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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 C-0048, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Bonnie Cone offers a candid portrait of what it was like to be a single career woman in the South during the first half of the twentieth century. Cone describes her educational experiences as a child and as a student at Coker College, a women's school. Among the experiences she discusses are her early days as a math teacher in South Carolina and North Carolina and her role as an instructor to Navy officer candidates at Duke University during World War II. Following the war, Cone returned to Charlotte, North Carolina, to continue her career as a teacher but soon became involved in the effort to establish a college in Charlotte. Cone worked at the forefront of this movement, helping to push through tax legislation for that purpose. She served as the director of Charlotte College in the late 1940s and 1950s. In 1964, when Charlotte College became the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, she was made temporary acting chancellor. Her colleagues later believed that, despite her pivotal role in the establishment of the university, the position was not made permanent because she was a woman. Cone, however, did not hold this view.
Bonnie Cone describes her career as an educator in South Carolina and North Carolina during the first half of the twentieth century. After teaching at Duke University during World War II, she moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, and became one of the primary personages behind the successful establishment of a university in that city.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is Lynn Haessly, and I'm interviewing Bonnie Cone in her office on January 7, 1986. I thought first I'd like to ask you about where you were born and who your parents were.
I was born in a little village, Lodge, South Carolina. It's about 75
miles from Charleston, about 75 from Columbia, and 75 from Savannah.
Lodge was the name for the first building that was there, which was the
Masonic Lodge building. I could hear the old farmers saying, "We're
going to the lodge," you know. But my parents were Charles Jefferson
Cone and Mary [Pause]
It's OK.
I'm about ready to say her own mother's name instead of Addie Lavinia Harter Cone.
What were their backgrounds?
My father's family were farmers. My father's father came back after the war between the states and had to rebuild a home, which was just out on the edge of Lodge. When my father's father, my grandfather on my father's side, was building his home after the war, he needed somebody who was a great bricklayer. And I know there were bricklayers in my mother's family, and that's how my mother and father met. They were from an area in an adjoining county. It's in the area called Sycamore, but that doesn't tell us [what county it was]. It's one of the older counties, too.
Well, when you think of it you can tell me later.
Alright, I'll tell you later, but it was one of the older counties. You see, I'm saying Berkeley, and that's not it. Barnwell, that's what it is, Barnwell County.
Were they very large landowners?
I don't think in the scheme of things that they were large landowners. I know that their forbearers did have more land, and they had slaves who helped work the land. But my grandparents did not [have slaves] on either side. I still own a little parcel of land that was purchased by my grandfather after the war between the states. It was a little over twenty acres and it's good farmland. Somehow, it's a sentimental attachment that I have to that land, and I just couldn't let it go.
Do you rent it out?
Yes, and it's farmed every year. That makes me feel good, you know. It has some timber on the back of it, and I wouldn't let a piece be cut for anything. Again, it's not a valuable thing, except sentimental value.
Tell me about your childhood. Were you the first child?
I was the fourth child in my family.
Of how many?
There were six children in all, two younger, but they didn't live. I had
two brothers and a sister, and I was the fourth child. Then there was a
little boy and a little girl after me. One died in infancy and one died
about age one. So I was raised as the baby in the family and got, you
know, a lot of
What does that mean?
That meant that you had to do the very best you could at all times. Oh, you knew you had the love and the care, you know, and all of that. But it was great being a fourth child, too. You know, you had your two older brothers. My older brother and my sister were, you know, more partners, and then my second brother and I seemed to be. He went to the Citadel, and he would come home—he knew that I was trying to learn to play the piano—and he would bring his sheet music and things like that to encourage me along in my efforts with playing the piano. We're very close still. He's the only one of my family members still living from that generation. He lives in Saluda, South Carolina.
Tell me about your elementary school education.
Well, all of my elementary and high school education occurred right there in the little town of Lodge. It was a community of less than two hundred people, and it's no larger than that today. My brothers both were sent to—after their ten grades at Lodge—were sent to a bidding school, Carlyle Military School at Bamberg, South Carolina, which was about 17 miles away. My father had gone there when he was a young man in his early years. But my sister and I, when we came along, we were sent straight from Lodge to college. I had to take eight examinations to enter college.
What kind of examinations?
Oh, they ranged from Latin to English to History, you know. I don't
remember the exact areas, but I know that there were eight tests that I
had to take. I always say I think I was the last one admitted to Coker
College by way of examination. I must have
Let me ask you a little more about your elementary education. How many children were in the school? Was it a one-room school?
