Carl A. Mills Jr. became principal of Cary Elementary and Junior High School in 1953, and by the mid-1960s was serving as superintendent of the Cary district. When desegregation began, Mills was serving as principal of Cary High School, and he welcomed the one African American male who was the first to enter the all-white school. The process that followed was a smooth one, directed by local committees without much contribution from black families, which were few in the area. It is somewhat difficult to dissect the different stages of Mills's career, and how his school dealt with maintaining integration. However, he does reveal what might be distrust of government inspectors when he describes their questions about what appeared to have been the resegregation of his school: by the time the inspectors arrived, black students had left the classroom to learn trades. Not long afterward, Mills left the education business for a career in town recreation.

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Title from menu page (viewed on Nov. 10, 2008).

Interview participants: Carl A. Mills Jr., interviewee; Peggy Van Scoyoc, interviewer

Duration: 01:29:35.

This electronic edition is part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South. It is a part of the collection Oral histories of the American South.

Text encoded by Jennifer Joyner. Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers.

Forms part of Oral histories of the American South collection.