Public School Forum

A think-and-do tank committed to North Carolina public schools

by Emma Miller

On September 4th, 1957, Dorothy Counts becomes the first Black student to attend a predominantly white school in North Carolina, Harry Harding High School in Charlotte. Counts was met with intense resistance and violence from white students, parents, and administrators alike. Dorothy Counts discusses her first day of school:

Audio Transcript
“The first day was not a good day. It was…when we got there that morning, they had barricaded the area, and so I wasn’t able to–my father had to let me out and then go find a place to park, and a friend of his was with him at the time. And so he ended up walking me to school, which was about two blocks. The streets were crowded with students and adults. A lot of the adults were telling the students what to do. These were white adults and students. They threw rocks, they threw ice, they spat on me, they called me names, those kinds of things. Once I got into the school, basically I sat alone, and it was the same kind of thing that first day, sort of a rejection. But I am a very determined person, and I’m stubborn too. And so when I went home that day, my father asked me, ‘How did things go?’ and I replied that it wasn’t the best, but after they got to know me that it would be okay. And that was me being naïve, not knowing.”