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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-0064, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Ellen Black Winston was born and raised in North Carolina during the early twentieth century. Growing up, Winston was especially influenced by her parents' social and political views. Her father worked as a civil lawyer and as a banker and her mother was actively involved in various community organizations. As Winston describes it, "a very liberal, democratic attitude . . . prevailed in our home." As a result, Winston was expected to attend college. In the 1920s, she studied English and French at Converse College in South Carolina with the goal of becoming a schoolteacher. By the late 1920s, however, Winston made the decision to continue her education at the graduate level. With the active support of her husband, Winston completed her doctoral degree at the University of Chicago in 1930. She returned to Raleigh and taught social science for several years before relocating temporarily to Washington, D.C., to work for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. In the late 1930s, Winston returned to Raleigh and worked for the Works Progress Administration program in North Carolina. In the 1940s, Winston spent time teaching at Meredith College and became increasingly involved in organizations aimed at improving social welfare in North Carolina. In particular, she was actively involved in the American Association of University Women. In 1944, Winston was appointed North Carolina Commissioner of Public Welfare, and in 1963 she became the first United States Commissioner of Welfare. In this interview, she focuses specifically on the status of women and opportunities for professional women; her philosophy of social welfare and her goal to improve standards in North Carolina; and her efforts to work with government at the local, state, and federal level.
Ellen Black Winston was born and raised in North Carolina. She received her doctorate in sociology in 1930. Actively involved in issues of social welfare in North Carolina, Winston was appointed as the North Carolina Commissioner of Public Welfare in 1944 and went on to become the first United States Commissioner of Welfare in 1963. In this interview, she describes problems and opportunities for professional women, her goals to improve standards of social welfare in North Carolina, and her work with various branches of government.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
You've had a very distinguished career as Commissioner of Welfare in North Carolina and as U.S. Commissioner of Welfare. I guess that one of the first things that people would like to know is how you came to this career. I know that you were a school teacher here in Raleigh in the 20's, after you graduated from college. What made you decide to go back to graduate school?
I had decided, actually, that I would go to graduate school. If I was
going to stay in teaching, I wanted to be able to move up. I suppose
that's the correct term for it. Meanwhile, I had met the man who was to
become my husband. He was very much interested in my learning more about
sociology, of which I had had a very little when I attended Converse
College. So, it just really evolved over a year or more, in which I was
doing a good deal of reading, that instead of going into English, which
was the field in which I had specialized at Converse, I should go into
graduate school and pursue sociology as a field. I also had good
guidance from my future husband. The University of Chicago at that time
was really foremost among universities in its department and the faculty
who were teaching there then. So that choice seemed pretty easy. I had
the good fortune to have an uncle
I know that your father was the banker in Bryson City, is that right?
My father was an attorney and practiced law for most of his life,
particularly civil law. He didn't like criminal law. But then he became
president of the Bryson City Bank and increasingly that took his time
and effort. When we were growing up, though, he had an active legal
practice and one of the great things was his frequent trips to Raleigh
to handle cases before the State Supreme Court. So, we felt that we knew
something about the capital city, at least as children. That was the
time of the old Royster Candy Store, too, which was one of the landmarks
in earlier Raleigh. And he always brought back Royster Candy. I don't
regret most of the changes in Raleigh, but I do regret the closing of
that store.
Your mother, I know that she was active in library work later on. What other kinds of things did she do?
My mother was really quite a remarkable woman. She was a
Did any of your other sisters pursue careers?
I had one sister and she was a graduate also of Converse Collge.
This was Oscar Cox?
Yes.
Right.
What about Converse College? You went there from around 1920 to 1924.
The reason that I went to Converse College was because my mother selected
it. This was in the day when that still happened. And I think that
Mother had high hopes of Converse making me into a traditional southern
girl. I know that she hoped I would pick up a southern accent, which I
never did very successfully.
Did you always want to be a school teacher?
I don't think that there was ever any question. Young ladies from the setting I came out of became school teachers. We had a couple of courses in education when I went to Converse. I thought they were rather stupid and from the days that I took them until the present time, the only thing that I ever felt I learned from those courses, was somebody's statement, "Let knowledge come from a smiling face." I know that in one of the classes, we always had to quote something at the opening of the class when the role was called, and I used that. And it really stood me in good stead later on.
Was there much interest in woman's suffrage at Converse? You were there right after all the . . .
Yes, I had a couple of courses in sociology, but they were, I think, pretty run of the mill. I had a little work in history with Dr. Penelope McDuffey. And she really was interested in what was happening to women and she did try to expand the ambitions and ideas, I would say, of the students. But other than that, I really don't remember any real efforts. At least they didn't draw me in. And I think that I was the kind of student who would have been attracted by such movements. I was active in student organizations, the YWCA and some other little clubs of one sort or another that make no difference now. The one thing that I have always been concerned about, I think I had . . . I know I had the highest grade average of anyone in my class.
I remember your report card, it was always very good.