No, it was not a one-room school but I can still see the school building.
I know there was a wooden building which we went to first. I remember
very little about that except there was a string there, and we used to
like to jump across the string—silly little things like that you
remember. But the school building that I remember was a brick building,
a two-story building, and we had an upstairs to that building, and there
was an auditorium. And I did learn to play and I remember having to go
up the stairs and play the march. The children came upstairs for the
assemblies when we had assembly. I remember the names of three of my
teachers that I've had. One person I would say was the best. I had no
better teacher anywhere than that one teacher. He was the man who came
as superintendent of the schools, Mr. Ed Rentz. He was great in
mathematics. I had finished the tenth grade, which was the top grade we
had, and Mr. Rentz came that summer as head of the school system. My
older brothers and my sister were in college. It was not easy to keep
three in college. So my mother and father agreed that I would
Yes. I was going to ask you why, if he was the reason that you chose to go into math. . . .
I didn't know I was going to do it when I left high school, of course,
but as I got into college I found that things mathematical, well. . . .
In my freshman year they must have recognized I did alright because I
was given a scholarship to grade papers for the two professors of
mathematics. If either one was absent, I had to teach their class. And
so, you know, I graded those papers my whole four years in college. I
don't know what I would have done if I hadn't had Mr. Rentz. I might not
have had a feeling I could grade papers there. When I was a senior in
college, there was the Dean of Women who had never gotten a college
degree, and it was all because she hadn't been able to pass plane
geometry. So she asked me if I would teach her plane geometry. I had to
get permission, of course, from
Had you thought about being a teacher before you went to college?
Yes, all my early years I just knew I wanted to be a teacher, and I knew
I wanted to go to Winthrop College because I had learned that that was
the school where they were educating people who were going into the
field of teaching. We had a Baptist minister and his wife. They lived
diagonally across the street. The parsonage, as it was called, was
diagonally across the street. And Mr. and Mrs. Rogers persuaded my
parents that—you know, I was a young, timid girl—that I should go to
Coker College, a small liberal arts college, and not to the large. I
think the student body at Winthrop was probably 1500 at that
Was Coker a single sex college then?
Yes. It became coeducational while I was on the board in the '60s. It was single sex all those years.
And Winthrop?
It was single sex, too, yes. It was made coeducational in more recent years. I remember when they both became coed.
Do you think that it was an advantage to be in a little college?
I don't know. I never thought about going to a coeducational school, you know. Winthrop, I knew, was the place where the best teachers were educated in our state at that time. You know, even after I came to Charlotte to teach, we knew that, and our public school people would go to Winthrop to get teachers because it was an outstanding school for the preparation of teachers.
You mentioned you had leadership roles at Coker.
Well, let me see, I was president of the Math Club, for example. I think
I was president of the Science Club. They weren't tremendous leadership
roles but, you know, things like
Did you have to work when you were in college?
My work was grading those papers [laughter]
Did you live in the dormitory?
Yes, I lived right in the dormitory. Right there all together, you know. It made it easy to get to classes and to do things you had to do.
How did you get your first teaching job?
My! I know where it was, and I know all the regulations about it. I don't
remember whether it was through Coker that they found me or. . . . It
was a little village, Lakeview, South Carolina, in Dillon County, and it
was one of three high schools in the county. There was Lakeview, Dillon,
and
These would have been state bonds, these scripts?
It was a state obligation bond, I'm sure. But that contract letter, which I still have, says that it was understood that teachers in this school system would do no night riding, no card playing, and no dancing. Well, they did not rule out crocheting, or making quilts, or activities of that type, and some of the teachers—with some of the people in the community—we just got together and we had a good time doing those types of activities. When I see the spreads on my beds now, I say, "Well, no card playing, no night riding, no dancing." But then they required us to live in—not the first year, but the second year—they required us to live in the hotel which had been built for the tobacco market. The tobacco market had failed.
Was this the teacherage?
It was not called a teacherage. It was the hotel in Lakeview. We were
required to live there and every weekend, it seemed to us, the people of
the community would bring in a live band, and they would have dances
downstairs in our parlors. I didn't dare venture forth because I had to
have a job. I had to teach. But you could hear the shuffling of the
feet. You could
Was it a string band? What kind of band was it?
Well, it must have been, you know, just a little country band, is, I'm
sure what
Did you lose all your possessions?
