Napoleon Byars is a member of the faculty in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. An award-winning professor and favorite among students, he credits his success in the classroom and life to the role models at Charlotte Catholic High in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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I attended Charlotte Catholic High School from 1968 to 1972. The youngest of seven children, I was the first to graduate from college. My father died when I was only 12 years old leaving my mother to provide for the family on a housekeeper’s wages. Courageously she went back to college taking night courses and earned her teaching degree. She instilled in me the value of a good education.
School segregation had not ended in the 1960′s and blacks often attended inferior schools. Being a teacher herself, mom pushed me to attend Charlotte Catholic High which opened its doors to a few black students. I remember riding the city bus across town on the first day of school. I pressed my face against the window as the scenes outside changed from poor neighborhoods on Charlotte’s Southside to storybook homes that I had only seen in books.
When the bus stopped at Charlotte Catholic, I walked slowly down the steps into a predominantly white world. Students moved about freely among manicured lawns and gardens on the way to classes. In many ways I felt like I was in OZ. We had our own library and labs with real microscopes that worked. Classrooms were comfortably small with nuns and priests as teachers. With our faith as a common denominator I slowly adapted to my new culture.
I kept to myself and wanted to prove I was academically equal. It was tough going at first having come from a segregated middle school. What inspired me the most was the caring and discipline displayed by the nuns cloaked in black habits that hid their hair. They would pray while walking on the way to class or the lunch room or the athletic field. Their dedication to prayer and lives of self-sacrifice instilled in me a desire to make the most of my gifts and talent. Besides, Catholic School was barely affordable for a single mother with many mouths to feed. Earning an ‘A’ on each test, each essay and verbal quiz was my way of showing appreciation to my mother for her love and the sacrifice she was making for me. How could I do less?
After the initial year at CCHS I made more friends and soon was the popular kid at school. I was inducted into the National Honor Society and elected senior class president. The experience of being a prep school Negro led me to enroll at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At UNC I found a passion for journalism and joined Air Force ROTC. Joining the U.S. Air Force was like another prep school environment and, even though I was a commissioned officer, I was still a prep school Negro. From Texas to Alabama to Japan, I was usually one of only two officers of color assigned to military bases.
During my time in the Pentagon I was public affairs officer to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William J. Crowe, a man of enormous compassion and intellect. As a mentor he taught me the power of taking bold initiatives and enjoying life enough to laugh. From 1989 to 1992 I was deputy publisher for the Pacific Stars and Stripes newspaper in Tokyo. Later as the National Affairs Division Chief, I integrated marketing programs for public affairs offices in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.
After 21 years of active duty I was selected for promotion to the rank of colonel. I chose instead to transition to civilian life before returning to academia and Chapel Hill. In addition to teaching classes, I’m also the director of the Chuck Stone Program for Diversity in Education and Media. The program brings promising high school seniors of diversity together for a one-week writing workshop. The goal is to encourage students to be a voice for the underrepresented populations.
Thirty years after graduating from UNC the ranks of African American faculty remains disproportionate to the state’s overall black population. I enter the classroom each fall and spring realizing that I may be the only black professor that many of the students will have during their four years at Carolina. The prep school Negro lives on.
- Napoleon Byars