I know that I had a letter some years later when I was applying for
credit at the University of North Carolina with regard to my academic
I just went back this spring to the fiftieth reunion of my class, by the
way. I made the address at the luncheon meeting, in which I was
encouraging the young women to get out and get going, as you can well
understand. It took a little courage to go back, but as I have told
several people when I reported on it, at the least the ones who came
back were all very well preserved.
Well, when you went up to the University of Chicago, did you find yourself sort of lost, or did your training at Converse had . . .
I had had a few extension courses before I went to the University of Chicago. Dr. Howard Odum came over and taught, I think, on Saturday mornings. And I had a couple of courses with him which were very helpful. But I always felt when I hit the University of Chicago that despite the fact that I had always been a good student and so on, I was about as well prepared as if I had had two years of college at a really major university. So, it took an awful lot of catching up and hard work in order to handle the competition in the classroom.
Well, you were at the University of Chicago at a time when Dr. Robert Park was . . .
Yes. This was in the heyday of Park and Burgess. They had developed a whole series of courses and were training a great number of sociologists. But, I had the good fortune to be there when William Ogburn was teaching, because, he had come to the University of Chicago and he brought in some newer ideas. He was, of course, working actively during that period with Odum in Washington. And so one got a great deal of stimulation through those contacts. And he sort of took me under his wing. He was teaching statistics and I happened to be pretty good, at least in the introductory course.
You were a former math major.
That was all helpful.
Were there other women at the University of Chicago?
Yes. There were other women at the University of Chicago. In fact, we had several women in the general group at the time I was there. Some were ahead of me, some came at the same time and some came a little later, before I left the University. I don't remember any difference between the men and women students. Actually, that was the period when women made up a higher proportion of those getting advanced degrees than has been true for the last couple of decades. That was sort of the heyday for women students, really, certainly in the fieldsin which I was interested. I was very lucky, too, because at that time they had very strong faculty in cultural anthropology and that was one of my related interests. I also was living in Green Hall during the first period, which was really four and a half quarters when I was there.
I went in the summer and stayed through the three winter quarters and
then stayed through the middle of the second summer, when I went back
home to get married. But I lived in Green Hall during that period, which
was the graduate
This was in the late 1920's?
Yes. I went to Chicago in the summer of 1927 and this was from the summer of '27 until the middle of the following summer. Sophronisba Breckinridge was the head of Green Hall. And of course, Sophonisba Breckinridge was great on women's rights and pushing back the horizons, and that sort of thing. And the Abbott sisters . . .
Grace Abbott and . . .
. . . were there at the time. So, there was a nice climate, as it were. Besides, this residence hall was a very good thing for someone coming up from the South, who hadn't had too much experience. We had a marvelous group of women, women in all fields, who were living in the hall. The dinner table conversation was really quite challenging. The first quarter, or maybe two quarters, I don't remember, I sat at Miss Breckinridge's table. because she always presided over the dining room hall for dinner at night. And of course that conversation was always interesting. She more or less, I think, picked the people at her table. Then after that I headed up a table myself and I could more or less control some of the directions of the conversation. But you know, I remember friends in education, in home economics, in biology, in chemistry. We had a great mixture and it really was great fun.
These were sort of formal sessions?
Oh, the dinners were quite formal. You started with soup and whoever was head of the table served, you know, and we were really quite precise in our manners.
You were expected, when you were head of the table, to bring up
Yes. And then, you know, we celebrated birthdays and that sort of thing, so it was really a very good experience. I did a little tape for the University of Chicago a couple of years ago. The man who came down to do it was somewhat surprised that I didn't do more running around in terms of meals. But we had three meals a day at Green Hall, you know, so, you automatically went back there normally instead of going out with the other students, even at lunch time.
You ate with the other women students, then, most of the time?
Yes, who were normally not in my field. After all, there were not too many of us and I was the only one who was living in Green Hall during that period.
Did you talk much about women's roles, women's rights at these? Were women as a conscious group much of a topic of conversation?
Not as I remember it. But you see, these women weren't having any real
problems.
Yes, I can imagine. I think that how you got your jobs in Washington
during the Depression, working with the WPA and so forth, was
Well, of course, I was well trained. It was good training, hard training.
You published several articles.
Oh, yes. I already knew, you know, that you publish or perish. Very early. Let me think back . . . I guess that the first publication was the one that Ogburn and I put out on the frequency and probability of mental disease. It's still correct, too. But one got that emphasis, of course, at the University of Chicago. So, I was writing for publication very early. I came back to a teaching position because I had been on leave. And then, you see, after teaching a year, I went back for a summer and a fall quarter. I only took one other quarter at the University, really, which was the following summer. I did something that more of you graduate students ought to do. As soon as I had the master's degree, I selected the topic for my dissertation and I wrote all my term papers, practically, in that field. It was broad enough so that one could be doing the research and developing the chapters as one went along. This meant that by the time I took my prelims, the dissertation was practically finished.
That's a pretty smart idea.
I recommend it to more people. I think my husband really put the idea in my head because after all his role in all of this was quite tremendous.
You got married while you were in graduate school and went back to Chicago after you were married?
Yes, oh yes. I was married in '28. And actually, my husband
Did people think that was unusual for you to get married and then go back to school and live in a dorm in Chicago?
