West Charlotte High School During Integration
-
- Mary Lou and Jim Babb oral history interview, 1999 July 14
- Mary Lou and James "Jim" Babb recount their family's experiences attending West Charlotte High School during the height of school busing for integration in Charlotte, North Carolina during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Topics discussed include their daughter Julie's experience in the open school program; their son Jimmy's experience on West Charlotte's first soccer team; and how the PTA brought white and black parents together. They also discuss their frustration with the ongoing lawsuit against the Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools' busing program, which they see as trying to undo twenty-five years of hard work and will lead to the resegregation of the school system.
-
- Andy Baxter oral history interview, 1999 June 29
- Andy Baxter talks about his experiences as a student at West Charlotte High School, where he was student council president in his senior year. Mr. Baxter reflects on his experiences with racial integration at the school, speaking at length about the different levels of integration in various areas of school life, including academics, staffing, extracurricular activities, social functions, and the lunchroom. He notes that the level of integration varied significantly across these different areas; clubs and certain social groupings were more diverse, but there were few black students enrolled in academically rigorous classes. Mr. Baxter credits West Charlotte for the effort made towards integration and towards building a respectful culture within the school. In reflection, Mr. Baxter suggests that the apparent successes of West Charlotte during the 1980s may have been due to the social background of the student body, which was mostly middle or upper middle class irrespective of race.
-
- Regina Crockett oral history interview, 1999 June 20
- Regina Crockett recounts her experiences attending West Charlotte High School in the late 1990s. Topics discussed include the importance of Advanced Placement (AP) classes at West Charlotte; how she and other Black students were encouraged by their teachers to sign up for AP classes; and how being in classes with people of all different races helped break down the barriers between people.
-
- Barbara Ledford oral history interview, 1999 July 17
- Barbara Ledford describes her experiences as a teacher and administrator within the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system, where she was employed in several schools including East Charlotte High School, Northeast Junior High School, and West Charlotte High School. Despite the fact that she was only there for the last five years of her 32 year career, Ms. Ledford describes her experience as the principal at West Charlotte as the "jewel in the crown" of her career. In describing what made West Charlotte an exceptional school, Ms. Ledford notes the wide diversity of the student body. She states that students of all backgrounds participated in the highest level courses and received academic honors and awards, though she acknowledges that inequities of society were reflected within the school. Ms. Ledford also expresses her appreciation for the English as a second language (ESL) program at West Charlotte, which helped diversity flourish and provided cultural enrichment at the school.
-
- Betty Seizinger oral history interview, 1999 June 22
- Betty Seizinger discusses the history of West Charlotte High School and shares her experiences as a teacher there during the 1980s. Ms. Seizinger describes West Charlotte's challenges and successes in integrating staff and students during the 1970s. She talks about tensions that grew within the school during the 1980s and 1990s and a belief that while integration was a success, inequality between white and black students in the schools was still present. Ms. Seizinger states that black students and families were more inconvenienced and less considered than their white counterparts during implementation of integration across the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system. Other points of contention include underrepresentation of black students in upper level classes and a shift towards increasingly white teacher leadership within West Charlotte during the 1980s. Despite these shortcomings, Ms. Seizinger characterizes West Charlotte High School as "the school that made desegregation work," praising the principals, staff, and parents who created a unique culture and made the school a role model on a national level. She also describes white flight from Charlotte's public schools into what she called "segregation academies" (private schools that were exempt from the new laws prohibiting segregation), the emergence of a neighborhood school movement that picked up pace with the rapid suburban growth of the city, and the implications of the proliferation of magnet schools within Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. The interview closes with a related discussion about Davidson College.
-
- Evelyn Van Hecke oral history interview, 1999 July 15
- Evelyn Van Hecke was a 40-year-old woman at the time of interview, which took place in her home in Charlotte, North Carolina. She was born in Charlotte in 1958. She was educated at Carmel Academy (now Charlotte Country Day School) and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and was employed as an art teacher at West Charlotte High School and Hawthorne Junior High School., Evelyn Van Hecke recounts her experience as an art teacher at West Charlotte High School in the 1980s and 1990s. Topics discussed include the role fine arts classes played in bringing students of all backgrounds together, her experiences working with English as a Second Language students in her art classes, and the pride West Charlotte teachers and staff had for the school and their students. She also discusses how under new leadership at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in the 1990s, West Charlotte was no longer treated as the system's flagship school, compounding the problems the school faced due to the lack of support for integration from newcomers to the city.