OAK RIDGE, Tenn. — An Oak Ridge bus tour celebrated the 69th anniversary of the Scarboro 85 Saturday.
On September 6, 1955, 85 Black students integrated Oak Ridge High School and Robertsville Junior High. This was the first time any school was desegregated in the southeast.
Decades later, the community of these 85 students is still celebrating them.
"Scarboro 85 changed the dynamic of the world because they were pioneers. We wouldn't be here today talking to you without them," said Vanessa Spratling, a Scarboro 85 Monument Committee member.
Some of the money from the bus tour will go towards the monument community members are hoping to build in Oak Ridge to commemorate the legacy of these students.
"They probably didn't even know the effect they made," Spratling added. "But because of them, we're able to go to school together, celebrate together and eat together."
The tour showed people historic Oak Ridge sites, like the original Scarboro schools and Oak Ridge High School.
Katatra Vasquez organized the tour.
"It has been an honor for me to put this specially curated tour together to celebrate the journey that not just those 85 had, but the people before them who put in the effort and the work that fought for the integration of the Oak Ridge schools," Vasquez said.
Vasquez said sharing these stories with the community is important.
"There is this tremendous African American history that has been overlooked and kind of pushed to the side and not necessarily talked about. This is great history that we have here in this unique secret city," Vasquez said.
Spratling said the group's impact is everlasting.
"Just come and continue to celebrate the achievements that Oak Ridge [has done]. They didn't just do the Manhattan Project that saved the world. They saved the world in many other ways. And that is one of the ways we did it," she said.