pI'U
Contribution
From
Carol Passmore
When the 1958-1959 school year brought, in addition to the
birth of my youngest brother during a snow storm, a school fire, a
twenty-five year flood, and an epidemic of some disease I failed to
catch and thus don't remember, my parents decided that it might be
easier to raise four children somewhere other than southeastern
Kentucky. They moved us to High Point, North Carolina, where my
father began teaching at High Point College. I entered the tenth grade
there knowing little of Quakers except that a gray cat of my younger
years bore this name. Because our small Kentucky town had very few
African American citizens, I also knew little of the issues stirred by
Brown v. Board of Education.
A year later, as I entered my junior year at High Point Central High,
the civil rights movement also arrived as two sisters, Brenda Fountain
at the junior high and her sister Lynn at the high school, enrolled in the
all white schools. I don't remember any particular tension or concern
during the summer but perhaps I wasn't paying attention. As I stood
on that warm September morning with my friends, newly acquired
during the previous year at school and at the First Baptist Church, the
word was that we would not have trouble like some other newly
Carol Passmore, Durham, North Carolina, member of Durham Friends
Meeting.
27
pI'U
Contribution
From
Carol Passmore
When the 1958-1959 school year brought, in addition to the
birth of my youngest brother during a snow storm, a school fire, a
twenty-five year flood, and an epidemic of some disease I failed to
catch and thus don't remember, my parents decided that it might be
easier to raise four children somewhere other than southeastern
Kentucky. They moved us to High Point, North Carolina, where my
father began teaching at High Point College. I entered the tenth grade
there knowing little of Quakers except that a gray cat of my younger
years bore this name. Because our small Kentucky town had very few
African American citizens, I also knew little of the issues stirred by
Brown v. Board of Education.
A year later, as I entered my junior year at High Point Central High,
the civil rights movement also arrived as two sisters, Brenda Fountain
at the junior high and her sister Lynn at the high school, enrolled in the
all white schools. I don't remember any particular tension or concern
during the summer but perhaps I wasn't paying attention. As I stood
on that warm September morning with my friends, newly acquired
during the previous year at school and at the First Baptist Church, the
word was that we would not have trouble like some other newly
Carol Passmore, Durham, North Carolina, member of Durham Friends
Meeting.
27
