What did we do to get this? Ira Harris reflects on his life during forced desegregation

Ira Harris was born and raised in rural Franklin County, NC, on his family’s farm. As a child, he learned firsthand the realities of racism. He and his friend Henry were forced to attend an all-white school by a Jim Crow School Board in an attempt to show Blacks were inferior to whites during desegregation, and to stop the effort. Harris shares in painful detail the daily verbal abuse and beatings from white students, which included an attempted drowning in the school’s bathroom. In a system designed for failure, he often found himself in “Black detention,” which meant either being locked in an empty classroom all day or a dark closet.