First Year Impressions

James McCorkle ’66

Guilford’s first African American traditional student, James McCorkle, from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, began classes as a freshman in Fall, 1962, and graduated in May, 1966.

“I had two roommates rather than one, and we had two rooms, in English dorm, on the end of English dorm and it was set up that way on purpose. Charlie Hendricks, of course was the dorm person. They were both seniors I think, the roommates, and I [pause] more or less went to class, and, you know, talked to people, you know, and—But I didn’t make any real, solid connections. I think one of the things I always tell people that I learned was—with my roommates, I learned to appreciate classical music because one of them played classical music, [JS chuckles] and I learned to appreciate country because one of them played country. We had to share our three different types of music and so forth. I remember, you know, the—going to classes and the labs and things of that nature, and [pause] almost every weekend I would hit the road.”  [chuckles] p.6

“I guess the thing that I remember most is I did play tennis, and I had started playing tennis with a girl here on campus, and evidently we were playing tennis too much because I did get word that that was something maybe I needed to back off of. I’m pretty sure that came through our dorm person, Charlie Hendricks, and I’m pretty sure it was sort of like, ‘We don’t know how people might react to that,’ you know. Because they—I guess they had some challenges throughout—I don’t know. They had to open that little drugstore down there, tell the people down there to let me in, [chuckles] things like that.” p.8