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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 H-0218, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Conrad Odell Pearson grew up in Durham, North Carolina. In 1932, immediately following his graduation from Howard Law School, Pearson became involved in legally challenging segregation in higher education. The first part of the interview is dedicated to a detailed discussion of his work with fellow attorney Cecil McCoy on a case that challenged the decision of the University of North Carolina to deny admission to Thomas Hocutt, an African American, to the school of pharmacy. After the case failed in the state legal system, Pearson helped to re-introduce it at the federal level as a challenge to the Fourteenth Amendment, where it was ultimately thrown out on a technicality. Pearson continued to litigate against institutional segregation from the 1930s on, and in 1935 he helped to found the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs. In addition to describing his legal and political work for civil rights, Pearson offers an insider's perspective on race relations in Durham, primarily from the 1920s through the 1940s. Pearson devotes considerable attention to describing the ways in which James Shepherd, president of the North Carolina College for Negroes (later North Carolina Central University), and C. C. Spaulding, president of North Carolina Mutual, were leading members within the African American community. In so doing, Pearson offers numerous examples of Shepherd's and Spaulding's leadership qualities and their ability to work closely with white politicians for the benefit of African Americans. Throughout the interview, Pearson expresses admiration for the leadership capabilities of these men while simultaneously drawing distinctions between their moderate politics and his more radical politics regarding race relations. In addition, Pearson emphasizes that he saw Durham as more progressive in terms of race relations than many other southern communities, citing a general lack of racial discord as evidence. Whereas Pearson devotes considerable attention to describing the role of African American leaders in shaping race relations in Durham, he also offers commentary on the ways in which industrial leaders, like the Duke family and Julian Shakespeare Carr, also shaped the social and racial landscape of Durham. Finally, Pearson discusses the organization of tobacco workers as it affected African Americans in Durham. This interview offers a lively and complicated portrait of race relations in Durham, North Carolina, and the struggle for socioeconomic equality in that city.
Conrad Odell Pearson grew up in Durham, North Carolina. After obtaining his law degree at Howard Law School in the early 1930s, Pearson returned to Durham, where he became actively involved in legal struggles against segregation in higher education. In this interview, he describes his participation in various civil rights activities, his perception of African American leaders James Shepherd and C. C. Spaulding, and race relations in Durham.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
You're talking about Richard Kluger's book, Simple
Justice?
Yeah. And if you'll hand me that… "William H. Hastie and the Vindication of Civil Rights." He had better records than I have. You'll find it in here.
Is that also by Kluger?
No. That's by somebody at the Howard Law School
Journal.
Jonathan Rush.
Put my name and address on it and you can take that with you.
Well, I can check this out of the library. I'll make a note of that.
Well, I'll just read it and it'll be on tape here. It's the Howard Law Journal, Volume 21, #3, 1978, "William H. Hastie
and the Vindication of Civil Rights", by Jonathan J. Rush.
He has better records than I have. I lost all of my records.
He was working mostly out of the NAACP files?
Yeah.
Well, I'm interested, and they're interested in this oral history program in kind of the background—and maybe there are some things that people don't know, particularly about the community. Do you know how the case began? Who made the first move?
Well, I conceived of the idea when I was in Howard Law School.
And that would have been when?
1932. I graduated in 1932, and I took the bar in December of '31, and passed it. So I was lawyer in law school. So I conceived of it, and came back to North Carolina and talked about it. I had an associate by the name of Cecil A. McCoy.
Where was he from?
He was from Durham, but I think he finished Brooklyn Law School. Somewhere in Long Island.
How long had he been here?
This was his home.
But I mean, how long had he been in the law?
I don't think he finished law school. I think he did enough to comply with the requirements of the North Carolina bar at that time.
But he was a practicing attorney in Durham when you got out of law school?
Yes. And I discussed it with him, and he was for it. The next thing we
had to do was find a plaintiff. And we went to the high schools and
talked with the principals and tried to find out who the brilliant
students were. And we went to all of their houses and they turned it
down. They were afraid of reprisals. And Hocutt had worked in the
drugstore for years. I don't know what his background was. I don't think
he had anybody to help him or anything. And in the meantime he was going
to school down here at the North Carolina College, at that time—it's
North Carolina Central now. So he wanted to be a pharmacist. So we
interested him in it, and we drew the complaint. 'Course a complaint
drawn back in those days, lawyers would probably laugh at it now. The
law has progressed so, since from that time. And we made a cardinal
mistake because we should never have brought him [the case] in state
court. Because the state court, judicially at that time, was committed
to the status quo, and Jesus Christ couldn't have won the case if he had
been the lawyer on the case. Well, it was radical in that no one had
ever challenged the system of discriminating on the base of race in
state institutions. And we found out from this law suit that you aren't
going to win anything in the state courts. Because they could tie you
up, and they could write a decision, and keep it balled up, and keep it
from ever getting to the Supreme Court, you know. So we went back to the
drawing board, and we came up with the idea of bringing all these cases
under the Fourteenth Amendment in the federal courts.
