Celebrating African American History Month: An Interview with Irwin Holmes

In 1956, four African American undergraduate students enrolled at North Carolina State University (or NC State College, as it was named at the time), marking the first early steps in desegregating the campus. Irwin Holmes, Walter Holmes, Ed Carson, and Manuel Crockett began their time as students here that fall, and in 1960 Irwin Holmes became the first African American undergraduate student to receive a degree from NC State, with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering.

As a student, Irwin Holmes made history by joining the tennis team, making his team the first integrated athletic team in NC State history. Holmes' teammates also elected him co-captain of the tennis team his senior year, making him the first African American athletics team captain at NC State.

Mr. Holmes sat down with us to record an oral history interview in the fall of 2014. The interview is now online in our digital collections, where researchers can watch the full video interview and read the interview transcript to learn more about Mr. Holmes' life and his experiences as a student at NC State.

In the interview, Mr. Holmes describes growing up in a vibrant African American community in Durham, where he says, “I grew up seeing that black people can do whatever they want to.” He describes then coming to NC State where he was the only African American student in all of his courses, with professors who in some cases refused to teach him because of the color of his skin. He also describes his tennis coach, Coach Kenfield, as an ally and mentor to him during his time as a student, and tells the story of his teammates walking out of a Chapel Hill restaurant that refused to serve him.

Mr. Holmes generously shared these stories and many others with us, helping to fill some of the gaps and silences about the experience of African Americans in the official records of the university during the early years of desegregation. Thanks to Mr. Holmes' contribution to our ongoing efforts to document university history, researchers can better understand what it was like to be in the shoes of the first African American students on a previously all-white campus.

Learn more about Irwin Holmes and the history of African American students at NC State by exploring our digitized collections , Historical State Timeline , and Mr. Holmes' interview online .