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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-0069, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Grace Jemison Rohrer was born in Chicago in 1924. Eventually she moved with her family to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In 1942, Rohrer entered Western Maryland College. Rohrer studied to become a teacher, but taught for only a few years before she and her husband decided to have children. When she was only 40, Rohrer's husband died and she decided to go back to school so she could better support her family. After earning her master's degree in history, Rohrer experienced her first overt case of gender discrimination when she was not hired to teach at Guilford College in 1969 because she was a woman. Following this setback, Rohrer accepted a job heading up the Learning Foundations through the Centenary Methodist Church and with the Mac Wood School for children who were "perceptually disabled." In the early 1960s, Rohrer had become involved with the local Republican Party, serving as her precinct chair in Forsyth County. During the 1960s, Rohrer helped to establish the Republican Party in Forsyth County as North Carolina politics shifted to re-embrace the two-party system. Rohrer describes in this interview what she perceived as the prominent role women played in the reestablishment of the Republican Party in the state. During these years, Rohrer was actively involved in advocating for women to have a more prominent role in politics, and in 1971 she helped to form the bipartisan North Carolina Women's Political Caucus (NCWPC). Increasingly intent on campaigning for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, Rohrer threw her support behind James Holshouser and his gubernatorial campaign in 1972 because of his public support for the ERA. Because of Rohrer's work in local politics and with the NCWPC, Holshouser appointed her as the Secretary of Cultural Resources in 1973 after his election, making her the first woman to serve in a cabinet-level position in North Carolina. Rohrer discusses her dedication to women's issues and the Equal Rights Amendment. Although loyal to the Republican Party, Rohrer argues that her first loyalty was to women; she thus worked amicably with Democratic women in order to promote women's rights.
The first woman to serve in a cabinet-level position in North Carolina, Grace Jemison Rohrer first became involved in politics in the 1960s, organizing the Republican Party in Forsyth County, North Carolina. Rohrer later joined forces with Democratic women in order to establish the North Carolina Women's Political Caucus (NCWPC) in 1971. In 1973, Governor James Holshouser appointed her to serve as the Secretary of Cultural Resources. Throughout the 1970s, Rohrer advocated for women to have a more active role in politics, and she actively supported the Equal Rights Amendment.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is Kathy Nasstrom with the Notable North Carolinians Project, interviewing Grace Rohrer on March 16, 1989. Would you tell me first a little bit about your family, where you were born, where you grew up, and a little bit about your family background?
My family came from the midwest, from Chicago. Both my mother and father were born in Chicago, and I was, as well as my two brothers. My father worked for Western Electric and was transferred to various places. So we lived for five years in Ohio, moved there when I was eight. Then he was transferred out to New Jersey, and we lived there for a while, and then he was transferred down here to North Carolina, to Winston-Salem. So it was a childhood where I lived in a variety of places, all of which added something to my background. In Ohio we lived with my grandfather, and it was in a small town. We were very free. We lived on the edge of town, and we wandered the woods and the fields and the streams. I look on that as a very rich time. We moved to New Jersey. That had it's contribution. We lived in a bedroom community, outside of New York, but it was like a small town. Everybody knew everybody else, and we made some very close friends. In fact, my mother and father considered the friends they made there probably the closest, other than those that they grew up with, and kept in touch with them.
I had two brothers, one's older and one's younger. My mother was not
highly educated, degree-wise, in fact, did not graduate from high
school. When she was in ninth
What year was it that you entered college?
1942.
And where did you go, what school?
I went to Western Maryland College in Westminster, Maryland. My father gave me four colleges to choose from, all Methodist colleges, and I chose Western Maryland just because reading the catalogue it felt good. And that's how we chose the college. My brothers went to Ohio Wesleyan which is another Methodist college, although one brother did not stay there. He transferred to Georgetown.
Somewhat related to that, when you graduated from college then, what did you think you would do with your life? You say you got married a week later. What kind of plans did you have at that stage?
