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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-0043, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Pat Cusick discusses how his educational and military experiences altered his views on race. His relationships with blacks and exposure to racially progressive ideas provided a basis for his later civil rights activism. He was dissatisfied with the state of liberalism on the University of North Carolina campus. He also comments on what he saw as the hypocrisy and civil masks of Chapel Hill liberalism, which in his view prevented effective social progress. Cusick describes his participation in civil rights demonstrations as part of the anti-war Student Peace Union. Through his anti-war efforts, Cusick became aware of other social movements on campus. He laments his idealistic belief in what he came to view as the liberal facade of Chapel Hill. He regrets not pressuring the University to do more, though his activities did result in jail time. Cusick describes the formative impact his prison time had in stirring up his radicalism, emboldening his support of nonviolent strategies, and connecting with other like-minded activists. He explains how his stance against segregated prisons led to a lengthy hunger strike. Governor Terry Sanford's slow response in desegregating public facilities was a disappointment to him. He discusses the massive legal trial against civil rights demonstrators and his subsequent departure from North Carolina. Cusick moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where he became aware of northern racial prejudice, and where he engaged in social and economic justice endeavors. It was not until Massachusetts enacted a policy in 1988 against gay adoption that Cusick publicly came out as a gay man. He credits the influence of the civil rights movement with helping him come to terms with his sexuality.
Pat Cusick recalls his participation in the civil rights movement in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Imprisoned for his role in these demonstrations, he describes the formative impact his incarceration had in stirring up his radicalism, emboldening his support of nonviolent strategies, and connecting with other like-minded activists. Cusick also discusses coming to terms with his homosexuality.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is Pamela Dean. It's the nineteenth of June, 1989. I'm going to be talking to Pat Cusick, a leader in the civil rights movement in Chapel Hill in 1963-64 and now director of the SCAP agency in Boston, Massachusetts.
Let me deal with my father; that's the easiest. My father came down to
work in the steel mills of Gaston, Alabama. His parents had come over
from Ireland; that's about all I know—Irish-Catholic. My mother's family
has all the convoluted roots of any Southern historical novel. The
Hollingworth branch of it came over with William Penn and were Quakers.
By the time they worked their way down to Alabama they were Methodists.
Another branch—my great-grandmother was a Lewis, so my third-great uncle
was Meriwether Lewis, who did the Lewis and Clark. One of them married
Betty Washington, George Washington's sister. So I was supposed to be
very proud of all of that type of thing. In my mother's family, my
great-grandfather was the leading slave owner in Northern Alabama. He
was a major in the Confederate army, and formed the first unit of the
Klan in Alabama after the war. There were two leading families in that
county. Now that was the tradition that I had been raised in. Until
recently, until my mother went into a nursing home, his picture hung on
the mantle with the stars-and-bars draped behind it and the gun
underneath. The sword had been lost by the United Daughters of the
Confederacy during some festival. That was the tradition I had been
raised in, learning the poems of the confederacy and all of this. My
grandparents
So this was a really important influence on you?
Yes it was. The next important influence was on a more practical
level—the Korean war. I went in the Air Force, and that physically
removed me from the South. I not only associated with black people, my
supervisor was a black person. I had been around black people all my
life within that paternalistic way. Not only was he my supervisor, but
he was brighter than I was. I was in air traffic control, and he was the
air traffic control supervisor at Berlin. I think that helped almost
complete the piece. I went back to Rome, Georgia, where we were living
then. I used to wonder what I would do if one of my friends from the
You compartmentalized.
It took me about ten years. I was a very retiring person. I never would argue with people very much. That seems hard to believe now; I'm notorious around here. It took me almost ten years to come out of that closet, so to speak, of what I could or should do.
In your home town with your family around?
In Chapel Hill, the whole thing in '63 was almost like a revolution. The whole movement was like wildfire. I went through a number of changes. When we first started off, we were pretty naive, I think. We just talked to everybody in Chapel Hill. I was fortunate to be there. I often wonder, what if I'd been in Boston? I would like to think that I still would have done certain things, but circumstances have a lot to do with it. I would like to think I would have been of staunch character and would have done this, that, and the other thing. But I don't know.
What made you decide to go to Chapel Hill? You had gone to a
I was at Belmont Abbey College in
That got me, too.
I went up in the summer and said, "Ahh!" I rushed and transferred to
Chapel Hill. I lost most of my credits in the process. I also found that
I had been the beneficiary of a really excellent education at a small
school where you talk to your teachers and all that. I was really
appalled at the first big lecture I went into. I had to work because my
step-father was an alcoholic, and the help was needed at home. I worked
at the Student Union, called Graham Memorial, in the old building with
the columns. I ended up being the custodian there, in those days a
student who had a small room there. I also worked there which was very
good because they paid for my room. It was really great during the
holidays because I had this whole place to myself with this fantastic
sound system and so forth. I was there for a good bit. Then my
step-father got cancer, so I had to drop out of school. I had switched
to math in the meantime. I really had to send some money home. I got a
job working full-time. First I got a job for two weeks working at the
computation center. I learned to do the key punch, so I got a job
full-time doing the key punch. I was a math major so I was programming
on the side. I was the first person they hired who did not have a degree
as a programmer. I was taking one course a semester and working more
than full-time. Then I got a promotion to computer analyst. So I was
full-time at the University and stayed there
Let's stay for a little while with your student experience, your student life.
I was on the GI bill so I was older than the run-of-the-mill student.
How was that? Now older returning students are much more common. In that time I'm assuming there wouldn't have been so many.
There were some from the Korean War but not that many at all. All of the older students that I knew were veterans like myself from the Korean War. You just did not see older students.
Did you get involved in University life, in extracurricular….
Not really, because I was working full-time, going to school full-time. I was working about forty hours a week. I developed a distaste for the fraternity-sorority system. For one of my jobs at Graham Memorial we rented out little portable pianos for the fraternity bashes, especially during the fall. Myself and another person, we had to move the pianos in and out of the fraternity houses. We were called names and stuff like that. I developed sort of an antagonistic mind-set toward the beautiful fraternity houses.
Can you recall the names?
I don't remember exactly, but they were derogatory names. We were the hired help moving in the stuff.
You clearly were not the sort they were going to recruit?
So I pretty much was uninvolved. I worked and had my own little circle. I
formed a—God, the naivete of this—I had seen a leaflet of a group called
the Student Peace Union. You needed five students to form a chapter.
There were no chapters in the South. I formed a chapter. That was the
start, because that was very controversial. We were the only thing left,
if you want to put it in left-right terms, of the young Democrats. We
were raising the issue of the Vietnam War… Jack Kennedy was president.
We would have weekly sessions saying, "This is wrong, and it's going to
get us into a major war." We were looked upon as extremely radical and
caught a lot of abuse. Eventually the Daily Tar Heel
did support us.
Chapel Hill has always had this reputation. North Carolina is supposed to be the most liberal state in the South, and Chapel Hill is the hot-bed of liberalism in North Carolina. You are suggesting that you were not encountering anything that you or I would describe as liberalism?
No.
Not among the students?
Definitely not.
Except for a small handful that you personally had become acquainted with?
There had been the tradition so that we were able to debate. In order to
get chartered as a student organization, and thereby be able to use the
facilities around campus and actually
He's in the chemistry department, isn't he? physics?
Physics.
Had you taken any classes with anybody that made you aware that there were other people in the University?
No. I had taken a class with a physics professor who turned out to be
very supportive, but I wouldn't have known it from his class. I didn't
know him except for that. That was Wayne Bowers. They lived on Franklin
Street, Wayne and Maryellen Bowers. They were very supportive of the
Student Peace Union. Maryellen was, and I'm sure still is, a member,
along with Lucy Straley, of the Durham-Chapel Hill branch of the Women's
International League of Peace and Freedom (W.I.L.P.F.). They were very
supportive of this very small peace group of ours and the Straleys. We
then started talking about how we could be doing all this stuff about
international peace when so much was happening right in the South. I
went to Ocracoke Island off the
You started out with a small group of people. Who were they?
Mike Putzel, who is now with the White House press corps. He was one of
the initial five. He did not get all that involved with the civil rights
part of it, because by that point he was writing for the Daily Tar Heel, and all the Tar Heel kids
became stringers for the U.P.I., A.P., and that type of thing. We wanted
them to, because they were sympathetic. Wayne King was in that category.
Wayne was the Washington bureau chief for the Times. I
think he is back in New York now. We talked on the phone once last
year.
That's four. You said you had to have five. Who's the other?
John Creel. I don't know what happened to him, and Lou Calhoun. I'm still
in touch with Lou. He, like myself, was a white Southerner. John Donne
is dead, I guess you know now. He died in '82. Joe Straley came up for
his memorial service. We rode up to Vermont together where he lived.
It has shaped everything that has come after for me. That is why these
charts are on the wall and stuff. It is very close
You started out with a small group just interested in talking about issues?
Raising the issue of the Vietnam War.
You started this in the fall of '62, fall semester?