Oh, I lost my possessions. I can still see my little steamer trunk, you know, with some of the precious books inside, and my new spring outfit under the bed because there wasn't room enough in the closet to hang it up. You know, everything went that you had. Some of the college books that you had and notebooks that you treasured. You just had to start anew.
You moved and worked in several different little South Carolina towns in the '30s. Why did you move around to the different towns?
Well, I'll tell you. I left Lakeview. You know, I told you we had certain strict regulations. I had friends who lost jobs because, whether they had done some of those things or not, people were made to believe they had, and they'd lose a job because somebody had seen them out night riding.
What is night riding?
That meant you took a ride down to the—you might have been riding just talking to some people because you didn't have very much place, no living room area, in which to have a date, you know. What would you do? You might get in a car and take a ride to Dillon and have a Coca-Cola over there or something like that. It may be very harmless, and I suspect it was. I don't think it was really a very harmful situation, but the mind of man can make some things evil that aren't evil.
Well, they had given me a very hard spot to teach in. My room—I can remember, I can still see it—you entered the front door, went past the superintendent's office and down the hall to my classroom. They had a door off of the closet, and there was a transom. Everything that went on in my room, he could hear it right in his office. That was okay. Big old boys, I thought they were tremendous fellows.
You were asking me why I moved on. Well, alright, I taught mathematics. I
had to teach chemistry. The first year I had to teach French, and I
never would have made that one if there hadn't been a flood and the
school hadn't closed for a few days. I didn't know I was going to have
to teach French until I got there. The school was closed for a few days.
I got my books, and I got ahead of the students, and I stayed ahead of
them. But I had had a good background in French in college, and my
teacher was just as contemporary as today. We never heard a word of
English the whole two years I was in that class. Everything we read was
in French, and all we wrote was in French. But I kept
At Duke?
At Duke, yes. Finally, I finished it in 1940, I believe. Yes, I think it was conferred in '41 but, you know, I finished at the end of the summer, and it was conferred the following spring. Dr. Garinger was the man who invited me to come to Charlotte to teach at Central.
How had you met him?
I had not met him. It was through one of my professors. I think Dr.
Garinger asked Dr. Bell about some particular things. He wanted me to do
some testing. I think Dr. Garinger and Dr. Bell had known each other at
Columbia University. Anyway, I was recommended for the position and
offered it and came to Central High School in '40. You know, all those
teachers there had been there forever and a day. One teacher wouldn't
teach anything except plane geometry. Another wouldn't teach anything
except college algebra, and somebody else had to have tenth grade
algebra. I said, "Now, Dr. Garinger, there is one thing I do want. I
want five different preparations. I do not want to teach one thing all
day long. I would grow stale at that." He said, "Well, the only way I
can do that is for you to teach a class in business math." And I said,
"That's alright. I can teach that, too." And I had some very bright
students in that program. So that was my schedule. I had to be moved
from room to room. I remember taking my pointer and my chalk, you know,
all my equipment I had to take from room to room because I didn't get a
room. He assigned me to all my various places. But I had tremendous
classes. I taught there from '40 to '43 when the war came on, World War
II. The chairman
Let me turn you back a little bit and just ask you about what it was like to teach in South Carolina high schools in the '30s. What were the students like and what was the quality of education in the schools then?
I think I taught in some of the better schools, I really do, from Lakeview right on, you know, to Gaffney. I guess I'd say that the quality of the work, well, the students, I know where some of those students went to. Some of them we've kept up with all these years. Some went into medicine. One is teaching—was teaching, maybe he's retired now—from Clemson. You know, I know one was an associate superintendent in Florence County, and he died just this last spring. But there are people I kept up with, challenging and interesting people to teach.
Were there very many school dropouts then?
I do not remember. You know, I think I would have been devastated if some
of my students had dropped out. We visited. I know that in those early
years I visited in the homes of every student, you know. They expected
us to, and if I hadn't been expected to, you wanted to know the families
because you wanted to do the very best job you could. I think those
close contacts we had, [in] small communities [were important]. Well, I
had to teach Sunday School on Sunday morning. At the first I don't think
I had to teach. I don't believe I had to teach after
Did you have regulations for the teachers' behavior in the other school systems?
I had no such regulations. I remember one, talking about problems. I had one young man who was, I was sorry to say, a relative of Daniel C. Roper. He had been in a reformatory school. Now you don't go to reformatory school?
