Get On Board, Children: The Story of Integration in Yancey County, North Carolina

ASU Author/Contributor (non-ASU co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Ashley Cole Brewer (Creator)
Institution
Appalachian State University (ASU )
Web Site: https://library.appstate.edu/
Advisor
Susan E. Keefe

Abstract: In the early 1950s America witnessed the beginnings of what would become one of the most significant social campaigns in the nation’s history. The murder of fourteen- year old Emmett Till created unrest among black communities and influenced a serious social upheaval. The arrest of Rosa Parks brought more attention to a chain of uprisings that eventually became known as the civil rights movement. National events, such as these, stand at the forefront of civil rights history. However, they were not the only successful movements that occurred. Resources devoted to America’s past tend to gloss over the struggles rural African Americans faced in the mid twentieth century, especially in Appalachia. Black invisibility has long reinforced the myth of homogeneity in the region. Of the limited scholarship that does address black Appalachian culture, the period of the civil rights movement is either summed up in a couple of paragraphs or is omitted all together. In the wake of the nationally publicized affairs of the 1950s, a small black community in Yancey County quietly fought the local Board of Education in pursuit of school integration. My work examines the struggles and successes experienced by these residents during that campaign.

Additional Information

Publication
Thesis
Brewer, A.C. (2011). Get On Board, Children: The Story of Integration in Yancey County, North Carolina. Unpublished master’s thesis. Appalachian State University, Boone, NC.
Language: English
Date: 2011
Keywords
African Americans, Southern Appalachia, Civil Rights, Integration, Yancey County

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