Holmes Hall

Located on Cates Avenue across from first-year residence halls Tucker and Owen, stands a three-story building designed by LS3P Associates Ltd and constructed in 2007, directed by Balfour Beatty. This building has had a couple of name changes in its lifetime. Its first name was First Year College, and then in 2015 it was renamed University College Commons. In October 2018, at the start of Diversity Education Week, Chancellor Randy Woodson announced that the building was to be renamed Holmes Hall in honor of Irwin Holmes, the first African American to receive an undergraduate degree at NC State University. During the announcement Chancellor Woodson stated that Holmes “broke barriers that would forever change this university and the Atlantic Coast Conference. He was, and is, and always will remain a role model that helped drive needed social and cultural change at NC State, in North Carolina, and beyond.” 

Born in Reedsville, North Carolina in 1939 and raised primarily in Durham, Irwin Holmes became one of the most significant actors in the early days of desegregation at NC State and he ultimately shaped the history that followed. He noted that his youth was filled with role models in Black Durham: educators, entrepreneurs, activists. His father led Durham’s recreation programs for African Americans, while his mother worked as a teacher. Both parents had masters degrees from NC Central University. In Hillside High School, which was well known for its successful alumni, Holmes excelled in both academics and athletics. In 1956 and at the age of 16, Irwin Holmes enrolled as an undergraduate in electrical engineering at NC State. He had been accepted at the prestigious Howard University, a historically Black college in Washington, DC, but chose NC State because of affordability and the reputation of its School of Engineering. The university offered scholarships to support his education, and it was also closer to home and family. He was one of four African American students to enroll that semester, joining Ed Carson, Manuel Crockett, and Walter Holmes (no relation). In a 2014 interview, he described being one of only four Black undergraduates on campus as being “on my own,” relaying as an example the first time he learned about study groups:

I never had a class with a black student in the four years I was there, which was an interesting experience. The real shocker is, until my second semester senior year I never spent one minute in a study group. You know what a study group is? I didn’t even know they existed. All my classmates were in study groups and not only did they not invite me into a study group they didn’t even tell me they existed. My senior year, by that time it was clear that I was going to graduate – to my fellow students – and that I didn’t really need a study group. They invited me into a study group. I said, “What’s that? Sure, I’ll come.” I was never so shocked in my life. You went into a study group the night before the exam; they would walk in the room, sit down at a table, and lay out their professor’s last ten exams he’s ever given and say, “This is how he tested the people on this chapter for the last ten years,” and you know there’s no way that he’s going to test you in any way that there isn’t something on those old tests that’s going to tell you where to study. It changed your grade point average by at least one grade point. If you were a C student, that makes you a B student. If you were a B student, it makes you an A student. I was just about a B student; that semester, in those classes, almost straight As.

He also noted that key mentors made a significant difference in his education, particularly his coach John Kenfield and his electrical engineering professor William Stevenson, who he saw as one of the   “the real class acts when it comes to relationships” and one example of a dynamic Holmes saw throughout his career: truly successful people focus on treating others with respect and honesty.

It was not until his second semester that Holmes lived on campus; he took up residence in Watauga Hall, one of the oldest residence halls on campus. While on campus, Holmes had access to certain amenities such as the dining hall and the gym, but if he wandered just a few blocks over to Hillsborough street he found that restaurateurs refused to serve African Americans. On the weekends, Holmes stated that he would find a way back to his home in Durham, North Carolina where he would go to North Carolina Central University to hang out with other students.

While at NC State, Holmes played on the tennis team, where he became the first African American athlete at NC State and in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). During his time on the tennis team he made waves in the collegiate sports world as he became the first African American athlete to receive a varsity letter. During his senior year, Holmes’ teammates highly valued his leadership skills and elected him co-captain of the tennis team.

During his time at NC State, Holmes experienced his share of racist scenarios with some of the teaching staff at the university, and during some of his travels as a student athlete. In an interview in 2006 to The Technician, Holmes recounted that he had gone to his first day of math class freshman year and everything went by as usual, but by the next week the location of the class had changed and a male teacher had replaced his female teacher from the week before. Holmes continued the interview by saying that not long after this event happened he had heard some students on campus say one of the female math teachers had asked to not have to teach a math class with African American students in it. When Holmes spoke with the NC State football team in 2016 he told them the story of how a diner in Chapel Hill refused to serve him after a tennis match so the entire team walked out of the restaurant in solidarity.

