Aug. 24, 1955: Old Fort School Desegregation Struggle

“What Happened to Our School?,” a mural painted by Brooklyn artist Don Rimx on the former Sanderlin Theater in Old Fort, was inspired by a photo of Albert Joyner and his attempt to enroll local children in a segregated school in 1955. Painted on Sept. 19, 2020. Photo by Fred McCormick. Source: The Valley Echo

One Sunday in September of 1950, dozens of African American children marched down the main street of Old Fort carrying signs saying, “We Want Our School Back” and “What Happened to Our School.”

In 1950, local officials decided to shut down the all-Black Catawba View Grammar School — a fixture in the Black community of Old Fort, North Carolina — and, according to the Old Fort Together website, the plan was to “bus its 75 elementary students to a poorly equipped Black school in Marion, 30 miles round trip.”

The Old Fort Together website continues,

Despite Black opposition, petitions by parents, and protests by children, the school was shut down in 1952 and razed. A state investigator found that “there was not one person interviewed who did not regret the removal of the school from the community.” One Old Fort resident published an opinion in the local newspaper calling the closing and razing of the Black school “acts of aggression” and “disgraceful.”

Parents applied for their children to attend the local all-white elementary school and were denied. They even hired a white attorney, George Sandlin, to no avail. On August 24, 1955, a group of Black students attempted to enter the all-white Old Fort Elementary School in Old Fort, North Carolina. They were turned away at the door.

This was a year after the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education case ruled that racial segregation was unconstitutional. As in many places throughout the South, Old Fort did not willingly accede to this court ruling.

The Old Fort Together website concludes,

In reviewing the case in late 1955, U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that Brown had indeed “made inappropriate” the establishment of a segregated school as a form of relief, but the judges did not offer easy alternatives. In 1957, 66 Black parents applied to send their children to Old Fort’s white schools, but the school board rejected them, arguing that they had incorrectly filled out their applications and that additional enrollment in already crowded white schools posed health and safety risks. The color line in McDowell County’s schools remained intact for another 7 years.

Watch a short film about the creation of the mural and the struggle for racial justice in Old Fort.