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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 G-0049-1, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Anne Queen was born into a working family in Canton, North Carolina. She graduated from high school in 1930 and accepted a job at the Champion Paper and Fibre Company, where she worked for ten years. During this time she grew to identify herself as a New Deal Democrat. Queen became increasingly interested in the labor movement during the 1930s and sought to reconcile its ideals with her religious faith. By 1940, she became determined to act on her lifelong desire to receive a college education and enrolled at Berea College in Kentucky. While a student at Berea, Queen was able to interact with African Americans for the first time in her life and became increasingly drawn to issues of social justice. Following her graduation in 1944, she participated in the first interracial workshop at Fisk University before studying for a year at the Missionary Training School in Louisville, Kentucky. From there, Queen continued her graduate education at Yale Divinity School. In so doing, she disproved her own earlier belief that "poor people couldn't go to Yale." Queen describes her educational experiences at Berea and Yale in great detail, focusing on her academic inspirations and the influence of teachers such as Liston Pope and H. Richard Niebuhr. After finishing her doctoral work in 1948, Queen returned to the South to work as an assistant chaplain at the University of Georgia (1948-1951), for the Friends Service Committee in Greensboro, North Carolina (1951-1956), and as the director of the YWCA-YMCA at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1956-1975). Because of her long tenure working as an advocate of social justice, particularly for the labor movement and the civil rights movement, Queen is able to offer a comprehensive assessment of the changing social landscape of the South during the middle of the twentieth century. In so doing, she offers insight into the leadership abilities of southern women such as Dorothy Tillman and Jessie Daniel Ames, the process of integration at two major southern universities, and the nature of politics in North Carolina.
Anne Queen spent ten years working for the Champion Paper and Fibre Company in North Carolina before continuing her education at Berea College and Yale Divinity School during the 1940s. In this interview, she describes her life as a worker, her advocacy of social justice causes, her experiences in higher education, and her work at University of Georgia, with the Friends Service Committee, and the YWCA-YMCA at University of North Carolina.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
It's good to have delayed this interview until now. As you know, I moved
back to the mountains in July of 1975 and before I left Chapel Hill, I
quoted T.S. Eliot from the last of the Four Quartets,
where he says that "we shall not cease from exploring and when our
exploration has come to an end, we will go back to the place where we
began and know it for the first time." And the months that I have been
back in Haywood County in the western part of the state, I've had an
opportunity to really get to know the place of my roots in a new way and
I'm convinced that Eliot is right. It is only after we go back to the
place where we began that we really get to know it for the first time.
During the last few weeks, I've been engaged in a tutoring program with
a child in the neighborhood and he had to do a paper three weeks ago on
the history of education in Haywood County. I reread and had him read a
book called the Annals of Haywood County and it has
quite a bit of information that I had forgotten about the school system
up in that part of the state. As was true in many parts of the country,
before public education, it was a privilege for those who could
Who else was in the family?
Oh, I had two sisters. My mother and my two sisters, Bonnie and Mattie.
Mattie was the youngest. By then, Mattie was in school, she was born in
1917, Bonnie was born in 1913 and I was born in 1911. We lived with our
Tri-Weekly Constitution, it's now the Atlanta Constitution and I can remember as a very young child
how much we all looked forward to the arrival of the Tri-Weekly Constitution. I can't remember much about the
Asheville Citizen-Times, we may have gotten it, but
the two papers that I remember as a child were the Tri-Weekly Constitution and the Times-Picayune. It was a New Orleans paper which was sent to us by
a family friend who had married and moved to New Orleans when she was a
very young woman. One of my fond memories of the Times-Picayune was the comics, my first New York Times, when I worked at the Champion
Paper and Fibre Company, my sisters and I read the Sunday New York Times every Sunday. In 1936, we clipped coupons from
the New York Times and bought a set of encyclopedias.
I can't remember what kind they are, we just got them out and have been
rereading them and using them to help this young boy who has also done a
paper on the Pony Express. Now, I'm helping this boy (who is twelve
years old) to come to appreciate the Sunday Times. I
get the Sunday Times every Wednesday and he takes it
to his teacher and his teacher reads from it, so this pleases me very
much.
In 1930, I graduated from high school and I went to work at the Champion
Paper and Fibre Company. I went to work for eighteen cents a hour and
very soon, the wages were cut to sixteen cents. When the New Deal came
into being after Roosevelt was elected, I was making fourteen cents an
hour, working nine hours a day. Joe Glazer has this wonderful labor song
on a recording of labor songs, which he calls "From Can't See to Can't
See", and I very much
Did you do the same job all those years?
No, I started out as a paper sorter and then I worked at the paper cutter
and then the last and I guess the best job I had was as a paper
inspector. I learned a lot during those …actually it was ten and a half
years that I worked. I came to understand some of the forces in our
society which I felt needed to be changed and I had come to the point,
or pretty nearly come to the point, before I left
But when I got to Berea …and I think that it would be interesting for you to know what the forces were that led me toward Berea …I had always wanted to go to college but I felt that the door had closed. I wish that I could remember a line in the review of Irving Howe's … what is his name? The professor at NYU who has just written this book …
The World of Our Fathers?
The World of Our Fathers. Irving Howe. The review of
that book, quoting the father of a Jewish scholar who talked about "the
doors that never opened to him?" Do you remember that? This was a review
in the New York Times. I really meant to refresh my
memory on that before this interview, but I felt that doors had closed
to me. I must say
Were they also working in the paper factory?
Well, by that time, by the time that I went to Berea, my second sister was working at the American ENICA Corporation and my third sister was working at Champion. And you know, Champion then was very much of a family plant. It was founded by Peter G. Thompson from Cincinnati. He came to Canton in the early part of the century and bought the land. Much of the land where Champion Paper and Fibre Company is located was owned by two of my grandfather's brothers, one who very much supported the sale of the land to Champion in order that an industry that would increase the tax base for Haywood County be brought in and give jobs for people. The other brother felt that he didn't want to live in a community where the environment for his children would be spoiled. So, he pulled up and moved to Clay County. Clay County is one county now where there are fewer billboards, there is no industry to speak of, but the environment is probably as clean as anywhere. So, I think that maybe my roots go back to that uncle and that has sort of helped to shape my concern for the environment.
