Conclusion

NC State’s black employees played a large role in the university’s on-going integration process. Like black students, they fought for equal rights, fair treatment, and greater representation in the campus’s workplaces. Despite a history of class tensions, black employees from different backgrounds and education levels often worked together in order to guarantee their rights as university employees and American citizens.

University administration was incredibly slow to change their hiring, recruiting, and management practices to give black employees a fair opportunity to work at the university. Even after the Physical Plant employees’ protests in 1969, the university showed little initiative to comply with a majority of the worker’s concerns. One of the main reasons university administration began to address the inequalities in the campus’s workplaces was the enforcement of federal and state laws that protected the employment rights and opportunities of all employees regardless of race or gender. Without that enforcement, NC State may have taken even longer to further integrate its workplaces.