After graduating from NC State in 1960 with a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, Holmes continued his education at Drexel University where he earned a Masters degree in electrical engineering in 1966. After graduating, Holmes began working with IBM, where he worked until his retirement. Holmes lives in Durham today with his wife Meredythe.

Cultural and legal changes led to the racial integration of undergraduate education at NC State when Holmes, Holmes, Crockett, and Carson arrived, but the process had begun earlier. While students of Hispanic and Asian descent had enrolled since the late 19th century, African American students were barred from attendance by state law and social convention. A 1951 article in the Technician titled “Not Ready?” demonstrates student thoughts on the issue at the time. The unnamed author had conducted an informal survey of students asking if Black students should be enrolled at NC State College:

To a man, the students raised a vociferous NO! Most of them were true to the Old Southern Tradition, “Would You Let Your Daughter Marry A Negro?” Some said that they wouldn’t room with a negro; some said that the fine parents of the South would take their children out of State and send them elsewhere. We got what we asked for, but we are surprised that at least one man didn’t favor true democratic education rather than the old sticky “give ‘em equal facilities of their own.”

The authors went on to offer a plan toward integration: start with graduate students, who would “almost surely make an excellent record scholastically, then more negro students should be admitted at lower levels. It would not be a slow erosion of all our Southern Traditions. The plan would serve to show that the Negro IS human and does deserve the best in education, and is ready for it on the highest levels.” The writers encouraged the State College community to proceed with integration, and some university leaders supported this approach.

Two years later, the first Black students at NC State, Robert Clemons and Hardy Liston, entered the Engineering School as graduate students. In 1957, Robert Clemons became the first African American graduate of NC State. The integration of undergraduate education at NC State began at Chapel Hill when Leroy Benjamin Frasier Jr., Ralph Kennedy Frasier, and John Lewis Brandon, students from Hillside High School Durham (where Holmes attended),  refused to accept UNC Chapel Hill’s denial of admission because of race. They took their discrimination case to the Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court’s decision that UNC violated the 14th Amendment by denying students access based on race. The decision in  Leroy Benjamin Frasier et al v Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina officially opened the door to the desegregation of the UNC system, including NC State.

The physical space that is Holmes Hall today stands next to Carmichael gym and near the former location of the tennis courts, where Irwin Holmes enjoyed some of his favorite moments at NC State. In a 2014 interview, Holmes talked about the importance of place names, noting that spaces named for African Americans at NC State show “black students...what State feels about black people. When you’ve got that kind of environment you can’t help but win.” The Study Abroad department, Disability Resources and the TOTA (Tucker, Owen, Turlington and Alexander) service desk are just a few entities that operate out of Holmes Hall today.

Original Source References

Interview with Irwin Holmes - mc00449-oh-holmes-20141020 - NC State University Libraries Rare and Unique Digital Collections | NC State University Libraries Rare and Unique Digital Collections. Accessed March 1, 2020. https://d.lib.ncsu.edu/collections/catalog/mc00449-oh-holmes-20141020.

“Irwin Holmes • Electrical and Computer Engineering.” Electrical and Computer Engineering. Accessed February 28, 2020. https://www.ece.ncsu.edu/honor/irwin-holmes/.

North Carolina State University, Office of the Chancellor, Carey Hoyt Bostian Records, UA 002.001.003, Special Collections Research Center, North Carolina State University Libraries, Raleigh, NC, https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/findingaids/ua002_001_003/

Secondary Source References

Bisset, Jim. “The Dilemma over Moderates: School Desegregation in Alamance County, North Carolina.” Journal of Southern History 81 no. 4 (November 2015): 887-903.

Wallenstein, Peter. Higher Education and the Civil Rights Movement: White Supremacy, Black Southerners and College Campuses. Gainesville, University Press of Florida, 2009.