Champion has a reputation for being kind of
Yes, it was. But you know, now the management has changed. Reuben B.
Robertson married the daughter of Peter G. Thompson and he became the
chairman of the board and I expect that the most powerful people on the
board were still Thompson-related. Reuben B. Robertson, who is a Yale
graduate, was on the board and two of Thompson's sons were on the board
and during those days, it represented, I would say, a kind of
beneficient paternalistic enterprise. It was better than the Cannons.
They built Camp Hope, which was a recreation center for people in the
county. Lake Logan … Camp Hope was named for Mrs. Robertson, Lake Logan
was named for one of the sons, who by the way, is now involved in this
Pinehurst Mortgage and Loan Company that has declared bankruptcy and
they haven't been able to get a hold of him to report his losing a
million dollars. Then there were three children of the Robertsons, Hope,
who married one of the Dr. Northerns, Reuben, Jr., who became sort of
the heir apparent to his father, and Logan, who is a physician but is
now in business. Both of the sons went to Yale. Reuben, Jr. graduated
from Yale, and I think may have gone to Yale Law School. All during that
administration in Champion, it was
But you said that there was labor union activity there in the thirties.
No, it was before that, in the twenties. I was very young. I can remember
… I have very clear memories of the sense of despair that everyone had
and …this shows how it was a very subtle effort to control the workers,
but there were some people who lost their jobs because of their union
activity and were never able to regain their jobs, but on the
I wanted to try to put together the paternalistic operation of Champion with a need for a union and also your growing social awareness of the labor movement.
Well, this may sort of get at it. There was what was called the Mill
Council. Have you ever heard of that? Well, I think this was an effort
to at least give the appearance of the democratic process for workers.
There was a Mill Council and workers sat on this Mill Council, but the
company obviously controlled the council. I'm not quite sure at what
point the awareness for the need of a union began to grow in the hearts
and the minds of people. It just may be that it was as the competition
for the paper industry began to grow and people had a deeper feeling of
insecurity. Then I think also that the social legislation that was
passed during the Roosevelt Adminstration helped to impress upon people
who worked that they do have a voice in their destiny. This, I believe,
may have contributed to it as much as anything. As I said, it was
beneficient paternalism, but I believe that it was this awareness on the
part of people and of course, when I read Millhands and Preachers, that was sort of the
beginning of my own awareness of the role that the trade union movement
has in a democratic society.
You remember when you read that?
Oh, yes. I was at Berea. It was my freshman year at Berea and I had a
professor of New Testament, Dr. Walter Sykes. He was talking with me at
a picnic one day about my experience in the paper mill and he said,
"Well, there is a young North Carolinian who has just written a Ph.D.
dissertation for Yale and I think that you would like to read it. It's
Millhands and Preachers by Liston Pope from
Thomasville, North Carolina." I rushed to the library and checked it
out. I read it and it was so revealing to me and I think that up to that
time, that is probably the book that had the greatest impact on my
thinking and I decided then that I really would like to study with that
man, but I didn't think poor people went to Yale and so I sort of pushed
it out of my mind, but it was subconsciously in my mind and then I came
to my senior year and Gordon Ross, who was chairman of the Department of
Religion and Philosophy asked me one day what I was going to do. I said,
"Well, I don't know. I can't do what I want to do, one of the things
Yes.
Well, you know Berea. You know that it was founded by John G. Fee, an
abolitionist who went to Lane Seminary, and Lane Seminary was located
right outside Cincinnati, but later became the Oberlin School of
Theology. It moved to Oberlin. He founded Berea as a school for
dispossessed or deprived
How did you get there?
How did I get to Berea? Well, yes, I'm glad you raised that question. My
sister, my youngest sister next to me, Bonnie, went to visit a cousin in
Hamilton, Ohio, and they stopped in Berea and ate at the Boone Tavern
Hotel and New Eyes for
Old Eyes, or something like that and he has such a thrill at
just walking into a library. I can remember now about walking across the
campus from the
Kingfisher?
I don't know where they get that name, but I think that it is paid for by
the oil interests. I had no professor anywhere who is superior to him.
He did his Ph.D. on Jonathan Edwards at Yale with Robert Calhoun. He
really, I guess more than anyone else up to that time, influenced my
intellectual interests. I remember very well in a course on Jonathan
Edwards, it was called the Development of American Thought, but it was
really a course on Jonathan Edwards, that I asked a question in class,
and I became very embarassed about it afterwards, because I really sort
of blundered, and he called me to his office to talk with me later and
told me not to be embarassed because this is the way you learn. This was
sort of the turning point in my determination never to leave unasked a
question which might open up new truths to me. The two courses that I
had with him, which helped to shape me and set me in the Notes
on the Mind while he was at Yale and he said that he must have
been all of fourteen. Well, this summer that I worked in Northampton, I
would just go and sit in his church and I really felt as if I were on
holy ground. Then after that brief time, I went from there to a job in
Harlem. I lived in the Bronx but worked in Harlem in what was called the
Baptist Educational Center and this was the summer that it was reported
that Adam Clayton Powell had died from a heart attack. I was in his
church the Sunday that he had the heart attack and it was reported that
he had died and I kept the phone the next day during the time that
people kept calling in at the Baptist Educational Center.
This was Adam Clayton Powell, Sr.?
It was junior, that was when he was married to Hazel Scott. I remember seeing her that day in the church. Well, that summer was really a very important summer for me in terms of helping to shape my thinking about racial tensions. When I think now about the dangers in New York as compared to the openness then, it has really moved a long way from the situation then.
I'm not sure which summer this was.
I'm sorry, it was not at Berea when I had that experience, it was between the two years at Yale. So, I'm getting ahead and I'm sorry that I misstated that.
