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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview M-0009, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Ebson V. Dacons discusses his career as a black high school principal in segregated and desegregated public schools. He was the principal of Lincoln Heights High in Wilkes County, North Carolina, from 1964 until 1968. Dacons favorably describes the segregated schools as places of caring and autonomous teachers and administrators, where parents respected school authority. He describes a culture of self-sufficiency and mutual cooperation as a means of remedying inequitable resources. In 1968, the Wilkes County school board decided to reconstitute Lincoln Heights High into an integrated specialized school. Rather than move into a central office position, Dacons assumed a principalship at the new school, the Career Center, in order to remain within the larger black community. Initially, the school had limited gender and racial integration, but Dacons heavily recruited attract whites and females to the Career Center. Dacons regrets the loss of the power that he enjoyed as principal under the segregated school system and discusses additional differences in the organizational structures of segregated and desegregated schools. The interview ends with his discussion of the importance of mentoring black males.
Ebson V. Dacons recounts his career as a black administrator of segregated and desegregated public high schools in Wilkes County, North Carolina.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Just testing to see if the equipment is working correctly.
I'm Ebson Dacons and I am known in the professional circle as E. V. Dacons and formal principal of Union School in Wilkes County with eight years of experience there as a principal and fourteen years as principal of a Career Center that was established following the closing of the Union School. Our grades there ranged from 1-12 and we had 521 students. We had twenty-two staff members. It was a challenging opportunity that I experienced and I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it. Matter of fact, when I left Iredell County and got into administration in Wilkes County I remained there for twenty-five years in a capacity as an administrator—I wore two hats as principal of the Career Center on the closing of Lincoln Heights I not only was the chief honcho at the center but my job had to do with supervising sixty teachers that were in the area of occupational career or vocational education. And of course that covered the middle grades exploratory programs and the Percy High School Vocational Programs. We had a center there that had eleven quotas for our principal. This had to do with really a pre-vocational kind of skill program. These persons coming out of there would be health occupation people or LPN's because we worked with and had the cooperation of Wilkes County Hospital.
Just for the record you had better say that you know that this is being recorded.
I am aware that this is being recorded.
Tell me how you became a high school principal.
I suppose I just more or less drifted into it. I can't tell you what was
the major factor that motivated me in that direction. I was content as a
science/math teacher and thoroughly enjoyed the classroom—the give and
take—the students. I missed that when I got into administration. I
really did. The farther I got from them, the colder it got and it took
me sometime to adjust to that. I suppose it was finance. That was one
factor. I certainly didn't care that much about the authoritative aspect
even though that is part of the territory. But it was year around
employment, I needed that with a family. I think another factor that
contributed was that I wanted to more or less be representative of a
role model not only for my own children but for my people to get into an
arena where some leadership was visible. That contributed also to my
moving in the
So in was 1964, you were principal of Union School in Wilkes County. Now I want you to go back to 1964, and talk about how you supervised your personnel at that school and how were your teachers selected.
I came into that job when there were school board members that were legally authorized to hire and fire for their schools of that administrative unit. There were five members of the board at Lincoln Heights—all were obviously Black. I came into rather challenging situation in that there was some unrest. I inherited a situation that was a bit chaotic. The school was terribly in debt. The moral and the posture of the school somewhat at a low ebb despite the fact that Lincoln Heights had a legacy—a very beautiful legacy over the years. Some very fine people coming out of there including Mayor Lou Harris who became quite famous and people knew about him. Some other persons out here who got into medicine and so forth. But I was able to weather that storm and I think I did and you might be interested in this. One or two board members said to me, you have some staff members that won't work with you. I said please don't give me their names. Please do not give me any names. I think that was one good decision that I made because I never did meet them. I never did know who they were. I tried to be as objective as I could. Establishing rapport was somewhat of a challenge. I could feel in sense that line of distrust that came from administrators and working around that I was able to work with the personnel and to put my finger on what we did—one thing, we had weekly staff meetings. We had an active P. T. A.—parent, teacher organization, I had another hurdle then dealing with them in that some of them were members of organizations that contributed funds to the school and I needed to get all of those treasures together and of course you can imagine what it is like going out and saying, look let me have your treasures.
