The significant thing about what happened here, Sanders says, is what didn't happen.
"The campus placidly accepted change," he says.
Leaders in the state were adamant that conditions weren't changed, says Charles E. Daye, who became the first black to join the faculty of UNC's School of Law.
But he says, "Students were ahead of the social curve of the time."
Brandon says that even though protest never erupted against their presence, many people still didn't understand why they were at UNC.
"Some people thought the main reason we wanted to go there was because of the females," Brandon says. "In a sense, it wasn't expressed that much but there was a rumor that went around."
On March 4, 1956, The Daily Tar Heel reported that two psychology students found in a poll that the student body "slightly favors" integration.
Sanders says that with students in the 1950s, there was a more mature recognition that change had come, welcome or not.
"That doesn't mean everybody accepted the change," he says. "But it made very little difference in the lives of most students."
All three men commuted 20 to 30 minutes to and from campus their first semester, Brandon says.
The spring semester of his freshman year, Brandon opted to live in a special section of Steele building - which then served as a residence hall - that University officials set aside for him and seven other black graduate students.
"I was in room 34 I think," he says. "I had a medical student as a roommate, (James) Slade."
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"Partly as a result of (Chancellor Robert B. House's) decision, separate arrangements were made to try to reduce conflict," Sanders says.
House was known for his conservative stance on integration.
Although dormitories were segregated and remained that way until Sept. 1964, Brandon and the Frasier brothers ate at the same cafeteria as white students without incident.
"The integration of campus facilities came somewhat ahead of other communities at large," Sanders says. "In 1950, there was no place I could have taken a black guest for dinner - in 1960, for that matter."
None of the first black undergraduates were able to catch a movie in Chapel Hill or gain entrance to local landmarks such as the Carolina Inn.
Brandon says he remembers going to a snack bar, but he could most often be found in class or in his room while on campus.
"Most of the black activities occurred closer to Carrboro," he says, which was where he got his hair cut and helped wash cars at a service station to make some money.
"I wasn't too social," he says. "But I've been that way most of my life."
The Frasier brothers joined the University swim team but later dropped out.
"They were just like anybody else," Coach Ralph Casey told the Durham Morning Herald on Feb. 9, 1956. "Maybe a little quieter than normal. They worked hard. They were a curiosity at first but that wore off."
The boys hadn't learned proper study skills at Hillside High, Brandon says.
"We dropped out of school after our third year," says Brandon, who didn't earn the necessary C average after six semesters to pursue his chemistry major. "We didn't commit ourselves like we should have."
Brandon later earned a master's degree in chemistry from the University of Houston-Clear Lake.
The Impact of Brown
Black students had been enrolled in graduate programs in UNC since 1951, when five men transferred from the North Carolina College in Durham to UNC's law school.
Daye says he doesn't think the undergraduate school could have been integrated before Brown v. Board of Education, in 1954, which struck down the "separate but equal" mandate of Plessy v. Ferguson.
"You had to prove that the education was unequal, which was far more difficult to do for an entire university itself rather than just a law school," he says.
A lawsuit for undergraduate admissions taking place under the "separate but equal" doctrine would have been too complex to win, he says.
Students would have to sue, claiming their education was inadequate for every specific course, he says. "We would still be litigating today if it weren't for Brown."
Student Leadership
"Student leadership and advocacy were important in this period," Sanders says. "Especially for instilling the temper of the campus."
Ralph Frasier told The Daily Tar Heel in 2003 that reporters from the student newspaper's staff approached his high school for black applicants.
"This whole effort was initiated by students at (UNC) who, following the Brown decision in 1954, believed that (UNC) should be on the front edge and took the initiative to see if the University would voluntarily admit African- Americans," Frasier had said.
Other groups, such as student government and the YMCA, sent the new students letters of congratulation and offered to show them around campus.
"Student leaders were more aware of racial issues, more concerned with treating blacks justly," Sanders says, adding that he engagement of such leaders was crucial in acclimating the new black undergraduates.
"Vocal students such as those in student government and The Daily Tar Heel had established a pattern of acceptance and not of resistance."
Contact the Features Editor at features@unc.edu.
