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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 L-0035, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
George Esser was the assistant director of the University of North Carolina's Institute of Government, executive director of the North Carolina Fund, project adviser with the Ford Foundation, and the executive director of the Southern Regional Council. He was born into a comfortable Virginia coal family in 1920, but the Great Depression plunged his family into poverty. Struggling to find a way to earn an income, Esser learned "the meaning of what a penny meant and a nickel meant" and what government programs could offer to needy Americans. Esser took advantage of one such government program, the G.I. Bill, to enroll at Harvard Law School, and he took his law degree south to the Institute of Government in Chapel Hill. In this interview, Esser describes the background and family history that shaped his philosophy and how he put that philosophy—a belief in the power of institutions to uplift communities—into action at the Institute. There, under the direction of Albert Coates, he studied issues like city-county consolidation and made connections that would eventually lead to the creation of the North Carolina Fund, a five-year community empowerment organization created with a grant by the Ford Foundation. Esser discusses the increasing role the Fund played in North Carolina's economic development in the 1960s, a story that reveals not only the importance of political influence in the development process, but also the operations and personalities that drove the Fund's initiatives. After discussing the North Carolina Fund, which closed in 1968, Esser remembers his efforts to reorient the Southern Regional Council (SRC) in Atlanta and his return to North Carolina in the 1980s. This interview offers not just an inside look at influential social justice organizations in the 1960s and 1970s, but also a portrait of a man who devoted his life to organizations dedicated to ameliorating poverty and social inequality.
George Esser remembers his contributions to the North Carolina Fund and pulls back the curtain on a network of organizations that worked for social justice in the 1960s.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is Tape 1-A of an interview with George H. Esser, former member of the staff of the Institute of Government in Chapel Hill and former executive director of the North Carolina Fund. The interview is taking place in my home on Elliot Road in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I am Frances Weaver. It is June 13, 1990.
George, I thought it would be a good idea if we started in the present and talked about what you have been doing since you came back to Chapel Hill, and then go back and reexamine some of the forces in your life that lead you into your dedication to the causes of poverty and the amelioration of the racial problem in the United States. So what are you working now? What is your main effort?
Well, since June of last year I have been retired in the sense that I
haven't been recently paid
Working with Governor Sanford, in what way do you work with him in the
effort you mentioned? Senator Sanford, I mean.
Senator Sanford, well, that shows our age. Senator Sanford has a young
black staff member, Katharine Wellman, who got involved with a study of
the northeast done by an organization in Washington, I believe it's an
organization of the Roman Catholic Church. Anyhow, they had done—I'll
find that name and supply it to you—a study of the northeast and poverty
in the northeast and racial relations as they effect economic
opportunity in the northeast, and it was pretty grim as we all know.
Even though that was the first part of the state that was settled, it
also has more limited natural resources and certainly more limited human
resources. So Katharine Wellman got Terry interested in doing something
there, and Terry thought, well, we
Now, who are the leaders there to whom you turn?
Well, right now we're working with local grassroots leadership.
Eventually, before this would become any sort of a public program, we
would have to involve that just economic development leadership but
county commissioners, state
Who are those economic fiefdoms?
Well, there's some agricultural. In other words, there's some large farms. There are some, not many, but a few large industries.
Are they North Carolina industries or they industries that were…
Well, the seafood industry is probably North Carolina. Perdue is, Del-Mar-Va, you know, his operations are in Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina as well. There's one large paper company, International Paper Company, that's active in that area. But there isn't as much big industry in that area as in other parts of the state.
If you go northeast, do you go all the way to the ocean? Does that include tourism at all?
Well, I'm not sure whether it, we would involve those counties, yes. We would involve Dare and Currituck and Hyde. On the other hand, the coastal area is not the area where the economy is so badly off.
Most intractable poverty.
The environment may be bad, may be under a threat, but there are probably
plenty of jobs, not necessarily the best kind of jobs. I've always been
very cautious about pushing tourism because many of the jobs are
custodial. On the other hand, many of the service jobs—we say we're
becoming a service economy—that I've dealt with in other projects in the
last five or six
Have you tried that kind of experiment?
In working with the Local Initiatives Support Corporation in the last
five years, one of the things that I did was help support programs for
the elderly in different ways, but with community sponsorship and
community ownership. For example, in Jackson, North Carolina, under the
sponsorship of the local health clinic, which is also a non-profit
corporation, we have finished and now opened a facility for the elderly
that includes fifteen units of housing, eighteen rest home beds, sixty
skilled nursing home beds, and the county senior center, all in one
location across the road from the health center. Well, you've got in
that county then those jobs of concern that support both health care and
elderly care are focused in sort of a non-profit community. They're
paying as well as other—they're more competitive in North Hampton
County, the salaries, though low, are more competitive in North Hampton
County than they would be in Charlotte or even Raleigh. Plus the fact
that this is an opportunity, I mean, for example, that retirement home,
half of the skilled nursing home beds and rest home beds and all of the
housing can go to people who have, really, no income except support from
Medicaid. So that you have a facility where the
I see what you mean, yes, yes.
And they see that the community, they are contributing to the community.
A sense of pride.
And their own people are being helped by that community.
Are we talking whites, blacks?
Well, they are having trouble getting whites into the apartments. They are having no trouble at all getting whites into the nursing and rest home facility, about 50-50 right now. There is no difficulty in getting people who, the feasibility study said get 50 people who can pay the full rate, 50% of the people who can pay the full rate to offset the 50% of the people who only get Medicaid. And they've had no trouble maintaining that proportion. There problem right now is getting enough skilled nurses.
Yes, universal problem.
But fortunately we've got a very able young man, who's father is head of
Family Medicine at this School of Medicine, as administrator up there
and he wants to see it work. But we've supported other efforts, for
example, The Shepherd's Staff in Belhaven where the churches… Belhaven
is a little town and a major land area, not many people. And yet, the
churches in that area have come together and worked together, and not
only provided services to frail and isolated elderly, they have now,
What are some of those sources?
Well, for example, Medicaid, Medicare, subsidies for day care. North Carolina probably is one of the leaders in terms of using public, governmental resources for health centers for the poor. For only for the poor, I mean, in rural areas it's for everybody.
This comes out of state funding, federal funding?
Both state and federal. For example, the health clinic in Jackson is the only medical facility in North Hampton County except for two doctors in their sixties.
Oh, I see. Is East Carolina not working?
Well, Jim Bernstein who heads that program in Raleigh and has headed ever since it was established, under Holshouser actually, says that it's easier to attract doctors from out-of-state than doctors from in-state.
Really, isn't that interesting.
Some of them. But for example, Roanoke,
Isn't that interesting. That's fascinating. Are there any black doctors settling in the east?
Well, that's one problem. There are a few. But Dr. Ken Reeb, who is the director of Family Medicine at the University here, I saw him recently, and he told me that one of the things that they have learned recently is that young men and women who are most attracted to returning to rural areas are natives of rural areas. Therefore, the medical schools are beginning to recruit more heavily from rural areas in order to have an opportunity for a good proportion to return to rural areas.
I see, I see.
That's a new twist. I sat on a task force soon after I got back here for the Dean of the Dental School. At that time the dentists in the state wanted them to reduce the number of persons admitted to dental school because there were too many dentists for the number of opportunities according to the dentists.
Were they driving the price down
They were driving the price down, I think. But if you looked at it, there
were not many dentists. There were not many black dentists, and many of
the rural counties were not being
I see. That's a name I know but I don't…
Lavona, I believe her name is.
Yes, that's it.
But it is still a problem, getting adequate health care and dental care for poor people in the east and particularly black poor people.
I would think so. How about teachers? Are they willing to go into the rural schools? Or do we have many rural schools left?
Well, they're more consolidated. There aren't as many community schools. You drive along eastern North Carolina, and it's astounding to me, you find high schools way out in the country but not in the little towns. They're located so they serve several little towns.
Like what we have out here, or used to be out of town, the high school.
But for example, in many counties you will find East North Hampton and West North Hampton, East Robinson and West Robinson, North Robinson it is. Anyhow, it's geographical more than by town. It's easier to find minorities, it's easier to find black and Indian teachers than it is black and Indian professionals. That does not necessarily mean you're the best teachers, or that the whites that teach there are the best teachers. But they are fully staffed, whereas, I mean, the professional situation is not only one of the… Let me give you two further examples. There is no black CPA east of Durham.
I'm astonished.
There is no black contractor in the state of North Carolina.
Not one?
Not one, and the reason is—a general contractor, let me be more precise. There are lots of small black contractors. There is no general contractor who is eligible to be bid for or receive contracts for major transportation projects, like interstate highways, or airports.
University buildings?
Or University buildings.
I see, yes.
So you can have lots of sub-contractors. But the subsidy required to get
a competent black contractor an
From where?
From the federal government, if the state will do what is necessary to gain those funds. I guess it was while, I forget, this was about four years ago that we tried. The state Transportation Department wanted to give a contract to a black firm, but they were unwilling to do what had to be done. You see, for example, it takes a lot of time and expertise to prepare a bid. So the first time around you've either got to have a contractor is has got the resources, the working capital, to assign people to prepare a bid, or you've got to subsidize the bid preparation effort.
Yes, I see.
And also, you've got to give a firm access in some way to working capital so that they can buy the equipment and operate for the first month or two, and it takes some money.
And you can't give them the experience that they need to even make an estimate on costs, can you? Are there any penalties? Suppose there's a building at the hospital being built with a large influx of federal money. Is there any penalty for not having minority participation?
Oh yes. They must have, under many programs, 10% performed by minority
owned sub-contractors. They cannot get the required percentage in the
state highway, and I think they've made a genuine effort. In this case
they knew something about it. But they didn't get, because, you see,
they've increased
To do it.
To do it. But I have not been close to it the last year so I don't know what…
I see.
But it's a real problem.
Of course it is. This lack of the black professional is critical. And of course, as we see it every day in the newspapers, it applies to black teachers at the college level, the black Ph.D.'s in the Humanities.
That's right. I mean there was an article this morning about
That's right. I saw that.
But it amuses me that in every one of those columns that Kilpatrick writes like that, he will admit that he was wrong with respect to discrimination but…
But
But he doesn't like the solution.
Well, George, in this work that you're doing or have done since you came back to Chapel Hill, are you working with the people that you knew or some of them in the days of the North Carolina Fund?
Occasionally, I mean some of them are people, for example, one of the most effective people in economic development in eastern North Carolina among the blacks is a company called a Worker Owned Sewing Company, which really means Tim Bazemore. Tim Bazemore worked for one of the programs of the fund twenty-five years ago. So it's been fun to work with him. On the other hand, it is frustrating to know that Tim is one of a kind and you don't see any… The Worker Owned Sewing Company in Windsor is a worker owned company and has about seventy-five people, who both have a share in the company and work for the company.
Is it a mill?
It's a cut and sew operation. But Tim has done a very good job with it. They don't get paid a great deal but anything that's left over, they get at Christmas as a bonus. But on the other hand, Tim is not easy to get along with and while he has brought people in from time to time that he says are going to take his place, they leave before Tim does.
I see
Oh yes. But on the other hand, he is one of the real leaders in the black community in Bertie County. So I've worked with Tim. On the other hand, in North Hampton County, when I was working with that retirement project there, there was nobody there directly involved that I had known twenty-five years ago. So it varies according to, in Goldsboro I was working with people I had known. In Elizabeth City I was not working with people I had known. On the other hand, after we take a break, I think how I got into that and how I found what the opportunities were would be of interest.
Oh yes.
You see, I was in Washington and I decided that health-wise and career-wise, I mean, I wasn't going to go any higher than I had gone. I had a very prestigious sort of position but the stress was getting… My son John took me to lunch and lectured me for three hours, and I listened to him and I realized that he was right. So that's when we decided, it took us a year to work it out. But when I came back here, I didn't have any real, well, I had one job I was doing, but I didn't have a lot of consulting assignments. I was of an age that I didn't want to get involved in building a major firm.
Yes, you mean a major consulting firm.
Where I had a lot of responsibility for other people, raising money for
other people. So I decided I would do it on a low key basis and do it
myself, and anything that I needed I could buy, if I needed help, and
occasionally I've done that. So I started out very modestly. I was doing
one job for a friend of
Yes, fantastic.
Of the 500 parts, roughly, in a diesel engine, they contracted for 497. And they wanted some of those parts to come from minority owned firms.
I see, they did?
Well, Irwin Miller is one of the most socially responsible individuals and companies, Cummings Engines is a company, in the business. Irwin Miller has been on the Ford Foundation board. He's been president of the National Council of Churches.
What's his background?
I'm not sure. It seems to me, it sticks in my mind that the family was
initially Quaker. But they have made their money from the manufacturing
of engines, and their headquarters in Columbus, Indiana, which is just
south of Indianapolis. And I
Well, I diverted you. We were talking about their pay at $12.00, as compared to $6.00.
So I went up to see Mike, and the way that Liss operated was, he had created the organization at the time he left the Ford Foundation as a way of attracting banks and insurance companies and other corporations into investing in primarily real estate and to some extent business in depressed areas of major American cities.
Urban?
Urban. North Carolina was then, and remained, and not now in it, but it
was the only rural project that Liss supported. And they supported for
two reasons, well, three reasons. One was that Irwin Miller had
suggested it, and he had been on the Ford Foundation Board, and he had
promised some help. A second was that Juanita Krepps was on the Liss
board, national board, and she was interested. And a third was that the
Ford Foundation did provide and still provides major help for LISC in
and through its Urban Poverty Program. But its Rural Poverty Program
said, "We will be interested in providing some of the foundation money
to match corporate money from North Carolina if you have a project in
North Carolina." So Mike called me in New York and said, "Do you think
you can help raise half a million dollars from North Carolina
foundations and corporations, such as banks, to match half a million
dollars that is available, part grant and part
And Nathan, of course, you'd worked with for years.
Yes. The other person was a young man named Bill Duncan, who was then head of an organization in eastern Kentucky that was doing some imaginative things. And we did a study, a quick and dirty study, but we said, "Yes, there's a lot of opportunity for community based economic development—that is, non-profit corporations that either want to operate a business or build and own and operate housing or commercial real estate. Now, in the cities the ownership of housing, particularly apartment houses, the operation of that housing, and to some extent commercial real estate, had been a lot more successful than support of manufacturing, let's see, or the actual economic development. One of the things that we learned was that in eastern North Carolina it took a while, but that housing was not as much a priority in eastern North Carolina as jobs.
Yes.
Now, there is some priority for housing, particularly now. It's greater than it was five years ago, but five years ago there was a lot more interest on the part of leadership in communities in creating jobs for people rather than building houses.
Well, that comes first, doesn't it? We've got to turn this over.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
George when we turned the tape over, we were talking about the Local Initiative Support Corporation and the funding that you sought in North Carolina. You said that you and Juanita Krepps and others had worked on that effort. Where did you find the resources to support this organization?
Well first, Babcock Foundation had committed $200,000 in 1982. Before I
came back to this state, the request had come into LISC from Irwin
Miller, and George Autry had arranged for Mike Sviriridoff to come down
and talk with Governor Hunt and Joe Grimsley. And they had gotten
$200,000 from Babcock but had been turned down, for reasons—I was not
involved—but it was probably the Wake Forest commitment, they'd been
turned down by Z. Smith Reynolds after having been encouraged to submit
a proposal. So when I got into it in the fall of 1983, first of all, the
question was whether it should be a project that focused around Rocky
Mount and its labor market, meaning Halifax and Wilson Counties or
whether it should be a bigger area because there was so little community
based leadership in the region. The study team that I mentioned before
recommended that the area be eastern North Carolina because we didn't
think that money could be raised in the Rocky Mount area commensurate
with the requirement or that the local leadership would be supportive.
And our initial canvas of potential in the region—that is, that I knew
or Art Campbell or Nathan or Bill Duncan had discovered—was pretty well
scattered. So after we made that recommendation, we knew we had $200,000
from Babcock, and we knew that we had
Another 80 you needed or thought you needed?
Another 80 we needed. But let's move ahead. So I said alright and so we
did. So the project formally began some time in May, and early in May
Mike was down here to receive an honorary degree at Duke, and he said,
"I wonder if I can have
How do you launch something like that? Who were the people you turned to?
I did this on a very low key basis. I had been involved in—well, the
North Carolina Fund was what I would call a high intensity basis because
it was sponsored by the governor and it was announced in the governor's
office so everything had to be formal. I decided that if I was the
primary employee and
What kind of projects?
Well, let me give you two or three examples. I already knew about Tim Bazemore, and Tim called me. He had been talking to Art Campbell. Tim had already gotten a loan from LISC, which is now paid off, before I got started. He'd been talking to Art, and Art said, "George now is dealing with eastern North Carolina. Why don't you call him?"
Who is Art Campbell?
Art was a former employee of mine at the Southern Regional Council, who headed a southern program for LISC out of Chattanooga, Tennessee, that was supported by the Lynhearst Foundation. So I got that call very quickly after I had started this. So I went down and spent an evening and a morning with Tim, and what he wanted to do was—this was a project that did have fund roots. There had been a very, sort of radical organization created in the late '60s under the leadership of a man you may remember, Golden Frinks.
Oh yes, indeed.
Called People's Program on Poverty [PEPOP], and they had raised a little money and bought some land which was never used. Well, it had been used for a building. There was a building on part of it. They wanted to convert PEPOP from a for-profit into a cooperative to help serve black farmers in Bertie County. We decided we would give them $2,500, and we provided some other resources, I mean, got them access to other resources, and eventually they did convert into a cooperative. They did not, however, move beyond that. We thought they were going to come back to us for a major loan for a market, which they never did. I learned that the people who were in closest touch with the leadership, with people who could provide leadership for community development corporations, was Legal Services. There are seventeen of those corporations scattered across the state, about half a dozen in eastern North Carolina. So I made it a point to spend a good day, at least, with the leadership of each of those corporations. So I got their assessment of what was possible or what was going on in their area. Then in some areas I had friends. There is an organization down in the east that was created back in the '60s, that I helped create, called the North Carolina Rural Fund for Development, and a former Fund employee administered that. Headquartered in New Bern and had basically federal money. But I went to their annual meeting down in Atlantic Beach, and while there I met Caroline McKuen of the Watermark Association of Artisans in Elizabeth City, and I learned that Frances Inglis was chairman of the board.
