Emory Cambell

I wasn’t involved in desegregation. I grew up in a segregated system. Went to school all 12 years in a segregated system. And it wasn’t until after I went to college and got out of that, that the effort of integration began. In Beaufort County, integration didn’t come until about nine or ten years after I left high school.

We didn’t have any white people on this Island. And the stores were owned by Black people. [laughter] And so, we didn’t have—when white folks and white people came to the stores, I used to notice that more.

Do you stick out your chest and be Black? Well, I did some of that, too. I remember. But then, we had to work as a team. And we laughed, we had to have teamwork, and all these projects that were thrown at us, we had to do with our team.

From this county, I don’t know. For one white school on this island, there must’ve been about four or five little Black schools, you know? ‘Cause they had neighborhood schools.

That was the 1954 new Black school. That school was built in 1954 and consolidated all those small schools that I listed before. And that was pretty much the answer to our situation. In other words, improved to have a better school. But then, they also did the same thing for white schools. So, that was, supposedly separate but equal.