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In a month dedicated to black history, sometimes the most riveting stories come from people with names less familiar than Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King Jr. Many of them are connected to the Triad.

N.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Henry Frye

In 1956, Frye had spent the past six months in New York and had come home to marry his college sweetheart, Shirley Taylor. The 23-year-old spent the night before the wedding at his parents’ home in Ellerbe, and decided to register to vote before heading to Greensboro.

What he should have been asked to do, as part of an established literacy test, was read and write a section of the Constitution to the satisfaction of the registrar.

“The guy started asking me all kinds of questions I knew were not a part of the literacy test, so I refused to try to answer the questions. 'Name the 14th president.’ 'Name three signers of the Declaration of Independence.’ Unnecessary questions.”

“This was what black people had to deal with,” said Frye, 77.

Frye’s bride was waiting, so he got in his car and went on to Greensboro.

“I didn’t forget about it,” Frye said.

Not after graduating law school. Not after serving as the first black U.S. attorney in the state. Not after starting his own law practice in Greensboro.

When he got the chance, he did what other blacks before him had been unable to do: he won a seat in the state legislature — making him the first black person this century to be elected in the General Assembly.

And as with his methodical approach to everything, Frye made a list of the 119 other legislators in the state House, with columns denoting “yes,” “no,” and “undecided.” From there he went about the business drumming up support for abolishing the segregation-era literacy test, which had been used to keep blacks away from the voting booth.

He didn’t want the bill to go before a committee unless it had enough votes to survive.

“If they said yes, I marked it down,” he said. “Very few did. Most of them said, 'I have to think about it.’ The general feeling among people was, I’m wasting my time. 'You won’t get that through the House or the Senate.’ Frankly, I had some doubts myself.”

Some said if they voted to end the test, they wouldn’t get reelected back home.

One legislator took the floor during a debate to say that race had nothing to do with the test.

The bill passed after Frye shared his personal example.

“It strengthened my belief in democracy,” Frye said.

Judge Elreta Alexander-Ralston

Sitting high on the bench, Judge Elreta Alexander-Ralston peering down over her reading glasses sent tremors through the courtroom.

“Speak now, darlin’, because the truth will set you free,” she often cajoled. Or sometimes demanded.

Known for her fabulous furs and the click of her heels down the courthouse corridor, the bottle blond was alternately revered and feared.

As a district court judge, she invented “judgment day.”

Just made it up.

“She called it a prayer for verdict continued, which did not exist in the law,” said attorney and former district judge Joe Williams, her protege.

In 1968, Alexander-Ralston became the first black woman in the nation elected to the bench.

She recognized that an inordinate number of black children were being brought to the courthouse and charged with petty crimes and getting convicted — while smaller numbers of white kids were showing up, Williams said. She reasoned that giving youthful offenders a chance to mend their ways meant they wouldn’t be saddled for life with a criminal record.

“Her strategy was if you helped the wealthy white kids then you could help the black kids in the community, because nothing could be said about it if you were feeding them all out of the same spoon,” he said.

She intentionally chose the case of a white Eagle Scout, who on a dare stole something from a store, as the first case for judgment day. His parents and their lawyer wanted a dismissal, but that required the assistant district attorney to drop the case, and he wasn’t inclined to do it.

She allowed the boy to plead not guilty, and told his parents she would give him a list of things to do to avoid her finding him guilty.

“It wasn’t an easy thing,” Williams said. “You had to go to your high school and in a seminar confess to all the students what you had done and tell them about the court system. You had to visit the jail and see a cell. You had to write a long dissertation about what you were going to do with your life and how this would affect it. In some cases you had to do volunteer work. She had a blend of things to do.

“Then you had to come back on judgment day,” Williams said. “If you had done all the things you were supposed to do, then she would enter a verdict of not guilty, and if you hadn’t done those things, then you might see the jail.”

Alexander-Ralston, who died in 1998, is remembered for pioneering legal reform.

Courtroom 2A in the Guilford County Courthouse — where her portrait hangs — is named in her honor.

Contact Nancy McLaughlin at 373-7049 or nancy.mclaughlin@news-record.com