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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-0556, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
Raney Norwood recalls the maddening process of integration in Chapel Hill. Upon entering the new, integrated Chapel Hill High School, he and other African American students left behind the educational traditions of Lincoln High. They spent their first year at CHHS struggling to reclaim them through non-violent and violent means. Norwood describes the so-called riot through which black students demanded the restoration of Lincoln's educational and athletic traditions, and one dramatic instance of violent white supremacy which resulted in the death of one of Norwood's friends. This interview presents a picture of a community roiled by the struggle to integrate and the different ways in which black students responded to the uncertainty and injustice of the process.
A former student at Lincoln and Chapel Hill High School recalls the frustrations of integration.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is January 9th in the year 2001 and this is Bob Gilgor interviewing Raney Norwood at 146 Stansell or nearabouts. Good morning, Raney.
Good morning.
I appreciate your letting me talk with you. The first question is, would you tell me what it was like when you were growing up—it was Carrboro, is that right?
That's right.
—what life was like for you, what your parents were like, what your house was like. Just take it and run with it.
OK. I was raised in Carrboro. My father, he worked at the university as a janitor. My momma was a housemaid for a while for Coach Jim Taylor, the coach of the Carolina football team.
We grew up in a big two-story kind of raggedy house on Main Street in
Carrboro. I attended a black elementary school. Then I went on to a
black high school, which was Lincoln High School. At Lincoln High
School, you know, all the teachers and the principal treated the
students like we were family members. [unclear]
In 1966, we were told that we were going into an integrated school. This
really tee'd a lot of my classmates and myself off because we were
really loving it at Lincoln High School even though we were getting
hand-me-downs from Chapel Hill High School, which was a high school.
When I mean hand-me-
But getting back to Chapel Hill High School, when we got out of there, it seemed like we lost it all. Because they put us in an environment that we were not used to. And that environment was being around a lot of white people. This is going to sound strange, but speaking for myself, it seemed like we couldn't speak their language. We couldn't live up to the expectations of the teachers there. They were piling up a lot of homework on us that we didn't have the resources and the time to do. A lot of the white kids, they had encyclopedias and dictionaries and stuff in the home. When we got there to do a book report, we had to go to the public library, which is quite a distance from the house. We had very limited time to do that. We got out of the school at three-thirty. Our parents would give us until six or six-thirty just before it gets dark to get back home. So we had to cram just to do a book report.
We had a lot of teachers—let me rephrase that—we had some teachers at the high school that were real prejudiced. I'm not going to call a name, but there was an English teacher, in the class we talked about it a lot because she didn't hide her prejudice, she came out with it.
How did she do that?
Well, for one thing, when we came to class, she would make comments. They weren't hardcore racial comments, but you know. A couple of times she'd call us Teddy Bears, stupid, dumb. She would give assignments—and we know, different assignments from white students. She'd flunk three-quarters of the class at the end of the year—which made the blacks who had to graduate on time to attend summer school. At the time, summer school would cost fifty dollars to get that unit that we needed to graduate. My father was a janitor. That kind of money was like paying out, now, five or six thousand dollars. But he came up with it, because parents back then wanted to see their children graduate.
So we attended summer school. All of us came out with high grades. We had
a great teacher. She was white. She had about twenty students. And she
took hand-on-hand with each student, teaching us. This was in our junior
year. So in our senior year we were pretty prepared when we got back in
to school [tape stops].
A friend of mine, Walter Durham—we called him [unclear] [unclear] [unclear]
But a lot of the students, they was in class, didn't realize what was going on. When they did, they fled to the bathroom, they locked themselves in the bathroom. A lot of the white students thought that we was out to get them and try to hurt them. And like I said, we weren't really mad with the students. We were mad with the system. We wanted to the people to listen, to find out what was going on with us.
How long had you planned doing this?
It wasn't no plan. It was just then, coming in to school that morning, sitting there on the radiators, talking amongst ourselves.
Is there something that sparked it?
It was around time—it was a day or two after Martin Luther King got shot. That sort of set it off. I can't sit here thirty-some years later and remember, you know—. We would sit among ourselves and what set it off—. But I guess we were just being fed up by a lot of stuff that was going on.
And when you say you chained the door shut—to the whole building?