No real plans as far as a career was concerned. I didn't expect to have a career. I did teach for a couple of years until I got pregnant. But it never occurred to me that I would continue to teach. I had a child. I stayed home and took care of the child, which I never regretted. In fact, I never went back to work, expect for a couple of months when I filled in for a teacher, until my youngest child entered kindergarten. I went with him (the youngest) and taught in pre-school.
Oh, at the school.
At the school where he was at. So we went and came home together. And it wasn't until after my husband died that I worked full time. Because that pre-school was just mornings from eight to one.
How old were you when your husband died?
I was forty.
And then how old were your children at that time?
Well, Bruce was seven, and Donny was twelve, and David fourteen.
If you don't mind saying, what impact did your husband's death have on you in terms of what you pictured would happen next in your life and your plans at that stage?
Well, what I did was go back to school and get my Masters in history. I decided I wanted to go back to teaching even though in growing up, women's role was very narrow, perceived very narrow. You could be a teacher, a nurse, or a home economist. Those were usually the three things. I was a natural teacher. So that was what I probably would have been regardless of what would have been open. But at that time I had taught third grade and fourth garde and pre-school. I decided I would like to teach at the college level. I have a strong interest in history, and I went back and got my Masters in history. However, in trying to find a job in that, I was not very fortunate. I went to one college—I've never revealed the name of this college, but it was Guilford College, a Quaker college in Greensboro—to explore the possibilities of getting work there, and they said they'd never hired a woman in their history department and probably I wouldn't stand much of a chance.
What year was this?
That was '69. I graduated right after that, and I went home and told my
father this. And he was flabbergasted. He may have, you know, at one
time felt that women's roles should be limited, I don't know. But I was
very special to my father, and
Then, I don't know why or how this happened but a minister came to me, an associate minister of Centenary Methodist Church, and asked me if I would set up a child development center for the church, which is a fancy name for daycare. That was the only thing on the horizon so I did. I put that together and it was very successful. And out of that came an offer to head up Learning Foundations by two members that went to that church. They had seen the work I had done there. This was a program for underachievers.
Of what age?
Any age.
But younger than high school age?
No, I had an ambulance driver come who had such difficulty spelling. And
he had all these medical terms he had to write down and so forth. I
worked with him in trying to help him break down words and listen to
sounds so he could improve that. So we had adults as well as high
school. Probably the majority were high school. That's how I got into
this Mac Wood School, because a lot of these children were perceptually
disabled, and they were not functioning in public schools. The
And that's into the public school system, is that right?
Yes.
And what year was that law passed, or else, what year was it then implemented in North Carolina?
It was in the early seventies. I'm not sure what year it exactly was, because I had gone on to Raleigh. I directed that school for a year or so and then . . . was asked to come to Raleigh by the Governor at that point, Governor Holshouser.
Right. Actually, and this then gets into, as I was looking at your resume, the start of your political career. So I'd like to stop at this point and ask you to think back on your family background and what had happened up to early 1973 when you went into the Holshouser administration. Is there anything in your background, up to that point, that led you into politics, any person or any event that sparked your interest?
In the late fifties, or during the fifties, I had been asked—I'm a
musician—and I was asked to conduct a choral
So we're still in 1958 here?
Yes. In 1960 I was precinct chair . . . and worked my tail off. We called
on about a thousand homes within that, handing out literature on people,
and it was a Presidential election, of course, that year and Forsyth
County, our Mt. Tabor district, precinct, I should say, went Republican,
for the first time, and then I was on the county committee as precinct
Chair. I was on the county committee, and one thing led to another, and
in '64, the Party came back and asked me if I would run for County
Commissioner. Well, my husband was not doing at all well at that point,
and I refused, and they said, "Would your father be interested in
running for the House?" I said, "Well, let's go ask him." So we did, and
he just jumped right at it, and years later, after he died, I found . .
. I went through his papers,
And so he was a Representative from what district?
Forsyth County.
This is interesting to me because I've heard people say that when Holshouser was elected in '72, that marked the time when North Carolina could be characterized as a two-party state. I suppose I should start by asking would you agree with that assessment?
