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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
K-0443, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
Clyde Smith took three coaching positions at Lincolnton High School in Gaston County, NC, shortly after a "freedom of choice" plan brought black students to the formerly all-white school, and shortly before integration began in earnest. He experienced integration as a coach: the basketball court and the football field were some of the earliest sites of integration. But while sports teams often integrated more smoothly than classrooms because the white community valued athletic ability, some tensions on his squads remained. Black players were frequently undisciplined, he remembers, preferring to goof off on the basketball court rather than run drills, or preferring the glory of Friday night football games to the rewards of Monday morning practice. Eventually, the all-white coaching staff warmed to their black athletes, but not before they dismissed a number of them. Smith offers only one side of the conflict between coaches and players, but his recollections suggest that though their abilities may have eased the integration process, black athletes nonetheless experienced some of the discomforts of the transition.
Clyde Smith recalls the tensions that integration introduced to athletics at North Carolina's Lincolnton High School.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Like I said, I wanted to let you know about some of the general attitudes
about race and race relations in particular in Lincolnton. It would be
real worth your time. This book is pretty easy reading (holds up
Elizabeth Leland's A Place for Joe, a book
about a mentally disabled black child cared for by a white Lincolnton
family during the segregation era). You can read this book in several
hours. Of course it's got a lot of pictures, things and
family kind of history. And I can attest that this is really a true
story. In fact I can take you up the street here when we get through and
kind of show you some of the things that relate to that.
As I said, I pulled those yearbooks. There's a little bit in
there that you can spin off on. I knew this thing with the Student Human
Relations Committee that was formed by the students. You know kind of
emerged. And that's truly empowerment. You know we talk about
empowerment today and it's a big word. Students really became
empowered back then in the late 60's. You know,
I'll share all that with you. So you go ahead with your
questions, and I just wanted to make you aware of some of the general
attitudes that kind of already appear in Lincolnton before that and I
think that's one of the things that really made integration
in Lincolnton High School, you know
Let me first ask you where you grew up. If not here, where you did and when you moved here.
Okay, I grew up in Gaston County which is a fairly small community,
fifteen, eighteen miles from Lincolnton. Traveled through Lincolnton
many times - I had relatives here. And of course going to Western
Carolina I traveled back and forth through Lincolnton. In fact,
that's really how I - one of the ways I ended up in
Lincolnton to start with. A guy who's really a key person in
this, my senior year in high school I was on a football - in fact Von
Ray Harris who still lives here and we can even talk to him by phone
today if you'd like and if you have time we can maybe even
swing by his house. Get a picture or something. But anyways, his first
year at Lincolnton High School was the fall of '59. He was
coaching an all-star football game and traditionally that had been
between several conferences that Lincolnton played in but
didn't really include those small schools in Gaston County,
but for some reason a number of those schools were in the playoffs so he
made a recruiting trip through Gaston County and picked up a couple of
boys that played
It's through that relationship with coach Harris that I ended
up in Lincolnton. I came back and taught for a couple of years in Mount
Holly in Gaston County. Every year Coach Harris would try to encourage
me to come to Lincolnton. If there was an opening in Lincolnton he
wanted me to come there and we had a pretty good relationship
… And finally after about three years an opening came and I
came to Lincolnton.
What were you doing when you first came here? Were you coaching?
Yes, when I first came, I came as an assistant football coach, head track coach and the head basketball coach. Which really was a key thing with the blacks particularly. You know we had a real influx of - in fact the first year here when I coached basketball, all of a sudden the basketball team really became predominantly black even that first year. I mean I think I had like eight or nine black kids out of a squad of fifteen. But that was quite a change of what Lincolnton had experienced before. You know they had had one or two on the team from freedom of choice but all of a sudden we became - I think we had either nine or ten kids that first year.
Do you remember, what was the response or attitude of
It was kind of an open attitude. I didn't really see anything … of course the schools I had been at in Gaston County, it had been freedom of choice kind of deal too, so it was almost the same kind of situation I had experienced elsewhere. I guess one of the first things really when we - first that fall, in that summer, there was a really high turnout of black football players for the first practice. Closing down an all-black school. And there was a lot of apprehension I guess with people that ‘this is finally going to happen,’ but my first couple of years I was in education, we began to get a few black students. It seemed like people in general were kind of open about it. I guess some apprehensions, you know, but from everybody - You know, ‘How is this going to work?’ and so forth.
How did integration come about? Was it an initiative of the community or was it from the government?
It was pretty much like it was everywhere else. It was an outgrowth of
1954 and it had been kind of gradually coming about. And I even saw some
- and my college was up in the mountains, so it was unusual - but we
began to get a few black students there. Particularly playing football.
It was new for
Did you notice some tension between the black players and the white coaches?
