AT&T calendar honors those who made North Carolina better
The 2016 Heritage Calendar honoring people who contributed to the lives and experienced of African-Americans in North Carolina is now available, along with lesson plans developed by the N.C. Department of Public Instruction. These are the people featured in the calendar, which is published by AT&T and available at www.ncheritagecalendar.com.
Compiled by UNC Chapel Hill students Jun Chou, Madeline Reich, Evan Schmidt and Alicia Taylor and edited by Winston Cavin.
They won key civil rights cases
Few people of their generation have had the impact on North Carolina as three lawyers who co-founded a now-prestigious Charlotte law firm in 1968.
“We were the first racially integrated law firm in the state of North Carolina,” said James Ferguson, one of the co-founders. “We felt ... we would be creating and living out the idea of racial equality that drove us all to get together in the first place.”
Julius L. Chambers founded the firm as a solo practice in 1964. Re-forming with Ferguson and Adam Stein, the firm gained recognition from its involvement in a series of important civil rights trials of the early 1970s.
In 1971, the firm won Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, the landmark United States Supreme Court case allowing busing for school integration nationwide, argued by Chambers. It also won the Cotton v. Scotland Neck case,
which was argued by Stein and dealt with racial gerrymandering of school districts. And it championed the Wilmington Ten case, dealing with the firebombing of a grocery store.
“We probably handled more significant civil rights cases through the 1970s and 1980s than any private law firm in the country,” Stein said.
All the attorneys faced occasionally violent opposition, including bombings.
Chambers subsequently served as general counsel of the NAACP before being appointed Chancellor of North Carolina Central University in 1993.
He retired in 2001 and rejoined the firm. He passed away in 2013.
Stein served as North Carolina’s first Appellate Defender and now works at another law firm in Chapel Hill.
Ferguson, still at the original firm in Charlotte, continues to be passionately engaged in helping to end discrimination or racial disparity.
He led desegregation effort
For Dr. Dudley Flood, teaching isn’t a profession – it’s a lifestyle and a calling.
“If I’m awake, I’m a teacher,” he says. “I can’t imagine not being a teacher.”
Beginning his career as a teacher, he later became a principal before being hired in 1969 by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction to lead the desegregation efforts of the state’s public schools.
“That’s the thing in which I’m most proud, because it was the most taxing and most challenging opportunity I’ve ever had,” he said. “At that time, it was uncommon to find anyone who really wanted to desegregate their schools.”
Although he has been part of desegregation efforts in 48 states, he believes that work is still incomplete.
“Integration is still in process,” he says. “Most people don’t know the difference between desegregation and integration. I spend time even now working with that concept.”
His older sister, Minnie Flood Reynolds, sparked his commitment to becoming a teacher when he was in high school. Later, other mentors helped him earn bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees from North Carolina Central University, East Carolina University and Duke University, respectively.
Today, Flood works with many volunteer organizations. His favorite is an organization named after him, the Flood Group.
“It’s purpose and mission is to empower parents of students to further empower their children academically,” he said. “Right now we’re focusing on reading, though we call it ‘literacy’ because articulation is equally as important as reading.”
A prostate cancer survivor, Flood remains active in campaigning against the disease. Flood also serves on the Social Services Committee of the Wake Human Services Board and on the N.C. Public School Forum Executive Board. He also works with a leadership academy for students who have demonstrated high potential.
She helps kids succeed in life
As a teacher, Jana Jones Halls was passionate about helping students succeed in the classroom. Then she realized a greater calling was helping them succeed in life.
“There’s so much need outside of the classroom that has to be addressed for many students to have a chance to be successful,” she said. “The issue of poverty is so overwhelming.”
A native of McLean, Va., Jones Halls came to Wilmington, NC, in 2004, planning to work with children. She worked with special needs students at Codington Elementary and then taught language arts at the Friends School of Wilmington.
In 2007, Jones Halls participated in the first of two mission trips to Kenya, life-changing experiences for the minister’s daughter.
“That really transformed my life,” she said. “I was actively pursuing the possibility of moving to Kenya to teach when I realized the things my heart was connecting to in Kenya were here.”
In 2012 Jones Halls “made a leap of faith” and joined the Americorps HandsOnSchools program as the community outreach coordinator at D.C. Virgo Preparatory Academy. She was named Executive Director of Wilmington’s Blue Ribbon Commission on the Prevention of Youth Violence (BRC) a year later.
“It’s a daunting task knowing that any day you could see your kids’ photos on the news or get a call that something happened to them,” she said. “So you celebrate the small successes. And, in those moments, you know it’s all worth it.”
