Exhibit honors civil rights pioneer

At age 94, D.D. Garrett has seen many changes ranging from segregation to equal rights opportunities in the United States.

Born in 1914, Denison Dover Garrett, an African-American that grew up in rural Pitt County, has experienced life when blacks in America endured many challenges. Segregated schools and public facilities and basic civil rights infringements did not make it easy for an African-American to climb the corporate ladder.

On Sept. 16, an exhibit for Garrett opened in Joyner Library to commemorate the services he has contributed to the Greenville community and to the civil rights movement.

At the exhibit students are able to read about Garrett's achievements and look at photos and other artifacts that are on display.

According to the exhibit display, Garrett encouraged African-American political participation-he ran for city council and eventually won a seat on the Pitt County Board of Commissioners and becane the first African-American elected to a countywide office in Pitt County.

In a segregated Greenville, in May of 1965, Garrett initiated the integration of the previously all-white neighborhood of Greenville Heights through the sale of a "modest dwelling" on 1112 Ward St.

"Mr. Garrett has been a civil rights activist in the South and took a quieter approach by running for office in 1946," said Dr. John Lawrence, the N.C. Collections librarian at ECU who has worked on the exhibit alongside Dr. David Dennard. "He's a good example of a very prominent type of activist in the South."

Dennard, head of the African and African-American Studies Program of the History Department at ECU, is helping Garrett organize his papers for the purpose of putting together a memoir of all his work.

Dennard described the obstacles Garrett faced during the Jim Crow era where many things, such as literacy tests, were set to disenfranchise the African-American citizens across the country.

"Mr. Garrett ran for City Council in 1949 at age 35--before the Civil Rights Movement, that's a period where most blacks weren't even voting," said Dennard. "He ran numerous times and in 1988 he became the first black to be elected as a County Commissioner of Pitt County at the age of 74."

Among his many achievements, Garrett founded the D.D. Garrett School of Business in 1950 to improve the prospects of others in his community. This school was created to help provide African-Americans with basic secretarial and typing skills, which blacks were not taught during the years of segregation.

The theme of the exhibit is persistence and patience, which according to most reflects all of his achievements, such as being the first black realtor, the first black accountant and founder of Greenville's first black insurance agency.

The exhibit opened on Constitution day with an invitation-only reception. According to Lawrence, about 50-60 people attended the reception.

"It was largely family and friends of the Garretts, and Edith Warren, Pitt County Representative in the N.C. House, and Sate Representative of Pitt County, Marian McLawhorn, also attended."

Garrett, who is still alive today, has seen many changes in the U.S. from African-Americans not being able to vote to an African-American winning this years' Presidential election.

"We couldn't be where we are now without people making little baby steps. You don't cut down a tree in one scoop--you take little chips out of it until one day it falls. We've been making changes through little steps," Dennard said.

The exhibit is on the third floor of the Joyner Library and will be on display until the end of the semester.

This writer can be contacted at news@theeeastcarolinian.com.