unknown
Description
In response to a March 8, 1974 racial disturbance at recently-integrated Grimsley High School in Greensboro, this unidentified Greensboro News & Record reporter interviewed white students for their perspectives on race relations at the school. The article anonymously quotes the white students, many of whom were having a difficult time with integration. Feedback from the white students included: some felt they were being held back in class because black students were not on the same academic level as them, black students were launching unprovoked violent attacks on white students, that black and white students still socialized nearly-exclusively with their own, and black students tend to be distracting. A white teacher notes that, "We thought that if they got their rights, they would all put on suits and ties and act like Sidney Poitier. We thought wrong." A school official says, "When I was growing up, I was prejudiced because of what people told me about blacks, but these kids are becoming prejudiced because of what they're experiencing themselves."This article was clipped and saved in a scrapbook on desegregation by Clarence "Curly" Harris, manager of the Greensboro Woolworth store at the time of the 1960 sit-ins that spawned lunch counter sit-ins across the South and rejuvenated the civil rights movement.
Text
Clippings Scrapbooks9&Quot; X 11&Quot;
Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, UNCG University LibrariesIN COPYRIGHT. This item is subject to copyright. Contact the contributing institution for permission to reuse.