All the doors.
All the doors?
All the doors. We're trying to remember where we got the chains and
locks from. [unclear]
But there was no physical violence that was part of that—other students?
A couple students got hit. I will not sit here and lie to you. We attacked two or three of the students. One was calling us niggers. One that was spitting, you know. Those that broke lines, you know, like the lunch line. A few of them was attacked, but like I said they was target people.
I had a lot of white friends that I made in those two years. A lot of
them were really close friends. One white classmate of mine, as a matter
of fact, he wanted to join us and run. But I could not let him do that
because we didn't want him to get hurt. A super-nice guy. Nice parents.
His brother, all them were nice. But he wanted to run with us. You know,
we were like a little gang. [unclear]
How long did you keep the door locked?
Until Mr. McDougle and Mr. R.D. Smith came. And Miss Clemens, which was a black teacher. They came and took control of the building.
What did they say to you?
Oh, Mr. Smith, he came in, he sit with us and told us what we were doing is wrong. We tearing up something that really didn't belong to us, that there were better ways to go about it. Miss Clemens she came out like a drill sergeant. And she commanded and demanded that it's time to come back to the classroom and I don't put up with this mess. And we loved her because she was a firm, strong teacher and she was the type of teacher she did not look through the glass in black and white. She looked at it, my students, you all are my kids. We had a lot of respect for her. She introduced a lot of fear in us, the way she would speak. Also there was a lot of love.
What did she teach?
Typing.
Were there specific things, other than the way you were treated by some of the white students—the name-calling, the spitting, and the way you were treated by the English teacher—were there other things that you wanted from the school system?
Yes. When we first got to Chapel Hill High School, everything that
Lincoln had was taken away from us. They took away the school colors.
They took away the mascot. They took away the name of the teams. When we
first got to Chapel Hill High it was the Chapel Hill High Wildcats.
[unclear]
We finally got the school color changed. We had this showcase where we had trophies. No Lincoln trophies. When you came to Chapel Hill, Lincoln, in basketball and football, Lincoln was a name. I mean, it won championship after championship.
Our coach became almost like a doormat. He was an assistant coach.
Coach Peerman?
Coach Peerman. We felt that, with his winning record and the way he looked out for students—he didn't care if you were on the team or not, even the guys that played football and basketball—he really looked out for them. He was more concerned about their grades and where they were going. And being made assistant coach was almost like a slap in the face.
Because of the great tradition of Lincoln High—their winning football teams? Chapel Hill High didn't have that same tradition?
Chapel Hill, they had a nice record. Lincoln High had a superb record.
When you go out of town and mention Lincoln, people listen, black and
white. When they had games, whites came out to see Lincoln high school,
a team beating another team 78 to 0, going un-scored-on all season. Then
they got the bad marching band—we used to say
"bad-ass" marching band. They had cute little
majorettes. We got a drum major high-stepping, putting on a show. [unclear]
All those were things that we looked forward to because we didn't have too many things to look forward to. When I came to Lincoln, I grew up saying I want to be in this band. I wanted to be on the football team but my parents wouldn't let me be on the team because I got hurt when I was about nine years old. I got shot in the eye with a BB. And they were scared I was going to get hit in the good eye so they wouldn't let me play football. But I did get in the band.
What did you play in the band?
First I was on the drum. But the drum came kinda heavy, and I was always kinda the type—one to show off. So I went to the cymbals. I took these cymbals and modified them, where they can spin. And one of the guys taught me to rig them where you could spin them and they would come up.
So tell me some more about some of the things that were bothering you that sparked this riot off.
Well, for me personally, I felt that we had been lied to. They told us that our parents had signed these papers for this merger at the school. They told all the black students there. See, there was this government program on campus called Upward Bound. A lot of the black students coming from a low-income family, this program was designed to teach us to enter into college life. We sat there, me and a group of guys, talking, "When we leave here we got to go to Chapel Hill High School. They're taking Lincoln away from us." I'm tee'd off with my parents because they should've asked us, you know. Back then it was hard to question your parents about something. Because they were the word. You didn't ask why or anything. But I got brave and I decided to ask my parents. They did not receive any kind of paper or form or anything talking about the merger. They said it got dumped in their lap, that there would no longer be a Lincoln High School. Chapel Hill and Lincoln would merge in one school located out in the country, we called it. I said "OK, there go the white people, lying to us."