Had you thought about other state institutions or public schools? What made you focus on Chapel Hill?
Well, I looked at, it was called Miche Statutes of North Carolina, and looked at the constitution. And there was nothing in the constitution that barred blacks from the University of North Carolina. It said that the legislature is hereby empowered to constitute one or more universities for the training of the youth of the land. It didn't say anything about race or anything. But traditionally no Negroes had ever applied. And that was the basis of it.
So, in effect, there was no Jim Crow law for the University.
It was custom and usage.
Now, you had thought of this when you were in law school at Howard. And then when you came to Durham you got in touch with Cecil McCoy?
Cecil McCoy and I, we had adjoining offices. And we talked it over and he
was for it. None of the other lawyers in town had ever thought about it
or dreamed about it. After we started it, then they all wanted to get
into it. And, of course, we wouldn't let them in. And it divided the
town, because, you see, we were just emerging out of the Reconstruction
period. And there had been riots in this state. The Wilmington Riot is
well known. And the Red Shirt Movement was run by Josephus Daniels
Do you think that fear was real on the part of someone like C.C. Spaulding? Do you think he was really frightened?
Yes.
What about Shepard?
Shepard capitalized on it. We talked with Shepard about it in confidence,
and told him what we were going to do. And we pledged him to
confidentiality and silence. And the next morning we woke up and the Greensboro Daily News had broke the story. And it was
a fellow that worked for the Greensboro Daily News—I
can't recall his name [Tom Bost]—but he worked for the Daily News back at that time. He was a special writer for the
Greensboro Daily News. I think he was on Dr.
Shepard's payroll—a P.R. man with him, dealing with the legislature. And
after he broke it, then we went to the Morning Herald
and told them if we were going to break the story, we would have told
them about it. But Dr. Shepard had broken it without our knowledge. And
the editor was enraged, not at the story being broke, but the fact that
we were bringing the law suit. He said, "As far as I'm concerned" (as I
recall, the editor said), "all of you can go back to Africa. It'd be
better off for the country." He wrote an editorial: "Playing with
Fire."
What was this man's name? Was this Council?
I don't know what his name was. He was the Morning
Herald editor. Morning Herald. I think they had these other people working
for them. And the case was filed.
Now, this was when it was filed as a federal case, you're talking about?
No, filed in the state. And the judge said he would hear it, but he thought we were making a mistake, and that in his practice, he would rather have a case where a Negro was suing a white man because, you know the old Southern idea of an aristocrat looking after the well-being of a Negro. His name was Barnhill. And we wrote to the NAACP and asked them for help; and they sent Bill Hastie down. Bill Hastie had already graduated from Harvard in the first tenth of his class, and was considered very brilliant, a legal scholar. He'd gone back to Harvard to get his S.J.D., and he was working on his S.J.D., and NAACP sent him down. He was really a brilliant man, no question about it, a scholar. And he amazed… The courthouse was filled. And his performance just amazed the people; they hadn't ever seen anybody as brilliant as he was. And his colloquy with the judge and so forth, and how well-mannered he was, soft-spoken, no anger. He made quite an impression. And, in fact, it was the start of his career. He later became a solicitor in the Department of the Interior under Ickes. And I think he became an aide to someone during the war. And I think he went to the Virgin Islands as a district attorney, U.S. district attorney, and later became governor of the Virgin Islands. After that I don't know whether he became a district federal judge—I think he went directly to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Philadelphia and New York and so forth. And he had quite a career, made quite a reputation as a legal scholar.
Did he see this as a case that could be won, do you think?
I doubt it, because he didn't think that we should appeal it. He didn't
think that we had laid the proper groundwork, and didn't think that the
Supreme Court was ready to hear a case of that sort. It would have been
interesting if the case had gone to the Supreme Court of the United
States, to see what they would have done. Because they had Plessy v. Ferguson before them, which grew out of whether a
man could be segregated on a boat. And they had said that he could. Then
they went into the field of education. It would've been interesting,
historically, to know just how they would have acted on it. But after we
got into the federal courts, we began to get relief, and cases sprang up
all over the country. No one had ever thought about challenging the
state. Maryland had a dual system, and Delaware, Texas, Kansas, North
and South Carolina, Virginia—all had dual systems. And there was no
black university in the whole South. It isn't one [Negro university] to
this day that is supported by the state. This doesn't speak well, does
it, well of the separate but equal doctrine.
