Imagery often paints the picture of segregation ending at the school steps, but one woman’s story gives insight into what life was like once the school doors closed. In 1965, history maker Mary Smith-Blackmon was one of three Black students to desegregate Canton High School in Mississippi after transferring from the all-Black Rogers High.
Suggested Reading
Only 25 Black people had enrolled in a Canton majority-white school between 1965 and 1966, according to the Civil Rights Movement Archive.
When Smith-Blackmon arrived at Canton High School, along with Bobbie Ruth Chin and Phill George, they were met with violence on their first day, according to Jackson, Mississippi’s WLBT. When attempting to walk into the building, “They threw and they hit us with acorns that fell from those draping trees that were there, but we got in,” Smith-Blackmon told the outlet.
Once Smith-Blackmon made it to the classroom, white students were “laughing and noisy,” spraying her chair and the immediate area around her with an unknown substance.
Smith‑Blackmon reflected on painful memories that still linger six decades later, recalling how even routine school activities became moments of humiliation and fear. She described being harassed during a school program where a male student seated behind her repeatedly kicked her chair. Smith-Blackmon did not cower in silence. “I just told him, as long as you are white and I’m Black, don’t you ever put your feet anywhere near me,” she told WLBT. But despite defending herself, she was suspended for two weeks.
While the three Black students entered Canton High School together, they were denied the comfort of shared experience or solidarity. “Bobbie Chinn and I didn’t have any classes together,” Smith-Blackmon told the outlet. “They made sure that we would be all alone, all the time.”
That isolation left each student without peer support.“We didn’t know then, how bad it was going to be,” Smith-Blackmon told the outlet. “We just thought it would go away, but it didn’t go away though.”
After failed attempts to transfer back to Rogers High due to a state law prohibiting more than one transfer per school year, both Chinn and George eventually left Canton High, leaving Smith‑Blackmon to navigate the hostile environment alone.
Even amid the cruelty, Smith‑Blackmon found unexpected allyship in a white classmate she described as “like an angel,” watching over her. When Smith-Blackmon graduated with honors in May 1966, that classmate, whom she has never publicly named, ensured that Smith-Blackmon’s family could witness the milestone. “She passed me an envelope, and she said take these tickets, but you must never tell where you got them from,” Smith‑Blackmon recalled. “And to this day, publicly, I’ve never told who gave me the tickets.” The classmate has since passed away, according to WLBT.
After attending Tougaloo College and majoring in education at Jackson State University, Smith‑Blackmon returned to the Canton Public School System. In the same district where she had once been isolated and mistreated, she devoted 30 years to educating students before retiring.
Today, the building that once housed Canton High School is an apartment building. The school closed in 1969 in fear of additional integration, and Rogers High was eventually renamed Canton High School.
“We got through it; that’s God,” Smith‑Blackmon told the outlet, reflecting on an experience that benefited other students who followed.
“What we have to remember is that opportunity follows struggle,” she said.
Straight From 
Sign up for our free daily newsletter.