She broke racial, education barriers

In August 1960, a month shy of her 40th birthday, Arline Parker Neal became the first Black woman to earn a master’s degree from Carolina.

Today, she’s 104 years old.

Born in 1920, Arline Parker Neal was the first of 11 children reared by Joseph and Nannie Parker on a tobacco farm in Durham County’s Mangum Township. He had finished school in eighth grade, she in fourth grade. But they always stressed that their children should get an education, said Claudette Betina Parker, the youngest and only other living sibling.

Neal graduated from Little River School. In May 1944, she married her first husband, U.S. Marine Pfc. Paul M. Smith. The wedding license lists her occupation as electrician’s assistant.

Neal lived on Durham’s Plum Street in 1960 when she celebrated her master’s degree. (Submitted photo)

Both attended Durham’s North Carolina College (now North Carolina Central University). Their first child, Cheryl, was born in 1945. Neal continued classes until she graduated in 1948. A year later, Smith began work as a librarian at Dillard University in New Orleans. Neal and her daughter joined him a few months later. During their first year there, Neal taught in Dillard’s nursery school. Paul Smith II was born in 1955.

“Arline began a long line of us going to college,” Parker said. “My mother and father expected us to move forward. My mother knew the importance of women taking control of their lives.”

While Smith earned a doctoral degree from Indiana University, Neal and her daughter returned to Durham. By 1958, the family was living on Plum Street near NCCU. That year, Neal was teaching at Pearsontown School when she was accepted to Carolina’s School of Library Science master’s program.

Cheryl Smith Christophe, a teenager at the time, said that her mother never talked about what spurred her to continue her education but that she emphasized the pursuit of learning. “Getting your education was something my parents always stressed,” she said.

Perhaps Neal’s ambitions combined with the influence of teachers or being in the college environment of Dillard University drove her to enroll at Carolina. She may have wanted to improve her understanding of the youngsters in her classes. Christophe thinks that her mother “wanted the best one around, and UNC was right there.”

Christophe never heard her mother talk about concerns she may have had about attending Carolina while much of society remained segregated.

Neal avoided the isolation of living on campus because after classes she returned to her home in Durham. And, as a public school teacher, she could focus during summers on her own schoolwork.

That work resulted in a thesis, “A Study of Reading Achievement and the Problems of Personal and Social Adjustment of Rural Eighth-Grade Youth,” which is in UNC Libraries. The bumpy, vellum-like pages show that during spring 1959 Neal administered two standardized tests — one for reading, one for personality — to 54 eighth graders at the all-Black Merrick-Moore School in Durham County. She then analyzed the results.

Neal had a long career teaching a variety of subjects in Durham’s public schools. (Submitted photo)

In the ensuing years, Neal was a teacher at Whitted Junior High School and at Holton Junior High School. She taught subjects ranging from mathematics to home economics but excelled at teaching math, her sister noted. After a divorce, she married Wiley Neal, a Durham school principal, in 1974. She retired from teaching in the 1980s.

The two traveled extensively, were active in Durham’s Covenant Presbyterian Church and exercised at the Duke Center for Living. He died in 2014. Through the years, Parker said, her sister enjoyed gathering with family and sharing her cooking and baking skills.

“All this time, she’s been just my mom. She’s a great woman,” Christophe said.

Editor’s Note: Neal sees her daughter every day but was not available to add to this story. Thanks to Brian Sturm, professor in the School of Information and Library Science, for sharing links to newspaper stories in DigitalNC and to the Office of the University Registrar and UNC Libraries for their assistance.