Why did you need their treasures?
Well, auditors were asking questions that we couldn't answer, you see and
of course we needed to get—well you see we had a treasurer for band, one
for the business department, one for the choir, and one for the
lunchroom. I found all of those and they were separate identities and
they had their own monies, these kinds of things. So I needed to—it was
really illegal because they were reigned in the name of a school and of
course the school didn't have any jurisdiction over it because this is
my money here and what have you. So it took about two years to get that
done after I think we knew each other though—one on one. And I did a lot
of that where I would go in and talk with a teacher and ask him or her
to tell me what they found and then I would listen and I spent a good
deal of my time listening. I found
Did you have direct authority to elect your teachers?
Yes, I did. With my board during the first year they supposely wanted me to have some help. I had some help offered to me by them. I think they perhaps questioned my ability to choose staff and of course not only that but I had some help offered by them on several other things including what kind of milk I would buy and all that kind of things. But I finally got a hold of that and was able to establish the fact—and of course during that time principals did have, I did, the right to go to a school and pick out a teacher and say to my board, this is a person that I would like to have. And usually if my superintendent… and I was fortunate enough to work under two good superintendents. After we got to know each other and I can talk with you about them telling me that I didn't need any second year algebra book. I didn't find any there when I went and I was informed by some of the staff there, and there weren't that many, in fact there were only two staff members central staff members. One supervisor for grade 1-8, and the other for high school. But one of the secretaries at the superintendent's office said that the children have not learned what is in the back of that first year and so anyway we got the second year algebra and we got geometry.
So we can go right into the next question. I was going to ask you is to talk something about the instructional program in your curriculum. It seems as if you went right in there and tried to work with the instructional program and improve the curriculum.
We were fortunate to have students who went. I think percentage wise we had our share of students who went on to college.
And all of your students were Black?
All of these were Black and I don't want to mislead you here. We had
dropouts too. But our dropout then was not as high as it is now. We
perhaps lost twenty-five
That was because they did not have a Black high school in Alleghany County.
They did not have a Black high school in Alleghany County.
And how long was their ride?
Their ride was about—it's about 38 miles from Wilkes County to Alleghany—one way. When he switched that bus off at night the way he had to pick children, he had a 104 miles on that bus round trip everyday. And of course I also had one bus in Wilkes County that had ninety-six miles on it. You see Wilkes County is a big county and a whole lot of territory and some of the most treacherous roads in the state.
Now I know when it snows we get the snow in
You take now through the winter crossing the Blue Ridge Parkway, what they call, blowing snow all the time you know that is not unusual. So that bus would come through that all the time. That's not unusual so that bus would come through there all the time. There was a magnetism about the instructional program there. The students took to ride one way. and I don't know how we kept order on that bus. Imagine putting 35 kids on a bus. It wasn't a big jumble of buses but we had 35 people grades 9-12. The dropout there was no greater than it was anywhere else. We had good cooperation there with parents—we had the parent teacher's meeting those parents would be there.
They would come the 38 miles too.
Yes they would come on in.
What about the discipline?
I want to say that that was not a real problem. We had—let me put this in
the proper perspective—parents would say to me before school started,
some would say professor I'm sending six youngeons to you in the fall.