Yes, for bad boys!
Anyway, I do remember that Hunter McColl, that's back in McColl days, he would get very angry with somebody, a teacher maybe, and he might throw a brick through the window of a car or something like that, you know. But Hunter was in my homeroom, I remember, and all of his problems, if he had misbehaved during the day, or if he made somebody angry with him, if he had any sort of problem, they'd send him back to me in the afternoon.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B
Well, I may be telling too much.
No, I'm interested. Tell me about when Hunter would come to your room.
Well, Hunter would come to my room after school. I had to teach some
biology those years, too, I remember, and we making an aquarium in the
top of a big old drum, a metal barrel drum. We'd have the sand and stuff
in the bottom, so we could have fish, and we could have plants that, you
know, could grow underwater. We had some water hyacinths, and they
bloomed in there for us. Well, anyway. Hunter would come in, and he'd
say, "Now, just beat me, Miss Cone! Just don't talk to me, just beat
me!" I said, "Hunter, I never beat anybody in my life. What in the world
do I want to beat you for?" He said, "I won't resist you. Beat me!" You
know. Well, anyway, we worked together, and we talked, and we understood
each other. You know, I heard from him every year until one year at
Christmas I got a nice note from him and it was about the happiest note
I've ever had from anybody. And he said, "I just want you to know I've
at last"—he had a wife and children by that time, you know, your
students do grow up—and he said, "I want you to know I at last have what
you wanted me to have, and that is self-control, and I have it." And you
know, he died after that. You know, that was a joyous thing to me to
know that he kept working on this thing—that he knew he had this
problem. But he'd been used to being beaten and beaten some more, you
know, and that wasn't helping him at all. I don't
Let me ask you about what it was like to go from the smaller schools into a big city high school like Central High.
Well, now, Gaffney, was the largest school—larger than these first two.
How many students would it have had?
I can't tell you but it was a county school. I remember the building was bigger than these other buildings and the community was larger, with the college in the community. But then coming to Central High . . . .
How many students did it have?
Central must have had over 1600 at that time.
In four years?
In three. Let's see, they had tenth, eleventh, and twelfth. I don't know. I don't remember any real problems I encountered. I remember students, definite students. I can even remember where Ernest Hunt, who is an administrator at Sharon Towers, I can remember exactly where he sat in the room. You know, why would you remember silly things like that? But he was an excellent math student, and he had college algebra.
What were the differences between a big school like that and a smaller one?
Well, you know, in the big school in Charlotte at Central, they had
sections according to ability, and, you know, you could move more
rapidly and more happily if you had a section that was able to go, that
was able to be challenged. It's hard
Why had you begun to work on a master's degree?
I wanted to go ahead and do a doctorate. But you see, I didn't have the
time. I didn't have the money to do that, and I wanted to get a broader
background. So from the early '30s I started in on my master's degree
and kept working. I had responsibilities. My parents were getting older.
I was the only single child, and I felt that I wanted to be near them. I
didn't want to be away doing doctoral work when I felt I needed to be
close to them. And you know, that takes you away if you are going to
really do it the way you should. I've never regretted, though, doing
what I did do after my father's death in '49. My
Were you interested in going to graduate school because you were interested in college teaching?
I wanted to be a better teacher.
You didn't want to go into college teaching?
I wasn't thinking about the level of teaching, but I felt that I wanted to become the very best teacher I could be. So I was not aiming for that. I have a tremendous experience at Duke teaching in the program there.
Tell me about that.
Well, we had these young men from the fleet, and I had marines as well.
They were all sectioned after they came in. They were supposed to be
very bright when they came but then they were sectioned according to
mathematical ability when we got them there. I had some of the best
sections to teach. We taught twelve months a year, six days a week, and
it was a thrilling experience to work. One of my students was Bill
Styron, the author, and I remember, Bill wasn't so interested in what I
was doing in that math classroom, but he was an officer candidate, too,
and we had to stay together. He was already writing at that time. I
remember when we finished our work together, he said to me, "You know,
if I ever achieve anything in writing, I am goingTime magazine in '65 when we became a campus of the
University. He was going overseas on a trip, and he had this magazine.
He saw where I was, and he had already published several books by that
time, and so he wrote me a nice letter, which is in the archives, and
sent me a copy of his first book which he autographed. So, he was not
interested in mathematics, but interested in writing, and he stayed with
it and has succeeded. You probably know his . . .
Sophie's Choice.
