White flight makes a high school all black
The rise of suburbs in Durham, North Carolina, made Hillside High School an all-black school as white families left the city and city policymakers did nothing to change district lines.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Richard Hicks, February 1, 1991. Interview M-0023. 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
As it relates to
the students here we do not have a Caucasian or a person of any other
race in this school other than blacks. There are 976 kids here at this
time and they are all black students. However, about 30% of our staff is
composed of Caucasian teachers or of another minority. However, we have
found that that has in no way deterred the teachers or students interest
in making this one of the best high schools around.
- GOLDIE F. WELLS:
-
How do you maintain the total black student population?
- RICHARD HICKS:
-
It is just a matter that--I guess it was like it occurred in many cities
that Caucasians chose to move from the inter-city areas and move to the
suburbs and as they moved to the suburbs in the county school systems
they began to build bigger and in some cases better facilities in their
high schools. So what has happened over the last eight or nine years is
that there has been a continuous flow so that those Caucasian families
who still live within the school district, there children are grown and
have children of their own and the city and county of Durham have not
seen fit over the years to move the city school district line along with
the movement of the suburbs. So there are many people who live in the
city of Durham but are in the county school district because the school
district line has not changed.