Now we want to learn and if they give you any problem you let us know
and nothing about before you let us you know what to do with our
children. Now, and of course they went back into those hills saying we
believe in not sparing the road and the rod answers for everything. We
did use corporal punishment. I did. I used corporal punishment but I
think that my use of it was more psychological than the real physical
aspect of it. I shocked I guess not as many but I guess some who came
out of families where the parents were on the border of being abusive
with whipping. It was alleged that one parent used a chain and I don't
know if there was any basis to that. I never—now the if you want to say
deserved it—they weren't bad boys. I would go to them and they would
come into the office when the teacher would send them to me and were
just mischievious as they could be and into something, but what was such
a shock though when I would just touch them on the shoulder. They
expected me to reach and get my strap. I had a strap that was just
hanging over there. They expected me to go over there and get it but I
just touched them on the shoulder and said why did you do it—tell me
about it. And we ended up just talking. I wasn't thinking about using
any corporal punishment on him but trying to figure out what to do
though the whole time we were talking because here the corporal
punishment is supposed to be the answer but it is not. A good
administrator has to know when and you don't always know. We had no
discipline. I had one student that I had to send to the probate court to
send away during my whole 8 years and I guess it was a bit ironic
because they thought that I was crazy when I called. I said to the
court,
Do you think it was because of the parental support?
We did have a kind of parenting that went on there then with them. They believe in doing a job of parenting. Plus the fact I think we had more stable homes then than we do now. We had some children who came from foster homes but the foster home was also a parent who had children of her own. The foster home was a father, mother situation and those children came out of well-disciplined homes. Of course we didn't have then, of course there was alcohol but that was the only drug that we had. I think that you had more two-parent families I think. And I'm not discrediting people who are single parents but I don't believe that they are getting the job done. That's just my own opinion.
You've already talked a bit about transportation with the buses that you had coming from the other two counties. What other buses did you have and did you have to be responsible for the transportation for your school?
My job was to touch base with the bus drivers. It of course was my job to rent those buses.
You didn't have an assistant?
No, no I didn't have an assistant. The nearest thing that I came to an
assistant principal was if I had to leave campus I simply would go down
the halls and say to a
Well, how many buses did you have other than those two that came from the other county?
Okay, when I got there there was only one coming out of the county. That
was Alleghany. We had nine buses, ten plus that one coming in out of the
county. Now some of those had to make two runs, two local runs. We only
had 52 students who were within walking distance. Everybody was bused
in. This is why the Lincoln Heights was closed as a school because we
were busing out folks by all these other schools to get there. It was
sad because Lincoln Heights was one of the better schools in Wilkes
County. As a matter I heard Rosenthough staff member say that before
they had a gym to play in they came to Lincoln Heights. So you had a
community that was very active and farsighted during that time in
getting things done. They built their own cafeteria. The first bus that
was put there, as a matter of fact, the first bus was, pardon a personal
reference here, was an uncle of mine through my father's side. It was my
father's sister's husband, Tom Riddix, bought one of the first buses for
the Black children. So the building that Mrs.
The utilization of funds. You said that you had to use funds from the parent and the community to do some of the things you needed done. What did you get from central office and how did you get things done?
This is quite amusing to you and probably you have never heard this
before. I received a light bill at central office for $1700 and so I
said, I've seen decimals misplaced and so I said it's $176 but I know
it's more than $1.76 so I pondered a little while over that and then I
called. I said, I received the light bill. You see, when I
Did you get brand new books or did you get used books?
That's another thing. You see these books here at Lincoln Heights had,
many of these books had been used. They were coming in there from other
schools cause the names would be in them. There were a second year
algebra book, a geometry book, maybe another science book that wasn't
even there. They weren't there. They had never been in the curriculum at
all and so I said our children deserve this. That's like cutting down on
the size of the gym that you're going to put in here. Don't put in a gym
that is not regulation size and doesn't have a stage for drama
productions. We had drama then and they weren't going to put that there
at that school, just a hall and a platform. I said we don't do just
little plays, our department compensate the state level, the regional
and district. Our kids expect it and our parents expect it and they
deserve it. They don't know if Lincoln Heights is getting it—they think
that they are getting everything. They're not. We didn't have a stage or
anything. We were adding a gymnatorium, they're not the
But how did you get the books—the algebra books?
