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"Spit on Her." It was in Charlotte that the worst trouble occurred—and, in a dramatic sense, it was in Charlotte that the finest victory was won. A crowd began to gather at 8:30 a.m. to await the only Negro assigned to Harding High School (three others were sent to other schools). Mrs. John Z. Warlick, small, shrill wife of a truck driver, began whipping up excitement. "It's up to you to keep her out," she told teen-age boys. At 10:30 a.m., the crowd spotted the girl: Dorothy Geraldine Counts, 15, daughter of a theology professor at Charlotte's Johnson C. Smith University, was walking down the street with a friend of her father's. The crowd, screaming, swarmed around her. It taunted her, pointed at her hair, stuck fingers up behind her head to resemble horns, held its nose as if against a bad smell. "Spit on her," screeched Mrs. Warlick. Some did. Dorothy, a tall and pretty girl, walked head high toward the school.
Inside, a group of girls began to chant: "We don't want her/ You can have her/ She's too black for me." But in the auditorium, a white girl sat down beside her with comforting words: "Don't worry. Everything's going to be all right." Recalled Dorothy later: "She said she hoped we'd be in the same class—and we are." And when Dorothy was called to the front for her room assignment, white girls sat on either side of her. Soon they were talking and laughing together.
But Dorothy Counts's cruel day was far from over. When she left school, the crowd was waiting, louder and even more threatening than before. Sticks flew at her (Liston Wood Flowers, 18, was arrested for throwing one). She was spat upon (Patricia Elizabeth Smith, 15, was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct after spitting full in her face). Dorothy Counts kept her eyes ahead, walked quietly, calmly to a waiting car.
Next morning Dorothy's father sent word that she was under a doctor's care for a sore throat. Would she return to school? No one seemed to know. But Mrs. Warlick knew who had won. Warned away from the school on penalty of arrest, she announced that she was disgusted because she had so little support and was quitting as secretary-treasurer of the White Citizens' Council. Said she: "I'm ashamed of the white race."