- Collection:
- Oral Histories of the American South: The Civil Rights Movement
- Title:
- Oral history interview with Steve Cherry, February 19, 1999
- Creator:
- Cherry, Steve, 1942?-
- Contributor to Resource:
- Jones, Mark
Southern Oral History Program - Date of Original:
- 1999-02-19
- Subject:
- Basketball coaches--North Carolina--Lincoln County
School principals--North Carolina--Lincoln County
School integration--North Carolina--Lincoln County
Discrimination in sports--North Carolina
Lincoln County (N.C.)--Race relations - People:
- Cherry, Steve, 1942?-
- Location:
- United States, North Carolina, Lincoln County, 35.48618, -81.22387
- Medium:
- transcripts
sound recordings
oral histories (literary works) - Type:
- Text
Sound - Format:
- text/html
text/xml
audio/mpeg - Description:
- Steve Cherry spent twenty-nine years in the Lincoln County, North Carolina, school system, eventually becoming principal of East Lincoln High School, where he remained from 1982 to 1996. Cherry also coached basketball for many years, and describes school desegregation from both a coach's and a principal's perspective. As a coach, he witnessed the abuse of black players by white players on the basketball court; he weathered threats from white fans angry that black athletes were competing; but he also saw the integrating effect of organized sports. As a principal, he endured brawls between white and black students, and juggled the new demands that the white and black communities placed on him. This interview provides an in-depth look at how desegregation played out on the basketball court as well as in the school halls, and shows the important role athletics played in expressing, and muting, racial tensions.
The Civil Rights Digital Library received support from a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for the aggregation and enhancement of partner metadata. - Metadata URL:
- http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/K-0430/menu.html
- Language:
- eng
- Extent:
- Title from menu page (viewed on November 12, 2008).
Interview participants: Steve Cherry, interviewee; Mark Jones, interviewer.
Duration: 00:58:32.
This electronic edition is part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South. It is a part of the collection Oral histories of the American South.
Text encoded by Jennifer Joyner. Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers. - Contributing Institution:
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project)
- Rights:
-