Yes, and others, and others. And I think it is right remarkable that he
has kept his contact with Duke. He finished his degree after the war was
over and has been on the library board at Duke and has given copies of
all of his works to Duke in all the languages into which they have been
translated. I'm very proud of him, of my non-mathematical
How long was the course that you taught to the military men? Was it just a matter of weeks that each course was taught?
Well, they were semester-length courses just like regular college work, and we did have some non-military people in these classes, too.
What was it that you were teaching?
It was college algebra, and trig, and analytical geometry. I don't believe I taught calculus there. I believe those were the areas which I taught.
So these were not courses specifically designed to enable them to do the statistical work that they were doing?
It was basic college work which they had to have if they were going to go on to be officer candidates in the Navy. They were going to be officers in the Navy. They were candidates.
Why did you agree to go to Duke to do that?
Well, I just know that on my own I would not have done it. I needed to be
sure I was not getting out on a limb because I needed to continue to
work. Anyway, Dr. Gergen contacted Dr. Garinger, who was my principal,
and Dr. Garinger said yes, he wanted me to do that but he wanted me to
come back to Charlotte. My job would be available when I came back. So
that assurance, you know, made it easier for me to do that. It was not
easy to work twelve months a year as we did. But, what was easy during
the war? Everybody who was a loyal American citizen had to do the best
he could do for his country, and they made me feel that was it. Well,
Duke was not going to let me, with my little bit of math ability, not be
used. Before the teaching thing came up, I know they recommended me—the
WAVES was a brand new thing then, and they were trying to get officers
for the WAVES—they recommended me and, well, I had to go through with
the process of being checked out completely. I thought if I had been
eligible, if I had really been an officer, I think it would have killed
my mother because, you know, women didn't do things like that in those
days. But I have a missing molar, and the missing molar, if I had been a
man would have been alright,
Did you want to be a WAVE?
No, I really have to say that is not what I would have chosen to do. But no man chooses to go into the battle either, but you were an American citizen and if this was where you could serve your country best, you know, I just felt I had to do what I had to do.
You talk about knowing that you had to continue to have to work because you were a single woman. When did you realize that you were going to be a single woman for all your life?
Well, I'm not sure I'm going to be a single woman all my life.
Your life's not over yet.
I'm being facetious but that's okay, isn't it? Well, you know, I don't think one ever realizes one is going to be single. I didn't deliberately set to be a single woman. I have had some very strong and wonderful friends of both sexes. So I can't answer that. I didn't set out to be a single woman.
Tell me about the statistical work you did for the Navy in Washington.
Well, then, after we got our men off, still the war was going on [but]
the program was waning, and Duke felt that they could handle all the
teaching. I didn't know I was being recommended when this position in
the Naval Ordinance Laboratory became available. I was in our division.
I remember Dr. Rock was the head of that group and I was his assistant.
When he was
Were you renting rooms?
Yes, all I could have was a room, and I did well to have a room. I lived with just wonderful people at Duke, for example. I lived in the home of Duke's first librarian, Mr. Breedlove [first Head Librarian at Duke University]. Mr. Breedlove's wife was the sister of one of my friends here in Charlotte, the Aikens. She was an Aiken before she married. I don't happen to remember that name. Anyway, when I went to Washington, I lived with another sister of Mrs. Breedlove, Lenora Aiken, and she had a home out near Bethesda and that's why I lived with her. So, you know, it was being a part of a family. It was not like going out and having to find an apartment. I couldn't afford an apartment in the first place. Salaries were small.
What was the statistical work that you did for the Navy?
Well, anyway, it was working with classified materials, and, as I say, I was next to Dr. Rock. I had charge, when he was not there, I had to open up files that had combinations. I had in my group, I felt like there was one man there who was—I just didn't trust him, you know? I was just really kind of wondering, "Are you really a loyal American citizen?"
Why was it that you didn't trust him?
Well, he'd always miss work if he earned a day. You know, we were there in the middle of the war. At first, when we got into that war, we didn't have any mines. We had to develop that kind of equipment that could be used to counter what was being used against us, and then we had to learn how to get rid of it. So we were working on mine laying, mine sweeping, you know the statistical work. We were trying to develop mines that would be more efficient, more destructive, to the enemy's vessels. So it was just interesting that at the first we just had magnetic mines, you know, that would be actuated by magnetic lines of force. But then, as the war moved on, we were able to develop mines that could be actually movement and sound and magnetic fields in combination, and you'd try to make them because you wanted them be activated at the point where you could do the most damage to the ship.
