Location: Bragg Boulevard at Randolph Street in Fayetteville
County: Cumberland
Original Date Cast: 2018
In September 1951 Fort Bragg school system superintendent Mildred Poole, with the support of military liaison Capt. F. J. Donoghue, integrated the Main Post School. Her action, which involved the integration of thirty-three black children (previously bused into Fayetteville) with 1,208 white elementary students, drew press coverage but little resistance on-base. The Associated Press story was carried in papers across the nation and an article appeared in Jet. The bold move, the first at a military installation in the South, came three years after Truman’s desegregation of the military and three years before the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka declaring separate schools for blacks and whites to be unconstitutional.
The Main Post School was built in 1921. The building, which ceased to serve as a school in 1962 and later served as headquarters for the military police, was razed in 1966 and the site now houses a library. A new elementary school was opened across from the Post School in 1953. Mildred Poole was named the first principal of Bowley Elementary School, which remains in operation although the building is considerably altered. In 1956 Poole’s contract was not renewed and she took up an educational post in Clinton. She died in 1992 at age 92.
In retirement F. J. Donoghue, living in Florida, wrote to the Fayetteville Observer, encouraging the paper to profile Mildred Poole. He commended her bravery and vision and recalled that he had feared being court-martialed for okaying her plan but proceeded after conferring with the JAG officer. Poole told a reporter in 1979, “It was rough—even in my family. But when people would jump on me about it, I’d say, ‘I know it’s right. The only one I’m responsible to is the good Lord and he has OK’d it.”
References:
Stacey Griffin, “Documentation of Fort Bragg’s Historic Schools, DOD Educational Activity Historic Context, and a Mid-Century Modern Schools Architectural Context, Fort Bragg” (2017)
Jeffrey J. Crow, Paul D. Escott, and Flora J. Hatley Wadelington, A History of African Americans in North Carolina (2011)
Roy Parker, Jr., Cumberland County: A Brief History (1990)
Fayetteville Observer, Dec. 3, 1979; Jan. 15, 1984; and Apr. 18, 2018
Army Times, Feb. 22, 1985
Jet, November 1, 1951
Asheville Citizen-Times, October 14, 1951
(Baltimore) Afro-American, July 24, 1951