© This work is the property of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text.
MP3 file derived from WAV preservation master, which was derived from original analog cassettes.
The electronic edition is a part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South.
An audio file with the interview complements this electronic edition.
The text has been entered using double-keying and verified against the original.
The text has been encoded using the recommendations for Level 4 of the TEI in Libraries Guidelines.
Original grammar and spelling have been preserved.
All quotation marks, em dashes and ampersand have been transcribed as entity references.
All double right and left quotation marks are encoded as "
All em dashes are encoded as —
Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview L-0048, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
University of North Carolina law professor Daniel Pollitt recalls his
relationship with and respect for UNC Campus Y director Anne Queen.
Queen's interest in social justice issues intersected with
Pollitt's active support of racial equity and student activism. The
Campus Y served as a refuge and training ground for social justice activism, and
it led to the creation of other organizations focused on social justice matters.
The Community Church, composed of many UNC professors, also played an active
role in endorsing desegregation. The connection between politically active UNC
students and religiously concerned church members created an anti-segregation
coalition. Pollitt describes how Campus Y student activists and some church
members engaged in direct-action protests of a segregated movie theater in
Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Local white businessmen resisted attempts to
integrate public facilities, often with force. At the whites-only Pines
Restaurant, the local press captured the restaurant owner's attack on
an elderly priest attempting to integrate the establishment. Many white Chapel
Hill residents were appalled by the restaurant owner's segregationist
fervor. However, civil rights demonstrations in downtown Chapel Hill drew
negative views from North Carolina governor Terry Sanford and Chapel Hill Weekly owner Edward Randis. They also created more violent
backlash from segregationist whites. Pollitt connects whites' rising
resentment of civil rights activism to frustration with other student and labor
activism: by the late 1960s, UNC students involved in civil rights
demonstrations also objected to the Vietnam War and to the inequity of UNC food
workers' pay.
Daniel Pollitt describes his admiration for University of North Carolina Campus Y director, Anne Queen. He discusses his and Queen's engagement in social justice movements and the city of Chapel Hill's reaction to student political engagement.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
... position at UNC and with the Campus Y when Anne came in 1956.
She came here the year before I did. She came here, I think, in '56 and I came here in 1957. I came from Arkansas where we had integrated the schools; the schools here were not integrated and that was sort of a common bond. We used to be located on the main campus and would go up to the Y court for coffee at 10:00, so we became friends. That's where the action was; the constructive action on campus centered around the YMCA, the campus Y. So, we became friends.
When do you remember first meeting Anne and what were your initial perceptions of her when you met her?
I don't remember. I have no recollection of when we first met. We met near the YMCA and that's where the students would hang around. I think we had a half of the black students here at the time. I became the faculty advisor to the NAACP and everybody in the NAACP group, the handful, seemed to be active in the Y. And whatever the NAACP wanted to do, we would do it with the Y, so maybe that's how I first met her. She was the assistant and Claude Shotts was the director. Then they invited me to join the advisory committee which I was very happy to do.
That's great. What did you know, at that time, about her background when she came? I know I asked you about your initial perceptions. Did you know much about just her ethical and moral attitudes and what her interests lie in the most?
Oh, yes. That's very obvious. We were kindred souls, so it was easy to strike up a good friendship. She was very open. She was always very open to everybody. But she was very open to me about our common concerns which were student involvement and trying to do something about the segregated campus and the segregated community we were living in. And it was again, the late fifties, which were characterized by student apathy. I didn't think it was, but I think there's always ten to fifteen percent of the students who are concerned with social justice and the problems beyond them. That was what was going on at the Y in many ways. They were nothing big. Claude was the administrator and fund-raiser and he had his concerns, but he'd already retired from Northwestern, I think, where he had been the Y director. And we didn't have the energies that Anne did. And they organized programs to go visit the mental people at Butner and the orphans; the disadvantaged people within a twenty mile area were visited by Y people who would go out and just walk with them or talk with them or give them a touch of the outside. And I think that was maybe the first of the major energies in '57, '58 and '59, or in that period. It was social service types of things. And I remember they had a car and the car broke down. It broke down every time they would go to Butner. Their biggest problem was to buy a second hand car that would get the students there and back.