Jones Halls’ mother, who passed away in 2013, often suggested that her daughter would one day lead a non-profit organization, an idea Jones Halls scoffed at and brushed aside.
“I never thought I would be in this position,” Jones Halls said. “But it’s one of those situations where you realize all of a sudden that you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.”
A ‘blessed life’ has inspired her
Joan Higginbotham didn’t set out to become the third African-American woman to fly in space. But then, her professional life has never really been what she expected.
Her interest in engineering began at an early age and continued when she was an undergraduate student from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Accepting a job with NASA, she was working on the electrical systems for the space shuttles when she was urged to apply for the highly-selective astronaut program.
“There’s a lot of learning initially,” she said. “You have to learn to operate the shuttle, fly supersonic jets, and scuba dive. The first year is just learning, learning, learning.”
Higginbotham launched into space on December 9, 2006, aboard the shuttle Discovery on STS-116 with the mission of delivering and installing a major component of the International Space Station.
“I feel blessed to have been able to fly in space. For me, it was great to represent my country,” Higginbotham said.
She retired from NASA in 2007 with 20 years’ service and joined Marathon Oil, where she was drawn to their malaria eradication program in Equatorial Guinea, Africa. Reflecting on that experience and what she considered an “incredibly blessed life,” Higginbotham decided she wanted to help others.
She continues that commitment to helping improve other’s quality of life today as the director of community relations for Lowe’s Inc., the home-improvement corporation based in Mooresville.
In addition, Higginbotham serves on the Board of Trustees of N.C. Central University and is involved in multiple community organizations.
“I am a big proponent of living a healthy lifestyle and of making sure our youth grow up very well-educated,” Higginbotham said. “I believe this puts them on a good path to being successful in life.”
A great writer made her mark in NC
For the author whom many critics consider one of America’s most significant African-American woman writers, the quiet Durham cabin was far removed from the New York apartment that hosted parties of the Harlem Renaissance. But it was home.
Zora Neale Hurston is best remembered for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the story of a young woman’s search for identity. But her 30-year career included novels, books of folklore, short stories, essays and plays.
In 1939, at the height of her literary acclaim, she joined the faculty of North Carolina Central University – then called the North Carolina College for Negroes – with a charge from President James E. Shepard to organize a theater program and produce African-American plays.
Building connections with faculty and students at the then-segregated University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Hurston collaborated with UNC-CH drama professor Paul Green, playwright of the 1927 Pulitzer Prize-winning In Abraham’s Bosom.
Her brief North Carolina experience marked only one chapter in the story of a lively, gregarious intellectual who was also an anthropologist and folklorist, dedicated to telling the story of the African-American culture.
During the 1920s, Hurston befriended Harlem Renaissance writers and artists, including singer Ethel Waters and poet Langston Hughes, collaborating with the latter on the play Mule Bone. Acclaim from the literary community followed, but Hurston continually struggled to find financial success as a writer.
Hurston died in 1960 in Fort Pierce, Fla. Her grave remained unmarked until 1970, when it was discovered and designated with a marker by writer Alice Walker.
In the decades following her death, Hurston’s work enjoyed a revival. In 2005, Time magazine chose Their Eyes Were Watching God as one of the 100 best English-language novels published since the magazine was founded in 1923.
He championed education equality
John Harding Lucas’ dedication to equality has profoundly impacted educational systems in North Carolina and worldwide.
As the author of what was called the Lucas Concept, he was instrumental in building an inclusive, diverse environment in the education profession.
Born in 1920 the son of a minister and teacher in Rocky Mount, NC, he was a student of a segregated school system. After graduating from Booker T. Washington High School, he enrolled at Shaw University and earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry.
He taught science and coached at Adkin High School in Kinston before enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1944.
Returning to North Carolina in 1946 after service in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater of Operations, Lucas resumed his teaching career and pursued a master’s degree in school administration from North Carolina Central University.
In 1962, Lucas was named principal at Durham’s Hillside High School, a post he held for 24 years.
While at Hillside, he became a leader in the merger of the all-white North Carolina Education Association and the all-black North Carolina Teachers Association. Originally, discussion centered on folding the black organization into the white one. Lucas’ proposal, to treat both groups equally by creating a new organization, resulted in 1970 in the formation of the North Carolina Association of Educators, which he served as president from 1974-75.
Lucas accepted the Presidency at Shaw University in 1986. He was later elected to the first school board of the newly-merged school system in Durham County and served as its Vice Chairman.