Yes, '62. Jack Kennedy was president. Of course, liberals were very upset because here was a liberal president, and who was this group out here, rather than trusting him, saying that this was going to turn into a horrible scene for the country.
You were getting no support. Were you getting any active opposition, or weren't you big enough and visible enough?
We were getting opposition from the Y.A.F. There was a campus chapter of the Young Americans for Freedom, who were the young right-wingers. We would be debated by them and called all kinds of names, communists and this, that, and the other thing. We had some pretty good debaters, and we were pretty sharp. There was some kind of debating society, the Di-Phi Senate or something. We had a big debate in there, I remember. We always did very well. We did a lot of homework. We were controversial but weren't physically attacked or anything.
Any response from the administration?
No.
They took no notice at all.
None that I know of.
The Chancellor was Aycock then?
Yes, and Bill Friday was president.
Until just a couple of years ago. Forever. So you were stirring things up a little, but nothing like the teach-ins and sit-ins that happened a bit later.
No. Nothing like that. We certainly were opposed to that type of
activity. But we stirred things up. The closest we came to anything
active was on Armed Forces Day. There was always a big parade marching
down Franklin Street of units. I went to the Women's International
League of Peace and Freedom and proposed that we should march together
with symbols. As an organization, the S.P.U. had the symbol that had
been in the British disarmament. So we made big signs of the peace
symbol. We marched right after the Armed Forces. That upset everyone.
There were big pictures in the newspapers, Durham Morning
[Herald] and Raleigh. Eventually the Daily Tar
Heel ran an editorial praising us for the positions we were
raising on campus. I gather that the Daily Tar Heel in
later years became very conservative, but in that period of time it was
very liberal.
It has had a checkered past.
Wayne King, I believe, was the editor. He's now the one at the New York Times.
It was January of '63 that you started the next phase of this which was the, wait a minute, I've got my dates wrong.
Well, April was when we publicly started, but I think we had been discussing it for a while before that.
It was January of '63 that Terry Sanford made his statements supporting integration and starting some local, community-based committees to try to bring people together and bring about integration in a peaceful and incremental way.
We had been discussing it that whole time. It must have been March that we decided that if we went and talked to the owners of the segregated businesses in Chapel Hill, that they probably would integrate. That is what I mean about being naive.
So you were going to go from just debating issues on campus to going out into the community?
We formed a committee and started meeting with all these people. We met with no success. We were duly appalled. We had explained it logically and everything else, both idealistically and practically. Then we decided we would picket a place. That was a most unusual experience.
Can you tell me some of the places you went and talked to?
I didn't talk myself. We pretty well covered most of the ones, I think.
We picketed the College Cafe, which was in the main block of Franklin
street, almost next to the Varsity Theater, across from the Carolina
Coffee Shop. A lot of these discussions and a lot of my recruitment of
members took place in the Carolina Coffee Shop and a place called
Harry's, which is no longer there. We decided to picket the College
Cafe. Max
Why?
That radical activity. When we started picketing, I wasn't that much in favor of marching. When we started marching, I was not in favor of civil disobedience. The events swept us along and so forth.
Was John Donne not more radical than you were?
No, I think we were about the same.
Was there anybody internally that was pushing you?
No, not really. I think the external events throughout the South, but more importantly what we went up against in Chapel Hill, which we almost had to run up against in order to believe it. We had been talking to the emergency association and stuff and people that we felt should know better. So we picketed the College Cafe with horrible results. They sold out of food the first day with people breaking the picket line. The owner came out and thanked us for having the pickets and asked us to continue. Other restaurant owners asked us if we would transfer to their restaurants. Here we were, idealistic and making a big step, and it is having the exact opposite effect. You talk about being discouraged. Certain fraternities made it a requirement of the pledges that they had to break the picket line. The NROTC made it a requirement. They had to break the picket line. So you had people coming in in droves, plus people from Carrboro and out in the country coming in and screaming. You talk about being discouraged. But we picketed.
There had been some civil rights activity in Chapel Hill before that?
Around the Carolina Theater. One of the people that was a leader of that was also involved with us, Harold Foster. He was the only one that had been involved.
Other than Harold, earlier than that, had you been talking to anyone in the black community at all?
No.
You were white men talking to white men.
Right. Very much the type of thing that I criticize these days. But we didn't stay in that little ivory tower long because, after this College Cafe experience, we discussed that and decided we would go to the black community. We had our first meeting at the St. Joseph A.M.E. Church, a mass meeting. We spent all night trying to think of a name, and how we came up with the stupid name we came up with—you'd have thought we had more sense—it was called the Committee for Open Business, the acronym being COB. It seems like we could have done better than that. But that was the purpose, open business. We formed the Committee for Open Business and had a whole steering committee. It was much larger than what we had been. It was based in the black committee. White liberals from the University started coming. By the time we had our first march in May down Franklin Street, it was about fifty-fifty black and white. It didn't stay that way long.
Your picketing had clearly brought out the segregationists. But it also
had the effect of bringing out the
Not at the picketing. The next stage was when we formed the Committee for Open Business, and that brought out a number of professors and people centered around the Community Church, which was kind of a bastion of liberalism. The coming together was doomed to failure for a number of reasons. As a result of the march, or even before it, a couple of places were segregated. We published this list of businesses. They were afraid we were going to come by their place. So a couple—I know a bowling alley, I believe, and maybe some other places—desegregated. We had around 400 people in the march.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
We were denied a permit to march. We marched anyway, but the chief of
police, Chief Black, very unusual person, he turned out to be a tough
opponent. He was not a Bull Conner. In fact, because of the incident
that happened in Chapel Hill in 1948 with the buses on the first Freedom
Ride through the South, in which Bayard Ruskin was on the bus and
others. He got very intrigued—these were all pacifists—and he got
intrigued with what they said about nonviolence. That was the first
violence that happened, was in Chapel Hill. He was a young cop. So he
started reading Gandhi. So he knew as much about nonviolent tactics as
we did. So he would not allow us to use his recalcitrance, like the
whole scene in Birmingham and stuff. So once we said, "Well, we're
marching anyway." He didn't arrest us. He then turned it into a parade
for us, and that characterized his tactics throughout the movement. He
and I exchanged Christmas cards for a number of years until he died a
couple of years ago. Very interesting guy. So we had the big march in
May, and then soon after we sat-in, the big act of civil disobedience,
and I was in charge of that demonstration. We decided that the heart of
the matter, and I think our thinking was correct on this, it wasn't so
much the individual places which were segregated, but in terms of Chapel
Hill that the Merchants' Association should have called upon its members
to desegregate. We had met with them, and they weren't going to. So we
sat-in at the Merchants' Association, and that was my first arrest. It
was a very heavy step for me, the whole civil
Tell me about that sit-in. Can you describe how it went.
Every single, I mean, it's forever etched, because it was quite a step for us to take. It was definitely a big step for me to take. By that time, no, it happened a little bit later that most of the white liberals were leaving, but this was mostly black teenagers and a couple of whites. We went in and we were very well organized. We had non-violent workshops. We decided to be very open. We had them in the yard outside the First Baptist Church in the black community. Police would come and watch us. I had been to some other ones because it was loose network throughout the South then of SNCC and others because of all the sit-ins. So I had been to some workshops in other places. So we taught ourselves and each other how to go limp and all the tactics. How to protect yourself and other people nonviolently and stuff. So the police would come and watch us. So anyway, we went in and we just sat down on the floor. It was very small and narrow, had a counter, very narrow floor. I think there must have been about thirty of us or something. We were singing.
"We Shall Overcome" or what?
No, it's hard to explain the singing these days but it was an integral
part of the whole… Did you see "Eyes on the Prize?" We were singing "No
More Jim Crow." "No more Jim Crow over me, and before I'll be a slave,
I'll be buried in my grave, Free Men, and we were
stacked up almost like cordwood outside. And then that was the first
experience with jail. That time we did stay, no, we were in the Chapel
Hill jail and then we were transferred, because there were too many of
us, to Hillsborough. Then there was negotiations. At that time that was
a real shock. I think the negotiations, well, I don't want to get into
internal stuff. But the town was very shocked at that point in time, and
maybe if the people on the outside had been better negotiators, things
would have gone a little bit better. But we stayed, I think, about a
week over in Hillsborough.
What was the jail there like?
The pits. All the jails were. Well, the Chapel Hill jail was clean. The
Hillsborough jail was kind of the pits. It was very interesting—I don't
know whether it was then or another time. I was there so much. I think
it was then, but Harold Foster and I were cell mates. And sometimes when
you were in there, you'd be in a two person cell with thirty people. But
we ended up with two people. So he was the editor of the student
newspaper at North Carolina Central and very well read. We'd both read
Baldwin's Another Country. So we got into this week
long discussion about that. He was very good for me because he was very
militant. It was very good, those discussions and
Do you find that kind of thing here in Boston?
Well, not here, not right here, but I see it in other aspects. I see it in debates and the Rainbow Coalition and different aspects. So I don't think they could have stayed in almost. The differences were so great. So they left.
The white liberals?
