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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-0057, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Mack Pearsall is the son of Thomas J. Pearsall, chair of the North Carolina
Advisory Committee on Education that created what came to be known as the
Pearsall Plan. Ratified by the General Assembly in 1956, the Pearsall Plan
allowed parents to move their children to non-integrated schools or granted them
vouchers so that they could send their children to private schools. The younger
Pearsall laments that this policy—created in the aftermath of the Brown ruling—cast him and his father as anti-black.
He argues that unlike his father's rival, I. Beverly Lake, Thomas
Pearsall had a diverse approach to race. Mack Pearsall recalls his
father's anguish over this public perception, and insists that the
Pearsall Plan served a practical purpose at the time by preventing public school
closings. Mack Pearsall goes on to discuss the racial conflicts that arose from
the merger of the Rocky Mount and Nash County school systems North Carolina in
1992. Pearsall argues that Rocky Mount residents largely ceased their resistance
to the school merger in order to attract industries to the area. As North
Carolina's economic footing has changed from an agricultural to a
global economic market, Pearsall points to the necessity of higher education for
the state's residents. Better job training and a more knowledgeable
populace, he argues, will place North Carolinians ahead of competing nations,
and will ultimately produce greater racial integration.
Mack Pearsall recalls his father's role in the Pearsall Plan, a school
desegregation strategy in post-Brown North Carolina that
allowed parents to move their children to non-integrated schools. He expresses
faith that economic progress will positively affect the state's race
relations.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is Walt Campbell interviewing Mack Pearsall in his office in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, May 25, 1988.
Well, Mr. Pearsall, I thought we would begin by just letting you talk a little bit about your career and then from there move into your family's background and then into a few specifics about your father and the Pearsall Plan. So please.
Okay Walt. Well, it's a pleasure to have you here. From a personal background standpoint I was born on March 11, 1937. Born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Born into a family that had somewhat of an agrarian tradition. My grandfather and his father started a mercantile business and an agricultural processing and provisioning business back in the late 1800s, which is the environment that my mother grew up in. She grew up in Battleboro, North Carolina which is a little bit north of here. I had a couple of uncles, or at least my grandfather's brothers, one was a physician and one started the Planters' National Bank in Rocky Mount. So from a traditional standpoint I'd say that we've been in eastern North Carolina for a long time and family-wise, have been involved in the creation or evolution of a number of institutions here. That all tends to affect your focus on life and your philosophy on life.
I, of course, went through the years of the Second World War observing
that and watching very carefully and seeing how that influences
one's outlook. I went to public schools here in Rocky Mount.
That was back during the time when they had separate but
At that time, my parents decided that my long term education could be
better served by going away to a private school. They looked at a lot of
schools out of state, ultimately choosing the Asheville School for Boys
in Asheville, North Carolina. I went off to the Asheville School at
about twelve and a half years old with my initial greeting being that
you will repeat the eighth grade because we started foreign languages
and algebra back in the eighth grade, and I had not had that in grammar
school. I spent five enjoyable, rigorous, intimidating years, I reckon,
in that environment, which back in that era, it certainly
didn't have the liberal and flexible overtones that it does
now. You stayed there, and they kept you scared to death that you were
going to fail out the whole time. I think it was part of the
Finishing that, I suppose, it was more or less preordained, in the sense
of family tradition, that you would go to UNC-Chapel Hill which I wanted
to go to anyway. And from not only going to UNC-Chapel Hill, but going
to the Deke House where my father was a Deke, and I had a brother who
was two years older that was a Deke. So I went to the Deke House and to
Chapel Hill and spent an enjoyable college career, not really very
committed to the academic side of things because basically the first two
years was a repeat of what I'd already had in prep school so
that I was able to coast. I coasted perhaps for too long and then
collided with the fact that I hadn't been tending to my
business and ultimately ended up leaving UNC-Chapel Hill to go into the
military for a short stint on the six-month, six-years type National
Guard Reservist type program. During that stint, before I returned to
Chapel Hill, I got married. And when I came back,
I decided at that time, because of a lack of focus in the undergraduate area, that I would go ahead and skip the third year and go right on to law school with the combination AB-JD degree, LLD degree. So I went out of, finished the undergraduate program and went on to Chapel Hill to law school where apparently I got pretty enthused about things and with the, let's say, the taming of my life style by being married and having a certain sense of responsibility. I enjoyed an, you know, interesting academic undertaking. I did very well. Graduated with honors; was on the Law Review.