Well, just saying to them, how are our kids going to college. When they meet here, when they're on the college campus they run across kids from New England, from the West Coast, Southland and Florida. They have already had these experiences, they've had this learning and they are so far ahead of our kids. It's not fair. It's not right. Our parents think they're getting the best but they're not. I'm here in their behalf. This is a role that I played myself. to help our children and we're trying to help our folk to achieve and to do something out here in life and they can't do it here with just being—we don't expect our kids to leave and just go to work at the sawmills, we expect our children to leave here and go on to higher learning and they are. So I was able to get myself thirty books. That's not a big feat but for that era that was a big feat.
Well, you said the cafeteria—you had to make it run and you had a manager but you did you have to see about the money or did the manager see about the money.
I had to see about it. She wasn't trained in that area so I had to. Even the cafeteria report she did a good job but after they start you find out how much they can do. But I had two people, I had one manager and an assistant part-time. They cooked the food and served it.
Did you have a nice cafeteria or did you have to see about getting that.
No the cafeteria was one that the community had built. They had constructed it out of blocks. Everybody worked with the masonry work on it so it served the purpose but you could tell it was not a first class masonry.
Did they have a cafeteria up at the White high school? Did they have a cafeteria?
Well, you see at that time you had twenty-six White schools and you had
four high schools, five—let's see East, West, North, Central. Well a
year or two before I came there were seven high schools so they did some
consolidation there you know and some of it was during the time when the
building program was taking place there at Lincoln Heights.
The buildings and grounds. Did you have to supervise that?
Yes, there were 19 acres in the building and grounds there. It is landscaping there, usually without any, it wasn't my suggestion but usually your ag students thank goodness for us. In one way you look at it, we were using children there as maintenance but they learned. Unless you got a major breakdown of equipment this is when your county people would come in—like you've got a backup on sewage, or that kind of thing. Now the county would offer fuel, like coal and that kind of thing. We had both steam and hot water on the campus.
Now how did you see your school, Lincoln Heights, what was its relationship to the community?
The center of the community. All of your community activities in addition to what had out there but you might say it was the solidifying factor, the institution that really gave the oneness of mentality here in terms of direction of Black folk. You knew here where we were. You knew all the way from Boone over to the southern end all the way to Roaring Rivers which is the northern end of the county. You knew what Blacks were thinking. Our goals, I represented the core and so it was the huddle of activities here. They looked forward to and had tremendous support for all athletic programs. When it came down to your culture program, your coral group, your band, and what have you the people rallied around that kind of thing and were willing to have all kinds of money raising projects to keep that thing going and so Lincoln Heights was the community.
How much administrative power or control did you have over your school site and responsibilities?
I personally had quite a bit of control. Maybe at times more than I
wanted. I certainly was not the type who would flaunt it but my
suggestions would go. That leadership there was pretty big role because
see if you make the wrong decisions it's nice to be in those leadership
roles as long as the decisions you make are good and sound but if you
make some wrong decisions friend by the same tokens you are still the
guy who they are looking to and what have you. So the principalship then
had a lot of clout, a lot more than it has today. You have a lot of
people who have to make decisions and perhaps that is good in a way
because then if
How did desegregation of schools affect your role as principal?
I was told that I had three choices. (1) I could, our board—the Wilkes
County Board of Education had contacts with Wilkes Community College. I
could replace there, (2) well, let me back up, the very first one was
this, if we had a school, we would place you but no principal has
resigned but my school is going to be closed. So I could go to the
community college, I could go to the classroom and I could go with the
central staff. And I said to the superintendent, I said, I have worked
here for eight years for the Wilkes County Board and I don't know a
thing about Wilkes Community College, well, I know something about it
because we helped bring it there but I don't know anything about it. You
can mark that off. I said my children, my people don't expect to see me
in the classroom. I suppose the more Black I would live longer but they
don't expect to see me in there. So that brings me to one thing and that
is the central staff. Now you call that a supervisor now were you
talking about telling these children to get dental work done and to
carry them for clothes and shoes. I want to understand what you are
talking about. I need to understand that because not that I'm any better
than anybody else to do it, somebody has to do it but so that I'll be
clear as to
Did you have any different supervision of the Black teachers? What was your competition with Black and White?