Yes, also we were getting too militant. But it wasn't just the militancy. I think that was why most people think that it split.
So, what was it?
Well, the first sit-in strained everything. And I know people were
members of the Society of Friends, Quakers and stuff, and they said,
"You know, this is really a violation of what King's doing, a violation
of nonviolence, because you know that violence is going to happen, and
you're going too fast." The most eloquent answer to that, I don't know
if you've ever read it, but King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" is
the most eloquent, you know. So I think the little cultural things, even
to the singing. The uncomfortableness that some of the professors felt
with all this type of thing. That contributed to the resentment
I was thinking about
Oh yes, so all of that was in there, and they didn't really resurrect
them. Maybe they did things behind the scenes. I'm still biased against
them, but they resurrected themselves when we wouldn't read in prison, a
violation of our God-given right to read. So they formed a committee of
100 and pressured the governor to get us some books. The Horses's Mouth was rejected. You couldn't have
anything with sex in it or politics and all this stuff. The Bible would
have been rejected. But my last day in prison before I came north, a
book finally got through to me, and I couldn't believe it. It was a
paperback book of The Life of Lenin by Leon Trotsky.
And I thought, my God, I don't believe this. Then I looked at the blurbs
on the back and here's the life of Lenin from his most bitter critic,
the immigrant, and all this stuff, who was assassinated. I thought, you
know, that some censor in Raleigh thinks that this is probably a modern
time person who's fled the iron curtain or something. I mean, in terms
of Trotsky, never heard of him, no doubt. So I was delighted. I just
left it here. But except for Joe Straley, I think afterwards Joe said he
didn't always agree with us, but he stuck by us and that's true. He may
have thought we were going to fast, but he stuck right in there with us.
Then he decided, I remember the night he decided he would be arrested.
But after this big decision on his part, which is fairly heavy, because
he was a full member of the faculty and all that, the police decided not
to arrest us that night. We were occupying the alderman's chambers, and
they decided not to arrest us. So Joe did not get arrested. But stuck
with us, you know, right down the line, thick and thin. He'd be a good
person to talk to though because he would have a perspective different
than most. I'm probably still biased about some of my beliefs about it
and make no bones about it. So it
Again, what are you getting from the administration, the University?
Not direct harassment, but the thing that we got most upset about was every time a white student, a university student was arrested—and it seemed like it always happened in the middle of the night. The Dean of Women's name was Kitty Carmichael, I remember, and she would wire the parents or call them. "Did you know that your daughter has been arrested with the Negroes?" and so forth.
Dean Cathy, the Dean of Men, was also doing it?
That's right, yes. And there would be immediate contact with the parents, which they had every right to do, but it was the way it was done. And, of course, most parents of the white southerners didn't have any idea of what their children were doing and most became very alienated from their families. So there was that that was happening. There wasn't much else because, you see, we weren't meeting on campus. We were in the black community by that period of time.
There were a few black students from the University?
Yes, and they were involved. Kellser Parker, I remember, he was a very active person. He wasn't arrested. And I've forgotten the young man's name that the Honor Court—do they still have the Honor System there and the Honor Courts?
Yes, it's changed considerably however.
Well, they decided to make a case because he was arrested. So they were going to try him at the Honor Court and, like, get him kicked out of school because he was in the movement. So that was a very, so bits and pieces of the University.
Our big mistake, I said it in the book and I still believe, our biggest tactical mistake was not putting more of the burden on the University. I mean that's where we should put our leverage rather than the town. We and SNCC in Atlanta were the only two places in the South that were going after a public accommodations law. But in both places it seemed very doable because we were only one vote away in Chapel Hill. We actually thought we would get that ordinance, and it would have been the first one in the South prior to the national law. So that part, I think we were correct in our tactics and our strategy. We were stupid in that we did not involve the University more, as obviously the University has leverage on the town.
They're not quite synonymous but there's an awful lot of overlap.
No, and a lot of parents of kids had pressure put on them, different
places where they worked in the University. I couldn't say it was
University policy because it was supervisors
But there was nothing coming from the administration in support of what you were doing?
No, and if you look at the size—some people tended to disbelieve me later
on. I don't know the number of faculty there were then but it was
considerable. But if you look at the number
You were no longer a student, no longer an employee?
No, I had resigned and I was full-time with the… I'd been kicked out of my house. I lived on Spring Lane which is a street right above Rosemary Street. And I had to go to a Magistrate's Court because the landlord kicked me out for having trash in my house—namely that's a synonym for black people.
Who was it that was staying with you a lot then?
Quinton Baker, who's now in Springfield, and others too. It was kind of a little hub. And then I moved into…
What was the address there?
210 Spring Lane.
I'll have to go check and see.
210 Spring Lane, has a white porch, had a white porch. Little dirt alley right off of Rosemary Street about a block parallel to…
I know some people who live there. I know the street, and I bet it's the same house.
Yes, interesting little place. And so then we moved from there into, we
were pretty much anathema that summer, we moved into a fraternity house,
believe it or not. There was one unusual fraternity, St. Anthony's Hall.
The person who was actually arrested more than anybody in the movement
was John Schively, a white fraternity member, who then became quite an
Different poles.
At the same place, the same place. And I guess one of the things that
constantly inspired me was, not much Martin Luther King—I mean,
definitely so, and he had me at a retreat one time and it was great and
all this stuff—but actually the teenagers, the young people. I was
enjoined. There was an
Eighteen months.
Movement, and what happened, and then the change in me, from someone that did not want to march because that was too radical, then at one time to be laying up under the car, police things. Then we decided to die, you know, at one point. We had a fast for a week. It was Dr. King who talked us out of going all the way and dying. We were going to die right there on Franklin Street.
In front of the post office.
Yes, yes, Lord. I guess the other thing that sticks out most to me was my first prison sentence, the thirty days. That was very heavy. We were very naive then too, because we thought that if four of us, we could have paid forty dollars and be gone. But we decided to…
This is in December.
Yeah, I had calmed down. By that time I had gone to Danville, Virginia. I
was working with Kings' groups, and I came down to go to trial and
planned to go back to Danville. And that's how some more organization
got involved in Chapel Hill. Because when I got hung up there, some
people from SNCC and from SCLC and stuff came in. The trial was very
interesting. I was thinking of it the other day. I had jury duty here. I
was in
But the black community and those few white supporters were moved?
That's right. Then it kicked off mass arrests and everything like that. That's when it really kicked off.
When you were in jail in December…
Yeah, in prison.
There were about 150 arrested in that period.
Right. So us moving the minds and hearts of Chapel Hill didn't happen, but it did move our own supporters.
That's when you started getting the sit-ins in a lot of the businesses, Watts Restaurant, etc. etc.
Right. And it was very meaningful for me, almost a spiritual thing happened to me, I mean, I refused to cooperate. So I didn't eat or work, went on this fast, and that was just very heavy internally and all this type of thing. Also I was by myself. I mean, I wasn't surrounded by people in the movement or singing songs, and so it was a very heavy, heavy experience for me, which was good in the long run.
When you said you were going too fast, the issue was that you wanted to be in an integrated facility?
Well, the issue was, which I did my best in my university manner to
explain to the captain of the chain gang camp, was that participation in
evil is evil. And we very much tried to practice that. Those of us who
were white in the movement did not go into segregated facilities at all.
So it dawned on me, this was not preplanned, but I was on my way to the
Durham chain gang for thirty days, and it dawned on me this is a
Nice welcome. And how did they respond to you after that little announcement?
Well, I went over, I was scared to death, and was laying on my bunk, and
all these bunks were very close together. They had an early supper, and
so they rang the bell for supper and you were supposed to line up. Then
you all shuffle over to this other place. So I didn't get off my bunk
because I wasn't going to participate. So the guard came over and he
said, "You either get your but up and eat, or no one in this camp eats."
Oh God, so I thought, well, I won't make the decision here. I'll at
least go over to the mess hall, and so I did. Talking wasn't
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
This is Tape 2 of an interview with Pat Cusick on January 19, 1989.
So for me it was a very different experience because I didn't have the solidarity of the movement around me. This was a very lonely, I mean, it was just me in there. The other three people that had been sentenced were different places. Mrs. Glover didn't serve time. She was a black housewife. Her kid was ill, and I guess Charleis Cotton was at the Hillsborough jail, and I've forgotten where VanRyker was.
She was still just a teenager, wasn't she?
Yes, but we were not together. We were chosen symbolically, the four, and
we knew that—a matron from the black community. I was representative of
the civil rights organizers. Now, what was Van Riper, the white coed?
She was symbolic of white students and Charleis was symbolic of the
black high school students. We were chosen very carefully to send a
message. So it was a very meaningful experience for me to decide to, you
know, with the fast and everything, and I was in this horrible place
over in Raleigh. I was scared too because we were in a two person cell.
You didn't get out at all. We were right under death row. It was just
like the movies, you know, these big bays and everything. Nasty, filthy,
dirty, and the guy that I was in the cell with was a man that had just
been put down from death row. He had been commuted from death and was to
serve life. He had a big knife. Most convicts do, and he would sharpen
it all the time, and he was a real staunch racist. His biggest desire
Did they choose him special for your cellmate?