Again, I suppose, almost in a preordained fashion—my father was an attorney who had practiced for some years. Had been a district attorney down here. Then at the time that my grandfather died, and my grandmother began to seek some advice and counsel and guidance on running the farms, he got involved in that aspect of it. So he began to be pulled away from the practice of law into the practice of business. A brother-in-law had tried it before that and didn't like it, but my father seemed to be more inclined and involved, you know, in agriculture and excited about it, and he ultimately ended up tracking in that direction. So that during my childhood years and during my early adulthood, I had observed him as a licensed but non-practicing attorney who had devoted a good portion of his time and business interests to agriculture.
But those interests had begun to spread out in the early 1950s. He got into an oil distribution business. And then through contacts with Governor Luther Hodges and Harold Makepiece and Senator B. Everett Jordan, he became acquainted with the Howard Johnson restaurant/motel franchise system. At that time Governor Hodges had as many of the Howard Johnson system franchises as any one person was allowed to have at that time, which was five.
Because my father had been involved in politics and because my father had made a commitment, at Governor Hodges' request, to come back into politics after he had left in the early 1950s, having decided that he would not run for governor…. I have seen the booth in Charlotte Airport where he pointed to me, that he and Dan Moore sat down and decided who was going to run for governor. My father had made that decision back in the early 1950s—that he wanted to return home to be with his family and did not want to be owned by the party which is a part of the process when you're elected to the highest elected office in the state.
So I observed his political activities and his involvement in
agriculture, and I suppose, it was more or less preordained that I would
come back and practice law, sort of on a part time basis for two or
three years. And then at the same time, I inherited the responsibility
for the agricultural investment side of the house. I spent ten years in
that side of the house, and it became apparent that I
couldn't run that business and stay on top of the legal end
of things sufficiently to where it wasn't
I think he had a certain commitment and emotional involvement in agriculture that I never had. My emotional commitment to business is basically that I enjoy the process, the actual business that I'm in doesn't make a whole lot of difference to be. I enjoy just being in various types of business. But he had an emotional attachment to agriculture. We used to laugh a lot because I've never found in my history of twenty-five years of being around agriculture, if you added up all the money you made and all the money you lost in that twenty-five years, you'd be behind the game. It used to be that you lived poor and died rich because you had inflation to build the values in there—that your heirs would live well if you did not live well. You know that's been deflated.
But I got, you know, I was more or less selected as lead member of the
next generation. I have a brother who's older
who's been involved in various types of landscape
architecture. He went to landscape architecture school. He's
a graduate of
This is the M. C. Braswell Company?
Yeah, the M. C. Braswell. He used to go out, and he'd ride
around on a Sunday afternoon or a Saturday and talk about
He was a great student of human nature. And I can remember to today how he used to compare the black race to the white race in terms of, the fact that blacks just don't seem to carry grudges like white people do—that was something that he marveled at. That that group of people as a race seemed to be able to overlook the transgressions that had been heaped upon them. And I think he felt a great sense of responsibility and a great purpose to see that their position in life was changed—that they were given an opportunity.
I can remember back in the 1960s when we had a farm that was adjoining
the town of Battleboro, and we were able to get the town of Battleboro
to extend water out there to that farm. At that time the FHA was lending
a lot of money for people to build
The family was part of that process because we happened to own some very key industrial land here and we sold some of that industrial land off, and I can remember how happy he was to see former tenants and their children working for Abbott Laboratories and making a good salary and being able to afford things for themselves and their children that prior generations had never been able to. They had been released from the bondage of an agricultural lifestyle which was living from hand-to-mouth where you basically produced what you ate. It was a subsistence existence. They never had any discretionary income. They never could afford the things that the people who were working in public work could. And it was that transition from total dependence on agriculture to a better balance with industry here that made him so enthusiastic because he saw an opportunity for these people to upgrade their own lifestyle. That was something that I experienced, and I watched him do that. Watched the pleasure that it gave him because it was part of his political and part of his sociological philosophy.
When did you sell the industrial property? Was that early '60s.