This did not get beyond, then, the state level?
No. Now, the Hocutt Case, we didn't appeal it. We went back to the drawing board, and decided that all cases of this nature, we would bring to the federal court. And we began having some success in the federal court. Then some of the states started setting up separate law schools, to keep Negroes out of the white law schools. Texas set up one; North Carolina set up one; I don't think Virginia set up one. I think Texas set up an elaborate law school to keep Negroes out of the University of Texas.
This was what, Texas Southern?
I forget the name of that school now. I don't know whether it's in
operation now. South Carolina set up one; Florida set up one. But I
think they eventually closed the school in South Carolina and Florida.
Did you think that the NAACP, in part, had this in mind as a short-run gain? That is, if you couldn't integrate an institution like the University of North Carolina that you might get separate professional schools?
That was probably the idea at that time; they wouldn't support that idea now.
Do you think Hastie was aware of that?
He wouldn't have supported that idea. I don't think, in my judgment.
What about the NAACP in general, the office, Walter White?
I don't think they would have either. At the same time, suits began to
spring up on two issues. On the Plessy v. Ferguson,
the separate-but-equal doctrine, they started bringing in law suits to
force the state to equalize the schools. And that went along for a long
time. And the next thing was the salary schedule. They paid white
teachers in the public school system one salary, and Negro teachers a
lower salary. And then Virginia brought a suit and the courts forced the
state of Virginia to pay the same salary. And North Carolina did so
without a law suit, because they knew that they couldn't win, so they
went on and equalized the school teachers' salary.
You don't think that the NAACP might have used this threat to have integration when they didn't think, perhaps, it was possible to get these lesser demands, such as equal teacher salaries?
I don't think it was part of that policy then. Do you remember Judge
Waring in South Carolina, who ruled in favor of the NAACP on a case Brown
was born. And this judge, when that case was brought in South
Carolina—it was a three-judge court as I remember—and he voted that Plessy v. Ferguson should be overruled, and
discrimination inherently was wrong. And you'd have to integrate the
schools. I think it was two-to-one, or something like that. But he
incurred the wrath of the people in South Carolina. And I think when he
lost all of his friends he eventually, I think, left and went to New
York to live. I think his name was Judge Waring.
This was what, in the forties? This was long after the…
That was the forerunner of Brown.
There was a time, then, after the Hocutt case, when the NAACP was arguing for equal salaries and that sort of thing?
Now, see, first you had the Hocutt case. It awakened people to the idea
that state schools should be open to everybody. And you had a slew of
cases on that issue. Then you had Plessy v. Ferguson
that said you can have separate schools, but they had to be equal. And
you had a slew of law suits to equalize the schools. Then you had Brown to come along next. But that idea was generated,
as I understand it, by Judge Waring, who was a United States district
judge. He planted the idea in Thurgood Marshall's head. And the NAACP
changed its policy.
What about the Gaines' case? Was there any relationship between Gaines and Hocutt?
Gaines grew out of the Hocutt case. Gaines came way after the Hocutt case.
Yes, that was what, 1938?
Yes.
Well now, to back up a moment, there's some interesting local history. We were talking about Dr. Shepard and his motivations. What do you think were his motivations?
He capitalized on it to get, I think, the state to pass a statute to allow him to have a school of pharmacy. And he also got a school of law out of it. He capitalized on it. He wasn't in sympathy with it at all. The weakness in the Hocutt case was, under the rules of the University of North Carolina—and I guess all the schools—is that when you apply, your record has to be sent up from the school that you last attended. Dr. Shepard wouldn't send his record over there. So we had Hocutt to go over to Dr. Shepard to get his record. And Hocutt sent it over there himself. But that didn't comply with the rules of the University, which left a hole in your law suit.
Is that the technicality that it was thrown out of court on?
That was one of the reasons. And the next was that the judge said that he
didn't think Hocutt was qualified. Yet, all you needed at that time to
attend the School of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina was be
a high school graduate.
So you're saying that Shepard had these motivations to capitalize on it, and you think that he got a law school and a pharmacy school.
The pharmacy school never developed, but the law school did. And he got
money for capitalization, new buildings and things of that sort.
That was the first report on the case, from the Greensboro
Daily News?