I have no idea.
Calling attention to it.
So we'd have all these long discussions. He would pose arguments to me,
and I would answer him. So finally on Christmas eve morning, I guess it
was, he said, "I want you to eat." I don't know how many days [I'd
fasted], twenty or something. "There's soon going to be bodily damage,
and it's a shame." And he said, "I want you to know that I am not going
to yield because to put you in a black camp is obviously not
integration. You
You're doing just fine as far as my purposes are concerned. While you were in jail in December there, were you in touch with anybody at all back in Chapel Hill? Were you aware of what was going on, the increase in the sit-ins, the increase in arrests?
No, well, once. I'd been in maybe a week and Floyd McKissick came to see
me. I smuggled out like a little letter which then appeared in, I guess,
the Village Voice, and that ended that type of thing.
But I knew that there were… And then on Christmas eve, Joel Fleishman,
who still lives in Chapel Hill—he was the high up at Yale and he's very
up high at Duke.
He's vice president of something or other.
Joel and I had not been close because Joel had a, he would always get the
coterie of brightest liberals sort of around him, and John Donne was one
of those. Then John Donne went with the movement. But people persuaded
Joel to come because he would
But you were aware there was a lot of activity.
Yeah, and that had been planned. I didn't know just what but we were going to use this to kick off that. We also thought, like I said, we would move the University and the liberal establishment and the town, and, of course, that didn't happen.
It was right about this time that Sanford did an about-face and came in and announced opposition to all the things that you folks were doing. A year before that he had been endorsing desegregation. Now, he's saying that while the idea may be a good one, the way you're going about it is absolutely wrong.
I have a theory about that because I've seen it in other settings with
other people, and Ehle quotes it in the book, I think. The playwright
that had been around Chapel Hill, Paul Green, said something about
Chapel Hill was a lighthouse, but something about its base. And I think
in terms of Terry Sanford, and I still have mixed emotions about Terry
Sanford, certainly in the line-up of southern governors, etc., etc., he
was exemplarily. I mean, there's no doubt. I won't take away from
What do you thing about that?
Oh, I totally disagree to this day. I think the reason Pryor got defeated
was the food tax. Terry Sanford put a tax on food. I mean, to blame—and
he specifically blamed us in Chapel Hill for polarizing the whole damn
state—not so. The state was certainly polarized on racial matters, but
it wasn't due to just us in Chapel Hill. Just from conversations I had
with white convicts and stuff who were not voters, but nevertheless, the
main anger at Terry Sanford that they transferred to his protegee was
the tax on food which was atrocious. That's in my view. Course, he will
probably forever say, I don't know what his view is now. But I think
that's why. But yes, he did. He didn't like what was going on in Chapel
Hill, because we got more militant in our slogans and things when we did
the big thing in February, the big action on February 1. I know one of
the signs was "Chapel Hill, Home of Candy Coated Racism."
Do you think the University and Terry Sanford basically failed to live up to their liberal reputations?
Oh absolutely, one University professor…
There were some other University professors and some Duke professors that participated in sit-ins and did get arrested.
That's true. I look at Duke a little bit separately. They came over one day and then they got into our trials and things, but in terms of Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina.
Couple of professors who did get…
Oh, Don Sitton, he wasn't a full professor.
Who was that?
Don Sitton. I forgot about Don.
Albert Aman and William Wynn were arrested.
Right that's true. They were like very new in Chapel Hill. It's incorrect to say Joe Straley was the only one but they were very new. Joe was the only one that had been there a while. Joe's very active today, I understand.
Oh yes.
Have you talked to him yet?
I haven't yet but I definitely want to. I have met him a couple of times and was impressed. Clearly his commitment has longevity.
And then we made a mistake that has come in good stead with me since
then. So I never made the same mistake again. We gave the town an
either/or, and you just don't do that. You give people some room. We set
a deadline. February 1 was the deadline for passing the ordinance. We
were naive in several ways. Obviously, the Chapel Hill establishment
could wait us out.
What did you think would happen when we set a deadline?
We thought the threat of this and everything, that they may go ahead and
we'd get that other vote. Very naive, very naive. So we had February 1,
and we did a good job. We sealed off all five highways coming into town
with bodies. And the greatest umbrage with some people, I'm sure, is
what we did—Duke and UNC were playing and it was the number one game of
the week, basketball.
Throw themselves under the on-coming cars and get run over.
All committed to die that day. Sounds strange sitting here saying it, just like sounds strange me fasting when I can't lose weight or calories, but yes, we were committed to die that day. So by that time, of course, they'd brought—have you heard about the bread truck? The town brought a great big bread truck to transport us.
That was the new paddy wagon.
Yes, yes. So they waited us out February 1. The next night it really got rough. And see, when Chief Blake wasn't on the scene, it could get very rough sometimes with the cops. They were under great strain. God knows the overtime hours they had worked and stuff. So they started getting kind of violent. That's when I jumped under the wheels of the car and we started doing that type of kind because they were being violent. I wasn't even scheduled to be arrested that night. But they were just a little bit out of hand. That was at the corner of Columbia and Franklin.
People were sitting down in the intersection and being pulled out roughly by the cops?
Yes, and see, we didn't have all the leadership arrested the same night, and I was not supposed to be arrested but I got very upset. I was the one who worked with the teenagers. I was the one in charge of the direct action, specifically in terms of the teenagers which were all the ground troops. So I felt I should get out there and get up under the wheels of a police wagon.
You weren't going to ask them to do something you weren't prepared to do. Stand on the sidelines and watch them get run over.
Right, be a leader who sent them off to whatever. But obviously, they waited us out. And there we were with all these debts and they still hadn't passed the ordinance. That was a very discouraging time. Then we decided to die with this fast. We even got so far as to discuss all the measures we would take to make sure we weren't fed intravenously and everything like that.
Was the fast in front of the post office?
Easter, Holy Week.
This was your idea? Is that right? You're the one who came up with this idea?
It was Dr. King who talked us out of it. I went on a retreat. He had his
top staff, about twelve people each year, went on a retreat, and I was
invited to participate, which was
This was before you actually had the fast?
Yes, this was off the coast of Beaufort, South Carolina at a place called Penn Center. It had been founded by the Quakers after the Civil War, on an island called Frogmore. All these live oaks with the Spanish moss and everything, and we met for about three days. Then he brought in the heads of his affiliates. But it was during a conversation with him and with C. T. Vivian, who said it was contrary to, we weren't really with the spirit of nonviolence because we were leaving the city no room at all to manoeuvre. We were throwing down another gauntlet type of thing. Also, I think, he didn't want us to die. That we should put an ending date on it.
But once again, it's biggest effect, it had no effect on the town whatsoever. It had effect on our own supporters and a little bit, I felt, with the white liberals. Some of the people who had been really upset with us for the last number of months, started coming down to post office and stuff.
The tone of this was not confrontational.
Right, we were just going to kill ourselves. No, we weren't because we
were just fasting for a week. Had to get that snide remark in. That's
when all the klans gathered from around the South that Saturday night.
Then Chief Blake told me the next day, he said, "Klaven Number 9 saved
your life." That was the Orange County Klaven. He had it infiltrated.
And he said, "They
There were a lot of the white liberals who came out that night. A lot of people came down with the intent of protecting you.
And some armed folks though the arms weren't… People from the black community too. The people who had not participated because they hadn't been nonviolent and didn't feel they could be. So they were there.
Here was a potential for a real good fight, a righteous fight.
Oh yeah, they weren't going to let that happen. The Klan drove by but that was it. And as I said, I didn't know about the acid, thank goodness, until the next day. Because I'm basically a chicken hearted, throughout all of this. Still am.
You hid it well at the time.
Yeah.
A lot of people came by. This fast lasted about a week, and a lot of people came by and talked with you.
And a big embarrassment was that we were joined by this coed, this young
woman, from Duke. Then we didn't know until she talked into our first
T.V. camera that she had decided—she'd
Oh, wonderful.
On T.V., right, right on T.V. Oh, I'll never forget. We could have killed her.
Trivialize the whole thing.
Right. But it was interesting the first time I went back to walk past that patch of grass, and to walk past the Colonial Drugstore. I still couldn't go in there because I could see the owner still in there. He was perhaps the most recalcitrant. We had a big picket line there.
Yeah, that was one of the perpetual holdouts.
And Franklin Street, Lord, it looked almost the same, you know. And some of the same institutions, like this guy at the Colonial Drugstore. That's the South, you know. There was the University Motel and the Tarheel Sandwich Shop and all. But the institutions pretty well stay. I'm sure Chapel Hill has changed but that stretch of Franklin Street, which was the battleground… I noticed some of the streets in the black community are now paved that weren't paved then. We knew this was happening anyway, Lincoln High School was done away with, I guess the next year.
High school's way out on the northwest side of town.
