Wolverine History: Change Is Coming, the New Bethel Students Who Integrated Woodruff High in 1966

The Woodruff Times, in a story published March 5, 2022 and bylined to staff writer Garrett Mitchell, began a series on Wolverine athletics with the students who crossed the town's color line. Here is our summary.

The story opens at the ruins of New Bethel, the public high school for Black students in Woodruff before desegregation. Woodruff High School sat about a mile and a half away, across the railroad tracks. Today that is a three-minute drive, but for students in the mid-1960s the distance felt enormous.

At the start of the 1966 school year, Black students could choose to stay at New Bethel or enroll in Woodruff's public schools. Desegregation was voluntary that year and became mandatory in 1967. Many families hesitated, and some students stayed at New Bethel for personal and academic reasons. The paper notes that school integration in South Carolina had begun in Charleston in 1963.

The students profiled recall that the move was frightening and unfamiliar. Greg Anderson, then a sophomore, found the student body and Coach Willie Varner welcoming, though Varner was strict about behavior. Marshall Stephens remembers the excitement growing over the following years as he and Larry Fryer showed the transition could work, and he described how New Bethel received less state funding than Woodruff High, with older, worn books while Woodruff received new ones each year. Willie Stevens, a top student at New Bethel, worried about his academic future; his father, a minister, had followed the news of integration and prepared the family.

In fall 1966, nine New Bethel players became the first Black athletes to play football for Varner. Fryer and Stephens were the first Black players on the varsity team, and seven others played junior varsity: Anderson, Gary Young, Lewis Scott, Milford Johnson, Charles Gray, Michael Brewton and Willie Pearson. The Wolverines were coming off a 13-0 season and their third state championship in 1965. Fryer and Stevens later reached the Wolverine Hall of Fame. The article closes by noting the story continues in the next part of the series.

This is our own summary for community reference. Read the full story, with the players' own recollections, at The Woodruff Times using the source link below.