New Monument in Oak Ridge Honors the Scarboro 85

Courtesy of the Scarboro 85 Monument Foundation

Years before the Clinton 12, Little Rock Nine and New Orleans’ Ruby Bridges drew widespread attention by attending formerly whites-only schools, Oak Ridge High School in Oak Ridge, TN, became the first high school in the Southeastern United States to desegregate on Sept. 6, 1955, even as the rest of the Southeastern states defied a landmark court decision. 

As an eighth-grader at the all-Black K-12 Scarboro School, Larry “L.C.” Gipson recalls listening as a group of strangers announced that at the start of the new school year, the older kids would integrate into Robertsville Junior High and Oak Ridge High schools to comply with the Supreme Court’s 1954 unanimous ruling against segregation in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. 

“We had limited interaction with the whites, so that took some adjustment,” Gipson, now 85, says. “Most of the students, and a lot of the teachers, did not want us there. They wouldn’t say anything bad to us, but you know when you’re not wanted.” 

The Scarboro 85

A $4.2 million national civil rights monument is currently under construction in A.K. Bissell Park to commemorate the 85 brave students, children of Manhattan Project workers, who integrated Oak Ridge public schools in 1955. 

“We want to preserve this precious American history and educate the country about this amazing story,” says John Spratling, president of the Scarboro 85 Monument Foundation. “We want to obtain our rightful place in civil rights history.” 

Courtesy of the Scarboro 85 Monument Foundation

A history teacher at what is now Robertsville Middle School, Spratling grew up hearing stories from his aunt, Sarah Mae Spratling, one of the Scarboro 85. 

“I kept saying, ‘Why isn’t anybody else talking about this?’” he says, noting the general secrecy that pervaded Oak Ridge as a government-run city. “We kind of flew under the radar because we didn’t have all the fanfare [the other schools did].” 

Celebrating the 65th Anniversary

The idea for a permanent monument was born in 2020, after a citywide 65th anniversary celebration of the Scarboro 85. The memorial will feature the 14 Black and white “game changers that put their lives on the line to make this integration happen,” Spratling says, along with several interactive exhibits designed by robotics students from Oak Ridge High School. The monument will also highlight three athletes who broke the sports color barrier for public schools and universities in the Southeast but never got to show their skills because the other teams refused to play with them. 

To date, the Foundation has received $3.7 million from the state of Tennessee, City of Oak Ridge, Anderson County, and other donors, with the community working to raise the $500,000 needed to maintain the facility. Donations can be made at scarboro85monument.com. 

“We’re trying to heal these long-standing racial wounds and unify America by bringing the Black and white communities together to make us a stronger nation,” Spratling says. “Oak Ridge is a place of racial equality and healing.” 

One of only a handful of the Scarboro 85 still living, Gipson looks forward to the ribbon-cutting. 

“This will give us, my grandkids and their future generations the recognition of what was achieved by this all-Black community back in 1955,” Gipson says. 

For more information about the Scarboro 85 Monument Foundation or to donate, visit scarboro85monument.com.