One of the most important experiences while I was at Berea, and I guess
led in a sense to the experience at …between the two years at Yale, was
that I was a member of the first interracial work camp which Friends
sponsored in the South. It was in 1944 at Fisk University. It was the
first year that Dr. Charles Johnson's Race Relations Institute was held
and our work camp was a kind of laboratory for a pilot project in this
kind of community action and of course, it was just an intellectual
feast for us. Countee Cullen was there, Ira Reid was there, Charles
Lawrence was the assistant director and his wife, Margaret, who is one
of the early black psychiatrists, was our camp doctor. The director of
the camp was a man named Frank
No.
He's a black from Ansonia, Connecticut, who was one of the early black graduates of Yale. Clarence Mitchell's brother-in-law was a member of that work camp. There was Jane Carroll from Mebane, North Carolina, who had gone to UNC-G and then came here in the School of Public Health …
Was this camp on the Fisk Campus?
It was on the Fisk Campus and the women lived in one dormitory and the men in another and the Charles and Marie Johnson were just marvelous, it was a great experience. Margaret McCulloch was living in Nashville then. You know that she had been at LeMoyne, but she's from Nashville. She was really a great source of inspiration to us. Life was really tightly segregated and this was a daring experience.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
…I remember so well the day that I left Berea on the bus. I traveled by
bus through Kentucky into Tennessee. I left Berea in the late afternoon.
One of my jobs at Berea …and I didn't mention jobs that I had at Berea,
which may be of some interest to you. My first job, I worked in the home
of an agricultural teacher there cleaning and housework. Then when I was
a freshman, every freshman had to wash the dishes. We didn't have
dishwashers then and we had two cans of water which we brought to the
table and they had dishes and water boys. (They weren't black.) By this
time, I had gotten a job that was called a monitor and the monitor in a
dormitory would take care of the linen and the supervision of janitors
and all the students were janitors. The monitor had to close the
dormitory. It was late in the afternoon when I got a bus to Nashville. I
arrived in Nashville at four a.m. and I went up to the ticket counter
and asked where Fisk University is; and they didn't tell me where it is,
they said, "You know that it's a nigra college?" I said that I knew it
was a Negro university. Finally I got directions and I got a taxi and
the taxi driver was so angry over a white woman going into this
community that I thought he might have a wreck before I got there. It
was just about
Clarence Mitchell's brother-in-law was Clarence Giddings and he and a
remarkable young woman named Rebecca Taft, who was the daughter of …she
had gone to Wellesley, she was the daughter of an Episcopal priest from
New England who had moved to Colorado and she and I became very good
friends and I've kept close contact with all these people through the
years. I hear from Becky every Christmas and Jane. The Loeschers I've
sort of lost touch, but as a result of that experience, the Loeschers
sent their son to the University here. It's almost impossible to believe
that life could have been so segregated then as it was. We could go
nowhere as a group, so consequently, we didn't go anywhere. We went at
the urging of Margaret McCulloch to an Episcopal Church one Sunday and
we were not welcome, so we went to the Fisk Chapel or black churches in
the community. I guess that the one experience that I had that helped me
to understand the depth of suffering that segregation imposes on a
person was when Bill Cousins, this bright young black who had a
bachelor's degree from Yale was going to Fisk to do a
Was the senior Willis Weatherford at Fisk?
No, he was not there, but he visited that summer and I met him …no, I think that he may have still been at that YMCA school in Nashville.
Blue Ridge?
I guess that he was a Blue Ridge then. No, by then he had come to Berea.
You know, he raised money for Prophet of Plenty.
The years that you were at Berea were the years of the war.
That's right. I remember as well as if it were yesterday the day the war
broke out. Just a few months ago, a classmate of mine from Berea who is
about to retire from a Congregational church up in New Hampshire, the
first woman minister I ever knew, sent me a clipping about a classmate
of ours who was …no, he was not a classmate, he was ahead of us But he
was a pacifist, and you see, I had never heard the word pacifism in my
life before going to Berea. I had no idea what it meant. But you know,
there was a strong chapter of the FOR that Julia Allen and Adelaide
Gundlach and a number of the Berea staff and faculty and students and
George Alley—I can't remember his last name; he's from Asheville. George
Alley was a pacifist and I met …I don't know whether you've ever heard
of a young pacifist from Texas named Arle Brooks. He went to prison. It
was incomprehensible to me at that time
Do you remember anything else about the impact of the war on Berea?
You know, not as much as the Vietnam war, but I do remember that conflict
between the pacifists and the non-pacifists at Berea. I think in some
ways it was more marked then than during the Vietnam war. I came to
understand then the …I appreciated the pacifists position, but I
No.
I have a copy of it but I don't know where it is. When I go through my
files, I have a file on that work camp experience and I hope that I will
find it there. It was really a beautiful letter. It was like reading one
of the letters that the Apostle Paul wrote, and I have always had a
great admiration for Bayard Rustin since then. Of course, you know that
he had to suffer because of his anti-war position plus the fact that he
is a practicing and admitted homosexual, and was arrested and served a
term. Speaking of Bayard Rustin, it was during my years at Yale that the
experience here at the Chapel Hill bus station took place, where you
know that he was testing the court ruling on interstate transportation.
I remember that I was
Where was that?
I met Charlie …he came to Yale. This was a very interesting experience.
The southern students at Yale had people who sort of looked after us,
who would travel from the South to keep us informed about what was going
on. And two of the people who did that most effectively were Howard
Kester and Charlie Jones. And they did this—a kind of missionary trip
from the South to the North on behalf of the Fellowship of Southern
Churchmen. And Liston told me that this horrible night; he said that
Charlie Jones's house had been stoned and his family had had to leave.
Then, my first experience with Jimmy Wallace, I picked up the Fellowship
of Southern Churchmen's Prophetic Religion and read an
article which he wrote on common carriers and Jim Crow. It was beautiful
and, actually, he could have written it last week.