Let's see if we can find out when the case was filed.
…to do some research for them. And as a result of this research, some
fella that died left his son a large amount of money. His son was kind
of eccentric and he turned the money over to the NAACP. I think his name
was Garland Morning Herald and the Greensboro Daily
News, I'd like to have a copy of it myself. You see, that would
give whoever's going to write about it, the attitude of the status quo
people. Because the newspapers would certainly reflect the opinion of
the majority.
You feel satisfied that it was Dr. Shepard who broke it to the Greensboro Daily News?
Oh, yes. He had an angle for doing it.
Is it possible that the case could've gone any further had he not sabotaged it?
If Dr. Shepard hadn't sabotaged the case, we would have had a stronger
case to carry to the Supreme Court. Supreme Court of the State of
What was Hastie's advice on this?
That we not appeal. That we go ahead and start working out procedure to get these cases in federal court. Because you're not going to get any relief from the state court. It was like Brer Rabbit: don't throw him into the briar patch. They'd welcome all the cases into the state courts.
What was Hocutt's feeling about this?
Hocutt would have done anything that we suggested that he do.
You had actually selected him personally?
He was the only one we could get.
But you and McCoy had gone to Hocutt and actually interviewed him and said, "Would you do this?"
Yes. We had tried a whole lot of students besides Holcutt, but Holcutt's the only one who would agree to be a plaintiff. And Dr. Shepard brought James T. Taylor, who was on his faculty but was studying at Ohio State University. He brought him back. And A.E. Elder, who later became President after Dr. Shepard. And they did all they could to get Holcutt to withdraw. But Hocutt wouldn't withdraw.
Was Hocutt hopeful? Did he really think he might be admitted? Or did he see this as a kind of test?
I think he wanted to be a pharmacist, and I guess he figured if we could get him in, that we could raise the money to pay for his schooling over there. But he ended up going to New York and he became some sort of supervisor in the subway. He died about a couple of years ago.
He never did go on to graduate school?
No. He was very proud of his contribution. Everytime he'd come to North
Carolina, he'd look me up. And he would come to the campus.
Did Kluger interview him, I wonder?
I don't know whether Kluger did or not. I doubt it.
What about Hocutt's family? Did you know anything about his background?
No, I don't; I really don't.
He had been an undergraduate major in science? He had a strong record, you said, and that should have got him admitted.
If he was a high school graduate at that time, the University of North Carolina—as I remember reading the catalogue. Because we wrote for a catalogue. Of course, they didn't know me from Adam's house cat. So they sent the catalogue, and we looked at the catalogue. And the only requirement at that time was to be a high school graduate to enter the School of Pharmacy. Of course, that has changed now.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
… degree there.
In pharmacy. All you had to do was to be a high school graduate, and he was supposed to be admitted.
There's a story that Louis Austin used to tell about you and he actually carrying Hocutt over there.
We carried him over.
Can you tell me that in as much detail as you remember?
As I remember it now, Dr. J. N. Mills, who's now deceased, had an
automobile, and we got in his car, Hocutt, Louis Austin, Cecil McCoy,
myself, and
Was there any response in the meantime? Did word get out that you had tried this? Did the people of Chapel Hill react?
No. I do remember there was a law school professor there who was from Illinois. He went to school in Illinois with Negroes in his class and so forth. And he made a statement I never did forget. He said, "Of course you had a right to bring this case, and you had a right to bring it under mandamus, to make a state officer do what he is supposed to do." He said, "It's just like a child coming into the parlor and demanding his play toy to play before the guests." Then he said, "We kept our ears to the ground to see what the reaction would be, because we didn't want anything to happen to you." I forget that fellow's name. I think he was dean at one time. And the name of the attorney general at that time was Brummett. So they brought in Brummett, the person who was teaching constitutional law at the University, and Victor S. Bryant, a prominent lawyer here in town.
Mr. Bryant is still alive?
He's still alive. [Died 1980] And it was amusing. When we got to the
courthouse to try the case, the hearing, the attorney general said he
wanted to talk to us. So we would go into this room, and all the Negro
citizens stand out in the hall. We went in there to talk, and the
attorney general said, "Well, now, I'll tell you what I'll do. If you
fellows drop this suit, I'll get the state to appropriate money to pay
your tuition outside the state." We asked for assurances. He said,
"Well, all I can say is that I would probably do it," and when we come
back and tell
These were black lawyers from Durham.
