By Mike London
Salisbury Post
EAST SPENCER — The Rowan County Sheriff’s Office announced on Tuesday that John Noble, who served with that office for almost four decades, has passed away.
Long before Noble was a police officer or a politician, he was a fine, two-sport athlete at Dunbar, the East Spencer school that educated Black students during segregation.
Noble graduated from the school in 1965 and spoke often about how proud he was to have worn the blue of the Dunbar Tigers. He was inducted into the Dunbar Hall of Fame in 2023.
Dunbar had no shortage of terrific athletes in the 1960s, but Noble was recognized with the “Most Athletic” superlative for the Class of 1965. Off the field, he was well-rounded. Besides excelling in football and basketball, he was a people person. He was in the glee club, the drama club and the math club.
Dunbar was a relatively small school. The yearbook for the graduating class of 1965 displays only 25 boys in the senior class, but the school still was good in football and often great in basketball. Dunbar teams competed in the NCHSAC — the governing body for Black athletics — and won a basketball state championship in 1959. In 1953, 1960 and 1961, Dunbar was state runner-up.
The long-time coaches for Dunbar were Harry Koontz, a math and P.E. teacher who coached basketball, and James Pemberton, a science teacher who coached football.
Noble said in an interview once that his love for athletics came from James Archie, who was his uncle. His parents were strict. They had a lots of chores for him to do. Playing ball got him out of the house.
Noble’s best sport definitely was football. He loved it, but he didn’t have a glamorous job. He was always in the trenches as a rugged lineman.
In the fall of 1961, Noble made the Dunbar squad as a freshman. He found Coach Pemberton to be normally mild-mannered, but when the coach spoke, he meant business and he had rules that were firm. Violate one of those rules, and no matter how good you were, you no longer were part of the Tigers.
Dunbar usually practiced without water and the most sophisticated equipment on hand was a blocking dummy. Noble would hold the dummy out in front of him, as a teammate charged him full speed and tried to knock him senseless.
Dunbar won only one game in 1961 — against Troy’s Peabody High — but in the fall of 1962 when Noble was a sophomore, the Tigers jumped to four wins. In 1963, they jumped to win six wins.
Noble was a senior in the fall of 1964, and Pemberton had patiently built a powerful team. Noble was a 215-pound tackle by then, a big man for the era, and he and his buddy Eugene Neal opened wide holes for the backs. If you played, you played both ways, so Noble also was a run-stuffing linemen on defense.
Dunbar had two swift players — David Washington and Lonnie Sifford — in the backfield, and if they got to daylight, they were gone. Big fullback Clavin Jackson supplied the power in short-yardage situations. Quarterback Wayne Lanear directed the offense. The Tigers used the Wing-T and Pro-T formations.
Dunbar overpowered Belmont, Monroe and Statesville to start the 1964 season. The only loss in the regular season was to Lexington. Dunbar clinched the conference championship by whipping Mount Airy 35-6 on homecoming. Mount Airy was held to 77 yards.
The final game of the regular season for Dunbar was at home against Salisbury’s J.C. Price. That rivalry was intense. The crowd was pumped. Everyone knew Dunbar never had beaten Price, a perennial power.
Dunbar won big that night — 30-6. Price had minus-7 rushing yards. Noble scored the most satisfying points of his life when he tackled a Red Devil back in the end zone for a safety.
Dunbar was 8-1 at that point and took on Ridgeview High from Hickory, a frequent state champion, to decide the champion of Western North Carolina.
Ridgeview’s Panthers won 74 straight regular-season games from 1957-1965 and once had a streak of 14 straight shutouts. Ridgeview was much bigger than Dunbar, took advantage of fumbles and beat Dunbar 28-0, but it was a tougher struggle than it sounds. Ridgeview had negative yardage in the second half. After that game, Pemberton declared to the Salisbury Post that his tackles Noble and Neal “could play for any team in the state.”
Noble also had good nights in basketball. In the 1963-64 season, he was a starter and averaged 8 points on one of Koontz’s strongest teams. Noble played with Nathaniel Davis, Roy Goodlett and brothers Romus and Louis Jefferies. The Tigers were 19-2 and finished third in the state.
Some good basketball was being played at Rowan’s Black schools. Four of the county’s top five scorers that season were from Dunbar or Price — Dunbar’s Davis and Louis Jefferies and Price’s Rufus Agnew and William Boger.
After he graduated from Dunbar, Noble had football offers from Livingstone, North Carolina A&T and Johnson C. Smith, but he elected to go to Shaw. The reason was he wanted to go into the law enforcement field. Shaw offered a major in criminal justice.
By the time Noble graduated college, the South was changing. In the spring of 1969, Dunbar and Price were shuttered and an era ended.
Noble had put in an application to the local sheriff’s department, but he hadn’t been hired and had gotten a job by the fire department.
When the fully integrated schools opened in the fall of 1969, there was tension at some of them. The sheriff’s office needed Noble. It meant a pay raise, and Noble was eager to serve. He put on a badge.
There was a fight at South Rowan his first day and a fight at North Rowan on his second.
But Noble would provide not only a Black presence in the schools, he was a calming, commanding figure in the halls for every student. Things gradually settled down. Athletic teams played big role in the integration process. Teams mixed and learned they could get along.
For Noble, those first tense days with the sheriff’s department blossomed into a historically lengthy career. He retired as a lieutenant.
Noble ran for office for the first time in 1981 and was shocked when he won. He went on to serve more than 40 years as an alderman.
While East Spencer was always next to Noble’s heart, he became a huge fan of the West Rowan Falcons during their glory days. Several of his grandchildren were standout high school athletes who went on to play in college.
Quarterback B.J. Sherrill and defensive back Domonique Noble, cousins and Noble’s grandsons, were instrumental in West Rowan’s historic 46-game winning streak.
Rashonda Mayfield, a 1,000-point scorer for West girls basketball, was another of Noble’s many notable grandchildren.
