© This work is the property of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text.
MP3 file derived from WAV preservation master, which was derived from original analog cassettes.
The electronic edition is a part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South.
An audio file with the interview complements this electronic edition.
The text has been entered using double-keying and verified against the original.
The text has been encoded using the recommendations for Level 4 of the TEI in Libraries Guidelines.
Original grammar and spelling have been preserved.
All quotation marks, em dashes and ampersand have been transcribed as entity references.
All double right and left quotation marks are encoded as "
All em dashes are encoded as —
Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview B-0041, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Presbyterian minister Charles Jones recounts his civil rights activism in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, from the 1930s to the 1960s. He describes the town and the University of North Carolina's leaders as moderately liberal on racial issues. They tolerated some token integration of performances and extracurricular events as long as the students supported and sponsored the activities. However, UNC and town officials limited any measurable integration, says Jones. He notes the differences between liberalism and radicalism in Chapel Hill: the older, white liberals worried about recrimination at work, while the younger, independent radical college students embraced idealistic goals. Jones discusses the impact of Frank Porter Graham, and contends that Graham sought gradual changes without offending the racial sensibilities of the greater North Carolina populace. Jones credits Graham's influence for the state's avoidance of political demagoguery. By the 1960s, though, the number of radical college students who engaged in direct action civil rights tactics had grown, which upset older, gradualist liberals. As the focus on inequity grew to include not only segregation but also economics, Jones argues that it took a while for white liberals to accept the shifting social climate. He maintains that southern liberals viewed segregation as the major problem, but younger activists made economics an issue. Jones's involvement with civil rights activism angered a minority of his more conservative parishioners and led to his decision to leave Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church. His more liberal parishioners convinced Jones to pastor the newly created Community Church. Jones culminates the interview with an assessment of the pace of racial change and effectiveness of civil rights activism.
Presbyterian minister Charles Jones recounts his civil rights activism in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, from the 1930s to the 1960s.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
You were asking about the difference between the Southern liberal and the
Southern radical, and you spoke of Buck Kester and Jonathan Daniels. And
the difference between them, I think, came from at least two sources.
One was their age. The other was their occupation. I think
it's been my experience, too, that it is the younger person
in the South who has more humanistic or reformist or whatever you want
to call it, upsetting tendencies. He is often in a sense the spiritual
son or some kind of a sone of a person like Jonathan Daniels; it is a
case of some children (not real children), but one generation going a
little bit further than the former one did. Both in conservatism and
liberalism I think that happens, that you get more radical convictions
in the young and less radical in the old. So age makes one difference.
And the second is one's occupation. If you're in a
position like Jonathan Daniels, where you make your living off
advertising, you have a responsibility to your institution which means
to keep it running. Though there were limits to Daniels'
accommodation to that. Jonathan was a strong prohibitionist as to
liquor. At that point he refused to take liquor ads in his paper and
lost income when most other newspapers welcomed money from that source.
Jonathan was a liberal, especially on race and labor, yet he
couldn't quite go as far in action as Buck. All Buck had to
do was do it; he didn't have a business support. He could
afford to be radical. But it seems to me that sometimes you do find an
old fellow that way, too, because I think there are two classes who can
be radical without too much cost, the young, who don't have
any responsibilities, and the old, who aren't going to be
here much longer. And occasionally
He talked a great deal about how social change would be brought about through education and religion. And in the late forties, when he opposed federal action in the broad area of civil rights, that might have looked to some as if he were taking a states' rights position. But you think it's even broader …
I think it had nothing to do with states' rights, because if you're working in his life you might find places where he didn't stick to states' rights position. Well, as a matter of fact, you'll find it when he was in the Senate. He refused to go along with all the other Southern senators on a vote against cloture.
Yes.
Do you remember when that thing we think probably lost him his bid for re-election to the Senate? I think it was an honest conviction of his that the peaceful way and the gradual way—he felt it had to be gradual—would be by education and religion. But when he talked about education, I think he talked about education of the black as much as of white.
But it's bringing blacks up to a level where whites would…
And educating the whites to a sensitivity to the problem. Now
that's why, in the forties, we got along famously in
ChapellHill by what I call a permissive period in the University. You
could do anything so long as it wasn't made public and it
didn't make a fuss.
David Clark?
David Clark. There was a letter—I suppose it was meant to be
confidential—from David Clark to members of the N.C. House
and Senate telling about that concert. And he writes about Frank Graham
walking in, big as life, "with some niggers" and
sitting on the seventh or eighth row
I was thinking, in 1960, I'm not sure where Frank Graham was, either in New York or perhaps even in India or Pakistan, when the first sit-ins took place in Greensboro, he wrote a little essay for the Southern Regional Council, in effect celebrating what those four black students did.
