The Roanoker March/April 2025 - 34

women
A Witness to History
written by Bruce Ingram
From desegregating Roanoke schools to breaking barriers at VMI,
Terri Hairston helped shape opportunities for women in military education.
A
34 march/april 2025
s an English teacher at Lord Botetourt
High School, I cover literature and events from
different decades. Last year, on the advice of
mutual friend Cheryl Manning, I invited Terri
Hairston to come to my class when we did our
1960s' Unit. A member of the Patrick Henry
Class of 1974, Hairston was part of the generation of Black Roanokers
who desegregated Roanoke City Schools, which like
most of Virginia, fought for over a decade the 1954
Brown vs Board of Education Supreme Court decision
that schools should integrate.
I asked Hairston what it was like to attend
Roanoke's all-Black elementary schools in the 1960s.
" The beauty of going to an all-Black school was that
we had teachers who nurtured, loved and disciplined
us and had high expectations for us, " she said. " We
were told that we could accomplish great things, and
we believed our teachers.
" We didn't know that our books and band uniforms were old and
that our school and sports buildings and facilities were inferior until
the schools were integrated and we saw what the White kids had. Our
teachers were generally family friends, people we went to church with
and part of the Black community. "
At that time there was little to no " commingling of the races " as
the saying of the time period went. All of Roanoke City's neighborhoods
were nearly or totally segregated, Hairston said, and though
some Whites lived in Northwest or on Orange Avenue, they did not
attend school with Blacks.
Interestingly, Roanoke made the first tentative steps toward desegregation
through sports. Hairston attended Booker T. Washington
Junior High (an all-Black school) her seventh and eighth grade years
in 1968 and 1969. And for the first time, she was inside
ABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT:
CNN's Jeanne Meserve
interviewing Hairston on the
day that the first women arrived
at VMI. Hairston estimates
that she probably did some 30
interviews that day.
Roanoke's Terri Wheaton
Hairston with her mother
Nadine, taken probably during
Terri's fifth grade year in
Roanoke City Schools.
a school building with White youngsters.
" Woodrow Wilson's all-White basketball team came
to the Booker T. gym, and we beat the snot out of
them, " Hairston recalled. " We were so far ahead that
the refs called the game after the third period. "
But the beauty of sports and the importance of that
and other athletic encounters between White and Black
schools, Hairston continued, were that these games
served as barrier breakers. White Roanoke also learned
that Black athletes were equal to (and sometimes superior) to their
children and having Blacks on their football, basketball and baseball
teams could give them an advantage against other local schools.
At the end of Hairston's eighth-grade year, Roanoke City schools
finally integrated. She and many others were bused first to Lee Junior
High School; then as a ninth grader, these youngsters opened James
Madison Junior High. Not everything went smoothly.
TheRoanoker.com
COURTESY OF TERRI HAIRSTON
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The Roanoker March/April 2025

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