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OPINIONS
February 14, 2019 |
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Georgianna McLean was one of several African-American teachers convinced to teach at previously all-white Smithfield High School in the late 1960s. These pictures are from the school's 1969 yearbook, which had this to say about the popular Glee Club teacher: "We are fortunate to have a very talented and well-like directress."
 Wingate Lassiter |
A Smithfield
success story: acceptance
of integrated schools
Yes, it's true --- in this community, infamously known in the late 1960s as "that Klan town."
It took a while after the Supreme Court's decision in 1954 to integrate the public schools in Johnston County, but when it finally came in earnest in 1969, it came not with a bang but a whimper.
One reason for its acceptance was a convergence of circumstances that brought about school consolidation and school integration at the same time. Our traditionally segregated high schools graduated their last class of seniors in the spring of 1969, including Smithfield High and all-black Johnston Central High (in Smithfield) along with Selma High, Richard B. Harrison (also in Selma), Wilson's Mills, and Corinth-Holders. At summer's end in 1969, all high-school students that would have attended those schools went to brand-new Smithfield-Selma Senior High School.
Therefore, everybody lost their beloved hometown schools at the same time and had to accept a new reality together.
But there's more to the story:
In her 2007 book, A History of Smithfield High School 1903-1969, native SHS "Red Devil" Julia Allen McCullers devoted a chapter to the gradual shift to integrated schools here, a process that started with "voluntary integration" in the summer of 1965. Over the next couple of years, Superintendent of Schools Evander Simpson coaxed several of the most respected teachers at all-black Johnston Central High to move over to Smithfield High (where a handful of African-American students had already enrolled).
Mrs. McCullers interviewed several of those teachers for her book.
Among them was Carolyn Ennis (who's retired from teaching but continues on staff assisting Johnston's school administrators with special projects). Mrs. Ennis had this to say to Mrs. McCullers about her years at Smithfield High: "Most of the students were willing to give the new system a chance.... They may have been hearing racial comments and attitudes at home, but for the most part they were just teenagers who wanted to get along with their peers and teachers."
By the time SSS opened its doors in the summer of '69, teachers and students of different races had come to accept one another's presence. Yes, in the late '60s there were instances of prejudice among students and parents and staff showing through now and then, and Mrs. McCullers cited some of that in her book. But frightening racial disturbance at Smithfield High School never made news because it never happened.
Meanwhile, that "Welcome to Smithfield" Ku Klux Klan billboard glaring down on the U.S. 70 entrance to town at the river gave this community a reputation it hardly deserved. The first sign went up on private property in 1967, was once replaced, and taken down for good in 1976, a year before Smithfield celebrated the town's bicentennial. Legal efforts by Smithfield leaders to banish the billboard had failed to achieve that goal, and so it was voluntarily removed by what was left of the local KKK chapter, perhaps in part from a realization that integration was here to stay.
Sadly, there's still a copious amount of racial prejudice all around us, and disheartening is the national political climate that has recently opened old wounds of hatred and misunderstanding. Even so, it's good to reflect on one chapter of local history that shows us that we can all get along if we will simply respect one another as we would want to be respected.
Old high-school yearbooks are now online, thanks to the DigitalNC project hosted by the UNC Library at Chapel Hill:
Here's the link to Smithfield High's digitized yearbooks>
Here's the link to Johnston Central's digitized yearbooks>
"Hard copies" of yearbooks from those two schools (and many others in Johnston) may be viewed at the Heritage Center in Downtown Smithfield.
A PLACE FOR OPINIONS
Any American newspaper worth its salt has an "editorial page" --- a place where its readers may voice their opinions alongside the point of view of its editor. The Smithfield Weekly Sun will continue that long-standing tradition to provide a public forum for the printed word. We will restrict the content of our forum to concerns of local interest, and we will require subscribers who wish to contribute their opinions to do so over their names. In other words, we will only publish signed (and verified) "letters to the editor." We do request that your submissions be in digital form, transmitted to us via e-mail sent to wingate.lassiter@hometownheritage.com.
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