It has always troubled me that the most violent incident in that excursion through the South which lasted for six weeks, was in Chapel Hill.
It still disturbs me. I think that it should have helped people then to understand and help us now to understand that the Kingdom had not come and that anywhere, there is the possibility of violence errupting.
Well, you are leaving Berea and you are going via Louisville to New Haven?
Yes… Well, my year in Louisville was good and it had mixed blessings, but
it helped me to sort of separate some of my thinking. I couldn't enroll
at the Seminary because women didn't enroll there, they had to go to
what was called the Missionary Union Training School. I didn't take it,
I took only courses that I had to to make it possible for me to have a
bed and board there. I took very little work at the Training School.
Everything I took was from Dr. Binkley. And then there was a professor
there named Dale Moody who had dared to leave the South and go to Union
Seminary to study with Tillich, and then he had become a very good
student of Karl Barth. I took one course at the Missionary Union
Training School, but it was just like Sunday School work. I remember
that one day I had washed my hair and I was sitting under a hair dryer
and I picked up a periodical which had been published by the Missionary
Training
Between my year at Louisville and my year at Yale, I worked at a camp in
Illinois called East Lake Camp. It was run by a minister. I had worked
there in my summer between my last year at Berea and my first year at
Louisville
Hiroshima.
Yes. One of my classmates there was a Japanese-American, Gary Shozi
Oniki. He had been in the Grenada Relocation Center …I'm sorry that I
didn't think of this when you asked me about the war. I think that one
of the things that disturbed me most about the war was the relocation
centers and what could happen to human beings who were American
citizens. He had been in Grenada. And old Dr. William J. Hutchins was
still very active, and he influenced Berea to bring him there from a
relocation center. And there were also two other students, one was
Japanese-American and the other was Chinese-American, who had come to
Oberlin to a Y conference, and the war broke out and they couldn't get
back home. Dr. William J. Hutchins went to Julia Allen and said, "Julia,
take these boys to Berea with you and tell Frank Hutchins that they must
be admitted to Berea." She brought them and they were admitted. They
both graduated and both went to Union Seminary and have really done very
well. Well, I
Were there many women in the Yale Divinity School?
Oh, my class was the largest to that time for women. There were six of
us. And here again, I had this thrill of walking into the Sterling
Library …you cannot imagine what, although I was used to a good library
at Berea, but I couldn't study the first time that I ever went
I didn't know that he was from Berea.
Oh, yes. He went from Berea to there … No, he was the only one from Berea; but Albert Outler I had met at Berea and he was there, and of course, Liston Pope. I went to see him just as soon as I had arrived, and he knew about me because I had stated on my application that I was going to study with him. And I went immediately to talk with him, and I became their official babysitter. I earned all of my spending money at Yale babysitting for the Popes. He always paid what he referred to as "union pay."
Who did you study with?
Well, I did my major work with Pope and Niebuhr and they were both great
teachers. I studied with Professor Bainton, Joyce Peck's father. Joyce
and Bill were
He had a letter in the New York Times within the past
week.
Oh, did he? Well now, if he has another one, I hope that you will send it
to me. He is the most colorful professor that I've ever had. I had
systematic theology with Albert Outler. All along the way, there have
been certain books that have been highlights in my so-called
intellectual journey. One book that I failed to mention that I was
introduced to at Berea that will always be one of the highlights for me
was William James's Varieties of Religious Experience,
and I suspect that it was this course in American thought that
introduced me to James. It was at Berea that I was introduced to
Rauschenbusch and I always collect all the old Rauschenbusch books that
I can find. I gave two to Ralph Luker when he and Jean left and I intend
to leave the rest of my Rauschenbusch books to Ralph. I won't wait until
I'm gone, I'll give them to him one day. When I got to Yale, of course,
I had already read Millhands and Preachers, but The Meaning of
Revelation became a sort of another classic for me and meant a
great deal to me. I was introduced, of course, to Tillich by Niebuhr and
to Barth and Buber. Those meant a great deal to me at the time, and to
Richard Niebuhr's brother Reinhold. I think that if I had to highlight
the one book at Yale that influenced my thinking as much as any, that
was Bergson's Two Sources of Religion and Morality. I
did a kind of a report of that book for Richard Niebuhr and I really
became terrified when I discovered that that had been one of the books
that had influenced Niebuhr's thought; but I did pretty well. Then, it
was a course with Albert Outler that we had to do a paper on one of the
Church fathers. And I selected Augustine, and I decided that I would
tackle Augustine's De Trinitate. And I really
struggled with it; and I went to Outler one day and told him that I just
couldn't do it, I would have to change. And he wouldn't letme change. I
did pretty well on that, but I am very grateful to him for the kind of
discipline that he imposed upon me that just didn't permit me to change
in midstream. Then, another experience that I had at Yale that really
helped me a great deal in writing my credo …in Outler's course we had to
write a credo. I think that he said all that you can say about a
seminary student writing.
While you were in New Haven, did you have much contact with the rest of the university? You mentioned the Sterling Library …
One of the things that I remember, there was a labor conference at the
Law School once and I went down to that. No, I didn't have much and this
I regret very much. I think that I missed a lot. And you know, I've met
so many people who … for instance, Jean Pollitt's brother, Neil
Rutledge, was in law school at that time and he helped put on
I'm not sure …
Oh, they had a trial and everything over it.
In the early forties, there was a radical in the Divinity School who was fired …
That's the man. What was his name? [Jerome Davis] Pope took his place they hired Pope to replace him. What was his name? Well …we'll come back to it.
Graham made some effort to intervene.
Oh, yes. Well, I spent an evening in his home and he gave us all copies
of his book.
Claud Williams?
Claud Williams. And they had quite a run-in because Claud Williams would use people, and he tried to use Pope. And Pope told me once the story about a Christmas card which he received from Claud Williams which had the Russian emblem on it.
The Hammer and Sickle?
Yes. And the caption was, "A fellow traveller of the One who went to the
Cross."
Prior to your going to New Haven, had you had contact with people in the South that radical?
