Celebrating Black History: Onslow educators remember when

Betty Wilson remembers what it was like to sit in a classroom full of students sharing the same skin color - something her students at Summersill Elementary School have not had to experience.

Wilson, an assistant principal at the elementary school, attended Georgetown High School, Onslow County's sole black high school, in the 1960s. She was scheduled to graduate in 1967.

Instead, she became one of the first black students to attend Swansboro High School after Georgetown was destroyed in a 1966 fire for which no one was ever charged.

"When we got to Swansboro, that was very interesting because we had been led to believe that we would get a better opportunity, I guess, because we were told they had more up-to-date equipment, the more up-to-date books. That is where we really wanted to be. But I didn't find that to be necessarily true when I got there because what I saw was students just like me," Wilson said.

Now, 42 years later, Wilson works in a school system with almost 24,000 students - 4,849 of whom are black.

"(You) don't look at the outside, you look at the inside. When it comes to teaching and learning, I'm just looking at what it is you need to learn," Wilson said.

Northside High's Principal Albert James graduated from Georgetown High in 1964. After attending the Hampton Institute and serving in the Army during the Vietnam War, he found his way back to Jacksonville and the Onslow County schools system.

"The culture and environment at Georgetown was much, much different than high schools in general now. It was all African-American. Issues, concerns and things that students and teachers talked about were basically African-American issues," he said. "There was a strong emphasis, a strong push, for us to be successful."

James grew up watching the "mainstream" population - the white population - solely on television or at Onslow County's dividing line: the railroad tracks in downtown Jacksonville near the old train depot that separated the black community from the white community.

James is encouraged that now diversity is the mainstream.

"I will venture to say that kids here are kids and teenagers are teenagers and all they see is their souls and characters," he said. "Whenever there's an issue, the issue is not a racial issue. It's this clique against another clique and what causes those cliques, sometimes we don't know, people just gravitate towards one another, but it's not a race clique."

Contact Jacksonville/Onslow County reporter Amanda Hickey at 910-219-8461 or ahickey@freedomenc.com.