Oh yes, that's Frances Drane Inglis.
Right, and I was very much taken with Carolina. I went down to see that operation. I hadn't thought about producing craft organizations such the '60s. But here in the coast of North Carolina there was a cooperative that really had some innovative ideas and was doing good quality work, and Caroline McKuen was a very effective administrator. She said, "I would like to see that Watermark is represented at national shows. I can sell enough at national shows to really make it worthwhile." So I arranged for, I had a little advisory committee.
Yes, you referred to us and I wondered.
Well, we had a little advisory committee that was composed of one representative from each of the donors.
Did you meet regularly?
We met four or five times a year. The way it was set up was that if the
advisory committee approved a project, a LISC officer with that approval
had the authority to approve grants or loans up to $50,000. Anything
from $50,000 to $150,000 required a committee of the LISC board to
approve, and anything above $150,000, at that time, required a full LISC
board approval. So we started off with very small projects. So I would
write them up. There was a protocol for writing them up, and I would
write them up and basically got them approved. And all of a sudden we
began getting little…. Also at that time I was chairman of the advisory
committee to the School of Social Work for a program called the National
Child Welfare Leadership Center. Glenn Wilson was on that. I was talking
to Glenn one day—Glenn is an amazing person
Is that Dallas Herring's operation?
No, this was a black owned casket operation. In Tillery, North Carolina, northeast, and they not only requested a grant or a loan from us, but the first time I met Martin Eakes.
What's that name, Mark?
Martin Eakes, who is director and founder for the Center for Community
Self-Help in Durham, young, white lawyer, Davidson graduate, native of
Greensboro, and who now has a very
I see. Get the word out and people knowing people, and trusting people's judgement.
Well, actually there was a later, in January we agreed to give legal services, a state wide operation—I had gotten to know the executive director. He lives here in Chapel Hill. He's a fine young man.
Who is that?
Richard Taylor. Lives out on Mount Carmel Church Road. We gave Legal
Services Resource Center, which is a support organization for the Legal
Services Program, a grant of $24,000 which they matched. They conducted
a program of workshops for board members and staff members of community
based organizations in eastern North Carolina. They had one regional
meeting that I talked to. That was probably the largest group of people
that I talked to about this program. They reached about 50
organizations, but out of the 50, only about three or four had
Let me see, I need to go back a little bit. When I went out looking for opportunities, I was not only looking at the opportunities for sponsorship of economic activity by non-profit corporations with leadership from the poor community, we were also, as a result of that quick and dirty study that we had made in the fall of 1983, looking for opportunities for helping minority owned enterprises in eastern North Carolina. Because we had established that the proportion of number of businesses and size of businesses owned by blacks or Indians was very far below the proportion of population in that area. So when I went out, I was also looking for opportunities for demonstrating, only the importance, but the feasibility of loans—it would have to be loans; we couldn't make grants—to minority owned businesses. Then somewhere in the spring of '85, after I had been around, we said, "Well, we don't have many resources. we really ought to," Nathan and I said, "present the advisory committee with a proposal for how we would use the funds that were available." Now that we know some of the people, some of the opportunities, some of the landscape, we ought to put this in a more formal agenda. And I guess I really ought to provide you with some of that material.
Well, it will be in your papers and they'll be in the Southern.
That's true. Anyhow, we came up with eight things that we were going to
test informally, from construction and operation
That's right.
And the firm of Garrett and Sullivan, Nathan had supported Martin and DeWitt had supported Edmisten, and the real reason that they split was that they had learned when Reagan was elected, they lost all their Labor Department contracts. So if they weren't protected both ways, as a firm they would suffer. Well, Martin was so grateful for some of the leadership that he found in Nathan, and Nathan was very clear with Martin that he wouldn't go so far as to support Helms. So anyhow, Martin let Nathan know that he would be interested in another effort to interest banks and other corporations in this program. So you couldn't do that during the General Assembly, but early in August Nathan called me and said, "The governor's office called and said they would like do it on August 25." I think that was it. Anyhow, I was supposed to be at the beach. Mike Sviriridoff didn't like to leave Martha's Vineyard in August.
I don't blame him.
But we finally worked it out, and Mike flew down, and I came back from the beach. John was with us. So John drove me up and went with me. He didn't go in the Governor's Mansion. And the governor really put on a first class show. I mean, he had a nice dinner, and he got the top people. It was just a—and he had done homework, so he knew what…. We had a very good meeting. So as a result of that, we had to do a lot more follow-up. Everybody wanted to talk to me individually, and I sensed that it would be good. We'd set this up with Martin through Nathan. So either Nathan or Dewitt Sullivan, his partner, accompanied me to every meeting, and we spent right much time. It was not cheap to raise that money, but finally raised $50,000 each from First Union and NCNB, $25,000 from Wachovia, $150,000 in two separate things from Z. Smith Reynolds, another $50,000 from Cummings Engine, another loan commitment from North Carolina Mutual. We raised a fair, and we got $20,000 from Carolina Light and Power. So we did a fair amount of that. So the banks were more interested in minority business enterprise. They didn't really understand, they finally understood this retirement community in North Hampton County. As a result, one of the things that we had established was the there was probably more interest in minority leadership and interest on the part of blacks in being part of the entire economy, and not limited to a black business district….
I see.
In Onslow County and probably in Wilmington than there was in a place like Rocky Mount or places like that. So we set up a separate project, sort of an informal project, in Onslow and New Hanover counties. For two years we explored the possibilities of doing loans down there. There was a woman who worked for Garrett and Sullivan, and we arranged that she would spent about three days a week down there.
What was her name? That's a terrible thing to ask everybody, sorry.
Just a minute, I'll think of it. we had also established an arrangement
that summer of 1985 with—there is a governmental program that's
available. It's a combination of Small Business Administration money and
Council of Governments' relationships, and there are several
organizations in the state that are multi-county that have access to
Small Business Administration loans and some other public loans. In this
case in New Bern there was an organization of this kind called the Neuse
River Development Authority. we discovered that while they had no great
track record in terms of supporting minority businesses, that they were
not opposed to that. If we decided that we were going to support a
business that was located in their area, they were willing, for a small
fee, to take money from LISC and make the actual loan and collect the
note and to transmit the money to New York. It was clear that we were
dealing with old loans of 5 to 10 to 25 and up to 50, and this was
smaller than most operations that LISC was supporting in the cities. In
the cities they tended to support major housing
I see.
And, you know, what we thought were some really good business opportunities turned out to lousy business opportunities because the owners could not qualify.
Couldn't do it.
For credit. But we also learned that there were a lot of people who had
good ideas with respect to manufacturing something or providing a
service, but did not have the foggiest idea how to handle money. There
are several things like that. But in all of Onslow County we ended up
making, well, we had one cu down there. We found the only black doctor
in the county, and Wachovia Bank and Trust Company had accepted his
mortgage for his house but had turned him down for a $3,000 loan for a
piece of
Divest himself.
Divest himself. But in the long run, he ended up on the Jacksonville NCNB city board.
Did he really?
Very successful.
That's a success story.
You've probably seen, you haven't seen a picture of him but I'm sure
you…. In the summer of '86 there was a set of quadruplets from a white,
Camp Lejeune family, and he was responsible in his fertility clinic for
the quadruplets.
That is really success
So anyhow, we had that program. We started by saying that we had these things we were testing sort of. So at roughly this period, there were beginning to be other programs developing that were parallel to or related to what we were doing—the Center for Community Self-Help in Durham. Martin went out and hired some very able people, including a gal from the Ford Foundation, Kay McKee, who's been in rural poverty programs up there. And they established a credit union and, to make a long story short, today they have assets of 20 million dollars and they are making a name for themselves with banks in the state for being able to loan money for housing and for commercial development.
That's terrific.
To people who are poorer than those who normally go to banks.
That's remarkable. I've got to turn this off. My light is flashing. We'll pick it up at the next session.
All right.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
This is tape 2-A of an interview with George Esser, former member of the Staff of the Institute of Government and former executive director of the North Carolina Fund. The interview is taking place in my house on Eliot Road in Chapel Hill. It is June 21, 1990. I am Frances Weaver.
George, I reviewed the tape from last week, and there are a couple of questions I need to ask you about it. Shepherd's Staff, I wasn't sure exactly what that was. You referred to it in relation to Belhaven.
The Shepherd's Staff is a non-profit corporation, established and supported by churches in eastern Beaufort County and in Hyde County. It was formed to provide services to frail and isolated elderly people in that area, but it has also been interested in expanding its services and has recently secured a large loan from the Farmer's Home Administration to build units of housing for the elderly with congregate eating facilities in Belhaven. And LISC helped the Shepherd's Staff first do its analysis of need in the Belhaven area and secondly to secure free development services, such as a lawyer and an architecture. Jud Mayfield, an Episcopal minister who is really the glue that holds the organization together, is a remarkable person. He has persuaded the diocese of East Carolina, for example, to donate half of his time, plus $20,000 a year, to continuing to work with the Shepherd's Staff.
I see, and his name is Mayfield?
Judson Mayfield.
And then you referred to a Roanoke-Amerant?
Roanoke-Amerant Community Health Group, Inc. is the name of the non-profit corporation which sponsors medical services for most of North Hampton County and part of Halifax County. It was established by, and with the support of, the Office of Rural Health Services of the state, and is regarded by them as probably the best administered rural project in the state. This is the organization, the doctors and the administrative staff, who had the idea of building the community for the elderly, which now exists across the street from Roanoke-Amerant. Roanoke-Amerant provides the medical services for the retirement community.
At the end of the tape last week you were talking about Glenn Wilson and how you learned from him that Myles Horton was going to get an honorary degree. I'd like to know one number, can you tell us about Myles Horton, and number two, why that pleased and surprised you that he was to get an honorary degree.
Well, Miles Horton from the mid-50s, he was from Appalachia, and in the '50s he headed the Highlander School which was located near, I forget exactly, but quite near Sewanee, University of the South. And for example, Martin Luther King used the Highlander School as one of his first retreat areas.
I've heard of that, okay.
Miles has a great, grassroots organizer and educator, a superb person,
but he was obviously unpopular with the segregationists and the status
quo people generally. Eventually the state of Tennessee confiscated the,
which I do not
And you were pleased that we gave him an honorary degree?
I was not only pleased, but I was amazed because this University has not been known for reaching out to the people who were unpopular because of views they advocated that were, you know, to me and you perfectly legitimate views of society, but to the business and governmental leadership they are often anathema.
And trouble makers
And trouble makers. So it was very pleasing to me to have him recognized. This would have been quite consistent with Dr. Graham's approach.
Absolutely.
And he probably knew Miles Horton well.
I think he did.
But in my association with the University, both directly and indirectly in the last thirty years, I have not been struck with the way the University reaches out to protect and shelter and nurture unpopular but legitimate points of view.
Well, it was a triumph, I think, when he was honored.
And who was it last year, oh, Marian Edelman.
Yes.
That was a great recognition, you see. But I think Miles was probably greater. Marian has legitimized herself.
Yes, she has.
But Miles was still sitting on the mountain and talking revolution in a
sense
That's right. Marian Edelman, I can almost hear them saying, "Boy, we get
a black and a woman all in one."
That's right. Well, Marian, have you ever heard Marian give a speech?
No, but I see her on McNeill-Lair.
She can talk faster, you know, the words just kept tumbling out. She does not use notes. Oh, she has a piece of paper in front of her, but she's always looking at you. And I've known Marian for over twenty years, and I just think she in a terrific person. A researcher that I respect very highly once told me in Washington that the best research, that is policy oriented, done in this country is done my Children's Defense Fund. She really is not, like many persons that came out of the '60s, advocating out of a loose understanding of society.
Yes, an emotional.
An emotional, but she really gets the facts down.
Very important. I know that Dr. Harold Howe [former director of the Learning Institute of North Carolina and former U.S. Commissioner of Education] has worked with her in some of the stuff he does.
Oh, she's great, and she's from Bennettsville, South Carolina.
I think that's wonderful.
George, you mentioned Nathan Garrett a number of times. I would like to know about him and your long association with him.
Nathan Garrett, his father is still alive in his nineties. He's a pharmacist who came from Carrboro, North Carolina to Durham, I think, after World War II. But anyhow, Nathan grew in Durham, went to Yale, and later to Wayne State. He became a CPA and during the early years of the Fund John Wheeler, the banker from Durham, who was on the Fund board, suggested to me that Nathan would like to come home and he would like me to talk to Nathan. Well, Nathan and I hit it off very quickly. He joined the Fund staff in 1964 as the controller, I believe was the initial title.
I believe so. It's in that document you made.
Eventually I made him Deputy Director of the Fund, and as part of our
spin-off from the Fund, we spun several hundred thousand dollars off to
an organization called the Foundation for Community Development, which
was intended, and for five years did, to encourage grassroots community
development, including economic development in North Carolina generally.
Several of the
What's a CDC?
Community Development Corporation. The first one was in
Bedford-Styvasent, which is supported by the Ford Foundation and
initiated under the leadership of Bobby Kennedy. Some of them ran into
difficulties, political difficulties really, some of them operational
difficulties, in the early '70s. The Ford Foundation withdrew support
from those that had advocacy as a function. They continued to support
those that were primarily economic development, but advocacy was
creating problems. OEO, the Office of Economic Opportunity, did the same
thing. So the FDC, which I would regard as an intermediary
organization—that is, it was helping organizations at community levels
get established. One of it's first primary staff was Howard Fuller, who
was a superb person and a good friend of mine. He's been much
misinterpreted in North Carolina. But anyhow, when it became clear that,
while United Durham Corporation would continue to get support as an
operating CDC and that some other in the state did, money for a
statewide organization to support and encourage new community ventures
was not forthcoming from either foundations or the federal government.
So rather than see it go bankrupt, Nathan simply closed it out. He had
helped bring another CPA from Detroit to the Fund, Dewitt Sullivan, and
so he and DeWitt, who was then controller for MDC, established a CPA
firm in Durham called Garrett and Sullivan. Now, Mike Sviriridoff of the
Ford Foundation and later of LISC knew Nathan
Wonderful, yeah.
That doesn't mean that in some things, some ways, we don't differ, but in
differing
From Mississippi, and Nathan were back to law school at a point we would consider….
Nathan went back to law school.
An advanced age.
And got an LLD degree. Now I think he's a full-time professor in the
School of Business at NCCU. But he's also doing, for example, I helped
him get tied up with—there is a national non-profit organization called
Seedco, which works with universities and local depressed communities to
develop Independent.
Oh, that's a name I, yeah.
Tom is a native of Chattanooga but a graduate of Wilson School at Princeton. I knew him at the Ford Foundation twenty years ago. So he's an old friend.
It's a network, isn't it, George?
It's a network.
Is Nathan, would you describe him as part of black power in North Carolina?
Well, very much.
Or does he provide access for you?
It's very interesting. when Reagan won in '81, Garrett and Sullivan had a lot of Labor Department contracts, which immediately were terminated.
You mentioned that on the tape.
They decided that they were never going to let that happen again. So
Nathan supported the Republican ticket in '84 and '88, the Republican
state ticket. He's never supported Jesse Helms, but he supported Martin,
and for that reason he has had real access to Martin. And Wanda, his
wife, is a member of the
Yeah, we weren't here then, but I guess so
Well, the payoff on that was Soul City. And he got the support of the federal government. And I won't say, you know, Soul City went bankrupt, but even today there are—well, Soul City exists physically, and there are people in the area who participated in that who have been successful. And it made a lot of difference in Warren and Vance counties.
Did it?
Well, for example, warren County today has a black controlled Board of County Commissioners and County Manager.
Wow, yeah, and that, you think, is directly related to Soul City?
I don't think it would have happened with Soul City. Now, that doesn't mean that, in warren County you've also got some of the worst relationships between—well, you've got more tension between white and black leaderships then you so in, let's say, North Hampton.
Where in the black leadership in this state now?
Well, I think that it's primarily concentrated in the major cities in the Piedmont.
Businessmen?
Well, some businessmen but lawyers are the leaders, the Dan Blues, the Mickey Michauxs. Now, obviously Harvey Gantt is now a lawyer.
Howard Lee?
Howard Lee, well, Howard Lee is not a lawyer but he's a leader.
And he's part of the black power structure.
That's right. Incidentally, I'm not, you know, Howard Lee's got a tough election.
Tough election, yes, he does.
Because that district includes Randolph and Moore.
Yes, always there's Randolph to consider.
But there are some black leaders in the east, but they do not tend to
carry nearly as much clout, not to control nearly as many votes, nor to
be venturesome. There is a lot more protection of turf, in terms of jobs
and the school system and the community action agencies, the government,
on the part of the blacks in the east than there is, let's say, in
Durham or Greensboro or Winston or Charlotte. Well, the black political
present in North Carolina is just like—twenty-five years ago, I
remember, I got a call at the Fund one day from Arthur Tyler,
I see, I see.
And that's pretty much true today. And there is nobody, with the possible exception of Jesse Jackson, who can turn out the black vote. A lot of going to depend in November on whether the black vote really turns out for Harvey Gantt.
Yes, whether he can do it.
You don't have the overt hostility as much in the college campuses as you did in, say, the late '60s and early '70s. But you can go to occasions, college campus or in a black community, where you feel uncomfortable. There is still hostility to the prevailing society, hostility to the barriers to opportunity. And this is particularly true among the younger ones, men and women. I think that we have made tremendous progress in the last thirty years, but I think we've got a long way to go.