Well, at Berea, with people like Howard Kester and some of the people in the FOR. Well, you know, the people who were at the Race Relations Institute, they weren't as radical …I can't remember when I met …yes, I'm sure that I met some of the people at Berea who were in the Southern Conference.
Well, Julia Allen went to the organizing meeting.
Yes, and of course, I met Dombrowski. I guess that I met him at Berea. You see, that was the remarkable thing about Berea. It was really an open community and I think that it still is doing these things. You know, Berea has its critics now. For instance, there is a guy named Mike Clark …oh, I met …what is the name of the man who was head of the Highlander Folk School?
Myles Horton.
Myles Horton. I met him. You see, his sister-in-law
What is the essence of his criticism?
Oh, that it is chauvinistic and that it has exploited Appalachia and trains people just to fit into the Establishment. I don't agree with that. Of course, I don't represent that radicalism.
Well, you go from New Haven to the University of Georgia.
Well, that was in 1948 and I had three very happy years, and I would say risky years, there. This was just the beginning of the movement to change the South. There was a Methodist campus worker there named Claude Singleton, who had come from north Georgia and had at one time been a member of the Ku Klux Klan and he was sort of the leader of the move to integrate things in Athens. He was one of the organizers of the Interracial Fellowship. And I can remember that we would have meetings at the Wesley Foundation right behind the SAE house and the KA house; and I arrived in Athens two weeks before Herman Talmadge was elected governor. Of course, things were very much segregated.
That's also the fall of the Dixiecrat movement.
Yes, and that was the year that Frank Graham was defeated. I was in
Winder, Georgia and went to a political rally with a friend of mine, met
Richard Russell and met that Wood, who was the first chairman of the
House Un-American Activities Committee. And it was at that rally where I
heard that Frank Graham had been defeated. I really felt as if I were at
a funeral. Of course, that was the year that Frank Graham, Claude Pepper
…oh, I met Claude Pepper at Berea. Red and Black, the campus newspaper and he met
Dean Brazeak. And they were raising money Red and Black …his name was Mike Edwards and I renewed
my acquaintance with him much later here in Chapel Hill when he went to
work for the Peace Corps … and they promised him that night that they
would give him a story to release first. And I'll never forget this, the
Red and Black office was in the building where my
office was …I'll never forget, he released the story and the
administration spent hours trying to decide who they would hold
responsible for releasing the story. Mike Edwards sat there and let them
make fools of themselves for hours and finally he said, "You know,
you've wasted your time. I take that responsibility. When I was elected,
that responsibility was given to me by my election." So, I was very
pleased to help students take on new insights as far as the South was
concerned. The president of the University of Georgia Religious
Association …that's comparable to the Y here … was a young man from
Elton, Georgia named Bev Asbury, who went to a YM-YW conference at Blue
Ridge with me and met Aubrey Williams and Aubrey had …that was Aubrey,
Sr., whom I also had met at Berea …that was a tremendous influence for
him. He went back as a flaming liberal, really
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
…after having been at Berea and Yale, how was it?
Well, in some ways, it was something of a comedown. As I reflect on my
experience at Georgia, I can only comment on the intellectual life there
by departments. There were some people there who were really first rate,
but as a whole, the University there was much inferior to what I found
in the University here when I came in 1956. I think that one of the
strong influences here that Georgia didn't have was the influx of
so-called "outsiders." I think that any university that dares to call
itself a university must have a kind of melting pot community. And
Georgia was really very provincial in terms of the number of people from
the outside who came. So, I think this is the problem with the
University of Georgia. One department
There is one other experience that I had at Georgia that I failed to
comment on and I would like to do so just briefly because it is related
to some people who have made a great contribution to change in the
South. It was an experience that I had with Morris Abrams and Mrs.
Tilley, Mrs. M.E. Tilley. That was back in the days when we had a kind
of Celebration of Brotherhood Sunday or Brotherhood Week. The University
of Georgia Religious Association had a program on brotherhood. We
invited to the campus Mrs. Tilley, Morris Abrams, who was, you know, who
challenged the county unit system. He was a graduate of the University
of Georgia and went on to be a Rhodes Scholar from Georgia. He was from
Was Mrs. Tilley …the woman in the Faulkner novel, Intruder
in the Dust was a frail …
She was a very frail woman and very petite, looked Old South in many
ways, just a lovely woman. She had many of the qualities that Mrs.
Roosevelt had. I remember saying to her, "Oh, Mrs. Tilley, your husband
must be very proud of you." She said, "Oh no, it's the other way around.
I am very proud of my husband." Well, those were great women. Now, since
Jackie Hall did her dissertation on Mrs. Ames, I'll tell you a nice
story that George Mitchell, who was head of the Southern Regional
Council, told me. Once, there was an angry mob in Mississippi going to
get a black and take him out and lynch him and Mrs. Ames organized a
group of women in the county. They circulated a petition, having women
sign a petition which stated, "We do not wish any angry mob to protect
our womanhood," because she had gone to the county sheriff and said,
"Why do you allow this to happen?" and he had said, "Oh, Mrs. Ames, you
don't understand. We are doing this to protect Southern white
womanhood." So, she drew up a petition and had every woman that she
could find sign it, saying "we want no one to protect
It was in 1951 that you left Georgia and came to Greensboro?
Yes, and that was sort of the beginning of a new decade in the South when things were really beginning to change and the pressures were coming for change fast and furious. Those are the five years that I traveled for the Friends Service Committee. I look back on it now as a kind of roaming of the South. I remember when Bob Johnson of the Wesley Foundation gave his closing sermon before he left the Wesley Foundation to take a traveling job. He had been here and he talked about the South. It's a beautiful sermon. Have you seen that sermon?
No.
I'll get you a copy of it, and when he talked about leaving this job to
roam the South, I said to him that I came to Chapel Hill at the same
time that he did after roaming the South. I wouldn't take anything for
the five years that I traveled in the South. Those were years of
What territory did you cover?
