JACKSONVILLE, N.C. (WITN) – Gloria Baker Goodwin and Linda Hunt Dula sit in the same pews, and sing in the choir every Sunday at their Jacksonville church, but for decades they had no idea that they stood together on one of the most important days in American history.
Both women grew up just minutes apart in western North Carolina during segregation, Goodwin from Conover and Dula from Hickory.
The pair attended rival high schools, made the journey to Washington D.C. as teenagers for the 1963 March on Washington, and carried the memory of that day for more than 60 years before crossing paths and discovering their shared experience as fellow church members at the Abundant Life International Baptist Cathedral.
For both women, daily life in western North Carolina meant navigating a world where opportunities were limited by race.
“It was a racial thing, because we were not allowed to do certain things back in those days,” Dula said. “We were struggling trying to get better jobs for our race, better housing for our race, better everything because we were not afforded the things that other people had.”
Goodwin’s experience with segregation became even more personal in 1967, when she became one of just two Black students to integrate Newton-Conover High School in Conover, North Carolina.
The other student who joined her was Pauletta Pearson, who would later marry actor Denzel Washington.
“It was completely a horrific environment for us,” Goodwin said. “We were treated unfairly, however our parents who were of strong faith encouraged us to continue and we did, we were very smart students, we joined all of the activities that they had at that school.”
Goodwin says during that time they weren’t given the same treatment as others, recounting the time she attended prom at a local Country Club and was told by another student that they didn’t belong there.
“He said ‘I told you that people like you can not come in here,’” she remembered.
Decades later Pearson who integrated the Newton Conover High School with Goodwin, purchased that Country Club along with her husband Denzel Washington.
In 1963, both young women, Goodwin and Dula found themselves on buses headed to the nation’s capital, though they didn’t know each other at the time.
Goodwin was 13 when her father, president of the local NAACP chapter, made the trip possible for her family.
“When we got there, there were 250,000 supporters, that were on the Lincoln Memorial,” Goodwin said. “I will never forget that experience. I think the prominent and pronounced event that I took from the March on Washington as a young teenager was The Martin Luther King Jr Speech I Have a Dream. Everyone in the crowd was crying and hugging each other, and I think that particular speech turned the tables.”
16-year-old Dula, had also embarked on the same historic journey.
“It was really very touching, because I saw all of these young people and older people there that were there for the same reason I was for equality,” Dula said. “That’s what we as a race have had to do all our lives, struggle to be accepted in the communities and in the world really.”
The two are connected by a button which reads “March on Washington for jobs and freedom, August 28, 1963.”
Decades passed, and both women eventually moved to Eastern Carolina and found their way to the same Jacksonville church.
They became friends, now serve together as mothers of their congregation, sing in the choir and share stories about their lives.
It was during one of those conversations that they discovered the remarkable connection that had been there all along — they had both witnessed one of the most pivotal moments in civil rights history, standing in the same crowd, listening to the same words that would change America.
Today, Dula said while progress has been made, challenges remain.
“We have come a long ways yes, but with the president we have today, he is trying to push us back, and we’re not going back,” she said.
Both women hope their intertwined story will inspire others.
“I hope young people would see this interview and rise up and say yes they can, that if we can survive segregation and now integration and now fights for civil rights, and equal rights then they can too,” Goodwin said.
Goodwin now serves as president of the Democratic Women of Onslow County.
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