Statue Honoring Chief Justice Henry Frye, Wife Shirley Frye Unveiled In Downtown Greensboro
GREENSBORO, NC – More than 300 people watched with respect and reverence as the City of Greensboro unveiled a statue of two civil rights pioneers and local living legends, Justice Henry E. Frye and his wife Shirley T. Frye, during Black History Month.
The crowd included prominent civic leaders and clergy, as well as the extended family of the couple being honored, who graduated from North Carolina A&T State University in 1953 and were married three years later. In the past six decades, they have made their mark on this city and state.
Speakers at the ceremony in Center City Park included N.C. Governor Roy Cooper, Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughan, N.C. A&T Chancellor Harold Martin, Bryan Foundation President Jim Melvin, Rev. Darryl Aaron of Providence Baptist Church, and Brooks Pierce Partner Justin Outling, who fondly recalled his lunches at the Elm Street Subway with Justice Frye when Outling was the firm’s “baby attorney.”
After the speeches, the Fryes embraced as the cloth was pulled off a statue of them holding hands that now stands atop a pedestal in Center City Park near the intersection of Friendly Avenue and Elm Street.
The bronze and granite sculpture by Maria Kirby-Smith is nine feet tall on its pedestal and weighs over 6,000 lbs. Last year, Greensboro City Council voted unanimously to install the statue by Kirby-Smith, which was financed with private funds from the Joseph M. Bryan Foundation.
Governor Cooper called the Fryes “real-life superheroes” and “a dynamic duo.”
After Henry Frye and Shirley Taylor graduated from A&T in 1953, the future Mrs. Frye returned to A&T as assistant vice chancellor for development and university relations and as special assistant to the chancellor before serving as special assistant to the president and director of planned giving at Bennett College. She led the integration of Greensboro’s segregated YWCAs in the 1970s, using her work as a model for YWCAs across the country.
When Henry Frye completed his service in Korea and Japan, he and Shirley were married on Aug. 25, 1956, the same day he was denied the right to vote via a racist and impossible-to-pass “literacy test” imposed only on Black voters.
This inspired him to study for the bar and change his state and country. In 1959, he became the first Black graduate from UNC School of Law; in 1963, the first Black assistant U.S. District Attorney; and in 1968, the first Black man in the 20th century to be elected to the N.C. General Assembly. In 1983, he was the first Black appointee to the N.C. Supreme Court, and in 1999, that court’s first Black chief justice.
During her speech, Mayor Vaughan said, “I hope that a young person visiting this park and seeing this statue will wonder about the lives of Henry and Shirley, and they will find out about two extraordinary individuals living in an extraordinary time of the Civil Rights movement and see how they changed the world separately and together. I am honored to know these two great individuals. We are a better city because of them.”
When the couple rose to the podium, Shirley Frye told the applauding crowd, “That’s enough,” and as they laughed, further demonstrated the dry wit for which she is known. “Everybody is talking about Henry being the first this or that. I want you to know he is my first husband.”
She then called making her speech “one of the most difficult tasks we have ever encountered. There are no words in our vocabulary that can express our gratitude, thankfulness, and appreciation to clearly articulate to everyone who bared their souls to honor us with this great gesture. Neither of us likes to be the focus of attention, but what do we do now? We’re here. After nearly 67 years of marriage, with all kinds of conversations and discussions over the years, this kind of thing was never a vision at any passing moment.”