Yes.
Do you think that would be part of his great encouragement?
Yes, that was part of his encouragement. I don't think he would have sat in with them that first day at all. But it would have been interesting, to see what he would have written a little bit later on when they started lying in the streets and getting arrested.
Yes.
See, he was commending the first initiative, which was rather mild, but later on, when we had over a thousand indictments here (in Chapel Hill) at one time, it would have been interesting to see what he would have written then.
My researches haven't gone that far, but I really
I don't know that he wrote anything at that time.
No.
But as far as I know, at no time in my life did he ever say to me, "This is unwise." Not once. And I was very close to him, but not once did he say to me, "This is unwise." Nor did he criticize me for having done something that I knew was wrong or unwise after I did it, that that wasn't in him. But he was the encourager. And I guess you would have to say he was the protector, after you did it, you see. He encouraged and he protected. And I think that was his great strength. Had he been the radical, then here was a whole section of North Carolina life—political, religious—where we'd have had nobody to kind of get hold of for help and support. And in his way he was, I think, as necessary to these accomplishments as were the sit-inners and whatnot, all the rest of us.
Going back a bit to your earlier distinction between people who are more liberal and those who are more radical, it seemed that part of your definition of the difference was that the liberals are people who are more tied down to some institution which restricted them.
Yes. I'd just term it a responsibility; it wouldn't even have to be an institution, whether an institution of the family or whatnot.
I was wondering, for example, there were those four years in the mid-forties when Howard Kester was principal at Penn School. I wonder if those years he was able to do less of the kind of thing he wanted to do than the years immediately before that and after that.
Well, after Penn School Buck came back to the Fellowship of Southern
Churchmen for a while, but we really didn't do anything very
radical. Buck's ideas had moved into what he called a
Seminary-in-the-Cornfield to get these ignorant, less educated,
born-again Baptist preachers
I was thinking that age might be…. It's hard to remember many people past their thirties or so who were much involved in the sit-ins.
Of course, but in Chapel Hill there were a good many.
Yes, that's right.
A good many. Dan Pollitt was professor in the Law School. Oh, God, he was
something. He was on the picket line, he was in the courtroom, almost
Another question is that at least as far back as the thirties, and certainly continuing into the early fifties, there was a very strong notion throughout the region that Chapel Hill is this liberal island.
Yes.
And that may be something that you would care to argue against; I don't know. But from my point of view, if that were so, it's difficult to understand how there was such a violent reaction to the Freedom Riders in 1947. That incident in Chapel Hill was the most violent incident of their journey, was it not?
The only violent one, yes.
And then the nature of the resistance to integration in Chapel Hill took some rather violent forms.
Dr. Frank, we talked about that once, but we weren't talking about Chapel Hill; we were talking about North Carolina.
Well, that, too.
He said to me, "The reason North Carolina has not gone the way
politically with demagogues, like South Carolina has in extreme reaction
is because we have not had any political demagogues. Look back; we
really haven't had any real effective political demagogues.
We've had conservative
Who were rather bland.
Bland, and did their fighting behind the curtain at you, you see. Well, I
don't think that holds for the Chapel Hill bus test because,
after all, these fellows coming through here weren't
demagogues. They were peaceful and they were very quiet. And we (Dr.
Frank and I) never talked about this; I wished I had, now that you ask
the question, but it's interesting. But we didn't,
I guess because I think I have the answer. At that particular time of
violence in 1947, the blacks in Chapel Hill, due to Dr.
Frank's notion of education, were beginning to open a taxi
business, and they did open a taxi business. And this upset the white
taxi men, because it put them on an equal with blacks, obviously. And
the beginning of the troublemaking in this instance, in fact all of this
violence, centered around taxicabs. And the three cars that came to my
house were taxicabs, mainly taxicab drivers in them. And at one time
when the students called that big mass meeting about it, I went to the
mass meeting and I saw a taxicab driver going with his cap on. So I
said, "I hope you're going to say what you have to
say today." He said, "Hell, I can't say
nothing. I ain't had no education." I says,
"Well, it don't take an education." I said,
"I didn't graduate from college, either. I dropped
out. It don't take an education to say what you feel; you say
it." And he says, "No, I can't do nothing
like that." And he said to me, "I wasn't in
that bunch." He said, "I wouldn't do
nothing like that." But he says, "I've been
driving up and down these streets, and students have been cuttin in on
me and calling me a son-of-a-bitch." And he said,
"People have been
But he had some kind of change?