This started building up. Then, back in the '60s, like I said, people
were marching on campus. Preston [unclear]
What really caught my attention was, a group of Black Panthers came in
from High Point. And they weren't really recruiting at the time. What
they were trying to do was help. So [unclear] [unclear] [unclear] [unclear]
And the thing about it back then, when you became a Panther and you came
back into the black neighborhood, it was hard for them to accept you
because they was afraid. We might have been
But this was after the high school thing. Going back to what made it
spark is, like I said, taking Lincoln away from us. Putting us in an
environment that was not friendly. We did not have full support. We saw
the coach go down. We saw the principal, Mr. McDougle, which was a
strong figure at Lincoln High School, took on the role of being a coffee
maker. I don't care how they try to justify, Mr. McDougle was a coffee
maker. We went to visit him in his office. His office was way back in a
little corner. [unclear] [unclear]
I heard a story from Gloria Register and I think from—that a group of African-American students went to talk to the principal on the day that the protest occurred. They went with a list of things that they wanted changed. And they felt, when they walked out, that none of the changes were going to be made. And she said it was like wildfire spread from there. That's the day that the riot occurred. Do you remember any of that?
It's coming back to me. I remember someone going back to the—.
These were the politician-students we called them. We were like the army
that go in the back. Like I said, I sit there, talk to [unclear] [unclear]
But what did you do when the doors were locked? Did you break chairs, windows?
We broke chairs. We turned over—the lockers were built into
the wall but we damaged those. The doors, kicking them in and stuff. The
comrades—I called them—that were outside, we were
cutting [unclear]
Break windows?
I can't recall breaking windows because there was a huge window and we knew if we get caught there—see, I used to have to wash those windows when I got in trouble. I can't remember the windows being broken. It could have been, but we were mostly just inside doing things. As I said, some students did get beaten, but not bad to where we put them in the hospital. The main thing was just getting people's attention.
What happened after the riots? Did you get suspended? Did people get suspended? And did you make changes in the things that you wanted changed?
Changes were made. We did not get suspended because it was a [unclear] [unclear] [unclear]
Was Hilliard Caldwell involved with that?
He was not there. He was not involved directly. But he was the type, he
could work the homes away from school. He worked with the students. He
was a great inspiration, really explaining to us the need for an
education, staying in school. But Hilliard was also the type,
"You gotta march with you, you gotta protest, I'll protest with
you." [unclear]
Everything started smoothing out. As of today, it's not where it should
be but—graduation night was black and white. We drunk wine
together, we drunk beer together. Just before we hit the stage to get
our diplomas and stuff, there was this black and white thing. Other
thing that tee'd us off that night, we had to wear white gowns and cap.
It made us look like blacks had joined the Klan, you know. We're Klan
members. That irritated us. I remember that day my mom [unclear] [unclear]
But at the end of our senior year, things started becoming smoother. More people started interacting. There were still a lot of race issues and stuff. But out of the school color. Now we're graduated. Now we're getting into heavier things. We started hanging on campus more, started protest down there more.
But you felt you were at least getting people to listen to you a little bit?
We felt that. We knew that. Changes were coming. I think the black
teachers were beginning to open up a little bit more. I had a white
teacher, she was my math teacher, Miss Caroline [unclear]
You mean the students who went to Chapel Hill High before—while it was on Franklin Street?
Right. We don't really even know how that came about, but they were forced to go. They had no choice.
Who forced them?
Listening to some of the students [unclear] [unclear] [unclear] [unclear]
Let's go back to the summer before the merger of the schools. You had mentioned Upward Bound. Can you tell me more about that?
Upward Bound? OK, let me tell you from my point of view what happened.
One Saturday morning, my mom and dad they're getting me up and they got
two suitcases packed. They say, "We're taking you to this
program." I'm thinking, "Wait a minute. They're
sending me out to reformatory school because the attitude and stuff I
had." We get in the car. It's raining, I mean it's really
raining hard. I'm in the back seat. All the time we're going to [unclear] [unclear] [unclear] [unclear] [unclear] [unclear]
So what it turned out to be, though, was to prepare us for college, if there was a subject that we needed to take to get ready for college. They were trying to work in mixing the whites and the blacks together. They were paying us ten dollars a week. All the food and stuff was free. But everything they had on the schedule we had to do, like, getting up at six o'clock in the morning [phone rings; tape stops].