Not really.
How would you, not so much locate an exact time, but how would you describe the process by which North Carolina became a two-party state?
Well, it became one step at a time. Let's see, I think it was in the
early sixties. It may have been with the 60s election. Guilford County,
which is the county next to Forsyth County, went completely Republican.
The problem is, and I was talking about how we had put up qualified
candidates, and the other side hadn't, in Guilford County, it was . . .
well, let me back up. When you had no hope of winning, and you put up
candidates, you get anybody who will put their name on the ballot
because you hope maybe there will be some kind of a fluke that somebody
will get in. Well, what happened in Guilford County,
When I think about what you've said, that a lot of the groundwork for bringing Republicans into local offices was done in, am I right in saying, the very late '50s and through the 1960s.
Yes.
Were many of these local and precinct workers women? What role did women play in that transition?
I think women played a fairly important part in it. And I can only speak
for Forsyth County. No woman achieved county chair at least in Forsyth,
although in some of the other counties they did. I ran for vice-chair of
the state party and won. And the reason I ran, I ran in 1970, the woman
that was vice-chair, the only thing that was important to her was that
she be at the head table. She had no vision of what her opportunities
were in terms of women. And so I ran, and it surprised people. I wasn't
that well known, but the Forsyth delegation, led by my father, lobbied
the convention, and I won. And the woman who was Republican national
committeewoman was Thelma Rogers, and she pretty much controlled the
vice-chair, who was Helen Verbillio, and Helen did what she was told.
But Thelma Rogers was a real feminist, although she might not have
appreciated that name. She did fight the bias against women within the
party, and people hated to see her coming. Well, when I came in, she had
no control over me because we had no relationship. And she was very
difficult at first until she realized that my goals were the same as
hers. Then we became very close partners in this effort to pull women
into significance within the party. And she backed me all the time. In
fact, there were times that she would come to me and say, "Maybe you can
do this. Looks like I can't." And I backed her. She's dead now. But she
did a great deal. She and I and Charlie Griffin were the three
Republicans that worked very hard for establishing a North Carolina
Women's Political Caucus. You're talking about names, Mary Charles
Griffin is another person who
It sounds as though, you mentioned, I think your phrase was, "She didn't realize that we had the same goals at that point." What would she have thought your goals were? How would she have thought they differed from what she wanted to accomplish?
I can't really answer that. She was struggling so hard within the party [that] to have somebody, my perceptions, to have somebody come in that she could not control and count on, was disturbing to her. And when she found out we were working for the same things, then that threat was lifted. She didn't have to control me. She attacked me at one meeting, one of the first board meetings. As vice-chair I was automatically a delegate on the executive board of the Federation of Republican Women. And boy, did she let me have it. And I just stood up and very calmly said, "Well, this is what I hope to accomplish," and hoped that she would be willing to work with me. And gradually that worked out.
What would you say you were hoping to accomplish at that point?
Well, I encouraged women to run for office. I encouraged them to run for
the county chairmanships. In fact, I was pushing so hard that when I
would call up a county chair, the first thing he probably would say was,
"I'm working on it. I'm
And I'd say, "Yes, I know you're working very hard at it." It wasn't so
much that the men were against it. It was that it had never occurred to
them to push women. Or "Do you really want to do that?" That was sort of
the impression. Many of the women, they were involved with were in the
Federation of Women's Clubs. And I'm sure the Federation has trained a
lot of women, as the Democratic Women does, for roles in politics. But I
didn't come up through the Federation. I came up through the precinct
organization. I came up through the party. My whole approach to politics
was lots different than those women. The Federation was more the social
club with their hats and their white gloves, and I had gotten my hands
pretty dirty, walking the streets and calling on people and running
campaigns. And it was trying to remove them from that into the actual
function of the party that was my goal. And with the men seeing the
Federation as it was, I think there perception was, "Well, these ladies
are having their fun. They're not interested in really getting
involved." So it was pushing the Federation and pushing the party to
bring women into decision making areas of the party. I was chair of the
state party for a short time, and at the convention that I reigned over,
and all the committees, half of them were women. But I appointed half
women and half men, pulling in a lot of women into committees that
hadn't been done before. And had I stayed on, and that's another story,
I would
You mentioned a little earlier the North Carolina Women's Political Caucus, and I think of that as the first time that Democratic and Republican women came together in an organization. But again, that may just have been what I've been told. Is that true, and would you describe that process?