Yes. They felt that the suit should be dropped, and we should follow the state's proposal to furnish tuition to Negroes who wanted to go to state schools outside, to such jurisdictions that would admit them. We wouldn't agree to it unless we got a firm commitment. Well, the attorney general couldn't commit the legislature to do anything; all he could say was he'd try. So we wouldn't accept. Then later on a bill was introduced to that effect, but the legislature was mad; they wouldn't pass it. Later on they did pass such a bill, and you know who had control of it: Dr. Shepard. If you wanted to go to Chicago to study medicine or anything of that sort, why, you had to go to Dr. Shepard. If he okayed it, then you'd get your stipend. And several of the southern states then followed that.
Did Shepard have contacts in the legislature?
Oh, yes, because he was a clever politician. If he'd been white, he would have been governor of this state.
Tell me a little bit more about him. He was a Republican, wasn't he?
Yes.
That didn't make any difference?
No, no, because Shepard was a very, very clever… He was a highly educated
man. He was clever. He finished in pharmacy.
Was Bryant in the legislature at this time?
No. He had been in the legislature, but he wasn't a member at that time.
You said that Bryant was one of the people who was trying to control this. Were Bryant and Shepard together on this?
No, I don't think so. I think Shepard's lawyer was Bob Gant, Sr., who was a member of the legislature at that time. He's now deceased. Bob Gant, Sr. was a lawyer and a politician. Dr. Shepard was working through him.
Was there a clear division then in the black community over the Hocutt case, would you say, with the black citizens being on one side, and then the feeling that Shepard and a handful of others [were] on the other side?
Yes. The people who were closely related to the Reconstruction problems
naturally were cautious, for fear that there might
Was there any division at all among the whites?
I had letters from people from all over the state who supported. I can't remember receiving a letter from anyone that was derogatory, who didn't support it.
What about in Durham? Any white citizens who were supportive?
No, I don't remember anybody.
Was there any division at all? Was there anybody who stood out as the chief opponent, and then people who were more moderate?
No. Brummett was the attorney general. I guess the people of the status quo figured that you wasn't going to get anywhere with it anyway. It was their ballpark, and you couldn't win on the home court. That was their home court. They didn't think you could win anyway. I don't think they were disturbed at all.
So among whites who might have had some voice, there was nobody in Durham who spoke up in favor, who supported it?
No, not as I can recall it.
Any younger white citizens who would …
No.
Now this division between the citizens on the one hand and those, you
say, who remembered Reconstruction on the other. Shepard had this extra
motivation, you're saying, of perhaps getting a law school or something.
Now Spaulding's motivation was pretty much fear,
I wouldn't call it fear. He was afraid that the repercussions might cause the same conditions that you had in the Wilmington riots.
Did he ever talk to you about this?
I don't recall ever having a conversation, but I know what he was doing at that time. I knew he was opposed to it. He'd think that we ought to go ahead and compromise in the matter. And I can understand his feelings about it, because he had seen racial discord. As we spoke about earlier, in the Red Shirt Movement in the state, when Negroes were shot down at the polls and the race riot in Wilmington. That's the way Aycock and Josephus Daniels—the elder, were leading it. And after they got it under control, the legislature passed a law that would prohibit Negroes from participating in politics again, "to read and write the Constitution in the English language to the satisfaction of the registrar." Well, that last line there, "to the satisfaction of the registrar," he could be a fourth-grade student, and you could stand before him as a Ph.D., and all he had to do was say, "You don't satisfy me." I went all over the state collecting affidavits and sent them to the FBI in Washington to be investigated. They came down and investigated, and that'd be all you'd get. The federal government was in sympathy with it at that time.
There was a story about Spaulding actually trying to call maybe it was you, perhaps Louis Austin, kind of on the carpet up at the Mutual Building about this.
I remember we did have a meeting up there, and they were trying to get us
to withdraw it. At that time, the Mutual had a kind of forum where all
the employees would come in. We had a meeting up there,
I've looked into the NAACP records, just looking up something else, and there is a letter in there from Spaulding to the NAACP in which Spaulding says that "Some of our lawyers"—and he mentions you and McCoy—"are interested in a case that would do much good," or he says something like that. And he seemed to be actually inviting the NAACP. Do you ever remember him at the first being supportive, and then getting frightened? Do you ever remember going to him initially and asking …
The only person we consulted, talked with first, was Dr. Shepard. Of course, Dr. Shepard could control Mr. Spaulding. If Mr. Spaulding listened to Dr. Shepard, Dr. Shepard would have controlled him. We were talking about Dr. Shepard a few minutes ago. If he had been born white, he'd have been governor of the state. He had come up through that rough-and-tumble politics during Reconstruction. He knew his way around. When he built and started this school, the National Religious Training School, if you started a school and Booker T. Washington didn't okay it, you couldn't get any money from the northern philanthropists. And he never gave Dr. Shepard approval. Dr. Shepard went directly to people in Boston and raised money. He kept raising money and going almost bankrupt and raising money, and finally he got the state to take the school over.