Today, Lucas Middle School in Durham and the John H. Lucas Sr. Wellness Center at Hillside High School are named in his honor.
Now in his mid 90s, he continues to be an active member and leader at White Rock Baptist Church, as well as on numerous boards.
The Bicycle Man’s work lives on
It all began in 1990 with a single broken bicycle, wheeled into Moses Mathis’ garage
by a neighborhood boy seeking help.
“Next thing I knew, I had a bunch of kids in my garage with bicycles to be fixed,”
Ann Mathis, his wife, remembers.
Over the next 25 years, Moses Mathis became known as The Bicycle Man for his commitment to repairing, collecting and donating bicycles to children. In 2006,
President George W. Bush awarded him the President’s Call to Service Award, which recognizes those with a minimum of 4,000 hours of community service.
Moses Mathis passed away in 2013 at 76. But Ann Mathis continues the couple’s long commitment to community and service.
In 1990 the couple opened the Tiffany Pines Community Outreach Center, with the goal of helping give their community’s youth a better future by teaching work-ethic, self-esteem and community pride.
That program has transitioned to the Bicycle Man Community Outreach Projects. With Ann Mathis as its CEO, it has given approximately 30,000 bicycles to residents of six North Carolina counties with plans to expand to Pitt County.
“When we give the bikes away, it just melts your heart. Sometimes these bikes are the only things these kids get for Christmas,” Ann Mathis said.
The program has since expanded beyond bicycles, however, Mrs. Mathis still faces challenges to get funding for the Building Up Grades and Give a Kid a Break Programs, which were started to encourage children to improve their grades and teach work ethics.
She sees their legacies in simple terms.
“It has always been about the kids,” she said. “I just want people to remember us for the work that we’ve done and for helping and working in our community.”
She built unity in her classrooms
As a child in Robeson County in the 1940s, Ruth Revels experienced a unique form of segregation, which ignited a lifelong commitment to building unity and understanding among all ethnicities.
“I grew up in a community that had three-way segregation,” Revels said. “We had African-Americans, whites and Indians. And our schools, restrooms and restaurants were all segregated.”
One of her teachers at her small country school was Elizabeth Maynor, a fellow Lumbee Indian, who instilled in the young Revels the belief that each student was special and could succeed.
After graduating Pembroke State University with a bachelor’s degree in education, she took Maynor’s example into her own classrooms. Her early experiences in a segregated community motivated her to build an inclusive learning experience for her students. For example, realizing that African-American and American Indian literature was seldom taught, she developed and taught a class for tenth graders.
“I was trying to make the point that we are teaching not only the black students about their culture, but that all of the students needed to learn this,” said Revels. “They’re learning about other writers and they need to know that we have outstanding African-American and American Indian artists and literature.”
The class was discontinued after Revels left teaching in 1977, becoming the executive director of the Guilford Native American Association (GNAA), which her husband, Lonnie Revels, had founded.
At the GNAA, Revels worked to empower and educate the American Indian community, as well as other minority communities.
Revels, 79, continues to be active in various community organizations, including serving on the African-American Atelier art gallery board and serving as the chair of the North Carolina Commission of Indian Affairs.
From priviledge, a life of caring
Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans was born into a life of wealth and privilege in the early 20th century. She “cared so much about people and the community,” her oldest daughter, Mary Trent Jones, recalled.
“She did not know a stranger.”
Semans, who died in 2012 at 91, left a legacy far beyond being a descendant of the founder of Duke University. Semans was a trustee of Lincoln Community Hospital in Durham, which was started in 1901 to provide health care for African-Americans.
“She made sure that everybody took care of Lincoln Hospital,” her daughter said.
In 1951 Semans became one of the first two women elected to the Durham City Council, having run on a platform of black voter registration. “She was instrumental in helping African-Americans in Durham obtain their voting rights and making sure that they were able to register to vote,” Jones said.
Semans took a leadership role as a trustee for the Duke Endowment, a private foundation that supports higher education, health care and children’s welfare in North and South Carolina.
The Endowment had been created in 1924 by James Buchanan Duke, Semans’ great-uncle, as a way “to make provision in some measure for the needs of mankind along physical, mental and spiritual lines.”
Dr. Jean Spaulding, the ombudsman for Duke University Medical School and a trustee of the Duke Endowment in Charlotte, served with Semans and said there is “no way to count the number of people touched by Mrs. Semans.”
Jones added: “My mother was the most amazing, unbiased person. We grew up unlike a lot of our peers – not thinking that blacks and whites were any different.”
