Sixty years ago today, on August 13, 1964, the first African-American students enrolled in Lawrence County High School and Loretto High School and the Lawrence County Schools System was desegregated.

According to Carpenter and Carter’s ‘Our Hometown,’ the transition from segregated to integrated classrooms in our area went relatively smoothly, without the violence that characterized integration in some other areas of the nation.

While segregated schools for black students were available through the eighth grade in Lawrence County prior to integration, Lawrence County’s black students had to catch a bus to Mt. Pleasant–a roughly 50-mile round-trip each day–if they wanted to attend high school prior to 1964.

In a post we did about this subject ten years ago, some of our readers shared their memories of those first days of racial integration.

Brenda Wright McDonald and Carolyn Pulley both remembered attending an assembly in the LCHS gym shortly before the school was integrated where school faculty explained to the student body what was happening.

Terry Evans recalled that someone asked Coach Leonard Staggs of LCHS if he was going to allow black students to play football or basketball, to which Coach Staggs replied, “If they prove they can play, then they will play.”

Coach Staggs backed up his words with actions when Ernest Smith became the first African-American student to play sports for Lawrence County High School soon thereafter.

Kate Moore shared her memories that, despite opposition from a few parents at having an African-American teacher at Lawrenceburg Public School, second grade teacher Vera Davis “became a much-loved teacher at LPS, teaching second grade there for many years until her retirement.”

What are your memories of integration in Lawrence County?