You were saying, getting up at six o'clock in the morning—.
Yes. We had to get up at six. We had to clean up our room. We stayed at
Morrison dormitory. We had to make the bed and then you go to breakfast.
Even if you didn't want to eat breakfast you had to go anyway. That was
no problem because most of the guys, we liked to eat anyway. After that
you went to
Was this for all the students from Lincoln who went to Upward Bound and who were not going to Chapel Hill, who took this?
No. Why it came about I'm still not sure, but it was not all of us. I was a good number. It was not all from Chapel Hill, too. People came from Pittsboro, Siler City, Hillsborough. I guess it was based on people's income. Those that were interested in getting to college.
Did you have any idea—? Let me put it this was: when did you find out that you were not going to go to Lincoln High School and when did your classmates find out that Lincoln was going to be closed and there was going to be this merger and all the black students would go to the new Chapel Hill High?
We got the word about one or two months before school closing. Around
April-May. The word started passing through the school. But then, it was
just someone on the planning board, something that hadn't been decided
but was just being talked about. When we actually found out we were in
Upward Bound. It was during the summer. [unclear]
So it was just a short time before school started that you found out you were going to the consolidated school, Chapel Hill High School.
Right. My parents, they were absolutely sure. The school was being built. We knew this because we used to hang out there, you know. We heard the dates. We went out there and hung out in the country, as we called it. So we knew the school was being built. But we didn't know they were taking away the other two schools. But when we got the final word was when we were into Upward Bound.
Did you have any preparation from your brothers or sisters, from your parents or the church, or from the school system as to problems that you might face at the new high school and how to deal with them?
None whatsoever. I couldn't get any from my brothers. I got a brother that was older than me but he was always gone. Since I was being the oldest—so my brothers came up first. They didn't prepare us. Nobody in the community. Nobody reach out to us. People didn't even have any kind of sympathy for what they was putting us into. All the preparation that we got was when we go to Chapel Hill High School.
I'll be honest with you: the first three months were hell. Our hands were tied. We took all this abuse. You know, on the school bus, when we got to school. For a long time we thought we just had to take it. If we fought, when we got back home—parents, they didn't see. For my dad and mom, it takes two to tangle. One can't do it by himself, they always say. So we took this abuse and we saw each other taking this abuse. We would be a small number. In one bus there might be four or five blacks; on the other bus, compared to fifteen or twenty whites. It wasn't that we were afraid; we were outnumbered. We wasn't stupid. We got stupid at the end. But then it was, "I don't care no more. I'm a senior. I'm not going to take this. I'm not gonna walk away from school. We didn't have nobody. Even when we turned to someone at the school to talk this thing out—you know, like Mr. Smith—not to be negative, but he would say, "Go back to class and things will get better." Miss Clemens would say, "Pay it no attention." But they didn't know the knife that was being stabbed into us, you know. It's bad when you don't want to go to school. We got to the place where we skipped school and hung out at the pool. But we were falling behind in the classroom.
So if you fought at school, when you came home, even though you were a high school student—?
In a lot of the black families, when you're staying under their roof, if
you're sixty-two years old [laughs] [unclear] [unclear] [unclear] [unclear]
And our main thing was trying to get a free breakfast program set up over
here in Hargraves Center. And Hank Anderson and Fred [unclear] [unclear] [unclear]
When did you set up the breakfast? In what year did that come?
I graduated from high school in 1968? I think it's around 1970, the early parts of '70.
When did the riots occur? Was that '68?
It was in '67. In '66-'67. The riot really was in '67.
And when did the high school open?
'66.
So it was a school after?
Well, it wasn't a school year. You know like you go in the fall of '66?
So it was in the spring of '67?
Wait a minute. No. It was in the spring of '68. That's when it was.
And you set up a breakfast program in '69?
Either '69, either '70.
And how long did that continue?