Yes, he changed later on, toward the last. Rupert was a more open man
than than Howard. And yet I don't want to run Howard Odum
down. When Henry Wallace wanted to come here—he did come here
for a student Progressive Party convention—and the University
had agreed to the student convention. They hadn't looked at
it closely enough, or the students didn't tell them that
much. But when they discovered it was Henry Wallace and the Progressive
Party, it
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
Did you all know that Odum had a book in which he said segregation was best for the South?
The very early book? Yes.
It's in the Tar Heel, if you read them all.
I guess it was in the Tar Heel that I read it, a short
little review of a book of his, and I didn't record it
because I didn't have any use for that. But he at that time
felt that there had to be segregation. And of course that's
the mark of a liberal, he can change. I guess you can be more liberal
today. But Chapel Hill never held much opportunity for action. That may
be another reason. Your action was out there with the tenant farmers.
Until it came to eating and the theater, we didn't have any
local race problems in Chapel Hill.
What is the guess?
They would have backed off at the more radical actions, and I base my
guess—really, it's a judgment based on experience
during the sixties, as you've probably read, when Chapel Hill
picketing opened, Dan Pollitt and I, we were about the only two whites
in it, really, for the movies. And then John and Pat and the fellows
come with the Peace Union. We were starting on the drugstores and
things, and they started on the restaurants. And then as it goes on, we
just don't make any headway at all. We pound the pavements,
and, God, I don't know how long
Do you think that what Chapel Hill liberals—Frank Graham or Howard Odum, who were different kinds of men—were looking forward in the long run, with respect to race relations, is what we have today, by and large?
I don't know. I'd like to hear them. I think I probably shared with them, because I wasn't too far from their generation, a rather naïve outlook that if you could desegregate certain things, then that would be behind you, and you could go on with a normal life. But I have seen later—well, I saw right away, as a matter of fact—that that was only the beginning. Now I'm not sure that they'd be disappointed; I think they would, perhaps even better than I, see why they were mistaken. We lived so long under segregation that segregation was the problem, the only problem. And I think basically the problem is economic now. But you don't see those things until you take a step far enough to see them. I believe they'd both be quite surprised at the fact it didn't work out, and we didn't have peace and everything else that goes with desegregation.
One reason why I asked that question is yesterday in the News and Observer there was an article, which I
didn't read carefully, but it was based on an interview with
Mr. Pearsall, the state legislator. And the whole point of it seemed to
be that he today says that his wonderful plan back, I guess, during the
administration of Luther Hodges was to prepare the way for integration
of public schools, which doesn't
I don't know what he was trying to do. I guess
you'd have to accept his word for it, but I think it could be
self-deception. You know…. You don't know, because
you haven't gotten older yet. But one of the things that, if
you're not careful, you tend to do is to make sure you were
successful back there, and you had good judgment, plans was good, and
everything progressed right along When Pearsall played his role there, I
think he was trying to block integration, but I think he was still
trying to do it in the genteel fashion that caused Dr. Frank to say
"we don't have any demagogues in the
state." Now if you want to get into that, you can talk to
George Watts Hill, Jr. He was in the state legislature, and he opposed
the Pearsall plan. And he argued eloquently, you know,
"Let's go into this thing." And as a matter
of fact, some of us thought that we ought to oppose that plan with some
statewide advertising, and I went out after money. And I went to John
Wheeler. I went to John and said, "John, where am I going to
get some money for this ad?" Well, of course, John gave me
some. He said, "You go to Watts Hill, Jr." And I said,
"What the hell. You go to any of the Watts Hills." He
said, "You go to Watts Hill, Jr." And I went over to
Watts Hill, and it turned out he attended church I served when he was a
student. And Watts was dead set against Pearsall. And if you want some
insight into that—and I don't know how Watts
feels; now he may be gentle with Pearsall—my feeling is
Pearsall was expressing his own feelings in a way in which he learned
very cleverly how to express them and how to block things of this sort.
Because I think the equal of the demagogue, in terms of his course of
action, is that kind of fellow, the blocker. News & Observer) and at first it made me
angry, and then I kind of got amused about it.
It looks like there's been a shift in the party line.
Yes.
And it's no longer fashionable; one might even be embarrassed by …
Well, he wants to be the patron saint of some kind.
But this would be someplace where Frank Graham would disagree.
I wish I knew. You see, he was a great—and this is in the good
sense—compromiser. And that's what a politician
is, anyway, at his best. He would take a potent position, and one time
they had trouble in my church, because members of the black Navy band
started attending And when I saw the trouble coming I just called a
meeting of the officers. I said, "You've
No, there isn't really very much, and I regret, in a way, that he was away from the scene so much in the fifties and sixties. Francis Bradshaw is still alive, in California.