How did you see the campus Y change during Anne's role at the campus Y? How did you perceive it? It was always a social service organization and somewhat the center of campus, but how did that change? How did she make a unique influence, do you believe?
Well, I think the Y changed as the conditions changed. I forget the
exact date when we started to integrate the public schools here, but as
soon as they did, they started with the little tots, the first and
second grades, maybe. And the Big Brother and Big Sister and the
tutorial programs started, so the people from the Y would go out and
they would adopt somebody and sit with them after school and review
their lessons and be a role model and an inspiration. So, that was going
on. The black schools didn't have much in the way of a library, and I
remember to get an encyclopedia, fifty volumes of an encyclopedia, we
got that, you know. That was earlier, and then came the tutorials which
was about the same time. And then in the early sixties, the
There were several different organizations including the Committee for
Open Business, the Committee on Integration and then later on, CORE and
national groups came in. Anne was a member originally, of the Committee
for Open Business and it split when Governor Sanford called on the
demonstrations to halt, so that there could be more voluntary
desegregation. Do you know much about that split?
Well, as I was saying, the first sit-in was the high school students. Then they decided to have a meeting. The black high school students wanted to have an open meeting a couple of days later; maybe Friday or something. And they went to a couple of the black churches and the ministers didn't want them. They were afraid of the whole thing. So, they came to the Community Church where Reverend Charlie Jones was the minister and asked Charlie Jones if they could use the Community Church, and he said, "Sure." But then they decided that was too far from the black community and they might not be able to find it and so on. So, Charlie Jones arranged to meet at the Roberson Street Center which was the black community center. And then, what do you do when you meet? Well, there was a CORE organizer who had come down to help at N.C. Central in Durham and he'd been arrested for something and he was in jail. So Charlie Jones and I went over and bailed him out and brought him over to the Roberson Street Center where he could talk to the high school kids.
Do you remember the name?
I'm trying to think of the name.
I have several names of students, but most of them were arrested after. . . . Was it Pat Kusack, John Dunn?
No. They were much later and they were college students. These were high
school students. There was Harold Foster and Braxton Foushee, who's now
the assemblyman or councilman at Carrboro. They were the stars of the
basketball team. And they are the ones who had gone to celebrate their
victory. One of them was the President of the Student Body there and the
other was the editor of the year book or something, but they were big in
the Lincoln High School. So, they met and we had the guy from CORE,
Gordon Cary was his name, and he was a white guy who had been a
conscientious objector in World War II. He was, I think, the organizer
east of the Mississippi, because CORE then consisted of four or five
people. And he came and he did socio-dramatics or something. And he
says, "All right, now, let's do it lawfully and peacefully. You be the
store keeper and you be the cop and you be the protester," and so on,
and he had them acting everything out. And that's what we did that
evening was to act it out. Then I think they went back the next day
Were you involved with the picketing of the theater?
Of the theater, yes. Was that first or was that later?
That was one of the original main actions. I think it started with the black high school students.
We had two theaters in town and neither one would allow blacks. I can give you that very clearly. There was a movie showing, the song of which is, "T'ain't Necessarily So." It's a very famous play and then a movie and it was showing here. The English teacher at the black high school asked the manager if she could take her English class to see this movie and that she would come after the late show on Friday or before the matinee on Saturday or they would sit in the balcony or whatever he wanted, but she would like to take her class. And he said, "No." So, she went to her minister who took it up to the Interfaith Council and Charlie Jones at the Community Church. They went to see the guy and he said, "No." So the decision was to picket that movie. And I was the first picketer at the showing at 6:00. And from then on, it went on for five months or something and we always tried to have a white person and a black person picketing together. There were half hour stints. And that went on throughout the fall and the winter and the spring. But that was the Ad Hoc Committee for Open Theaters or something like that. And that was successful, but that was not really related to the other picketing. I don't think it was related in time. My memory is hazy.
Do you recall what Anne's role was in all this was?