I didn't live in a dormitory after we were married. At that point, I had rooms in houses of faculty members that were close to the campus. And in the summertime, my husband and I had an apartment. That worked out pretty well. I don't think that anybody in Chicago felt that was strange.
In Raleigh?
My parents thought that it was all right. They were devoted to their
son-in-law and thought that if he and I decided on this, it must be
quite all right. I never had any question about it here in Raleigh. I
just don't think that people were as focused, as they have been in
recent years, on that kind of thing. And I remember very well while I
was in Chicago, that Dorothy Fahs Beck, who has been for many years now
the director of research for the Family Service Association of America,
got married and went off to South Carolina to teach and her husband was
still in graduate school. We didn't think anything of that, certainly,
at the University. So, there was some of that type of separation going
on. It was only when I went to Washington, I think, as Commissioner of
Welfare in the '60's, that I got questions about my being in Washington
and my husband being here. When I was in Washington earlier, I don't
remember any questions from anybody. Of course that was in the
Depression period and all kinds of people were running off in all
directions, Foundations of
American Population Policy. And I was working with Sterner on
The Negro's Share, so I had been away during the
summers some of the time. But then when Tom McCormack came to
Washington, he asked that I come up and help work on some of the
projects in the old FERA days. I remember that it took me quite a while
to make up my mind, but after they kept asking me to come, my husband
and I decided that I should go and at least try it, and of course it
lasted for quite a while.
This was mostly in the 1930's, when you were in Washington?
This was in the 1930's. I went up in 1934. I had taught several years here in Raleigh after I completed my degree.
Was that in high school?
High school, yes. And both my husband and I were busy with research. He was publishing a good deal at that time and I was getting out articles based on my dissertation because it didn't seem appropriate to publish it in book form. We were both doing things with the American Sociological Society at the time, and so on. It's the same kind of life that young professional couples have today, really I don't see that it was very different.
You weren't very much involved with local duties here in Raleigh during the 30's? Most of your energy was focused on your career and your job in Washington.
Well, of course, this was the very early '30's, after I got my degree in 1930. I was busy teaching; we were working on our research. I was active in the PTA because I regarded that as part of my duties in connection with the school system. And I have friends still that I made in those days. I used to do programs for them, and a variety of things. I was not really active in otherkinds of community affairs. Then, I went to Washington, and that was a fairly long period. I was commuting, but that didn't give the opportunity to be active here. While I was in Washington, I used to go to the local meetings of the American Sociological Society. I was there at the time the Population Association was formed. some, one went to some of those things. On the other hand, we were working very hard and the amount of productivity was such that one worked long hours in the office.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
Then Dr. T.J. Woofter, Jr.came from Chapel Hill to head up the research program. He and I worked very closely during those years, both in the development of the research program and then in the publications that we wrote together.
You came back in 1940 then, to teach at Meredith?
Actually, during the last year that I was associated with the WPA
research program, I was really working here in Raleigh. I came home. I
reversed the arrangement. I came home and worked in Raleigh because I
was doing editing primarily at that time and some writing which I could
do at home. And then I would go up to Washington for a couple of days
and deliver the manuscripts and get new materials. And then I was asked
to work in the training program of the WPA here in the state. I had been
in
What you find is that women professional friends are tremendously
scattered, because they have gone off in other directions, just as you
have. But the tendency is to keep in touch with them, as time goes on .
. . so, I was doing those things, too, which of course, were extremely
useful and
I presume that many of these people you met in the AAUW and in the State Legislative Council and in the North Carolina Conference for Social Service, these were people interested in kinds of issues like welfare and . . .
Yes, and in getting good social legislation here in the state. After all, many of the early bills, in the general field of social welfare, broadly defined, were pushed by these organizations. It was extremely useful because one could promote one's interestsin several organizations and this tended to give increased support.
Who were some of the important leaders in Raleigh during the 40's, in these kinds of groups, other women?
Mrs. Palmer Jerman was still active when I first came to Raleigh. She had
taken great leadership during the suffrage movement. Mrs. J. Henry
Highsmith was one of the important women leaders at that time. Mrs.
Chas
What sort of issues were they interested in?
They were interested in improving the welfare program, for example. They were, of course, interested in schools. They were interested in some of the aspects of child labor because we had not yet brought our laws up to snuff.
Not even in the '40's?
Well, I'm back a little earlier than that, not all of that was well
worked out. But you know, I would have to go and check dates on all of
this, and I'm not going to because you historians can do that.
I'll do that.
All right. Of course, the PTA had many of these same interests and I must
say that I was always impressed with the interest in child welfare
generally in the PTA. Not just in education, strictly defined. Then we
had some wonderful women who were state presidents of the PTA. I got to
know Mrs. Ernest Hunter of Charlotte in that connection. But we had
excellent women from various cities in the state who headed up the PTA
and have continued to head up the PTA in the intervening years. There
were quite a number of women, actually, who were active, who were
socially minded, who were trying
Were many of these women interested in race relations, in improving race relations? Or can you identify some of those who . . .
