African American
Pearsall Plan: North Carolina’s Response to Brown v. Board of Education
1946-1990
The United States Supreme Court’s ruling in the Brown v Board of Education (1954) declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Following the Brown ruling, North Carolina enacted legislation that undermined the Supreme Court ruling. In August 1954 and in response to the Brown decision, Governor William B. Umstead created a “Governor’s Special Advisory Committee on Education,” with Thomas Pearsall, a prominent Rocky Mount farmer and businessman and former North Carolina Speaker of the House, as chairman.
Henry E. Frye (1932 – )
Governor James B. Hunt appointed Justice Henry Frye, in 1983, to the North Carolina Supreme Court. He thus became the first African American to sit on the North Carolina Supreme Court.
Pearsall Plan: North Carolina’s Response to Brown v. Board of Education
The United States Supreme Court’s ruling in the Brown v Board of Education (1954) declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Following the Brown ruling, North Carolina enacted legislation that undermined the Supreme Court ruling. In August 1954 and in response to the Brown decision, Governor William B. Umstead created a “Governor’s Special Advisory Committee on Education,” with Thomas Pearsall, a prominent Rocky Mount farmer and businessman and former North Carolina Speaker of the House, as chairman.
Contraband Camps
Before the end of the Civil War, as Union troops occupied more and more of North Carolina during the Civil War, more and more slaves fled to Union lines to live in what were then called contraband camps. Contrabands (freedmen) were escaped slaves from the Confederate territory into Union territory.