History Overview from North Shelby School Website:
Northside (North Shelby) School was constructed at 1205 Northside Drive in 1965 at a cost of $189,267. It operated as a black elementary school from 1966 to 1971, and became a Title I kindergarten from 1971 to 1975. It became the Children’s Center for the special needs in 1975.
The Truth:
The 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education ruled that segregation of schools based on a separate but equal principle was not working as intended and therefore unconstitutional. Many states, including North Carolina sought to get around the Court Decision in many ways. In the early 1960s NC Governor Terry Sanford even threatened to shut down public education in North Carolina to stop integration enforcement. Also, a flurry of construction of new black schools was started in an effort to show the Federal Courts that schools in North Carolina were indeed “equal.” Northside School in Shelby and several other black schools around Cleveland County were constructed for this purpose.
The dreams of the black community in Cleveland County that finally at last the promise of a better education for black children appeared to be coming true. It quickly became obvious that those dreams were not coming true. The flurry of construction of black schools was only a ruse to ward off enforcement of full integration of public schools in North Carolina, Cleveland County and elsewhere.
The next ruse used by Cleveland County Schools to ward off integration was to consolidate the many neighborhood white schools as a prelude to construction two large “County Schools,” Burns and Crest High Schools and Middle Schools. After that construction was completed, then all the students in Cleveland County, black and white, would “feed” into those integrated schools. Burns and Crest High Schools did NOT include swimming pools and auditoriums because of the fears at that time of mixing races in large numbers in close proximity.
This “consolidation” caught me in the Eighth Grade when I was bused from Fallston to Belwood for the Eighth and Ninth Grades and then returned to Fallston for the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth grades. I graduated Burns at Fallston in 1965 never to have been to school with a black person. The “big” Burns High School was under construction and full integration began in 1968. Many of the newly constructed black schools ceased operation at this time because white parents didn’t want their kids to attend former black schools (as they were somehow inferior) and were sold off cheap to “friends” of local government officials. It always seems to happen that way. Somehow Northside School in Shelby escaped that fate. That school remained under the ownership of Shelby City Schools.
Besides the opening in Burns and Crest High Schools in 1968, something else happened that taught me about the “separate but equal” so-called defense of segregation. 1968 was a Presidential Election Year, I had turned 21, a Junior at NC State University majoring in Nuclear Engineering and my first time to vote. As I was in the line to vote, a young black man that I knew, maybe a year or two older than I, a product of Cleveland County’s segregated schools was right in front of me. When the Poll Worker handed the black man his ballot, the black man asked for help with his ballot. He COULD NOT read. The Poll Worker pointed to a place on the ballot and TOLD the black man, “right HERE is where YOU vote “Straight Democrat!” the black man hesitated and asked for more help. The Poll Worker, an older white man, short and wearing his glasses down on the tip of his nose, reared back his head so he could look down his nose at the taller young black man, raised his voice and TOLD the young black man “RIGHT HERE IS WHERE YOU VOTE STRAIGHT DEMOCRAT!!” The young black man took his ballot and walked away. To this day I do not know how that young man read his ballot or marked it. To this day I remember that incident and became convinced that school segregation based on the “separate but equal” principle was a farce and a lie. I also continue to NOT understand why black voters vote straight Democrat when the results of doing so are so often NOT in their best interest.
Back to the article.
Sometime later, Northside School became North Shelby School and the school was used for children with “Special Needs.”
Also, there was the merger of Cleveland County Schools, Shelby City Schools and Kings Mountain City Schools into one School District and one combined school board. The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction began tightening up on school operations and school performance expectations.
The North Shelby School’s special needs program was exempt from many of those school performance expectations and requirements. Other Cleveland County Schools were not exempt and failed in school performance expectations according to NCDPI testing standards. The NCDPI ordered improvements to Cleveland County failing schools and put down time limits for improvement. Otherwise NCDPI would take over operation and control of the failing school or schools. If that would happen the “cat would be out of the bag” that the failing schools were a product of a failed OLD school board that never wanted to hear any bad news. Or let anybody know that bad things were happening at CCS. They did NOT want it to get out that the OLD School Board had broken all their promises that everything was going well and everybody was happy with things just like they were.