And that's one thing they don't want to hear from us, is "look how far we've come."
That's right. No, as a matter of fact, we are now at a time in history where young blacks do not remember the conditions of the '50s and early '60s.
That's true. They don't know what it was like to live under segregation, legal segregation.
And they don't understand—those civil rights leaders who made a name for
themselves in the late '50s and '60s are not
Yes, true.
And I don't say, we were talking about Nathan a few minutes ago, I don't say that Nathan is a great civil rights leader, but Nathan is a very good bridge between the prevailing white political and business structure in North Carolina generally and the….
The essential man, I mean, an essential to the whole process.
And to the black community. And he is well respected in the community that is probably not, you know, the community that is most hostile to white society. But he is well respected in that community, and so I think that it's important for there to be somebody who can have that sort of access to both centers of power and centers of hostility.
Exactly, exactly.
One thing I want to talk about a little bit, George, before we go back and talk about your youth in Virginia, and that is, when you were talking about your work in the east, we didn't really talk about agriculture, and that's a major component down there. I want to know what's going on and what the state in thinking and maybe North Carolina State Extension about the problems of agriculture in the east of North Carolina.
Well, I'm not as well informed generally on agricultural policy as I
should be. I think it is interesting, however. First of all, the small
farm is disappearing, and with
Call them in.
Call them in.
Was that a deliberate ploy to run the small farmers out.
Oh, I think so, yeah.
Probably.
There was more symbolic language used, such as, belief that you paid your on bills and so forth, but there was no recognition on the part of the… And we had a perfectly terrible man named, well, a terrible man? He was probably very moral, I don't know. But he was not interested in poor people or black people, and he was a Heims protegee. The director of Farmer's Home under Reagan, named Larry Godwin…
That's a name I remember.
You would get projects right up to him, well, Roanoke-Amerant got right
up to him. And the Farmer's Home arrangements for loans for construction
in rural areas was much better than HUD's, but he decided that available
money should be spent on
Critical problem for North Carolina.
In the '60s it played among with outreach to other organizations in the community so that it was doing more than either advising farmers or advising urban gardeners.
You mean it got involved in the political process.
Well, for example, in the '60s they experienced with something called
Area Developments Associations. And one of the community action agencies
that we supported in the east actually started with the Choanoke, the
Area Development Association which is composed of whites with a few
black leaders in the North Hampton, Hertford, Bertie, Gates area, no,
Halifax, not Gates. But that effort died. Today you've got a very
interesting, and I think effective, non-profit organization that was
established under the leadership of Bob Jordan, called the North
Carolina Rural Economic Development Center. And it is doing some things
that the Extension Division meant have done twenty-five years ago. But
it's providing studies of problems. It's supporting demonstration
projects. For example, it is administrating the money that the General
Assembly provided for three purposes. One
Really?
Of creating small groups of, in Bangla Desh it was farmers, in this case it could be automobile mechanics and small business people, people who are interested in small businesses. But loans of up to, well, initially, I think, it was $2,000, and then a second one can go up to $5,000, and then a third up to $8,000. There is a test process. Small groups were formed, and let's say there are eight. That group helps determine which person in that group gets the first loan.
Interesting.
And they cannot get another loan for anybody in that group until the first one has gotten a loan and is paying it back.
A little community pressure.
Yeah, and if he doesn't pay it back, the whole group is censured.
That's an excellent….
So its being tried in several places in North Carolina with money from
both the General Assembly, which don't think that the leadership of the
General Assembly
Wonderful.
So he's been very sensitive to minority leadership, leadership from grassroot organizations. So that on one hand you've got Bill Friday as chairman, and you've got people like—well, up until he died—the man at BB&s, Vincent Lowe, as vice chairman. Ed Bishop is a very prominent member, but so is Kate McKee of the Center for Community Self-Help, and so is Valerie Lee of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation staff. And I think it's very interesting, too, that Valerie is chairman of the T.V. board at the University.
You know, I saw that. I was aware of that. Is she connected to Howard?
No, but I've known Valerie. She was married to a black man from
Henderson, from Vance County, named Jim Lee, and they have been amiably
separated for years. But Jim got a Ph.D. in
Really, where was that?
It was based initially in Warrenton. Then when LISC started, we provided the loan funds to enable her to buy a new studio in Rocky Mount, because radio-wise that area was served by, I forget what the call letters were. After she went to Reynolds, which was a good move on Reynolds part, and good for the state, they had trouble raising money, and it's eventually died. But it worked for a while, about fifteen years.
Well, George, I think we better go back and take a look at who you are, where you were born. Let's go back to the beginning and reflect on, as you tell me some of these things, what it was in your life that shaped some of the attitudes you have now, as you went acquiring these attitudes. So you were born in?
I was born in Norton, virginia, which is in wise County, Virginia, almost out to the western tip of the state of Virginia.
Is that coal county?
It's coal county. My grandfather, let's see, the Essers were German. The
first one immigrated to this county about 1800 from Germany. The family,
there's not much information on this, but the family myth is that he was
fleeing from the Bonapartists or the Bonaparte Revolution. But anyway,
he settled, or the Essers settled, in the anthracite area of
Pennsylvania, north of Bethlehem, in a town that is now known as
What was his name?
His name was John Alfred Esser. He was my grandfather, and I remember him pretty well. He died when I was eleven years old. He was married to Esther Hyndman.
That's your middle name.
She was from a Scotch-Irish family in Mauch Chunk, and I don't remember—she died when I was eighteen months old. But her sister, who was unmarried, lived with us, the old extended family, until she died the first year I was in college.
George, we've got this light. I'm going to flip this over.
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
George, we were talking about your grandfather, John Alfred Esser. And your father, his son, was?
George Hyndman Esser, and he was born in 1880. So he was sixteen when his father moved to virginia. His father asked some of his business associates in southwestern Virginia where he should send his son to college. Among the people he asked was C. Bascombe Slemp, who later began Congressman and then was Calvin Coolidge's private secretary, Eugene Hyatt, both of whom had graduated from VMI. So they urged him to send my father to VMI. So my father ended, before he had even seen southwestern Virginia, he ended up traveling from Pennsylvania to Lexington, Virginia and entering VMI, which was something of a shock to him.
Shock
At that time, you know, they had no Christmas vacation. I think one year his mother came up and spent Christmas in Lexington to be close to him. So it was something of a shock. That was 1896, and he stayed there until—incidentally, I think it's interesting, too, that in the same county in Pennsylvania that my father had entered from there was another young man, who my father knew at VMI if he didn't know him in Pennsylvania, named George Cattin Marshall [General of the Army, World War II, Secretary of State, Marshall Plan].
Really?
He was a year behind my father at VMI.
I didn't know that, George.
From the same county in Pennsylvania.
That's amazing.
But in the fall of 1900, my father was the class of, the fall of 1899, I guess it was, there was an epidemic. I believe it was meningitis, and the school was sent home. Was closed in October, and the cadets were sent home. This was my father's senior, or first class, year. And by the time they came back in January, he was working, I think, at—my grandfather was then superintendent of the mine at Dorchester, Virginia, which is near Norton—and I think my father was working for him. Anyhow, my father did not go back and so never graduated.
Never quite finished.
Never quite finished. He was sorry in later years that he didn't, but at that time there weren't nearly as many people getting college degrees, and it was not as critical. So for the next twenty years, my father worked in the coal business, sometimes with his father, who had a great talent for making a mint and then losing it. When he went into bankruptcy for the third time in 1928, that was it. I know that he went out on his own first, I think, in 1904, 1905, and the Depression of 1907 wiped him out. Anyhow, when he did not have a big operation going, my father would be working for somebody else. And actually, for several years before and about the middle of world War I, my father was superintendent of a mine near Charleston, Virginia, but still not married.
When did he marry?
He met in 1919 and in 1920 married my mother.
And her name is?
And I will pick her up in just a minute. But I would say that—let me see
if I can characterize that area—southwestern Virginia at that time was
very much into coal mining, logging, exploiting resources. There's a
very good, it's not a great book, but a very good book called Miners, Mill Hands and Mountaineers, written by a
professor, I believe, at Appalachian. But it describes what happened
between 1880 and 1930 in the area from Charleston south to Birmingham.
And those mountains were taken over by out-of-state coal and lumber
companies who came in, and that's what I grew up with. I grew up with
the coal mining business. When I was born, my grandfather owned a large
mine at Esserville, which was four miles from Norton. My father worked
very closely with him. At that time, which was just after I was born in
1921, we had money. I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, I guess.
Grandfather had built a large house, and right next to it my father and
mother built a large bugalow-style home. We had everything we wanted.
But by 1926 when I was six, the bottom had dropped out of the coal
business, which it historically has done before every major depression,
and by 1928…. My grandfather had invested in a new tipple, a new
processing of coal, and he couldn't pay off the loan. So they went
bankrupt in 1928, and we lost our homes by 1930. So I remember the
Depression very vividly.
So the Depression, there was no recovery during that period?
Oh no. Then my mother was from an old Virginia background. I think you know and I think I'm proud of, but as my mother said, it's something you live up to rather than live on, one of my great-great-great-great-grandfathers was Thomas Jefferson. My great-grandfather, who married Jefferson's great-granddaughter, was also a farmer in the Charlottesville area. He invested all his money during the Civil War in Confederate bonds, and so when the boys came home from the war, there was nothing. That was the Taylor branch.
Your mother's name was what?
My mother's name was Martha Randolph Taylor, and her father was Jefferson
Randolph Taylor. He was one of the boys who came back from the Civil
War, and there was nothing. He was in the Rockbridge Artillery, I think.
He came back. He graduated from the University of Virginia, spent a
couple of years tutoring large plantation—you remember David Bruce, the
ambassador to Paris—when his forebearers owned a plantation near
Danville, and my grandfather tutored there for a couple of years. Then
he studied law and practiced law in Charlottesville until age, he was
about thirty-seven, no, forty-three. He was born in 1842. He left. All
his brothers had grown up. His sisters were at the farm near
Charlottesville. My grandfather, who was not married, went to Alexandria
and entered Virginia Theological Seminary, and spent three full years
there, at age forty-three. When he graduated, there was not a place for
him in the diocese of Virginia, but the diocese of West Virginia, he
became
That kind of thing, I hope, would be in your papers. But they were the parents of Martha Randolph Taylor?
They were the parents. She was the first child. But think of this now,
when Martha Randolph Taylor—I'm going to have to clarify in a
minute—their first child was born in 1892, my grandfather was fifty.
They had one other daughter, Mary Cary Taylor, who was actually my
mother. My grandfather then went from Moundsville. Actually Mary Cary
was born in Oakland, Maryland. Then he went to Texas. I used to ask
myself, how in the world did he get into Texas. Well, actually his wife
had some cousins in Texas. But they didn't like Texas, so they moved
back. They ended up in
Norton, Virginia. I wondered.
So that's who they got to Norton, Vvirginia. Because they applied late and that was the only place available. At that time you came in my train from Bluefield if you're coming from the east, and there's still one friend alive who was on that train.
Good heavens. That's remarkable.
Who was also coming to teach. I used to hear and I still hear every time
I see her about the train coming in and being met by John Ira Burton,
the principal, and being taken to Mrs. Martin's boarding house on Main
Street. And that night there was a shooting on Main Street
Dodge City.
Dodge City, rather than Norton, virginia. But they soon thereafter moved to rooms. You know, at that time they didn't have teacherages in Norton, and teachers got rooms with other room.
In some places they moved around, you know, a month here and a month there.
That's right. But they both lived with Dr. Carr and his wife. They'd been
there about a week, and they were walking
The Clyde Line, I bet you.
And then went on to Montreal. I was born a year later.
Let's get you birth date.
My birthday is August 6, 1921. They were married in 1920. Then the second, my brother, was born on December 28, 1922.
And his name is Cary.
He was first named Jefferson Randolph Esser after his grandfather, and
five days later my mother died from pneumonia, and so they added the
Cary. So it's Jefferson Randolph Cary Esser. This has always been a
problem for him, and when he went in the Army, you know, they don't
accept the third name. So it was Jefferson R. Esser, and everybody
except me and my wife know him as Jeff
Two babies.
Actually three weeks later his only male first cousin, who was staying with his father right in the house right behind, got pneumonia and died. And so my grandfather decided it was a good time to take my grandmother to Florida to forget all of this strain, and she died of a heart attack in the St. Petersburg Hotel. So my father had two young boys. So he wrote Martha.
The sister?
The sister, and said would you come take care of the boys?
Where was she at this time?
She was a teacher in Roanoke. So she wrote a first cousin that we knew
and in whom she had a lot of confidence, and said, "Would it be proper?"
I've got the answer. And he said, "By all means. You've got to see that
those children are raised."
Those little nephews are raised, yes.
So she came to Norton and moved in. Actually for a year and a half there was a full-time nurse for my brother, but after that…. From my earliest recollection, why, she was there. I've later discovered, she later told me that he asked her to marry him in 1928. I'm citing this because I think it gives an insight into me, and she said she would do it until he was—that was after he had gone bankrupt. And she said that she would marry him after he'd gotten on his feet economically, because she had been through so much poverty. I mean, Episcopal ministers, particularly in rural churches, didn't get much.
Oh no.
And certainly in the form of dollars. And she was very sensitive through out her life to…. There was a time in the early '30s in the depths of the Depression when my father broke his leg, was in the hospital, and he had no job. And the only income we had was a monthly annuity that a distant relative of mine, the daughter of my great-grandfather's sister, who lived in Philadelphia, and I mean, they had plenty of money and the Civil War had not wiped them out. She left an annuity to my grandfather which continued through my mother's life. At best, it was $50.00 a month. During the Depression it was something like $37.50. But for a couple of years that was the only income we had. So I, you know, remember moving out of our house. We camped out in the bit house until the big house was sold. And my father was in the hospital with a broken leg, and we had to move from the big house into a small house that Martha—"Mash," I called her—had discovered and rented. She was responsible for moving everything, for storing the furniture, and this old aunt of my father's, who was then about seventy-five and was no help at all—I mean, she wanted to help but she just couldn't help—was there. And she eventually went with my father's sister for three years and came back. It was tough.
It was very tough.
I don't know. I was never a very entrepreneurial person. If a job came my
way, I was glad to have it, but I was not good at creating jobs. And I
was not good at, you know, I tried delivering papers and things like
that and it was not very good for me. But I was sensitive to the meaning
of what a penny
I hadn't realized that.
My father did vote for Franklin Delanor Rooseveit in 1932.
Then did he switch in '36?
Yeah, and he voted for Coolidge and Hoover in '28. It was perfectly natural. They were a Republican family. So when I went, high school was a breeze for me. Mash and my father always wanted me to go to VES but we didn't have enough money for that. Now, beginning, let's see, my father in 1933 got a job with the Relief Administration. He did, and I was old enough to see what that meant to people.
Yeah.
Because we would travel around to projects where people were working.
So you could see it, yeah.
Then he worked for the NRA Code Enforcement in 1934, and that meant that
he had to travel all over southwestern Virginia to mines. We would all,
you know, they were great about doing things like saying, "Well, we'll
go on a picnic." So while he was at some mine, Mash would take us to the
banks of some stream or something and we would have a picnic. But I got
to know southwestern Virginia. Then the Trade Association executive
It came in every month.
And it enabled him to live comfortably the rest of his life.
Had Mash waited this long to say yes, or were they married before 1935?
They were married. He took that job and about a week later, it was unusual, my father said, "I've got to go to Middlesboro," which was an old coal town that really has a fascinating history—it's a town in Kentucky right across Cumberland Gap—"on Saturday and let's all go." So we went down and we went to the old hotel and had lunch, and after lunch, he drove up in front of the Episcopal Church. My father got out and went in. He came back out and the rector turned to have been in theological school with my grandfather. So he opened the door to the car and looked back at Cary and me and said, "How would you like to have a mother?" Well, I burst into tears, and all of a sudden they were worried. And I said, "No, I was doing it because I was just happy about it." So we went in and there was an old lady who was witness and they were married.
Well, how nice, George.
But that was twelve years after she came to take care of us and raise us.
So I didn't have what you would call a
She was also aware of her Jefferson heritage?
And she was always, I mean, it was in her line it came down, and she would always say, "You don't live on that. You live up to it."
Well, that's an enormous influence on a young person.
Knowing that, what I read about Jefferson had a real impact on me, too. I
don't say I have ever been a great scholar. There's some things I read
intensively, but I don't, my son, John, is a much better scholar than I
am. I'm not a very good scholar. I tend to read too fast to be a good
scholar. But anyhow, I early understood that Jefferson really stood for
things
This didn't really bother me as much because I went to VMI. Went to VMI because it had been in my family, and father had gone there, and my mother's cousins had gone there, and it was cheaper. But, I guess, in retrospect I hit it just at the right time. Well, Pearl Harbor came during my last year.
Ah, you stepped right into a commission.
I was the last class that stepped right into a commission. I told somebody the other day I'm probably the last generation that has never taken a test in the Army. I mean, traditional exams, but psychological testing or classification testing, that sort of testing. I never took a test like that. But I went through the war.
Where did you serve?
When I went to VMI, they had calvary, infantry, and artillery. And
everybody that I had known had been in the calvary. So I signed up for
the calvary, and that meant that learned to ride horseback, which is a
great privilege. But it wasn't very useful
That's right. Not in the Second World War.
I had my degree in chemistry, believe or not. So they took six of us who
had degrees in chemistry and transferred us to the Chemical Warfare
Service because the Chemical Warfare Service had so few officers. That
was a break, too, because it meant that by September of 1942, when I had
only three months into the service on my part, I was company commander
of a company of officer candidates in an officer candidate school. I had
just
Where were you stationed?
At Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland, which is twenty miles north of Baltimore,
just south of Aberdeen. I'll never forget, I mean, there was a former
first sergeant who was then a second lieutenant, and he roomed next door
to me. On the night he arrived, I stayed up with him all night,
practically, drinking bourbon. But a couple of days later, I had another
second lieutenant who had just gotten his commission, but he was from
civilian life. He was about thirty-eight, and he didn't like one of my
orders, and he said he wasn't going to obey it, and I said, "You will
or." So I walked out, and there was actually a tent area and this little
orderly room, little porch, and I was standing on the porch. Ed
Selinsky, who was the former first sergeant, went up to this guy and
says, "You obey the lieutenant or you'll have me to put up with as
well."
So I had no more problems with Lieutenant Preston. But anyhow, at VMI I
read widely but I was in the sciences so I didn't have a lot of courses
that actually made me think about where the world was. You know, today
they do a lot better job in, I think, any engineering degree or any
scientific degree in giving some better background. Oh, I had a course
in economics and it was sort of a joke. The man that was teaching
history was a lot more concerned with the developing European war than,
understandably, he was in the past. So I went into the war, and
Did you go into France?
We landed in France, and actually our first combat was in Holland and Germany. I ended up on the other side of the Elbe River. Actually saw the Russians.
Did you meet the Russians?
Yeah, met the Russian troops. Another experience that lives with me is I was in the second day, I guess—we were liberated the afternoon before and the next morning I was at a concentration camp.
Oh, were you?
So I saw, I'll never forget talking to a man who was there who had been a
professor at the University of
Yeah, Joy and Bill Murphy go there. He teaches at
By the time the day was over, that man no longer lived. So because we had
been sent in late, we were also returned home
I would think not, yeah.
So all during the war I was thinking what I was going to do, and I ran into a man who said, "Why not go to law school?" It was funny. He was the one who encouraged me to think of Harvard instead of Virginia, and he ended up going to Virginia and I went to Harvard.
So directly from the military, in what, 1946?
I went up to, and this, you know, my son and daughter, a couple of days ago I was telling them this and they found it hard to believe, I went to Boston from Edgewood in February of 1946. Went over to Harvard, and I had an appointment with an old professor who was in admissions. I went up to his office in the bowels of the library, and he met me. There was also a man there who was Dean of the School of Law at the University of Iowa. So we sat around and they talked to me. They asked me what I'd done in the war. And sometimes they would go off on their own. I was there over two hours and finally he said, "well, I believe we'll let you in."
You could come in?
So I was admitted to Harvard. I was also admitted to the University of Virginia. And when I left home in June of 1946, I told my parents that I would let them know where I ended up. It was not until I called from Worchester, Massachusetts, that they knew I was going to Harvard.
And you had the G.I. Bill?
And I had the G.I. Bill which pretty much covered all of the expenses.
Makes a difference.
Makes a difference.
Oh, it was a wonderful thing. That light is flashing. We'll talk next time about your decision when you graduated from Harvard to come to the Institute of Government?
Okay.
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
This is tape 3-A of an interview with George Esser, former member of the staff of the Institute of Government and executive director of the North Carolina Fund. The interview is taking place in my home on Elliot Road in Chapel Hill. It is June 27, 1990. I am Frances Weaver.
George, when we broke up the other day, we were talking about your decision to go to Harvard and I want just to touch on a couple of things. Can you give me a capsule summary of Harvard at that time, of the Harvard Law School? What it was like and what it was like for you?
What it was like, there were over two thousand students. In the post-war period, why they had continuous semesters.
Oh, straight through.
They didn't go back to the old two semester a year program until 1949. So I went seven straight semesters from June of '46 until September of '48. And there were three graduating classes in 1948; in February, June and September. It was a good experience. There were lots of people in law school at that time who were from all over the country who would not have normally gone to Harvard Law School. The elitist tradition of Harvard was clearly broken. Not that there weren't many eastern prep school people there, but they did not predominate.
I see.
Nor did they win all the honors, you know, the president of the Law
Review or whatever. So it was an
I had interesting roommates and I've stayed very close to Jim Barnett whose father taught law at T.C. Williams in Richmond. I met [him] the day I was admitted to Harvard, but he married into one of the old families of Massachusetts and practiced in Providence. And they have a lovely summer home about forty miles from Providence, south of Fall River in Massachusetts. But it's interesting. We've stayed very close and we go to see them a lot and they come to see us occasionally. Well, one night over twenty years ago, before we moved to Atlanta, the phone rang about ten thirty and it was Faith, the wife. The oldest son had come to Chapel Hill to see his girl friend and she had rejected him and he had taken a hundred sleeping pills.
Oh, George.
Well, first of all, she sensed that he might do something drastic and she had gone back and found him. At that time there was a doctor named Lou Whitmore or something of that nature.
Lou Welt?
Welt.
Lou Welt. He was a great doctor, right.
And he was an authority on overdoses of drugs. And they kept that boy in intensive care for two weeks and Hilliard Caldwell was the primary attendant.
Was he really?
And Jim and Faith arrived here at midnight and I had gotten an up to date
report through Bob Lindsay and that boy
I would think so. Had you known Hilliard Caldwell before this first encounter?
Yes.
You had. In other activities in Chapel Hill. George, were there any North Carolinians at Harvard Law; friendships that carried over when you came here or acquaintances?
Well, yes. Well, Alec McMann was a good friend of mine in law school, and he and I came to the Institute together.
I see. I didn't know that.
Then Rich Preyor was in my class.
Was he? I didn't know that.
Well, he actually took a vacation, so he graduated a semester after. Reed
Thompson, who is now in Washington, who was from Pittsboro was a good
friend. Pred Bynum from Rockingham, North Carolina was a good friend.
Harry Martin, I knew. He wasn't a close friend, but he's now Justice of
the Supreme Court and lives in Chapel Hill. So I did make some friends
and some friendships that have carried over. And I made some very good
friends of people who practice today in Philadelphia and New York and
Providence. But because I didn't enter the practice of law, other than
the friendships that I have maintained, like Jim Barnett and Ray Gouth,
where there was a real personal element, I
The ABA type professional associations?
Yeah. And so I haven't seen many of them. And the only time I went to a law school reunion, which was in 1983, I didn't particularly enjoy it. Mary and I went up to Massachusetts and joined Jim and Faith and we were together and that was the main pleasure of the reunion, was seeing Jim and Faith. Neither of us saw people that we were fond of in law school.
Yeah. Yeah. That's the way of reunions, I think.
Yeah, so I have no regrets about VMI. I have no regrets about law school. I have friends in the social action field who are also Harvard Law School graduates who never practiced. They were not in my class, but Bill Brinker is a very good friend of mine. He graduated about 1960 and he's never practiced and probably will never practice.
Yeah. Is it an unspoken bond when you meet somebody? "You went to Harvard, too?" sort of thing?
Yeah, particularly if you are in an activity that doesn't generally bring
law school graduates into it. It's very interesting to find not only law
school graduates, but Harvard Law School graduates. You know, you have a
bond that it different at any rate. But I think another thing that is
important, Fran, is that it was while I was in law school that I really
faced the realities of political affiliation. I still had the Virginia
patina of conservatism and I found it was difficult
You didn't pay your poll tax anymore.
He didn't pay my poll tax for that purpose.
Seems like a valid choice to me. So what led to your decision to come to the Institute of Government and maybe not go into the private practice of law?
Well, let's see, in the spring of 1948 we had a summer term remaining.
Law firms did not go to the law schools in the same way that they do
now, nor did they compete in terms of salaries and all the way that they
do now. But I wrote several lawyers or law firms that I knew. But I saw
an advertisement or a note on the bulletin board one day that Albert
Coats, a graduate of the law school from the University of North
Carolina would be there. Well, first of all, I talked to a couple of
residents of North Carolina who didn't know him well. But I remember
Really? Wy?
W-E-Y-H-E-R. He was from Kinston. Two of my professors had been at Duke before the war; David Cavers and Lon Fuller. And Cavers was very pro my thinking about coming to the Institute of Government, but he said, "Don't stay more than four years." Lon Fuller really didn't know much about the Institute, but Cavers encouraged me. So, Mr. Coats came and I forget the conditions of the interview, but obviously, you know, he could make a very fine impression on an impressionable young man. And so at the end of that interview, I had agreed to pay a visit to Chapel Hill during the break. So I went home and I remember it was May and hot. But Mitch and I drove down and we stayed at the Carolina Inn and Albert and Gladys wined us and dined us; went to the Institute and met and talked to a good many people. I recall Cliff Pace and Henry Lewis.
Henry was on the staff then?
Henry was on the staff in 1946.
Right after the war?
Yeah. But I don't remember, for example, Terry although Terry was still a member of the staff then. That was the year, actually, that that fall was a sort of a watershed year for the Institute, because lerry had left during the summer, but in the fall Alec and myself and Dick Phillips and Don McCoy all came.
All joined the staff?
All joined the staff. And I think that was sort of a watershed. I mean, because those four people had a real impact on me. But at any rate, we had a very good visit. I remember it was hot and then Mitch and I went on from here to Richmond and eastern Virginia. And sometime in the summer, I forget exactly when, I accepted the Institute offer to my father's dismay. He never did understand precisely what the Institute of Government was. He had me type out a sheet of paper that he used to keep in his wallet and when people asked him what his sons were doing, why he would pull out the sheet of paper to describe the Institute. So I accepted and let's see, we had our final exams and graduated in September and I stayed up long enough for Jim and Faith's wedding. And then came home and had a few days at home before I came here. I came here on the first of October, 1948. And Alec came the same time.
Did he?
Did you know when you came that you would also be doing some teaching in the University? was that part of the deal?
That was part of the deal. In some ways it worked. In some ways it didn't and I think that the test that it didn't work, in the long run, is that very few Institute people teach today in the University.
Yes. Today. But you taught?
Today. But I taught. In the law school, we taught as surrogates for Albert Coats.
I see. I see.
Even grading papers and all; we did the work, but they were his courses.
I see.
Now later, when we began teaching in political science and other departments, planning and other departments, while he approved the assignment. I mean, whether or not we taught, he did not take part.
Yes, I see. So you were on your own then?
So at that time, when I taught in planning and political science, I taught in my own name. And in law school, I was teaching parts of Mr. Coats classes.
Of Mr. Coats classes. Yeah. George, were you sought out by political science and planning? I mean, did John Parker suggest this would be a good idea? Or was it a mutual thing?
Mr. Coats was funny that way. He wanted the Institute to be involved but he wanted it under conditions that the Institute controlled.
I'm not surprised. Jealous of your time.
Phil was the first to get involved.
That's Phil Green?
Phil Green, yeah. He was the first to get involved with Jack Parker. It was after four or five years that it became as close as it did, but I got pretty close to political science. Fred Cleveland and then Don Hamond, of course, was from political science and he was one of the few non-lawyers at the Institute at that time.
Yes. Is he a Ph.D. in political science?
Yeah.
I see.
Mr. Coats did not understand why we wanted to be involved in the rest of the University. I don't know why he didn't, but he didn't.
I thought that was his dream.
Well, his dream was involvement by invitation with control given to the Institute.
I see.
He did not like cooperation and he did not like to think that the Institute was contributing to the good reputation of somebody else.
He wanted it out of the Institute?
He wanted it out of the Institute.
All stars to the Institute.
Yeah. Now, I think, on reflection that the negotiation he did to get faculty status for the staff at the Institute was a real triumph, on reflection. I don't know that many people could have secured that.
No. I know Albert's techniques, however.
But on the other hand, you know, it was sometimes humiliating to know what was going on. He could be paranoid, he could be protective of the Institute, he could be provincial in his attitude about the Institute. You know, he didn't believe anybody else had a good idea.
Yeah.
That is in the social sciences. In terms of the arts and the humanities and literature and so forth, I think that he was a very, very good University citizen. But in terms of the social sciences, he had a feeling that love was the social science. And he could not reconcile his dreams with those of Howard Odum or Rupert Vance or people like that. And when I got involved later in the mid-fifties, with the Institute for Research and Social Science—Gordon Blackwell and Fred Cleveland and Dan Price and others—first of all, Mr. Coats wouldn't let me be an official member of the Institute.
He wouldn't?
No. I had to do that informally. And secondly, he got really upset when I managed to get a hundred thousand dollars of a six hundred thousand dollar grant from the Ford Foundation set aside for the Institute.
You mean the Institute for Research and Social Science?
No. I mean the Institute.
The Institute of Government. But you got it?
I got it.
What jurisdiction did Mr. Coats have over this?
Well, I obviously came to the Institute of Government and after we got
it, we had trouble spending it, because he would say, "God damn it. We
gave up a chance to get a million dollars." And he never got over the
fact that I was close to the
He never got a hearing?
Well, he got a hearing, but he never got close in terms of a commitment. And he could not understand that. And of course, he had retired from the Institute when I finally left the Institute. But he always expressed wonder that I could get so much support from the big, large foundations. And you couldn't tell him how the Institute was perceived by other people. He didn't understand that, because he was the one who knew everything about the Institute.
That's right.
On the other hand, he hired good people. Now, he would let some people go, you know, for months without actually even talking to them.
Really?
And if you could operate, you know, without a lot of supervision, you could get things done.
Without his interference?
Without his interference. Well, for example, one of the things that I achieved and it's still going on at the Institute, is I put together the first informal but year long training program for city managers and officials of city government. And later, it was extended to counties and it's still going on thirty-five years later.
I see.
And I think it's something like fifteen hundred people have been here. Do you remember Williard Graham?
Yes, indeed. The executive program.
Okay. He came and he established the pattern for the executive program. All I did was take that pattern for public officials.
I see. And apply it to the….
So, they came every two weeks for two to three days from October to May.
Exactly like the executive program.
Yeah. Now we didn't have as much money or we didn't charge as much either. And it was a joint thing between Alec McMann, Phil Green, Don Hamond, Jake Wicker and myself and then others from time to time. But initially, that was it. And you know, over the years it became stabilized and it became accepted. Initially, the League fought it, the League of Municipalities.
Oh, turf battles?
Turf battles, you know. But they found it hard to fight education. And so
finally, they gave up on that. And
Well, I could understand that.
Particularly Alec and Phil and I had to deal with that, and we finally beat that with the power of our involvement rather than his involvement. And eventually, they named their building in Raleigh for Mr. Coats.
Yes, isn't that interesting?
But I knew the man who started the League back in 1934, Pat Healy, in Washington. And Pat used to tell me about his perception of the battles with Mr. Coats in the thirties between the League of Municipalities and the Institute. And the resources were limited. We were fighting a turf battle. But Mr. Coats could go for months and sometimes more than that time without significantly interfering with somebody and then something would come up, an issue would come up and he would get involved. And sometimes he would mess things up pretty badly.
Really?
Yeah. His involvement would mess things up.
Very emotional response to things, would you say?
Very emotional and very paranoid. He was a very paranoid man. And he could take his fears about other individuals or other institutions and erect Machiavellian schemes for combat.
I see.
And then call staff people in and talk for hours about this.
Really?
And just lay out his schemes. Even if you didn't agree with him, he didn't hear you. And very often, we didn't agree with him. Now, some people could help him more than others. I don't know. But both Phil Green and Jake Wicker had stretches of serving as sort of the chief of staff for Albert Coats. And how they did it, I don't know, because in a position like that, he could be consuming of time. If you talk to Mary Green, obviously you can't. But talk to Peaches. Peaches is sort of bitter about it.
The hours he demanded.
The hours and calling at all hours of the day and night. And he didn't do that for most of us.
Total dedication. He expected it.
Or morning, noon and night, week day and on a Sunday. And you know, when I came he was astounded to learn that I was teaching Sunday school. And I said, "Well, Mr. Coats, it means a lot to me." "What? I want the Institute to mean as much to you."
Was he jealous of your interest in the church, do you think?
Oh, he was jealous of anything that took away. Now he wouldn't admit this, but he really was. He was jealous that took away from total commitment to the Institute.
He's done it himself.
Yeah. And he wanted total commitment and he could not understand when
there wasn't total commitment. And he didn't
Her life had been dedicated as well.
And I will say this. when my father was very ill right after Christmas in 1955, I called Mr. Coats and I said, "I think I should stay here." "Stay as long as you think is necessary." And he really was good about it.
Generous about it.
And you know, those things came first, but he didn't sometimes understand about children.
I bet.
And he didn't understand about your desire to work with other people in the University or in the community.
What were his racial attitudes, George?
Well, I don't think they were bad, but they were subordinate to the Institute. And the first thing that I recall that happened was there was some sort of meeting somewhere other than the Institute and I think it involved law enforcement officers. But there were both blacks and whites there. And one member of the staff, Don Hamond, sat down with some of the black participants at lunch. And this really upset Mr. Coats. The building was finished and opened in '56 or '57.
That's about…. Yeah.
And we had our first conference for newly elected municipal officials in May of that year. And in '57, you see, it was right after the Pearsall plan.
Right. This is early.
So we had about a hundred people register and they came in on a Sunday afternoon. And there was no way of telling from the advance registration material, so a lady came up and she was a city councilman from Kinston. Well, I registered her and I assigned her a room and then I went to tell Mr. Coats. He was in the office that afternoon. Well, it was a real bad…. But you know, he survived it.
Afraid of the spillover? Afraid of the press?
That's right. And you know, as an example of his fears: he once had a little money, a little Foundation money, and he used some of it to buy dinner and football tickets for a commission that was working with the Institute. I mean, someone like Spencer Bell. Well, Henry, what was his name? He was state auditor?
Oh, Bridges.
Bridges was auditing the University books and he raised some question about the expenditure of those funds. Well, it just about sent Mr. Coats to the hospital.
Well, yeah. His integrity had been in
And the staff did not regard it as that serious, but he did. And I guess
what I'm saying is that he knew that on race that morally he was bound
to support desegregation, but politically he was worried that he would
lose state
I'm sure he would.
