Brenda Sloan

Location: MUSE Winston‑Salem

Interview by Michael S. Williams
Videos by Jonathan Harmon

Atkins High School, Class of 1961

Brenda Sloan's teachers at Atkins High School always offered students exhortations, she said, and pushed them to "go places." For Sloan, that meant getting involved in the movement, protesting for the fairness she and her classmates felt they deserved. And they knew the educators had their backs. "I felt protected, and I felt like they loved me and they cared about me," she said.

Graduating from Atkins in 1961, Sloan participated in a student protest at her school in 1959 and remembers well Carl Matthews' actions at S.H. Kress & Co. in 1960. She also tried to get on the 1961 Freedom Rides in Greensboro and admits it was a "scary time," considering what was happening around the country. She felt those scenes could play out in Winston-Salem. That fear is something echoed by James Farmer, a co-founder of the Congress of Racial Equality. "If any man says that he had no fear in the action in the sixties, he is a liar," he wrote in his autobiography Lay Bare the Heart. Farmer and Sloan became friends later in life when both worked at Mary Washington College. Farmer had long been an inspiration for Sloan, and the fear of the movement did not stop her from continuing to speak out once she arrived in Durham at North Carolina College (now North Carolina Central University). She was arrested three times for protesting, a continuation of her activist-minded high school years.

Sloan recognizes Atkins was part of the Big Four high schools — including Anderson, Carver and Paisley — the Black learning centers that provided a solid foundation for its students. She said those schools were about "the bringing together of the Black community."