And this was in Ehle's book too, the splitting of the town, which
everyone blamed us for polarizing the town. I guess the next year, the
one black alderman got defeated. That's true but then it was, the very
day that I got the release from
Was that mainly because you had started out with this seemingly possible goal of getting the accomodations ordinance? You guys got trapped in that.
Well, we were one vote short, and we kept thinking that we'd get that vote. And like I said, we in Atlanta, the rest of the South in terms of the city councils and different governing bodies were not that close. But it seemed so close that we'd be able to do it. So we focused everything there.
Who was the fellow who was on the board of aldermen who was also the Orange County…
Roland Giduz.
Yes.
God. And Adeleide Waters was the liberal on the board. She was probably as upset with us as anybody. We weren't doing things in a real nice way.
She wanted the changes. She wanted the public accommodations law, but she didn't want sit-ins.
Right, and this type of thing. And we were going too fast once again. But
once again I pose Dr. King's letter as the answer to that. It wasn't her
time table anymore. And that
It was all rushing by them. They weren't leading anymore.
Either young, uneducated black youth or black Baptist preachers, for
crying out loud.
You're probably familiar with Bill Chafe's Civility and
Civil Rights about the Greensboro sit-ins.
Yes.
And the integration of Greensboro schools. Basic thesis is about the power of civility to prevent change.
Oh, very much.
We won't listen to you unless you're civil.
Oh yes.
You're not a legitimate spokesman for your interests unless you're civil.
Well, I see right here in the work I've been doing. I've been changing
tactics lately. Been going to the South End Historical Ball even, which
is a whole thing here. No, very much, I think that that's true in the
South. But it's not only the South. I think that the racism in this
country, our conditioning to it is such, that in liberal movements and
progressive movements, white folks have a hard time coming under black
leadership, very much so, very much so. Now, that will
I think that in the Chapel Hill case it's also class problem, educated professors listening to uneducated high school students?
That's right.
I mean, that's turning everything totally upside down.
And the music, you know. I mean, I felt it myself. Everything was set
around the black church. I'd been raised as a Roman Catholic which is a
lot more staid and I went to this monastery school, Gregorian chant, and
I was not used to this type of exuberance and the music and everything.
Then I got so I really liked it. I'll never forget, because I worked in
the eastern part of the state too, right around Williamston, and they
were having sit-ins at churches, not sit-ins, but they would send teams
of two young people, and not just young people, to white churches, who
would then not admit them on Sunday. Some would. And I remember one time
all the teams came back in and some of them had actually gotten into the
service. I'll never forget one young man stood up and he said, "You
know, I don't know why we'd ever want to go with these white folks. It
was the deadest service I ever…" He said, "The man was boring at the
sermon." And he said, "God, the music, it was awful. And it was just so
dry. They don't have any spirit."
But all in all, and in my talks, I get called upon to talk a lot, around Boston, the middle schools, around the time of King's birthday and stuff. One of the things I concentrate on with these kids, because they have no idea of what happened, is what segregation was like. Because they can't appreciate what happened if they don't know the horrors of segregation—the segregated bathrooms, the segregated Bibles. In Greensboro they had a white and colored Bible. Jim Peck in New York, on the first Freedom Ride, when he refused to swear on the segregated Bible, he got thirty extra days on the chain gang as contempt of court. So if you don't know that. How did I get off on this tack? Oh, then it's become fashionable to say, well, we really didn't do that much, you know. We did. We threw off what was really legal apartheid forever, and that was a hell of an accomplishment. Now, we didn't get much more than that, but that, in itself, was a very important step.
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
Because to have the whole power of the law against you and the courts and the whole system against you, it's much different when that's not true. So at least, that was done. So I'm glad I had the opportunity. I'm glad I was there. I'm glad I was swept up in these events. It certainly changed my life.
How did you feel though at the time, after that second series of trials
and the march, you'd all agreed to plead nolo.
Well, you know about the deal. We made a deal. Then we had to swear in open court that we had not made a deal.
Tell me about that. Tell me about that decision.
Well, it was a heavy decision. We realized that we had Orange County,
anyway, over a barrel. Because they had spent a fortune on the Duke
professors' trials. They are already spent a lot on our trials. And they
were coming to have a new bond issue. So we knew we had a bargaining
chip. Also having served the thirty days, I very much did not want these
high school students to go to prison, and most, 90%, were black high
school students. So our attorneys, who we didn't realize then were under
fantastic pressure from the SBI, but they said that the state and Judge
Mallard interested in a deal. If we pled nolo, which,
of course, we didn't know what that meant and they explained it, this
would give them the opportunity to not spend all that money and have
these mass trials because they could dispense with it very fast.
There were about 1500 grand jury indictments coming out of all this.
Yes.
So there really was mass…
I think the largest mass number, prior to the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, at that time, and pretty much ignored in the histories of the civil rights movement as compared with Birmingham and Mississippi and so forth. So we discussed it. Part of the deal was at first that only two people would have to serve time. That would be John Donne and myself, and we'd serve thirty days.
You were the two visible leaders?
Yes. We thought that would be a pretty good deal. By that time we'd run up these monstrous, we were $70,000 in legal debt. And there was no base to draw any money from, and God knows, we'd tried everything. So by that time we were convinced they were not going to pass the law. So it seemed like a pretty good deal. So we had big meeting, and we had to make a decision. And I thought it would be very bad if we did it in the usual mass meeting atmosphere, the songs and the spirits and the everything. It had to be very calm. So I played devil's advocate against serving time. I pointed out, really painted a very grim picture of prison because I didn't want people sweep away by emotion, especially young people, and make a decision to go to jail.
Wanted to be heroes, wanted to be martyrs.
Yes, so we decided to pled nolo. Course, we thought we
were going to get thirty days because that was the ordinance we
That was stretching it pretty far.
We had a sense of humor though. We said, "God knows, what's the well? It
must have been the Old Well." We couldn't figure out what the church
was. Never do the Old Well. But then it really went against the grain to
state in open court that they'd been no approach to us about any kind of
a deal. So then we pled nolo, and then my other
egotistical chagrin was when, I had a speech prepared. They asked if we
had anything to say and I said, "No," because I was going to give my
little speech, which I felt was my due if I was going to go away to
prison again. So the attorney said, "Pat, please don't say anything
because you still have so many people left to sentence that you will
antagonize this guy and he'll double everybody else's sentence." This
was a very unusual judge. I guess you've read about him, Raymond B.
Mallard. So we stood mute. Then we got more than thirty days, and they
pretty well sentenced the entire executive committee except Ben
Spauling. Ben was our treasurer. He was a black student. But we didn't
let him get arrested. He didn't have any charges because he was our
treasurer. So we had enough sense not to do that. But everyone else got
sentenced according to their perceived rank. But I had begun
negotiations with George Randle. I called George Randle a few days
before that and I said, "It looks like there may be as many as 150
coming in."
You were in your mid-thirties?
Well, I was thirty. So I drove back to Chapel Hill. He said, "There's nothing I can do." So we had to raise money, that was part of the deal, to pay off some debt. And we were calling all over, and a lot of the liberals in Chapel Hill refused to contribute. They said, "Well, you broke the law." "Yes." Oh, I was so mad. So we were calling all over the country. Any one who had an idea. And the kids went out with mason jars collecting quarters. Some of the liberals did give but, by and large, they didn't. That was just the end for me with them. But it's true we did break the law and we were willing to pay. But the high school students.
Did you break the law you were sentenced under?
No, no, but the high school students, I was very upset about the high
school students. So as it worked out, he mostly
It was you and John and Quintin.
Buddy Teager.
J.B. Henry, Arthur Crisp, Rosemary Ezra, and Lou Calhoun. Tell me something about them. We haven't talked about some of these people at all and their involvement.
Lou was much more active than the book would indicate. The son of John C. Calhoun, a white southerner, he was head of the Wesley Foundation before he got in the SPU.
He came to civil rights, many southern civil rights people did, through the church.
And Lou and I have remained close, and he was exiled north too. They certainly achieved their purpose there. Lou and I are close friends. Rosemary's a strange one. Oh, I'm on tape. Well, Rosemary, if you're listening, you are kind of strange, dear. I don't know whether Rosemary's still in Chapel Hill or not. She had come from the North someplace. She wasn't a student, and she had money. But she didn't look like she had money. Just a person who would be regarded as an oddball, but a real nice person. She wasn't in the leadership of the Freedom Committee, but she owned a house. That's it, she had enough money to own a house. So that became kind of a headquarters for us in a lot of ways, and when visiting agitators would come to town, they'd stay at Rosemary's and stuff like that.
Well, if she wasn't actually part of the leadership, she made herself pretty visible.
Right, she was a resource and very visible. And she was white which made her very visible. J. V. Henry was another southerner, but he was with SNCC, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, in Danville. I met J. V. in Danville.
He was one of "them outside agitators."
Yeah, he came to town because when I did my thirty days that drew him and Lavert Taylor, who wasn't sentenced and was one of King's staff. He and I were very close friends.
He was one of the ones who was on the post office hunger strike?