Not really. I don't remember when women's organizations became directly
concerned with race relations. These were, in many cases, special
organizations, that grew up with this particular interest rather than
being the old line women's organization. When I went into the State
Department of Public Welfare, we had a professional Negro on the staff.
They had had one prior to that time, too. I do know that when I did the
WPA training job, we had training groups for whites and training groups
for blacks. One of the first things I did when I got into the state
office was to say, "Well, now, we are not going to continue to have
separate meetings and training and informational sessions on the basis
of race. It's too time consuming, it's inefficient, it's wasteful." I
wasn't really being any activ
Were a good many people that were on welfare in North Carolina black?
Of course they were. And our big concern was that they had their needs met, that we wouldn't have problems about discrimination in the receipt of benefits
One thing I wanted to ask you, was how you got your job in 1944, as Commissioner of Welfare? Was this through contacts with women?
Mrs. Bost was Commissioner of Public Welfare, and she announced her resignation. The position had traditionally gone to women. Mrs. Kate Burr Johnson was the second Commissioner of Public Welfare and was succeeded by Mrs. Bost. What really happened was that Mrs. Highsmith called me up and said, "Ellen, that's the job for you."
Who was she?
Mrs. Highsmith, at that time, was very active in the Federation of
Women's Clubs. And I referred to her earlier as one of the women with
whom I had worked, and I had been her legislative chairman when she was
president of the Federation. Then other people became interested.
Governor Broughton, when he was approached by Mrs. Highsmith and some
other women, said, "Well, if you can bring me the name
This was by women in the Federation of Women's Clubs?
I don't know who made all those contacts. I never quite knew. But Dr.
Odum, Miss Harriet Herring, Dr. Jocher, over at the University, were all
interested and were very helpful in many ways. My friends really worked
on it and so, it just happened.
Were there other jobs then, in state government, that were identified as women's jobs?
Up to that time, the head of the state library had always been a woman and was for sometime thereafter. That was a woman's job. There was a period of time when Mrs. O'Berry had headed up the Emergency Relief Program. At least half of the county directors of public welfare were women, some of them splendid administrators, by the way. We still, in that period in time, had women principals of schools. Really, there were a good many women in one position or another although this, of course, was the highest position in state government which was held by a woman. You know you really began to see men taking over the top positions in various fields, not just social welfare, when the salaries went up. Just a few years ago, I was at the UN for some kind of expert group meeting, and we had a woman, I think from the Philippines, who said, "You know, social welfare in my country is dominated by women. We really need some more men in the program in order to have some balance." And we told her with practically one voice, "Get your salaries up and you won't have any difficulty."
You worked a great deal with the AAUW in the 1940's and 1950's, here in
North
Yes.
What were the reasons behind those committees in the 40's and 50's? What was the AAUW concerned about then concerning women?
The AAUW was early concerned with regard to opportunities for women.
After all, it focused on educated women and whether or not they had job
opportunities, professional opportunities, commensurate with their
training. It was headed by well qualified women. I think that the
Committee on the Status of Women was a very useful committee in those
days because we had the Social Security Act with which many women in
other fields were not familiar, but which had all the potentials of
course, for economic security for women. We had quite an active Women's
Bureau at that period in time, which led later to the various state
Commissions on the Status of Women, and the national meeting in that
general area. So the AAUW was laying the groundwork. Those were very
interesting meetings to attend. We met in the old AAUW building. During
the period that I was active in the AAUW, they built their new building
in Washington. They had some very good women on the staff. One excellent
woman, a histori an by the way, was the staff person for our committee.
And then they had another excellent woman who was in charge of their
legislative program. I don't remember too many other women who came to
those meetings. But they were all well trained. They were all active in
their own communities and professions. We had one charming woman, I
remember, from Oregon. It was really quite interesting, and since I was
the only one professionally in social welfare, I really had the
opportunity to make a good deal of input.
The AAUW wasn't interested in things like the Equal Rights Amendment in the 50's, it was more concerned with social welfare kinds of issues?
Well you were having the debate being joined back in the 50's and you had a number of women's organizations, if you will remember, in those days which were not particularly supportive of the Equal Rights Amendment. They thought that the ways to approach the situation was through getting specific laws changed, that sort of thing. And of course, AAUW was, I think, one of the later organizations to give active support to ERA. Actually, I found myself in that period of time, because I was also in that period a member of the Business and Professional Women's Organization, attending some meetings where they were very pro and some where they were really con; perhaps not quite as actively con as they were pro at the others. But there was a long period of debate and wide differences of opinion with regard to ERA on the part of national women's organizations.
What were your views during those years?
I think that at that period in time I didn't think it was necessary, that
I was really so concerned with specific pieces of legislation that
affected the welfare of women and children, of families, that this
didn't seem to me to be as major a goal as many felt. I wanted to see
specific changes which would bring about immediate improvements in
situations for people. I think that I did try to keep an open mind in
regard to both sides of the question, but certainly I was not an ardent
supporter of ERA. Of course, the other thing is that the doors
Did you have any connection with the North Carolina Governor's Commission on the status of women in the early 60's?
