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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview A-0326, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Zeno Ponder helped rebuild the Democratic Party in western North Carolina in the 1950s and is considered one of the most respected and influential leaders of Madison County. The interview begins with his descriptions of his family heritage in the mountains and of local Democratic and Republican traditions. Like many in the region at the time, his father and brother supported the Union during the Civil War. Ponder recounts going to small schools during the Depression and attending Mars Hill College. He also recalls the local employment situation during the Depression and during World War II. He and his wife trained as chemists, but he decided to return to Madison to farm. He became involved in county political organization by teaching in a GI training program following World War II. Working on his brother's run for sheriff solidified Ponder's loyalty to the Democratic Party. The latter portion of the interview describes the growth of Ponder's farm and personal wealth and unique aspects of the political culture in the North Carolina mountains. It ends with his description of the 360-degree mountain view from his living room.
Zeno Ponder is one of the most respected and influential leaders of Madison County, North Carolina. This interview begins with his descriptions of his family's activities in the area and local political traditions. Ponder briefly describes his experiences at local schools, including Mars Hill College. Ponder became involved in local politics through a training program and his brother's campaign for sheriff.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is an interview with Zeno Ponder, just outside of Marshall, North Carolina, on March 22, 1974. Mr. Ponder is the titular head of the Democratic Party in Madison County, North Carolina. Mr. Ponder, we're discussing North Carolina politics since 1948 and its changes in the state. But you are in a part of the state that is a lot different from Raleigh. The mountain culture is wrapped up into every aspect of things out here—religion, politics, the music—and it is hard to talk about politics without talking about mountain culture in general. In Raleigh you can talk about politics and the elections without talking about the culture in Raleigh sometimes. So the two things I would like to explore is you, your involvement in politics out here and also your views of mountain culture, because that's influenced the way you look at politics and the activities you've had. I think a good way to begin may be to talk about your roots in the mountains and what kinds of formative things about the mountain culture have affected you.
Bill, I guess, talking about the roots of things that happened to me and
where my roots are in Madison County and the mountains, I'd go back to
my heritage, my family. I was one of thirteen children. As a matter of
fact I was the thirteenth. My mother didn't give up easily, but when she
saw me, that was it. We had one sister and twelve of us boys. We didn't
know that we were living in poverty, so we were very happy. I guess
there is a great deal of truth in ignorance truly being blissful.
Because we just simply didn't know what the outside world was. When I
grew up during the '20s
So your father was a farmer?
My father was a farmer. He went six weeks to school and immediately after the Civil War. My father was fifty-four years old when I was born. So I practically didn't get here at all, being the thirteenth child and my father was fifty-four years of age.
Did he . . . was he a subsistence farmer? Did he plant some tobacco and have a few hens, that kind of thing?
My father bought thirty-two acres of land, long before he was married. He didn't marry until he was thirty-four. Batched on this thirty-two acres of land. And he did do diversified farming. And he owned his own land. He accumulated more land as he went along. When my father died at the age of eighty-seven he owned about eight or nine hundred acres of land.
In Madison County?
In Madison County, all of it, yeah.
So your father's motivation pushed him from the lowest, poorer class of people into the landed, more middle-class part of the county.
Yes, when he died he was in considerable . . . in the upper bracket
Was . . . the family feuds and the Democratic-Republican split, a lot of it is rooted in the Civil War in the mountain counties. Did that have any influence on your family?
Well, certainly it had an influence on my family. My father, son of Robert Ponder, was one who fought with the Union, not because of the Democratic-Republican element but because he just did not believe in slavery. My grandmother, bless her heart, I guess she was destitute and being a widow with two children to bring up during that era, I don't fault her, but she married Josh Reams, who was part Indian. And he was a veteran of the southern element. He had fought for slavery and fought with Lee's forces.
This is your . . .
This is my step-grandfather. My father's stepfather.
Your father's stepfather.
Now when my father grew up, of course his mother talked to him about what
his father had done. Robert Ponder. Josh Reams, his stepfather talked to
him about what he had done. So there was a woman who had lived and given
birth to two sons of the Union and, incidentally, she gave birth to two
sons of Josh Reams, a Confederate soldier. The political implication as
I see it, coming from . . . through my father and on down to the
children, was simply that we took the view that we had very little if
anything to conserve. We were liberal and the Democratic Party was
liberal in its views nationally, state, and county. So we were for that
form of government which would give us a better opportunity to involve
ourselves
A lot of the people that were on the Union side in the Civil War, they continued in the Republican tradition. Isn't that right?
Well, its true, and a good many of the people here in Madison County were not, up until the Civil War—they had no roots here in Madison County. They came in from the Piedmont, retreating back into the hills where they were less likely to be picked up and put in prison or put on one side or the other. So they were renegades. They were good people, they just didn't believe in fighting. You know, we had people during Vietnam what didn't believe in fighting. We had people during the Civil War. We've had them during every war.