Didn't see it really as an issue here. One of the things that I really noticed more than anything else is that … again, at that time, we thought it was more lack of discipline on their part. One of the things we noticed, like I told you earlier we had a big turnout for football and you know they really dropped off the team real fast. I don't know, we kind of sensed and whether or not it's true or not I'm not really going to say, they were not used to the type of discipline we were dishing out. Our football coach is a very hard-nosed person and turned out to really be successful. He turned out a couple of All-Americans and he was a very successful coach. He was kind of known for his hard nose.
What was the coach's name?
Von Ray Harris. Very strict disciplinarian type of person. Which any
successful football coach then, that's what made him
successful. We kind of sensed that maybe the black athletes had not been
used to the rigors of the type of practices that we were trying to get
From my interview with Rudolph Young the other day … are you familiar with Rudolph Young?
Yeah, I'm familiar. I know Rudolph.
He mentioned that Newbold athletics didn't receive any local press. Did black athletes at Lincolnton High School receive any press when they first came?
Oh yeah, oh yeah. Immediately. In fact, one of the
You mentioned that Bobby Joe Easter came during Freedom of Choice. Were most of the blacks who came during Freedom of Choice athletes?
Pretty much. Pretty much a couple of athletes. Another athlete came, in
fact Walter Lansler [spelling?], who was a basketball player.
He'd been through there. You know, it was
Did any black athletes, or athletes in general, ever make it to college after that?
Oh yeah, in fact Bobby Joe Easter was, he really came along, he could have played in the Big Ten. He visited Big Ten schools. Purdue at that time - Purdue University was one of the big schools. In fact they flew him up there. Bobby Joe's grades weren't that … He ultimately ended up at Middle Tennessee, in fact he graduated from Middle Tennessee. He actually, I think what happened, he was recruited pretty highly and ended up, I think he actually ended up going into the service and then after the service he ended up at Middle Tennessee. But he was very highly recruited you know by the Big Ten schools. At that time, Big Ten schools, unlike Carolina and other local schools who recruited black athletes, the Big Ten has always had pretty good success from this area. Big Ten recruited black athletes in the south, but you know they don't get very many now because there are too many teams in this area.
Was there a minimum GPA for all athletes on the teams?
No, the only thing there you had was the state Department of Public Instruction or the High School Athletic Association in North Carolina which was kind of a governing body. It required a student to pass three subjects. So that was only it, we didn't know anything about GPA then. If you could pass three subjects, you could play. And those three subjects could be just about anything you wanted, they could be P.E. You know of course everyone had to take English, but just about anyone could pass three subjects particularly because they had P.E. class and some kind of vocational class or something else. So it was pretty easy for someone to pass three subjects.
What was the coaching staff like? Were there any blacks or was it all white?
It was all white, we didn't have any blacks on the coaching staff at all at that time. Had a couple of black faculty members.
Do you think there was a problem with blacks, you mentioned the football players dropping out. Do you think they had trouble with …
Adaptation or adjustment? I really don't know. I just
In fact, it's kind of ironic, I never will forget. One of - we had another little black kid that was as a result of me dismissing two or three of these other black kids all of a sudden got to play a lot more. And after two or three weeks went by, maybe his playing time was not quite as much. He came up to me and said "Coach, let's have another one of them meetings. I gotta play more." I guess it was me as a young coach trying to get a handle on things. Like I said, I dismissed some of those guys, and even to this day though quite a few of them see me and and they don't hold a grudge, I'm sure. In fact they've done some things for me in my schools. They've been very supportive. They didn't even react negatively against me at that time. That was about the middle of the year in basketball. But basically it was the same in football. I don't think they held it against Von Ray Harris.
In fact, he had an instance early on in football. Newbold had a guy who was tremendous, he was a man. I mean literally. He was one of those guys who was about 200 pounds, stocky, quick as a cat. His name was Leroy Diamond. He was a star at Newbold. He was "all-everything" in the black conference I guess. Leroy was one of the ones who emerged, he hung with it. I never will forget it. We played the first varsity football game, just barely won 7-0, just got by.
Who was that against?