Anne was a behind the scenes participant. Let me add one more dimension. That is the sit-ins, which was Pat Kusick and that crowd. But that was a year or two later. We had the first wave of sit-ins and maybe forty or fifty percent of the downtown businesses agreed to serve everybody, but the others didn't. And that was the second wave which was the John Dunn, Pat Kusick crowd. And that's where people got arrested and all that sort of thing. Now, what Anne did during all this, first of all, she was the home. The Y was the home for the black students. They sold stocks in the Y building, so there was a logical reason for everybody to go there, and then on each side they sold the newspapers and then there were the lounge and the offices. And then upstairs there were some offices all connected with the Y and good things. But that's the one place where the handful of blacks could go in and be treated respectfully and with warmth and with friendship. And that was the one place where they could achieve some prominence. Kellis Parker, I think, was his name, might have been the first secretary or the treasurer or something of the Y. But the blacks were given the opportunity to achieve leadership positions at the Y when most other places were closed to them. So Anne Queen really helped integrate the University. She was friendly to all these people and gave them things to do. They could go out and help tutor or they could do this and that. And then she had a Speaker's Bureau that went on and on and on and on and almost anybody who was worth hearing was invited down here by the Y and they would have a program of some sort. Then there would be the reception which would be open to the public, generally, and then the next reception at Anne's house. She had a very small little cottage, very unpretentious, but she could squeeze twenty-five or thirty people in for dinner, which she always prepared, you know. And she was a teetotaler and she always put me in charge of the liquor. And so I would bring the liquor and mix the drinks. She wouldn't do that, you know. She didn't mind having liquor in the house and she didn't mind if other people drank, but she wanted no part of it. She didn't want to do it.
That seems to be quite a characteristic of hers that she was very open to other's people's ways, but she was definitely committed to her own. Can you comment on that maybe more?
Well, she had her own standards which were extremely high. I can't give
you any other illustration off-hand. But she would invite the black
students to her house and that would be maybe the first time in their
lives they'd ever been invited to a white person's house. And in there,
they would be treated like anybody else was treated. I remember Floyd
McKissick was the head of CORE and was a very frequent visitor. And
Sloane Coffin, the minister, was down there. Al Lowenstein, I think he
had been active in the Y when he'd been a student here and he would be
brought down. She liked Michael Harrington who was the head of the
Social Democratic group and was very much up on poverty, the war on
poverty, which was the Kennedy years in the sixties. That came at the
same time. And I don't know whether Sarge Shriver came or not, but any
time there was a Peace Corps recruiter they'd be at the Y and then
they'd be at Anne's house and there'd be people invited in. I don't know
if she had a special fund. I doubt it. But that was her role. Her role
was to be extremely hospitable to all the minorities and that includes
all the foreigners. We never had many foreigners come here like they do
at Michigan or Cornell or Harvard or something. But they were always
welcomed at the Y and it was in that connection that Anne started the
International Bazaar where everybody would wear their native garb and do
their native dance or their native instruments or their native crafts
and their native foods. So there were four or five, maybe ten, places to
eat something and you could buy things. And it was a money raiser, but
predominantly a show place for people to demonstrate their native pride
and to get to know each others. And in the international area, it was a
big thing to go to the UN. She would go up and later somebody else would
take up a bus load of kids. Frank Porter Graham was then at the United
Nations. He was high up and he would introduce and talk to directors and
so on and show them around. A lot of the kids had never been to New York
City and so they wouldn't waste their time seeing the Statue of Liberty.
They went down to Greenwich Village and East Greenwich Village and would
see X rated movies and get exposed to a part of society which many of
them had never dreamed of before. So, it was to see the U.N. and to see
a major city and see how people live in a major city. I believe you
could drive all the way to New York, at that time, in ten or twelve or
fourteen hours. The first town you get to in Virginia, they had stopped
to get something to eat at the bus station. They wouldn't serve them
because a quarter of them were black. So they went up to picket there
for a few days. So, she was the hostess and the friend and tried to
provide opportunities for people who needed opportunities. So, that was
her role.
Was this on the "Chapel Hill Weekly"?
Yes. So that got a lot of publicity going. And if Father Parker is going to lay his body on the line, you know, at his age, why shouldn't the rest of us? So, that started the tumultuous period. There were letters to the newspaper every day pro and con. There was a big debate going on everywhere. Every night there'd be a sit-in somewhere. And this time, it was done by the college students, all of whom had been active in the Y.