So Madison County, I guess, was receiving maybe more than our share of people who just didn't believe in fighting, just didn't believe in the cause of the war. And they came here and they stayed after the war. And they were very strong in favor of the Union forces. And then to cap the whole thing off I'm sure you've heard about the massacre on Laurel. And that was the stronghold of the Republican Party—that was up until I became active in politics—Laurel community, five townships over there. And they can still tell you and show you right to the spot where these people were lined up and shot in the back of the head off a poplar log. Because they thought they had raided Marshall and taken some sugar illegally.
These were Union sympathizers.
Yes.
And who shot them. The Civil War, the confederate troops, the militia?
No. I'm not too familiar with the history. I'm sorry, I'm not sure. I
can't recall the names. I've read it. A Union captain came in and had
what appeared from my reading of the articles, different articles, a
stump trial you would call it. Very little military trial to it, but
he
So it was actually the Union killed them?
Yep.
So that heritage is actually very much a part of both families and the way children grow up, whether they end up being in politics or not. But also particularly for politicians.
Well, actually, Mr. Finger, the politician in my family came in more through my mother than through my father. My mother was a Ramsey, Emma Ramsey. She was the oldest of a family of some eleven children. My mother's father, John Ramsey, was Republican sheriff of Madison County on two different occasions—each a two year term. Her brother, my uncle Chaney Ramsey, who lived here, incidentally, on this same farm that later I bought. It went out of the family at his death and then I bought it back some twenty-five years later. He was sheriff on two different occasions, each a two-year term. And he was a Republican sheriff.
That's your uncle?
That's right. And my grandfather. They were both sheriffing this county. Both Republican. And little did my grandfather know, I guess, that his grandson—E. Y. Ponder, my brother—would serve twenty years as Democratic sheriff. The second one, the second Democratic sheriff in the history of the county. There was only one before him, for a two-year period. That was Mack Burnett. Nobody thought he could be elected. He was plowing corn all day the day of the election. But he got elected. I should say he was plowing for corn. He was plowing the land in the fall of the year for the corn crop.
So your mother's side of the family was really steeped in mountain Republicanism.
Right.
Whereas your father was less interested in politics than in farming and trying to provide for his thirteen kids.
That's right. He was, had very little interest really in politics and never ran for any office. He voted an independent ticket. He was registered as a Democrat but I know that he supported his brother-in-law, Chaney Ramsey, who was running for sheriff on the Republican ticket. He supported his father-in-law, John Ramsey. He supported Jesse James Bailey. I remember that very well. He signed some documents as a school committeeman at Pleasant View School stating that Jesse James Bailey was a good, forthright young man worthy and capable of being high sheriff in Madison County. So my father was really nonpartisan.
That gives me a good feel then for some of the influences of your parents, both of them, and also the traditions of mountain politics as they affect lots of people.
You, you went to high school during the Depression? Or was it . . .
Well, yes, I went to high school. I finished in '36. So when I entered high school in '32 it was right at the depth of the Depression. And some very interesting memories of things that a good many kids of today just couldn't conceive of. We had no such thing as a lunchroom program. My lunch consisted of two biscuits. And part of the time there was ham meat between those two biscuits; part of the time an egg fried between those two biscuits. And occasionally my mother would have enough money to buy sugar and take apple juices, blackberries we would gather, pick, and from these make jellies or jams. But that was our lunch. And I was in style, too. I ate right along with the rest of them. I had just as nice a biscuits as my deskmate did.
Some people probably had less, didn't they?
Oh sure. In fact I thought my mother did a better job than most
But people did keep going to school. They didn't . . .
Well, many of us did. We had a lot of dropouts, I guess, back then. But again, I guess ignorance is bliss. I don't guess anybody kept any records, any data. My brothers and sisters, my one sister, we went regularly to school. Now they did drop out, my brothers and sister did, except for E. Y., before they got through high school. But it was considered a necessity or it was . . . they were sixteen, they were big enough to work, hold down a job, help earn a living. My father was unable to work for that large a family. They had to help him, scratch for themselves.
You hear and you read sometimes that the Depression didn't affect the mountains like it did other sections of the country because the mountains were poor and isolated anyway. Was that . . . were you old enough to grasp those kinds of differences or were you just kind of going to school day to day . . .
Well, of course I only know what I have read and I do know what we had in
the mountains here in Madison County in particular I know about. 1907.
The old cotton mill building was built on the west banks of the French
Broad River, Marshall, Tennessee. There was immediately after the
building of that building a survey made by the federal Congress.
Congress sent in men to determine whether or not there was justification
for child labor. Or whether in fact the Congress should pass a bill
which had been introduced outlawing child labor. And I can take you in a
mile of my home here to Annie Baldwin, who married Theodore Collins, who
worked in that cotton mill for forty cents a day at the age of nine
years old. She worked for me last year, at the age of seventy years of
age, and made twenty-five dollars a day stripping tobacco,
How old?
She's seventy—she's seventy-one, I believe, her birthday.