And yet, I would think he was proud of the fact that dealing with those issues was coming from a former staff member at the Institute.
Ambivalent. And of a generation when the leap was very difficult.
That's right. It was a very, very difficult belief. You know, I don't think that personally he had any really real bias, but professionally, he was out to protect the Institute and he was not going to let things like that interfere.
Yeah. Well, he wasn't the only one. There were other administrators who shared that anxiety; that the University would go down the tubes if faculty took positions on this.
I'll never forget. Now, this was a long time ago and I don't know how it happened, but Mary and I were out one evening for dinner and we had a baby-sitter. We only had one child then. Cary was born. And for some reason, we went by Whitehead Circle. Maybe we were looking for the McMann's. I don't know. Anyhow, we passed Bill and Ida's house and we said, "well, by gosh, we haven't seen them for a long time." So we went in and they were there and the hearings on the Pearsall amendment were on. Now Bill was already acting president.
So this would have been '56.
And the moment the famous confrontation between Roy Coats from the legislature and W. Robert Mann took place. And within five minutes, the phone rang and it was Roger Kyser. You remember Roger Kyser?
I do. He was a legislator.
From Scotland County. Well, Roger had his strong points, but race was not one of them. And he wanted to know, "Where'd that schedule come from?"
Born and raised in South Carolina.
I see him around town. He writes letters to the News and
Observer all the time. He's become a real libertarian. But I'll
never forget that moment. That was one of the great moments.
Yes, it was. It was a great moment. 10 tie things up with Mr. Coats. Albert Coats was a great man.
Unquestionably.
A great man. He loved North Carolina. He loved this University. He loved the Institute. Nobody could have matched him in building an institution as he did.
That's right. Pioneered.
He had a good sense of talent. He attracted able people and as I say, in giving them freedom to operate on the whole, he gave us a chance to build that institution. It was his dream, but it had to be built in terms of relationships with and programs for groups of public officials.
Yes.
And if he had not had the right people…. And he understood that and that's why he would go to Harvard to recruit. And so he recruited well and he provided support in terms of faculty status and salary. Now there were times when the salaries weren't up to…. You know, he would get eleven month salaries that compared with nine month salaries. And he didn't like you to have other sources of income because you were working twelve months out of the year.
Twelve months and he would have made it thirteen if he could.
Yeah. But on the whole, he was a great man and he built a great institution. I think that one of his impacts on the institution is very sad. And that is that it is a very provincial institution even today.
Oh, that's too bad. We've got to turn this over.
[END OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE B]
George, it was about this time when you had been at the institute a few years that you met and married Mary Parker. Let's talk about that a little. Where did you meet Mary?
Well, it was a funny thing. I knew about Mary long before I met her. You remember Davis Powell?
Yeah, D.B. Powell?
Yeah. Well, D.B., when he was here at the University, D.B. started the job that I think Jim Little still has. Personnel testing. well, anyhow, I knew D.B. very well and we all went to D.B. 's… He was one of those who ate at the Inn every night. One of that group. And we all went to his wedding in Alta vista and when his first child was born, they asked me to be godfather. And I went to Alexandria for the baptism and at the baptism was Martha Parker who was Mary's older sister. And she had been in the National Gallery of Art staff with Temple.
Uh, huh. Temple Powell.
So, that was the fall of '51. In the spring of '52, Fran Alexander called
me and said that Mary Parker—and I said, "Well, I had heard of her."
"Well, she's a friend
At Fran and Sid's.
At Fran and Sid's. And that was in spring of '52. I remember my first date with her was the day before Easter. And she had left High Point in May and went back to Beaufort and then spent the next year at the National Cathedral School in Washington. So instead of having her close by, I had to go long distance. And the first time I went to Beaufort was a June weekend about 1952 and it was hot. Oh, it was awful hot. It was over a hundred degrees and that was before air-conditioning was common in cars.
Or in houses.
And Mary's sister said to her husband, "John, do you think that young man
is interested in Mary?" And he said, "Any damn fool that would drive all
that distance in this heat must be."
So, when I met Mary at Christmas time that year, I remember the Alexanders.
That's right. After Christmas, she came here and the Alexanders had a party.
That's right. And by then, were you engaged?
And we were engaged, yeah. We became engaged—let's see—Mary's sister, Martha, the one I had met in Alexandria was married in Beaufort at thanksgiving and it was between that time and Christmas that we became formally engaged. And as I recall, why you—is it Elizabeth or….
Elizabeth is why I couldn't come to your wedding.
That's right. I thought so.
Yeah, let's see. You were married in….
We were married in June of '53.
Well, see, Elizabeth was a baby. She was born in January, '53. Yeah. But I remember Fred went down and Henry Lewis went down.
That's right. Alec Heard and I came to Princeton.
You came to Princeton in November, '51.
In the fall of '51.
And then of course, you're Stewart's godfather and Fred was John's godfather.
John's godfather. That's right. So we had a real inter-family feeling for each of the family.
Yeah, right. Peggy and Cary are friends to this day. And Stewart and John would be if they ever saw each other.
That's right. But it's very interesting that…. Well, and of course, I
have felt close to…. I have been
Oh, I've heard about that, George. That sets me off. Yeah, I've heard about that.
At the memorial services. And then I was in Washington when she came to Washington for the internship.
When she had the Presidential Internship. I think she consulted you, actually about what to do.
Well, actually, you see, my organization administered the program. So I would see Elizabeth from time to time, so I was very much interested in what she was doing. And we had been at her wedding at the yacht.
Oh, yeah. You came down for the wedding. You certainly did. Up for the wedding; guess you were in Atlanta, right?
We came to the wedding. Up for the wedding. We were in Atlanta at that time. So, I think that, you know, Elizabeth had handled a very, very tough situation just beautifully.
She really has, George.
Of course, all your children handle them.
Well, Elizabeth is now Deputy Director of one of the divisions of EPA.
I know. She's a very
She's just really doing…. Anyway, we were talking about Mary Parker. You all settled….
And Albert and Gladys came to the wedding.
They did?
You know, Mr. Coats behind the wheel of an automobile is like David Yates behind the wheel of an automobile. You really took your life in your hands when you rode with him.
I never drove with him. Thank heaven.
And I'll never forget that Mr. Coats, in that little Ford, Mr. and Mrs. Coats were parked off of the highway across the street from Mary's parents. And he got in the car and he put his foot on the brake and the rear wheel spun down into that sand and all of a sudden, it took off like that. And we didn't know whether he would get it straightened out on the highway or not. But no. Ceremonies meant a lot to him. To both of them. And they loved going to weddings.
They did indeed. And they took great personal interest in the lives of each of the Institute staff.
Anyhow, they had us to breakfast.
Oh, they had a breakfast for us, too. Yeah.
But, the music at our wedding was Purcell, not "Here Comes the Bride."
And Mr. Coats said, "Well, you're
I remember he put us…. when I was first taken by Fred to meet the Coats, he wanted to know the particulars of our courtship.
Oh, yes.
Right down to where and when Fred proposed. And Fred told him.
Oh, yes.
And what's more, he never forgot.
No. He could be very, very charming and very, very meaningful. Of course, it took Mary—as it took you—some time to get used to him. In our first year of marriage, we had a little dinner party and we invited the Coates and the Coates forgot. And they thought about it after we had served dinner and they called and they came on out. And we'd already served dinner.
I think we were there, George.
Yeah. And Albert insisted that he wanted something to eat. Well, it was
roast lamb, as I recall, and it had gotten cold. Mary always felt that
he overdid it that time.
That was very like him. Very like him. Well, you all lived first on North Street?
No. We lived first on Greenwood Road with Adelaide and Howell Walters.
Oh, that's right. That's right.
I had gotten that little apartment a couple of years before and we lived there and it was great for Mary because Mary Margaret Russell was in one side and Gladys and Cliff Lyons were on the other and Adelaide and Howell were a lovely couple. And so, it meant that—Mary felt that, you know, she could really sort of take…. And I'll never forget that one time I came home and she had made stew. And I said, "Well, this doesn't taste like stew that I am familiar with." So she went over to Mary Margaret and Mary Margaret said, "Well, did you put so and so in it?" I forget what it was. It was cornstarch I think to thicken it a little bit. And that was what she hadn't done. But it was great to have the kind of…. That was a lovely neighborhood. And then we moved from there to North Street. Miss Alice Jones cottage.
Miss Alice Jones cottage. That's where I first met you father. He came to visit there.
Yeah. And then, it was after that—it was when we were living there, that
we had had Cary and John was on the way and we needed more space. When I
look today at the
Five percent mortgage? Five and a half?
Five and a half, you know, and the land was cheap and I think that the difference—what permitted us to make the difference, was the amount that I got each year from Reserve duty. About a thousand dollars and it made the difference. We weren't paid at that time at the Institute quite as much as the University rates for faculty. But it soon got up to that level. But when I think about the fact that we were able to build then, I just am very grateful.
We were lucky to come at that time. George, Mary worked at that great institution, the Chapel Hill Kindergarten. Mrs. Weddock's kindergarten.
Mrs. Weddock's kindergarten. And you know, there is no telling how many children in Chapel Hill benefitted by that.
It was remarkable. It was a remarkable thing.
As Mary says, "Her one claim to fame was that she was the teacher of
James Taylor."
I do believe she taught James Taylor, but is it not…. I always heard—I don't know whether it's true or not—that a couple of those Taylor children were the only children Alfa ever expelled from the Chapel Hill Kindergarten.
That is possible. As a matter of fact, when I come to think of it, I believe I do.
They were so independent.
They were so independent and listen: Trudy was an extraordinarily unusual woman.
Yes, she was. And her theories of child rearing….and she did have theories. It didn't happen by accident, those children.
No, no. She intentionally did things. And I'll never forget going to—when
I was with the Ford Foundation—flying from Raleigh-Durham to New York or
Boston with Trudy. And it was after James had first made his reputation.
And it was while she and Ike were still together. But it was an
extraordinary conversation
Well, many of us couldn't. And each one of those children, after troubled adolescence, I think four of the five have emerged as professional musicians earning a good living.
Oh, that's right. Livingston and James and the daughter.
And Huey did it for a while and Kate did it for a while.
Isn't that amazing?
Really. Well, it was fascinating. Well, I knew that Mary had had that experience and that the Taylors actually had been….
That's right and you know, Alfa and
Oh, yes. And Alfa was an amazing and gifted teacher for what she was doing.
She was a very, very fine teacher. And there was a whole generation of
Chapel Hill children who benefitted who will never forget "Little Fish,
Little Fish."
Oh, yes. Mrs. Weddock. She was a great Chapel Hill…. Really an institution in the town.
That's right.
George, we haven't really touched on what assignments you did at the Institute and how that might have carried over into the fund.
Well, let's see.
Well, assignments first and was there a carry-over to the fund?
When I first came to the Institute, Mr. Coach had never…. I mean, every staff member who was there had dealt with a function of government. I mean, Henry Lewis dealt with tax assessment and tax collection. And when Phil came, he took on planning and when Ale came, he took on local government finance. At the time that Ale and I came, Mr. Coats had agreed for the Institute to make a study for Charlotte and Mecklinburg County on the consequences of consolidation.
Oh, really? That early? I didn't know that.
Oh, yes. And it was a much better study from the point of view of the
functional elements of city and county government than the legal and
other aspects of bringing it together. So he asked me to do a study of
city-county consolidation throughout the country. Well, I found a book
by a man that I later—I mean there was a lot in the library—but there
was a fairly recent book by a man I later got to know pretty well named
victor Jones from california that dealt with—historically—with
city-county consolidation from the point of view of political science.
And I had a lot of arguments with Mr. Coats about what we said about…. I
said, "We've got to end up with a legal charter." But I said, "The
history is not found alone in law or statute or ordinance." And well, he
didn't want to go. He wanted everything to be in terms of what the law
was
I was going to ask you, did this lead to your association with people
like
That's right. I would never have known then if I had not been looking at the total community. If I'd been looking at a function, I never would have gotten involved. So, I got to know a lot of people, not only on the campus but increasingly, throughout the country. And I got to know Paul and the people at Ford Foundation when…. well, let's see. Back in 1955, the Institute for Research in Social Science established a committee on urban growth and there were, you know, quite a number of people active in it. But I was the only person from the Institute and I guess it was because I was already teaching in municipal administration in the political science department, that I mentioned that I heard about this. And I said something to Frank Leyland or somebody like that and they said, "well, why don't you come to this meeting?" And so I started going to IRSS meetings and I got to know Bob Bagger. Do you remember Bob Bagger?
Oh, I remember Bob Bagger. Yes, indeed.
Bob Bagger was the first person I ever met who would intentionally create a problem so that he could observe what the consequences of the way people responded to the problem. I liked Bob, but Andy Scott…
Jim Prothrow, was he active?
Jim Prothrow. And I met all of those people. And the sociologists and I got to know Gordon very well.
And Rupert Vance, was he retired?
I knew Rupert pretty well. I've known Reba better than I knew Rupert. But I admired Rupert to no end. And Gordon and I struck up quite a friendship but it took Gordon a while and me a while to understand that I could not make a commitment for the Institute; that I could open the door, but I couldn't make the commitment.
You weren't Mr. Coats representative.
That's right. But that's how Paul, I think, initially proposed that first
urban studies grant to the University that a certain amount be reserved
for the Institute of Government to carry the results of the research
into the state. Well, it was interesting to me—that was '57—and Paul
Novasocker is a very, very imaginative person and he carried the
Foundation's interest in urban problems through several stages. I mean,
first there was commissioning direct research. Secondly, there was
supporting local institutions devoted to research. And he
That came out of Ford? Out of Paul Novasocker's fertile mind?
Out of George Novasocker's fertile mind.
Was he vice president then?
No. He was…
A program officer?
He was a program officer.
Henry Heild was president?
Well, anyhow, I kept up with these changes in emphasis by, you know,
seeing things in newsletters or by seeing Paul at…. I remember meeting
Paul at a couple of national conventions. And by that time, we'd gotten
to know each other pretty well. And so, knowing what the current
interest, though I was not able to follow through, but I did know, in
the fall of 1962, John Healy had gone to work for Terry Sanford and they
had gone to New York and Terry had
John was director of the Institute? John Sanders?
Yeah. And said he wanted to come over and get some ideas about the agenda. And I forget how I was identified. I must have had some prior conversation with John Sanders and I must have said to John—I'll have to go back and check this—but somehow I must have said to him that a focus during the week on traditional urban functions like city planning was not what Paul Novasocker was interested in.
That's in your 1970 tape. You point that out to either John Sanders or John Healy or both.
But then at that meeting which I'll never forget, came on…. We met on
Christmas Eve afternoon, 1962, I made that point to John directly. John
Healy and John Sanders. There were three of us, but why it was only me
in there, it must have been I had said something to John Sanders that
led
Yes. I can see that. You just do it.
And you know, maybe that's why the Institute staff did not regard Henry
as a very good manager because he…. Well, anyhow, so looking at the
governance of urban communities and then seeing changes come in the
fifties and being exposed to what was happening in other states and
going to national meetings and getting to know people like Paul
Novasocker and Bill Cassella who was with the National Municipal League
and people like that. Yes, I did have
Really? When you are annexing property into an urban community?
Yeah, and I'll never forget…. I mean, Bob Stape…. I was working one night
at the Institute and Bob Stape was there and I said, "Bob, let's figure
out a standard." That standard is still in the law. Something like a
population density of something like two people per acre; something like
that. He just pulled it out of the air. You know, Bob was a city planner
and well, that's the
Oh, I see.
Because the cities in North Carolina, with some exceptions…. I mean, you
have a few around and you have some cities like Charlotte that have
grown out to be
Takes it in. Yeah, so you avoid the Saint Louis and Birmingham model with all those incorporated cities with their own schools. Yeah.
That's right. That's exactly right. So, I guess, in the long run, the fact of looking at the total urban community and then seeing the diversity in…. The demographic diversity, the problems that were involved in race and income and employment, so I guess, you know, I wasn't trained, necessarily, to do the North Carolina Fund, but I had developed the sensitivity to the issues that enabled me to do it where it would have been very difficult for people with other backgrounds could have done it.
Of course. How about a North Carolina network? Did you know the people in the municipalities?
I knew because so many had been to school and been through courses that I
had organized and you know, there is no question in my mind that the
network of people that I
He did?
And that was in 1965, as I recall. And I worked with them and they came up with a plan to do it. Bill Veeter in Charlotte was very professional, but he understood that…. But I'll never forget I said, "Bill,"…. After I learned, you know, that highways were convenient ways of fencing off people that you didn't want to be involved, one day I said, "Bill, how did you determine the location of Independence Boulevard?" He said, "By the price of land." And you know, that's right. But, the price of land was such that it effectively meant that all of the slums were cut off from Meyers Park and Dillworth and the residential areas. I mean, the people in the slums would have to cross that busy highway to come over.
To come over. Like a Berlin wall.
That's right. But I think that the network of people that I knew in North
Carolina in the cities and
I'll bet. You'd know who to call.
I knew who to call.
George, I came to North Carolina some forty odd years ago from New York. I still am surprised at the network of power in the state and the difficulties outsiders when they have when they confront it. Is that still true? You know what I mean? An insider just does a heck of a lot better in North Carolina than an outsider.
Well, I think that's right. And I think the University is the reason. People got to know each other. And for a long time, this University overshadowed any other institution. Today I don't think it's as much true.
Well, we don't control the legislature anymore, do we? Our alumni?
Our alumni don't control the legislature and you've got a lot more
political power that is exercised by the business community that is from
out of state. The managers are from out of state in many more situations
than…. And what we have seen in the last few years in Winston Salem
simply confirms the trend rather than establishing the trend. The trend
has been that way in the textile industry a long time ago. But now RJR
and Raliegh News and
Observer are newspapers. They are no longer part of the
network.