Do you know whether they were in contact with Anne during that period for advice?
Well, I forget the name of the organization, but there had to be one to collect funds for bail purposes. And the treasurer of that was the treasurer of the YMCA and the office was the YMCA. That's where people met.
So, that's where the students organized that were involved in this sit-in movement that were students at UNC?
Yes. I mean, you'd go to the Y and see what's going on. And the other place was the Community Church. The Community Church was more for the grown-ups. I don't mean that the students are not grown-up.
I understand.
But the older people used the Community Church. There were the white collar University students and there were the black high school students and then there was the white community, mostly professors, that operated out of the Community Church. At one time, the Duke divinity professors got involved and they all got arrested. But Anne was not in the forefront at this time. Everything that we mimeographed was mimeographed at the Community Church and not at the Y. The Chancellor was Bill Aycock, I guess, and we kept putting pressure on Bill to put the theater off limits or something, or to take an action of some sort. And he didn't. And Bill Friday. They were neutral throughout all this. They did not speak at all on the public accommodation. Maybe they were wise. The state of North Carolina was not ready. They were preserving the University. I was active. I was the very first picketer at the theater and my role was well known and out front and I wrote an article on it and I'd be quoted. I never once doubted that anyone would come after me, you know. And I was not going to not get a pay raise, I was not not going to get promoted or anything else.
So, you didn't believe your position was at all threatened?
I felt I was in no jeopardy whatsoever for doing all of this. And no one was in jeopardy. Not a single professor was jeopardized in any department that I knew of because of their active involvement with people who were arrested. Peter Feiline was pretty active in this. He was a brand new professor; a young, untenured, assistant professor. And pretty active.
I'm sure he was.
But on the other hand, or maybe that's enough, you know, to protect the faculty from any repercussions.
Did you believe that Anne, because she was a staff member at the University and because she was responsible for the Y and had that reputation, had that communication with the administration, with Bill Friday and Aycock? Did she in any way feel like she had to remain in the back of this movement?
I don't know. She did have contact with them. See, Bill Friday and Bill Aycock were members of the Community Church which was the center of the whole thing. You know, it was somewhat ambiguous. I don't know when Claude Shotts retired from here, but there was a good question about who would succeed him. And again, this was a man's University. Women go over to the Women's College in Greensboro and you could only come here if you were going to the Nursing School or if you live in Orange County or something like that; or if you were an upper classman and you want to major in something they don't have at the Women's College. So, there were very few women. So, at that time, I had a friend who came here to get her Ph.D. in romance languages and they would not let her be a TA here. They arranged for her to be a teaching assistant at Duke because women were not fit or it was not appropriate for women to teach as a teaching assistant in the romance department. Well, now here's Anne Queen. She's a women at, essentially, a men's University, number two in a two person job and I'm sure she'd like to be number one, you know. But I don't really think Anne would have thought about that.
Yes. I was interested in finding out more about how you felt her position as a female. . .
Well, there was that and there was trouble. I know that when Claude Shotts did retire, or announced his retirement, there was a search committee or something, on who was going to succeed him. I got a petition going for Anne to support her for the job. And we weren't sure she'd get it. There was a search committee and I think I might have been on the search committee. I know I was on several search committees for the Y. I would have been a biased member. But there was that problem.
Norm Gustavison came in, I noticed, when he was really young and she had been there for several years. I'm wondering if you know anything about how that decision was made.
I was on the search committee that brought in Norm. But I was also on the search committee that brought in somebody else before Norm, I think, who stayed there for a little bit and then became the Assistant Dean of Students or something. He was out of the Union Theological Seminary and a very good person, but Anne was not assured that she would get the top job, you know. And if she did she would be one of the two. . . . There was the Dean of Women and there was Anne Queen and they would be the only women with any authority around the University.
How did you perceive Anne's influence on the students?
Well, she had everybody spellbound. Everybody loved Anne Queen and what
she was doing and what she was about. Anne is not a traditional beauty.
She has her own beauty, but it's a unique beauty and so she doesn't fit
the model of the Hollywood beauty type. And she spoke like she was from
Canton, North Carolina after having grown up in a blue collar household.
Yes, you say that she was admired by all these people. Why was she so able to spellbind people? Obviously, her interests, but her interests were similar to a lot of other people who were active liberals in the community.
