Introduction

Discussions of the integration of NC State usually focus on the struggles of black students fighting for equal access to a quality education and their difficulty in integrating into an overwhelmingly white campus space. The students’ fight was an important aspect of the Civil Rights Movement, but it often overshadows another campus group fighting for equal space in higher education, NC State’s black employees. These employees played an important role in integrating NC State by fighting for equal space in the campus’s workplaces.

NC State has a long history of hiring black workers. The university hired one of the very first in 1889, and she worked at the university for 50 years.[1] However, until the late 1960s, almost all of the black employees worked in positions considered unskilled or low-skilled: grounds maintenance, janitorial positions, infirmary work, or food service positions. This situation was not unique to NC State. Particularly in the South, black employees traditionally worked in agricultural, labor-intensive, or service jobs. This was largely due to ingrained racism within social and cultural institutions and decades of inferior educational systems available to the black community, which denied them access to necessary education and training to advance in the workplace.[2] Many of NC State’s black workers faced these same employment barriers and largely remained confined to the traditional jobs. It was almost unheard of for a black person to work as academic staff, in a faculty position, or in the upper echelons of the university’s administration before the '60s.

After student body integration began in the early 1950s, the university took small steps to hire black employees in what were considered non-traditional positions. NC State hired a few middle-class black employees to fill academic positions. The university hired its first black academic staff member in 1958, the first full-time library staff member in 1962, the first faculty member (a visiting professor) in 1962, and the first black instructor with faculty ranking in 1965.[3] Importantly all of these first employees had at least some college education. Many saw these hirings as progress but the employment of these first black academic and staff employees was tokenism. Workplace integration at NC State remained miniscule until the federal government stepped in to combat institutional racism by passing and enforcing equal opportunity and affirmative action laws starting in 1961 and continuing through the early 1980s.

Black employees, like black students, struggled to carve out their own space on NC State’s campus. “Race & Space: The Workplace” explores the workplaces black employees occupied from 1969 to 1983, tracing the spatial changes of workplace integration. The exhibit excludes student employees in order to focus on black workers who faced different challenges in fighting for equal campus space. Student employees often did not rely upon a university job for their livelihood, but black workers from the surrounding communities did. Many could not fall back on a college education or transfer to a historically black university. They needed their jobs to survive, which made their struggle different from black students fighting for equal education and treatment in the classroom.

The exhibit also highlights the actions taken and not taken by university administration, the ways working-class and middle-class black employees cooperated to achieve better workplace opportunities, and the federal laws that mandated equal access to workplaces regardless of race and gender. Their story is a vital, if often overlooked, aspect of NC State’s integration history.

Federal Laws Addressing Equal Employment Opportunity

Executive Order 10925, signed in 1961, established the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 guaranteed black citizens not only their equal rights as American citizens, but Title VII of the act forbids government-funded public establishments and businesses connected to interstate commerce from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

Executive Order 11246, issued in 1965 and amended in 1967, banned discrimination in government employment and required federal contractors to adopt and implement "affirmative action programs."

The Equal Employment Act of 1972, which amended Section 701 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, extended the law to employers with more than 15 employees, all levels of federal government, and unions with more than 15 members. It also made it easier for employees to file a class-action suit against a discriminating employer.

[1] “Historical State Timelines: African Americans,” North Carolina State University Libraries, accessed October 27, 2014, http://historicalstate.lib.ncsu.edu/timelines/african-americans#d1950.

[2] Ray Marshall, “The Old South and the New,” in Employment of Blacks in the South: A Perspective on the 1960s, Ray Marshall and Virgil L. Christian, Jr. eds., (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978), 6.

[3] “Historical State Timelines: African Americans,” North Carolina State University Libraries, accessed October 27, 2014, http://historicalstate.lib.ncsu.edu/timelines/african-americans#d1950.