
{"id":13917,"date":"2010-11-18T14:13:12","date_gmt":"2010-11-18T19:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=13917"},"modified":"2010-11-18T14:13:12","modified_gmt":"2010-11-18T19:13:12","slug":"a-brandis-manley-boardroom-at-lincoln-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2010\/11\/18\/a-brandis-manley-boardroom-at-lincoln-center\/","title":{"rendered":"A Brandis-Manley boardroom at Lincoln Center"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Eddie Davis<br \/>\n<\/strong><br \/>\nIn\u00c2\u00a0late-summer of 1960, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools became the eighth school district in North Carolina to host the early stages of school integration, when three black\u00c2\u00a0first-graders\u00c2\u00a0enrolled at Estes Hills Elementary School.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>A year earlier, in 1959, two of the members of the CHCCS board, Henry Brandis and J.R. Manley,\u00c2\u00a0were on the losing end of a vote that would have allowed\u00c2\u00a0Stanley B. Vickers, a 10-year-old black student from Carrboro,\u00c2\u00a0to\u00c2\u00a0transfer to\u00c2\u00a0an all-white school in the district. The motion to allow Vickers to attend a white school was defeated 4-2. <\/p>\n<p>At the time, Brandis was the dean of the UNC School of Law. Manley was, and still is, the pastor of First Baptist Church. Their courageous votes carried a legal and moral connotation\u00c2\u00a0that still rings powerfully\u00c2\u00a0more than a half-century later. In fact,\u00c2\u00a0Dean Brandis ultimately resigned from the\u00c2\u00a0board based\u00c2\u00a0on what he called the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153indefensible\u00e2\u20ac\u009d position taken by the majority. Rev. Manley, who was the first black member of the board, had received the highest number of votes in the preceding school board elections.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The reasoned votes of Brandis and Manley foreshadowed the ultimate decision by federal Judge Edwin Stanley in the landmark case of <em>Vickers v. Chapel Hill City Board of Education<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0In that case,\u00c2\u00a0which was\u00c2\u00a0originally filed on behalf of the Vickers family\u00c2\u00a0by attorneys Conrad\u00c2\u00a0Pearson and Thurgood Marshall, the judge\u00c2\u00a0ruled that the constitutional rights of Stanley\u00c2\u00a0Vickers had been violated\u00c2\u00a0solely because of his race.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>We have now reached the 50th anniversary of the first phase of school integration in Chapel Hill-Carrboro.\u00c2\u00a0May I suggest that one way for\u00c2\u00a0the\u00c2\u00a0school district\u00c2\u00a0to commemorate this anniversary\u00c2\u00a0and to\u00c2\u00a0commemorate\u00c2\u00a0the\u00c2\u00a0spirit of justice, fair play and inclusiveness would be for the\u00c2\u00a0current board members, none of whom were involved in the actions of the late 1950s and the early 1960s, to name the boardroom at the Lincoln Center in honor of Brandis and Manley.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I know that there have been many\u00c2\u00a0members of the board who have given quality service to the school\u00c2\u00a0district and that\u00c2\u00a0designating the boardroom the Brandis-Manley Boardroom might raise the issue of special treatment for these two former\u00c2\u00a0board members. <\/p>\n<p>However, such a designation would send a strong message about the continuing commitment that the school district has to diversity and inclusion. This\u00c2\u00a0designation would allow the current board to honor the courageous stand on behalf of individual students by Brandis and Manley. The designation would honor the legal and moral legacy\u00c2\u00a0of Dean Henry Brandis. Finally, the designation would honor the lifelong advocacy that has been given to Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and the entire state of North Carolina by Dr. J.R. Manley.<\/p>\n<p>This proposal has been submitted to the individual members of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education and to the school administration.<\/p>\n<p>I hope\u00c2\u00a0citizens, parents and students of the school district will urge the school board to\u00c2\u00a0give ample consideration and deliberation\u00c2\u00a0to this proposal during this 50th anniversary season of school integration in\u00c2\u00a0the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school system.<\/p>\n<p><em>Eddie Davis is a retired public school teacher who lives in Durham.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In late-summer of 1960, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools became the eighth school district in North Carolina to host the early stages of school integration, when three black first-graders enrolled at Estes Hills Elementary School. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13917"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13921,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13917\/revisions\/13921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}