On May 7, 1954, the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision declared racial segregation in public schools
unconstitutional. While states were ordered to comply with “all deliberate speed,” full integration took decades in many areas.
As one of the 11 children who desegregated Durham Public Schools in 1963, I recall the courage and innocence with which we, as kids, faced this monumental task. I enjoyed a rich childhood, and at age 10, I was oblivious to the dangers of being the sole Black student in a classroom. Along with my siblings and the other children involved, I quickly learned that our lives were profoundly different.
Our parents instilled in us the importance of our role in this work to end segregation. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whom my father befriended during their time together as students at Boston University, helped shape our family’s views during his visits to our home.
Another civil rights activist, lawyer Floyd B. McKissick, and his family also played pivotal roles in desegregation in North Carolina. McKissick was among the first Black students admitted to the University of North Carolina law school after initially being denied on the basis of race. As an attorney, McKissick represented the first Black undergraduates at UNC in 1955 and the families who integrated the Durham school
system in 1959.


Two of those students were McKissick’s daughters, Andre and Joycelyn, who endured harsh treatment as they desegregated Durham High School, including physical assaults. In 1963, attorney and former State Senator Floyd McKissick, Jr., and his sister Dr. Charmaine McKissick-Melton, were among those who desegregated Durham elementary schools. At eight years old and only a third grader, McKissick-Melton,
who is now an RGEA member, displayed remarkable courage and strength. Her family was intricately involved and faced constant threats on their lives.
McKissick-Melton frequently shares her experiences through public speaking and writing. She’s currently working on her father’s memoirs and continues to advocate for human and social justice.
Ira Harris also has written about his experiences during desegregation. The RGEA member from Rocky Mount recounted his harrowing experiences during school desegregation in his book, Brown-Skinned Boy, which was published last year. During the 1960s, Harris was forcibly removed from his family and placed in a white school to “prove the inferiority of Blacks.” Despite the hardships, he
persevered. “I survived the rough patches,” he says.
My brother and I have shared our stories with the Durham Public Library collection, while McKissick-Melton continues
to document her family’s history and struggles during that time. Harris’s book and video trailer further illuminate his experiences and the trauma he and his family endured. By preserving our stories, we honor the contributions of those who came before us and work toward a future free from past injustices. And though these events are part of the past, their relevance persists as rights continue to be challenged.
“The desegregation of public schools was necessary for our country to begin its evolution,” McKissick-Melton says,
“but today it feels, more than 60 years later, that we still have a struggle ahead to continue to make progress.”