Beginning in 1968, Frinks and other SCLC officials began a boycott in Hyde County, North Carolina, to desegregate public schools. With King's assassination on April 4, 1968, Ralph David Abernathy assumed the role of the national SCLC president and visited Hyde County to lend his support for the school boycott, implying national SCLC support of the movement. In the spring of 1969, Frinks led two nationally covered marches advocating integration in Hyde County; one from Swan Quarter to Raleigh and another from Ashville to Raleigh called the Mountaintop to Valley March. The goal of these marches was to travel through as many towns as possible to inform them of the movement going on in Hyde County and gain support of neighboring towns. Using the same technique of persistent, frequent protests he had been for over a decade, Frinks' efforts paid off. On November 1969, Hyde County citizens voted on a referendum that provided the necessary funding to desegregate the Mattamuskeet School.