On Sept. 4, 1957, Dorothy Counts took the longest walk of her life.

In many ways, it was also Charlotte’s.

Photo/Associated Press

Counts, then 15, was yelled at, spat on, and had debris thrown at her by angry whites as she desegregated Harding High School. Photos of that difficult walk were splashed on newspapers around the world.

“I had no idea when I left for school that morning what would happen,” she said. “They had barricaded the street, so my father couldn’t drop me off. A family friend, Dr. (Edwin) Thompkins, from Johnson C. Smith University, is the adult pictured walking with me. The walk from Fifth Street to the auditorium at Harding was a long walk that morning.”

A revolution on greens

Seven months before Counts’ (now Counts-Scoggins) walked into history, a group of black golfers enjoyed the fruits of victory - winning a court battle to play at Revolution Golf Course.

“This was not a bed of roses by any means,” said Ray Booton, a member of the group of golfers, who with the NAACP from 1951-1957 fought for the right to equal access on public facilities in Charlotte.

Booton, the lone survivor, was in attendance for the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Revolution’s desegregation on February 17, 1957. Though cancer has impaired his ability to talk, Booton remembers those years vividly.

“It all goes back to the days when I was walking the beat,” as a Charlotte police officer, he said. “As a police officer patrolling the Brooklyn neighborhood, I was in contact with many of the caddies.”

Booton, an officer from 1950-1964, had begun to embrace golf and the right for African Americans to play public courses.

“Golfing was still a country club sport that with blacks was not commonplace,” Booton said. “We weren’t allowed to play, but most golf courses let caddies play on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays when the members didn’t play.”

Booton and 13 other African Americans joined to play at the Bonnie Brae Municipal Golf Course, before being arrested in 1951.

The NAACP sued the city.

“There was a time when if you belonged to the NAACP, your job was in jeopardy,” said Booton. “People were afraid to sign petitions, because it could put their jobs in jeopardy. I was called in and asked if I like my job. I told them yes I do, I just want to play golf.”

The Revolution golfers weren’t the only blacks to make waves on the links. In November 1957, Charlotte native Charlie Sifford became the first black player on the PGA Tour.

Time ripe for change

Charlotte in the 1950s went through a growth spurt, said Tom Hanchett, historian at Levine Museum of the New South. Suburbs were cropping up and the city had a booming middle class that clamored for state of the art facilities such as Ovens Auditorium and the Charlotte Coliseum, now Cricket Arena. But there was two Charlottes, with African Americans locked into an underclass.

“We were finally shaking the doldrums economically, because of the Depression,” Hanchett said. “All that hopefulness, excitement, and prosperity seemed to bump right up against the statement by a quarter of the Southerners that things were not good.”

Race was moving to the forefront of America’s consciousness, too. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, and federal authority was tested as events unfolded at Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. President Dwight Eisenhower ultimately sent soldiers to protect black students at the previously all-white school. Montgomery, Ala., was a hotbed of civil rights activity - and terrorism against black activists. Another Alabama city, Birmingham, would erupt in violence that would earn it an unflattering moniker - “Bombingham.”

“Charlotte’s white leaders looked at what happened in other cities, particularly Montgomery; Birmingham had not erupted yet,” said Hanchett. “Charlotte was looking at Montgomery and Little Rock. I think Charlotte’s leaders didn’t want to do that, and I think African American leaders understood the economic self-preservation the white leaders had and realized if they moved carefully, but firmly, they could make things happen.”

Brown vs. The Board of Education was decided in May of 1954, but in Charlotte, little had changed in terms of equal access to public facilities.

“Fifty years ago it was understood that blacks and white students were separate and black students didn’t have the same resources in all the schools,” said Counts-Scoggins, who would become the face of Charlotte’s desegregation process. “People think in terms of Charlotte-Mecklenburg school integration starting in the early ‘60s with the busing era...or when they gave parents choice, but it started in 1957.”

Fear and prejudice

In 1957, three black families put in applications for their children to attend what had historically been white schools. Gus and Girvaud Roberts (now Girvaud Justice), Delois Huntley and Counts-Scoggins took the first steps toward desegregating the public schools.

“My parents made applications for three of us...my brother Howard was in elementary school, and my brother Wilson was a senior,” said Counts-Scoggins. “It just so happens that I was the one chosen.”

Counts’ experience is different from Gus Roberts, the only student to graduate from the school the students desegregated.

“I think he didn’t have the same things happen that I did in those first five days at Harding,” said Counts-Scoggins. “No one welcomed me. From what I understand, when Gus went to Central, the principal was standing outside waiting to greet him.”

