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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-0084, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
Activist and politician Eva Clayton grew up as the daughter of a successful insurance executive in Savannah, Georgia. She came with her husband to North Carolina, and while raising four children and working toward advanced degrees, she became a leading figure in the civil rights movement of the early 1960s. Her activism experience drew her to service, and she spent years working with economic and social development organizations in and out of North Carolina government, including the Soul City Foundation and the Warren County Board of Commissioners, on which she was serving at the time of this interview. Three years later, in 1992, she would win a seat in the United States House of Representatives, where she would serve until 2003. In this interview, Clayton remembers a career spent in community development. In addition to helping lead the effort to establish Soul City—an attempt to create a new kind of rural community—she served as assistant secretary at the state Department of Natural Resources and Community Development. This interview follows the career of a successful black woman who sought to share her vision of economic possibility and social progress with her community.
Activist and politician Eva Clayton describes her years of service in and out of politics in Warren County, North Carolina.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is Kathy Nasstrom for the Southern Oral History Program interviewing Eva Clayton on July 18, 1989. I'd like to begin with a general question about family background and if there are particular family or educational experiences you'd like to note here in terms of your interest in civil rights and the commitments that you've shown and the kinds of work you've taken on.
Well, let me just say a little bit about my background. I'm from a small
but relatively, [by] North Carolina sizes, relatively large community. I
was born in a place called Savannah, Georgia. Came from a typical small
family. There were only two of us, my brother and myself. My father was
in the insurance business, and I gather in some ways, though he was not
part owner, he was part of the leadership. He was insurance director for
the state of Georgia and had a staff of, I guess it was, 50 people. My
father only [had] an eighth grade education formally, but later went on
to take his GED and went to whatever they call the insurance institute.
So, he's what you call an itinerant business person. My mother, similar
situation, was a teacher but never graduated from college. She went to
normal college, which was in those days equivalent to a junior college.
One of the things that strikes me [about] both my parents is an undying
loyalty to one business. He worked for one company for forty-two years.
That's something I probably said I wasn't going to do. But also out of
that experience both my brother and I both said we were going to one day
own that insurance company.
Would you recount briefly your post-high school education, the schools you went to and the years you spent at those schools?
Well, I graduated from Johnson C. Smith as an undergraduate with a major in biology and general science. At that time I thought I was going to be a pre-med student. I got married and we came to Durham, and my husband's in law school. While he's in law school, I'm in graduate school in biology and did some research at the University of North Carolina. I was in grad school at North Carolina Central. Had children, and didn't go to school for a while after. I think I finished my master's, it's been so long ago, 1963? I don't . . .
1963?
I think. And I'm not recalling this, but I think that's true. Then I worked for the University of North Carolina in gastrionology for two and a half years while my husband was . . . We lived in Durham a year after that, too. We came to Warren County and again I taught school in the nearby junior college. It was called Kittrell Junior College at that time. It was a school affiliated with the church that I grew up with, the AME Methodist Church. It's no longer in existence. I got involved in civil rights. My husband was an attorney, at that time the only black attorney in our county. I became interested in law school, so eventually I went to law school. I went a year at North Carolina Central, and then went a year at the University of North Carolina. Had my fourth child, and that was the end of my law career. Those are the schools I attended in between having children.
As I was thinking about questions for this, I did sense that the time
line was that you had more or less gotten out of
I was out, yeah, I was out.
But then am I right you were working probably at UNC at that time?
Somewhat.
Would you recount what you recall about what was going on with college students at UNC at that point, what you remember from other North Carolina communities, and your perspective on it, having just recently finished college?
Although I was involved as an employee at UNC, I don't recall very much, my recollection isn't very vivid as to what happened at UNC. I do recall a little more of what happened at North Carolina Central, the students in the marches and the protests in that area. I also recall when we moved to Warren County . . . The movement takes a while, it goes in waves, and so it may be in the college campus, [then] two years and three years later it's in the communities themselves. In Warren County you were about three or four years behind the student movement. There was a movement in North Carolina called, I can't think of the name of it, it was an adjunct of the NAACP, I cannot think of the name. But they were college kids who worked to free, they called them freedom riders, or . . .
