Granddaughter Enrolls After Georgia Tech Desegregation Fight

By GAVIN OFF, The Charlotte Observer

Eight years earlier than Georgia Institute of Know-how admitted Black college students, a younger man hoping to check mechanical engineering utilized to go to highschool there.

The interactions that adopted — the chilly indifference confirmed by Georgia Tech, the assist that Robert Cheeseboro obtained from the NAACP and the newspaper articles that detailed his struggles — are archived within the Library of Congress.

Cheeseboro’s daughter, Evelyn Bolton, 53, of Gastonia, knew little about this till she discovered paperwork shortly earlier than her father died of dementia in February. He was 87.

The library’s information paint an image of her father’s battle as a Black man within the South, a time Cheeseboro hardly ever spoke of, Bolton mentioned.

“It’s unhappy that I by no means took the time to essentially perceive what he went by,” she mentioned.

CHEESEBORO VS. GEORGIA TECH

Cheeseboro was born in Cellular, Alabama, in 1934 and grew up in Columbus, Georgia, on the western border of the state.

He was good sufficient to skip his senior yr of highschool to attend Morehouse Faculty, the traditionally Black males’s liberal arts faculty in Atlanta, relations mentioned.

In 1953 — after a yr at Morehouse — Cheeseboro utilized to Georgia Tech, situated simply 4 miles from Morehouse. However for a Black man within the Nineteen Fifties, it was unreachable.

Cheeseboro’s utility included a transcript of A’s and B’s and letters of advice, paperwork present. One highlighted Cheeseboro’s “means to do good work scholastically and his pure means to prepare and lead individuals.” One other mentioned Cheeseboro was a member of the Nationwide Honor Society.

Georgia Tech’s response? It really useful that Cheeseboro go to highschool out of state, in line with a March 9, 1953, letter from L.R. Siebert, the manager secretary for the regents of the college system.

The system would even assist pay Cheeseboro to not attend Georgia Tech.

“The Board of Regents of the College System of Georgia has authorised the granting of scholarship help to certified Negro residents of the State of Georgia for the examine in these fields provided to the white residents of the state by the College System of Georgia, however not provided on the Negro establishments of the College System,” Siebert’s letter learn.

In his letter, Siebert mentions a couple of dozen attainable universities, together with North Carolina A&T, Howard College, New York College and Massachusetts Institute of Know-how.

However Cheeseboro continued with efforts to enroll within the state-funded campus, letters present. He wrote again at the very least 4 occasions, asking faculty officers to rethink.

“Georgia Institute of Know-how is the college of my selection and presents the form of coaching I search, I might due to this fact request of you … to guage my document on the idea of its deserves for admission to the Georgia Institute of Know-how,” Cheeseboro wrote.

Black newspapers throughout the nation unfold information of how Cheeseboro was handled. The Library of Congress despatched Bolton copies of articles from Atlanta, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Miami that define his story.

“Morehouse Scholar Seeks Admission to Georgia Tech” learn an April 18, 1953 headline within the Miami Occasions.

The article describes how the NAACP launched copies of Cheeseboro’s correspondence with the college. It additionally describes how the college tightened restrictions, making it practically not possible for Black individuals to be admitted.

“Final Wednesday, the Regents directed all models of the system to present entrance examinations, and as well as, to require all potential college students to submit certificates from college alumni testifying to their good character,” the article learn.

“In fact, within the Jim Crow South, that wasn’t going to occur,” Bolton informed The Charlotte Observer.

Cheeseboro by no means obtained into Georgia Tech. He left the state to get his diploma on the College of Rochester in New York.

He ultimately made his strategy to California, the place, round 1965, he invented a transportable document participant known as the Swinger.

The Swinger weighed 5 and a half kilos, got here with rechargeable batteries and might be turned the wrong way up or put in in a automobile.

Consider it as a precursor to the CD participant.

Quick-forward greater than 50 years. From her dwelling in Gastonia, 17-year-old Samantha Bolton, Cheeseboro’s granddaughter, utilized for admission into Georgia Tech.

On the time, she had no information of the battle her grandfather fought.

The household stumbled throughout the Library of Congress paperwork after Samantha obtained in and shortly earlier than faculty officers provided her the Provost Scholarship.

The scholarship provides 40 first-year, non-Georgia residents an out-of-state tuition waiver for eight semesters.

Sure, the college that after tried to pay her grandfather to attend school elsewhere could be giving Samantha cash to attend.

And there’s this: Samantha hopes to check mechanical engineering, “like my grandfather.”

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