Wynona Douglas put on her best pink and white dress on the morning of Aug. 27, 1964. As she left the comfort of her home at 294 North Dean Street, the 15-year-old felt sure she was prepared for what awaited her. That day she would become the first Black student in Spartanburg County to enroll at an all-white public school. Federal law already had established that children in the U.S. were entitled to equal education, and the Douglas family decided that Spartanburg High School was the best option in her hometown. The all-white Spartanburg school board, choosing to avoid a court fight, had agreed unanimously that she could enroll. She transferred in from a private boarding school in Camden.
A local photographer snapped her picture as she walked alone up to a side door of the local high school where a counselor awaited her, as did 1,800 white students inside. As Douglas calmly headed to her first class, plain-clothes law enforcement officers moved through the hallways. State troopers waited in their cars at Hillcrest Shopping Center in case of a riot. As Douglas stepped through the doors of the school where she would begin the 11th grade, newspapers as far as Tucson, Arizona, and Santa Barbara, California, took note of the moment. That day, about a dozen Black students in four South Carolina counties integrated public schools, but she was the only one who did it alone.
The trail-blazing teenager was the daughter of Dr. J. Marion Douglas (1909-1999), who began his medical practice in Spartanburg in 1946. Wynona’s brother, James, was a few years behind her in school. He ultimately became the first Black medical resident at Duke University Medical Center and a leading cardiothoracic surgeon. Their mother, Gladys, had been a teacher at Cumming Street School. “I talked to her and she understood fully that somebody had to be a pioneer, somebody had to be first,” Gladys Douglas said in a 1984 interview.
Wynona Douglas endured two extremely difficult years as the only Black student at Spartanburg High. “I was optimistic—I really didn’t know people would be so rude,” she recalled 20 years later. “People overtly were nasty. They made comments like, ‘What is this we got in our school?’ They threw things at me. They would do things like deliberately putting my name up for an office and nobody would vote for me.” She was told she could not attend sports events because the school could not guarantee her protection. A skilled saxophonist, she was segregated from the rest of the band. Kids stopped eating with her at lunch. A white friend, C. Mack Amick, invited her to the prom, but the school nixed that too. In spite of all, she graduated in 1966 with an excellent attendance record and a scholarship to Ohio State University. She became a psychologist, worked in youth services and has lived in Ohio ever since. Court-imposed full integration finally came to South Carolina schools in 1970.
This Spotlight is an excerpt from North of Main: Spartanburg's Historic Black Neighborhoods of North Dean Street, Gas Bottom, and Back of the College by Brenda Lee Pryce, Jim Neighbors, and Betsy Wakefield Teter. Copies of the book can be purchased at the Hub City Bookshop or online.