We started selling industrial properties back in the mid-1960s. When I got back here, one of the first things that we did was sell off 100 acres of land to Abbott Laboratories which has turned out to be the largest single employer in Rocky Mount with over 2,000 employees. They're getting ready to make a major enlargement. They're a tremendous corporate citizen, etc. They have changed the landscape in this area for so many people, and they are obviously an equal opportunity employer. It's just been phenomenal what has happened there.
Did you lose any of your farmers to Abbott Laboratories, or most stayed on the land? Do you know?
Well, I think that's happened more in the last few years,
Walter, than it did earlier. I think there was a mind-set among many
people in agriculture that industry was going to steal the best labor,
and for that reason, the two could not coexist. I think those people in
agriculture today recognize that while that did happen, mechanization,
in fact, ran more people off the land than the arrival of industry did.
That even today, today even more so, they are appreciative of the fact
that with the type stress that has taken place in agriculture in the
last few years, that there are places that people can go to work in this
area without having to pick up like the Okies did and move far away. I
mean, I think that many of those people who viewed industrialization as
a negative back then, now see it to be very positive, and it allows them
to remain in the area and be employed. When in fact, if they had to rely
on their income from
How do you think your father would have felt about the changes? Would he be glad to see that it's become more industrial and less agricultural, or would he have liked to have had that balance throughout with more of a concentration on, probably, agriculture, do you think?
Well, I think he was more interested in the improvement of the lot of
mankind than he was in any one specific industry prevailing. He had the
philosophy that eastern North Carolina had been very good to the
Braswell and the Pearsall families, and that there was a responsibility
on the part of the families to return some of that reward that we had
reaped from it. And I think you find that manifested in the fact that he
convinced my two aunts and my mother to give the two hundred acres for
Wesleyan College as a part of that being a new dimension for this area
in terms of livability and opportunities for higher education. We can
talk about Wesleyan College cycling through now and what it's
going to do for this area, and I think that if he were here today, he
would be very pleased with what he would see in terms of
industrialization, and he probably would like to see more of it so more
people could have an opportunity. He would be very excited about the
arrival of Dr. Les Garner here at Wesleyan College and Les'
new mission to be a catalytic force in helping eastern North Carolina
move from where we are, which is in some form of a transition into a
global economy where our
The worldwide competition for agricultural products would have run contrary to his theory. He was a great believer in Malthus' theory that the population grew geometrically and the capacity to produce grew arithmetically. I think that is a philosophy that he and I differed on because I observed the technological revolution that was taking place both within this country in terms of productivity and what was taking place elsewhere in the world. He kept believing that there would ultimately be world wide famine, and that, for that reason, the farm community would be able to coalesce in a manner that would allow it to gain a better return to its investment. That has never taken place in my lifetime. I don't believe it will. I think we're even going contrary to that now because there are antagonistic elements even within agriculture, you know. The cow people want low corn prices, and the corn people want high prices. But that was a philosophy that he had. He tried to imbue that into me, you know, Malthus, Malthus, Malthus. There would be this great famine and worldwide, and the prices would go up, and we'd get an opportunity. But that hasn't worked, and I'm convinced it's not going to work. And for that reason, I'm moving out of agriculture because I don't have that psychic commitment that he did. I don't derive that psychic enthusiasm out of it that he did. It's nice to go out and walk around on the farms but it doesn't help to put anything on the table unless you're interested in lifestyle only.
I think it is noteworthy and interesting that a recent Wall
Street Journal an article came out that talked about the
split-level economy in the southern part of United States. And it talked
about two recent publications, "Shadows over the
Sunbelt" and "Half Way Home and a Long Way to
Go." In that article it made the very clear point, and I
don't have to go far to the east of where I'm
sitting to prove that point, that for years we had a group of
short-sighted leaders who wanted to keep low taxes and limited
government. They were people who owned land who basically were in those
elected positions or they controlled or influenced the people who were
there. And they didn't really step out front to try and
create a new economic dynamic for the next generation. And there are
areas of eastern North Carolina that are now suffering badly because of
that lack of farsightedness. The Branch Bank just did a study that shows
that out of the forty counties in eastern North Carolina, twenty-five of
them are going to get blacker and poorer in the next twenty years unless
somebody turns it around. This is a mission that Les Garner has chosen
for his college, to do something about the plight that faces eastern
North Carolina.