Yes, I saw Francis recently, as a matter of fact. He's still got a clearhead on him. He's taken off in several directions, eventually. One is extrasensory perception.
Oh, that's interesting.
Yes. And he's very interested in it. His health appears to be
fairly good. And Doug Hunt told me that they were wanting to get Francis
back here for a speech for the psychologists' meeting, but
they couldn't find the money for it. He was a liberal of an
interesting sort. He fell too far backwards sometimes for me them on through to see what, following that,
happens to them, and try to get a kind of look at the procedure and
movement. But basically I see that what happened in that period is that
liberals often were radicals. And through some kind of circumstances,
either getting older or responsibility, they take a position
that's a liberal position. Or you can be a liberal and be
moved to a radical position, see, also. You can go both ways, but the
radical is so because generally he can afford to be a radical.
I do get the impression that many people in Chapel Hill who considered themselves liberal were unable to keep up with the times. Things moved too fast for them. But the last year, however, was like the very year of the school desegregation decision.
That's right. That's the year in which Odom gave me
that book. No, it was two years before that. Race and
Rumors of Race, that was the book he inscribed. Well, I guess
it's just age is what does it. You don't see many
people, though they can, because, really, older persons can be more
Independent. Nobody's got any hold on them; no body can hurt
them; they're getting out of here before long; so age has got
just as much chance to be radical as youth, but there are not many aged
persons that do it, really. In fact, you oughtn't call me a
radical now; I'm not a radical. I think I would be if
something arose, because I've got no responsibilities to tie
me down. The other factor, which I might say, too, enters in this, is
the excitement. And that's what people often don't
realize, the sense not of just revolt in the radical, but the sense of
excitement and danger. When we get together and start talking, Dan
Pollitt and these other folks, some of the
I have a feeling that what you just described was a lot of Frank Graham before 1930.
With Beal., and With the labor union stuff.
Yes. In fact, I think that's one reason why he really did resist being elected President of the University, that he knew that he couldn't do that kind of thing anymore after he moved into South Building.
Yes, he had such a high sense of responsibility to the purposes which he had said he'd undertake. He had a single eye, really.
But all through the twenties, for example, except for those few years when he was away, he was always running around the state, organizing something.
Yes, that's right. And then that [Fred] Beal case in Gastonia.
Yes.
He just took off and went down there flying, as a matter of fact. But I
don't think you'll find many radicals or people
who had been radicals who ever thought Dr. Frank let them down.
He'd either say nothing—that wasn't
often of course
Yes, I think you're right.
And so most of those men, Senator Morse is gone, dead. You might could
get to Russell sometime if you're down that way. But
he's senile, I guess. Lowenstein might help getting to the bottom
of that. Al is a worshipper of Frank Graham so
There's a section in the memoirs of Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois entitled "Three Saints in Politics," and one of them is Frank Graham.
Who were the other two?
Senator Lehman of New York …
Yes, he was.
… and Congressman Jerry Vorhees of California, who I think was the first person that Nixon …
He's the great coop man. Yes, he was. Maybe it's just because of our background that we read it that way; as I read his leaving of Congress, it was a rather unique event, really. And I didn't keep up with what he was doing in Congress much. That would be his great field, though, because he was working one-to-one and persuading and educating and so on and so forth. He was a very useful man in Congress. If he'd been twenty years younger and become President, it'd be interesting to see what would have happened.
What do you think of that idea, of Frank Graham's sainthood?
I took some trips with Dr. Frank; we spoke together at some places
occasionally. I went up to Sweet Briar at one time, and he never drove.
And we got in my car, and he was sort of tired. And he would get a
chocolate bar or a lump of sugar, and get on the back seat and go to
sleep. When he did that, thirty minutes later he was ready to go. We got
there late at night, and a Miss Meta Glass was the President. You know,
Dr. Frank never took anything of a stimulating nature to drink, not even
tea. So Dr. Glass asked would we like to have some coffee. I said
"yes," and she said, "I'll pour
you some coffee." And Dr. Frank says, "No, thank
you." She says, "Well, would you like anything? I
think we have everything." He said, "Well, a little
buttermilk, please, would be very fine." It was the one thing
she didn't have. But she didn't let on. I noticed
it took her about fifteen minutes to get the coffee and buttermilk. It
turns out she
I remember Mrs. Hubert Robinson talking to me one day about how at one point the car that the Robinsons owned was better than the car the University president had.
Right. He didn't care. And his clothes
It's difficult sometimes for me to reconcile that simplicity with his great skill as a politician, say, in his working with the legislature to get appropriations for the University, something like that.
