Black History Month Panel Shares Perspectives

By Pat James, GoHeels.com

The third African-American to earn a degree in journalism from UNC, Walter Jackson, class of 1967, often felt isolated as a student.

Speaking Saturday at a Black History Month panel discussion hosted by Carolina Athletics, Jackson recalled being able to easily count the number of African-American undergraduates on campus during his freshman year in 1963. Rarely would he be in a class with another African-American. And there wasn't a single African-American faculty member for three more years.

"It was a different world," said Jackson, who went on to serve in Vietnam before becoming the first African-American news reporter for the Durham Herald-Sun. "It was the social isolation that just made you feel in some kind of way second-class rather than the kind of hostility earlier generations had experienced."

In many ways, UNC has changed significantly since Jackson was a student. But tensions over race, history and culture still exist.

In an effort to discuss how far the University has come and in what ways it can still improve, the Carolina Athletics Diversity and Inclusion Committee organized Saturday's panel, held inside the Carolina Basketball Museum following the men's basketball team's win over Miami. It's part of a month of events within the department celebrating Black History Month.

Approximately 40 people gathered to hear Jackson, former men's basketball player Shammond Williams and redshirt junior Nicole Greene of the women's track and field team. For an hour, they talked about their experiences as African-American students at UNC. Sportscaster and media host Dwayne Ballen, the husband of Senior Associate Athletic Director and Chief Financial Officer Martina Ballen, who chairs the department's Diversity Committee, moderated the panel.

Sitting next to Williams and Greene, Jackson spoke of how difficult it was to root for Tar Heel teams before African-Americans were allowed to compete. He also talked about the indignity of being expected to stand and sing "Dixie" as Confederate flags waved at halftime of football and basketball games.

No such tradition existed when Williams enrolled at UNC almost 30 years later. From Greenville, S.C., he said he was received better at Carolina than he'd been in his home state.

"It was just mind-blowing," Williams said. "The interactions and how people conversed with me, to a certain point, it seemed as if I wasn't African-American. It began to change my whole mind about other ethnicities and the way I viewed society.

"When you're in certain environments, you're getting certain information that's being dictated to you each and every day. So, if you don't know any better, that's what you're going to think."

Because of how much he cherished his time at UNC and how grateful he remains to Dean Smith for the opportunity he gave him to become the first person in his family to graduate from college, Williams said it hurt hearing about Jackson's experience.

"A lot of times we have no ideas of what they encountered to allow us to be in the position that we're in …" said Williams of Jackson and his predecessors. "Looking at how things have changed, I'm just grateful to be here, to listen to those things, because I appreciate it. Now I can pass those things down to my children to help them understand this isn't a privilege; people have earned and fought and dealt with some things to put you in the position that you can succeed."

Greene, who is from Ponte Vedra, Fla., and won the 2018 NCAA Indoor Championship in the high jump, was the only African-American girl in her high school class. When she arrived at UNC, she was inspired "because not only was I with (a lot of African-Americans) on the track, but we were in classroom collaborating together."

"All the opportunities I've been given here have been mainly from African-Americans who were in the hospital and higher-ups in the Carolina Athletics department and in academics and in the Leadership Academy," said Greene, who is majoring in exercise and sport science with minors in chemistry and medical anthropology and plans to go on to medical school. "It's just amazing to see it's not just athletics. It's everything."

But even with all the progress that's been made, there's still turmoil, such as the controversy that surrounded the presence of Silent Sam, a Confederate statue that was erected in 1913 and ultimately removed in January.

"I think the University can be the University it once was and is because there are positives in terms of having the kinds of struggles we're having now and the kinds of dialogue," Jackson said. "Lots of places couldn't grapple as effectively as this University has done with the kinds of issues we've been experiencing here.

"Not only can we get through it, but we will get through it and emerge greater than ever in my opinion."

University of North Carolina Athletics

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