Literature and theater have been her passions
Sylvia Sprinkle-Hamlin would like for you to visit her place.
“As librarians, we see libraries as the community living room, a place where people come and network,” she says. “They use computers. They attend programs. They discuss the challenges of the day.”
And, hopefully, they pick up a good book.
A native of Winston-Salem, Sprinkle-Hamlin has been the Director of the Forsyth County Public Library since 2000. She has held many positions in the library system since joining it as the department head for children’s outreach in 1979.
But her love affair with books goes back to her childhood.
“Reading is powerful,” she said “When you read you can visit places that you’ve never been before. You get to know people’s situations and challenges that you may not have had. I read for knowledge and to be enlightened.
Plus, it’s entertaining.”
While she enjoys many types of literature, a focus throughout her career has been supporting works by African-American authors or which deal with African-American culture or history.
“We have really great writers that a lot of people don’t know about,” she said. “Some of my favorites are Isabel Wilkerson, Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, Trice Hickman, Kimberla Lawson Roby and Dr. Maya Angelou. I think that we should read all types of literature.”
She has also been a strong supporter of performing arts, an interest which stemmed from enjoying the theater while in college. She is currently the President of the
Board of Directors of the North Carolina Black Repertory Company, and has been the Executive Producer of the National Black Theatre Festival since 2007.
Sprinkle-Hamlin is a graduate of Winston-Salem State University, with a bachelor’s degree in education, and Clark Atlanta University, where she earned a Master’s degree in library science.
A leader in higher education
Cleon Thompson filled a wide variety of roles during his 49 years in higher education: student, professor, administrator, provost, and chancellor of two universities. But a constant throughout the years was his commitment to racial integration and equal opportunity.
Thompson’s journey began in 1949, when he enrolled at N.C. Central University, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology.
In 1957, he began his career as a Research Assistant at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He subsequently served as a biology professor at North Carolina A&T State, Tuskegee, and Shaw universities before returning to the UNC system in 1975 as Vice President for Student Services and Special Programs.
Over the next decade, Thompson worked to help the University system meet desegregation guidelines set by the federal government.
As an extreme tactic to end segregation, the government considered closing all five historically black institutions in the UNC system. Thompson took part in numerous meetings on the topic and was pleased when the idea was rejected.
“I was thankful for that because closing them would have reduced the access and opportunity of many young African-American students,” he said.
Thompson earned a Ph.D. in educational administration from Duke University in 1977. Three years later, he was named Interim Chancellor at North Carolina A&T State University, serving for a year.
In 1985, he was inaugurated as Chancellor of Winston-Salem State University. He stepped down in 1995 and accepted the post of Assistant to the Chancellor at NC State University. He retired from state government in 1998.
While proud of what has been accomplished in creating equal opportunities for all, Thompson believes more remains to be done. Yet he remains optimistic for the future.
“In higher education, the reward comes five, ten or even fifteen years after you’ve moved on,” he said. “You can’t measure your impact immediately.
But your impact will hopefully come over time.”
He carried the torch all his life
LeRoy Walker’s legacy is like the Olympic flame he carried through Durham in 1996 – a tribute to commitment, perseverance and excellence.
Born in a segregated Atlanta as a grandson of slaves and the youngest of 13 children, Walker became the first African-American president of the United States Olympic Committee.
But before that, he carved a permanent place in North Carolina’s history through more than four decades of service at North Carolina Central University – as an acclaimed track coach from 1945-83 and then three years as Chancellor, retiring in 1986. During his time at NCCU, he coached 40 national champions and 12 Olympians.
“His athletes always talk about how my dad’s work and personal ethic impacted their lives in terms of helping them be good people, good coaches or whatever they chose to do in life,” LeRoy Walker Jr. said.
Walker was named the first black coach of an American Olympic team in 1974, leading the U.S. men’s track and field team that received 22 medals in the 1976 games in Montreal.
When he led the American team into the Atlanta Games in 1996, it was the culmination of a remarkable life’s journey. After his father’s death in 1927, when Walker was 9, he moved to Harlem, N.Y., living with an older brother and worked at his brother’s three restaurants and a window-washing business.
Later, Walker became the only member of his family to attend college. He received a bachelor’s degree from Benedict College of Columbia, S.C., a master’s from Columbia University and a doctorate in biomechanics from New York University.
Walker died in 2012 at 93.
This story was originally published October 18, 2015 at 8:01 PM with the headline "AT&T calendar honors those who made North Carolina better."