It was true. I got a call from Martha McKay, who I hope you're going to interview.
Yes, she has been interviewed before but I'm interested in speaking with her again, and it's a matter of finding the time to be in Washington for that.
I think she's pretty much around here now.
Okay.
Martha McKay called me up and told me what she wanted to do, organize
this Women's Political Caucus, and talked to me about where she was
coming from. After about a half hour, she said, "I think we're pretty
much on the same wave length. Would you join me in this?" And I said,
"Yes, I'd be glad to." She said, "Well, I'm also going to call Thelma
Rogers." And as I said, Mary Charles Griffin was the other one. Marie
Rowe may have been in on that. I think Marie probably was. Donna Yon and
Marie were very good friends, both from Charlotte. So there was the four
of us, which represented the Republican end of it. They had a meeting in
the fall of '71 which I didn't get to. I had been out to Memphis on a
political meeting and I came home deathly sick. I don't think I've ever
been so sick with a cold
Before we get into the Holshouser administration and your work there,
which I do want to spend some time on, one last
We do feel that it played a part in his election, because the women went out of there . . . They were annoyed at Skipper Bowles. These were women who had influence. They had constituencies. And they went out of there with an attitude, you know, the fact that he [Holshouser] answered all their questions. They couldn't fault him on anything he did, and he stood up there and had the courage as well as the interest to be there. And I think it did have an effect. The other thing that went for him was the fact that Skipper came out of a very wealthy family and was pouring money into the campaign. This is an economical, especially at that time, state in which people were thrifty and careful about their money because they didn't have a whole lot of money. And to see this person trying to buy the governorship, as it was perceived, hurt him. But I think it also hurt him because he did not appear. And most of the women that were there were in the leadership at that time [and] feel the same way, as far as I understand.
Was Holshouser's appearance at the meeting at Duke in 1971, did he sway very many Democratic women at that point, do you think?
Well, there were mostly Democratic women there.
Do you think they turned around and then voted for him, or is that just too hard to say?
At that point, and this was in January of '72, the issue was women, and there was a commitment that we were going to vote for those candidates who were either women or men who supported women. And of course, the Equal Rights Amendment was involved in that too and Holshouser had come out to be for it. And we were going to put those things above party. I voted for Democratic women. I worked for Democratic women. I worked for candidates who were going to support the Equal Rights Amendment because that's one of the basic points of establishing the Women's Political Caucus. Jane Patterson probably, or Betty McCain, probably did not. Now, I don't know about Betty. I know Martha McKay worked for me, and she gave me a fund raising party and got in quite a bit of trouble with the Democratic Party because of her support for women over party loyalties. It was loyalty to women. And when you have someone in the leadership like a Martha McKay that is doing this, this influences others. And she invited Democratic women to the party. They weren't Republicans, and they all gave me checks toward it. So this was the kind of thing that was going on at that time. That was saying, I ran in '72. That's why I'm . . .
I'm thinking now, and this was something that, as I was imagining talking with you about it, I'm wondering what it was like for you in early 1973. Holshouser was the first Republican governor in seventy-five years or so, is that right?
Of this century.
