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RALEIGH - Brenda Florence was 10 years old on Sept. 4, 1957, the first day of school and the first day she and five other students integrated public schools in Greensboro.

"It was awful. I was scared to death," she said, sitting in a large parlor room at the executive mansion - about as far from the taunts, jeers and hateful looks she remembers as you can get.

She was one of 11 African Americans that the governor and General Assembly honored Wednesday for their part in racially integrating public schools in Greensboro, Charlotte and Winston-Salem.

Seven of those then-children were on hand, including Florence and her brother, Jimmy Florence, who was 11 years old, and Josephine Boyd Bradley, who came into Greensboro Senior High School as a senior.

"Once I got in the classroom, everything was okay," Brenda Florence said, "Once we were inside, we were treated decently."

That was not universally the case. Students who were older at the time said they encountered more resistance once they were in school.

"It was very much lonely," Bradley said of her first days of school that year. "It was frightening, one because I didn't know what to expect, and it was a little terrifying to walk up to the gauntlet to that school with people yelling and screaming."

On Wednesday, Gov. Mike Easley presented her and the six other students who were on hand with the North Carolina Award, praising them as trailblazers.

"These were courageous men and women," Easley said. "If you think about what was going in the state, the nation, the South in 1957, you'll understand the courage it took for them to walk in the face of fear and criticism."

Also honored were the superintendents of the three school systems, including Benjamin Smith of Greensboro, who is now deceased, and Craig Phillips, who headed the Winston-Salem schools and went on to be elected state superintendent of public instruction.

Phillips said he greeted Gwendolyn Bailey Coleman that day with a handshake, something he said he has pondered the past 20 years.

"If instead of shaking your hand I gave you one big hug, we might have been a lot farther along," he said.

He gave her that hug Wednesday.

Later in the day, the General Assembly passed a resolution honoring the students and superintendents.

Noting that the landmark Brown v. Board of Education had been decided in 1954, three years before North Carolina school integrated, Sen. Katie Dorsett said the transition toward integration "was neither deliberate nor speedy," as the court had decreed.

"It was far from easy, and the struggle for civil rights was far from over," she said.

In the House, Rep. Alma Adams was one of several who hailed the students as clearing a path others could follow.

"Today's generation of young people were spared," Adams said. "They were spared the experiences of going to segregated schools and experiencing the kind of separatism that many of us often saw firsthand. They didn't experience the hatred, the stares and the criticism and even the threats encountered ... by the seven people here today with us."

Bradley, now a professor at Clark Atlanta University, stood in a swirl of well-wishers at the governor's mansion as she was asked to reflect on the 50 years between that first day of school and today.

"Overall, I think there's still a lot to be done, but I think we've had moments," she said.

Florence, too, said there was more to do but reflected on the progress that has been made.

"We've actually come a long way," she said. "I can remember when I couldn't go into certain restaurants. I had to drink out of special fountains. I have great-nephews and nieces now and tell them that, and they just look at me like, 'Are you kidding me?'"

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker@news-record.com