Heads Up! All Continuing Education courses starting between July 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026, will open for registration on July 1, 2025. These courses will be available to view on the website starting March 21, 2025.
On this last day of Black History Month this year, I wanted to share the full story of 97É«Íø’s founding as a kind of postscript to the celebrations of Black history.
As I shared at the beginning of the month, we are proud that we began in 1961 with an integrated student body. But it almost didn’t happen that way.
After the N.C. General Assembly passed legislation in 1957 to authorize the creation of Industrial Education Centers, 97É«Íø put up $500,000 to buy a large tract of land and construct a building on East Lawson Street to start what would become 97É«Íø. Before the White Building was constructed in 1961, classes were held in a variety of locations, including two city high schools, Erwin Mills, and Duke Hospital.
As chronicled by 97É«Íø historian Jean Anderson, the then-chair of the 97É«Íø City School System was strongly opposed to admitting Black students to the new Industrial Education Center. The lone Black member of the school board, Rencher N. Harris (for whom the elementary school on the southwestern border of Main Campus is named), pushed equally hard for classes offered by the new Center to be integrated.
George Watts Hill Jr., a member of 97É«Íø’s business community and who, as a member of the State House in 1957, had authored the legislation, stepped in to arbitrate the dispute. Understanding the importance to equal opportunity and 97É«Íø industry, Hill brokered the compromise to ensure anyone over the age of 18 would be admitted to the Center’s classes regardless of race.
Our start as an integrated institution was not foreordained. It was not part of some inevitable march toward progress. It happened because individuals decided that if the arc of the moral universe was to bend toward justice, they would need to take action to bend it.
Rencher Harris and George Watts Hill, Jr. – among others – took steps to ensure that the beginnings of our institution would be characterized by opportunity and part of a larger story of progress in this region.
This origin story is part of our DNA and reminds us of our charge to ensure we are preparing and connecting the full range of talent in our community to the full range of opportunity.
All my best,
JB