About six or seven months. What happened, we ran out of money. We ran
out of support. We didn't get backing from the community as we thought
we was going to get. Still, in some people's minds, we were really gang
members, gangsters, people that killed. [unclear]
You were labeled as troublemakers but what you were trying to do doesn't seem to be the action of a troublemakers; it seemed to be someone who was really concerned about the community.
And when you talk to a lot of the people now, they say, some of the
classmates now that knew about us being Black Panthers, they almost
paint us as heroes. But we were like a lot of the country in other
places. But we were dealing in High Point, Chapel Hill, especially UNC
campus. Like H. Rap Brown [tape stops]
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
So you know we got to hang out with guys like that. Those guys were labeled as troublemakers because of the way they spoke. When those guys made speeches, they spoke about violence—see, our thing, you slap me, I'll slap you back.
The great thing, too, during that time, we had Martin Luther King. I was
saying to myself, "OK, white people, you all got two choices:
Martin Luther King, which is the non-violent way; or us. Now which one
do you want to deal with?" That was the attitude that me and
[unclear] [unclear] [unclear]
Still, I lived the life that I want to help people. Therefore I took on the job at the homeless shelter. The pay wasn't shit. I mean, real low pay. But I wasn't making good money elsewhere. I went there, and they're not going to treat black different from white or white different from black. Everybody was going to get treated the same because they're homeless and need help.
Just the same the Panthers was trying to say, but they were dealing with
the blacks. Because we were oppressed people back then. I mean, we had
to go in the back door to go to the store but our money was still green.
You know. During protests, we were protesting in front of the Colonial
Drug Store. There's
Did any of the whites march with you?
Oh, yes. We had some that marched, some that got involved. Like Revered
Seymore. A lot of people don't know that Martin Luther King spent some
time in [unclear] [unclear]
I go back to when my father had to walk from [unclear] [unclear]
Did your father talk about his job at the university as a janitor?
My dad used to tell us—I remember one time he asked me, was I
ashamed of the work he did. I said no. He said, "Well let me
tell you something. Whatever you do in life, do it damn good. And I'm a
damn good janitor." His hallway, man, he used to take us as
kids. It used to shine like a mirror, you know, the reflection off it.
The professors and stuff, they were real [unclear]
What about your mom?
My mom was sort of like laid back. She was in housekeeping. She worked a
while for Coach Taylor. We used to hear around the house, Coach Taylor
[unclear] [unclear]
So she ran the household?
Right.
Can you tell me a little bit about where you lived, what kind of house it was, whether you had running water, what kind of heat and so forth?
Man, I can describe it just like it was yesterday. I can see it was a
big, two-story wood frame house. [unclear]
We had this big wooden table. It wasn't no [unclear]
We heated by wood. Momma cooked by wood. If she wanted to cook a pot of
beans she had to start at six o'clock that morning, have it ready by
dinner, which started about five or six in the evening. We had the [unclear] [unclear]
Then we had this upstairs, which we did not visit much because daddy, he
did not want us hanging out up there much. He had a lot of little
personal things: he kept his guns up there and stuff like that. And he
would tell us there were ghosts up there. And there really were because
we had big rats in the house and the rats up there seemed like people
walking. It did not make us scared of the house but it made us scared to
go upstairs. My brother and I ventured up there. There was a lot of
treasure up there: big trunks, big wooden frame pictures, [unclear]
Like I said, sometimes we had so many leaks in the house we didn't even
worry about it no more because [unclear]
Then we moved out to Lincoln Park, name of the subdivision. We were sort of like the Hillbillies. When you turned on the hot water, it scared us, especially me. Getting used to these things. But all the good things went away, like homemade biscuits. In the old house, Momma used to cook homemade biscuits. Fried chicken, it would take about forty-five minutes to an hour to cook in the old house; it cooked too quick in the new house. A lot of love went away because came the time when the family members did not have to really eat together. So a lot of love was lost out of that old house.
How many brothers and sisters did you have?
I got six brothers, no sisters. I had a sister; she died at an early age.
Did you feel poor?