I think he maintained the integrity of that simple position even there. For example, I'll bet you fifty dollars he never took a drink, but he never said anything about the other fellow doing it. It didn't embarrass him, and to that extent he was a free fellow, a free man. And I can see him talking to these people, because as you said at the beginning, he had a belief that if you could educate you could bring out the best in people. He just didn't know how bad people could be, unfortunately.
He may have learned a little …
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
… I have never heard him speak in a derogatory fashion of Nehru. I don't know how to say it; it was a criticism. It wasn't harsh, but he really meant it, about Nehru and the Indians. He had negotiated with them for the U. N. He said, "They are so blind and stubborn. I can't do a thing." And I think it was his first defeat, really.
I think it was his first real defeat in negotiating, where he had to come out that he made nothing. Now with the Dutch thing, see, it doesn't matter. He and Henry Brandis and Bill Aycock went over there. And as far as I know; I don't…. He may have. I've read nothing about this. Did he take anybody to India with him much?
I think that Mr. Aycock was there for a while at the beginning.
But Henry Brandis and Aycock, they were both in my church on the board, so I know them fairly well. Both of them, I think, saw more clearly the deviltry in the people, particularly Henry Brandis. He's a very sharp observer of a person; he's a lawyer. He knows what's in himself as well as everybody else. And I think Graham had great help in realistically sizing people up, perhaps, in those disputes. Americans he knew, and that was his field. And it may be that he lacked the kind of advisers he needed in India, or it may be that Nehru and his associates just got stubborn.
Well, their dispute is still unsolved today.
Well, yes. Their sense of democracy ran pretty thin; as we've seen now, it didn't last very long. It would be interesting to wonder what Gandhi himself would do if he were alive.
I think he'd begin fasting.
Perhaps we could say something about the Presbyterian Church in Chapel Hill. My impression is that that congregation has always been the center of controversy in Presbyterian circles in North Carolina.
Right. And liberalism, in a sense. It's never had a conservative preacher. Well, at the present time there is, a young fellow; he's conservative, but he's not illiberal. Barron. I like him very much. But mostly they've had "nuts." The Chapel Hill church problem was more the chruch and its relationship to the Presbytery, the Synod, and the state. The congregation, when I was there, oh, well over ninety-some percent enthusiastic, some less so. The problem actually was initiated in such a way that I think some honestly didn't mean to have it happen. And this has never really come out, I think, because …
This is the local people.
Yes. I don't think this has ever come out, because people were
so angry and dissatisfied at me. There were about nine or ten people in
the congregation who really would love to see me leave. And they were
diehards really. They thought Frank Graham was awful. But others like
Professor Boyd came here and Hugh Holman and three or four people who
were not in this church became inadventently part of the problem. As a
matter of fact, Hugh was attending the Presbyterian Church in Durham,
because he was pretty conservative theologically.
Were these recalcitrant members pretty much the same people who had been back dissenters in the War years?
Oh, yes. Same ones. In fact, one of them picketed the church one day, a lady.
With a sign?
No. Walked up and down and stopped people and said, "Do you know
what Mr. Jones does?" They'd say,
"What?" "He eats with niggers."
I reluctantly took a leave of absence for a year. I'd been given a leave of absence and started not to take it, yet all the officers insisted I take it. They said they would attend to the problem, and they did. They fought them. They made them an appeal and all that kind of thing, but it didn't do. See, no charges were ever brought against me, not one. And they wouldn't let us see the record of anybody who protested anything. We never knew what any protester said.
Is that in accord with the rules of the church?
No. And that's where Van Hecke and Brandis, while I was away,
got up a legal appeal and took it all the way to the highest church
court, so that and the Presbytery was overruled in some respects. I mean
Brandis and them won it. And the top court of thirty-three people said
that the presbytery had erred in taking testimony in secret and not
making it available to us, and their public utterances were such as to
defame me. And if I chose to force them to make charges, they would have
to bring court charges. Well, that wouldn't have changed the
situation. I would still have had to leave, because the one thing they
did do they had a right to do, which was to remove me from office
"for the the welfare of the church." And the
Presbytery offered to find me another job, but they just said I
wasn't good for Chapel Hill. And it turns out that at the
bottom of it was a plywood contractor in High Point. I didn't
know that. Dr. Frank told me that he went to the bottom of it, and
several other people like Paul — Lee Rays. Fairly strong
people in the state, some of them politicians. So I just felt no need to
fight that kind of thing. But the local congregation stood firm all the
way through. But there are a lot of legends about that, too. There are
legends that I was defrocked, thrown out, so on down the line. I
don't know how such things grow, but they do. And Marion A.