To get back to Spaulding, if he hadn't been worried about the impact—that
is, the possibility of race riots—do you think he would
I would say Mr. Spaulding was a very cautious man. I don't think Mr. Spaulding had education beyond that of a high school graduate, but you never would have been able to tell it. By talking to him and so forth, you wouldn't have been able to tell it. He was a kind man, a gentle man, and he was really interested in advancing his race.
You mentioned Merrick reacting to being called a "handkerchief-head." Would anybody have ever called Spaulding or Shepard that?
Probably somebody would have called Mr. Spaulding that, but they wouldn't call Shepard. Because Shepard went down there to the Capitol to see somebody, and they told him to get on the freight elevator. He refused. He was going down to see about getting money, and he refused. He told me of an incident. It was customary that if a white man came to your office, he wore his hat, wouldn't take his hat off. He said this white fellow came to his office to see him about something. He kept his hat on. So Dr. Shepard said, "Well, now, let's go outdoors and talk, because I don't want to embarrass you and ask you to take your hat off, and I think you'll be more comfortable on the outside."
Did the fellow take his hat off?
Yes. And I think they went on outside to talk, but the fellow got the hint. He got the hint. And that's the reason why the North Carolina Mutual made its growth for us, that the insurance man come to your house keep his hat on in your house, and they capitalized on it. And that helped their insurance company grow.
In looking at Spaulding, you see him as a different kind of person altogether than Shepard? Is it mostly a matter of education?
Shepard had a better education and a far better mind, but I think Mr. Spaulding was a kind, gentle man who had a deep concern for his fellow man.
How do you think the black community saw the two people? Did they see Shepard or Spaulding as the leader, or both working together?
Shepard never left his office to attend any meetings or anything, yet he controlled everything through other people. He was a politician. You don't see no politician out there carrying nobody to the polls; he's sitting up in his office pushing buttons. That's the type of fellow Dr. Shepard was.
So you might see Spaulding more out front, but Shepard was behind pulling the strings.
That's right, pulling the strings.
To get to the other side of the community, that was offering the support in the Hocutt case, were the black workers in the tobacco factories organized this early?
No.
Was there any kind of sentiment coming out of the workers?
I don't think that they were concerned, other than the sensational part about it. I don't think that anywhere in the country people had thought about it. And when they hit the national media, then that started people to thinking. Because everybody had the same problems. If you went to Maryland, Delaware, and come south, everybody knew about the problems, and some of the midwestern states like Kansas, Oklahoma; they had those problems. So that's when people started thinking about it.
Did the word go out after the Hocutt case was dropped that it
No, I don't think… The only time I ever heard it discussed was, we were invited to Howard University Law School to lecture to the students about the case. When we were introduced—not introduced, because the fellows there knew us; I was just out a year ahead of them—Charlie Houston told them one of the weaknesses in the case was Dr. Shepard, his attitude toward it and what he did. Charlie Houston's words were very bitter toward Dr. Shepard. And Dr. Shepard's son-in-law who had married Dr. Shepard's daughter, by the name of Smith, was going to law school at that time. He was sitting right in there.
But I detect from you no sense of bitterness at all towards Shepard.
No, Shepard and my uncle were very good friends for years, and I admired Dr. Shepard. He did more good than he did harm.
Did you and he ever discuss this Hocutt case after it was dismissed?
The only time it came up was, they had a meeting over at the University in Chapel Hill, held under some kind of auspices of the Human Relations.
The Commission on Interracial Cooperation?
That's right. I was invited. I don't know why, because Austin and myself
were never invited to any of the meetings like that. I went over there,
and the president of Johnson C. Smith was presiding. And there was a
white fellow—I forget his name [Newbold]—who was in charge of… He was on
some kind of a foundation to advise the state about Negro education. It
irked me that he came in and handed the president of Johnson C. Smith,
who was the chairman, a piece of paper. That was the
He was from North Carolina or where?
He was in Raleigh, but he was on a foundation. The Ford people or
somebody sent him down here to help Negroes out in the field of
education. You can find out what his name was; most anybody can tell
you.
And then nominated a black man, too.
No, I don't think I did. I don't think it ever came up. Mr. Spaulding and
I got along nicely together. I drew his will, and his daughter and I
went to school together. And we never had any ill feeling.