Oh, yes. I was a member of it. Anne Scott was the chairman. I was a member while I was in Washington and I came down to Chapel Hill a time or two, at least, for meetings. I also did some things by correspondence. And then later, I was a member of the inter-departmental committee . . .
Of HEW?
Yes. It wasn't just HEW. Actually, it was headed up in Labor and the Secretary of Labor at least opened our meetings. This is when I really worked very closely with Esther Peterson and Mary Keyserling. And we had representatives from within government and some representatives from outside of government. I remember particularly a man from Federated Department Stores. Then, after I resigned in Washington, I was still asked to represent the Department of HEW on this particular committee.
Well, to go back to the North Carolina Commission in the early 60's, what was the purpose behind that? Who got that commission going?
I think that it was stimulated out of Washington.
By the national committee.
Because we had the National Commission. I went to their meetings, but they had gotten geared up just before I went to Washington. The National Commission in turn stimulated state commissions.
What section were you involved in? Were you involved in the Social Welfare . . .
Oh, in the social welfare aspects. Then, of course, when we had
Well, one sort of final question, I gather from all that you said today that you really never considered yourself a feminist.
No. I sometimes said that it was only after I read Anne Scott's Southern Lady that I realized that I had done anything
that might be defined as trail-blazing or different, because it just all
seemed natural and one thing followed another. No doors were closed that
I wanted to go through.
Did other people ever consider you a feminist?
I think that when other people reacted to me it was not as a feminist but rather in terms of the fact that I had ideas about social welfare that were a little too advanced for some of them to follow.
Well, o.k.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
You became Commissioner of Public Welfare in 1944, in North Carolina. What was the situation like then? What was the welfare program like then, in North Carolina?
I was sworn in on June 1, in Governor Broughton's office. My parents
came, my husband was there and Mrs. Bost was there, my brother and niece
came from Charlotte. And we had several members from the State Board of
Public Welfare and some of the staff from the Department. I even
remember what I wore. It was very nice, with a hat, and I'm sure that I
carried gloves.
You were a proper Southern lady.
Indeed I was a proper Southern lady. And I still remember the shock when
I came back from Washington one time to make a speech at a public
welfare meeting and the county people saw me for the first time making a
speech without a hat. When I went into the Welfare Department, I was
really very fortunate in terms of the fact that the program had been
soundly organized and developed. In other words, I had a good structure
on which to build. We had good state legislation because it made it
possible to take advantages of any changes in the Social Security Act
that would be helpful to the state. I learned a great deal from the
people that were in the office. Mr. Stewart was the auditor, I think
that was the title. Now, we would call him the business manager or
something of that sort. He was very sound in handling the already quite
large finances of the department. Miss Lilly Mitchell was still active
at the time and Miss Mitchell was a stickler for doing things in the
right way. And she taught me many lessons about the details of
administration. Mrs. W.B. Aycock, whom I had known before as a great
leader in PTA work and in educational advancement, was our director of
personnel and a joy to work with. There were many members of the staff
who were sound and good and helpful, so that it made a fine base on
which to start. Of course the grants were disgracefully low. We did not
have a great variety of programs which were administered by the
Department. In other words, the stand-bys were the public assistance
programs and the child welfare programs. We did have legislation in
regard to the licensing of charitable solicitations in the state. We had
responsibility for the inspection of jails and setting various kinds of
standards there. We had licensing authority with regard to child caring
institutions except that church related institutions of a certain size
were exempt. So, there was quite a lot of legislation, very good
legislation, on the books. It was the kind of legislation that I liked
because
In Doblestein's dissertation on your years as Welfare Commissioner, it seems to be one of the major thrusts of your years, is raising standards . . .
Right, and assisting . . .
And particularly on the county level.
And it is still one of my great concerns, because we have been so derelict in terms of standards for the various types of services for vulnerable people.
And the state has continued to put pressure on county boards . . .
I assume so. Unfortunately, I don't really know very much about what has
happened in public welfare since I left the federal program I did not
think that it was smart to come back and get involved in a program which
one had left. I think, after a period of time, one can probably do that.
There are some things that I am active in in relation to the
You had trouble with political parties several times. Doblestein points to Davidson County and Rockingham County as two places where you and the State Welfare Board had to keep them from appointing political hacks.
Of course we insisted on the merit system being followed. I might say, too, that during my earlier years, Dr. Frank T. Devyver from Duke was the director of the merit system and was a great help in getting standards up. Yes, we wouldn't permit the employment of people who didn't meet the qualifications. We followed the law.
Now, what were the problems with the state legislature? Was it mostly just getting more money from them?
Oh, I never viewed them as problems. I enjoyed working with the
legislature. Only very nice people get elected, you know. They have to
have good personalities or they can't corral the votes.
Who were some of the other liberal leaders in the legislature? You mentioned Coltrane in the budget office.