Yeah. Well, that means then, that actually, maybe that network isn't anything like it was, if at all.
No, I don't think it is.
It was the network that essentially might have done Paul Sharpe in. He simply couldn't get it, you know. It was impenetrable.
But you know, one of the most valuable things I ever did was when I agreed with Mr. Coats to come here. I walked in a portion of the Harvard Law School library that had general reading, not legal books, and I found there the multi-volume autobiography of Jocephus Daniels. And I read that before I came and that helped me better understand what was going on in North Carolina from the beginning than anything I could have possibly done.
Wouldn't Jocephus be pleased. My light's blinking.
[END OF TAPE 3, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 4, SIDE A]
This is tape 4-A of an interview with George Esser, former Assistant Director of the Institute of Government and Executive Director of the North Carolina Fund. The interview is taking place in my home on Elliot Road in Chapel Hill. It is July 10, 1990. I am Frances Weaver.
George, we've agreed that the written record of the North Carolina Fund is so extensive that there's no point in going back with day one and every episode. That's already on tape and in an extensive interview, but what I thought would be interesting is to talk about some of the people who shaped the North Carolina Fund and your thoughts about them and their contributions; which means, of course, that we start with Terry Sanford who was governor of this state at the time. I'm curious, why Terry Sanford? What is it in Terry that was willing to take the risk that was implicit in the North Carolina Fund?
Well, Fran, Terry Sanford is a very, very interesting person to me. He
was not…. Mr. Coats always said, "Terry branded him." But Terry wanted
to go into politics and he was a good campaign manager for Cory Scott
and he won as governor. And he showed real courage from the very
beginning as governor. You know, I think
I didn't know that.
Now, it came under Lyndon Johnson. But that was while Lyndon was still
trying to be another Kennedy. So I think the fact that Terry Sanford was
campaign manager for Cory Scott in the Senate race in '54 probably
defines Terry better than any other single act. According to, you know,
the Paul Lueke definition of traditionalist, modernist with the third
sort of modernist is the middle of the road. And then citizen power
ideology over on the left. He defines Terry as modernist with a few
aberrations. Farrell Gillery of the Raleigh News and Observer says that
Terry is a modernist with a real citizen power philosophy. My
And he was then North Carolina Mutual?
No, he was president of Mechanics and Farmers Bank. He was involved with Mutual, but he was without question the strongest black leader in North Carolina and one of the strongest leaders nationally. He was close to Lyndon Johnson, for example. John was not an activist and yet he was not going to oppose activists. As I say, I learned a great deal from John Wheeler, not only about the way black North Carolinians perceived society and what they felt about the kind of progress that they felt was necessary, but also, he was a good politioian. And you got a good sense of the art of the possible from John.
He was willing to concede that? What was possible in the area of race relations?
Oh, no question about it.
He wasn't a violence man, for instance?
No, not by any means. Nor was he really…. He had questions about Martin Luther King.
A moderate himself?
Well, I remember—I guess it was '63—John had no intention of going to Washington for the speech at the reflecting pool?
"I have a dream?"
"I have a dream." Had no intention of going. Now he supported it, but he was not going to be out there. John did not go to Martin Luther King's funeral. Durham was ablaze at that time, so he felt that…. And he was supporting Howard Fuller then. As a matter of fact, that particular time, Wince Grabarek, the then mayor of Durham, hated to say it, but Howard Fuller kept Durham from burning up at the time of Martin Luther King's death. And finally, Grabarek admitted it. Well, John Wheeler, on the other hand, John knew how to push democratically better than Martin Luther King. He knew how to use his banking connections and he knew how to use his governmental connections very skillfully. And he backed us at the Fund, backed me, one hundred percent. One hundred percent. But getting back to Terry, I think that Terry was successful because his instincts were with the people. Secondly, he got smart young people working for him who reflected the same goals.
John Healy among them?
John Healy, Tom Lambeth and Joel Pleishman. Now George Stevens was really
more conservative. And that man
I can't remember his name, either.
He was not as innovative and change oriented as Lambeth, Fleishman, Healy and later Evans.
Yeah. I'd forgotten Ely worked for him.
Well, Ely helped him write that book on…
Ely's first book.
Well, it was Sanford's first book, too. But Ely and David Etheridge came down and you know, David's son lays tile for a living.
He did it for me recently.
He did?
Yeah, and I didn't know that he was David's son.
He lives in the house next to Cary's studio.
Oh, does he really? Yeah. He's a nice boy.
Nice young man.
I didn't realize that he was David's son until I went to the fundraiser for David Price and he was introduced. And I said, "That's my tile man."
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Well, Terry brought John Healy in and it was out of John's…. Or was it out of John's?
It was out of John's…. well, Terry wanted to get national. He wanted to
get some funding for exploration
That must have really hit them.
Well, that really attracted.
And so out of that came this plan for a team of Ford Foundation staff—turned out to be seven—to come down in the middle of January and spend a week. And I believe last time I told you about the Christmas Eve meeting that later that I got involved. But none of these staff were North Carolinians or southerners.
Ford Foundation staff?
Ford Foundation staff. And yet, Terry understood precisely what they were
interested in, but he was also clear with them, not in detail, but I
mean, precise…. But generally the barriers that he had faced; which was
one of the reasons why we were a non-profit corporation. And of course,
ford's experience in other cities: in Boston and Philadelphia and
Washington and New Haven and Oakland was that non-profit corporations
did provide the flexibility
You had to actually include them in the process?
Now, Daniel Moynihan wrote that book in which he heavily criticized
citizen participation. And you know, the Economic Opportunity Act was a
mistake from the very word "go" in terms of Congress demanding that it
be nationwide in application. It should have had another three or four
years on a demonstration basis. And the problem with any government
program is that—particularly one like that—as
Yeah. It was his hometown stuff.
You had to integrate everywhere that you sent a team. And he said, "I
understand that." And that was the
Yes. I'm sure he was very sensitive to that.
And at the same time, he was very supportive of the Fund and the Fund's staff. He was not always supportive of some of the staff, particularly the local staff. But we didn't hire the local staffs. But I think that on the whole I would say that I am a great admirer of Terry's because he's been a successful politician reflecting, for the most part, the same values that I think are important; more than any political leader in North Carolina. More, I think, than Jimmy Hunt.
Yes, I think so. I think so.
Plus the fact that Terry is not as plastic as Jimmy Hunt.
No, he's not. He's really not.
And you know, I like Jim Hunt, but Jim was more like Albert in this respect. He wanted the record to show in advance that he…. He wanted to make sure that everything went smoothly. Terry was much more willing to take a risk on people and programs; which gets to Healy. Healy was without question, the most innovative mind that I've ever seen.
I've known that George, since we were college classmates.
And John Healy really is much better as an idea person in the private or public sectors than he is writing books. But, look at some of the things that…. And you know, support came from the national foundations because they were great ideas. The Governor's School, sending Shakespeare around the state, the Fund, the Learning Institute, the School of the Arts and the zoo. It was John's idea. I mean, it was carried out by a later administration, but it was John's idea. And you know, John would sit there in that little office in the state capitol and he picked up the phone and the next thing you know, he's be talking to somebody in Detroit, Michigan or New York or Washington and I am sure that I was sitting there when he had his first conversation about the zoo. And I said, "John, the very idea of a zoo in North Carolina?" And he said, "You have to have these ideas before you never can tell." And you know, apparently, the Steadmans have put up the money that's necessary to make the zoo a reality; I mean, in addition to public money. But John never saw a telephone he didn't like. Once he had an idea, he moved.
He moved on to the next idea.
But I mean, he moved to implement that idea. And we did a lot in that spring of 1963 in going around. You know, John would call Bill Clemmons, for example.
Was he then chancellor at Boone?
Yes, he was at Boone. He would say, "Bill, you know, I think we need to pull together a group in the mountains." And before long, why you had a group meeting at the New Ray Inn on a particular evening. And Bill was responsible for it. He used Pete McKnight and Craig Phillips and Craig was at that time Superintendent of the schools in Mecklinburg.
Yes, and
He used Jim Gray. So, you know, I mean, we would go and I was with him on a lot of these things. And we would go up and have a meeting and talk about…. By that time, we knew that we were talking about what do you do to improve education and opportunity, particularly in the depressed areas of cities and in the poor counties. But it was amazing to me. Now, I did most of the drafts of the proposals.
After the idea, you were the draft man.
John turned me, really, to think through how this could be implemented. But, you know, on key things he was something. The day in '63 that… John could coin the phrase "war on poverty."
You know, I'd heard that. And that is John's?
That's John's. It was coined the afternoon that the Ford Foundation
president and staff came down. Or I guess it was the day before we were
to announce the grant.
George, let me ask you about John and the University. Did he ever make the attempt to have some of these programs like the Governor's School, the School of the Arts link itself—which had a relationship, I realize, to the University—but did he try to get them into the University and was rebuffed or did he discount the University and go outside? There was a lot of controversy about School of the Arts, you know. "It should be in the University. Why is it going over there?" And that kind of thing.
Well, John was in a controversy at the University at the University in '61 or '62—1 forget—in which he wrote articles—I forget whether they were in the News and Observer or Chapel Hill news.
He wrote an article in the News and Observer and it was on the front page of the prospective in which he said the University was not doing its job in the state.
I'll never forget. Henry Clark once organized…. This is, I find, one of
Henry's interesting paradoxes: his support of the fraternity system. And
I was by appointment of Chancellor House—I never did understand this—I
was chairman of the committee on fraternities and sororities for a
while. And we had a meeting—I guess Fred was there—but anyhow, Henry
organized a weekend at the Whispering Pines in 1961 or '62, but it was
after John had written that article. And John was there and so were Bill
Aycock and Jimmy Godfrey and there was never any direct confrontation,
but it was then that I became really conscious of how the South Building
really reacted to that article. As I recall, Jim Godfrey and Bill Aycock
made it quite clear in a sort of a semi-public conversation waiting for
breakfast Sunday morning. John was actually, in my judgment, was, you
know, he was very conscious of what the political limits on the
University were, but he felt that imagination was not being used. Now he
did not go so far, you know…. He felt that programs like the North
Carolina didn't belong in the University. But the School of the Arts
could have been if the University had provided that sort of support. But
I'm not sure that even if the involvement of the University had
John's argument was, if I remember—of course, he was very interested in the arts himself—that we had no application of art in the University. It was all history and theory.
And that screwed it up. I mean, you know, there's a little bit in the art school, but it's controlled. And the—good Lord—the Playmakers: the students are even farther removed from the performing arts and you know, I'm not a great admirer of the Playmaker Repertory Theater.
No, neither am I, George. The students don't have a chance anymore.
That's right. And we were talking with that…. You know, speaking of history, Lambert and Isabella Davis invited us for a drink the other night.
Oh, really. Old neighbors from Greenwood.
Well, and also, Mary and Isabella swim together. And then Isabella and
Mary discovered that some friends of ours in Washington were also
cousins of hers. So, we sat down and among the things that we discussed
was the Playmakers. You know, she was one of those townspeople who acted
a lot. And so the Playmakers, then, was a much more
Okay, let's talk about Pete. He was drawn in early.
He was drawn in early.
President of Duke.
Well, he was at that time with the Babcock Foundation. And I believe Ann's….
Ann?
Forsyth. And Tom Pearsall. But Pete was a good president. He was very supportive of me. I liked Pete. I never did understand the later developments in the private lives when I knew that Gail was not making John happy because Gail didn't want any children. And to have her divorce and suddenly marry Pete and provide Pete with a daughter was just beyond…. I liked Pete's first wife, but she was an alcoholic. But I don't know that Gail and Pete had a real happy life, but they stayed together and then Pete progressively went blind and ended his life rather sadly in a nursing home.
Yes, I know. I know. I've talked to Gail about that.
I talked to Gail after I got back, but I probably knew more about it from Jim, you know, the reporter who's now president of Knight-Ritter.
Well, Rolf Neil was over then. But not then. I've forgotten it. Oh, the one that wrote the book. Is that the one you're thinking about? I can't remember his name.
In a moment, I'll remember it. But he's a good friend of mine and is now
at the top of the knight empire. I'll think of it in a minute. But Pete
was very supportive. Pete I would put as a modernist who could be
persuaded to
Student interns. Went into Rocky Mount and other places.
Student interns. Went into Rocky Mount and other places. And eventually, nothing came of it except that it was clear to me then that there were people in Rocky Mount who were trying to torpedo us and they were able to get to Pearsall, but you know, I think Tom was sorry in later years. I talked to Tom but I didn't see Tom again. I talked to him on the phone several times. And when he died, I wrote Elizabeth and she is always a sad person. It was her money, you know.
Yes, I know. I know.
And I think Mac has a good citizen.
I think so. He's not as involved at the higher policy levels as his
father was from the time I knew
Well, you see, Tom had been Speaker of the House and of course, in the fall of '63, he was planning to run for governor. I don't know exactily how Terry did that. But in the early days of the fund, Terry was involved in persuading Pearsall not to run so that Rich could.
Really? I didn't know that.
Terry felt, and I think properly, that Pearsall would draw votes away from Rich in the east, but that Pearsall couldn't carry the Piedmont. And which is probably right, too. And so, in both Fund meetings and church meetings that fall, Tom would be sitting there and all of a sudden there would be a phone call or someone would drive up and there would be a very intensive conversation and so finally, he decided not to run.
I wonder whether it was a disappointment to him. Hard to know.
Oh, it was very much a disappointment.
Well, George, we've talked about John Wheeler. What about Rosa Parker. Mrs. Parker.
Mrs. Parker was Luther Hodges sister.
In-law?
No, she was his sister.
Luther's own sister. I see.
And she was married to Mr. Parker. And she was a jewel.
Fred always thought so.
She was a jewel. I think that Rosa obviously had grown up very
conservatively, but she was a lot less conservative than Luther. She was
willing to take the risks. She had compassion. She loved the University;
she loved the state, but she knew that both could be better. And while
the Fund was still on, in 1967, Terry was going off, but he said, "You
know, we need to expand the Fund board." But that was at a time of
national, I mean, you know, rioting in the streets. And so, we needed
more support. So somebody said, "Well, why not bring Luther Hodges,
Junior in?" And somebody asked Rosa and she said, "I'll take care of
him." So when he started coming, she would sit Luther right beside her
and she'd say, "Now Luther, you vote the way I do."
[END OF TAPE 4, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 4, SIDE B]
…Rosa Parker, and you were about to say something about the Manpower Development Corporation.
Well, in 1968, when we got very much money from the Federal government and other sources to create the North Carolina Manpower Development Corporation, as a spin-off from the Fund, Luther Hodges, Junior was proposed as chairman and he accepted. And Rosa encouraged him to accept. And I guess it's interesting to me that thereafter, I think Luther was much more liberal and modernist in his approach to issues of the state of his father because he had been associated with the Fund of MDC.
Yeah. He learned something.
And actually, he had his campaign manager, in 1978, George Autry, who was president of MDC. But Rosa was great.
How was Rosa selected? who knew her and who wanted her on there?
Oh, that was Terry's choice.
Yeah, well, I can't think of a better woman at the time, you know.
Because he felt that it needed more women and Forsyth, who was a much
more difficult personality who had
She's from Winston?
She's from Winston. She was the only child of Z. Smith Reynolds and Ann Tate. And you know, Ann thought that John Healy—or thinks that John Healy—hung from the moon. And she has supported John. John has helped her spend her money. Not the Reynolds money, but the money that came from her mother's side. You see, her mother is actually somehow related to the Cannons and also there was some money from a Staffer family in Baltimore. And John, for ten years or more, used Ann's Staffer money to recruit young black men and women to go to prep schools in the south and later the east.
I've heard that. I'd forgotten that.
But that was Ann Forsyth's money.
And John's idea.
And John's idea. I haven't seen Ann as much since I got back, but I understand that since Frank died, that Ann has snapped back and is better than she's been for several years.
That's wonderful.
Hollis Eadens was the only staff person for the two foundations at that time.
And he was from Babcock?
He was from Babcock. He had not had a very happy experience at Duke. But he was very supportive and I personally was very fond of Hollis and Hollis believed that we had to do something about the racial problem. And he understood that we were dealing with issues that many of the Reynolds people would not understand. But he was always supportive. It would have been very easy for someone in Hollis' position to say, "well, you know, the way that the Fund is going, I don't…." Hollis didn't take that view. Hollis was very supportive. Initially, out of the thirteen member board there were two blacks. And Sam Duncan was the president of Livingston College in Salisbury. His brother was one of the last commissioners of the District of Columbia and his sister, Mrs. Koontz…
Elizabeth Koontz was the name we were looking for the other day. That's right.
Yeah, Elizabeth Koontz was the first black president of the National
Educational Association. And she died just a year or two ago. Sam was
great.
From Wilmington?
I guess, a modernist. But I had known Wallace in law school briefly. And he had taken a Master's degree at Harvard when I was there. He was married to…. Do you remember Shep Mayan?
Yes.
Well, Shep's wife and Wallace's wife were sisters from Jacksonville, Florida.
Oh, I see. From Jacksonville. Yeah. Kin of Tracy's.
What did he do for a living?
He's a lawyer. But I haven't seen…. I've talked to Wallace a couple of times since I came back. I've not seen him, but he's a good man. But he was very supportive throughout the life of the Fund.
How about J.C. Brown?
When we got to the point where Terry was going to retire as chairman, the
question is who would succeed Terry as chairman. And I remember the
meeting where we discussed
What do you suppose he expected from Bob Scott that Bob didn't do?