Could the kind of work that you had done then, how much easier would it have been with computers?
We didn't have any computers.
Would it have gone much more quickly?
Well, I'm sure it would have, yes. I'm sure it would have. But we used
what we had. I was in Washington, I remember, when Roosevelt died, and
Was there any possibility of your staying on after the end of the war?
Oh, I didn't even think of that. That year they made me stay on to finish
up the work that we were doing. Now that was hard. As long as we were in
the war you didn't think about anything else. You knew. But then I got
to yearning to come back to teaching. I wanted to come back to my high
school students. I was offered work in colleges but I had promised Dr.
Garinger I would come back to Central, and I could hardly wait to get
there. In '46, that was the fall of '46, but you know what else was
happening then? The veterans were coming back, and they needed a place
for them to use their GI Bill. They wanted to go to college, and a lot
of these were people who were first generation college students. So I
came back. I think I got out in August, and I started work in September.
I hadn't enough time to get home and get back here. As I say, the North
Carolina College Conference working with Chapel Hill, with the Director
of Extension, which was located in Chapel Hill, decided that they would
have to open some centers to take care of these veterans. Dr. Garinger
worked to get one of them here in Charlotte, and it was in the same
building that I was teaching in at that time, over at Central High
School. And so, when I reported to my duty he said, "We want you to
teach the engineering mathematics for the
Let me ask you, before I talk to you more about Charlotte College, you
lived in Charlotte for several years on and off before Charlotte College
really began. Other Piedmont cities had developed universities—some of
them through the state like Greensboro or Raleigh, and others like
Winston-Salem or Durham had private universities—but there is no real
university here in Charlotte, and I wanted to ask you for your
assessment of
Well, it really was very hard for us to understand why this most populous region, where we had more than twenty-five percent of the high school graduates within commuting distance of this area, why a university had not developed. I know some of the stories. But we knew that we had to have a university, either publicly or privately supported. That's exactly why we tried everything we did to move so that we would be able to get this institution that was very much needed in the city and area and state. It's a service to all.
What were some of the stories about why a university hadn't developed?
Well, you know people will tell tales that say, "Oh, Chapel Hill and State want all the money up there. They just want your area to pay thirty percent of the taxes." You have this tremendous population needing to be served as long as you pay the taxes. They get the income to operate those institutions in the effective manner in which they operate, and they are going to be very satisfied. They don't go pushing to get a permanent institution.
And there is nobody comparable to one of the Dukes in Charlotte?
Well I'm not going to say that this is a true story, but I know that in
the early history of the location of Chapel Hill, if you go back to—what
was it, 1789—I understand that there was a real push to get the
university here at that time.
Where is the Plaza area?
Do you know where Hawthorne land is? Do you know where Presbyterian
Hospital is? It's in that general area but on out to the north. He tried
to get land, and he felt that the landowners were jacking up the price,
and he said, "Oh, well, thank you," he would go back to Durham. This is
a story we have heard, too, that we lost Duke University because of the
What kind of impact did it have on
Well, first of all, it seems to me, there were people who needed higher
education whose families could not send them to these institutions. The
nearest one to us when we became a higher educational institution was at
Greensboro, Woman's College. It was still a woman's college. The first
year we operated at that old college center we had more students coming
to us from old Tech High School, where the mill area of the city was,
than had gone from that high school in its twenty-odd years of history.
You see, the availability. I can tell you where
Yes, I think so, too.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
We were talking about the beginnings of Charlotte College, and you had talked some about how individuals had come to the college who wouldn't have had a chance before. What kind of impact did the lack of a university have on the city's intellectual and cultural life and the city as a whole?
Well, it's hard to answer that one. It's hard to measure that. You know, we know that there were parts of Charlotte, the southeastern part of Charlotte, where those young people from that area afforded the best education. You couldn't find better educated people than those people. But, it seems to me, that a community is the poorer when one of its citizens is able to receive a broad education, and therefore to make a greater contribution to life, [rather than] for them to be denied it simply because they were born in a section, in an area, where they didn't have those opportunities. We found there was just nothing wrong with those people from north Charlotte and from the Harding High School area. They had good minds, and they had the ability to do the work. They just had parents who were not able to financially afford to send them to college.