Well, when I first became Commissioner of Public Welfare, Tom O'Berry from Goldsboro was a great leader in the Senate. And he was of tremendous help to me. His first wife had headed up the emergency relief program. That was back in the days, too, when leadership was less divided in the legislature. And if you had some strong member of either the senate or the house who would help you with legislation and appropriations, life was certainly easier. I got to know Irving Carlyle through his leadership in the Senate and eventually asked to have him come on the State Board of Public Welfare. There really was a period in time when one could suggest to the governor whom one would like to have on the state board and that helped to account for some of the very strong members of the state board with whom we had worked in other capacities. Mr. Taylor, in the house of representatives, from Goldsboro, was another strong friend. I would say that, on balance, he probably was somewhat less liberal in his social philosophy than Senator O'Berry or Senator Carlyle, but tremendously helpful in terms of my legislative program and getting things through. We always had a legislative program. It was my theory that you always movedahead wherever there was the possibility of improving the social legislation base for the program.
Were there outside liberal groups that were helpful?
The State Legislative Council. We always tried, when we had these major
items, to get them adopted by the State Legislative Council and of
course, I worked closely with it during those years. The State
Conference for Social Service was a help, although it was not really a
strong lobbying group in any sense of the word. I would always go to the
meetings of the State Federation of Women's Clubs to try and get
endorsement for the programs in which we were interested. And I remember
once that . . . I've forgotten what the issue was now, they had begun
the discussion before I got there and were just about to turn down one
of the things that we were hopeful of getting in the next legislature.
So, I got there and got the floor and was able to explain it so that we
got their support. We worked with a great many groups in the state. For
example, we always had an active group among the Superintendents of
Child Caring Institutions. While they, of course, were particularly
interested in and even protective of their own programs, they were of
tremendous support in terms of improved child welfare legislation and
programs generally for children. We had an active Association of County
Directors of Public Welfare. In those days, we called them
Superintendents of Public Welfare. We worked very closely with them. We
had committees in all of our major areas and they came into Raleigh
regularly to meet with us, as we tried out new policies. We had a
committee on Public Assistance and we always went over proposed policy
changes and developments with the Committee of Superintendents. It was
during this period that we had what we called "Dear Superintendent of
Public Welfare Letters," which were the channel for sending out program
developments and new policy areas. The Committee on Personnel usually
was represented when we met with the Merit System Council to help in our
push for more emphasis on education, on training, on raising salaries,
that kind of thing. They were a
He was always tremendously helpful in working with the legislature
Well, it all sounds like an incredible master plan that worked fairly well.
Well, of course, the thing is that you had to be well informed in two areas: well informed in the area in which you were trying to get legislation and well informed in the legislative process itself. I have referred many times to the friend of mine who came to see me one day. She had been promoting something or other in the way of adoption legislation, which we supported but had not taken the initiative in getting introduced. She came to my office and said, "Well, the bill went into the house this morning. Now I'm going on vacation." We nursed that bill through all the committees and through the house and through the senate and actually got it enacted into law. But, those are some of the things that you have to know. I think there were some advantages in those days because all the legislators, practically, stayed at the Sir Walter. So, it was easy to know where they were in the evenings and where the caucuses were being held. Later on, when they got spread around in their living arrangements, that was more difficult. Now, the committees all meet in the legislative building or nearby. We always provided the meeting places for the public welfare committees. They met in our library.
Did you personally coordinate a lot of the lobbying that went on, like the County Superintendents . . .
Oh, yes. We had to know what was going on and who was seeing
Did the North Carolina Conference for Social Service, would you characterize that as probably the most liberal of the groups lobbying for welfare and social welfare legislation?
As I said, it was not such a lobbying group in itself, although it would take positions and our county departments were active in it, much more active, by the way, in my day than they have been in recent years. It was a question of having supportive groups, but with the actual work being handled very largely through the Department itself, the county directors, and the State Legislative Council. We would always give a great deal of help to the State Legislative Council. It operated on a shoestring. They were promoting many of our bills There were things that we could do, like mimeographing letters for them and so on, that helped to pull this whole thing together.
And I would also imagine that the Institute for . . . Chapel Hill . . .
The Institute of Government. We were always closely in touch with those
people and Roddey Ligon particularly of that staff. He was their
specialist in public welfare and he knew public welfare laws as well as
I did. And he was very helpful to me many times in terms of the drafting
of legislation and the interpretation of legislation, and their
Legislative Bulletin was must reading for us each day. We had to know
about other legislation that affected our interestsand that we might not
have even though it helped to
Were you closely connected with the sociology people at Chapel Hill, Howard Odum and . . .
Yes, Dr. Odum was one of my great friends. And I saw quite a lot of him in various ways. And other members over there were always good friends, Dr. Jocher, of course, and Dr. Jocher was active in the state conference. Hunt Hobbs, who was not in sociology, but was in social and economic areas and published a newsletter for many years, was a fine friend and supporter in many ways. That's when I got to know the Guy Johnsons and Rupert Vance and that whole group. And we had many contacts with them and I always felt free to go for advice. When I first came into the Department, the Public Welfare Institute, which was held each fall, was a joint venture of theSchool of Public Welfare and Social Work and the State Department. I soon found that this really didn't work well, because again somebody had to be in charge of it and you couldn't go back and forth on whom we would invite and how we set up the program for the nine o'clock meeting on Friday morning, and that sort of thing. We very quickly took the Institute over and ran it ourselves. Actually, we had many, many meetings because I believed in keeping people up to date with the national as well as the state scene. We were very active in the Department in the State Conference for Social Service. I was president for two terms Mr. Brown was president for a term. We provided office space in those days for the executive. It was in my term that we actually brought in a paid executive. Before that time we had had a volunteer secretary, practically.
