In September 1958, four black students enrolled as undergraduates at East Tennessee State College for the first time. It was four years after the significant decision made by the Supreme Court in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, which declared segregated schools unconstitutional. On Tuesday night, three of those students returned to campus to share their experiences in “The 1958 Desegregation of Undergraduate Education at East Tennessee State College: A Panel Discussion,” which was held in the Martha Street Culp Auditorium as part of the Centennial celebration at ETSU.

“They had already decided to open up the college before any of us decided to come and it was an easy transition, .” said Mary Luellen Owens Wagner, who graduated from East Tennessee State College in 1962. “They really didn’t advertise that we were coming. We just showed up and here we were. “

Wagner and her former classmates could not remember any extra security being present on their first day of college. She described it as a “quiet integration,” mostly because the college had provided little if any information to the media about the transition.

That doesn’t mean that everything was perfect at the newly desegregated school.

“Now I will have to say that I never was called a bad name and I never had any rudeness,” Wagner said. “I’m not saying that everyone was happy to see us and welcomed us with open arms, but there was never any rudeness or name calling.”

According to George L. Nichols, however, they weren’t quite as comfortable as they had been at Langston High School in Johnson City, where all of the panelist attended before college.

“Our teachers were excellent [at Langston],” said the 1962 ETSC graduate. “They were educated and they used their meager resources and stretched them to the best of their ability to prepare us to face the outside world.”

Langston students could go no higher than basic algebra and were forced to share one science lab with a single beaker and Bunsen burner for chemistry class.

This shortage of education made college even tougher, not to mention the social frustrations of attending a previously segregated school.

“You had to have drive, focus in that you had to be able to catch up and keep up at the same time,” Nichols said.

“You had to be able to learn what your classmates had learned in high school at the same time you absorbed what you were getting at the college level. Don’t tell me that was easy.”

Despite the adversity Nichols faced, he made many accomplishments during his college career and beyond. He was the first black member of the ETSC marching band, as well as the black first graduate from the ROTC program. He received many decorations for his military service, which included a tour in Vietnam.

Wagner, who taught at Wheatley Elementary School in Washington, D.C. for more than 30 years, also experienced a “first” during her time at ETSC.

One day, when Wagner was riding the bus home from campus, the driver asked her to move. Wagner’s classmates were not thrilled by the request and decided to do something about it.

“The kids on the bus raised ‘Sam,'” she said. “They were yelling and talking about it and when we got to the bus station they emptied the bus and went inside the station and went and talked to the manager. They were nice and noisy.

“Needless to say, the bus system was integrated after that and no one ever asked me to move again.”

Elizabeth Watkins Crawford, another 1958 ETSC attendee, was able to see how desegregation was affecting the rest of the country while she traveled with her husband, who was in the military.

“We entered into college without a lot of turmoil, but when I left here and traveled around I saw what the results were of the turmoil,” she said. “I can really appreciate that they integrated us into this college.”

Crawford, a substitute teacher for Elizabethton City Schools, says she can remember passing by a Woolworth’s in New York that was being integrated and witnessed a white man kick a young black woman sitting on the curb and then he spit in her face.

“I was so angry that I cried,” she said. “I have taken that memory with me for 50 years”

The fourth black student to attend ETSC in 1958 was Clarence McKinney who was unable to attending the panel discussion due to medical issues. He was a civil rights activist in Johnson City and became Jonesborogh’s first African American mayor.

Erin Bonner, a freshman art major summed up the panel discussion in an emotional comment that was given during the question and comment portion of the event.

“I really do appreciate what you did and you all deserve so much respect,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine not being paid attention to just because of the color of my skin. That is out of this world to me. Thank you so much.

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