And you were the first women who was appointed to a cabinet level
position in his administration. So there's this
Well, the first time I met with my immediate staff, the Division Heads
and so forth, the fear that was in their faces was shocking to me. I was
just not prepared. I thought "I'm a nice person. Certainly they must be
happy to have me in here." They were scared to death, and I said, "I'm
not planning on any changes. I don't know enough to make any changes. As
I learn the ropes and how things are going, then . . . we will talk and
see what changes need to be made in order for you to do your job better
and what you need from me and then everything's going to work out." I
tried to alleviate that, and that's what I did, and for six months I
took, I met with everybody personally. I took notes. They gave me an
idea of what their function was and where they were and what their needs
were, and I made very few changes as far as replacing people. And
Holshouser did not push that. Of course, he had people he wanted to work
in, but we were pretty much free to work that out for ourselves. It was
different with Martin . . . Then, of course, I had to deal with the
Legislature, and when I went in, I went in around the first of January,
I forget the exact date. It seems like it was the fifth. Three weeks
later the Legislature came to town, and I was to present a budget to
them. Well, of course, the budget had been prepared by my predecessor. I
tried to get it in my head. It was too late to do anything about that.
It was already printed and in the hands of the Legislature. So I had to
jump in and deal with the
And who is that person?
Mary Cormick. C-O-R-M-I-C-K. And she knew where the bodies lay. She had
her people that got things done, and she knew power and knew how to use
power. I learned a great deal from her. In fact, just to keep her under
wraps, or under control, I had to learn a lot from her, but if I needed
something or if I needed to deal with a Legislator, she could tell me
how to deal with him and how to get to him and so forth and so on. And
she said to me, "I'm a Democrat." But she said, "I'm loyal to whoever is
in this office because that's my job." And we got along great, in fact,
we're still good friends and see each other fairly often. I also had an
excellent secretary. When somebody would call up and want to see me, she
would say, "This is so and so," and give me some background on him, "and
he probably wants to see you about this because of this and this and
this." So I had good help, and I was able to develop loyalty and good
support within the Department, and I moved . . . I'm not a person who
jumps in. I'm not impulsive. I study things through and move carefully,
and that paid off because when I did move, there was good justification
for it and rationale, and it was accepted. So it really turned out that
it wasn't as difficult as you might assume, plus the fact that I was so
naive about what I was
Then you knew. I'm thinking, too, as you've just been talking, we didn't make a note for the transcript that your position was that you were Secretary of the Department of Cultural Resources.
Yes.
I'm curious, too, as you describe this transition. The two people you've mentioned so far, the business manager and your secretary, were women. What was the make-up of your staff and the people that you worked with? And then, how did they respond to having a woman manager?
They didn't seem to have any problem with me being a woman.
Within the Department of Cultural Resources you have three Divisions: you
have the Division of Libraries, you have the Division of Archives and
History, and you have the Division of the Arts—well, I made it into a
Division. There were numerous agencies within the Department that dealt
with the Arts. You had the Arts Council and the Symphony and the Art
Museum and so forth . . . the only person who really had a problem about
me was H.G. Jones who was Head of Archives and History. His problem, I
don't think, was so much that I was a woman but that I was not a
professional in his eyes, although I had a Masters in History. He was so
afraid, well, he had lost a great deal of power with the reorganization
of state government. He had reported directly to the Governor, and he
and Governor Scott were very close. Scott pushed, and Holshouser
supported him, the re-
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
H.G. Jones had said to me that if he perceived that the professionalism was going to be in danger, that he would take a leave of absence and work on the outside. The governor said that if he did that, he was fired, because the governor was strongly for reorganization, and he was not going to have somebody working for him that was going to work against it. So what I did was bring H.G. into the second phrase of the reorganization and let him lay out the professional qualities for that department, and kept him satisfied. Gradually I won him over. One other way I won him over was that I was there at seven o'clock every morning, sometimes beating him. And when he introduced me one time, he said, "She's the first one that has ever been there before I've gotten there. I've been the one who's opened the door." To him that was important. Then I thought, well, that's fine. He realizes I'm sincere, and sometimes I was there on Saturdays, and he was there on Saturdays. Archives and History was his life. So gradually I won over the people, and because they were historians and artists and librarians and so forth, I think there was less concern about the fact about my gender. Because within those professions you had so many women, probably more than in many other professions, and I was pretty much accepted. Every once in a while I would run into some biases, but I felt quite comfortable.