Counts was greeted by students who spat in her food and pushed her in the halls. Teachers did not call on her when she raised her hand in class.

“I respected educators, because I came from a family of educators,” she said. “To go into an environment where the teachers didn’t acknowledge my presence was hard for me. More disheartening than the name calling and the spitting, and the pushing, was that the adults turned their backs.”

Though the process was more peaceful, than the three week standoff that faced the Little Rock Nine, Counts dropped out at Harding after an incident occurred while her brother was picking her up for lunch.

“I walked out and the back window of the car was shattered to pieces,” she explained. “That’s when I had fear. It wasn’t just me; it was my family that was threatened.”

Counts-Scoggins transferred to a school in Pennsylvania; the three remaining students finished the year at their new schools.

“All of that goes on, and Charlotte comes through it,” said Hanchett. “It doesn’t turn into Little Rock, it didn’t turn into Montgomery, and I think it gave white leadership, black leadership, and ordinary folks on both sides a sense that change could happen in a way that won’t cause everything to combust. In some ways we are still benefiting from that sense of possibility.”

Work in progress

In the week Tiger Woods became champion of the Wachovia Championship at Quail Hollow Country Club, the Revolution golfers contribution is still being felt.

“I’m still going up the hill 50 years later,” said Booton, an even bigger golf enthusiast today than he was then. “I never wanted to move; I was raised here and my roots were here. A lot more still needs to be done, but it is a good town now.”
And while golf hasn’t necessarily changed direction since Booton took to the game, Charlotte has.

“The main thing that is distressing now is to the extent that Charlotte has allowed its schools to re-segregate in the last five or six years,” said Hanchett. It seemed the city figured out how to do it right the first time. Why would they undo it now?”

Said Counts-Scoggins: “It does not make me happy, because I think the people who are now involved in doing this have no idea of how it was 50 years ago,” she said. “What those of us went through...not just me, but the families...the other students...to go back to that is very upsetting to me. It’s like it has been forgotten.”

‘It starts with…children’

One person who has not forgotten the experience is Woody Cooper. Cooper was a senior at Harding the year Counts-Scoggins arrived, and is pictured in the famous photo of her walking up to the school, as one of the students standing off to the side.

Top photo: Dorothy Counts-Scoggins endured taunts and violence in 1957 as the first African American student to desegregate Harding High School. Woody Cooper, a Harding senior in ‘57, and Counts-Scoggins embrace in their first meeting last Saturday at Irwin Avenue Open Elementary School, the former Harding campus. Cooper, who lives in Davidson, is on the left in the top photo.

Photo/Erica Singleton

“I thought all these years that I wish I would have said something to her, or done something,” said Cooper. “I don’t know what I would have done, but I wish I’d done something.”

Cooper and Counts-Scoggins had not seen each other since the fall of 1957, but made contact through e-mails. They met for the fist time to take the picture for this article.

“It was great; she’s such a nice person,” said Cooper. “When we were talking, I was thinking how dedicated she is. I have a lot of respect for her.”

Cooper and Counts-Scoggins are also grandparents, and they think about how the world has changed since they were at Harding.
“It starts with younger children,” said Counts-Scoggins. “That’s what Woody and I talked about. By the time we were 15, it was too late. He grew up in an environment where he was taught it was wrong for races to mix. I grew up in an environment where I was taught to embrace all people, but that’s not happening.”

“We look at our grandkids, and they don’t think about skin color,” said Cooper. “That’s not an issue. I’d hate to see them make it an issue again.”

“We’ve gotten to a point where the resources aren’t equitable, same as it was 50 years ago, when I was in segregated schools, so it’s the haves and the have-nots again,” said Counts-Scoggins, an education advocate and counselor.

“We’re never going to have a community where we are totally integrated, and that is fine,” said Counts-Scoggins, “but that doesn’t mean children don’t need to have the experience of learning with children not like them; by doing that they learn from each other.”

Hanchett has hopes for what this year will mean to the city.

“It would be great if this 50th anniversary were a time when the community took stock of where we are and where we’re headed,” he said. “Whether that will happen, I don’t know.”

Despite their rocky past, Counts-Scoggins and Copper found positives to reminisce about during their first meeting at the former Harding campus, now Irwin Avenue Open Elementary School. The two plan to meet for dinner during the summer when their schedules allow.

“We’ve come too far with race relations all these years,” said Cooper. “It would be a shame if [Charlotte] went back.”

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