At age 15, Dorothy Counts became one of the first and, at the time, the only black student to enrol in the newly desegregated Harry Harding High School in Charlotte (North Carolina). Almost three years after Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court struck down school segregation. Edwin Thompkins, a family friend, dropped Counts off at school on her first day. Since their car couldn’t get closer to the school’s front entrance, Edwin offered to take Counts there while her father parked the car. As she stepped out of the car to walk down the hill, her father told her,
Hold your head high. You are inferior to no one.
In an extremely hostile crowd, about 200 to 300 people screamed racial epithets at her. Most of them were students and parents. They taunted her, spat on her, and pelted her with rocks and sticks. While Dorothy walked by unafraid, she later told the press that many people threw rocks at her, most of which landed in front of her feet. Those students formed walls before separating themselves at the last moment so she could pass. After entering the building, she went into the auditorium to sit with her class. She was repeatedly harassed with racial slurs outside the school building. Nobody protected her in this situation. While going to her homeroom to obtain her books and schedule, she was ignored. Around noon, her parents asked if she wanted to continue attending Harry Harding High School. Counts said she wanted to go back to become friends with her classmates. A day later, Dorothy became ill. She missed school on Friday due to a fever and a sore throat, but she returned on Monday. When they returned to school, there was no crowd outside.
She returned to campus, but students and faculty were shocked, and they again harassed her. Her teacher ignored her during class and forced her to sit in the back of the room. A group of boys spat in her food during lunch on Tuesday. After Counts had finished speaking to the new student, she went outside and met another new student in her homeroom class. That student also explained that she was new to Charlotte and the school.
Counts told her parents that she felt better after making friends and having someone to talk to. Her parents urged Counts to be picked up by her during her lunch period so she could eat during her lunch period. Counts saw the young girl in the hallway on Wednesday, but she ignored him and shamefully hung her head. She was hit on the back of the head with a blackboard eraser during lunchtime. When she went outside to meet her brother for lunch, she discovered a crowd gathered around the family car, and the back windows were shattered. Counts said she was afraid for the first time because her family was being attacked now. She was forced to withdraw from the school after four days of harassment that threatened her safety, but the images of Dorothy being verbally abused by her white classmates were seen around the world. Photographer Douglas Martin’s picture of Counts being mocked by a crowd on her first day of school won the 1957 World Press Photo of the Year award
Counts and her family settled in Philadelphia, where she attended an integrated high school. Upon returning to Charlotte, she earned a degree from Johnson C. Smith University and began to work as a preschool teacher and education advocate. Since then, she has continued to provide non-profit services to children from low-income families in Charlotte.
In 2006, Counts received an email from a man named Woody Cooper, one of the boys who harassed and mocked her during her school time. And he wanted to apologize to her. They both met at lunch, and she forgave her by saying,
I forgave you a long time ago, this is an opportunity to do something for our children and grandchildren.
They two agreed to share their story and then went on to do numerous interviews and speaking engagements together.