Yes, yes. And John and I were very close friends. John died in '82. Quintin's in Springfield. Quintin was head of the NAACP Commandos. He was a student leader at North Carolina Central—now it's University—it was College then. Then he came over to Chapel Hill as a resource for us, and then he himself got involved.
He was not a Chapel Hill student?
No. He was a resource to help us with the nonviolent workshops, and then he himself got involved, and pretty soon he was in Chapel Hill full-time.
How did you feel when these sentences came down? More people were sentenced than you expected, much, much harsher sentences, even bizarre sentences.
In prison, the lifers and all those folks would say, "Like, all you got
is a year? I could do a year standing on the top of my head." I mean,
that was regarded as a joke. It was no joke to me. When I heard him say
twelve months of hard labor, my
It wasn't only the sentence itself, the active sentence. Long probation with these conditions.
Oh yes, I have a copy. I happened to be going through some stuff last
night. Did I ever remember to bring the, yes, this is the original.
[Gets out a paper] The judgement was a year at hard labor for blocking
the way to a public
This very paper. So I said, "I'm not going to sign this. I'm not going to
sign this." Actually, it's a moot question whether it is a violation of
my rights, but at the time I said, "I think this is a violation of my
rights." So, I said, "I'm not going to sign." And so they said, "Well,
you have exactly two minutes, and if you don't sign, the judge will make
this an active sentence, and you'll have three years to serve instead of
one." So I took almost two minutes and decided I would sign. I said,
"Give me the pen." That very signature. So that was a surprise.
So not only were they putting you away for one year, they were insuring that you couldn't do anything connected with the civil rights movement anywhere.
That's right. But also, there were subsequent trials and stuff, and there were people that didn't serve any active time that still had that judgement. So it meant there could be nothing. And as you notice, that's for any cause whatsoever, or for associating. So things looked pretty grim. But you know, we really believed in what we were doing, and we really thought we were going to change the whole fabric of this country. We didn't do that but it's a good thing we thought we were though, I think.
After the sentences, did you think that anything was going to happen then?
Well, I thought that in Chapel Hill the movement had been temporarily stopped.
Oh no, I wasn't in despair at all over the movement. Because I thought
the movement would succeed, and it would only be a matter of time in
Chapel Hill. It's just like I feel about Beijing today. They clamped the
lid on, and it will be very effective for a while, but obviously that
movement there is not over. So, you know, it was a lot of cold water
dashed in your face on that thing. And then I was in prison when Cheney,
Goodman, and Shwerner were killed. And Goldwater was nominated
They also did other things too. I mean when I went full-time with the movement, I owed Sears some money, and all of us were in debt. We were served with additional stuff the first day in, additional time, if all these things weren't paid off, and Floyd McKissick paid them off. They kept coming out with additional warrants to every creditor on earth. We had pled for parole, and by this time John Ehle was becoming an advocate of ours to try to get us out.
And he had connections in the governor's office.
Right. He's quite an idea person. He's the one that came up with the idea
for the North Carolina School of Performing Arts and different things
which had worked. But the word came back that we were not going to get
parole unless we agreed to go north. By that time, I was alone—they had
split us up—and I said, "Well, I'm not going north. I mean, I'm a tenth
generation, or whatever, southerner. I'm not going north." And so then
they came back with a probation officer to talk about the terms of the
probation, and they laid some additional ones down.
In other words, don't come back.
So I saw very clearly that if I did not leave, obviously I would be in prison. Because there is no earthly way you can honor that in a southern state. I mean, it's not like Boston. You must at least ride. So that's when I said okay. Then John Ehle had gone to work for the Ford Foundation. They were funding a new agency in Boston called Action for Boston Community Development, the CAP Agency, before the Economic Opportunity Act passed. Ford was the sole funding source. In order to get to the North, we had to have a job and a place of residence and be accepted by a northern state. So Ford called up this agency—they were the only funding source—and said, "We need to get this person out of prison." So that's why Boston was for me. John had also seen the computer centers and Harvard and MIT, and there was a job waiting for me there, which I refused to take. John Ehle wanted the book to come out right, in his view, which was that we would all go back to doing what we were doing prior.
I couldn't go back. I did not want to go back to math and the sciences,
so I took the job at ABCD as a coding clerk. The entrance to Boston was
something. I had five dollars. I had a shoebox marked "North Carolina
Department of Corrections," a toothbrush. Leaving was interesting, they
would not let me get near Chapel Hill. They made that very specific. So
Lavert Taylor, they allowed him to drive a suit over to Greensboro, and
they brought me into the Greensboro airport under armed guard in my
prison outfit. By that time though I was getting out, and my sense of
humor was very near the surface. I just thought
The parole and probation in North Carolina weren't working in concert, and I guess I got permission from one and not the other to go back because I pressed the case. What about my degree? I had one course short, and so I'm not allowed in the state. Yet you're requiring me to have to take the last course there. So I went down to talk to them about that. And then all of a sudden I was almost arrested on Franklin Street. I was scared to death. Whichever one of these departments wasn't in concert with the other—they may have been playing games anyway. Then this came up here. I told them downtown—Ed Brooke was attorney general and he was black—and I said, "I'm not going to agree to this thing." And they said, "Well, we have one-to-one treaties in all the states, and we're not going to jeopardize the treaty with North Carolina. So we're going to extradite you if you don't agree with this." So at the same time I thought this would be a good place to challenge this, because I'm not under the gun like the people down there. So I broke the rules, and went immediately out, and got a plane, and went to New York, and got the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to write for my materials in the South, and institute a suit against the commonwealth. When they finally wrote telling the commonwealth that they had advised me not to agree to this and that they were thinking of entering a suit, then they had a fit down here. They didn't want that.
This was over the issue of your going back to North Carolina without clearly getting permission?
Oh, no, no. I was saying I'm not going to abide by that.
You're not going to abide by the probation conditions.
So they said, "We'll extradite you." But they didn't want a lawsuit. So
they called me and they said, "Well, look, we're advising North
Carolina—you do have to notify us, though, twenty-four hours in advance
of going to any civil rights meeting and any civil rights activity or
going to any meetings in Roxbury. Or at least in the morning if the
meeting's at night." So I had an opportunity to really break their back
on that, which I did. Actually, we were upset. We really wanted to get
this into court because a probationary sentence is a sentence. It's a
relaxed sentence. Instead of being inside the wall, you're outside the
wall. So whether these are real violations of rights or not, you can
make an argument either way. So we very much wanted to get that into the
courts because the people in Orange County were under that same
provision. So we were disappointed that we weren't going to get to
challenge it, and that Massachusetts was relaxing. That was at the time,
though, that a white minister, Reverend James Reed, went to Selma and
was killed in Selma. So there was a sympathy march here of 60,000 people
on Boston Commons. One leg came from Cambridge, one from BU, and one
from Roxbury, the black community. I was an assistant coordinator of the
march because I had gotten active here. So I had a car full of what
would have been regarded as real tough Roxbury teenagers because I had a
youth group here. For some
I found out half way though that it's the custom here, or the practice rather, that if you serve half your probation, because of the big clog in the courts, and if you haven't gotten into any trouble, they go ahead and dismiss you, just as an administrative thing. So I found out about that and I went down and asked them. So they requested, they said, "We have to ask North Carolina." So, of course, North Carolina said no, no way. So I'm probably one of the few people who served a full probationary sentence here.
So you were on probation the full five years?
That's right. Every thirty days I went.
But it didn't stop you from being involved in civil rights. People weren't getting arrested up here the way they had been in Chapel Hill.
And it was a whole different type of involvement.
Not throwing yourself under the wheels of a car.
But I felt, I was very bitter about being exiled, and I soon begin to feel like Boston was far more racist than the South ever had been, which it is. I couldn't wait for the day for the five years to be up, because I knew I'd be on that first plane going back to North Carolina.
And now?
But you sink roots where you are. You get active. So I never did go back, at least not to live.
Twenty-five years later.
Twenty-five years later.
You're still here.
I'm still here.
Still an activist.
Still an activist. I think Boston is beyond the pall in terms of racism. I spent three years in Washington, which I love. I dearly love Washington, D.C., because I think it combines a little bit of the North and a little bit of the South. I was looking at housing prices when I was south just a few weeks ago. Certainly live better in the South. So I'm still here, still active. You'd asked a question about Gay Rights, I believe, in your note. I was deep, deep, deep in the closet at the time of the civil rights movement.
That would be a couple of things that would be real tough to juggle simultaneously at that time.
Well, yes. But I was. I didn't act on any of my impulses in that area until after I got out of prison and came north, and then I remained very much also in the closet here. Took me a long time to get out of that closet. I was skulking around and stuff. And then finally, all my friends knew that, and I was no longer ashamed of it and the whole, my Roman Catholic upbringing, etc., etc. I got rid of all the guilt trips on that. Finally Governor Dukakis helped me to come totally out of the closet.
Really? Can you explain that?
Well, every other year here there's a state issues convention, the Democratic Party. We've just completed one, so-called.
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
This is Tape 3 of an interview with Pat Cusick on January 19, 1989.
