Delois Huntley, who integrated Alexander Graham Junior High in 1957, dies at 69

Delois Huntley, one of four black students to integrate Charlotte schools when she walked through the doors of the all-white Alexander Graham Junior High in 1957, died on Sunday, her family said. She was 69. The cause of death was not released.

After the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that ruled segregated schools unconstitutional, the NAACP sought out black families willing to send their children to white classrooms. Huntley’s family lived in the all-black Brooklyn neighborhood, just three blocks from Alexander Graham, which was then on Morehead Street.

Huntley, a 12-year-old seventh grader at the time, told the Observer decades later she was encouraged by her parents, who “realized it was for the greater good. Somebody had to go first.”

Huntley’s first days were less controversial than those of Dorothy Counts at Harding High. Perhaps because of that, less has been written about her, and she’s lived a relatively quiet life.

Still, white kids bumped her in the hallways, or spat at her. She told the Observer that one boy wiped sweat from his brow into her face, and others whispered nasty things at her. She remembers her father fielding threatening phone calls, sitting up all night to keep watch, then heading off to work with scarcely any sleep.

When the school term ended, so did Huntley’s time at Alexander Graham. The building was torn down in 1958, and the school moved to Myers Park.

Huntley went to all-black Second Ward High, where she sang in the chorus, joined the cheerleading squad and graduated in 1963. Then she studied at N.C. Central and Johnson C. Smith universities before career and family beckoned.

In 2008, Huntley received the Old North State Award from Gov. Mike Easley and had been outspoken about school integration for decades.

“I don’t want to see us go back to segregated schools,” she told the Observer in 2007. “The only way we’re going to progress as a people - not just black people but black and white - is that we involve ourselves with each other.”

This story was originally published May 10, 2015 at 9:18 PM with the headline "Delois Huntley, who integrated Alexander Graham Junior High in 1957, dies at 69."