Okay, after it grew into about eleven courses, we didn't have— most of the staff there was White so you had electricians, mechanics, health occupations and we finally ended up with Mrs. O.B. Harris, who has always been in home economics. She and I worked together prior to the integration of Lincoln Heights and she went to central. She and I were able to get back working together when I got funding for clothing and textiles. And she came in and taught a class and so she was the only Black on the staff there and of course, I did have a Cliff Morrison there for a while with a 7th grade exploratory program.
Did you enjoy your job? And why?
I enjoyed it thoroughly. I suppose one key thing and I don't know how this came about. I have always made my own assignments and that sounds real strange. The work that I did—and I worked hard all the time and there were long hours. The clock had no meaning but I enjoyed it. In other words, if I decided that I needed to write a proposal I would write that to get a course in. I just enjoyed it so much. The superintendent very seldom told me what to do. I went in for the staff meetings and these kind of things—but that was not helping us as a school as a program to get from here to there. It was in those areas there where I had room to try and fail. I guess I enjoyed that more.
And as long as you kept that school running well, the superintendent wasn't bothering you. And he really didn't bother about what was going on over there.
No, he didn't bother us. Now and then—you see the message feeds back—it
has a way of feeding back—he knows what is going on. It feeds back to
him but as I said
What did you see as your major problem with your principalship?
I guess lack of finance for programs that would help our people. I hear people talking about money but money isn't the answer to all things but you see if you've got money you can buy specialists, people who are trained to help you. Many times our children here and our teachers did an enormous job but if they had had a psychologist, a therapist, people here who were well-trained and specialized in this area I think it may have helped us get a little further. More cultural experiences, you take a group of kids and you need to take them for a program that is going to happen at the Fine Arts Center down here—you just put them on a bus and let them experience that. If we could be hooked up now to a satellite program where they could come in and witness that. I guess maybe that would probably be the biggest problem.
What do you consider the most rewarding about your principalship?
The most rewarding thing is when I have students come up to me and say,
Mr. Dacons, I want to thank you. I just want to thank you. Some I went
and pulled out of the pool when they would play hooky and brought them
in. I just maybe had given that student lunch money out of my pocket but
I paddled him after I brought him in. Not hurt him but paddled him. I
saw students who would be in the corridor during lunch hour and I would
always say to them like I would say the first day—I don't talk promotion
and grades and honor roll in May. I'm saying this at our first assembly
because I will not talk with your parents, your teachers, school board
members, or superintendent in May about whether you passed, you didn't
pass, you didn't have quite enough units, and my office is off limits
for that. You have to find someone else to talk to in May about that.
Then of course all the little ground rules about this or that—during
lunch hour the corridors are mine. That is off limits to students. You
are in the cafeteria eating. If I found a student in the corridar I
would say, "Look young man— what is the problem? Why are you here?" He
would say, "I don't
Well, when you were principal back in 1964, there were over 200 Black high school principals in the State of North Carolina. When I started to do this research I called down to Raleigh to find out how many Black high school principals there were in 1989. They sent me a list and there were 41 and of those 41 some of them were not full-fledged high school principals. They were in alternative schools so there are less than 40 Black principals in the State. If you had to give some advice to any Black young person aspiring to be a principal, you know now we have male and female, just what advice would you give?
Take all the courses in human behavior as you possibly can take. Be convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt that that is the direction that you want to move into. I guess that would probably come first and then learn all you can about human behavior, learn all you can about your community relationship and as John Nesbit points out in his book, what the high tech, low touch means here and its impact on learning and child behavior. And make certain that you understand the school and its relationships with other organizations now especially the impact of media. You see in our time we didn't have the strong impact of television and what have you but if you are an aspiring principal, you are going to have to know that relationship and be prepared to deal with it. The impact that the media has on that school setting think that you are also going to have to examine your own heart about where you stand with regard to whether knowledge can be classified into great, greater, and least worth. Whether or not that all knowledge has some value. Be prepared also to unlearn some things that you held dear as you go in. Be inflexible but also adaptive to a worthy needed change.
What should you be inflexible to?
