A lot was changing in Fort Worth in the ‘70s. The population surpassed 300,00; the Kimbell Art Museum opened; the Tarrant County Black Historical & Genealogical Society was founded; the city started Sundance Square redevelopment, and many other cultural and political events began shaping Fort Worth into the city it would become in today.
In Fort Worth ISD, started shaping the district into what it would become today.
Cary, who graduated from I.M. Terell in 1937, faced heavy opposition on the previously all-white school board. Many expected he would not win. Cary focused his efforts on teachers, and by getting their support across the city, Cary secured his seat — even getting votes from crucial white neighborhoods.
Once on the board, Cary faced the battles of school integration that activists of that time fought. However, he was no stranger to such a fight. Before his election to the board, Cary visited the University of Texas at Arlington as an invited guest speaker. As part of his lecture, he criticized Arlington’s housing policies, calling them racist, and chastised African American students over their recent protests of the Confederate mascot, stating their academic coursework was the only way to make a profound change.
A few days later, faculty asked Cary to join the history department. He accepted the position in 1969, making him the first African American professor at the university.
Integration battles
Despite the historic victory for integration in Brown v. Board of Education, school districts in Texas still fought over how to fully integrate schools. Some of that fight showed up in policies like busing students.
Members of the school board could not agree on what to do. Some white trustees argued that money spent on busing students to different schools to fully integrate could be better spent in other ways.
But Cary stood his ground and fought to enforce federal busing policies. He said that not doing so was inherently racist, and the district not only had to enforce busing children to different schools to fully integrate, but it also had to hire more Black faculty.
To counter Cary, his opponents on the board started advocating for a “Freedom of Choice” plan, allowing students to choose which public school they would attend. Cary saw this as an effort to keep white students in white schools. In his view, the plan would only perpetuate campus segregation.
Next, Cary’s colleagues proposed a magnet school plan, establishing central campuses where Black and white students were bused to take some classes together before returning to their respective schools. Despite Cary’s opposition, it passed in June 1975.
Cary also fought trustees over a bond in 1977, causing discord in the Fort Worth community. The bond called for improvements to existing schools, such as heating and air conditioning, but Cary argued it was discriminatory because it did not provide upgrades for predominantly-Black campuses like Dunbar Middle School.
During the bond campaign, Cary and other Fort Worth Black leaders rallied before the school board, calling for the construction of a new, integrated school. They lost.
Cary later ran for state office and continued his work as a civil servant. Throughout his time in office, he was a leader in the civil rights movement. He continued to fight for education issues and never stopped advocating for the right to a quality education for all children.