And she stripped tobacco.
She can sit there and strip tobacco and do more than you and I.
Incredible.
She's worked hard all her life and she enjoys working. And she doesn't look back on those years with bitterness. She was working at forty cents a day and helping keep body and soul together. And she was one of twenty-one children. So she came from a large mountain family. So that story to me makes me know that yes, poverty was here long before the Hoover depression, the Hoover panic.
But it did get worse?
Well, yes. I . . . we had an upsurge in the economy. Maybe they were
making a better brand of liquor.
That's the next question.
They got along pretty good in the roaring twenties. Then the crash in '29, the Hoover panic, really did flatten Madison County.
So you graduated in 1936 and then I know that the war was very influential on you. What happened between '36 and . . .
Well, I was fortunate. A brother older than me was in the war and was
injured twice. Battle of the Bulge. Hospitalized for a long period of
time. But he recovered and lived a pretty normal life. I went from high
school in 1936 to Mars Hill College here in the county. And believe it
or not—this is hard one to believe. I was born and reared right over
there across on the west side of Marshall. Six miles. You can see the
place from here. Back to the right, here, seven miles, is Mars Hill
College. And so help me God, I had never been to Mars Hill College until
my mother took
Thirteen miles away.
Thirteen miles away. And I was all of fifteen and a half years old and I had never been to Mars Hill College. She took me up there and registered me . . .
You were fifteen when you went to college?
Yes sir. So I attended school there two years. Managed to pass my work.
Wasn't easy. I wasn't prepared. Very ill-prepared for college. I had two
prospective sister-in-laws during my elementary education out at
Pleasant View where we had six grades in one room. And these two
prospective sister-in-laws had each double promoted me. It wasn't that I
was smart. They were each just trying to make real good friends with my
brothers.
You had a college degree.
. . . had a college degree. I went back and did one full year on my master's degree and still wasn't old enough to register for the draft. I was twenty.
Well, your mother must have had an incredible influence on pushing her children to go on with their education. Where did that . . .
My mother had one of the most dogged determinations of any person I've
ever known. She was sweet, she was wonderful, she was good to me. And
some of the things that I knew basically that she believed in . . . I
didn't know how strongly she believed, I guess. Long after I was out of
college my father told me, jokingly, one day a story that happened
between he and his wife, Emma. Said, "Zeno, I'm real proud you went on
to college. Proud you finished." And said, "And I don't want credit for
it. I was perfectly
That would have been a lot of pressure if you'd known that at the time.
I didn't know it until years later. I knew that she was very determined that I further my education from high school. And like most teenage boys I would have been very happy to have dropped out at sixteen or seventeen. Come back and started farming. And again, I would have been ill-prepared for farming. About as ill-prepared as I was for college. But I didn't disappoint my mother. I went on through and I'm proud that I did.
So you learned some farming skills at State. I mean, you weren't just passing time.
I wasn't just passing time, no sir. I was a student all the way through. I did study. And I majored in soil chemistry. Incidentally, they did away with the department. I was the last one to graduate from North Carolina State University in soil chemistry. My wife graduated from Chapel Hill in chemistry but I had about sixteen more college hours in chemistry than did my wife—even though her degree is in straight chemistry.
Were you married at the time?
No, no. It was a custom that came along many years later. My wife and I were married after we were both finished college and after each of us had worked for about a year as a chemist with the Ecusta Paper Corporation.
Ecusta?
Ecusta.
Was she from Madison County?
No. My wife was born in South Carolina. Her father's people from Savannah, Georgia, and her mother's people were from Transylvania County near Brevard. So she was reared between Brevard and Savannah, Georgia. Her father died when she was about two years old.
And she ended up at Chapel Hill.
She ended up at Chapel Hill. She went to Meredith two years and then to Chapel Hill for her last two years.
Probably when there weren't a lot of women students.
Not too many girls over there at Chapel Hill and I believe we had four at State and three or four thousand boys.
And you met her . . .
I met her after I had finished college and after I had done my year's graduate work. Matter of fact I came in on the midnight shift and she had been employed. I was off on a five-day vacation and when I came back on the midnight shift I met . . .
You were both working at night.
She had gone to work at the same laboratory where I had been working.
And that was in Raleigh.
No, that was in Ecusta Paper Corporation in Brevard, North Carolina.
So you finally got accepted by the army, after you'd had a master's and worked for a year.
Well, no. Strange enough at this point . . . I was old enough and did
register for the draft in Transylvania County where I was employed. I
received a three months or maybe a six months deferment, I'm not sure.
In the meantime, Ecusta saw the handwriting on the wall, that they
couldn't keep
And your wife, or your fiancee, or your girlfriend . . . which was she then?
My girlfriend remained, and as a matter of fact, she took over the shift that I had on the job that I had and continued working there. We kept in pretty close contact and married about six or eight months later. After I'd gone to Chattanooga, that is. About six or eight months before she and I got married.