Moral standards some absolutes here that has to do with our family unity. Absolutes here uncompromising as it has to do with the sacredness of some social institutions like our church. Absoluteness when it comes down to staying as we are Americans on defending our shores from enemies from abroad. I don't want to get into the Persian Gulf but I don't see that as off shore. But I think when we see someone knocking on our door I don't think you ought to keep them out. Those are some things that—the achievement here that as a principal, if you are—you've got to know I guess I started to say—know where we are with regard to your racial overlays, racial overtones, your White principal over here, you've got to know something about the learning styles of Black children. The Black principal needs to know that too. That is such a thing that even though it is disputed, it is debated and what have you. You must know something about the learning styles of how our students move ahead. Let me qualify something here. If you are going to be in a public school, what I have said up to now has to do is for a public school person and of course in your private I think your job is easier there because you have policy. Your gut feeling about what comprises a home. See in 1964, during the time I was in principalship, I had no problem knowing what a home is; you've got a mother, father, Sally, Dick, Jane, Spot, white fence and what have you and now as we move toward 2000 we've got two people of the same sex in this home and they have children here and they are raising some children. That impacts on what is going to happen out here in the school. So as a principal you are going to have to know how the school fits in and adapts to and deals with the variety, if indeed the variety of homes, configuration of homes does exist. I'm not so sure that they exist but they are here upon us and somebody says, yes, they are. My age shows but I still go back to mother and father, and Dick and Jane.
Someone mentioned to me that they are really concerned about the Black male. Do you see any problems that need to be addressed in the school?
Yes, yes. The schools invariably kind of reflects the community what is
happening out there and of course I am concerned. As a matter of fact
I'm a member of The Brother to Brother Group that we've got here locally
trying to at least give some thought toward that problem. It is kind of
a universal problem. The Black male—I am concerned. Every other target
group of people have increased their span except the Black male. It is
actually decreasing. So I don't know how the school can really address
that but I think that here again, human behavior and what makes our
children move and what makes them feel good about themselves. Not a pie
in the sky, I'm not talking about frivolous kind of things but our Black
male many times fails because he does
Now do you think that the role of the Black male principal helped Black males?
I think it did. There was somebody there that he could say, look, here is a fellow here who's my principal and he's not quite sure if that White principal is his principal or not. He's just not quite sure. He knows that that White principal is there but he is not quite sure that that is his principal. And when he says this Black principal is his he is showing ownership here. This is my principal. He feels good about that. This motivates him to go on and do—it's kind of like a father. To some of them it is their father because every Black principal picked up these boys here and after a game and they had no way home and you carry them on home. So you are a father and if they didn't have lunch money, you just reach in your pocket because you didn't have any fund drive so that Black role model that we had there. Right now I think if we could get some more Black coaches out here that probably does or certainly helps that Black male to see that. The White coaches do a good job as long as we are winning but the Black coach is interested in that whole child and what that child is under. Look at the fellow, McCoy over at West Charlotte or look at Robinston down at Granville, John Thompson up here at Georgetown, these folks are concerned about Chainey here at Temple. These folks are'nt concerned about where these folks go, what they do after they quit playing basketball or football or what have you and it is that kind of thing. It is that caring, you see. So the Black principal I think did a whole lot to establish that good role model there.
Well, this has been very interesting and I am so pleased that you took time out of your busy day.
You know what, I don't have a busy day. I don't know whether you saw the car out there or not. The Buick out there in the front—that's my son's car. I couldn't have done anything today anyway because it's raining but you see I'm forced to put a waterpump on that car. No problem because he's driving my car. He's not stuck. Since I've retired this is what I do. Usually I end up—I just finished up with Pierre's chimney up there. I'm carrying cement up on ladder and helping Wally Passon, helping my grandchildren and my children and these kinds of things. I do gardening, etc., and a lot of reading. I enjoy that. But no, there's no duress or rush or anything.
I certainly appreciate it because this has been an interesting interview and you shared a lot with me.
END OF INTERVIEW