Listening to History: A North Carolina Mosaic

Race and Desegregation: West Charlotte High School

Race and Desegregation: Asheville's Stephens-Lee High School

Tobacco, History, and Memory: Storytelling and Cultural Grieving in Eastern North Carolina

Environmentalism: Forests and Communities in Western North Carolina

New Immigrants and Labor: The Case Farms Strike in Morganton

New Immigrants and Neighborhood Change: Northeast Central Durham

Voices After the Deluge: Oral History Investigations of the Great North Carolina Flood

Whole Lives: The Durham HIV Life Review Project

The Brown Creek Correctional Institute Life Review Performance Project

Chatham County at the Crossroads




Race and Desegregation: Asheville's Stephens-Lee High School

The Stephens-Lee Marching Band
Asheville's Stephens-Lee High School, built in 1923, was for many decades western North Carolina's only secondary school for African Americans. The school drew students from throughout Buncombe, Henderson, Madison, Yancey, and Transylvania counties, and represented a focal point and key source of pride for the extended African-American community in the state's western region. In 1965, however, the all-white school board closed Stephens-Lee as a part of its desegregation plan, and in 1975 the entire multi-building campus, save for the gymnasium, was bulldozed. As part of the Southern Oral History Program's "Listening for a Change" initiative, historian Kelly Navies has interviewed former faculty, administrators, and students of Stephens-Lee to collect memories of the school and assess the impact of desegregation and the school's closing on the black community in western North Carolina.

Despite the many difficulties imposed by segregation, Stephens-Lee's graduates were proud of the school and its educational program. The school's famed marching band reflected this fierce pride, as Richard Bowman, class of 1951, recalled:

"We were the raggediest [marching] band in Asheville, because our uniforms were hand-me-downs from the white schools. We didn't have money in the budget to buy nice, new uniforms. In fact, some of the students didn't have uniforms. They had only a hat. Maybe a uniform hat, but no uniform pants or clothes. But we had rhythm, and we would always get more applause coming down Patton Avenue than anyone, I think, because of the rhythm that we had. Miss Chappell taught the majorettes when I was in high school, and I have not seen a band to this day that marched with the rhythm in the form that she had the majorettes doing."

Stephens-Lee Alumni Association member Everette Parrish remembered the excellence of the school faculty. "Just about all our faculty had their masters degrees, and a few were working on their doctorates, which means we got the benefit of the latest in education." Through the Alumni Association, Navies has organized community outreach efforts including oral history workshops for Asheville youth, a forum celebrating the opening of the Stephens-Lee Community Center, and a presentation on her work at UNC-Asheville.





The Southern Oral History Program
Center for the Study of the American South
Love House and Hutchins Forum
410 East Franklin St., CB# 9127, UNC-CH
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-9127
(919) 962-0455
info@sohp.org