My father would have been very discouraged at that type of thinking, that type of small thinking, that type of racially prejudicial thinking, that type of what I call "plantation mentality"—of keep everybody down on the farms. That wasn't his idea at all.
Back during the 1940s when he got the Harvey Firestone Award, he had
employed on our payroll the equivalent of agricultural extension people,
helping the farm tenants, helping
Before going on and pursuing some of that with him, why don't you go ahead and explain exactly what you're doing now with Pearsall Operating Company. You say you're moving out of the agricultural end of things.
Well, let me describe how I got over to this side of the house.
Okay.
Basically, I had been at Braswell Farms for ten years, and I recognized that that was a cul-de-sac of no reward financially.
This was '63 to about '73.
'63 to about '73. At about the time of the energy crisis, I came over to this side of the house. Now, this side of the house was the motel and restaurant side of the house which was started as a result of my father's contacts with B. Everett Jordan, etc. and Luther Hodges. We got our first Howard Johnson restaurant franchise here in Rocky Mount in 1956, and then grew that into five or six Howard Johnson restaurants and motor lodges over time, all of them in North Carolina.
Was this to stimulate tourism or a part of that or was it… ?
Well, it was a diversification effort. It was an effort on his part to have a different footing for our economic dependency. Also, I think it was an effort on his part to demonstrate both to himself and to the community, his own economic independence. You see, he had married into a family that was wealthy by eastern North Carolina standards, at least measured in land. And I think that there were many who felt that he had simply ridden the coat tails of that opportunity and had never done anything on his own. I think, subconsciously, when he started the oil company over here as an independent venture with his own money that he had earned from his salary over there, and when he started the Howard Johnson business over here, that was a manifestation of the degree of financial independence from the Braswell family, to convey that he had the capacity to do it on his own. So that's why we got this activity going on over here. And I came across in the middle of the energy crisis to manage that side of things.
And I can tell you how dumb I really am. I remember in 1963 Leonard Rawls
and Jimmy Garner, who started Hardee's food systems, that is
right here in Rocky Mount, came to me and wanted to know did we want to
get into the Hardee's franchising business. I looked at their
P and L's and all that, and I looked at the fact that they
were making only 50% gross profit on the sale of hamburgers, and I
didn't look at the fact that they were making 85% gross
profit on the sale of french fries and drinks and shakes. And I said,
"No, I believe we've got enough going over here in
our Howard Johnson's restaurants to take care of
But I took over the Howard Johnson restaurants and motor lodges, and I recognized that that particular company was being lead by a guy who wasn't going to take us any damn where. He wasn't hungry enough, and he was a disembodied voice, you know, out of New York City belching out commands in Boston because his wife wouldn't let him leave New York because she wanted to be a part of the New York social circle. And I said, "Well, hey guys, you know, this is not going anywhere. Let's go find something else to do." About that time Hardees was about to go under financially. They employed a new CEO, Jack Laughery, who came in here and took over and turned it around. And I said, "Well, you know, fool me one time, your fault. Fool me twice, it's my fault." So when they started with the second wave of Hardees, we decided to get on board. So we started developing Hardees back then and now we've got nine. Did have twelve. We sold three two weeks ago. That's been a major development area for us—is to work on the Hardees.
But quite frankly, with the variety of responsibilities that I have, between serving on, actively serving on, the Planters' Bank Board and long range planning committee, on the executive committee, trying to run a farming operation, trying to run motels, trying to run Howard Johnson's restaurants, trying to develop real estate, I haven't had a lot of time to concentrate in any one area. And that's been, that has probably slowed the level of development that would have taken place over here. Basically, right now, Pearsall Operating Company operates four Howard Johnson restaurants and motor lodges, a Quality Inn, an independent restaurant at Nags Head on the Outer Banks, and also operates nine Hardees restaurants located in the Savannah, Georgia area, a thirteen county area down there, which keeps me busy.
But a big part of my time, because I was brought up under the philosophy
that you had to contribute something to life, you couldn't
retire from your community regardless of whether you had wealth or not,
and I've got a lot of friends who retired from the Democratic
Party because they've made a little money and joined the
Republican Party. And some of them have concentrated principally on
wealth accumulation. But my father imbued in me early on that the real
treasures to be laid up in life are not those that you can find in your
bank account. The real treasures to be laid up in life are relationships
that you develop and a sense of having made a difference. A sense of
having made some contribution to the change and the welfare of mankind
along the way. I don't say that in any self-serving way but
he believed
Do you see that happening with the school merger issue at this point? Could you tell us a little bit about the merger issue? Your role in it? Is this kind of an extension of, again, some of the problems your father might have faced with the Pearsall Plan?