Oh, I covered from Virginia to Florida and into Tennessee and Kentucky, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida …
Not into Alabama?
Yes, but it was a wide area. Each summer, I would direct a project for
the members of the staff. I was dietician for the project in Atlanta,
Interns in Industry project and I was assistant director for an
International Students Seminar project at Guilford College.
I don't know the name of it, but of course, the Brown decision was right in the middle of this.
Yes, the Brown decision. So, it was a very important period. Of course, I
was still living in Greensboro at the time. In fact, I was at the
hospital, at Moses Cone Hospital when the Supreme Court decision was
given. You know, Joe, it really is impossible to comprehend how we
endured that and I've always felt and I feel it more when I reflect on
this period, that really, it was not just liberation for blacks, but it
it's liberation for all of us. And of course, it was during that period
that the case for admission of blacks to the University of North
Carolina occurred. I got to know the South and appreciated it and
appreciated the committed leadership
I was going to ask you later on, but maybe now we could talk about it, what white southerners, particularly journalists, novelists, poets were you reading then?
Oh, yes. Well, my first introduction to W.J. Cash's book was when I went
to the race relations seminar at Fisk. The Friends Service Committee
required every student who went to a southern project to read this book
and I think this was an act of deep wisdom. That book had a tremendous
influence on me. I would say at that time that the journalist who had
the greatest influence on me, and I really got to know him when I was
living in Georgia, was Ralph McGill. I think that he is a great
journalist and he was sort of a teacher of all the other journalists.
You remember during the symposium when the journalists put on that show,
but it was a show of great depth, in Memorial Hall and the spirit of
Ralph McGill just hovered over that evening for me. He was a man of
tremendous courage and insight and wisdom; and I'll never forget how
grieved I was when I saw a report on educational t.v. of the Journal's decision to endorse Nixon, the agony they
went through and yet the timidity of allowing themselves to be driven to
that. I've never forgiven Reg Murphy for writing that editorial. I think
that it was a
Well, you've been reading the Constitution since the
good old days …
That's right, yes. Then, of course, Jonathan Daniels …Jonathan is really one of the great spirits. Jonathan's influence on southern journalism has been different, not of the depth of McGill's, but I think he has had tremendous influence. I have a great appreciation for the southern press and I hope that some time someone will really write a record of the courage of not just of the McGills and Jonathan Daniels and Chambers and Gerald Johnson …Gerald Johnson had a great influence on me …but I hope that someone will write a history of the contribution that the weeklies have made in the face of danger more in this state, and I guess in some cases in South Carolina and elsewhere; I think that it is a tremendous contribution.
You mean people like Hazel Brannon Smith, that kind of person?
Yes. Then there was this wonderful man [Neil Davis] in Auburn, Alabama,
whose son went here and is a descendent of Davies, well, he has been
very courageous. In this state, during the Speaker Ban Crisis, it was
not only the dailies but
How about poets or novelists?
Faulkner and later, John Ehle and oh, Thomas Wolfe has had a great influence on me. I'm rereading … you know that my project when I left here was to read Wolfe the first year, but I've gotten sidetracked because I'm so interested in the presidency that I am reading everything I can get hold of on the presidents now-and we might comment on that a little later. I would say …and you may be offended by this as a historian, and this is not original with me, Larry Goodwyn contends that the history of the South is really written in theliterature and not by the historians, because the literary figures have a sense and feeling for tragedy and the history of the South is really a history of tragedy. Carson …what is the woman in Georgia?
Carson McCullers?
No.
Oh, Flannery O'Conner?
Yes, Flannery O'Conner has had a great influence
Walker Percy?
Walker Percy and John Ehle, and that's not … he's been writing now for eighteen years …Wilma Dykeman is another one. I would say more novelists than …I just have to admit that I don't understand poetry enough to appreciate it. This is one of the projects that I intend to pursue, is to try to learn to understand poetry. That's one of the reasons that I wish I had majored in English.
It's from these literary figures that some historians have gotten the idea of a tragic, truly tragic vision of Southern history, Vann Woodward's piece on the irony of Southern history, also from Niebuhr's irony of American history.
I'm glad that you mentioned Woodward, because I admire him, and his writings I find very helpful. And Robert Penn Warren and I wish that I understood more the contribution that the Agrarian group around Nashville made. I just don't understand and haven't read much in that. I have too many other interests to pursue that.
I was curious whether you thought that this vision of tragedy in the
South was something shared by people beyond the literary group? It's
something that Van Woodward can get very easily from Robert Penn Warren,
from All 'The King's Men, but is it something that the
rank and
I'm not sure, I'm just not sure. In the rank and file in the South …
Well, does Frank Graham have this point of view?
No, I don't think that he did. Do you?
No.
No, I don't. And I get from this not only a sense of tragedy, but a
determined sense to live with tragedy, to live with suffering. Robert
Coles just wrote a review of a book; I can't remember the title of it
just now. It was in The New Yorker, I believe, just a
few weeks ago; it's a biographical book of French women. Did you see
that?
Yes.
I would really like to have that book; of course, every review that Bob
writes I want to buy the book because he is one of the most convincing
reviewers that I have ever read. You know, I thought when I read that,
that this could really be applied to mountain women. When I think about
my mother and the adversities that she overcame, only a woman of
determination and profound faith could really endure all that she did.
When she died at age ninety, I kept saying to my sisters that, "You
know, we really have to understand and accept
Well, I want to get back to where you are in Greensboro with AFSC. How do you come to Chapel Hill?
