Forceful demonstrations pushed North Carolinians to an extremist stance
Sanford exposes his political style of dealing with racialized campaigns—to sidestep the issue through moderate tactics. He questions the legitimacy of the civil rights demonstrations in Chapel Hill. Instead of improving conditions, the demonstrations only served to polarize people opposed to such rapid social change.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Terry Sanford, [date unknown]. Interview A-0140. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- WALTER DE VRIES:
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But did race ever enter into a statewide contest since then, up until
1972?
- TERRY SANFORD:
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Yes. Obviously it did with Lake running inuntil
'62.
- WALTER DE VRIES:
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'72.
- TERRY SANFORD:
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Yeah. Well, in '64 it was an issue for two reasons. Garvey was supporting
Moore and violently, publicly opposing the Open Accommodations Act. I
was trying to get around that issue by saying that other states may need
it, but North Carolina didn't. We were getting on with our business,
which was substantially true. The Chapel Hill thing, which John Ehle
wrote his book The Free Men about, was erupting, and
while they thought they were helping the cause, they of course were
destroying the cause. Because they elected Dan Moore and defeated . . .
or they contributed to the defeat . . . of Richardson Preyer. So it had
all the carry-over. The resentment against me for
the things we had done to implement the racial policies. The fact that
the demonstrations were still going on in a number of cities, that they
erupted right in the middle of the campaign. I never really understood
this. These people obviously were misguided. I never was able to pin
down the fact that somebody was prompting them to it, somebody from the
Lake-Moore side. I don't really think so. I think it was just a terribly
unfortunate break.
- JACK BASS:
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What was that, now? I'm just not familiar with that.
- TERRY SANFORD:
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Oh, street demonstrations. They had . . .
- JACK BASS:
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Where was this?
- TERRY SANFORD:
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Chapel Hill, of all places. They had three places. Brady's and some other
drug store downtown that hadn't integrated. Just three. And they put on
the wildest, meanest, most damaging demonstration we had during my
administration. Because everywhere else, it was possible to contain it.
And there I . . . well, I virtually did, but in the meantime they got .
. . they arrested all of them. I finally had to pardon a professor over
here who'd been sentenced to jail from the Divinity School for
demonstrating, and a bunch of students who have got to be so involved.
But it was right in the middle of the last two months of the campaign.
Couldn't . . . you know, if they had set out to figure something out as
Nixon did, say, in Charlotte, they couldn't have gotten anything more
damaging than that. Ehle wrote a book about it, and how we attempted to
ride out the storm.