Mildred O’Neil Largent: Threatened for her involvement in civil rights

Editor’s note: March is Women’s History Month. Throughout the month, The Paper will profile an instrumental female community leader. This is the third in the series.

Mildred O’Neil Largent was the first woman to serve as President of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She grew up in Glen Alpine, attending historic Olive Hill High School and completing her GED at Western Piedmont Community College.

She took college-level and professional studies at Winston-Salem State University, Shaw University, and The Universities of North Carolina at Asheville and Chapel Hill.

Having begun her working years as a domestic employee in the home of then-Morganton Mayor Andrew Kistler, Mrs. Largent became active in civil rights between 1961 and 1962, when her family joined several others from West Concord Street in a community effort to obtain transportation to school for their children, who had to walk past White schools to attend the more distant Black schools they were assigned to.

Within the following year, the children were reassigned to White schools that were closer to their homes. While the effort began as a matter of transportation, these young students became the first Black children to integrate Burke County Public Schools. This occurred before the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and before North Carolina implemented desegregation under Brown v. Board of Education.

Already a member of the local NAACP, Mrs. Largent’s open involvement with civil rights placed her family in danger as they experienced threats that their home would be bombed. The family had to be placed under police protection.

Despite the threats, Mrs. Largent’s influence increased. In 1966 she accepted a position with Morganton Housing Authority, climbing the ranks to become the Relocation and Property Manager and serving with that agency for over 30 years,

As a longstanding member of the local NAACP, Mrs. Largent served as secretary for 13 years and then as Branch President from approximately 1972 to 1981.

Her successor in that role, Mrs. Diane Tate, said “under her direction, as the first woman president of the Burke County Branch of the NAACP and housing manager of the Morganton Housing Authority, I learned many lessons of endurance, love, equality, patience, forgiveness, brotherhood, independence, strength, loyalty, fortitude, patience, boldness, encouragement, and respect.”

Mildred Largent passed on Feb. 14, 1997, five days after suffering a brain aneurysm while preparing for a program at her church.

Five days after her passing, the Rev. W. Flemon McIntosh Jr., was quoted in the Morganton News Herald, saying of Mrs. Largent, “Generations yet unborn will benefit from the works and dedication of this humanitarian ... Her profile will emerge to reawaken the community to its finest meaning, for she struck new sparks of hope in a world dark with unspeakable fears.”