We brought in people from outside for the State Conference. These were
literally in-service training meetings as far as we were concerned and
we had a very large attendance.
That was probably very smart to get those people on the Boards.
It was smart It's always smart to have strong boards. I know that there
are some administrators who would prefer to have weak boards and then
they run the programs, but it has always been my theory that you have a
strong board and then you and the board can push the program much
farther than either one separately. While we are speaking about
legislation, let's not get too far away from it for a moment . . .
O.K., I think that this side is about over.
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
Andrew Doblestein started a dissertation on your years as Welfare Commissioner, at Duke. He says that your success as Welfare Commissioner was based on your ability to build political support on all levels of government, local, state and federal. Do you agree with that assessment of your . . .
I would say this, that in administering public welfare in North Carolina
you must work with all three levels. You must work with the federal
government because they control a great deal of the money They are
responsible for many of the controlling policies with which one has to
cope. There is no question about the momentous role of the federal
government in social welfare. Of course the program was a federal-state
partnership so that meant that one had to work closely with those areas
of state government that could have some impact on the program the
legislature, the Bureau of the Budget, the Governor's office, the
Attorney General's office, your colleagues in other departments in
government. The end result was services to people, in the community
where our county government carries the
That's true, especially in North Carolina with some very poor counties and then larger ones.
That's right.
Some of the governors, you were saying awhile ago, were particularly helpful to you. I think that you mentioned Broughton.
Well he was responsible for my appointment. He had to follow the state board. He could have said to the state board, "Go out and find somebody else."
You also were able to help choose the people for the State Board
In the earlier years.
When did that stop?
I think that Scott, the first Scott, gave us some state board members whom we did not know and who turned out to be fine members, by the way. And we had one or two before that. It didn't mean that your suggestions were always taken, but at least you had the opportunity to make suggestions and that was a great help. There were a lot of governors in there . . . Broughton, and then we had Cherry and Scott and I would say that in both of those administrations, we had perhaps less direct attention given by the governor to public welfare. They had other programs they were pushing and they pretty well left it to the State Board and the State Commissioner to run the programs. Then . . .
Umstead.
We had Umstead for a very short period of time before his death. I remember going over to the Mansion after his attack to talk with him about social welfare matters, but really, I didn't work with him for very long.
Governor Hodges was in the office for a good many years and made marvelous contributions to the state. He was somewhat concerned about the growing cost of public welfare though, and this sometimes created some difficulties in terms of moving ahead when and as one would like to.
And Terry Sanford was certainly one of our more liberal governors in history and was always helpful, as well as the men around him. It's not always a question of working with the governor, but working with his associates, who are the people who are directly within the governor's office. And they can be extremely helpful to you. I remember many a huddle with the governor's legislative assistants in the little back office when the governor was in the old capitol.
Did Hodges allow you imput on who would be on the state board during his years?
I don't remember all the people who served on the state board over a period of time and just how they came to be appointed. And I would have to go back and check the records as to who appointed whom. I think that sometimes we would just send a letter over and say that there was a vacancy and we hoped that so-and-so would be considered.
How about Howard Manning, who was chairman for . . .
Howard Manning was chairman of the board for a good long time and was chairman at the time that I left to go to Washington.
Mr. McAllister had been . . .
Well, yes . . . Mr. McAllister never came to a board meeting after I was
sworn in. He was already quite old. But Colonel Blair presided over the
early board meetings and we had Mr. Hairston on that first board, who
had been a long time board members and was very supportive. Mrs. Latham
from Asheville,
Did you always have a representative of the women's clubs on the board?
The law provided that there must be at least one woman on the board.
Oh, I didn't realize that.
Yes, it was an early law. But when I came in, we had two women and I think that we always had two women on the board. There was no problem about that. Then, during the period when I was in the state office, we asked to have a black member on the board and I guess that we were one of the first state boards to have black representation.
Do you recall the year that that first started?
I would have to look it up. But it certainly must have been by the early 50's. And we were very fortunate. We had the president of Livingston College in Salisbury, who made an excellent board member. We had professional people and housewives, farmers, a run of the mill of interests in North Carolina.
I would imagine that the farmers were appointed by Governor Scott.
Yes.
He was well known for his support of the dairy interest. One thing that Doblestein points to was that one of the problems during your years was in 1959 when the state legislature passed a law that local district attorneys should investigate welfare recipients, to see if they were qualified. Do you know where that law came from?
I think that it came out of some of the more conservative counties. Some
of the counties with very limited tax revenues were increasingly feeling
the pressures. We tried to get grants up and the
Was there any kind of . . . since this was 1959 and the civil rights movement had started . . . well, Martin Luther King was active at this time in Alabama, was there any racial overtone, you think, to this law?
