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Paving the way for integration
by Johnny Whitfield, Wake Weekly Associate Editor
In the fall of 1966, with mandated desegregation still several years away, five young black girls left DuBois High School to enroll in previously all-white Wake Forest High School.
Of the five girls, only two -- Rhonda Hood and Theresa Watkins -- stayed at Wake Forest High School until they graduated. Their presence at the school helped pave the way for a smooth commingling of the races in 1971. Using a program called Freedom of Choice, the group of DuBois students, which also included Pauline Battle, Yvonne Peppers and Jeanette Massenburg, applied to attend Wake Forest High School. Watkins laughed as she explained her reason for transferring schools. "They had cut out the basketball team at DuBois and I was something of a tomboy and I wanted to play basketball, so I decided to try to go to Wake Forest." Although she got to Wake Forest High, Watkins said she later changed her mind about trying out for basketball. "I began to face reality and I just realized it wasn't going to happen," Watkins said. Still, she stuck it out in the uncomfortable surroundings thanks to the support of teachers who she said were concerned only about her education and not the color of her skin. "Pansie Sullivan, Ruamie Squires and Annie Bobo were especially good to me while I was there," Watkins said. Students were a little harder on Watkins and her black classmates, though some of them went out of their way to make her feel a part of the class. "John Byrne would go the extra mile and look out for me. He would walk with us to the cafeteria," Watkins said. Some white girls also befriended Watkins, including Debbie Steeley, Emily Jo Holding and Mary Alice Warren. "They were some of the people I grew to be close to," Watkins said. Still, not all the experiences in the previously all-white school were pleasant ones. Students broke into her locker from time to time and damaged her textbooks. Her complaints about the damage went unheeded, and she was forced to pay for the damage. And some people were more overt in their distaste for sharing their school with black students. "I always tried to ignore the things students would say. But one day I came home and just cried. I told my mother that I had been called the N-word so many times I was beginning to think that was what she had named me," Watkins said. Hood, Battle and Watkins were among the top students in their class at DuBois High School when they left after their sophomore years to enroll at Wake Forest. Battle moved with her family to Chapel Hill after her junior year, but Hood and Watkins became the first black students to graduate from the high school in 1968. Hood went on to graduate from Fayetteville State University. She died in 1980 from complications related to juvenile diabetes. One of her classmates at FSU was Regina Massenburg Umstead, who says she wanted to attend Wake Forest High with her friends. "I had filled out the application to go, but one of the teachers at DuBois talked to my mother and she decided against it," Umstead said. That was the end of the conversation, Umstead said. "We didn't question our parents in those days, but I really wanted to go bad." Instead, Umstead and her classmates at DuBois heard about the student experience at Wake Forest from Watkins and the others who attended. "There was a lot of curiosity about what it was like there, but we didn't ask a lot of questions," Umstead said. Still, they learned bits and pieces about their friends' experiences because they returned to the neighborhood each day after school. "We would still see them every day and we all attended the same churches and social functions," Umstead said. Watkins agreed that curiosity wasn't rampant among her former DuBois classmates. And while the experience had its bad moments, Watkins says she wouldn't trade it for the world. "It helped shape my values and gave me the work ethic I have today," Watkins said. After her graduation from Wake Forest High School, Watkins attended Hardbarger Junior College. After a career in public service, she returned to school and graduated from Shaw University in 1995. Today, Watkins says the experiences of those first black students at Wake Forest High School continue to serve black children today. "Five black girls from DuBois broke the barrier. We took the punches that they don't have to take when they enter Wake Forest Elementary School."
Last Updated On: February 9, 2006
Copyright 2006 The Wake Weekly