Yeah, I wouldn't be so bold to suggest that it's a
contemporary equivalent but I would say on a microcosm, on sort of a
micro basis, it has a lot of similarities. What we have going on here is
a battle that I've been involved in for ten years. The battle
basically consists of the fact that Rocky Mount has the uniquely
disadvantageous distinction of sitting astride a county line which means
that it's politically emasculated in terms of its powers east
and west. Because we're not a city of 50,000 people,
we're two cities, one of 25, one of 15,000, or 35 and 15,000.
Probably about fifteen, maybe ten years ago, up until ten years ago,
there'd been a release program
Nash County for racial reasons decided that they were going to stop that
release program because they saw that what they were getting into their
system at long last were white middle-class affluent parents who had an
interest in PTAs and in their children's education. The
county decided not to let the Rocky Mount school system grow at all and
to take all those people into their system because that would help the
transition from being a rural system into a combination with more of an
urban favor to it and more political clout because these are the people
who've got political clout. Well, the reverse of that is they
locked up the Rocky Mount school system, and through white flight, the
Rocky Mount school system has gone from a system that would be racially
reflective of the Rocky Mount city population to where it's
now about 80% black and 20% white. And that is a great disadvantage for
this area because of the perception of remediality of any school system
that is that racially imbalanced. We feel, that is the business
community feels, that that perception has in fact cost us a lot of
economic development activity here because we've been
red-lined by certain national industry location firms because of the
fact that there's a controversy going on. There
My God, we've just gone through integrating one of our two
local country clubs. I bet we've got the only fully
integrated country club except maybe Chapel Hill, I would say, outside
of an area like a Chapel Hill, which is a very enlightened community
that's ahead of most areas in the state from the standpoint
of race relations. We've just gone through integrating one of
the two country clubs here in town on a full membership and utilization
basis which is unheard of in eastern North Carolina. The reason we did
it is because I was traveling on the road this summer, and Bill Friday
called me and said that Irwin Miller, chairman emeritus of Cummings
Engine Company that has a $355 million dollar in Nash County,
called him up and said that the race relations and morale of their local
plant was so bad because the black executives could not join the country
club in Rocky Mount, that something had to be done. We happened to catch
that country club at a point where it was on the verge of near
bankruptcy, and the Rocky Mount business community came to the new buyer
and said, "If you will come in with a fully integrated program
for membership and utilization, we will support you." And next
week we're probably going to give him $400,000 to
help him make that "the" club in town. Now, that is an
enlightened move on the part of this community to get shed of some
antebellum shackles. 'Cause you can't have a
community that doesn't accept black executives and expect
companies to come here. They can't
They come in and they can't even play golf. I mean, this is ridiculous in 1988. So we've been able to integrate that. And that's one of the major strides, we think, towards making this community more wide open. I got a letter the other day from the first black to play golf at that country club telling me how much he enjoyed it, and I sent a copy to Mr. Miller, I said, "Mr. Miller," I put my handwritten note on it, I said, "You know, this makes life worth living and right worth fighting for." And he sent me a personal letter back saying how much he appreciated what we'd done in Rocky Mount. But that's another manifestation of the fact that you've got a hold over in this area among some very short sighted people of an anti-black attitude. That they should be separate but equal. And you've got county commissioners in this day and time saying that blacks ought to be in separate schools.