No. If you called me poor, even back then, I couldn't find anywhere for that word to fit into our vocabulary. My brother and I, when we sit down and talk now, we feel rich. It's a strange thing to say. We wore decent clothes. We had what you called school clothes—when you came home from school you had to take them off and hang them up. During the summer months we didn't wear shoes unless we were going to church. The rest of the time we were barefoot. Which is good. To answer the question, no, we didn't ever thing we were poor.
What about the toys that you played with?
A lot of the time we made our toys. We'd take a board and fine us four wheels—we got lucky and find four wheels of the same size—we'd make us a nice wagon, race cars. We'd take a little stick and tie a rag around the top of it and we'd call this a horse. And we'd find another stick shaped like a gun and that would be our little toy gun. A lot of times we made it.
But also, when the Christmas months came around, I cannot figure out
today how my father did it—we had some nice toys: bicycles,
[unclear]
How many hours would he work?
He'd go in eight to five, five days a week. When we got older he took another job. He was working at Blue Cross Blue Shield when it was located on Franklin Street as a part-time job. We figured he took that on as our needs and wants grew more.
Did you or your brothers go on to college?
I got two brothers that went to college. I went to Durham Tech. I took a few classes at Central. But I got one brother that he's an engineer now. He started off as an X-ray technician and then he went on and became an engineer.
So you didn't feel poor. Did you feel love?
A lot of love. Neighborhood love. You had love everywhere. Even when my
momma went to work, you still had parents. And not just discipline. You
get these old ladies that can cook cakes and pies. Across the street you
got another neighbor that can took chicken. The whole neighborhood was
love. It was one big [unclear]
I forgot to ask you about your mother, what kind of hours she worked.
Momma was mostly like a part-time. She might work one or two days a week. The rest of the time she was at home, taking care—.
What about the rest of the African-American community? Did you see much absentee—the things that are bothersome in society now—like the absent father, alcoholism, drugs, physical abuse, beating up women. Can you talk about those things in the community?
Yes. I was in high school before I realized that there were a lot of one-parent families. When we were coming up, both parents were there. One may have died or something. It wasn't like separation and divorce.
I saw a lot of abuse, a whole lot of abuse. I even grew up thinking that
in a black family, the husband was supposed to beat the wife. I mean
really, physically, keep his wife [unclear]
But this is the crazy thing. Fridays, it was certain my mom and dad would
go to it like Ali and George Foreman. Saturday they were quiet. And the
rest of the week, my dad would take mom to work and it was lovely. But
when that weekend came, as we grew older, the brother next to me, we
were not able to leave town the same time or go out at the same time.
One had to stay there and be the referee. And I saw a lot of that in our
black neighborhood. They fought but then they can [unclear]
So your mother fought back?
Oh, yes. It wasn't like she was fully controlled and all that, but it was there. Whereas physical violence towards the kids, there was not that. I mean, we got whippings. Like I told you at the beginning, we got whipping on the butt. But this beating on the head or choking, no. Back then, parents, their children were their pride and joy. "We're going to discipline them, but we're going to love them also." We saw the fights among our parents, because when they thought they were putting us to bed, they were loud with the hollering and cussing and stuff.
Was there much alcoholism in the community?
When you say much—people drank, but what I consider
alcoholics, it was few. Most households, people drank. Those that would,
they were labeled winos and drunks. These were the guys that would get
drunk and sleep out in the woods and stuff. Anybody came in the woods
where we lived, that was our personal territory. We did not want you
there. We let it be known. We made these things we called
"bean-shooters" with rubber bands, sling shots as
other people called. Bow and arrow we made with tops on it. We were good
with ropes. [unclear]
What happened when you were about to set him on fire?
Oh, one of the neighbors saw him smoking and put my fire out. He saved
the man. And then another thing we'd like to do. When grownups came
close to our territory we'd make them chase us in the woods because we
knew they couldn't catch us and stuff. We started digging traps.
So would you saw that you were a rebellious child?
I know I was. I woke up every morning, I wanted to break all the rules. If my dad was living, he would tell you. My mom would tell you: I was what she called a "troublesome" child. And I used to love it.
Were your friends the same way?
We had some friends, some were good as gold. Some were. . . like me.
Looking back on what you did at the high school with getting people to look at the issues that were bothering the black students—would you say that your being a rebellious, troublesome child helped you with that?