Well, I traveled for five years and I was ready to stop traveling. You
don't ever exactly choose the time, but the job at the Y became
available. Harry Smith, who was a Presbyterian minister …he was campus
minister for the Presbyterian Church, had been a good friend of mine. I
had known him through the student Y and I knew his father who was a YM
secretary at the University of Texas and about whom Willie Morris writes
in North Toward Home. Oh, by the way, Willie Morris
has been a great influence on me. I think that his North
Toward Home is a great …well, I think that it's a classic and I
wish that he was writing social history rather than fiction, but he says
that he is with fiction for the time, so that's his decision. Well, Fred
Weaver was Dean of Student Affairs and when I traveled, one of the
schools that I visited and always loved to come to was the University of
North Carolina in Chapel Hill. When I
Well, when the job became vacant, they asked me to come over for interviews and I did and I was ready to stop traveling and this was sort of a dream come true, to come to Chapel Hill. I didn't have any idea I'd stay as long as I did. I came in 1956; and I came for my first interview just about the time that the court decision was made on the admission of black students.
The first undergraduates.
Yes, the first three undergraduates; and that was the Frazier brothers
and I've forgotten the other one, but
I have the general impression that the early and mid-1950s in Chapel Hill were very much a conservative reaction against the Frank Graham years, not just because Frank Graham wasn't here anymore, not just because Gordon Gray was president in the early fifties; it was part of the national …
Yes, the Eisenhower years. I remember that I think I said that in that
little talk I gave. We were suffering the scars of the Eisenhower years,
but the spirit
My first Sunday in Chapel Hill was the day that I met Frank Graham. I'd never met him before. He and I gave out baccalaurate programs in Memorial Hall, and I'll never forget, he spoke with every student who came in and asked so many of them about their parents and grandparents. I can see why he was so dear to them. That day was the beginning of our long, and to me a very valuable, friendship.
What was he doing here?
Oh, he came to Commencement. He never missed Commencement if he was in
the country and he came to football games and to the Golden Fleece
breakfast. I'm sure that your research on him has helped you to
understand that he was a man who participated in the rituals of an
institution with genuine commitment and for me, the beginning and the
ending of school were two very important rituals and I think that I may
have learned that from Dr. Graham. This will be the first Commencement
that I have missed in twenty years. I won't be able to stay for it
because it is too long and I regret missing it and I never missed a
University Day. I think, in a sense, these are the times when we sort of
recall the memories of the life of an institution. I wish
I wanted to ask you about the fifties in Chapel Hill.
Well, you know, I was only here for four years during that period, from '56 and in some ways, the the last four years of the fifties were sort of a preparation for what happened in the sixties. The coming of the black students and the obvious discrimination against them … actually, there was activity in this community and on this campus in behalf of black students much before the sit-ins. For instance, the incident at the football stadium where the black students were segregated and during that time, it was students at the Y, more the YM than the YW because at that time, the YW had a more conservative board and a conservative staff. The YM, Bob Hyatt and Sam McGill, Claud Shotts had a great influence on the Y at that time and of course, even before him, Harry Comer …I don't think it's possible to exaggerate the contribution that man made to the University by helping keep alive an open community with the old Race Relations Institute. It was a forerunner of the Carolina Symposium.
How long did Comer stay here?
You know, I can't remember how many years. But
But there never was any incident in which the University administration discouraged you?
No. There were incidents when I was called on to explain and I often did
it and I think that one of the reasons that …I think that maybe in the
nineteen years that I was here, the greatest contribution that I made to
the Y was to keep the administration informed in a way that the Y would
be free to do the things that it really must do if it in any sense
serves as a conscience on campus. As a matter of fact, the first summer
that I was here, we had an experience that helps you to understand this.
This was during the time that …as you know, I came in '56, and there was
great stirrings to implement the Journal, Dean
Turner from the North Carolina Central Law School and one other … I
can't remember who. And the moderator of that program that night was
Morris Kitter, an Episcopal priest who died just recently. At the end of
the program, he said, "Well now, we will all go up to the Y and eat and
drink together." And we had refreshments and I said to Claude Shotts,
"you won't get by with this," and he said, "Oh, yes he will." Claude was
from Alabama, a classmate of John Sparkman and made a great todo about
his Southernness. So, the next morning, when he got to his office, Fred
Weaver was waiting for him. Chancellor House was the chancellor then. Of
course, the chancellor had been
Can you give some other examples of cases where something controversial took place on campus but communication between the Y and the chancellor's office was important?
Yes. Freshman Camp invited Floyd McKissick to visit when Tom Davis was on the Y staff. This was after Floyd had been involved in many of the civil rights activities, to …
Involved in local things in Chapel Hill?
In Chapel Hill and Durham. And he had become quite a controversial figure
and you know, the irony of this experience is what he ended up as. A
member of the board of trustees who had been visited by a parent whose
son had received an annoucement of this with McKissick's name on it,
protested; and this was after Bill Aycock became chancellor, and
demanded that Floyd McKissick be cancelled. News and Observer one morning and read in "Under
the Dome" that the Student Activities Fund of the University of North
Carolina in Chapel Hill had made a contribution to Mrs. Small's
campaign. I said, "Oh Lordy, I hope it wasn't the Y." Well, Dennis
Winner, who is now a judge in Asheville, was in Law School and he
brought me in a clipping; and he was just furious because he felt that
this was a violation of a very important principle that student
activities funds would not be used for political purposes. Well, about
that time, I got a call from Dean Cathey. I think News called and they had a front page story on it
and quoted me. I felt that was unnecessary to have a front page story,
but there was nothing to hide and I said that it was indefensible and
that if I had known of it, I wouldn't have approved of it. Jim Shumaker
used to always tell me that he hopes I'll never forget that the Chapel
Hill Newspaper didn't even carry a report on it. I
think that one of the best letters I have ever written, saying it was
indefensible but … and Chancellor Sharp, by then he was chancellor, he
accepted it as an innocent mistake. After that, I was always required to
sign the vouchers and it was not just a rubber stamp, I always checked
everything. But I do think that it was indefensible and I felt that we
had to always be careful that we were opened to all groups. Well, soon
after that, the Republicans (you remember when they had what was called
The Paul Revere Brigade in the South) and the Young Republicans had a
Paul Revere Brigade here and they asked me to use the Y building. I
said, "Sure, why not?" We had let Democrats use it. So, one of the Young
You've mentioned two or three chancellors. Does the Y, in your nineteen years, have much relationship with the president's office?
