Summer of Nineteen Sixty-Three

A full year before Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, Fayetteville was already changing, because students demanded it.

In the spring of nineteen sixty-three, a small group of students from Fayetteville State Teachers College, a historically Black institution, formed what they called the Demonstration Committee. Their aim was organized, peaceful protest against the segregated businesses that lined Hay Street and the rest of downtown, the restaurants that would not serve them, the theaters that would not seat them, the hotels that refused their business.

On May eighteenth, nineteen sixty-three, more than two hundred students marched. They staged sit-ins. They were arrested. Some were beaten. The records document students being struck with axe handles. Tear gas was used. Some students were expelled from school for participating.

The records go quiet on the full accounting of injuries and consequences borne by those who took the greatest risks. What is clear is that they did not stop.

The mayor established a biracial committee in June. By the time the school year ended, all four downtown theaters had integrated. Most restaurants and hotels followed. The pattern held when the Civil Rights Act passed in nineteen sixty-four: Fayetteville was already ahead of it.

This intersection, the Market House rotary at Hay and Green and Person Streets, was at the center of those marches. The students walked these streets, sat at counters along them, and refused to leave until the city moved.

Their names are less famous than the names attached to Birmingham or Selma. But what they accomplished, a full year early, is documented and undeniable. Fayetteville desegregated because students from Fayetteville State College made it happen.