I really think so. This is something that I grew up with, that I was not
afraid to do. I didn't mind stepping forward, doing something, taking on
a violent act. It's something that [unclear] [unclear] [unclear] [unclear]
Because I remember this other firebombing that was going on when one of
my friends got killed on campus by this motorcycle group called The
Stormtroopers. They went to court and the charges were dismissed. And we
[unclear]
Can you talk a little more about the firebombing at Northside? You say that a motorcycle gang killed a friend. What were they circumstances around that?
OK, what happened, they were having an all-night dance on campus at the
student union. A group of my friends, we went down on campus to the
dance. For some reason I left early—oh, I was chasing this
little girl, that's what it was—so I went on home. That
morning, my mom woke me and said James Cates, which was a friend, got
killed. I said, "No, he was with me. I just left him."
I'm thinking, it's just like an hour or something. [unclear] [unclear] [unclear]
We waited until trial. They went to trial. Like I said, the charges were
dismissed. Blacks were mad now. Some people were having nice peaceful
meetings, having marches. It wasn't enough. A lot of younger guys,
younger than us, decided to take on a role, "OK, it's time to
burn and stuff." They started burning. Chapel Hill was going up
in smoke. So we were able to quiet it down, the guys that were with me
in high school, we were able to talk to a lot of young guys. [unclear]
But we had leaders. Howard Lee was the mayor. He came forth and he talked
to us. But really their hands were tied, there was nothing they could
do. They could just protest. But really there was no going to court or
[unclear]
I take it that was a white motorcycle gang.
Right.
Do you remember the year that that happened?
I'm taking a shot at it, but I believe it was around '72 or '73. I had to get with some of my classmates.
Were there other things that stand out in your mind about growing up in Carrboro?
Yes. For a long time in Carrboro, blacks could not walk past the
railroad tracks out in Carrboro at night. I had a friend that was coming
from [unclear]
But this went on for a long time. When we went to the high school
football games, the stadium was located out in Carrboro. [unclear]
Do you feel that your parents taught you racial prejudice or racial tolerance?
I feel that, I don't know what you want to call it. Our parents taught us, "You better watch out or the white man is going to get you. The white man is a bugabear." But I couldn't say that my parents were prejudice. They were more cautious of the surroundings. I remember coming home from the grocery store one day with my father. Me and him were walking. I got ready to step off the sidewalk because this white couple were coming down the sidewalk. Then he held my hand, he said, "You don't step off."
Then I remember the story my momma told me about my uncle, her brother. He did not fear white people. As a matter of fact, he almost, like, tried to start something with them. She would tell me about this time, this white man, member of the Klan, and he knew it. He would go in there and make jokes about, "Where's your sheet?" and stuff like that. Another time, my momma was telling me that the police chief was accusing him of running white liquor, bootlegging and stuff. My uncle replied, "Place your order so your wife can have some." I'm really glad I got to know my uncle because there was no fear there. This man, when I talked to white people, black people about him, this was a man with no fear. He was teaching us, "Don't be afraid."
So we were never taught to hate anybody.
Did your parents, your mother or your father, fear for your survival, with your rebelliousness?
All the time. I mean, like I said, I was the kid that drove them crazy.
I would stay out late, go to the place where they tell me not to go, and
speak my mind, whatever that was on it. [unclear]
She used to tell me, when I leave the house, she used to worry. I used to love to box. A lot of people would start fights amongst us. We would get drunk, swollen lip, you know. But yes, I kept my mom worried.
I want to revisit Lincoln High School for a minute, and the football team. Did the football team get any help from the university?
In my understanding, listening to people, I was told that the university donated a lot of equipment. I was told that they gave time for them to use the field to practice and all. I know that they had access to the "tin can," we used it call it back them. I really feel, just second-hand information, that they received quite a bit of help.
Did any of the UNC football players come down and help out with the coaching?
They came down. I don't whether they were coaching or knocking the hell out of our players. I used to look at them, big giant white boys. Back at the time when there wasn't any black players on the Carolina team. I think they came here, I don't know in what capacity.
Are there any other things that you find stick out in your mind, that you haven't talked about at Lincoln?
