ORANGE SLICES
Congresswoman Valarie Foushee and Stan Foushee.
Editor’s Note: This edition has been updated Tuesday October 8, 2024 to reflect the accuracy of the quote by Congresswoman Foushee. Orange Slices apologizes for mis-quoting Congresswoman Foushee.
October marks Homecoming at the University of North Carolina and a chance for many alumni to gather and reflect on their time at Carolina.
One celebration, The Light of the Hill Scholarship dinner, took place this month and among other awards, black alumni leaders bestowed The Harvey E. Beech Outstanding Alumni Award on Chapel Hill native and US Congresswoman Valerie Foushee for “outstanding Black alumni who have been stellar leaders within their local community.” Also receiving a 2024 award was David C. Belton, class of 1975.
Foushee said that her family was grateful for the cohorts of UNC Black Student Movement members, the efforts of the “Black Mothers”, The James Cates Remembrance Coalition, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP and all who have annually commemorated Cates’ life with memorials, vigils and op-eds. At the plaque unveiling in 2022 Foushee said “the community is grateful for the memorial’s commemoration. The University community should learn from its history, she said, not ignore it, cover it up or attempt to wash it away.”
Who was Harvey Beech?
Harvey Beech holds a significant place in the history of the University of North Carolina (UNC) as the first Black student to graduate from UNC’s School of Law. His admission in 1951, following a legal challenge to the university’s segregationist policies, marked a pivotal moment in the integration of higher education in the South. Beech, along with four other Black students, was admitted to UNC after a landmark case filed by civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall. This case pushed back against discriminatory admissions practices at public universities.
Beech’s perseverance in the face of racial hostility and discrimination earned him a place in UNC’s history as a trailblazer for civil rights and equal opportunity. He graduated in 1952 and went on to have a distinguished career as a lawyer.
Harvey Beech (left) and J. Kenneth Lee.
Beech, who became a legal and philanthropic legend and a staunch civil rights defender in more than 35 years of practicing law in Kinston and who kept his ties to Carolina strong — particularly with the General Alumni Association’s annual Black Alumni Reunion — died Aug. 7, 2005. He was 81.
He was known for speaking candidly about how white and black Kinstonians could work together to blur the color line. He sought out young people with potential, living in poverty, and connected them with educational opportunities. He was the first black chair of the Kinston Board of Education, the first black trustee of East Carolina University. He started an anonymous fund at Lenoir Memorial Hospital for children hospitalized during holidays. He gave some of the land for Lenoir Community College. Beech was many times decorated in Kinston, including the Kinston-Lenoir County Citizen of the Year award in 1981.
At Carolina, he received the William Richardson Davie Award, the highest honor given by the trustees.
Rwennshawn Miller and Dexter Robinson; along with Brian Wrighten (not pictured) have sponsored the Harvey Beech Award for almost a decade.
Born in Mount Gilead, Beech was the son of a barber, and he trained to be one, too, as his father had dreamed. But he’d seen racially segregated water fountains, and the injustice of it stuck with him. He attended Morehouse College without his father’s blessing, graduating in 1944, captain of the football team and a classmate of Martin Luther King Jr.
Beech often said he wished he didn’t have to hold the honor of being the first, and his career as a lawyer and civic leader was all about moving forward. But he did not want people to forget. He believed the Black Alumni Reunion had a responsibility to help alumni who had a difficult time confronting their memories of Carolina.
Great pride for the next generation of scholarship winners.
At the October 2024 celebration of Black Alumni at Carolina, elders awarded scholarships to young students at Carolina in the hopes that they will carry on the dreams of Harvey Beech and those whose shoulders the new generation stands on.
“Our University’s motto is lux et libertas — light and liberty. Our job as a university is to shine a light on the truth, even when that truth is painful,” said Sam Fulwood, class of 1978 who attended last week’s event. “We have a long, 234-year history as a university, and each of us has a role to play in that history and in our university’s future.”
Laurie Paolicelli is executive director for the Chapel Hill/Orange County Visitors Bureau, a position she has held since 2005. Laurie has worked in tourism and marketing for twenty-five years, having served in leadership roles in Houston and California convention and visitor bureaus. She is a native of the Twin Ports of Duluth, MN/Superior Wisconsin. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business and Communications from the University Wisconsin-Superior and graduate certification in Technology In Marketing from the UNC-Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media.
This reporter can be reached at Info@TheLocalReporter.press
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