1955-1979
County deals with growth, race, war
Call this the era of the big boom. Cumberland County's population continued its post-World War II explosion, with its 43 percent increase in the 1960s the largest in any of North Carolina's 100 counties.
More people meant more demands for almost everything - houses, roads, medical care, water and sewer service, schools, churches, stores. Construction was fast-paced and sometimes haphazard as shopping developments and suburban subdivisions began to spread outside the Fayetteville city limits toward Fort Bragg.
Cultural explosions also marked this period.
Racial integration occurred in fits and starts, as the walls of "separate but equal" began crumbling after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling of 1954. The Fayetteville and Cumberland County school systems moved toward integration gradually beginning in the early '60s, with some controversies but few major flare-ups, before busing brought about large-scale student integration in the 1970s.
Civil rights marches and sit-ins, with students from Fayetteville State Teachers College at the forefront, led to the end of whites-only service at restaurants and segregated seating in theaters.
Politics changed. Blacks and women gained office in significant numbers, from the late 1960s and on into the early '80s, including Arthur Lane, Virginia Thompson Oliver and Mary McAllister on the county Board of Commissioners; Marion George, Mayor Beth Finch, Mildred Evans and the Rev. Aaron Johnson on the Fayetteville City Council; and Lura Tally, C.R. Edwards and Nick Jeralds in the General Assembly.
Business blossomed, including the location of big industries such as Rohm and Haas Co., Kelly-Springfield, Black & Decker, and Purolator, and the development of the Cross Creek Mall area.
Fort Bragg was booming, too, in more ways than one. For soldiers, their families and their civilian neighbors, Vietnam proved to be a far-reaching conflict, at home and abroad.
Activist Benjamin Chavis, in Malcolm X shirt, Chicago Seven defendant Rennie Davis, second from right, and 'Rush to Judgment' author Mark Lane take part in an anti-war march in downtown Fayetteville. |
|
