EE Smith Hall of Fame will honor inaugural class of groundbreaking Black athletes

(First in a series of stories highlighting the inaugural class for E.E. Smith High School's Sports Hall of Fame)

They are trailblazers, trendsetters and record breakers.

They have participated in Super Bowls, played for national college championships and developed all-star athletes.

And they are all bound together, despite having attended decades apart in some cases, by a common experience at E.E. Smith High School.

That bond will be celebrated Sunday as 21 distinguished former athletes and coaches are inducted into the inaugural class of the E.E. Smith Sports Hall of Fame.

Many of the inductees shared memories with The Fayetteville Observer from their days at E.E. Smith and the tie that still binds them. Seven of the 15 athletes going into the hall were heavily influenced by a quartet of coaches, and that's where this story begins.

The legendary staff

D.S Kelly. D.T. Carter, William "Bill'' Carver. Ike Walker Sr: All four have passed, but their legacy as coaches lives on through the players they influenced for more than six decades at E.E. Smith.

They developed successful teams during the '40s, '50s and '60s while Smith was still the only high school for Black people in Cumberland County, and through the desegregation of the '70s.

According to DigitalNC.org, E.E. Smith remains one of only five that originated as schools for Black people still operating as high schools in North Carolina. The others are James B. Dudley in Greensboro, Hillside High in Durham, Carver High in Winston-Salem and West Charlotte High.

"The coaching staff was legendary,'' said hall inductee Larry Tearry, a 1974 Smith graduate who went on to All-ACC football honors at Wake Forest and was a two-year starter at center for the NFL's Detroit Lions.

One member of that staff, Kelly, came to E.E. Smith in the early 1940s as a science teacher but eventually became the school's head basketball coach. He directed the Golden Bulls, featuring a lanky senior Walker at forward, to the N.C. High School Athletic Conference 4-A championship in 1950.

Walker would eventually succeed his old coach and led the program to great success in 16 seasons between 1973 and 1989.

Carter, E.E. Smith Class of 1939, and Carver, Class of 1958, had been star athletes at the school before returning to coach. Along with Kelly and Walker, they teamed up on the football staff. Led by Carter, the group created an environment for success on and off the field.

"To us, back in the time during segregation and Jim Crow, E.E. Smith was the epitome of success,'' said Jimmy Raye II from the Class of 1964. Raye would leave Smith and become the first Black quarterback from the South to lead a team to college football's national championship at Michigan State before embarking on a 36-year coaching career in the NFL.

"You had to be pretty good to be on a sports team at E.E. Smith because you were involved with all the Black kids from all over the city,'' Raye said. "And the environment at E.E. Smith, because of the coaches we had — D.T. Carter, D.S. Kelly, Walker, Carver — winning was the standard. It was a unique environment that stemmed from education. If you didn't perform academically, you didn't play athletically.''

Connections for a lifetime

The connection to their former coaches didn't end after the players left Smith. Bishop Harris, Class of 1959 and a three-sport star for the Golden Bulls, had just graduated from N.C. Central University and was hoping to break into coaching when Kelly steered his driver's education car into the driveway of Harris' grandmother's house one afternoon.

"Be ready first thing tomorrow morning,'' Kelly told Harris. "And wear a tie.''

Kelly picked Harris up the next morning and drove him to an interview with county school officials that resulted in his first job. Harris would go on from there to a coaching career that spanned more than 30 years at the college and NFL levels.

Related: 'E.E. Smith is in your heart': Alumni, students say legacy means more than school's location

"In the long run, they wanted you to be more than just football players,'' Tearry said. "I think those guys had the ability to see what's inside of you and pull it out.''

Carter's 1967 and 1968 football squads would play for the NCHSAC 4-A championship, with the Golden Bulls beating Winston-Salem Paisley, 6-0, in '67 and sharing the crown with Elizabeth City P.W. Moore in '68 (12-12 tie in finals).

Those squads, and Kelly's 1950 state champion basketball team, helped establish a tradition of success at E.E. Smith that continues today.

(Next: E.E. Smith becomes a hotbed for future NFL talent)

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: EE Smith Hall of Fame honors groundbreaking Black alums