Wright the other night in the Civil Liberties Union had a whole page of
mistakes
Was there any comparable situation in any other church in Chapel Hill?
Yes, in the Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church. Parson Moss, a fellow who
came from Canada, who was intellectually liberal. [Moss was actually at
the Presbyterian Church too] The race problem was no problem then. He
knew Jonah wasn't swallowed by the whale, and he said Jesus
wasn't born of a virgin and didn't walk on water,
either. And he said so, too. So they got up a move to put him out after
about sixteen or seventeen years, and he left. And then a few years
later when the Presbyterian Church asked him back, he came on back
again. And he served as minister there until he died. But that was
another one. And then there was another one, Donald Stewart, who
preceded Chapel Hill
Weekly protesting his sermon. And what Don should have done was to
invite Howard to speak in church the next Sunday; he did not do it. You
know, that would have almost settled the problem, but he
didn't do it. So he finally left, but his leaving was
unpleasant for all concerned.
I'm not sure I understand. Howard Beale was attacking the pacifism of Donald Stewart?
No. Donald Stewart was a pacifist and preached sermons. Then when England got in the War he changed.
Ah, I see. And Beale was continuing.
Yes, I left the main thing out. So Beale was feeling he was deserted, you see, and that Stewart's logic and religion was bad and so on and so forth. Beale was a very good logician. But it was an angry argument and I believe need not have happened.
I have had major differences with persons in the Church. I had some good
old staunch fellows. Henry Brandis, whom I love and admire for one Henry
came to me after I preached a sermon on the demonstrations, stating that
we had a legal right to break the law if we wanted to. The law is a
contract between two people, and if your conscience instructs you you
shouldn't obey it, you should go along with your conscience.
It was that simple. So you couldn't say all these people
breaking the law were whatever you wanted to call them. Well,
Henry's life has been devoted to law, and the law was in a
sense, his god. Anyway, he came to me red in the face over that sermon.
And we couldn't resolve it with logic. And I said,
"Well, Henry, why don't you next Sunday present your
position?" He said, "You know I can't do
that." I answered
Was Howard Beale a member of the church?
He was Episcopalian, but he came to the Presbyterian Church.
Was he reasonable?
No, Howard was an unreasonable liberal. Tar
Heel, when Junius Scales was here…. Junius was a good
friend of mine—I testified at the Smith [Act] trial for him.
Junius went the wrong road once or twice, but he shouldn't
have been convicted. The law should never have been written, but at any
rate when Junius was here the Tar Heel wanted me to
debate him on Christianity and communism. And so they called Junius; he
said he would. They called me; I said, "Well, I want to talk
Tar Heel crew and said, "Now
I don't want a debate. I'd like to have a
discussion and let people just see the different positions and make a
choice." And that was all right, they said. But then the Tar Heel comes out with the headline "Jones
and Scales Lock Horns Tonight."
So I wasn't going to lock any horns. I told them my wings would get damaged. But that's the way people were picking at each other in those days. There was a war on, so you had to fight one way or another. It was a rough period. It's too quiet now.
There was also this minister Ronald Tamblyn?
Yes. Well, Presbytery acted more legitimately there, yes, though I
wouldn't have done it. You see, when this church wanted a
minister, they wanted him for the way he thought, for what he was
saying, how he would go about church business. They didn't
give a damn whether he was a Presbyterian or what. So they go to Canada
to get this fellow, who hadn't been raised a Presbyterian.
Tamblyn happened to be a Congregationalist. He was perfectly willing to
change and become a Presbyterian. But that was worse to some
Presbyterians, because they thought that showed insincerity.
This remark, I think it was by Paul Green, to the effect that if Jesus
Christ came to Chapel Hill, he couldn't be the preacher of
the
Yes. That was written in 1953. Presbytery's Investigating
Committee
Yes.
I think it's fairly accurate, of course, from my point of
view. And one of the reasons it's accurate is because the
Dean of the Law School helped me do it. I was away from here, and I
wrote
No.
Because that wasn't his language. He went to New York to Union
Seminary and told Reinhold Niebuhr and John Bennett, who were both
friends of mine, what he wanted to say. But he says,
"I've got to say it in language so those men down
there will understand it."
What is there about Frank Graham that is Presbyterian?
I think he basically is a traditionalist, really. And he grew up in it. And he wouldn't leave it for anything. I think they could boil him in oil, and he wouldn't leave it. I think he feels that way about the United States, in a sense. He was sentimental, and if you read his writings, his patriotic speeches and so on and so forth, he's a real sentimental guy.
And even rings corny, I think, too.
