Black high school gives former students the skills to address inequality in Asheville
Bowman has helped to renovate Stephens-Lee High School and monitor the academic welfare of black students since he returned to Asheville. He credits the progress of the local movement to improve black education to the motivation students of his generation received at Stephens-Lee. They moved away to places where they could aggressively use their talents, then they returned to address injustices in Asheville.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Richard Bowman, July 8, 1998. Interview K-0513. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- KELLY ELAINE NAVIES:
-
That was real important. So, tell me in your opinion, as you look back on
your years at Stephens-Lee and what's happened since
then-how would you compare what's gone on in the black
community since Stephens-Lee was there and now in the
contemporary time? In other words, what kind of changes have gone on and
what did the closing of Stephens-Lee have to do with that?
- RICHARD BOWMAN:
-
Well,
[pause]
-Stepens-Lee. When Stephens-Lee was
open it trained the students to be leaders and to be aggressive and go
out and some of the students took advantage of that and left the city
because they knew that there was no way they could be aggressive here,
because there were not job openings for blacks. So, they left the city
and went to different parts of the country. They were aggressive and
they succeeded in reaching higher level than they ever would have
reached in Asheville. They worked in these positions for years and
learned a lot while working in these positions and then when they
retired from these positions they came back to Asheville and used that
knowledge to help push Asheville up. Whereas as some of the people who
stayed here and were not exposed to those things,
uh seemed to be just as content at the level that things were thirty
years ago and most of your movement is caused by people who left and
came back. A lot of your movement is caused by people who left and came
back.
- KELLY ELAINE NAVIES:
-
So, you, yourself are a part of that movement-you have
returned-and we're gonna talk a little bit about where you
went-but, you have returned to Asheville as a retired
man-was it your plan to come back and give back to your
community?
- RICHARD BOWMAN:
-
To be honest, no. My plan was to retire and come back to Asheville and
relax and enjoy these beautiful mountains, but when I came back and
found out what was going on in Asheville, I said I can't retire. Cause,
it's too many things need to be done-
- KELLY ELAINE NAVIES:
-
What kind of things are you talking about?
- RICHARD BOWMAN:
-
Well, one is uh, the education system-the number of blacks
finishing high school. They don't have black graduating classes the size
of the classes we had finishing high school-just a few blacks.
In certain positions, blacks appear to be being used. The black males
are strong and are used as football players to win games for the school,
but after football season is over they are forgotten about. There's no
concern about their education. In fact, I volunteered to work on a
committee here to monitor the black athletes and see to it that if they
don't maintain their grades, they not play football.
- KELLY ELAINE NAVIES:
-
So, you volunteer at the high school?
- RICHARD BOWMAN:
-
Yeah. And I volunteer to work on the Ashville City Schools Foundation
Board. And that's another board where we work with education. I work on
this listing
[unclear]
project to find out exactly why the students are having such a
rough time-we interviewed parents and teachers and
students-the board of education is implementing things that we
came up with on that program. But, and uh the gym is being renovated
now-I don't know how many blacks we have
here that know how-that have had the experience in reading
blueprints that I've had so I volunteered to take the blueprints and
kind of follow through with the construction.