Out of the closet, and I guess finally, most people that I was closely
associated with knew that I was gay, but certainly not wide circles of
folks in town or all over Roxbury. In '84 there was a state issues
convention, and prior to that the governor had come out with what I
regard of a very homophobic policy on foster care in terms of gays and
lesbians not being able to be foster parents, and there was quite a
controversy here. He got very uptight about it and there was a big
battle raging. Well, at the state convention, out of around 3500
delegates, there were 13 gay and lesbian delegates, not exactly a large
delegation. Not to say that there weren't more in the hall. And we were
pressing for an amendment to the state charter of the Democratic party.
I've never been in such a big fight over nothing. There's a section of
the charter that reads, "The Democratic Party will outreach to," and
then they have the laundry list—blacks, Latinos, women, the handicapped.
Outreach to, not grant any kind of whatevers to. So we wanted the words,
"lesbians and gay men" inserted, and he pulled out—it was the only roll
call vote at the convention—he pulled out his entire machinery against
this charter amendment. We got over a thousand votes. We lost 2 to 1,
but we did get over a thousand votes. In the process though, his
operatives had put out the misleading information, which is the kindest
way I can say it, that this was a threat to the black community because
we would be for taking
Were you aware?
I was aware of other gays in the movement, and this is something to, I
mean, you never mention names. But there were quite a few lesbians and
gays. I mean, the most prominent now,
How about on the Chapel Hill campus, was there any gay activity at all?
I don't think there were any, there certainly were no open groups that I was aware of. See, I came there in what, '59? That was a very repressive period. I went to a few parties, sort of the last of the beats in Chapel Hill, and I suspected that a few people there might have been. But I was so bottled up, I certainly wasn't going to make any pronouncements about myself. And I would see people around the campus that I suspected were gay, but I didn't travel in a lot of those circles, some of the art circles and stuff.
More common, more accepted, in the art circles?
Well, it usually, well, it's not in terms of demographic fact, but that's
where it's observed more and people are a little bit freer to be
themselves. But that would really have complicated the situation,
wouldn't it?
It would have been a terrific weapon for them
I mean, they had some lies in the records of the state. What was it the
captain wrote, I didn't know this until John Ehle's book, that we
practiced self-abuse so loud that it kept the whole camp…. And the
capitalized, initial caps, "S" and "A"
There's been a few changes in the last twenty-five years.
Yeah. But very much people-oriented. I've been in Boston the whole time, except for the three years I was in Washington.
What were you doing in Washington?
I was heading up a National Association of Executive Directors of the
Community Action Agencies in the country, about a thousand of the
Are you going to run for office?
No, never.
You don't want to be involved on that basis?
No, I like to be campaign manager, to put together voter registration drives, the whole Jackson bit. Being on the platform committee was very much an honor and very interesting, and I liked that part, not as the candidate. I wouldn't be a candidate. They lead a dog's life, I think, when they're running, and God knows what happens to them later. So I'm pretty well pleased with everything, except I haven't been too successful financially. If I'd stayed in computers and didn't do the civil rights bit, I would probably have been well-off financially. I probably would have never come out of the closet sexually, so I would have probably been married, and that would have been unfair to somebody. I would maybe have been living in the Research Triangle getting ready to retire with a lot of money and just totally not happy with myself. So I'm pleased, except for the money. I could use a little more money.
So in a rather strange way, not the way, I'm sure, the University intended, your experience at the University of North Carolina, your college years, were, in fact, very formative.
That's right. They certainly succeeded in driving us out of the South. But when I met Terry Sanford in 1980, we were discussing a poverty institute at Duke, and he said that he was glad that the prison experience didn't leave any permanent scars on me. Which I thought was a patronizing statement.
Yes.
To say the least. But I was very nice. I said, "On the contrary,
President Sanford, I really want to express my appreciation because the
prison experience has contributed so much to everything I've done since
then. So I owe you some thanks." But he was sincere in his paternalism,
you know. His motivation was sincere and kind
Yes, yes. I think that there we have another example of the validity of Bill Chafe's idea about the power of civility.
Yes.
As you say, Sanford, within the context of the South, was a liberal governor.
That's right. I had a hard time wrestling that for a while, there's no
doubt about that. Yet, he wasn't doing what he should have been doing
when the time came. And once again, I keep urging people—people haven't
heard of the Letter from the Birmingham Jail—but when
we got hold of that, we mimeographed it. It was distributed widely, very
widely, long before it ever hit any magazines nationally. Because that
argument was just prevalent out there, and that was such a good
response.
Very important, very important document
Yes. So you have read it, of course?
Yes. I assign it to my classes.
Then in the book, Parting the Waters, they go into it
quite a bit, the events leading up to that.
I think we've gone through the questions I had, the points I had.
All right. I don't know that I've given you that much.
Well, I think you have, definitely.
I guess the one thing I would like to add, if anything, after twenty-five
years—and I definitely want to say this because it was in vogue several
years ago to trot out people who were active in the '60s and are now
stockbrokers and stuff. In fact, I got a call from the Durham Morning Herald, maybe ten years ago, and they were
interviewing me over the phone, and they were really trying to make that
be the outcome. I mean, they had a preconception.
You had joined the establishment somehow?
Yes. "What are you doing now? Oh, you are?" But if anything, I think that the twenty-five years since then, I've just become even more committed, and that's why I'm so excited about the whole Jackson movement especially around here in this neighborhood. This neighborhood is very much the "haves and the have-nots." One-third of the people make under $10,000 a year, 52% are low income. Yet the median income is $28,000. So that means, of course, there's no middle. There's great affluence and great poverty. And the gap between black and white, demographically, or rather, statistically, in terms of all the indicators—income and education, numbers in graduate school—it's widening. Not only is it not shrinking, it's not even remaining constant. And I think it's very frightening. Then you put drugs and stuff and all and…
And we've certainly had, at least in the last eight years, a federal administration which seemed to be doing everything in its power to widen the gap.
Oh, there's no doubt.
That was their specific intent
They set the tone, and now they have the court, and God knows where, how long that's going to be with us.
What do you think of these latest court rulings rolling back civil rights?
I'm not surprised, and I think that will continue. I don't think they'll
roll back Roe v. Wade, but I think they will roll it
back somewhat, and they'll toss more on the states. But all of this in
itself sets—aside from the legalities of it and the pain—it sets the
tone, you know, it sets the tone. And when you have a tone that's set…
Recently in this neighborhood we were in a big—we're always in big
fights here—but we were in a big fight against some of the landed
gentry, white, who were opposing the expansion of a drug treatment
center at Boston City Hospital which is nearby. A representative of the
mayor got up and said, "If we don't expand, some of the addicts are
going to die." And one man stood up and said, "Let them die. They don't
own property." He said this at a public hearing, and I thought when you
can say that with impunity, because maybe fifteen years ago he would
have believed the same thing but the tone was such you would not, at
least, stand up and say that. So it's frightening. And I don't think
Bush is any better than Reagan. He's just a little more stylish, not
quite as hokey in speeches.
So your agency here is concerned with housing?
Well, we weren't supposed to be. I've turned it into something it wasn't
intended to be. We direct services to the poor, but I very much believe
in the original wording of the Economic Opportunity Act which has the
advocacy for institutional change as well as direct services. Daniel
Patrick Moynahan wrote a book called Maximum Feasible
Misunderstanding, in which his thesis is that the two are
mutually exclusive. I think it's very tricky but I don't think they're
mutually exclusive. So I'm the organizer. I don't have an organizer. So
what we did, my maps, all these colored dots on here, that's our
neighborhood, and that's publicly owned land. They decided three years
ago that they were going to dispose of it. So I organized a coalition of
thirty agencies, churches, organizations, and the city was going to set
the guideline that housing was going to be built, but it would be
one-third affordable and two-thirds, market rate. So we took the exact
opposite view. We said, "In this position of publicly owned land, the
greater good of the public must be observed." In the housing crisis they
means maximum affordable housing, so we want two-thirds. We battled for
a year and we got that standard. So that's out of this office that I do
that organize.
Affordable housing, what's the income guidelines on that, affordable for low income people or affordable for middle class?
Well, what we have here under this two-thirds, is that one-third is
market rate, one-third is moderate which is defined
Which translates into what?
A family of two, $29,000 for a family of two would be considered moderate. Then low is below 50% of the medium. So it's one-third moderate, one-third market, one-third low. Then we fought over who was going to build on all these pink dots. We formed a consortium of the non-profit builders to not go against each other. So on each lot we had a for-profit builder vying against a non-profit. Then myself and fourteen neighbors formed a new group, thirteen blacks, two whites. We all live within one block of this piece of land, the largest lot. The city encouraged us to form because they thought we were going to do a 1960's type of proposal, and we went against the most well-heeled for-profit group. But we didn't. We put together a good proposal, $14 million dollars, and we'll build 85 units. Hope to break ground this summer.
Where does the funding come from?