So then she moved over to Chattanooga?
Then she came over to Chattanooga and took a job there in the laboratory.
I was out at the plant, line supervisor. And soon we had enough TNT to
last for about five years, it was estimated. As fast as we were
producing it. Much faster than the B-17 bombers could drop it on
Germany. We had every igloo that we had filled to the brim. Trainloads
of it. Some fifty or seventy-five trainloads of TNT scattered over five
thousand acres there in east Chattanooga, Tennessee. So the plant
started cutting back and, boom, the big news came down that the
personnel men from the army, General Nichols and General Groves, they
wanted to talk to anyone who had technical training, especially a
college degree, in chemistry, engineering, et cetera. So I was
interviewed and hired in the same day I was interviewed and
You understood that . . . you were more than just a research, a chemist at this point. You had moved into sophisticated research.
Well, I had done a year of postgraduate work and I had studied and I knew . . . I was quite a good student, physics student, but chemistry was my major. That's what I loved, most. But the electromagnetic process of separating uranium didn't bother me at all, I'll tell you that. I loved it. I got in to it real fast like. We had ten thousand college graduates ranging in age from I guess my age to sixty-five to seventy that came in from Salt Lake City, Utah. Remington Arms had shut down a tremendously large powder plant out there. And coupled with that, the people coming in from Chattanooga, Tennessee, we simply built a city there in a matter of six months. Just outside of Knoxville. Consisting of sixty-five thousand people. It was barracks. It was tar paper and mud.
What year is this now? The war . . .
This was in '44, or late '43 or '44. After a year's time we actually got in a few portable trailers. And they didn't look like the trailers that you see nowadays. They didn't have any windows in them. They were just long tube-like things. You could get dry, get in the dry and you could have a little heat in and a little electric light, but . . .
This is outside of Knoxville.
Yes, this was just outside of Knoxville. And believe it or not, by the third or fourth year we were getting into some housing that looked like twenty-year housing. As a matter of fact, that's what they built it and called it, twenty-year housing. Still temporary stuff, but it beat the mud and the shacks that we had lived in the first few years.
So from there . . . you never were actually . . . you were a civilian then.
I never was inducted. And I'll tell you, they have a way of training you there in Oak Ridge. Once you got to there, that was all she wrote. Because many of the friends that I had attempted to see some action. They got real disgusted. They weren't getting the promotions. It was monotonous as the dickens. You couldn't talk even to your wife about what was going on. You had to have at least three passes to get in to even the most menial tasks to be performed there. I had four passes. And some of these boys . . . I'll tell you a good friend of mine, Bob Goodell—he was from New York. I'd worked with him at Oak Ridge, I mean I'd worked with him at Chattanooga for about a year and a half. And I'd worked with him at Oak Ridge for about a year. He didn't get where the action was. So he goes down and volunteers. Sure enough, he gets in for his boot training. But two weeks later he was back, on the job, working for Colonel Nicholson, same as I was. And he had taken a reduction in salary from $600 a month to $65 a month. And he stayed there for the duration, as a buck private at $65 a month.
And you all were making $600.
Oh yeah, I moved on up to $800, $850, $900 a month. He still got $65. So it doesn't take too much of that, you know, to make believers out of all of us. We buckled down for the duration.
After the war was over I was offered a continued job, but I simply just wanted to get back to Madison County. I wanted to get back to the country I loved, to the people I loved. And be my own boss, take my own chances, do my own gambling. So I came back to Madison County.
One thing I'm interested in at this point, going back to Madison County .
. . well, several things. Your wife had been very independent for
Well, really, I guess at the time, unquestionably, we were both very much in love with each other. And I think I get your question. Nina Lou didn't hesitate to respect my judgment to work with me and go with me. Now she has influenced me, and she's tried to influence me along some lines which I just wouldn't accept. She thought I would have made an excellent salesman and she wanted me to get in to the furniture business. Her father had been a furniture man. Her grandfather—Rustin Furniture Company. They had done real well in the furniture business. I told her, yes, I guess I could sell, you know. But I'm just not interested in selling. I like to produce. I like to farm. I like to see things grow. I like to gamble on the weather. I like to gamble on whether a calf will be born alive or dead. I don't want to sell a piece of furniture.
And she respected that?
She respected my judgment. Said, "Okay, we'll farm." So we put together what we had, which was not a great deal. But we had bought war bonds all during the war, both she and I. And she had a little money coming in from her father's estate, who had been dead many years at that time—twenty years. And I had some money coming in at this point from my father and mother's land. So we pooled it, and went in debt right heavy and started farming.
In Madison County?
In Madison County. Right here.
Right here on this land?
Right here.
And you've been here since 1945.
Been here since '45 or '6. '46.