Well, you see, I'll tell you another story. J.C. called me in the fall of 1968. It was after the election; after Nixon won and Scott had won. And he said, "George, would you go with me to see Bob Scott?" He said, "Ben Rooney and all of those people are fine, but Bob needs the equivalent of a Tom Lambeth and a Joel Fleishman and a John Healy in the office if he's going to be a great governor." So we went over and Bob had been given a little office in what was then the new Department of Administration building. And we sat down and spent an hour and a half, I guess and Bob was very…. And J.C. said, "You're going to be a great governor, but you're going to have to first find employment for your election staff that permits you then to step out and find the smartest young people that you can to run your office." And Bob said, "I think you're absolutely right." And then turned right around and maybe with one exception, put the election staff right in the office. And while there were some things that Bob did like the University and reorganization of state government generally, he didn't have the imaginative new ideas that the Sanford administration had. And J.C. was very, very disappointed. very, very disappointed.
That's interesting. George, we talked about Paul Novasocker the other day.
Oh, one other…. I left one other member out. When Dan Moore was elected,
it was a great shock, you know, to Rich and to Terry to lose, but when
Dan was elected Terry went to Dan and said, "Now look, we've got the
North Carolina here. It's reaching out to the problems of poor North
Carolinians, black and white, and if you don't want to be on the board,
how about let's making a spot for Mrs. Moore. And Dan agreed. So Janelle
came on the board. And there was one member of the board who knew
wheeler very well. Gerald Cowan who is a retired banker from Asheville;
a very nice guy. Not a strong man, but very nice. So she came on the
board and she came to the meeting in the spring and then for a variety
of reasons, we didn't have any meetings until the fall. And that fall,
you know, really began with both state and national activism efforts and
she resigned in…. I forget; November or December. And so I called Gerald
and Gerald called Janelle and so finally, she wrote me a letter and said
that it was not because of the program or anything. She just felt that
there were other things that demanded her time. But that she thought we
were doing a good job and so forth. And then, dipping down briefly to
Dan; Dan was never very supportive of the Fund—and he was certainly a
traditionalist—but he was very
It's not part of state government.
It's not part of state government. So I respected that and I had a chance
to tell that to Dan before he died. He and Janelle were at…. Soon after
we came back, the North Caroliniana Society gave a dinner and honored
John
Actually, the Fund operated four years when he was governor, because Terry only had one year after…
That's exactly right. Yeah. That's exactly right. And you know, Ed Rankin cooperated with us, John Hampton cooperated with us and his assistant, Dave Coltrane—Terry put in but Dan kept—cooperated with us. So that, you know, we didn't have overt opposition. Charlie Carroll was opposed to everything that the Fund or the Learning Institute or anything that Terry proposed.
I see. He was head of education?
Yeah. He was the elected person. I asked
Between Doc and what he would have liked to have done. And Doc's a risk taker. I mean, he would have done some experimental stuff. And the relationship between the Fund and LINK?
Well, we were one of the…. Let's see. The sponsors of LINK were the Fund, the Department of Public Instruction, the University of North Carolina and Duke.
So you were one of the grantors? I see.
Right. And we each…. I forget. That's in the paper.
Yeah, that'll be in the papers. well, you did talk about Paul Novasocker the other day; about how you knew him and your initial working with him on the memo. what relationship did he continue to have to the Fund?
Well, Paul was very conscious of the fact that the programs that Ford had
supported in major American cities and the state of North Carolina were
politically risky. And so he had initiated a strong monitoring program;
that is, he had people on his staff that he would send to New Haven or
Boston or Oakland or wherever frequently, and have them file reports on
how things were going. So that he was keeping up with what was going on.
And then every three months or so, why he would have the staffs meet of
all of these projects. And we met in Miami and Washington and New York
and Oakland and Puerto Rico. Quite a number of different places. So that
there was a real corporate feeling between the Ford staff and the gray
area staffs that included not only Mike
Oh, on the watergate hearings.
Was director of the project in Philadelphia. And so I knew Sam and there
were a number of people who had gone on to bigger and better things. And
it was a very heady time, too, because a number of projects were in
political difficulty. And at that time, the Ford Foundation was like it
is now. There was no domestic and international staff. The staff
operated world-wide. So here was Paul with a good staff, but he was the
person with the ideas and innovative
Did he really? He was another idea man.
Yeah, that's right. And you see, he hired John Healy for the year…
So, it was Ildesocker who got him into Ford?
Right. Oh, yeah. He worked with Paul. And the year after, Terry went out of office and that's where John met Rosemary.
Yes. You know, they lived in the same building with Doc and Sibby Howell in New York?
Oh, really?
Isn't that funny?
And I think Rosemary is great. She's a lovely person.
I do too. I think that's been a very successful, very successful marriage.
So then Paul was succeeded an economist who was already on the Ford staff
named John Jacomin who was only in that position a year and a half
before he became president of Haverford. And was still president of
Haverford when John went there. And Jack was a strange sort of a person.
He's the person—and you may have read about—who would take off for three
months every couple years and go into garbage collecting or salad cook
and so he did that and he was
What was Mike Smerdoff's role in the Foundation? Was he Program Officer?
Well, Mike is another interesting character. You know, if there were two
people who had had, one way or another, impact on me it's been Paul and
Mike. Or have helped determine what was happening to me. Mike was from
Connecticut; never went to college; started out in UAW and became state
director of UAW and then state director of AFL-CIO. Then in the Kennedy
administration, he became Deputy on the Alliance for Progress and then
he went back to Connecticut and Lee—Governor Dick Lee of New Haven—got
him to…. When the Ford Foundation developed it's gray areas
The New Haven program. That one. That was the famous one.
And the chairman, incidentally, was Rubin Holden who ended up as president of Barn-wilson. But you see, Ben was secretary of Yale University. And so, I first met Mike in April of 1963, I had to make some sort of a…. I went to Stores, Connecticut on some sort of program, but I used that time to stop in New Haven and meet Mike and to see a little bit of…. I've never seen such frenetic activity. I mean, Mike was sitting there with a table on each side and two or three phones. He later changed that style. So Mike and I have been friends since 1963. And at the first Fund board meeting, I invited Mike down to Durham to address the North Carolina Fund board and to tell them the kind of program that he had developed in New Haven. Well, then Mike was hired as a consultant by John Lindsay to recommend a reorganization of human resource functions in the city of New York. And he recommended a commissionership which he and John Lindsay offered it to Mike and Mike took it. And I guess he held the job for nine months. But when Jack Coleman left, Bundy offered the vice President for Domestic Programs to Mike Smerdoff. And so Mike was at Ford from 1968 until 1980.
So he and Doc Howell would have come along together?
Oh, they were contemporaries.
Doc was vice president for education.
That's right. And they had a high mutual respect for one another. And Alec was chairman.
And Alec was chairman of the board with George Bundy president.
That's right. So you know, I don't know. It was a very interesting group of people. Mike was not as innovative as Paul. He also was further right along the spectrum. He was very wary of community organization, of activism. And he believed more in well run programs that cooperated with local organizations but did not provide funds to community organizations. And basically, you know, he probably moved the Ford Foundation somewhat to the right, but he probably saved the Ford Foundation. You know, the Foundation world will never get over George Bundy's testimony to Congress in the spring of 1969.
I've forgotten what he did.
Well, he just didn't support the Foundation world very much. And you
know, I like George, but I forget the exact details, but he didn't
Yeah, yeah. I think you get that in the memo you wrote to Mike Smerdoff which is in the record. I think you get the senses that Ford would like it to continue and your memo is telling him why you felt and others felt it shouldn't.
So then Mike asked me to come on the Ford staff and that's how I ended
up. At first, they were talking about a position…. It was never very
clear. I mean, the negotiations were never very satisfactory, but it was
a position in New York which would have been program officer. But
eventually, Mike said, "well, you know, really, it makes more sense if
you would stay in Chapel Hill and travel the
That's right. I knew that. I saw that.
And I was very fond of Roger. Roger flew down and we went over to
Greensboro and met with Jack Eiam, who was the mayor, and with the
police chief who I had known for fifteen years. And I said, "this is
ridiculous. First of all, you never raised this with me."
I would think so.
But on the other hand, so does
Oh, so Katherine is married to Ken Mountcastle?
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay, I know him.
Barbara Lassiter could have been effective, but she was sort of a screwball. Betsy was a sad case. I mean, Barbara once asked me to dinner in New York and Betsy was there and Betsy drank brandy by the tumbler full all evening. And then of course, the brother, Charlie, was an alcoholic. But Charles was a good business man. But he didn't agree with everything we did, but he didn't have any reasonable basis for opposing it. And we would say, "We want it for these reasons." So he was very supportive. And then when the Reynold's Foundation did its history…. Emily Wilson. Are you familiar with that?
[END OF TAPE 4, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 5, SIDE A]
This is tape 6-A of an interview with George Esser, former member of the staff of the institute of Government and former director of the North Carolina Fund. The interview is taking place in my home. It is August 30, 1990. I am Frances Weaver. George, when we broke up last time, we were talking about members of the board of the North Carolina Fund and today I'd like to talk about some of the staff members of the North Carolina Fund. I'm particularly interested in Howard Fuller. He was so active in the '60's in the civil rights movement in North Carolina as well as being a controversial figure on the University faculty briefly. And I'd just like to talk about him. I don't even know what role he played in the North Carolina Fund. Can you just take it.
Howard Fuller was a native of Wisconsin who had taken graduate work at Western Reserve Case in social work and when we created the eleven community action agencies in North Carolina, in some way his name came from Case Western Reserve, maybe through John Turner—I don't know, who was then dean—to Morris Cohen and we referred it to the Durham project and he was hired by the Durham project; and I think in 1965.
This was a community action program?
It was a community action…. It was Operation Breakthrough in Durham. The
executive director was a social worker who—I don't know what happened to
him—but he had a lot of good qualities. He was named Foust. But Howard
soon demonstrated both his charismatic leadership, his appreciation
After the fact?
After the fact. I gathered from friends, including Nathan Garrett, that Howard was the reverse. That he would tell you what he was going to do before he did it. And therefore, you were able to prepare and to support him.
That's right. And you could answer the questions when they came.
So, I forget the exact incideht, but in the spring of 1967—it's covered
in that 1970 tape—Jim took one action where he wanted my support and
where I thought he'd gone too far. And where Nathan thought he had gone
too far. But we were very much aware that if we were not careful, that
he would organize the Durham black community and the Fund black staff
against us. So I forget whether it was Nathan or myself came up with the
idea, "Well, why don't we hire Howard Fuller in his place?" Because we
knew Howard was stronger and had better roots in the black community and
would be a better Fund staffer. So, one Saturday morning Nathan and I
called Howard Fuller and had a meeting with him and Howard was very much
interested. And Howard understood what the problems were about Jim and
he said, "Don't let that worry you." And so finally I called Jim in and
I said that we felt that the relationship should terminate, and I said,
"You
When Jim Gardner picked up on it. Yeah.
Not only Jim, but who was the other Congressman from…. Larry Fountain.
Larry Fountain did? How about Robert Morgan? was he active?
No, no. Fountain and Jones to some extent, though Jones was never very
articulate. But Fountain was…. The Federal bureaucracy was afraid of
Fountain, because Fountain was chairman of the Senate sub-committee on
labor. well, anyhow, I've covered that in some detail but Howard
throughout, was consistent in saying, "Well, we're only asking for equal
rights," and I found it very easy to defend that. And I had no problem.
And then the next year, we had the Martin Luther King death, but the
next year we were also—I have forgotten, but it's in the
Was this the food workers as well, or was this earlier? The custodians?
This was food workers as well. And then after that came Malcolm X University.
And what was his role in Malcolm x?
Well he created it.
Howard Fuller did?
Oh, yeah.
George, I'd forgotten that. I guess we were out of the country then.
You were. You were India.
That's right.
He created Malcolm X University and he had Nathan's support. And he had
left. And again, it's in that 1970 tape. I forget. For a while, see, he
took a Mohammedan name. And so he moved to Greensboro and Greensboro was
an interesting choice. I think it was partly because of his wife, at
that time—his first wife still lives in Greensboro—but Howard attracted
some
Was he really?
But the others have had very mundane careers, really. I mean, no, I say mundane, but they have followed mainstream choices. But the reaction of this diocese to the national church's grant to Malcolm X University was something that I will never get over completely. The diocese, well the giving fell off markedly. And our vestry…
At the Chapel of the Cross?
At the Chapel of the Cross. Adopted a resolution which criticized the
presiding bishop, Bishop Praser, Mason Thomas, who was then a member of
the vestry but was also chairman of the diocesan committee to review
grants from the national church to the diocesan projects and which
approved the project unanimously. And criticized Mason and there may
have been somebody else. And it's a 1970 resolution and that resolution
is still on the books in the parish and I think probably should stay.
Although, you know, I was not on the vestry at that time, but I remember
several people who were. And I think that it was…. Tom Thrasher was
still alive and still rector. And Mary and I heard that it had been
passed by a vote of nine to three. And we
And this was a resolution in opposition to the national church support of….
The national church had made a grant of forty-five thousand dollars to support Malcolm X University. And the people who were on the vestry with responsibility in the University had been so upset by the food workers' and the custodial workers' strike, that they objected and as I told Peter Lee later, when Howard closed Malcolm X University, he had the humility to call a press conference and say, "Well, it didn't work." But I said, "The church did not have the grace or the humility to call a press conference and say, 'we were wrong in accusing him of being a communist."' And so forth. And so I said, "I will never feel the same about the church."
It was tough. Those days were really tough. I heard him on the radio not long ago. Howard Fuller, that is. You hear him on "All Things Considered," and public radio.
Yeah, and you see, in 1983 John was already at Madison and I was asked to
be on a member of a team reviewing…. I knew that Howard had gone back to
Wisconsin and had finished all of his work for his Ph.D. except his
dissertation at Marquette. But I was at the University of Wisconsin on a
team evaluating the public administration program. And a member of the
faculty at the University was telling me about…. All of a sudden I
realized that Howard Fuller was who he was talking about. He was
I see. For the state?
For the state. So, I called Howard that weekend. He was living in Milwaukee and commuting and he was pleased to hear from me. And we had lunch together on Monday and he introduced me to his staff. He said, "This is the man who backed me wherever I went in North Carolina." And I've talked to him two or three times later. And he comes down to North Carolina every now and then.
Does he? Was he ever officially a member of the faculty or attached in any way to the School of Social work?
He could have been. Now that I've forgotten.
I think, George, that when I was doing papers, I think that there was a major controversy over his appointment and then gradually, he just left. But that's all hazy in my mind.
I believe in 1969 or '70, he was a lecturer at the School of Social Work. I forget who was…. I believe that that man Anderson, from Pennsylvania was Dean at that time.
I think you're right. That's the bells, yeah.
And Anderson was a very decent guy. He was not as good an organizer or fund raiser. John Turner was very good. John had all sorts of obstacles when he came as one of the first black deans. But he has done a terrific job and one of the things that he did was getting Jack Tate to commit himself to the leadership for the School of Social Work.
Absolutely amazing. Of course, Dolly late has a lot to do with that.
Oh, I'm sure of that. But Jack is like a bull dog. And you know, there
are very many similarities between Jack and Albert. You know, they are
the kind…. And Jack spent a lot of his own money in lobbying for the
General Assembly. When he started working with John Turner, the School
of Social work really, was something like twentieth on the list. And
Jack said, "It's going to be number one."
I tell you, if you want Jack late on your side for any big thing, he's….
Well, anyhow, I have a feeling that it was Anderson who certainly brought Howard into lecture. Now whether Howard had full faculty status, I'm not sure.
But it made many members of the faculty very uncomfortable and the administration.
I'm sure. But to sum up, and Howard today is head of the Department of Human Resources for Milwaukee county, which is one of the largest human resource welfare jobs in the country. And I, you know, I think Howard is an outstanding person. And I think that he was very good for North Carolina. He showed up the superficiality of support for integration that many political leaders and academic leaders had.
He called their bluff.
And I have no apology. In fact, that's one of the things I'm proudest of is working closely and supporting Howard Fuller.
Well, I would think so. I would think so.
And you know, I have known the leadership in the South, and I would put the black leadership…. And I would put Howard Fuller right up there among the top ten. Howard Fuller had more…. a lot of those who were successful in other southern states were a lot less emotionally stable than Howard. A lot less emotionally stable. And I just think Howard is a great person and made a significant contribution to this state.
Let's talk a little about Billy Barnes and his work with the Fund.
Billy Barnes was recommended to me by John Ehle. At that time, he was in
Atlanta and was the southern reporter for Business
Week. And let's see, Billy came to the Fund in January of '64,
let's say. He's a native North Carolinian. So he's been back here
twenty-six years.
How did John know him? Do you know? Is he a graduate?
Oh, yes. And I think John knew him through an interview. I'm not sure
that John had him as a student. I think John knew him through an
interview. But Billy is not a great journalist, but he's a great person.
And he took the heat. He gave the best possible support in the Fund
days. He would massage the angry reporters or you know, there were a lot
of young reporters who wanted to find something wrong with everything.
And he taught me, he said, you know, "when the reporters come and thrust
a microphone under your mouth, you have to respond." And he said, "How
you respond," and he says, "You don't have to tell them anything," but
he says, "You need to
Just ride it out.
Just ride it out. So, Billy was very creative. He wrote a newsletter, he had a system of regular news releases, he had a system of regular radio releases. I think we had a radio network of over fifty stations that had a little five minute tapes. He produced a movie. He did a survey with Oliver Quail that, even today, stands up with the very good reflection of the way people thought in 1968 and it was not very complimentary to the state. And then Billy decided to stay here to be a freelancer. And he's now, I mean, after many years of hard work to make it, he's now got a very good, lucrative relationship with IBM and is doing very well. And at the same time, Anne began her career after the Fund, you see. And I think Anne's been a very good both local and state politician.
I'm very proud of Anne Barnes. She's done a lot of good work in Raleigh.
And I think, you know, she had to find herself.
Aren't we? Oh, yes indeed.
