Harvey Heartley grew up dreaming of playing basketball at State College, now N.C. State.
The 6-foot-4 Heartley was a star at Johnston County Training School in Smithfield in the late 1940s. "Bones," as he was known, was a tremendous shooter.
"If I shot it, I knew it was going in," Heartley recalled.
John McLendon, the coach at North Carolina College, now N.C. Central, started recruiting Heartley after seeing him play as a 14-year-old.
"We played Durham Hillside over at Washington High in Raleigh," Heartley said. "The place was packed. I scored 39 that night. I was 14 years old. I didn't have any bad habits. I went to bed by 8. I drank my milk and ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I could run all night long.
"After the game, Coach McLendon said I needed to come play for him."
After Heartley graduated, he had scholarship offers from throughout the country, but State College and other segregated schools were not an option.
"I wanted to play for State," recalled Heartley, who later coached basketball and was athletic director at St. Augustine's.
"Most people don't remember, but back when the Dixie Classic was played at State, we [blacks] were allowed to sit in one section. Section 48. Right behind the South goal."
Reginald Ennis, the Johnston County Training School coach, got his team tickets to the Dixie Classic, an annual holiday event that pitted four of the nation's top collegiate teams against State, Duke, the North Carolina and Wake Forest in a three-day tournament.
"It was wrong, and it was racist to put us in that one section, but it was wonderful," Heartley said. "We'd sit in our little section, and we'd see coaches and players from everywhere. And we got to see all those great players. I wanted to get down on the court with them."
Harvey Heartley played at N.C. Central from 1951 through 1955. He was an all-CIAA selection and later was inducted into the Central Intercollegiate Athletics Association Hall of Fame. Heartley later coached state championship high school teams at Clayton Cooper and Raleigh Ligon.
In Raleigh in 1951, there were still separate drinking fountains for blacks and whites, separate entrances at movie theaters and separate swimming pools.
N.C. State would not have its first black scholarship player for another 20 years.
Al Heartley, another Johnston County Training School product, made State's freshman basketball team as a walk-on in 1967 and became its first black basketball scholarship recipient the following year.
"I wanted to go there so badly," Harvey Heartley said. "I think that's why my younger brother went there."
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Nearby 2A prep softball rivals North Johnston and Wilson Beddingfield played the ultimate grudge match Saturday afternoon, double-time style. 
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