Are you talking about SNCC?
It wasn't SNCC. There was something indigenous to North Carolina. At any
rate, we requested for that youth leadership to come to Warren County
and they helped to mobilizethe backbone, but they certainly probably
contributed far more of the sustaining power, meaning they were there to
provide the food, they were there to kind of be the extra protector.
They might not have been actually demonstrating, but you found as many
women around that drugstore, around the theater, just to be eyewitnesses
if something happened to their kids, or to their neighbor's kids. They
were the ones who not only provided the food, the transportation, went
to the rallies. Men did that too, but men weren't as present or ever
attentive to some of those details as . . . The movement didn't change
anything in society, similarly, like anything else that's going on in
the South, women tend to details, men don't. That's the nature of the
difference, and so it was there, too. There were men who stand out in my
mind in warren County in encouraging . . . I
I'm interested as you describe this period of the early and middle
sixties in Warren County, if there are any particular events related to
civil rights that stand out in your mind. In
Hmm. I think there are several, and I just think people go, as
communities go, through stages. I think the period of time, I can't
think of the years or the year, when there was so much unrest in the
streets, when the young people were protesting. And the powers that be
attempted to undermine the protest by trying to deputize the black men
who were around who were young. I thought that stood out as being a
desperate act, but also it stood out in mind as perhaps the peak of the
pressure by the young people. That they were so unable to control the
crowd that they had to resort to trying to use blacks to arrest their
own children. In fact, my husband was one they approached, and there was
a
Except for more that I'm interested in what the dynamic was related to civil rights in each community. It might have varied widely. So, actually I'd be curious now about this 1968 period, because that, if I'm right, launched your interest, at least formally, in electoral politics.
Yeah, well, my being in congress, is a result of my activism in voting registration. I had four, maybe three or four years, prior to that, [when] my husband and I had helped voter registration workshops throughout the county. And my husband had run.
Oh, I wasn't aware of that. When did he run?
He ran for the state house in 1964, probably '65, because you don't run
even years. So it was probably '65 and '67, or either '63 and '65, but
he had run twice. In fact the first time he ran he was able to call for
a runoff. He wasn't a leading candidate, but out of that effort and that
participation, I was encouraged to run for Congress. Now I didn't expect
to win, but I obviously you run to win. In fact I did considerably
better than I ever thought I would have, and probably if I knew all that
I know now I probably wouldn't have run.
There was, in places like Warren County prior to my running and prior to
my coming to the county, just a great outward migration for very good
reasons. There's a book called Chickenbone Special. It
was about the trek from the south to the North for people to find jobs
and a better way of life. The
Actually what you're saying there reminds me of, or several themes that you've mentioned, tie in with what I know about Soul City, the vision of economic development in rural areas and then, if I'm right in saying as the Executive Director of Soul City Foundation, you had more work with the social planning aspects of it, as opposed to the industrial area, the building of the city. Is that right?
That's correct. However, there was a time when the Soul City Foundation, because it was a non-profit, could qualify for funds to do some building. The building that's still there was called the Soul City Company. The foundation received funds, built that as what they call an incubator. The notion was that small business would have a place to begin, to nurture, and to support each other, and then would go out into the industrial park and establishments. That never materialized, but the building was built by the Foundation. The company actually built the city and planned the roads and proposed the houses and those kinds of things. The Foundation was responsible for health care, was responsible for the cultural programs in the area, the education, the day care programs, and the one I indicated, the industrial incubator, but that's the extent of its involvement.
By saying that I may have jumped ahead of the story a bit because I think it was in 1973 that you joined on with Soul City Foundation? Is that the right year?
Yes.
Okay. What about the period from '68 to '73?
From '68 to '71, I was still actively involved in the organization that
was called Eastern North Carolina Economic Development Corporation,
establishing the day care programs and the social programs that we had.
And '71 to '73 I was with the University of North Carolina heading up
their health/manpower program, which was a consortium of schools located
at UNC for the purpose of encouraging minority students to go into
health careers. I served as director of that. Then the Foundation
opportunity came after
And what brought you to that position, what attracted you about working for Soul City?
Oh, there was a lot to attract us to Soul City. Soul City probably is an
idea that is
Yes.