Oh, yes, sure. Yes, you'd completely misunderstand the man if you gave a fellow a speech and say, "Isn't that a wonderful speech?" You'd completely misunderstand him. And he loved Grandma and he loved Grandpa, and he loved everything old. Marvelous fellow, to look forward enough with so much love in the back.
But is there anything about him that is peculiarly Presbyterian and not Methodist, say?
No. As far as I know, he never got into the flow of church leadership.
You will read a whole lot about him since you're writing on
him, but check that out. As far as I know, he was never a moderator of
the presbytery, which would be eight or nine counties around here. A man
of his stature could have been moderator of the whole church. Governor
Smathers of Florida was once.
I'm not sure of the name of the journal, but it's a journal put out by the historians of the Presbyterian Church, and they're doing a series of articles on prominent Presbyterian laymen. But I just couldn't tell exactly what was Presbyterian, and that's, of course, what they're interested in. What was Presbyterian about him?
Did they do him?
No, they haven't done it yet.
Well, that would be very interesting, because you may find out some news
there, something that would help with the writing. As far as I know, in
all the years I was with him, he didn't even go to one of
these other meetings. Now he may have gone as a speaker to the General
Assembly once or twice, you know, the great one. That's like
when they invite prominent people out. But I think he was worth more to
them in terms of propaganda than they were worth to him. You know what I
mean. A great man, and they use him when they can, which is right. He
wasn't, in a sense, a head over heels
But what is there, say, in his outlook on the world, on social problems or on morality that's …
As a matter of fact, he's very unPresbyterian. You see, Presbyterians take a very dim view of human beings.
And he was quite an optimist.
Than I do now. See, I've become a Presbyterian.
Doesn't appear. No.
No, doesn't appear, at all In fact, he's very
selective
But then if he had been going to the University Presbyterian Church since he came here as a student in 1905, those things would not have come up in the church very often.
That's right. As soon as he got away from home …
I think, from what his sister Kate said, that
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
… on his Presbyterianism?
I don't think so. I'm pretty sure I asked her.
See, she is not like him in that respect.
She is a Presbyterian?
Yes, but I guess, being a woman, she doesn't get a chance to
show it as much. But she's not an activist in anything
either. I don't know whether she goes or not, to tell you the
truth. Whether she goes to church or not. But Dr. Frank was there every
Sunday he was
And hers.
Yes. Are you going to go from diapers to the graveyard with him?
Yes. My dissertation won't be quite that long or extensive. As far as I'm concerned, there isn't very much of real interest to me in the years toward either end of his life.
Yes. Childhood isn't …
No. It's very difficult, unless one is born in a very prominent family and there's a great deal of documentation about one's …
Childhood doesn't seem to have been very formative in his life.
Well, some things have been suggested by his sisters. His parents used to argue, for example, at the dinner table, which they thought was rather unusual. His mother was a staunch Democrat; his father said that, well, there were some good Republicans, too.
Yes.
I was going to suggest that you have a meeting with Warren sometime. Warren wrote one, you know.
Yes, but I don't know what's going on.
He wrote it years ago, five or six years ago, and somehow he hasn't put it all together yet. But he has lots of information I know he'd be glad to talk to you about, and some ideas, too.
But certainly by the end of his college career here in Chapel Hill, I think he's pretty much Frank Graham as he was …
The YMCA was an important factor and I don't know whether it
was liberal or what. It did nice good deeds, I think, was what it
They ran a kind of night school for black janitors and …
Yes, that's right. That's what I called "good deeds." But in terms of social change, I don't believe the Y at that time—as it did later….
Even before the Y had this Blue Ridge summer camp, they had one in Colorado to which he went. I don't know how, but he met Willis Weatherford and had gone out there.
He was a great friend of Weatherford. He and Weatherford and two or three of those old folks; you've probably run across them. Of course, Weatherford's dead now. He has a son, the President of Berea.
Yes. And then I think the last, probably formative experience for him comes rather late, in the twenties when he went to London for a year and met these Christian socialists.
Did he come through the London School of Economics?
Met [R. H.] Tawney and …
That got him unionized, I guess.
I think so, yes. His copy of R. H. Tawney's book, almost
He thought a lot of Toynbee, too.
Yes.
I think possibly you might pursue this. How close did he come toward some mild form of socialism when it came to economics?
I think he went further than the New Deal. In fact, in the mid-thirties, after the Supreme Court began to overturn New Deal legislation, he gave a speech many times which proposed a kind of New Deal amendment to the Constitution which would, in effect, bypass the Supreme Court. Nobody seems to have picked it up very much.
You'd have to square that now with his states' rights on race …
Yes. Well, I don't really believe that states' rights thing, but he did use it sometimes.
He surely did.