Representing us in the General Assembly. But during the '60's Anne was not active. But Billy Barnes was a fine supportive…. And has remained supportive. And any low income community that asked Billy for help and can you know…. Billy does not charge them. Well, he does not charge them, you know, more than a minimum. But I know the Indians and several black organizations have called on Billy regularly throughout the years.
Well, is this for PR advice?
PR advice or preparation slide shows. He's done several slide shows for the Indians. And he is a better photographer than he is a writer. And he's got a very extensive file of photographs.
Well, you know Jerry Cotten at the North Carolina collection should get in touch with him.
Oh, she should. He's got something like thirty thousand of them.
Oh, he should do that. I will call Jerry today. That would be wonderful.
And he's got them filed. Once Cary worked for him for a few days, filing, and when he uses one, I mean, when someone asks for one, he'll get a small payment for it. He's got a very fine photograph collection.
Well, Jerry should talk to him about the ultimate disposition of that collection. Absolutely. what about Lucy Watkins, George? I've met Lucy at your home a number of times.
Lucy is the daughter of Eric Rogers who edited the Scotland Neck
Commonwealth, and even though he sold it to the Parker interest and they
sold it to somebody else, he at the age of ninety-one or two, is still
writing editorials for it. Still lives in Scotland Neck. Eric was from
Charleston, Maryland. Lucy, senior was from near Farmville and during
the…. I knew Eric. He was assistant director of the Department of
Conservation and Development under Hodges, I think. And he was very
active in the Episcopal Church. So I knew him long before this. And then
I knew
Is she really? I did not know that.
Yeah, she's a real poet. She has her master's degree from LSU. Did
additional graduate work at kenyon. Married a very weak man that's now
married to somebody else. But that's another story. Lucy could write,
she was a good program developer. She was a very good buffer between me
and the staff.
Where is Lucy now?
Lucy is doing research for the Center for Education and Policy which is one of the centers that the Legal Services Corporation created for national support of legal services.
Is she in Washington?
She's in Washington.
How about DeWitt Sullivan, George? He later went into business with Nathan, didn't he?
Yeah. He was brought by Nathan. He was a native of Mississippi who had
gone to school in Mississippi and California. He had a marriage that
didn't work out and then he came back to
How about George Autry? He was with the Management Development.
I don't know, Fran. It's turned out beautifully. It all started when Martha McKay was working for me at the Fund in 1967. And Martha had a brother, Bob.
She had two. Bob and John.
Well, I never met John. John died or was killed or something. But I had
met Bob when he was working at OEO, because he was working at OEO with a
wild character named Bill Haddad who had married a
Of the Fund?
No, of the…
Of the Manpower Development.
And so we introduced George to…. And then I remember we went to New York one time soon after that and introduced George and Luther to Haddad and Clampitt and Wright Elliot and several other people in New York. So that was September or October of '67. And George is still there.
George is still there?
Twenty-three years later.
It was a success.
It was a success. And the man we chose for the Housing Corporation, Bob Walter Smith, known as Bob, retired a year and a half ago, but he was hired the same year. And so, Nathan of course, is still around, but his organization was terminated. So of the three organizations that I personally created those two were staffed by the same people for the whole time. And then, with Terry's urging, we supported LINC and that was never very successful. You know, the Learning Institute?
The Learning Institute never worked. why, do you suppose?
Well, I mean, after Doc left…. Doc was fine. But Gordon McAndrew, you know, I never felt that Gordon was quite on the straight and narrow. A female staff person accompanied him on every trip he took. And I don't know. And I forget. There was a scandal associated with that. So he had left. And then the next person who came on also had a scandal. And finally, that then finally killed it. And of course, the Superintendent of Public Instruction never liked it anyhow.
Charlie Carroll and Craig Phillips?
Charlie Carroll and then Craig was more supportive but Craig got very bureaucratic himself.
I've got to turn this off. That light is flashing.
George, what about Morris Cohen? You have mentioned him several times in talking about the Fund and I need to know something about him.
Well, we knew from the very beginning, that we would have to do a lot of training as part of the Fund effort. And we got Morris from, again, from Case western Reserve to head our training program. And Morris did a very good job, I think, in a straight training role. I mean, we trained the very first Vistas in this country.
I know that. That's incredible. wonderful.
We trained the community action technician grant that we got with Eleanor
Winston's help, of over a million dollars. Trained sort of generalists
to go into counties and help match resources with problem people. Well,
there were a lot fewer resources then than there are now. Next month
this county is having a Human Services Coordination workshop with some
forty organizations represented and I think thirty years ago, maybe only
two or three of them existed. But then we got, in 1966, into a
philosophical debate within the staff on whether you achieved change
from an educational base, a consensus base or whether conflict was
essential. Conflict was an essential element. And Morris was
uncomfortable with that suggestion that conflict was an essential
element. And Morris did not get along for that reason really well with
all of the black staff. Now, he and Howard got along pretty well
together. And then Morris was a…. I don't mean Morris was opposed to
conflict, but he was worried about the impact of conflict. And so when
he got an
Did you? Was he also training the interns? was there any training for the interns?
The interns, in 1967, he did not train. Howard trained them. He trained the interns in…. well, we had the North Carolina Fund volunteers in '64-'65. He had some enrolled in the '65 training and then we had various kinds of training that he headed. And he was a good academic sort and with a very practical bent. But he did not know how to deal with the question of racial anger. And he couldn't understand it, even though he was very Jewish. But it's very interesting to me. Morris joined the faculty and he came to see me from time to time in Atlanta or in Washington. But just before we came back to Chapel Hill, he became enamored of a student from South Africa, of all places, and he got an invitation to teach in a South African University for a year and he never came back.
You mean he's in South Africa?
Has been since 1982. And I don't know what happened to her. She was
living here and I never saw her. I'll have to ask Billy. He knows. But I
must say that I'm chastened by the number of people that I had in the
Fund who could not maintain their marriages. I'll get to some others in
just a minute.
How about Mike Brooks?
Mike Brooks was a graduate of the Department of City Planning. Regional
and City Planning here. was recommended to me by Jack Parker and he was
the first person that they had, I think, one of the first persons, at
any rate, who was interested in human resource planning rather than land
use planning. So I interviewed Mike and he was obviously a very, very
smart person. And he came with us early in the summer of 1963 and he put
together the original fact books on poverty in North Carolina that were
competently done. Mike was another who was very uncomfortable with the
black rage. And eventually, he left in '67. He was very uncomfortable
with Howard for my…. I can understand his being uncomfortable with Jim
McDonald, but I could not understand his being uncomfortable with Howard
Fuller because I thought Howard Fuller was a very honest person and that
we had the best opportunity to measure what the problem was in dealing
with people like Howard as well as people like Nathan. Mike did one
thing, however, that I always felt was a problem. we got—I forgot where
we got it—I think from OEO. we got a large grant, about a quarter of a
million dollars, to undertake a study of poverty in North Carolina. Some
aspect of poverty; it's on the '70 tape. And the contract was entered
into with RTI. And somehow or another, the people who were doing the
contract, who were carrying it out, made a mistake in the sample. And
Mike didn't catch it. And all of a sudden I realized that we had
On top of it. Drop the ball in the,,,
Now, Mike actually went to the faculty of the University of Illinois. I think he was later chairman of the Department of Planning at the University of Illinois. I'm not sure where he is today. He's another one whose marriage did not work out. And I don't know exactly where Mike is today. But I could find out, but I just haven't…. But he did a good job in the early days of the Fund when it was important that we have good basic information. And he did a very fine job.
How about John Strange?
John Strange was the reverse of Mike and Morris Cohen in that he…. He was
a native North Carolinian; graduate of Duke. Took his Ph.D. at Princeton
and was referred to me, actually, by Paul Ildesocker. And John did
understand black rage and was good in dealing and was a supporter of
community organization. And he came and worked part time with the Fund
and part time teaching at Duke. And we had another grant to evaluate
community organization processes in North Carolina communities.
That's all spelled out in Al Lowenstein's papers and when Smith became really radical….
Yeah, and we spent the night with a couple in New Hampshire—I worked at
the Ford Foundation—who met in Mississippi in '63 and were married in
'64 and you know, that was part of their experience. And we talked about
that. So, you
At the community level and all the other aspects of that.
Well, George, the Fund wound up in 1968 and your final report to Mike Svirdoff is so compelling and so complete in its statement about why you and the staff felt that it shouldn't continue. I'd like to know just personally…. I mean, I know you supported your staff and I know what you wrote to Mike, but did you personally feel the time had come for the reasons filled out in the…
Yes, I did. I realized that I had used up all the nickels that I had. I
had a lot of nickels, you know, from the institute days, but I think
that it wise and the other reason, Fran, that it was wise is that Terry
had said in '63, "I don't think it ought to go past five years." And I
tentatively agreed to that, and I guess Terry would have supported me if
I had said, "No, I believe we ought to continue." But I had pretty deep
respect for his political judgments. And he said in '68, "Well, I think
we probably ought to terminate it." And I think he was right and I think
I was right. I mean, I think we were right. We had used up…. You know, I
think that we had tested out credibility on some issues dealing mainly
with the black Insight, if we had done that, then I think it would have been one
thing. But the fact that we were involved in movements, I thought made
it important that we probably terminate. Now, I think the fact that both
MDC and LHDC and particularly MDC have survived is important and they're
important links. And of the community actions agencies that we helped
support, ten of the eleven are still going.
Still going? You have said on an earlier tape they've become pretty bureaucratic, pretty entrenched.
That's right. I don't think they're near…. well, part of it is the leadership, part of it is the structure of support from the Federal and state governments.
Well, George, when the Fund closed, you went with Ford as project advisor?
Well, I've never been absolutely satisfied with the way those negotiations went. I think that when Mike got that long memo, he said, "Well, I will follow your judgment," but he said, "then I would like you to come on the Ford staff." So we talked about that back and forth and the initial idea was that I was prepared to move to…. I remember talking to Fred about it. I was prepared to move to New York and then Knight said, "Well, why don't you think about staying where you are and being our advisor for the south." Well, it was a lot easier.
Yeah, and with children.
And with the children. And they worked out a very nice arrangement, so I
got an office uptown at 212 Rosemary. Mel Rastis had owned the building.
It was right behind the old School of Social Work is now, behind the old
institute. And Lucy came with me and Jim Burney was able to handle
A lot of travel?
A lot of travel. I was traveling anywhere from five to fifteen days a month. And you know, some of it was very pleasant. I realized in '71 that the pressure was finally off, but then I was an advisor. I was not a program officer.
Right. Sounds like little chance for creativity.
So, that meant that I was not making the final decisions. And paul
Ildesocker sensed this and had me visit him for three days. And the only
feelers that I got that I should have followed up on, I had a feeler
from both social work and education at this institution, but I had a
real feeler from Joel at Duke. And I think I probably didn't…. Well, I
didn't want to feel obligated to Terry. And I don't think it would have
meant that much, but I think that Joel was a little surprised when I
went to Atlanta because he had in mind asking me to join the Institute
That was really bureaucratic.
That was really bureaucratic. And you know, when I think about Atlanta, I have to feel that it broke the mold. It broke the Chapel Hill mold for the children and at a time when Chapel Hill was…. Well, as you recall when you brought them back, it was not a good time to raise children.
It was very difficult. In fact, we often felt—and I feel to this day—that the best thing that happened to my children was getting out of Chapel Hill in 1968. And the India experience was an A+ on top of that, but getting out of Chapel Hill…
I think you're absolutely right. Fred and I had lunch one day, I remember, down in the western part of Chapel Hill in late '67 or early '68 and we both agreed that it was probably important to the children, as well as for us.
Yeah, yeah. You could get stuck here. George, the years of your relationship with the Southern Regional Counsel are well documented in all the literature and papers of the Southern Regional Counsel; many of which I think now are where? Morehouse College? Where did they put them?
Atlanta University.
Atlanta University. What I really want to talk about is number one: What goals you went to the SRC with and number two: Who were the people on the SRC in those years who you feel weilded the greatest clout? I have the list of the executive committee here that I xeroxed out of an annual report.
Well, I felt that when I first went there, and in retrospect, I guess I
went there more for my respect for vivian
And they were, at that time, the whole purpose of the SRC was research into civil rights and the black condition.
And it was not only research. It was leadership.
Leadership as well as research?
Yeah. And so I made an effort, first, to get black staff. And I think
that the two primary black staff people that I chose had many strengths,
but they also had weaknesses and the weaknesses eventually were…. Harry
Buie was deputy, but I got him by saying, "You and I are going to have a
collegial relationship." And there was an Episcopal minister in
Mississippi. He had done a lot of good things, but Harry was not only
very bright and we shared many of the same values, but he was also out
for Harry and he was a manipulator. And so, then there was a graduate at
Princeton named George Harris who Paul called me about. And George had a
lot of good ideas, but he was the kind who could talk and write and you
thought he was sort of a brilliant director, but he could never quite
finish it. So, changing the staff in the long run was a very difficult
task. And Vivian, the president of Clark College on the Ford board of
And he was president?
And he was president. When he died, all of a sudden, it blew up. It was obvious that…
Was it a power struggle in the board?
Yeah, and Pat Derian was right at the heart of it.
Was she? I wondered. I saw her name on the list and I wondered about that.
Well, she was right at the heart of it. And she didn't…. I don't know if it was personal or what. She was worried about whether we were financially…. But she was elected president and she never realized how much I had to do with her being elected president. But I thought it was important because she was vice president, that she be elected president. And the people I thought were not friends…. I was trying to expand the concern of SRC to include poverty in the south as well as race relations in the south. Julius Chambers wanted to stick to race relations.
Race only? That's interesting.
Paul Gaston was the man who teaches at the University of Virginia. And
Paul is very bright, but he wanted to stick with race. Ray Wheeler
understood what the poverty issue was, but Ray was a very fine person,
but he never understood the finances or the financial issue, the
financial problems. So when
Ray Wheeler was?
No. Vivian. And so Pat came in as president and she spent a month—I knew something was bothering her—she spent a lot of time putting together a financial analyses. You know, you look at some things from a financial analysis point of view and it says, "A" and you look at it from another point of view and it says, "B." Well, they were looking at it completely different than I was. Plus the fact that my leaving cost them about a million dollars in grants that I had arranged. They never understood that. They were looking at the short range and I was looking at the long range. So we had a very stormy meeting in May of 1976, three months after Vivian died. And it was obvious that they wanted to pull back on purpose. They wanted to pull back on staff and they didn't agree with some program things I had proposed. So after dinner, they went into an executive session and Mary and I went to a movie. And we came back and there was a call there; Pat wanted to see me. And she said, "We had a meeting." It was only nine out of eight…. Some staff were very upset with me. They felt that with a full board…
You mean it wasn't the full board?
It wasn't the full board. And they felt with a full board that…. It was a vote of five to three. They asked for my resignation and I was fed up with them. And so I said, "Okay, You know, I'm not here to fight for myself."
And to fight a board.
And to fight a board, and so I agreed to resign. And we did not have a very…. The thing that really burned me up was that from March until it was all over, they never asked me…. They took their interpretation of the books and they never asked me for my interpretation of programs or of anything. And so I said, "Okay."
So they winged it as a board without….
And so I said, "Okay, if that's the way you feel about it." I mean, I wrote…. And then they tried to cut my severance that they had agreed to. Well, it was not much. It was five months. And I said, "No, you've agreed to it and I've announced it." And I announced it as my decision because I felt that it was important that the SRC maintain a good image in the region. And I think that the young man or the man who has been the director in the last twelve or thirteen years, Steve Suitts, is a good man. I have no problem with him. But I do not have good relations with many of those people.
I do have with some, but I was down there in Atlanta six weeks ago and I
had dinner with a former staff member who supported me all the way. And
John Griffen, who is president of the Southern Education Foundation, who
is a member of the board, was very supportive. But I have no regrets
about…. I have some regrets. I mean, I obviously, on the accounting
snafu, I obviously should have been watching things at home a little
closer, but on the whole, I do not look to Atlanta. I think that SRC
could have been a lot more influential and that's what I was trying to
move toward in determining the future direction of
Tell me something George. Hodding Carter was on the board. Are they not now married?
Oh, yes. They were married that year.
Were they married at the time?
No, they were married in '76.
Had they been married previously?
Oh, yeah. Pat was married. Derian was her first husband's name. He was a
doctor. He was Lebanese or something like that. She was a nurse and her
education. She was from Danville, Virginia. But I'm not a great fan of
Pat's. I mean, I think she's got a very strong sense of values. Hodding,
you know, is
To say the least. And so you went from Atlanta to Washington?
Yeah. And I was sought out in Washington and I, you know, I think I did
all right in Washington. I helped build a young organization into a more
professional organization. But it
Since 1963?
Well, yeah. And I'd been at it from a survival point of view since '72. I mean, everything. I had to raise my own salary. And so in the fall of '81, John was living at home and working with a law firm in Washington and he said, "Let's go to lunch one day." And so we talked for three hours and he said, "You know, stress is getting to you." And I said, "I acknowledge that." And so when the new chairman came in, why I told him that this would be my last year. And he and I agreed that it made a lot of sense for both of us. Because I was sixty-two by that time, and I, you know, didn't want to stay. Pat Reagan was already in Washington. It was not an exciting place to be.
Right.
And the years since, I gather from our earlier tape, have been very exciting and productive since you came back.
Yeah. Well, listen, yesterday I talked to this young man up in North
Hampton county and they now have sixty-one out of seventy-eight beds
occupied in their nursing home facility. They've got all of the housing
occupied. They've got the senior center. And one of the things I hope to
do this spring is to write the report on the coverage of the last five
years or the last six years, because it's only been in the last year
that the things have gelled. And now I've got five or six very
successful case studies to do. So we made the right decision coming back
here. But I do think that…. But you know, it's interesting. It was very
hard to impress on people at the National Academy the
Yet.
Yet.
That's a grim note on which to terminate this.
END OF INTERVIEW