The great advantage of the school fracas is that the values of housing on
the east side of Rocky Mount is going downhill so blacks can finally
afford housing over there. Well, that isn't what we need in
this area. What we need is, and is to our strategic advantage,
sustainable competitive advantage as we see it long term in this area,
is a superior educational system for this two-county area. Because we
understand why the northeastern
So it all weaves back to this transition of these blacks coming off the
farms and being integrated early on into this industry at menial levels,
in sewing operations and things that don't require a lot of
skills. Now, the maturation of the economy in the world and the fact
that it's become a global economy, is forcing eastern North
Carolina to face up to the fact that it is going to have to change its
ways if its going to be competitive long term from an economic
development standpoint. Because we just can't compete with
cheap labor. We just cannot do it for what they can do it for in China
or do it for in India and other areas of the world. It's
really a social-economic sort of reordering of priorities down here when
you change a country club. And that doesn't sound like big
business to a guy in New Jersey. That's big business down in
eastern North Carolina. And the school fight is over giving every child
in this two—county area an opportunity for top quality
education so we can have a labor pool that is smart enough to allow us
to be able to induce
Well, a lot of what you're saying reminds me of probably the situation that your father was facing at the same time with the Pearsall Plan. I'm not sure if all the dynamics are the same but in a way I perceive it as he was realizing that there was this transition going on between agricultural pursuits and industry, and that in some way preserving the schools was a big part of facilitating that transition. In other words, if we let the segregation issue, desegregation issue, disrupt our school system, we're going to be put back years. And we won't be able to make this transition. So that we have to provide some sort of safety or pop-off valve. Is that correct? Was he in a similar position in that way? Did he perceive those kinds of things going on? I mean, you've told me about his inherent sort of humanity towards black people, and I understand that that was probably a concern of his, too. Very much so, he had it a long time. But at the same time was he aware of what they needed to do to change North Carolina.
Yes, I think he was very pragmatic in that regard. I think he recognized
that if we were going to come into the mainstream of being an
industrialized state that we were going to have to have an educated work
force. I mentioned a few moments ago that we have never committed to the
human resource at the grammar and secondary and high school levels, the
kind of funding
My wife and I, first wife that was, and I had a major decision to make in
1960, well, it was in 1970, my son was born in 1965, and in 1971 he was
going into the first grade. That was the first year of the pairing
schools in the city of Rocky Mount. And a number of my friends,
affluent, wealthy friends, came to me and sat in this room right here
and asked me to join in the creation of a private school here, the Rocky
Mount Academy. And they asked me a give $50,000. And I told
them after I talked to my wife, without batting an eye, we told them
that they were wrong on two counts. Number one that we didn't
have $50,000 to give them, and number two that we
didn't believe in what they
Now what's happened is, this whole process of solving the
problem, the whole basis for it, is economically driven. They now feel
threatened economically because the area is not growing the way it
should grow. So now their pocketbook is pinching. So they're
coming out of the woodwork now. And one of the things about them is
they're being discredited by the opposition who says,
"Well, now you're a johnny-come-lately here. Your
children didn't even go to public school, and
you've been supporting this private academy out here all
these years. You have no standing to come in now and say how we ought to
be solving this public school problem." Well, I'm
not subject to that type of discrediting so I can stand up and look them
right in the face. My father imbued me with that. He didn't
suggest that I do that but he imbued me with that understanding that he
had. That a good solid public education system was a part of the
democratic fabric, and if you didn't have it, you would have
anarchy, and if
The difference between where he was in the Pearsall Plan and where we are is that, it was being, North Carolina was being forced to integrate its schools as a result of the Supreme Court dictates. In this instance right here, it is a move based upon enlightened self-interest on the part of the business community that it is not good business to be segregated any more. It is not good business to have separate but equal. It's not good business to have segregated country clubs because it doesn't help develop economically. So one was pushed, the other's being pulled. I think what you're seeing is the second phase of, I mean, we saw an integration of the schools back in the 1950s as a result of the Pearsall Plan and all that. And I'll tell you about, you know, what his philosophies were in a minutes. But I think it is an interesting, this is another stage of it. This is a stage where people are saying, the government isn't telling us we've got to be integrated, we've got to have unitary schools, we're telling ourselves that it's not good business down here not to have an educated public and not to have community unity and a solid unitary integrated school system. So the driving forces behind the two are quite different, and this is one where people are voluntarily coming forward and saying, "Guys, you've got to change it." His was different.
Now, I can remember this. One of the proudest things, or one of the
things of which he was proudest, was that North
Now, what my mother did, unbeknown to my father as he lay on his death
bed at Duke Hospital, was to call Governor Jim Hunt and she said,
"Governor Hunt, can you get some responsible member of the
black community to go and discuss this with my husband and see if you
can relieve his one burden, the one reproach that he did not want to go
to the grave with." And the governor sent a guy named Ben
somebody from Durham, one of his leading operatives. He went to my
father's room at Duke Hospital and they talked that thing out
and it was as if my father had had the last burden lifted from his
shoulders and could at that point in
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
Speaking of the Pearsall Plan, do you think that your father and the others perceived it, originally, as a pop-off valve, or was this something that they came to gradually, as they began to worry about the situation? In other words, when they sat down, did they say to one another, "Okay, we need something to hold the line here, and we need to get through this tough period. Let's have something that will do that." Do you think that that's the way they originated with the Plan?