And your track record in those areas, it seems to me, you had shown a great commitment to education and to the arts. So there certainly, I imagine, wasn't a question about that.
Yes. I had somebody say to me, "Well, the governor appointed you, but look what he appointed you to, to Cultural Resources. That's a woman's slot." And I said, "No, that's where I was most qualified." Because I had been going off in fifty different directions all my life, and it all came together in that job, my background in the arts, the history. The only thing I didn't have a lot of experience in was libraries, but I'd been a patron of libraries if that's any criteria for choosing.
That attitude you just mentioned about a department such as Cultural Resources being a natural choice to have a woman administrator in, how widespread would you say that was?
That feeling?
Right.
Oh, I don't know that it was so widespread. It came up once or twice. It had never occurred to me until somebody made the remark.
Following up a bit on this aspect of women's issues in this administration, because again I've heard it said that Holshouser was good on women's issues, would you say that's true? How would you describe his commitment? What was accomplished in his administration?
What was accomplished mostly was the increase in the appointment of women
into decision making areas. He came out in his first state of the state
address urging the early passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. He
became a little lukewarm on it as the tension began to build up, but he
never backed off. I think he was surprised by the reaction across the
state. Of
Now when you say "we" there, who would you include in that group?
Well, mainly the Women's Political Caucus. They were behind all of the organization to get this ratified.
I'm thinking about how to formulate this question then, because it seems as though, and let me know if I'm putting too much together here, but as you describe this there was the momentum of women in politics on a number of fronts, and then you just mentioned about the ERA started taking up everybody's energy, am I characterizing that right? Did efforts stop on other fronts for women in politics or is that overstating it?
Well, there was a great deal of momentum. It's my perception that the
momentum came from the fact that we had a single issue in which there
was, it brought a lot of women together. Now, at that point you had the
silent majority. There were a lot of women out there who were against
it, were frightened by it. It was really fear that they had. But they
weren't visible in '71 and '72. They did not become visible until,
really visible, probably until the fight in '75, although they began to
emerge in '73 as we geared up for the legislative
Right. These other things, and then you mentioned earlier women's issues, would you take a minute to outline what those were? What issues emerged in the 1970s in North Carolina as women's issues?
Economic: equal pay for equal work. Political: in terms of women being elected to legislative and county seats. We didn't get into abortion. Pretty much we kept that under wraps, although there was movement within for reproductive rights. Even then what was beginning to emerge was daycare, the need for daycare. Child support. Health is now an issue, a big issue, but it wasn't too much then. I'd say mainly the issues were political and economic, although they expanded as we moved toward the National Women's Conference.
Okay, in 1975 then.
'77.
'77, in Houston. Okay, that's interesting. Because now I'm thinking I saw that on your resume, that you went as a North Carolina delegate to Houston. Would you just talk a bit about that. I think that's interesting.
Well, I was appointed, as the others were, by President Ford to head up
the state committee for the International Women's Year. And we were to
have a state meeting, and Libby Koontz, Elizabeth Koontz, was chair of
that, and we had our state meeting and elected the delegates to the
National Conference, and I was elected to lead that delegation, which I
did. I didn't get as much out of the conference as others did because I
was taking care of these twenty-some women.
Why was that?
Because there was a strong, well, this has to be just my perception
because I had watched this unfold. I think
I think now I'd have you say a little bit more about the aftermath of the conference in Houston. You mentioned briefly a meeting in Washington, D.C. afterwards. What was that about and what came out of that?
Well, the purpose of that meeting, as I remember it, was to pull everything together in terms of where we were going at this point. So in a sense it was sort of an organizational meeting. After that I was not involved, although the presentation was made to President Carter and the women that were then in the leadership and were responsible for taking this to the Congress . . . And then they had a ten year, a decade, evaluation of it, which I did not get to, in which they looked back to see what had been accomplished. I guess I was disappointed because, and it may have happened, but whoever was carrying this on had really lost contact with the states. So it was difficult to know how far it went. As head of that delegation I should have been constantly informed about the progress of that, and I was not. In fact, I even lost an awareness of who I should contact. It was just, it seemed to be, a breakdown there.
