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In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the Vickers civil rights decision

Posted on September 1, 2011September 22, 2011 by Staff

Editor’s note: The following is a resolution approved by the Carrboro Board of Aldermen last week.

WHEREAS, the town of Carrboro, North Carolina has been an incorporated community for 100 years; and

WHEREAS, many events and individuals have added to the respect for diversity and inclusion and the appreciation for creative problem-solving that are two of the pillars upon which the modern town of Carrboro stands; and

WHEREAS, this centennial year includes the fiftieth anniversary of the civil rights federal court case of former Carrboro resident Stanley Vickers; and

WHEREAS, in 1959, Carrboro residents Lee and Lattice Vickers requested that their son, Stanley, attend Carrboro Elementary School, then an all-white school, rather than more distant, then, all-black Northside Elementary School; and

WHEREAS, in 1959, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro School Board voted 4-2 to deny the Stanley Vickers request to transfer to Carrboro School, with two members of the school board, Henry Brandis and J.R. Manley, dissenting; and

WHEREAS, at the time, Brandis was the dean of the UNC School of Law and Manley was, and still is, the pastor of First Baptist Church in Chapel Hill; and

WHEREAS, the reasoned votes of Dean Brandis and Rev. Manley forecast the federal court decision by Judge Edwin Stanley in the landmark case of Vickers v. Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Board of Education; and

WHEREAS, in that case, which was originally filed on behalf of the Vickers family by attorneys Conrad Pearson and Thurgood Marshall, the judge ruled that the constitutional rights of Stanley Vickers had been violated solely because of his race; and

WHEREAS, the Vickers decision advanced equal access to public schools in Chapel Hill-Carrboro, in North Carolina and across the Southeastern United States; and

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that we, members of the Carrboro Board of Aldermen, salute the courage, the conviction, and the sacrifice of the Vickers family and their multi-racial supporters in Carrboro and elsewhere;

AND, that the members of the Carrboro Board of Aldermen praise the 1961 Chapel Hill-Carrboro School Board for the model of cooperation and inclusion set in the Carrboro and Chapel Hill school district and the entire state of North Carolina with their vote to reassign Stanley Vickers and three other black students to the previously all-white Chapel Hill Junior High School during their meeting on August 29, 1961.

AND, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that in recognition of this anniversary, the members of the Carrboro Board of Aldermen declare Monday, August 29, 2011 Stanley B. Vickers Diversity Appreciation Day in the town of Carrboro, North Carolina.

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