Well, I doubt it. I think it was probably something that evolved. I think
that they recognized that North Carolina was going to be catapulted into
a very tension-filled environment—a major change in
lifestyles and folkways and mores. And that somehow or another,
responsible elements in this state had to come together and craft some
idea that would be consistent with North Carolina's image of
moderation. That you could not stand back and allow the rank
segregationist to step forward, and that the best defense is a good
offense. I think that's the basis on which they went. To say
they went in with it as a plan that was conceived to be a pop-off value,
I doubt it. I think they recognized that when you've got a
head of steam built up that unless you provide some avenue for people to
get relief that you've going to have a pop-off. And they
watched Virginia. They watched the defiance that went on in other
states, and they were very, Governor Hodges and my father, were very
concerned about the image that North Carolina portrayed nationally in
this whole process. And I think that if we hadn't portrayed
the type of
How did people in Rocky Mount react to what he was doing? How did his tenant farmers react to what he was doing? Did they know about it? Did he receive any sort of threats or anything? Was it just ignored?
No, absolutely, lots of threat mail, threatening phone calls, called a "nigger lover." There was an element that was opposed to integration of any form, stretch, or imagination, they were vehement and very outspoken about it. I don't think that the black community, particularly in terms of the tenant community, really had an appreciation for what was going on. I think they were brought to the party by the federal government and at that point in time, they were new to the political process. They had been disenfranchised and so new to the thought of being integrated into the overall society here, that they just didn't relate to it. And that there were certain leaders that were out there that did and who understood it, but I think perhaps even those, at that point in time, viewed it as a resistance type move.
How much contact did he have with his tenant farmers? Was that handled by other people?
Oh, Lord no. He had a lot of interaction with them, not in the disciplinary sense, but he had a lot of interaction with them at the family level. And that's what he used to do. He used to love to go out there and visit in their homes and, you know, just find out how they were doing and see ways that he could help them. He was just, sort of a mentor to them, I reckon. But at that point in time, I don't think they had any great sense of direction and destiny as to what was happening. I think they were being buffeted by the winds of legal circumstance.
Well, was there any type of rivalry between your father and I. Beverly Lake, in the legal sense, within the North Carolina community because they do seem to be at such opposite poles of this situation, and at the time it looked like they may be the two candidates running at some point—I guess that was the early '60s maybe. Was there any old sort of festering rivalry there at all that you know of?
Well, I don't know, I mean I think you've got to
recognize that at that point in time which proceeded the current two
party system that exists in fact in North Carolina, that there were two
factions in the Democratic Party. There was a more liberal faction.
There was a more conservative faction. They checked and balanced each
other and kept them honest. And there was infighting between those two
as to whether you were in the Charlie Johnson camp or whether you were
in the Kerr Scott
Well, how did your father feel about the possibility of running for governor, or did y'all ever talk about that? I mean, most reports I saw is that, you know, he really wasn't interested but if called, he would go and that kind of thing. Did you think he had an ambition to be governor?
Oh, I think everyone of us has an ego. It's just a question of
how well we manage it and, you know, how much it drives us. Most of the
politicians that I've run into, become convinced, I mean
there's a problem, and they've become convinced
that they have a solution to that problem. And they become convinced as
they hear themselves talk that probably they have a unique solution to
the problem. When they become convinced of the fact that
they've got a unique solution to the problem, then they
conclude that they are duty bound to offer themselves in candidacy to
solve this problem that they only have this unique focus on. I
don't think he ever let his ego get in the way. I think what
happened to him was he had to make a choice between family and politics.
In many instances the two cannot coexist, unless you have a wife who is
totally caught up in the political process. And my mother is not caught
up in the political process. I sit here and Jimmy Garner and Marie
Garner are very close friends of mine, socially, not politically. But I
anguish for her as I see her being drawn into the political realm
because of his ambitions and his desires to be a part of the governing
Speaking of family, how did your mother and father work out things with the Pearsall Plan? Was she, did she have the same sort of racial outlook, the same sort of liberal approach, if you will, as he did? Did she try to hold him back? Was she less liberal than he was?