So the idea's without its equal in a community that was that depressed. However, that experience did teach me a couple things. As bold as the idea is, and as imaginative as you can think you would have in motivating and inspiring, you also need to have a politics and the money. And if you have the politics, I think you can get the money. I don't mean politics in the sense of black politics, but politics in the sense of whoever's in power willing to take that risk. And that was not there consistently, you know, when the pressure got too hot or . . .
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
. . . saying that the pressure came and there was not the consistent political support. The pressure came in the form of an audit, a GAO [General Accounting Office] audit that was intense and thorough and humiliating, and all kinds of accusations with that. Didn't find one unallowable cost. They found some areas where they said there could have been [better] management. What Soul City was doing, and the complexity of what it was doing——it was an excellent audit in terms of that. But because it didn't have the consistent political support at the national level and at the local level, the first opportunity to pull the support financially. And that was so tenuous, it was so tenuous on good will and public acceptance. Of course, all business in the long run is related to markets, no question about that, but you need to have a support sufficient enough to try an idea. If it's a new idea, why do you think you're going to be able to implement it overnight? Soul City didn't have the time, it didn't have the consistent political support. It didn't suffer from ideas, it didn't suffer from leadership, it didn't suffer for a need, and, in my judgment, the project is still an economic advantage to our country and it will become even a greater economic advantage to our country.
By that you mean what has remained behind, even though the city never was built on that land?
Right. Although the city itself was never there. You have the
infrastructure there that's going to be supportive to businesses in the
future. You have the infrastructure there that
I'm thinking too in some ways we've gone a little bit ahead of the story here, too, in the sense that,
It's hard for me to live in the past. I wouldn't be doing all the things I'm doing if I had such vivid memories of the past.
That's why I'm the one with the timeline in front of me.
It was an opportunity to do something different and I am one open to new opportunities. And I grow by a variety of things and I think that's what makes Eva Clayton unique. And the opportunity was for me to be in the cabinet, or sub-cabinet, of Jim Hunt, and I was offered that opportunity and they asked if I would consider it and I said, yes, and I did.
And an interest in working with Howard Lee, I take it was part of it, too?
Oh, sure, sure. And he was the one that made the offer. Yes, yes. That was a particular delight. Howard Lee in 1972 ran for Congress, and again in 1974. And in 1976 he ran for Lieutenant Governor. And both in '74 and in '76, I worked with his campaign. I also worked in '76 with Jim Hunt's campaign. My husband was the county-wide co-chair during that. So those relationships meant that at least my name was there and some opportunity for a contribution in the providing of services to the state of North Carolina. I thought that as a challenge, you know. I'm pleased that I did it.
It seems that when I think of what was going on in the Department at this
point, a lot of it was, at least from reading the newspapers, very
controversial things. The funding of CETA [Comprehensive Education and
Training Act] and where the money went and that sort of thing, all of
which is documented to the
It accomplished a lot, but in fact what's controversial is amazing. You
do get caught up in the day-to-day, being written about or wondering,
gee whiz, what's under the dome today, or what's in the editorial pages
today. And CETA was certainly the, I don't know if it was a watershed,
but it certainly was the whipping boy. And you know, and I do have some
introspection about all of that. I don't know why I should be surprised,
but I was. It just didn't work, to make victims of poor folks and black
folks. Howard Lee is the Secretary of Natural Resources. What does it
have? It has community economic development, and I'm guessing this now,
but I roughly would say, at least 50-60 million dollars. You had the
Office of Economic Opportunity, or OEO; you had community assistance;
and you had housing finance in that area. Those four were under
community development, and I served as community development. All the
things I love to do, all the things I wanted to do, and was consistent
with my missionary zeal. Who are you helping? Where does that money go
to? Who are the recipients? Okay. Big money in CETA, big money in CETA,
big money in CETA. Money coming down so fast and many times you have to
send money back. You're knowing people in natural resources, including
land resources, environmental management, and I think maybe
But, what were our successes? We got money out to a variety of
communities. We made small grants for water and sewage they would never
have had. There are towns that are involved right now that have parks
and all. Through CETA funds the state and
It was in 1981 that you resigned, about the end of the year, late November. What were your reasons for leaving the departent?
