Dudley Flood - Is This Criminal?

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Dudley flood went to the historically black north carolina college at durham. He remembers asking one of his professors, professor jones, what he thought about dudley's idea to sit in the front of the bus that he and his friends often took. This was 19 55, one year after the supreme court decision declaring school segregation unconstitutional. The court had overturned the separate but equal doctrine that had been in place since 18 96.

15 years after the Supreme Court ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education, many schools across the South were still segregated. Some school districts actively blocked desegregation. North Carolina passed legislation authorizing tuition grants to white private schools, sometimes called "segregation academies." Members of the KKK held rallies in North Carolina, describing desegregation as "anti-Christian" and "communistic." When the Federal government pressured school boards to comply or lose their funding, many responded by shuttering Black schools and assigning Black students to formerly all-white schools. It was called "one-way desegregation."

In a very rural part of North Carolina, Black students and their families decided to fight back.

We speak with Dr. Dudley E. Flood about his work desegregating every school in North Carolina.

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