That's real interesting to me, a lot because . . . the times are a little different now, you know, but people still make decisions, I think, on those kinds of bases. What one person respects about the other. The other thing which is interesting at that particular time, that decision, was because of the kinds of work that you had done at Raleigh, Brevard, Chattanooga, and Oak Ridge, had your . . . the influences from your mother, particularly your mother's sides of the family and the politics which was such a part of life in Madison County. Was that with you all the time? Or were you so caught up in your work and the war effort . . . had you forgotten about politics or was that always in the back of your mind?
Bill, I think I would have to tell you in all sincerity that at the time I came back to Madison County I was not thinking in terms of becoming involved in politics. I was not thinking of what I wanted to do about Madison County. I wanted to just come back and live in Madison County. I wanted to be part of what I grew up with. I guess most of us have an inkling to go home again, you know. Thomas Wolfe put it, "Look homeward, angel." Well, I was reminiscing. I was wanting to come back, just to be with friends. To see the beauty that you behold from this mountain top. Then when I got back here I immediately become involved with the veterans of World War II and the GI training program. I taught school four years. Lot of people don't know that. But I was . . .
In the county high school?
No, I was teaching the GI training program. Teaching vocational
agriculture to the GIs of World War II. So I had twenty to twenty-five
young men, many of them—most of them as a matter of fact—older than me.
Incidentally, the
He was one of those veterans?
He was one of them. He's my oldest living student. I'm fifty-three, but my oldest living student is eighty-six.
You were teaching them vocational agriculture.
Right.
And they got GI benefits?
Right. Now during this teaching of four years I was also doing moonlighting on the farm. I was trying to keep my farm going, working pretty hard really. Working fifteen hours, sixteen to eighteen hours a day. Whatever the occasion called for, that's how long I worked. Many times I didn't have my shoes off. I've driven a tractor and plowed all night long; gone right through the next day's work and into the next night.
All night long?
Absolutely, many, many times. Many times.
By moonlight?
By tractor lights. I had my own tractor. An old coop tractor. Disc and plow and work right around the clock.
And I enjoyed it. Loved it. Trying to get ahead. As I said. I guess I got cold at the foot of the bed during the '30s. I knew what it was like to live right on the border of hunger. And if you've ever been there you just don't want to go back. Not if you're built out of the kind of stuff I am.
And your mother helped put some of that in you, too.
Well, I expect my mother had quite a bit to do with that and so did my
dad. They both worked real hard, but I think my mother, unquestionably,
she had the strongest will I believe of any person I've ever known on
this earth. I've thought about many, many things that she has said and
done. And how she would drive herself beyond what looked like it was
human
Boy, I don't know. I want to talk about Uncle Dave Macon and Grand Ole
Opry, but I think we should go on to politics. I don't know.
I started to tell you . . . I broke my train of thought . . . excuse me Bill.
I started to tell you there what really got me, I think, motivated to get into politics. These thousand GIs being taught by some twenty to twenty-five teachers. I was one of the twenty to twenty-five. All over the county. All over Madison County.
A thousand GIs in this county.
A thousand GIs from this county. I was maybe not the loudest mouth, but I
was one of the one who didn't hesitate to express myself when we'd have
our teachers' meetings. And we'd get together say maybe four times a
year. And those of us who were teaching the GIs would get together and
express ourselves and discuss different policies and tactics and skills
that we were using and field trips, equipment, et cetera in dealing with
the farm situation here in Madison County. Well, I guess I became a
leader of those teachers, those twenty to twenty-five teachers. And
those twenty to twenty-five teachers were scattered throughout the
county. They would talk in terms of, well, what Zeno Ponder's doing in
his class. We would have field days, countywide field days. And I did
have the opportunity to go before all these GIs and
Were you a Democrat at that point?
I was a Democrat at that point. My father registered as a Democrat and I naturally registered as a Democrat. That's something that's just handed down, you know. You don't go contrary unless there's a real good reason at the age of twenty-one. So when I reached the age of twenty-one I registered as a Democrat.
But that wasn't an important decision.
No, it wasn't an important decision. And I had more Republican friends than I did Democrats because there were more Republicans in Madison County. But I did become a spokesman or a mouthpiece, expressing the desires and wishes of these young men who had seen change and who wanted change to occur here in Madison County.
Why do you think that was, that you were the spokesman? Was it because you had been to college and, you know, had some training? Were you articulate?
I would say that you have described it very well. I had more formal
training than the average by far here in Madison County. I don't think
that I had any particular skills or abilities that many of the others
would not have had had they had the same formal training. I think
perhaps I did inherit a pretty strong will, a pretty strong drive. I
guess my daddy made
You weren't sure then what you were sticking to. You just had a sense that they wanted some change . . .
Right. Wanted some change. And some of the changes I knew we had to bring about or I felt we had to bring about in order to ever get Madison in step with Raleigh. To me it made good sense that if you wanted something from Raleigh you need to be in tune with Raleigh. Well, I happened to be a Democrat. I had registered that way.
The state of North Carolina was Democratic. It had been since the Civil War. And at that time certainly looked like it was going to be for a long, long time. Even beyond Jim Holshouser, maybe. But, anyway . . .