A couple reasons. One is that I didn't think I wanted to do another four
years. And the reason I had come to that
conclusion——I knew I made a contribution, I had no
problems with that, and I must say, both Howard and the governor allowed
me to make that contribution. But there were levels of frustration that
were unacceptable for me, not necessarily by any one person, just by the
nature of the beast, you know. And I guess I've always thought I was
arrogant enough, and rich enough, I didn't have to take certain I did not feel that Eva
Clayton had to go through any enormous amount of headaches to say,
"I made my first, I made first." That's no longer
important to me, to be the first. It's factual, I was the first black
female that ever was Assistant Secretary in a department of North
Carolina. But, to have that distinction, to make a contribution under
certain conditions that were unacceptable to me as a person, I'm a
person before I'm an official. I live with my own dignity, so it was an
opportunity to keep all of that in contact, and still make a
contribution.
And then your next step was right here, to Technical Resources International. And what you've said affirms something that I'd guessed, which is that this has been probably been brewing at least as an idea for some time, [that is] to go about what you wanted to do in a private organization where you could direct and control it.
It's no different, however, from what I did in the foundations or . . . It's all about empowering people and providing opportunities.
From your resume, to me that's quite clear, because in each of the things that you've listed the descriptions end up sounding quite similar in terms of the kinds of projects that you've worked on and what your goals are. So then my question is, did you feel that in a private organization which you controlled, you would be able to direct these things a lot more? You would not have the outside forces that come at you in state government or electoral politics, you would have control over what you wanted to do?
It certainly was. Not that it always resulted in that, but the motivation
was that you have the independence that you don't have in the others.
Also I was interested in going in business for the economics of going
into business. I was interested in making money. I was interested in
demonstrating that economic development could mean that you could
demonstrate how you have a business and you hire other people. It's the
self-determination. And I think that's symbolic. I think what you do as
a person is symbolic of what your community will do, or individuals will
do, and I've been honored by a number of persons sharing with me that I
have been their model. My striking out has caused other women to do the
same thing, or even other men, other small businesspeople, to do that. I
haven't made a lot of money, oftentimes I have more debt than I have
income. It's not a nonprofit, I can't write it off. But more times than
not I have fun, more times than not. I wouldn't be coming from Warrenton
all the way to Raleigh, or going all over eastern North Carolina doing
what I do if I didn't enjoy it. I'm going toPassages, you know you go through
these passages in your life. I'm not in my less mobile passage, but I am
in my more thoughtful passage where you maximize your time and you spend
somewhat less energies working on that.
It's been eight years now, here, is that right? What are the major projects that you've worked on, during these eight years?
Hmmm. The ones that probably have been most esteemed financially have
been writing applications for local government that would enable them to
do community development. I've had larger numbers of those, and in some
ways, that has provided them the funds to do the streets, the water, and
the housing. The other major type, that's been small businesses, a
couple stand in my mind. One, a factory down in Windsor
With these eight years under your belt doing this, would you comment on the relative success of doing what you want to do through a private organization versus a large state agency.
It's in a different arena. I think I have far more legitimacy among
certain people now than I might have had before. The participation at
the state level gave me far more visibility. I'm not as confident
everyone feels that people that get appointed to head up the, have all
the experiences of
We've got a little bit of time left, so I'd like you to comment on your continued work in electoral politics, in this case through serving on the County Commissioners Board in Warren County, because it seems that almost exactly as you were coming to do the work here, you were also establishing yourself in that area of politics.
Serving Warren County commissioners has been a particularly unique
experience. Warren County is a rural county. It has many problems and
limited resources. And Eva Clayton has served as chairperson for that,
this is six going into seven years. We have made a tremendous impact on
that community. However, being a Eva Clayton or having a majority black
on the board, does not change the reality that Warren County still has
tremendous problems. Local units of governments are facing just
tremendous amount of demands, with increasingly less resources to come
from the federal government, so they're
I see that we probably just have a little bit of time left. Is there anything you'd want to add or elaborate on comments made so far?
Hmm. I think not.
Okay. Thanks very much.
Okay.
END OF INTERVIEW