No, she's a very enlightened woman. In fact, I've only really gotten to know her after his death because I always knew her as a mother up until that point in time. Beyond that point in time I have known her as a mentor and a friend, as a very intelligent, enlightened lady. No, definitely not. She supported him philosophically through out the whole process, and she would be the person to whom he would return after the abusive phone calls and the harangues and all the stress that goes on when you're fighting a very divisive issue. And I think she would embolden him to go back out and pick the challenge up again. Because she too has a great sense of fair play and what's right.
Did she suffer socially at all? I mean, was she ostracized any? She didn't receive threatening phone calls, did she?
I'm sure they received them at home. But I was away at law school. I was away in school a good part of that time so I don't really know all the details of it. I'm sure there were those who ostracized her, and those who hold it against her today. But she's such a lady and she's so confident in her own convictions and so content with her philosophies in life that she's not dissuaded to do one thing or the other. She's not influenced by that type thing. She knows what she considers to be right, and she's comfortable in pursuing it regardless of what others think. Everybody's entitled to their opinion.
Well, how about ourself, did you feel any effects from it, the Pearsall Plan and the changes, while you were at school? I mean, did anybody accost you or threaten you in anyway? Or did fellow students look at it as this is the right thing to do, or your father is doing the wrong thing?
I don't really remember many instances of it. I remember that,
you know, I took a course in North Carolina history under Hugh Lefler,
and I think, the way he treated it within his course was a rather
delicate situation for me because I was sitting in the course, you know,
and he was discussing the plan and challenging it and all that. Not
opposing it but causing, as any good professor would, to challenge the
thought of it. And that generated some conversation on the part of other
students but I suppose the greatest thing that I got out of it
Well, what do you think made your father so worried about future perceptions of what he was doing? Were there books published? Were there accusations made? What set him off to worry so much? It seems like from what you described that it did worry him right up until the time of his death, about how this would be perceived?
Yeah, it was the one single worry about how history would treat it. I
think there had been enough verbalization within the black community
where he thought that that was the general perception. And
I'm not sure that it was the general perception.
I'm not sure there was any perception there but at least, he
perceived that they thought, that some responsible
So there was no one thing that you know of then that really might have hurt him, in a way, in bringing out the incorrect perceptions as he saw it. It was just a building up over time and as things changed, more and more came out. We became more liberal as a society in general, and thereby, some sort of measures like this might have looked as some sort of obstructionist. Was it just a general atmosphere maybe that made him worry more?
No, I don't think, I think that probably what happened, I
mean, the things that stuck in his mind were things that occurred close
in point of time when the plan was introduced, when it was clearly
misunderstood by the black community as being a segregationist,
obstructionist approach. And I think the older you get and the more you
begin to realize your own mortality, that those things that worry you
tend to cycle up more frequently. And I think that that's
what brought it up. I don't think there were any latter day
reinforcements of it. I think he had never been able to disabuse his
mind of some of the very caustic remarks that had been made back at that
point in time. And they had been very stinging to him because he
considered himself to be a humanitarian, and those things were so
inconsistent with that, he just couldn't reconcile in his own
Well, do you think the Pearsall Plan would have been seen by your father as one of the high points as his life, as one of the major contributions he had made to North Carolina history?
Yeah, I would say that there were two things that I think he would, well
now, of course, he had a lot of things that he was involved in and when
he was involved agriculturally, I think he saw a lot of things, did a
lot of things that maybe were influential. But if I was going to go back
and look at the things that I, and he didn't speak a lot
about the Pearsall Plan, but I knew that it was significant and I think
history has treated it as being significant, but he was not a man to
talk about what he had done. I think the two things that he would be
most proud of, in terms of influencing the direction that North Carolina
has taken for the better, would be his involvement in the reorganization
of the higher university system into the sixteen campus
system—that was patterned after California when he and Bill
Friday and a group went out there and came back—and then the
Pearsall Plan. I think those two things have, potentially have, had in
his mind, the most lasting effects for,
Well, I think on that note, we'll end it.
END OF INTERVIEW