They experienced segregated and integrated classrooms.
On June 21, 2025, members of the minority class of 1969 from Lee Edwards High School gathered at Longhorn Restaurant to celebrate their pride and contributions made to education and racial relations in Asheville City Schools during the 1959-1969 school years.
The decade from 1959 to 1969 was a time when Asheville City Schools were struggling to comply with the 1954 Supreme Court ruling on school desegregation, Brown v. Topeka (KS) Board of Education. School systems, and some state governments, throughout the South and elsewhere ignored or slow-walked the ruling, with Arkansas among the states that simply refused to follow it.
In September, 1957, when nine African American students (the “Little Rock Nine”) tried to enroll at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus ordered the state’s National Guard to surround the school to keep the students from entering. In response, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an Executive Order calling up the 101st Airborne Division to protect the students and implement the ruling. The ensuing struggle gained world-wide attention…