We found that we could send a student in those days to Woman's College
for less than it took to go to Queen's. You'd say you had Queen's here,
but Queen's was a woman's college, and, you know, mainly the people we
served in the early years were men, male students. It just hurts to
think that you've lost the parents of our first students but, you know,
we know that they were first generation college students. But already we
have seen educated the sons and
Do you think the college has made any kind of negative impact on the small colleges like Belmont Abbey or Davidson in the area?
I do not believe it because they were not getting these students. They were not serving them.
They were too expensive?
It was too expensive and maybe the program that was being offered was not
the same program. You see, a lot of ours wanted engineering. It was not
offered at either of these places, you see. We worked very well with
Davidson and with Belmont Abbey. I remember when we got our first
building down at the old Central High School campus—it was built back in
about 1857—we had an electrical laboratory which we shared with
Let's talk about the beginnings of Charlotte College, when this extension program began for the GIs. Did you have any inkling then that that would lead to the establishment of a university?
Well, you know, you didn't know. You knew that it was doing for us some of the things we needed to have done. We knew it was not enough. That first year we just offered freshman work. We had twelve centers in the state. We had 274 freshman students enrolled. The next year we knew that those 274, a lot of them, were ready for sophomore work but we knew they could not get it. There was no way they could have gotten it through any other place. So we worked very hard in the summer of '47 to get permission to do the sophomore year of work. We were able to get permission.
And Charlotte was the only place that did get that?
The only place that was allowed to do the sophomore year of work was here. I was at Duke that summer studying, continuing to work.
Were you still working toward the doctorate?
I was just taking additional work that summer. I was taking work there. It was good I was there because Charlie Bernard, who was head of the center the first year, had asked me to try to see Dr. Hillman. Dr. James Hillman was in charge of the—what was program he headed? Anyway, it was under him. The director, no, it wasn't the director of extension—he was with the North Carolina College Conference. Anyway, I know that we had to work through him to try to give him a feeling of the need that we felt. He understood it and was able to work with the university and get permission for us to offer the sophomore year of work. Then, in late August, we found that Charlie Bernard was leaving us. He was going back to Chapel Hill to work on his doctorate. So Mary Denney was with me that summer at Duke. She was our first full-time professor. We came back a little bit heavy-hearted because, you know, we'd gotten permission to do the sophomore year of work, and the institution was given that permission, and yet Charlie was leaving us. So the university and Dr. Garinger said that I would just have to be the Director of the College. The director was the person who was in charge of the operation of our branch. So, you know, I just couldn't understand why I was chosen but you had to do it. Dr. Garinger said so. He was my boss.
Did you want to do it?
Well, you know, I knew it had to be done, and yet I didn't know how to do it. But I said, "Well, I'll just have to do it if he says so." So, I had one month to get ready to go with the sophomore year of work, and the recruiting had not all been done for faculty or students so we had a busy, busy month. We opened that fall, and we had 304 students, and we got our sophomore [program] launched. Five centers were left, and we were still the largest of all, indicating that there was a real need here. Then, the next year, there were only three centers left. You could see that the university and the college conference knew that the need was being met throughout the state. But our enrollment was still large, and we were larger than the two other centers combined.
So in the spring of '49 they said that they were not going to continue the college centers after June 30th of '49. That was a very sad day for us. But it was an odd numbered year, and the legislature was in session, and we knew we had to. So we were able to get legislation prepared, introduced, and passed to stay alive.
How did you do that?
It took all the effort we could muster. You know, it took teamwork. First of all, you had to sell your community on it.
So you went to the legislators from Charlotte?
Yes, you had to work with the school board because it was the entity
under which you had to operate. There was no other agency. Then we came
under the school board, you see. At first, that's where we were. We
gradually got into our board but
So you were starting a separate. . . .
entity for the blacks, but they were given the first year of college work
and the second year, at least at
And there was no problem with the community? The white community didn't object at all?
No problem. We didn't go out and put it in the headlines. We didn't do it in private. We just didn't publicize it. I mean, there was no reason to publicize it. It was a normal operation, we felt. So we did have that first year that course in sociology, and all the public health nurses were there. I worked very closely with the black college.
At first, it was called Carver College, and they operated second ward. I
know that the head of that school was Dr. Brown. Of course, he could
drive a pink Cadillac. He had his doctorate but I still had to work with
them trying to keep the finances right for both schools, you know.
Gradually we strengthened our program. The thing that we were able to
get done that was the most help for us—we were under the school board
and they had very little time for us. There were too many war babies
born, not too many, but there were many war babies born, and they had to
get buildings and teachers and money to supplement teacher salaries.