I got the teaching back in. Going back to Mr. McDougle, as the principal. Coach Peerman. Like I said they were strict. They were almost like they were second parents and stuff. And if you got in trouble they had what we called the "coal mine." Where they got the coal to keep the furnace going. When you got in trouble, that's where you went. I mean, you got down with your little white tennis on and when you came out you dirty because you're going to shovel that coal. That's one of the ways they disciplined.
Another way was Coach Peerman. He believed in fitness. He would take you to the outer limit zone, a hundred push-ups in the middle of the floor. He had a big palette—he would tell you to bend over and Coach Peerman was a big man. These things stick out. But at the same time, in today's time, they would say, "abuse." To us, it got our attention. I think it kept a lot of us out of jail. I think that's the reason a lot of us a still alive because they cared.
When I used to go down there—I remember one day, my shoulder
was hurting, I couldn't shovel no more coal. And Coach Peerman said,
"Well, let me get you cleaned up and I'll take you over to the
hospital." And I'm thinking, [unclear] [phone rings; tape stops]
OK, we're going back to the high school where we're talking about Mr.
McDougle. Like I said at the beginning, seeing his office was so small,
seeing his only duty was [unclear]
What about the teachers at the new school? Did you feel that you had an adequate number of black teachers at the new Chapel Hill High School?
Absolutely not. I can't even remember the ratio, but there was not that
many blacks. But what [unclear] [unclear] [unclear] [unclear]
What were the courses that the black teachers were teaching?
Well, like I said, Miss Clemens she taught typing. I think there was another class but I can't remember. Then, Miss Pope, she taught home economics. Mr. Smith, he taught auto mechanics in shop. My memory escapes me on the black teachers that were there.
What were the things that Principal C.A. McDougle did at Lincoln that made him so loved by the students and the community?
First thing, when you first entered the building in the morning when you
came to school. He would greet you at the door. He welcomed you, you
know, "Good morning." He stayed there until the late
bell rung. Then, when you came into the school, he'd greet
you—and this was the [unclear]
You mentioned about dress. Did you have a dress code at Lincoln? Did you have a code about how your hair needed to be done?
You had a C.A. McDougle dress code. It wasn't in writing, it wasn't in black and white. But passing down the line, you knew: hair cut tight, shirttail tucked in. It wasn't like it was a uniform. But everything was neat. He drilled on this.
And also with me, I remember a couple of times I came to school with no lunch money. It seemed like he read me. And he gave me the money. And it wasn't like, you're going to pay me back tomorrow. He gave it to me.
He was a man that loved his students. He was a man that believed in his students. He wanted his students to strive to go further. His son and I became great friends. We were running partners. He was another partner of mine in crime. After Mr. McDougle retired, we used to go over to his house, and he used to ask me, "How's life treating you? How's you job going?" He still cared. And what amazed me, as the years went by, he still remembered his students by name.
Even Mrs. McDougle, I know we have not talked about her, but she was like
a mother. She was a teacher. And she was a strong teacher. That's
another [unclear]
You mentioned the teachers caring for you. What about the way you treated the teachers at Lincoln? Did students talk back or was there respect for the teachers?
Well, a few students got out of line, tried to talk back. But it'd take
the teachers no time to get us back in line. They had the stick. And I
mean, the real stick, corporal punishment. Call it what you want
Then, you got to look at it on the other hand, they were our parents because we were with them more than we were with our parents. But I mean, when we got home from school at three-thirty, we had contact with our parents until eight o'clock and then we was in bed and then we would go to school. But when you got to school at eight, you were there until three-thirty in contact with the teachers. So they became really substitute parents, the teachers. Friends. We loved them.
I'd like you to contact several things at Lincoln High School and the new high school. You talked about dress, you talked about hair, you talked about how you interacted with the teachers with respect. Was it different at Chapel Hill High School?
A whole lot of different. It came—seemed like the discipline just went away. When we got out to the new high school, we wore our shirttail out; go to the classroom with hats on, caps on; we talked back to the teachers. Ah, man, you could smoke on the school grounds. This was a definite no-no at Lincoln High School. We left the school grounds. At Lincoln, you dared not leave the school grounds. When you were there, you were there for the whole day unless you had a special excuse from your parents. Your parents knew where you were at when you entered the school. When you were not there, playing hooky, your parents knew. At Chapel Hill High School, that