Civil Rights and Growth: 1966-1985
After a period of progress, the end of the 1960s brought East Carolina great triumph while also presenting difficult challenges that needed to be overcome. In the fall of 1963, East Carolina became the last institution in the UNC system to integrate its campus when Laura Marie Leary, an African-American student from Vanceboro, North Carolina, enrolled in the college. Leary had been chosen by President Leo Jenkins and local community leader Dr. Andrew Best to be the first African-American student to enroll at East Carolina. Leary would soon be joined by several other African-American students and would successfully graduate with her Bachelors of Science in Business Administration in May, 1966. As more African Americans enrolled at East Carolina throughout the late 1960s, issues regarding racial relations came to a head near the end of the decade. Between 1967 and 1969, the African American students and those who supported their causes successfully used their collective voice to bring about changes to campus culture peacefully.
Racial tensions came to a head during the spring of the 1968-1969 academic year when members of Society of United Liberal Students (SOULS) decided to take action into their own hands and force the university to enact policies they hoped would improve the campus culture for minority students. On March 3, 1969, students representing SOULS presented President Jenkins with a list of ten demands from the African American students. The demands were presented to administration alongside a letter from SOULS members that explained the rationale behind their demands. In this letter, the students stated that they believed their demands were “reasonable and totally fulfillable,” and that they were willing to take "every opportunity for discussion and planning,” but they would “undertake any and every action necessary to obtain their reforms.” The student demands soon became public knowledge as the East Carolinian campus newspaper published the full list two weeks later and students across campus were writing into the paper to express their opinions on the issue at hand.
East Carolina also experienced great success during this time as the institution saw improvements to its curriculum, physical facilities, as well as its standing across the state. Perhaps one of the most important things to happen to East Carolina during the second half of the 20th century was its transition from college to university. On June 29, 1967, the North Carolina General Assembly approved university status for East Carolina and three other institutions across the state. The fight for university status was led by President Jenkins and Robert Morgan, who served as chair of the Board of Trustees and a state senator at the time. The transition to East Carolina University went along with the formation of the East Carolina School of Medicine that was opened in 1975. With university status, the first state medical school outside of Chapel Hill, and the approval to award both M.D.’s and Ph.D’s, East Carolina found itself as the leading state university in the region by the beginning of the 1980s.