That may be.
And it might go back now Democratic I would think for at least fifty years. I don't think he has done the Republican Party any great service by some of the programs he has done.
For instance, in this county he took down $35 million that was earmarked and set up for primary roads. He took down every single dollar of it. And not one square foot of road has been built in his first two years of administration. Not one square foot.
In this county?
In this county.
$35 million?
$35 million.
Earmarked for this county?
Right. 25-70 from Asheville to Marshall, going through the east side of
my farm over here. Highway 213 from Mars Hill to Marshall. Highway 213
from Mars Hill down to the Dairy Bar, down to the Appalachia road. NC
213
The Scott administration appropriated that?
Right.
So he's looking to where his support is? He's shifting the money around with this change . . .
He's hoping to take this $35 million, and apparently taking it with the blessings of the Republican leaders here in Madison County and spending it in other counties—hopefully some place for sale. I got news for him. He's just making this a more solidly Democratic county by depriving us of what was rightfully ours.
Well, that's a good perspective on where politics are now, to kind of jump back and keep with the story in 1948 when you started thinking about . . .
'47, '48, and '49. Was trying to think about getting Madison County in line with the state capital so that we could get our share of roads and schools and appointments. Various and sundry patronage ties that just naturally tie in on our political system. That's just the way the ball bounces.
Was there any particular incident that really brought that home and made you decide I have to be the one, or I have to be one of the ones, to build a Democratic Party in this county?
Well yes, there was. It wasn't by my choice. It was like many arguments
that I've had and lost and it turned out that maybe I was glad I lost.
My brother, E. Y. Ponder, who is presently sheriff and is serving now
his nineteenth year . . . yes, next year will be his twentieth. And he's
a candidate, too. He's running again. He succumbed to the demands of his
friends to make the race for sheriff of Madison County and I did
everything I thought within my power to discourage him. To keep him from
making the race at that time.
This was 1950?
This was 1950. But he succumbed to the demands of his friends and intercepted me on a business trip. I was up to Asheville. Said, "Zeno, I've decided at the meeting last night that I am going to be a candidate for sheriff." I told him it was a bad mistake, I just didn't want to see him do it. "There's no way at this point. We're just not well enough organized. I don't believe we can make it. I just don't want you to run." He said, "Well, I just got no choice. A man doesn't go any further in life than his friends will push him. And my friends are very insistent. I've got to make a race." So, I said, "Okay. If you've already committed yourself I'll hush. What do you want me to do?" He said, "I want you to be registrar in the Marshall precinct." "My god . . . I've never . . . I don't believe we can do it, Elymas. I just don't believe we're prepared for this. We haven't got it organized that well." "Well," he said, "we got no time. History doesn't wait and time doesn't wait. And if we're going to do anything about the county—"
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
So, E. Y. and me, from that point on, we worked very, very close. We figured out right down to the vote what would be the minimum in each of the twenty-four precincts. And the Marshall precinct was by far the largest precinct. And we concluded that he would have to have a split in that precinct to get it. If we wanted any part of the ticket we would have to have a split—that is, a fifty-fifty break. And that never had happened in the history of the Marshall precinct.
It had been strongly . . .
It had been strongly Republican. Usually losing by two, three, four
hundred votes. So my work was cut out for me and I had helped cut out my
own work in that
Were you informally appointed precinct chairman for his campaign?
No, I was formally appointed registrar of the Marshall precinct by the board of elections.
It was a Republican-controlled board.
No, it was . . . actually, the board was Democratic because the state machinery sets it up, see. So Judson Edwards and Jack Payne were the two Democratic members and Spence Rice was the Republican member.
And they appointed then Democratic precinct registrars all over the county?
Right. We had twenty-four registrars who were Democrats. We had twenty-four Republicans who were Republicans—judges. We had twenty-four Democrats who were Democratic judges. So we went about holding an election and it was plenty rough and tough and a lot of hard work.
I know there was a lot of controversy about that, your brother's election in 1950 and also Dr. Sam's election to the legislature. Before we go on, because we're going to start talking about a lot of elections and politics, I want to go back to what I said at the beginning of the interview. This is, I think, so important about mountain politics. That all elements of the mountain culture are operating all the time. It's not just a political election like it is in Guilford or Mecklenburg or Wake counties. It's . . . you know, the family ties, the . . . people carrying guns around like they don't do in Wake County. The people . . . the kinds of community events. The tobacco rais- . . . the tobacco, you know . . . tobacco planting and barn raisings. All that. All those things enter in to it all the time.
Right.
So, from Uncle Dave Macon in '36 . . . just try to give me some
perspective
Well, speaking of the guns . . . you know, I guess us mountain folks take for granted that a man's a man and he covers all the ground he stands on. I took the position as registrar that under the law I was in charge, and I took charge. I asked nobody any quarter. I simply took charge as registrar. We had at that polling place—Marshall schoolhouse—not less than fifty Republican deputies. Armed, as they were supposed to be. They had a permit to carry their guns.