For example, he fought in the late thirties for federal aid to education on all levels; that's not…. He had some states' rights sort of reservation that the decisions would be made on a state and local level. He did sign the FEPC report; he signed a dissenting opinion that the states should pass these FEPC laws.
I guess we'll never know whether that was…. I
don't think he ever did anything purely for strategy. I think
he probably thought you'd get it passed quicker if you passed
it in the states. One would lead the other on, then the next, and you
know….
I don't know. Somehow I feel that he really underestimated the nature of the problem with race, say …
Oh, sure, they always did them; there's no doubt about it.
With that gradual approach, it would have taken forever to get where we are already, I think.
And, as a matter of fact, even with the consequences, I think, even Bayard and John [L.] Lewis and most of the leaders at that period thought if we won that, we would have won the battle. And it's nice they didn't all get discouraged over it and quit. They've gone to work; the only place they can work now is in institutions. Have [Greensboro] you read an old blind fellow, a sociologist over in Durham's book?
Joseph Himes?
Joe, yes. Have you read Joe's book, put out about 1973?
No, I don't….
Well, I've raised it; I ought to be able to…. But
you can look in the catalogue over there, and you'll
recognize it. It has to do with that period, but not solely in terms of
eating. He's formulating a description of how a
revolution's leadership arises, and it was the most
stimulating thing I had read in a long time. It's got a
sociologist's language in it, and it's written
like one-two-three-four, and so forth. But at the same time, the way in
which he traces how these things arose. He's talking about
black leadership, so
Were you, in a way, trying to test his notion, applying it in Chapel Hill?
When I read that, I said, "Well, that's exactly what happened to me." I didn't realize at the time what was happening to me, what was pushing me here and why I returned anyway, what happened to make these young bright blacks, as we say, turn against us. And he just explained it all. Do you know him?
I have met him, yes.
You talk to him. He'd talk with anybody. But if you get his book and read him, that may be all you need. It's in the library, three or four copies, unless the sociologists have gotten it all out for class.
I was thinking earlier when you were talking about the Dorothy Maynor concert, you said something about its not being segregated. Was that at all common, local black people going to musical events?
Well, you had to have more than student sponsorship. You see, the
Fellowship of Southern Churchmen was behind it, and we were a South-wide
organization. So we had contacts in Durham, and we could get out the
Durham North Carolina College kids, you see. And anyway, Dorothy was
black herself. Her husband's a preacher and he's a
good friend of mine, so I've known them personally for years.
And when the idea occurred to have them, I wrote to her and she says,
"Yes, I'd love to do it. I'm under
contract, but I'll give you all of my fee." She
says, "My manager may have to take some." Well, it
Yes.
The Ministerial Association wanted to bring him. And so we decided to
bring him, but we couldn't bring him segregated. So we sent a
committee over to see Bob House—I lived two doors from
Bob—and we went over to see Bob, and Bob said,
"Sure, you can have Memorial Hall." And I said,
"Well, Bob, we couldn't have him segregated, because
there's going to be some black people coming just because
they'd be interested in him
He said, "Well, now, we ought not go back over there and change this," he says, "we ought to just go ahead and let the colored people sit in the balcony. Well, it wouldn't be segregated that way."
But it still would, of course. Well, we said, "No, we
can't do that." He objects, "Well, you
know, people think preachers are fools anyway. And they'll
say, ‘Well, it's those fool preachers
And that ended it, and we had it in the Methodist church. But we got cut
off there at that point
From the forties on, we formed a small group between North Carolina
College (as it was called then), Duke, and UNC students. And at first it
was about twelve people, the Dean of the Chapel at Duke, the Dean of the
Chapel at North Carolina College, and myself selected four people from
each school just to come to our homes, and we met that way for about six
months just for the fun of it. And then we finally got to the point
where we
You mentioned the Dean of the Chapel at Duke being active in this. In the
forties and early fifties, say, I don't have much
Yes, it came mostly out of the Divinity School. See, they've got a pretty large divinity school over there, and your people, most of them came out of divinity school. Some of them didn't. But now when you went into the demonstrations themselves…
In the sixties.
… by then there was a bandwagon going, and you had lots of
students. The march we had from North Carolina College over, it was a
lot of Duke students in that. Someday you may need to think about the
effect of the wars
Yes.
In the Frank Porter Graham Student Union.
Yes, that's right. So I don't know. Our
conservative friends
I think I'd better go.
Well, if I can give you all any…. I guess I have. I don't know if I've given you much anyway. The problem with these kind of things—at least it would be for me—is you've got four or five tapes in there, and out of it you've probably got a half a tape of good stuff.
Well, that's …
END OF INTERVIEW