Oh God, it's smoke and mirrors and a bit here and a bit there, but it's all equity. Two-thirds of it, the low and moderate, will be in a limited equity cooperative. So there will be no rental. Everyone will have equity of one type or another. Then within that there are fifteen of what we call SROs, single room occupancy. I just happen to have behind me the decline of the lodging house rooms of Boston, and it's a severe need.
That's one of the big issues of homelessness.
Oh yes, oh yes.
That decline in the single room occupancy hotels.
And there's a whole stair step. People are on the street, 22% of the
homeless in Boston go to work every day and living in shelters. But this
tells the story. This is my neighborhood.
And keeps getting bigger and bigger.
Right. So as a result of the organizing efforts, just that phase, we'll build $50 million dollars worth of housing, 500 units about, and two-thirds of it affordable. Ground will be broken this summer. So that's been sort of my main involvement work wise. Then outside of that the Jackson campaign and the Rainbow. So I'm too busy really. I'm trying now to think of how to get out of, I need more time for me. But it all started, thank you Chapel Hill, it all started in Chapel Hill.
And this is the '80s version, Rainbow Coalition, affordable housing.
Yeah, going into the '90s.
It's the '80s and '90s version of the civil rights.
That's right. And I'm heavily involved in voter registration around here.
We managed to get some stuff in the platform of the state. So I think
it's all the same thing. In terms of the Rainbow Coalition it's
political power. Jesse will soon be opening a Washington office. We'll
have a legislative agenda. We won 90 Congressional districts in the
primary. So we will concentrate first on those districts. You don't have
to be
Politics.
It wasn't at the previous convention, but it was a very good feeling for me to be in Atlanta. With the size of the contingent, we knew we weren't going to get the nomination, but there was a little bit of power there. We had to be dealt with and that was good, especially since it was in the South, and then being interviewed by the Chapel Hill newspaper too which was too much.
So did any one really remember it, that there was a civil rights movement in Chapel Hill? Probably only a few.
I haven't talked to a lot of people about this, and they said, "Oh yeah, there was some of that going on. I didn't really notice too much of it though." I don't think there's a real high consciousness about that. In a lot of ways I think it's seen as a prelude to some of what came next, which was focused more on the campus.
Right. I was in Washington, so it must have been '79 or '80, I had
contact with the CAP agency that was in Orange County. Pookie Britton,
who was the leader of the high school students, and his picture is in
the Free Men being thrown out of the Colonial
Drugstore, but he works there at the CAP agency. So that was quite a
little reunion too. But Joe was a very important person to talk to.
I think so too.
Lou's in New Jersey. I have his address at home if you want it. I have Lou Calhoun's address, Quinton Baker's, John Donne is dead. He became a lawyer. His wife is head of the education department at Darmouth. He was in town for a while and then he went to, they decided they wanted to raise their kids in Vermont, and she had inherited a real old farmhouse, and they went up there. But yeah, it's as fresh to me as if it was yesterday. Still have strong feelings. I don't know whether it came through, probably did in a few places. I'd glad I was there. Like I said, I wondered if I'd been here or some other place or if I'd been there and the movement hadn't happened, you never know.
But you were there. You were in the right place at the right time.
Oh, they finally decided on my degree, that I could take the course up here. But they specifically said I could not take it at Harvard. I had to take it at MIT, was the only place.
What was it?
It was an advanced calculus course. I mean, Harvard is a good school.
They're other good schools here too, you know. I never did take it,
because I got active in Cambridge and I headed up the agency there,
really got involved there. I was head of a similar agency in Cambridge,
a CAP agency, in 1970. One of our neighborhood groups, once again on
housing and negotiating over the land. Seize the Harvard commencement.
There was a lot of payback of that one. So I couldn't see myself getting
a B.S. in math because I was in human services and all this stuff. I
mistakenly thought, "I don't need a degree." And I say mistakenly,
because when I was unemployed in Washington, and then even now, and I
could have easily gotten a master's at Harvard, Ed school and stuff, and
I've recommended so many people who have gotten it. I could have taught
in D.C. I could teach now. I may start teaching next year though because
I've been told that probably Tuffs, I could get on as a visiting
professor and maybe design my own course, like "Gentrification, the
Cutting Edge of Change," or something like that. I need some extra
income. I think I have some things to say, so I may push in that
direction to just supplement what I have. And I would really love to
phase into something like that and writing too. I've never written. That
was a mistake too. When I first got out of prison, I was being beseeched
by The New Republic and The Nation
and all the little magazines of the left and everybody else to write
articles. Oh, no, no, no. Pat didn't do it. Obviously, that was a
serious mistake, because if I had done that in '65, I would
Doing real stuff instead of talking about it.
Yes, doing real stuff, right, bang.
Well, it's never too late.
I write well, professionally, I write well, but not in terms of really writing… But somebody said, "Well, look, why don't you just write "Vignettes from a Southern White" about the movement. I may do that.
Well, it certainly is a time when people are, you know, they're interested. People want to know what it was like.
I really recommend Parting the Waters.
I went out and bought it after you mentioned it on the phone.
He really documented his work. I mean, he really did a good job. For someone who was not there, it probably was one of the better jobs that could have been done on it.
Well, as a historian I'll argue that it sometimes has to be someone who was not there.
That's right.
To have a perspective to get the breadth of perspective.
Well, that's right. Excuse me, right. And what he did was so great too.
He didn't make a myth out of king. He presented King, the man, who had
to really struggle at times to get on top of what was happening and his
whole human bit, the middle-class conflicts versus his strong desire to
be with the
I'm definitely looking forward to reading that.
He's coming out with two more. This carries it right up pass the march on
Washington. Because I had been so disgusted until Henry Hampton did Eyes on the Prize because what had been done just
never captured the…
Did you see the book that North Carolina put out on this?
[END OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE B]
And every picture was either happy, singing black folks, I mean, it presented a certain viewpoint. They mailed it to me from the state. I'd been up here about six months and in the forward it actually says, in trying to explain, I guess, "We must remember that the North Carolina Negroes have been here a long time." It was trying to say they were good folks, and "they contain strains of blood from men of more masterful races," in the forward over Terry Sanford's signature! Look in the library.
I will.
It has an orange cover and has all these pictures. Our pictures are in
there but they were very selective. But yes, "they contain strains of
blood of more masterful races." Terry Sanford. Unbelievable. No, not
unbelievable either. And this was like an extremely liberal thing to do.
They were so proud of it. I almost threw up. North Carolina and the Negro.
History of the Civil Rights.
Yes. This isn't political or historical, but it's there. When I got to
Sandy Ridge, New York was hosting the World's Fair that summer, '64. We
would watch T.V. for two hours at night, and we'd be sitting around
watching the television. They've have the vignettes on the news on the
World's War. So there was a black man about twenty-eight in the cell
block, and we'd talk about the World's Fair, and he started saying, "I
would
A sense of the absurd.
Yes. And that book that came through, Trotsky's Life of
Lenin, through the censors. I almost came down. It was, I
Joe Straley called me and the Community Church of Chapel Hill was having an observance of Martin Luther King Day. They wanted me to come be the speaker. But that was the time we have our annual Rainbow banquet here and I could not come. But I told him that I was really very interested in taking a rain check on that. That would be interesting. See, that was the bastion of all the folks that I was talking about, the white liberals and stuff.
Well, twenty-five years later, it's time to
I haven't really mellowed. Well, I mean, I don't go around holding a grudge, but, I guess, I haven't really changed my mind about that. Although, like I said about Terry Sanford, I can see the—I mean, the people that do so much for what they did. They were on the wrong time table. Amtrack had issued a new time table. How long have you been in Chapel Hill?
I've been there about five years.
You live in town?
Yes.
Is it still as pretty? I guess I was there in, when I was in Washington, I came down to make a speech to the North Carolina Association of Community Action Agencies that were in Raleigh. I was staying with the Straleys. They came and got me and we rode down Franklin Street, and I said, "Well, you know, this is an Unbelievable little place."
It is a lovely town.
And a good university too. There is no doubt about that. They didn't do what they should have done a couple of times. Has it grown a lot, I imagine it has.
Yes, in just the last ten years it's grown immensely, about 30,000 students.
What's the percentage of black students, do you know? Small.
Small.
Yes, it is. Do they still have the fraternity, sorority caste system?
It's certainly coming back in the last few years.
I wonder, black students may be better off not going there. Have you read the statistics on job placement for black graduates of the small black colleges versus black graduates of major universities?
They do better coming out of the black schools.
Yes, they do better immediately. They get better jobs and their income's better. The placement rate is higher. And I've often thought of that, and I think I understand it. There's a sense of identity there. The smaller schools, there's a sense of identity. They're not like swamped. I've known a lot of black students at Harvard and stuff, and they're continually having to fight that whole thing and their own identity and all of this. That's not present at the black schools, and they really stress the identity bit.
My dissertation was on womens' colleges and college culture for women, 1880 to 1930 is the time period. But the more I studied that, the more I question the value of integration for women.
Right, well, there have been a lot of fights up here, too, on that. What was it? It used to be WC at Greensboro, Women's College.
END OF INTERVIEW