Dorothy Counts, one of the first black students to enter the newly desegregated Harry Harding High School is mocked by whites on her first day of school. People threw rocks and screamed at her “Go back where you came from”. Walking beside her is Dr. Edwin Tompkins, a friend of the family and a professor at the black college Johnson C. Smith University. After a string of abuses, Dorothy’s family withdrew her from the school after only four days. Across the United States this week children had been enrolling for the new school year. In the south tension was particularly high for districts trying to comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling that states should integrate their schools “with deliberate speed”. 

Year: 1957

Photographer: Douglas Martin

Country: Charlotte, North Carolina, US