They had a tremendous job with that aspect of educational needs, and
they just had very little time for us. But I was able to get them to
name us an advisory board. I had people like Dr. George Heaton, Woody
Kennedy [W. A. Kennedy], who helped us to find our beautiful land. We
had Murray Adkins, a tremendous fellow, for whom the library is
named—people of this stature, Pat Gilchrist and others, on that advisory
board. The advisory board was very aware. They met with us regularly.
They knew our needs. They knew what we were doing. They knew our
problems, and they were
And that had to last you for six years?
It had to but we didn't know. Each year we'd think we could persuade them
to have a tax election, which was provided for in the legislation. So
finally, I remember at the meeting of the advisory board
Now, this was a tax levy for the property taxes, not sales tax?
No, property tax, for the city. We were under the city school board. You see, we had two separate boards—the county school board and the city—but we were under the city because we were both operating in the city in city high school buildings.
Now, Brown v. Board came out in May of '54. Was that
before the election?
It must have been after the election. Anyway, I don't remember that.
You don't remember any conflicts there?
No, no conflicts. The election day came in May of '54, and Eisenhower was here, and there was a picnic in the park. We struggled so hard to get everybody to go to the polls to vote. When that vote was over, we had won it by 600 votes. That's all. But we won it, and that gave us our first tax support, in May of '54.
Let me turn you back and ask you about 1949 when you were lobbying the legislature. Did you go to Raleigh yourself?
I'm sure I did. I'm sure I did, and I'm sure I did in '65. I know it. I was there. I had to. I remember '65 better than I do '49.
I just want to try to ask you about all along through your career. You'd been doing your own kind of individual work, but when you became the director of Charlotte College, you had to take on a wider public role and work much harder at persuading people to support something. How did you begin to learn how to do that?
I guess it was in the school of experience. I mean, you just did. I don't know. I knew that we had to have the support. And, you see, working with that advisory board, I realize that you couldn't have been on just one body that had all these other responsibilities.
The school board, you mean?
Yes. We just could not depend on them, and so I knew to ask, I will
You attend Myers Park Baptist Church?
Well, I wasn't in Myers Park Baptist Church always.
I was just wondering how you met with people and made contact with people that you chose for the advisory board. Was it through church?
I knew Dr. Heaton through the church, and I was in the church by then.
You see, my father had died in '49, February '49, and my mother had come
for us to live together. I had always kept my membership down home at
the little old country church because my brothers and sisters had all
left and felt I wanted to be with my parents. That was probably not a
very good way to think about it but that's what I did. So when she came,
you know, from a little rural church—where I was baptized in the
With the location of Myers Park there must have been some very powerful members in that congregation.
Absolutely.
How did you meet people beyond that congregation?
You know, some of these people, for example, Woody Kennedy, was not a part of that church at all. But he was so powerful—he was with Wackey Industries. Was an N. C. State graduate, and he knew that Charlotte needed an engineering school. This is what he knew, and he was so dedicated to trying to get a program of that type here, and other programs as well. I knew of his interest, you know. He didn't fail to let you know. I knew of Pat Gilchrist's interest. He was in chemical concerns.
What company?
I can't tell you that.
How did you meet these people? Were you involved in other kinds of community activities?
Well, I was involved in the community. I had to be involved in the community. You know, I know that you accepted responsibilities in the community as well as in your church.
What kind of responsibilities, United Way sort of things?
Well, I worked with United Way. I had one year that I thought, "Well, how
in the world can they ask me to do it with all I have to do?" I had
charge of the women's division for the
Had you been involved in any of those kinds of activities when you first came to Charlotte?
I was involved in the church there.
It was only after you became director that you expanded?
I'm sure it was. Except I know I was interested in cultural things, and I was always having my tickets to the community concert, things like that, you know.
As director, part of your strategy was to. . . .
Well, you worked with community agencies, you know.
. . . develop a network of support. You made your advisory board your own kind of personal board and to be your kind of lobbying agent with the general assembly and fund raising.
And with the community, yes. Well, the main fund raising at that time was
to try to get that tax support. That was the first thing we had to do.
The bonds came later, and we had to extend the bonds to the county in
order to get state support. You see a tremendous network of people
working. The engineering club was always a friend from the very
earliest. I remember some of the Rotary Clubs. I'd go and speak to them,
you