Deputies.
Yeah, deputies . . .
To the Republican sheriff?
Yeah. They were deputies under J. Hubert Davis and he was running against my brother who was not a sheriff and had no right to carry a gun. And it was not easy, you know, to take charge with bare knuckles, so I didn't try it bare knuckles. I tried it with my gun. Because under the law I was in charge, to use whatever force necessary to maintain order.
This is at the voting place, you're talking about.
Yeah, that's right. And I had a lot of fellow registrars throughout the
county who were GIs and knew how to use a gun and had the guts to do it.
And they took charge. So when a Republican deputy came in and said, "Now
I'm going to take the names of the people here who are using markers
because we feel there's something going on. You all are buying votes.
Accusing us of buying votes. The Democrats. So I'm going to take names."
Well, I knew all the time what he was taking names for. Because both
bankers were solid Republicans and both bankers would brag that they
held enough paper to control any election. Just so they could find out,
you know, if that fellow did in fact vote a Democratic ticket. They
could foreclose and go get his cow or his horse or demand full payment
on the little shack that they
And that had happened before?
That had been happening all the time.
There wasn't a Democratic bank that people could . . .
No. There was no Democratic bank. There was no Democratic finance. There was no way. If you wanted a loan in Madison County economically, you went through the Republicans. But I was trying to change that.
That's what I'm trying to get at. Why politics was so important to you, to people. I mean that . . . it was because it was their mortgage.
It was their livelihood.
We had this one fellow . . . this part . . . I wouldn't want his daughter embarrassed. She's a mighty fine person. But Mr. Arthur Whitehurst, cashier of the Citizens Bank, along . . . just two years after this, was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service. Now this was back when a dollar was a dollar. And he owed a quarter of a million dollars back taxes. Mr. Craig Rudsill who owned the other bank, the French Broad Bank, he owed $300,000 to Internal Revenue Service. Mr. Guy English, their former Republican sheriff for fourteen years, he owed something like $180,000.
Were these figures published in the newspaper?
These figures were published in the newspaper and let me give you the whole story. The chairman, the chairman of the Republican, the Republican chairman of the county board of commissioners—Mr. McDevitt—he owed $150,000. So once that investigation got underway . . .
And that broke in the press . . .
Mr. McDevitt died of a heart attack. Mr. Rudsill died of a heart attack. Mr. English died of some natural cause. Mr. Whitehurst died of a heart attack. Now they were the four leaders. The two bankers, the sheriff, and the chairman of the board of county commissioners.
Which one was the chairman of the county commissioners?
Mr. McDevitt.
McDevitt.
Now those fellows had bought up at about $1.50 an acre about half of the Laurel community. It ran from Mars Hill to Hot Springs. Bought it from the federal government. They had cut timber off of it and received something like $100-150 an acre. Made a tremendous profit. Then they turned around and cut it up into fifty and seventy-five acre blocks of land and sell it for $25 an acre. And one of the bankers—it didn't make too much difference which—would finance the construction of a little house to be built on stilts, we call it. No underpining. Just drive in a few post, lay your two by fours down and start building your little shack. It was very convenient then for the sheriff to turn his head and let them do some pretty fair moonshining and pay six percent interest and take back what was a tremendous profit. Now, when the Internal Revenue Service got into that—and rightfully so—they came in—they should have—and broke the thing up. That was the beginning of the end of the one-party system.
Did that break before this 1950 election?
No, no.
So they were all still . . . you were still fighting that.
They were still intact, very much intact, when we made our attack in 1950.
That's why you had a gun with you.
Doggone right. That's why I had my .38 with me.
Before we leave this I just want to . . . how did the federal government happen to own from Wolf Laurel to Hot Springs?
I don't know what the deal, when they acquired this land. I believe
history would show that Betts Lumber Company came in there and built a
railroad
As a national forest.
As a national forest or let it go back to private enterprise. And these four fellows did get title to it.
Back in the '20s?
During the '20s.
That's when the forest service . . .
Yeah, it was during the '20s when they bought it. And during the '30s and '40s when they sold it.
I think those anecdotes give us a good perspective on . . . start from 1950 and moving on politics. Because you read about Madison County elections and the various ones that were protested in the courts and right on up to decisions and there is . . . the interest in this county in politics is so high. You know, to the point of fifty deputies in the Marshall precinct. So I think the way you described the interlocking financial industries and the inability of a person to get outside that is important. Well, let's go on with 1950. They said E. Y. didn't make it.
Well, E. Y. did make it. He was elected by thirty-two votes and that was
a landslide in Madison County. Because it never had happened before
except one time—and that one time when Sheriff Burnett was elected it
was a situation where the Republicans just got real disgusted with their
incumbent sheriff and tried to beat him in the primaries. They failed to
beat him in the primaries and then said, "Well, we're going to vote
against him in the
But E. Y. had trouble even getting himself inside the jail, didn't he?