Would the white community see Spaulding as having quite a lot of power in the black community?
He got a good press. I think Mr. Spaulding was practically, due to the mass media, known all over the world. He got a better press than Dr. Shepard.
I mentioned a while ago that some people might have seen both Spaulding and Shepard as "handkerchief-heads" because of the Hocutt case. But apparently the black community was not so divided that it turned out that way over the Hocutt case?
No. They soon forgot it. Shepard practically dominated the city of Durham
in the white and black communities, because he just knew how. And Mr.
Spaulding was liked because he never clashed with them. And secondly, it
was to the [advantage of the] status quo people to have a C. C.
Spaulding, because they could say, "Notwithstanding the handicaps,
here's a man that succeeded." And they publicized him all over the
world.
Was he clever enough to use this image, though? That is, did the fact that he had this image and good press enable him to go to the white community and get certain things, perhaps?
I don't think that he ever entered that area. I know we tried to get him on the City Council once, and they turned him down. Then they wanted to put him on the Board of Education, and some of the people went to him and told him they didn't think he should serve, because they figured he was going to be used. And he turned them [the Board] down, said on the advice of his physician; his health wouldn't allow him.
You mean he rejected it because he thought they were seeing him as …
The fellows went to him and told him that they thought that they were trying to use him.
And so Spaulding resented the whites seeing him so conservative that they thought they could use him?
Yes, and we convinced him that it was the best interests for him not to accept it, and he didn't accept it.
Do you think they could have used him, had he been on?
You know, you can use a person knowingly and unknowingly. Without his knowledge, he could have been used.
It wasn't too long after the Hocutt case that the Durham community became more and more active politically with the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs. I think that was formed in about 1935.
The way that started was this way. I was working with the
Was it your thinking at the time that Spaulding would make a good chairman because of his image, or what?
I think that was done to get it started, because there was a lot of people from the North Carolina Mutual in it. And if Spaulding hadn't given his okay …
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
I'm interested in him and trying to get some sense of what power he had
in the community and to what extent he was used and to what extent he
used his image to perhaps use others. You're suggesting that he wasn't
nearly as clever as Shepard, but I'm wondering if he was clever enough,
though, to sort of play off of his conservative image and then get some
things done. There's some evidence that he worked with Louis
He would do Austin a favor and do me a favor. When Louis needed some money, he would loan it. He wasn't a man to carry any ill feeling. He was just a man who had succeeded with a country background. He'd been on a farm down in the eastern part of the state, Columbus County, and he was brought here by some of his kinsmen. And he started working with the North Carolina Mutual when it first got started, as their field representative. He eventually worked himself up the ladder; as others died out, he became president. And by the time he became president, he was a man in his middle age with flowing gray hair. He looked the part. When you said "President of the North Carolina Mutual," he just looked the part.
Did that help him, too, in the political circles?
He never was interested in politics. He had a great deal of influence in town.
In the black community.
And white.
I guess that's what I mean by "politics," at that kind of informal level.
Yes.
But you see him more as a figurehead in the DCNA, though, the Durham Committee.
Oh, yes, they made him president because that was the only way they could get it started. Of course, Dr. Shepard didn't care, because he figured he was going to control it anyway.
But it would indicate, though, that he had some power, if people
Oh, Mr. Spaulding had influence in both the white and black communities.
So he was not one of these classic Uncle Tom figures who was just a white man's Negro.
No, I wouldn't picture him that type of a person.
Was the community divided one more level, where there were people like that who would in fact be so under the control of white people that they had no voice of their own, no room to maneuver at all?
Durham is a peculiar town. You see, the Dukes started the tobacco thing, and started the American Tobacco thing. Then you had the Erwin Cotton Mill, which is now the Burlington Industries. So they had a mortal lock on common cheap labor, and it was to their advantage to keep peace in the community. So Durham never had the traumatic racial explosions you had in other counties. It was to the [advantage of the] Dukes and the American Tobacco Company people and the Burlington Mills to keep peace in the community. Never had any trouble racially in Durham.
Were black leaders like Spaulding and Shepard sophisticated enough to understand that all they wanted was peace, and that if they could keep that racial peace they could ask for other things?
I don't think it ever crossed Dr. Shepard's mind.
What would have been his stand, for example, on a tobacco workers' union, Shepard or Spaulding?
I think both would have been against it, because when the North Carolina
Mutual was being organized in Philadelphia, the Mutual opposed it
bitterly. Dr. Shepard had no sympathy for labor organizations
Were you interested in the tobacco workers' movement?
