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In 1963, the Glynn County Board of Education began a "Voluntary Integration Program" in response to Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Below is a chronological list of events following the Glynn County Board of Education's decision.
The Board of Education announced it had authorized accepting a limited number of applications from African American pupils in the 11th and 12th grades for entrance into Glynn Academy this year. Blank applications were issued at Risley High School and accepted there until noon on Friday, August 23rd.
Explaining the board’s decision, W.A. Whittle, president, said: “Since this is such a great change from past procedures in Glynn County have a right to know exactly why the board took this action and how it arrived at the conclusion that this was the thing to do. We took this action because we knew definitely that if we went to court, we had no chance at all to win; and we have not found one person in Glynn County or one lawyer in Glynn County, who thought we had any chance to win. The business would never go to court when they have no chance to win, and we thought it would be poor business for us to do so.
"We wish to assure the people of Glynn County that the board members studied this problem hard and long for many months before they took this action. They took this action because, after long study, they sincerely believed that this action is in the best interest of the People of Glynn County.”
On August 23th, 1963, The Glynn County Board of Education received 17 applications for the Voluntary Integration Program roughly a week before the 1963 school year began. The Board announced that the amount of transfers from Risley High School would be "limited".
On August 13, 1963, Glynn Academy began taking applications to gradually integrate 11th and 12th grades. Two juniors and four seniors were selected out of the seventeen applications.
The pictures below were scanned from the 1964 Glynn Academy Yearbook.
In an interview with the local NAACP, Honors Student Carolyn Harris describes her experience:
“It was a little difficult at first because we had missed three or four chapters in some classes. We had to catch up. The teachers were very nice. They helped us.”
Harris expressed excitement of Glynn Academy's new Science Building and the state-of-the-art equipment that were not available at Risley High School.
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