Library Woman's College

African Americans and WC Library Use Prior to Desegregation

In February 1951, UNC System Trustee (and vocal segregationist) John W. Clark contacted Woman’s College Chancellor Edward Kidder Graham to inquire about faculty members’ support of integration and college policies regarding campus facilities and resources. In investigating Clark’s questions, Graham found that the Library (which had just moved in to its new building) allowed limited […]

Categories
African Americans concerts music race relations The University of North Carolina at Greensboro UNCG

The Motown Invasion of 1968/69

18 year old Stevie Wonder during his1968 UNCG performance (p. 54) In the late 1960s and into the early 1970s, the advancing struggle for civil rights infused nearly every facet of the UNCG and the Greensboro community. The Greensboro environment of this time, while being a volatile scene for race relations, enjoyed musical performances from […]

Categories
African Americans Ezekiel Robinson State Normal and Industrial School

Early African American Campus Employees

While African American students were banned from enrolling at the school now known as UNCG prior to 1956, the campus during its earlier years operated primarily on the labor of African American men and women who served as cooks, janitors, handymen, and others who worked behind the scenes. Ezekiel “Zeke” Robinson Little is known about […]

Categories
African Americans ARA-Slater food service strike

Food Service Workers’ Strike of 1969

Cafeteria food service on campus was first introduced in the 1950s, but dissatisfaction soon mounted as growing enrollments brought longer lines and complaints about the choices and quality of the food offered. In 1964, the Carolinian student newspaper ran a comparative analysis of the food services offered at UNCG, Chapel Hill, and N.C. State, finding […]

Categories
African Americans Bennett College Charlotte Hawkins Brown Dr. Anna Gove Julius Foust North Carolina A&T race relations Walter Clinton Jackson

Walter Clinton Jackson, Race, and WC Resources

Throughout the first seven decades of its existence, the institution now known as UNCG grappled with a number of questions regarding facility use by students from neighboring colleges, particularly the nearby African-American institutions such as North Carolina A&T and Bennett College. Interior of the College Library, circa 1923 As early as February 1929, administrators were […]

Categories
African Americans civil rights Civil Rights Movement community Otis Singletary Sit-ins Tate Street Woman's College

WC Students, Tate Street, and Desegregation in 1963

While the February 1960 sit-in at Greensboro’s F.W. Woolworth store downtown is well known, fewer people are knowledgeable about a second round of protests that escalated in Greensboro in the Spring of 1963. A number of Woman’s College (WC) students participated in the 1960 sit-ins, but the 1963 movement hit the students of WC a […]

Categories
African Americans Charles D. McIver Ezekiel Robinson founding

Ezekiel “Zeke” Robinson

Robinson with the college’s horse and buggy When the doors opened at the State Normal and Industrial School (now UNCG) on October 5, 1892, school president Charles Duncan McIver had 15 well-qualified faculty members and nearly 200 young female students. While cooks, janitors, handymen, and others worked behind the scenes to keep the school running, […]

Categories
African Americans African-American Studies Program Black Studies Program Neo-Black Society

African American Studies at UNCG

When organized in the 1967-1968 academic year, the Neo Black Society at UNCG expressed three primary goals for the new student group. Two social missions were recognized: a desire to help with voter registration drives and to work with the Greensboro United Tutorial Service (a community group aimed at connecting college students with community education […]

Categories
African Americans Neo-Black Society Protests student life

Neo-Black Society vs. the student senate, 1973

In 1967, black students at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) formed the student group, the Neo-Black Society (NBS), in response to growing concerns about the support and acceptance of black students on campus.  At its founding, the NBS was extremely separatist, calling for parallel university events for black students.  The organization was […]

Categories
African Americans Brown v. Board of Education Civil Rights Movement Integration Woman's College

JoAnne Smart Drane Remembers The Integration of Woman’s College

JoAnne Smart and Bettye Tillman, 1956 In 1954, the United States Supreme Court ruled in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision that state-sanctioned segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. This decision eventually led the state of North Carolina to begin the process of desegregating its three branches of the Consolidated University […]

css.php