I made speeches for them when they were trying to organize.
So Shepard would support you up to a point, or Spaulding would support you up to a point, but …
Spaulding had nothing to do with it. He wasn't interested.
I mean he wouldn't support you on the tobacco workers, but he would support you on other things, apparently.
Oh, yes, I remember a boy got into difficulty down here. What happened
was this. We had what we called the county home, and if you were drunk,
they'd give you thirty days and send you to the county home rather than
send you to work on the road. And there was a fellow out there named
Turner who'd been made a trustie, and somebody slipped off and went to
town and bought a gallon of whiskey, and all of them got drunk. And the
"captain"—the man that had charge of the prisoners out there—found out
who did it, and he was punishing the people who brought the whiskey in.
And they figured that Turner had told the captain who brought the
whiskey in, so they sent word to him they were going to get him. And
they were killing hogs at that time, and the captain told him, "If they
bother you, you defend yourself." So Turner had a butcher knife in his
waist. When he came out of the gate where they'd been to eat, a white
fellow from Burlington, who was in there for being drunk and was serving
thirty days, and some other fellows jumped Turner, and Turner
disemboweled this fellow from Burlington. And he was charged with first
degree murder. And Mr. Spaulding put up some money for me to go out
there and investigate the case and so forth. And they brought the case
to trial, and I raised the issue of the exclusion of Negroes from the
jury(s). And the judge called me after he heard part of the testimony.
He said, "This is not a first
Were there other things like that you can remember, where he worked behind …
He didn't do anything publicly; it was all private.
Can you remember other private things like that?
That's the only one I can remember.
But this was the way he saw himself working.
Yes, Mr. Spaulding was a decent sort of a fellow. But due to his rural background, his thinking was not as progressive or contemporary on issues as mine was during those times.
What about your uncle? Where would he appear in this lineup of community leaders?
He and Dr. Shepard were just like twin brothers. He and Dr. Shepard were great friends. My uncle was well-to-do at one time and considered wealthy. If Shepard got into trouble financially, he'd let him have the money to keep his school going and so forth. They were just close, very close.
Do you think there's much to the notion that Shepard, Spaulding, W. G. Pearson …
They pretty well ran the town.
Do you think these were meaningful connections they had with the Dukes?
Oh, yes. I don't think that Shepard was connected with the
Can you remember if you and McCoy and Austin were aware or conscious at the time of these whimsical relationships between the rich whites and, say, Shepard or Spaulding or your uncle, and that you wanted to change that relationship, or was that an issue at all?
That wasn't the issue.
That that part could stay intact, but you wanted other things to change.
Well, you see, it never occurred to us about—these are my afterthoughts—why there was so much peace and tranquility in Durham County when you had the opposite in other counties. I drew that conclusion myself, that since they had this cheap labor, it was to their benefit to keep things cool and quiet and peaceful.
How would they do this, for the most part?
You never had any racial explosion. Racial explosions always come from the white side, not from the Negro side.
But how would they control the whites?
Well, if you're a multi-millionaire, you don't have to control any
people.
I don't think it was obvious, like somebody was telling me
Would it be through, then, Spaulding and Shepard that they had this indirect influence, perhaps?
On whom?
On the black community. That is, are Shepard and Spaulding kind of intermediaries here in keeping peace in the black community?
Oh, I think so, yes.
So this would mean that if Shepard and Spaulding are going to have any credibility in the black community, they in turn have to be getting something from that white power structure. What could they deliver?
Well, let me tell you, Dr. Shepard became the Worshipful Master of the
Masons statewide. And every year he made a speech, like the President
makes every year, the state of the nation. And in this speech he'd
always praise the State of North Carolina, and he would name different
personalities, white and so forth. Then when he ended his speech, he
would make demands from the Negro community. And he used to say that the
price of prejudice comes high. And consequently, he was just looked upon
as a statewide leader. He had all these Masonic lodges in every large
city and every county in the state, so he just
I want to ask you about Carr in a minute. But in trying to figure out how Spaulding, for example, through this Durham Committee, might have some influence because of his influence in the white community. Could he go to the white power structure and ask for certain things and get them?
No, he wasn't that type. He was put in there to get the thing started, and after he came out then the younger group started putting people in the position to make demands. If he hadn't been there in the beginning, they never would have gotten the committee started. So during the time he was president, no demands were made, no political advances, except that Negroes started to register. Drives through the Citizens' Committee to register. Of course, there's nothing radical about that.
So his function was to get it off the ground.
That's right. He was being used, but he didn't know it.