Oh, yes. And I guess that it was partly because of my own personal relationship. Ida Friday was on the Y board when I was hired.
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
… place to live. Bill Friday's office then was in South Building, in the
office where Frank Graham's was. So, I'm very close to the president and
very close to Ida and we talked on the phone very very often and
especially everytime the University was in crisis. You know, for so many
of those years, there was just one crisis after another, because it was
a period of such radical social change. During what we refer to as the
civil rights period of the early sixties, but one of the times when I
think that I really was most helpful
I don't know that we need to talk about that because you've already talked about it on another tape.
I do have one thing that I want to say in terms of reflection. I think
that one of the things that I really appreciate about the University
during that time—and it was a period of great stress for many people—is
that we really were very lucky as a university when you compare what
happened to universities across the country, that we never closed and we
didn't really have any violence. I guess that one thing I would like to
record here is my deep appreciation for the fact that there was never a
time when I tried to see Chancellor Sitterson that I was not able to see
him. I think he appreciated that and when the announcement in the Tar Heel that I was going to take early retirement
occurred, he was the first person to come to see me. I really did
appreciate that. I called on him and he was really very forthright and
frank during the cafeteria workers strike and during the Michael Paul
incident—and those were two crises.
I sometimes have the impression that Chancellor Sitterson wasn't so happy to be chancellor.
I have that impression, and I think that to be relieved of that responsibility was a very freeing experience for him. You know, he loves this university. I think that his coming from Kinston and having all of his experience here, undergraduate, graduate and all, really had not prepared him for this radical period of change. But I think that one of the best experiences that I had with him was when I was negotiating with Upward Bound and I was preparing the proposal for it. Maybe I just had enough gall to do this and several times I called him at home … there was never a time when I called him that he was the least bit irritable. He was always responsive and I'm really grateful for that. Upward Bound had a very stormy time.
Why was that?
Well, it was … there were many reasons. One is that this was an
introduction onto the campus of a group of over a hundred black
teenagers. And many things that happened on the campus, they were
charged with and they were not responsible for them. But there was
really a tragic move on the part of many people in the lower levels of
the administration to get rid of Upward Bound. I said before something
about my letter in relation to this Mrs. Small business, but I
It's about ten years old?
The first Upward Bound Program was the year after I worked with Joel Fleishman up in the Yale Summer High School. and that was in '65.
I didn't know he had worked with you on that.
Yes, that was a great experience and that's where I came to realize the value of a program like this.
I had some connection with three students from Jackson who were in that program.
Oh, did you? What year?
'65.
It was a wonderful program.
There is a general interpretation of North Carolina as the most progressive of the Southern states. V.O. Key in his book on Southern politics stresses this progressiveness. More recently, there has been some question of how progressive North Carolina really is. There has been publication of statistics showing that wages for organized labor engaged in manufacturing in North Carolina ranks fiftieth and there is some question of how progressive we are. I wondered if you could give your thoughts on it?
Well, I'll leave that to you historians to be the final judges, but I
really think that one of the tragedies of this state and of the South is
the efforts that have been made to block the organization of labor. You
know, of course, that I love this state and my roots are very deep here.
I think that we have to be very careful about any kind of sentimental
judgements about the progressiveness of the state. I believe that this
judgement is made partly because of the kind of the press we've had and
the issues that the press has dealt with in times of crisis and because
of the influence of Frank Graham and other people, most of whom were his
associates in the South. I really do think, and this is no lack of
appreciation on
I went to the hearings in Raleigh and under the direction of Dean Dixon Phillips and a physician from Charlotte …
Who is this?
I can't remember his name, a physician in Charlotte who had one time been
on the staff of the medical school here. They brought together a
fantastic array of people protesting the speaker ban. And I remember the
night the hearings closed, Jimmy Wallace called me; and the last person
to speak was the president of the student body at Wake Forest, and he
said, "If the ablest producer in Hollywood or New York had brought
together a cast, they couldn't have produced this kind of show." It was
just incredible. That was one of the great moments and then another
great moment in the life of the University …and we still have a long way
to go and an unfinished a genda, but to move in the direction of really
being an open community in terms of black and white relationships. And
as I said at that Wesley Foundation gathering, when I came here there
were three black students and my last year here, I think there were
1,079. Not only the presence of black students, but the presence of
people like Edith Elliott and Sonya Stone and Benny Renwick and Charles
Day and people like this, I think they are moving in the direction of
fulfillment, as Dr. Frank would put it, "of the American dream for all
the people who are residents in this community." And as I think about
that period, I think back with deep appreciation for the bravery of the
black students who faced all sorts of difficulties and on the other
hand, with
Not really, I suppose that we could talk about things yet to be done,
particularly here in Chapel Hill and at the
Well, I think that this community is no exception, I think that many of
the problems, and these are problems that I sort of see as the
unfinished agenda, is that many of the problems we won't solve until we
solve the problems of housing. I think that this has happened more in
this community than it has perhaps in a lot of communities, and I'll
just touch on this because I want to say a word about my going and what
that has meant. One of the things that really concerns me now, I'm
afraid that we are in a period where there is not the drive to work at
the question of racial justice, thinking that we have arrived or because
there are not the external forces that push us to do this. And this is
what troubles me more than almost anything, and the reaction of some
people to Affirmative Action really distressed me. I was distressed, as
I know you must be, to have read in the last Yale Alumni Magazine that
Jackie Mintz has resigned, so this may be a signal of things that are to
come. I quess that I learned from the Y that we are at a point now where
white liberals may really be tested, that we are at a point now where it
is not as much a drive to open up jobs and schools, there are laws …I
agree with Carter, I think that the most
About going back to your roots?
About going back to my roots. Over and over again, I feel that my going
back has sort of confirmed what Eliot said. Actually, I'm no student of
Eliot, but that is one of the things that I really want to try to do, is
to understand Eliot. Bill Moyer interviewed McNamara and McNamara quoted
that and that is where I first became aware of
END OF INTERVIEW