Oh yes. The . . . the Republicans just absolutely homesteaded and set up tommy guns, machine gun, and refused to surrender the jail to the lawfully elected sheriff, so . . .
They actually had a machine gun?
Oh yes. They had a machine gun. We had a lot of fun out of them with that. They had it manned by Mr. Claude Henderson. He was a pretty rough old fellow. And we would try to shake his nerves. And we had a lot of fun. We'd go down and throw out firecrackers. Drive by the jail and throw out firecrackers. And they would start passing out these pistols just like passing out apples, you know. And he would get to his machine gun. It was manned in front of the jail, there where you could cover the courthouse. So we'd go driving off . . . let them get settled back down . . .
The machine gun was outside, in front of . . .
It was setting right in front of the jail, where they could aim toward the courthouse or swing around 180 degrees. Yep. So we'd let them settle back down. Thirty minutes or an hour later we'd go back by and flash the lights, throw them another firecracker. So they never knew whether we were foolish enough to attack. Of course we were never going to attack. We were just having fun. This was our nightly pastime.
That's not quite as calm as the Grand Ole Opry.
No, not so serene. But it's exciting.
I bet it was. So E. Y. brought suit in superior court to . . .
To take possession. He brought what was known as a mandamus proceeding—which is a taxpayers' proceeding to determine who is rightfully entitled to the tax money in the form of the salary for sheriff of Madison County. So it really . . . a proceeding is really a three-way lawsuit. You have the tax payer who is bringing the suit. Then you have the one, the incumbent in this case. The Republican, contending that he rightfully had won. And E. Y., the challenger, contending that he had won. And the taxpayer, over here, bringing the lawsuit. So it was a three-way . . .
Who brought . . . who was the taxpayer?
The taxpayer was Roy Freeman and Ernest Nelson.
Were they Democrats?
They were Democrats.
They were working for you all to bring . . .
They were Democrats and this was a beautiful piece of legal work in that it was a three-way lawsuit. And the taxpayer had the right to cross-examine and so did the contender.
Did you have to go outside the county to get a Democrat lawyer to . . .
We certainly did. We went to Asheville and hired George Shuford and Walt Haynes. George Shuford later was elected to the United States Congress and served until his health broke with him and he retired. Walt Haynes had never run for public office but both of them were very influential and strong Democrat lawyers.
Were you also active in 1950 in Dr. Sam's legisla . . .
Oh yes, it was not just for E. Y. We had a whole, full ticket. We only
got two of them elected. But we had three county commissioners, we had
three men running for county commissioner. Tax collector. Auditor.
County coroner. Of course a representative in the legislature—Dr. W. A.
Sam.
And all of those races were tied in together.
They were tied in together. We were working solid for the ticket as a unit. We were working just as closely together as Norm Sloan's basketball boys. Team play.
1950 you broke it. Or was it not quite secure yet?
Well, in 1950 we broke it in that we got Dr. Sam [in state legislature]. We got E. Y. in office. We stripped about a four-bushel sack of pistols off the Republican deputies and sent them back to plowing. Some of them practically broke themselves down carrying big heavy guns. So we relieved them of their weapons. And from there on it was a somewhat easier situation. 1954 I was named to the county board of elections and subsequent to that the other two elected me as chairman of the county board of elections. So in 1954 we put out a full ticket again and elected every single Democrat who was running for office.
So that was really then an era for you, politically. From roughly 1947 or '8 when you started the work through 1954 when you had some pull in the county.
That's right. From '48 to '54 was the era of challenge and it was finally brought off November 1954. Full slate of Democratic candidates.
Very locally oriented politics. I mean, you were in every cove in Madison County. It was the county machine in the county board of elections, school board. All those county level positions.
Well, yes . . . E. Y. . . and I bring his name in because . . . speaking
of every cove, every house. For every one person that I have talked with
and worked with politically and done a favor, E. Y. has gone me about
ten better. He is a person who has dedicated his life to helping others.
He's dedicated his time to listening to others' problems. I'm just not
that
Is he much older than you?
Eleven years older.
Then he really pushed his little brother into politics.
Yes, he got me involved. He got me appointed registrar so he could be elected sheriff. Then he and I did have in mind . . . we immediately went about . . . Dr. Sam to introduce the first bill he ever introduced was to—and this might not sound too popular today but it was good for us then, it helped—was to give any industrialist or prospective industrialist who would come in to Madison County a ten-year tax break. That is they would pay tax on the land that they bought at the same value that was on that land when they bought it for the first ten years. They would pay no tax on their concrete and mortar and their building. But they would pay on their personal property, such as machines, whatnot that they had that was movable. But no tax on . . .
No property tax.
No property tax, no tax on the property improvements. And that enabled us . . .
Just for this county?
Just for this county, Madison County.
How'd you get that through the state legislature?
Well, we worked at it.
I'm surprised that a bunch of other counties didn't . . .
It was fifteen years later before they decided it was unconstitutional. But we'd already used it.