Okay, this seems like a good time then to shift the focus somewhat back to North Carolina. You say you were not particularly involved at this point. What then did become the focus of your activities, because now I take it we're in the late 1970s, early 1980s. Where did your career take you then?
That's when I went back to school to get my Ph.D. I was teaching at Salem
College, and I enjoyed that. I enjoyed
And that essentially brings you up to what you're involved with today. Would you want to describe that a little bit more, what that program is about?
Well, what we hope to do is establish an Appalachian Humanities
Institute. We are serving the faculty, students, and the community at
large, including the alumnae, developing various seminars and workshops
and conferences and so forth. One of the things I'm establishing is a
weekend college in which we will have seminars. We will invite people
from off the campus to participate. And it's getting thoughtful people
around the table to reflect on the power of ideas that comes through the
literature, both past and present, and turn those ideas into actions
that will deal with the problems that we face daily. Another thing we
seek to do is to help people develop balanced judgment on various issues
that they're dealing with daily or public policy issues. I'm working
with organizations within the University on doing seminars for local
government. For instance, within their workshops, doing a two hour
seminar on civil disobedience with law enforcement officers and using
the "Letter from a Birmingham City Jail" by Martin Luther King, an
eloquent and powerful justification for civil disobedience. And law
enforcement officers have to deal with that. Not that they wouldn't
arrest Martin Luther King, but hopefully would go in with some
understanding of what he is trying to do. Therefore, that would affect
their attitude and how they treat him. And
It does seem that there is a lot of interest now in morals and ethics.
You mentioned the Bill Moyers series. I've also been watching the PBS
series that's been on on Ethics in
No, I think it's very basic to improving, not only the electorate's perception of their responsibilities, but their judgment as to whom they would support as their candidates. If we could have enough influence so that candidates can sit down and look at present public policy in terms of, I use the word, power of ideas, that are out there, that come from writings of the past and the present and everywhere in between, that would give them some breadth of understanding of what they're dealing with. It's the human condition. Because all of politics is the human condition and how, hopefully, to create an environment in which that condition can find a quality of life that makes it meaningful. So I see what I'm trying to do is to, well, I don't know how else to say it, just broaden the whole spectrum of thought in North Carolina. And I think this is important to democracy. We're going to revitalize this democracy and to continue for it to grow and touch people in a way that it isn't at this point. You know, when you have the Ku Klux Klan on the rise and Nazism on the rise, those are . . .
Right. We have just a little bit of time left, and somewhat following up
on what you've just been saying, but also thinking about our
conversation earlier about, first of all your involvement in the
Republican Party. Has that continued? And
Well, I'm still involved pretty much in women's organizations. I'm on the
Council of North Carolina Equity. I've gotten out of the Political
Caucus because I've really gotten out of politics per se. And I am far
more Independent. I consider myself more of an Independent at this point
than a Republican because I'm going to, very carefully, and I have for a
number of years, looked at the people that I support by my vote and by
my money. And I think, at this point in my life, and trying to
accomplish what I'm trying to, that's important that I have neither a
bias against the Republicans or for them, or against the Democrats or
for them. But to be able to be objective and to look at them clearly. I
think that if I'm going to deal with people effectively that I do have
to be in that realm. I took over the party at one time when the chair
decided to become involved in the gubenatorial primary. This was when
Holshouser was running. I was for Holshouser but I had pledged
neutrality as a vice-chair. But in the first primary neither Gardner nor
Holshouser got the 50% of the vote. So they had to have the second
primary and Frank Rouse, who was a strong Gardner person, got all upset
and he took a leave of absence and went and worked for Gardner and
turned the party over to the executive director. So I called a press
conference and said I was taking over the party, that the rules of
organization said the vice-chair takes over in the absence. I was chair
for several months until this was resolved, and Frank came on back at
my
I think our tape is just about to end, so I want to thank you for doing this interview with me.
You're welcome.
END OF INTERVIEW