Against R-S - Central Rutherford-Spindale. Bobby Joe Easter, the kid
who'd been at Lincolnton a couple of years. He came to coach
Harris after the ballgame and said … In fact Leroy
hadn't played very much. In the coach's mind he
hadn't really earned it, he hadn't seen what
he'd been touted up to and what he'd heard from
the black school board. Bobby Joe came to coach after the game and said,
"Coach, I don't know whether you know this, but
Leroy is a Friday night ballplayer." And I never will forget
what coach told him, and this'll kind of give you the kind of
attitude, the kind of tough attitude Coach Harris always had. He looked
at Bobby Joe and he said, "Look Bobby Joe, I'm going
to tell you something. You need to get word to Leroy that I'm
a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday coach. If he wants to play
for me on Friday night, he needs to come out here on Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesday and Thursday in practice and give what it takes to play on
Friday night." And Bobby Joe said "Okay." So
Bobby Joe evidently got the message to him because come Monday evening,
Leroy was a different participant in practice. And that Friday night,
Leroy Diamond scored five touchdowns. In fact, we finally had to take
him out of the ballgame to keep him from scoring. He only touched the
football about six times and five times he scored - from all over the
You mentioned Boyce Blake just now. Did you know Alan Stoudemire and
Boyce Blake? [For more information on this relationship see Alan
Stoudemire, A Place at the Table (Atlanta,
I knew them both, yes. Beause I was assistant coach at that time, and really on into spring I was their track coach.
What observations did you make about their friendship? They had a long-lasting friendship, and then in high school…
I knew they was kind of buddies, but I never really … In fact I didn't know this until it started coming out in the paper years later. In fact, I can still remember Boyce calling him Zeke, and I didn't realize that Boyce was the one who gave Alan Stoudemire the nickname Zeke as a kid because he said he looked like a Zeke. I knew that they got along good, but I never realized until recently that they lived over where they did, just across the creek from each other. I knew they were friends, but I didn't know that all that stuff transpired all the way back to when they were five years old.
When I talked with Dr. Stoudemire, he mentioned that he and Blake formed a coalition of black and white students to march against the KKK at a rally in Lincolnton.
Right.
Basically they drove the Klan out by showing them the resistance within the community. Did you know anything about this at the time?
Just at a distance. I really didn't. I was kind of new here. I had one kid and our second child was just born, so I was kind of preoccupied. I had heard vaguely about it, and I didn't know how serious it was. It just disappeared. This organization you refer to - in fact, after the football season got underway and things went pretty well. I'll tell you when things got happening was at the end of the football season. Just little things, undercurrent things that we didn't sense. The blacks begun to be left out. Like in the homecoming court, no black girls were selected. Then with cheerleading when things were voted on, and obviously the procedure in place was probably a majority vote. For boys, they earned their position on the athletic teams, but then all of a sudden when it became voting issues…
The KKK, I don't think there's an active group in
Lincolnton but probably in Lincoln County at the time there was. Even
though the attitude has always been quite open to blacks - a lot of the
way the KKK operates is from a distance, but I
At the football games, I assume Friday nights were big social events. They seem to have been hyped pretty well in the newspapers. Did blacks and whites come together at these events?
I think the blacks came, but they didn't really come in full force. Some came, but it wasn't like the two communities merged together or anything. But they did come, but they were isolated. They would sit in one little corner where they would sit together. Over the years that dispersed.
How long would you estimate that took to disperse?
Several years. It took several years until that kind of …
Over your coaching career…you had to dismiss players early on. Did that change as you had time to adjust to coaching in general and coaching of black players?
In fact, at least in my mind, they began to get used to us, and we began
to get used to them. And they started to do
As a teacher and as a coach, what did you sense was the black parent involvement in the schools? Did parents get involved in parent/teacher organizations?
Yes, we started to get more. The second or third year I was there, a black lady was very involved in our sports booster club. They tended to get involved in the sports booster club. And some of these black parents were connected to the school system, working in the cafeteria or something like that. In fact, I think the superintendent began to recruit. I know, looking at the picture of this boy right here that his mama worked uptown in one of the restaurants. Well, the superintendent began to recruit blacks because we didn't have many on staff. It was hard to find teachers, but it was good to put them wherever they could. Give them a familiar face in the cafeteria. They tried to find teachers, but it's even tougher today than it was then.
You mentioned that there were black faculty but not coaches. Did these teachers come over from Newbold or were they there before the first black students arrived? Did they come with freedom of choice?
To tell you the truth, I think we only had one black person. And he was here when I got here, but I think he came over with freedom of choice. He was Oliver Patterson. He's dead now, died a few years ago. He was a social studies teacher, lived in Charlotte. I think he had some ties here with Lincoln County growing up, and maybe with freedom of choice he came. I think that's really the only black certified staff person we had when I came, in fact I know it is. It was a number of years before we were able to secure someone else. He was the cosponsor, along with Coach Harris, of the Human Relations Council that was put together by the students.
When I talked with Rudolph Young, he also mentioned that certain businesses and restaurants in town had discriminatory practices. When was that, and were you around when that took place?
No, I think that had already been broken down. Some of it could have happened, but I just …
That's it for my questions. If you have anything else you'd like to share or discuss…
Well, if you've got time, I'd like to show you around the community a little bit…get a sense of the place. I'll show you some things.
That would be great. Let's do it.
END OF INTERVIEW