You never know. You know there is usually no simple explanation. It's
possible, but it certainly isn't something that I would emphasize. After
all, we had had our problems all through the years. There were always
some people, some legislators, who thought people were getting help who
shouldn't, or there was somebody who was getting too much. And my
favorite was the legislator who came to me about the old man in his
county who had a good farm and certainly didn't need welfare and here he
was, he had been getting old age assistance for years. I said, "Well,
this sounds dreadful to me and we will have to check it out." And we did
and the old man had never received a dollar of welfare assistance. And
besides, he was dead.
Oh, my goodness. So, you identified most of your opposition to welfare programs from rural, conservative counties of North Carolina?
Well, I wouldn't say rural, conservative counties, because we have many
rural counties that are not so conservative. I would say that we had the
same kinds of problems that you have generally. There are some
O.K. Did you ever feel that . . . well, all through this, I get the sense that you have a definite philosophy about what welfare should be and you believe in professionalization and centralization and control through the state offices . . .
I wouldn't say it that way; I would say leadership
I guess that you found it necessary through the years . . . well, you continued to work for these goals, but you would find that you would have to modify your philosophy a great deal and . . .
You don't modify your philosophy. But what you do is gauge as realistically as possible what you can hope to achieve and you move as well as you can in terms of the current situation. I've also found this in terms of legislation in particular, that if you have a good deal of interest in it and a number of people making suggestions about it, you often come out with a better piece of legislation than the one with which you started. You have to be a realist in all of this, and it is far better to take half a loaf than to say that if I can't have the whole loaf, I won't play ball. You may get the other half later.
Did you ever have any trouble in North Carolina with people that wanted to move too fast, or as far as the state legislature, were there ever any groups of people that wanted to do more than you felt was possible? I was thinking in terms of welfare rights people, I think . . .
They weren't active until after I had left the program.
There was no other group active in the 50's or in the early 60's?
I don't recall. I think that we were generally . . . we thought that it was our responsibility to be ahead, so we were ahead in terms of what we were looking for, in what we hoped to achieve and hopefully, we were realistic in terms of how much you could do in one legislature. And after all, there was always another one coming back in two years.
That's true. In North Carolina, I know that the things I've read about
welfare generally indicate that it's mostly women and children on
welfare.
That's because of the law. The Aid to Dependent Children Program, now called the Aid to Families with Dependent Children Program, was set up to provide for families with children when the father was dead, absent from the home, or so disabled that he couldn't work. This state has never been sympathetic to a provision that makes it possible to pay grants when the father is unemployed, and still in the home. So, one of the great criticisms of the Aid to Dependent Children Program over the years has been that it is disruptive of family life. I'll never forget the County Superintendent of Public Welfare who called me one day and said, "I've got a man in my office, he has several children, he lost his job, he has been all over the county and in surrounding counties and he simply cannot find work. Is there any program whereby I can help this family?" And I had to say to her that the only way under the law that you can give help is to encourage him to desert. And we still have that kind of program today and this is one of the problems of the program.
That's kind of a reverse discrimination.
Yes, it really is. A good many states have taken advantage of the provision whereby they can make payments when there is an unemployed father, but even so, in those states the regulations are quite tight on this. When we had the big study that was made when I was in Washington, we came out with a report called "Having the Power, We Have the Duty.
We had a very fine group of people on that committee. Their recommendation was that financial assistance be given on the basis of just one criterion, need.
How would you rank North Carolina's welfare program in comparison with that of other southern states?
It depends on the period in time.
Well, while you were commissioner.
I would say that we certainly saw ourselves second to none. We were making every effort to move the program ahead. There were some states in which some things were a little easier to achieve than they were in North Carolina, and there were other areas in which we could move a little faster. On the whole, I think that certainly in the later years we had a broader program than one found generally in the other states.
Well, one thing that I've gathered from talking about your success as commissioner, is that you found it very important to be a southern lady at all times.
I wouldn't use the word, "Success", in referring to my efforts. I always felt that there was a certain image to which one had to try to live up to and that image certainly included how one looked. One of the problems of so many young professionals today is that they don't look like professional women and in fact, seem to feel resentful over that approach. I also was careful in a good many areas, because I felt that the Commissioner of Public Welfare had to live up to what I would designate as the accustomed standards.
In the Department in Raleigh, of course, we had women carrying much more responsibility relatively than I think they do today. We had a woman heading up our child welfare program. We had a woman heading up our program for the aging. We had a woman responsible for enforcing the licensing laws. A good part of this time we had a woman directing our research. One of the early people that I brought in, by the way, was a director of research, because I just couldn't see administering the program without more facts. So, I would say that women had a rather good deal.
My experience has been that it is the women administrators that give the other women the breaks. Certainly, I found this to be true when I was in Washington.
Right. I think that other people have found that to be true in other research they have done on how women get jobs. Many times, it's through other women.
I had a woman just recently, this is '74, who was really apologizing to me . . . this was at one of the national meetings. She said, "I have a very important position in my agency that I need to fill and I tried to fill it with a woman, but I simply couldn't find one with the special qualifications that we were looking for and so, I had to take a man."
Well, that should be the end of the tape, according to my watch.
All right. I want you to keep in touch with me.
Oh, I will.
END OF INTERVIEW