Dudley Flood - The First Black Principal in North Carolina

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The newly de segregated high school med a student planning committee of seven white students and seven black students to advise school leaders. They implemented things like a requirement that anyone running for student body office have a running mate of another race. Dudley flood worked seven days a week from 19 69 to 19 73, travelling to every single county in north carolina. When he left hyde county, he moved on to the next county, often travelling with his partner, a white man, also a school principal, named jean crosbie.

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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