Well, I think that maybe it was because she would always say, "What do
you think?" And she wanted everybody to speak and I recall the first
time we had Floyd McKissick here it was a debate on whether the House
Committee on Unamerican Activities had a right to subpoena the Ku Klux
Klan and ask for their membership rolls or not. And Floyd McKissick
defended the First Amendment rights of the Klan. That was his role and
the other guy was the Congressman from Georgia who was very liberal and
popular who thought that the Klan was so bad, they ought to try to stamp
it out through publicity or something. Well, we had a Klan guy. I forget
who he was. We had David Duke here, who was the candidate for Senate in
Louisiana. He got sixty-five percent of the white male vote in
Louisiana, but he came here under YMCA auspices to get his point of view
across. So, she obviously, was very liberal and she favored Mike
Harrington and Al Lowenstein. Sloane Coffin, I think, was her favorite
of all favorites. But she always gave the other side a break. And again,
she never forgot the people in Butner or the Big Sister and the Big
Brother program; to go help children for a couple of hours. I don't ever
find it thrilling, but it could be considered thrilling to go out and be
the first picketer at the movie theater. My sign was "T'ain't
Necessarily So". That's what I remember, segregation. "T'ain't
Necessarily So".
Because he's supposed to have had such an impact.
He was the great sociologist who had such an impact and all that.
That's an interesting point because several writers have remarked on the fact that Chapel Hill had such a liberal tradition which was a very big impediment in taking the desegregation further than it already had. People became complacent that weren't willing to go beyond what had already been done. Did you see that?
Well there's always, "We're the southern part of heaven" and that sort
of thing and "We're great." And we have Howard Odum and we have Frank
Graham we can comment about. Yes, it was a minority that wanted to
integrate the town and we didn't. We didn't. We were unsuccessful. It
wasn't the 1964 Civil Rights Act that integrated the community. I'm
probably in the book because I wrote the ordinance on public
accommodation which never passed. The tactic of the majority of the City
Council was to, well, "This is sort of a last stage and let's not see if
we can't do it some other way. Let's establish a commission of good
folks to try and persuade everybody to reach a meeting of the minds."
And Anne Queen would be on those committees is my recollection. And
those were the people who had not been noticeable in the integration or
in the anti-integration efforts. My Dean, at the time, Edward Randis, he
was very adamant. He got very angry and he'd go to all the public
meetings and he said, "This is anarchy. You cannot violate the law." He
was a lawyer, you know. He said, "You're violating the law." And I would
say, "Well, Martin Luther King says that you have to put your body in
the struggle." "Well, then Martin Luther King should be arrested and put
away." And Edward Randis was a spokesman for the Chapel Hill newspaper.
But Edward Randis was great and the
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
They had food there, all sorts of international food, but somehow, Anne
Queen would go there and open it up in the morning and turn on the
lights and then at the end of the day, she'd sweep the place out. She'd
be there for two or three days and she'd want a hot meal that was not
Chilean or Ecuadorian or something. My wife would always cook her up
something, a hot plate of something and bring it to her. That went on
for ten years. She became an expected customer. My wife used to cook
Anne Queen her hot dinner on the nights of those things. So, in that
sense, we were pretty close. Anne was not in the Speaker Ban
controversy, except that the Y was in the Speaker Ban controversy. They
passed a law you could not invite someone to speak on campus who meets
certain criteria. They did invite them. Paul Dixon, who was the
President of the Student Body, invited Al Tucker and somebody else. And
then
What was done in the Y?
The law suit was planned in the YMCA in one of the offices. But other than that, Anne didn't play any role. There wasn't much role. It was a role for lawyers and fundraisers and I don't think Anne was a fundraiser.
She seemed to have a lot of student
So, then the Vietnam War came along. There was an anti-Vietnam War protest. There was a big protest here, but not like at Columbia or Berkeley. The graduate students went on strike for a day or two. Then we had a meeting of the faculty council to show our opposition to Nixon. The resolution that finally came out, as I recall, was something to the effect that they would encourage or endorse or something a trip to Washington to see our legislators. By the way, that was called "Washington Witness One." And then we had Washington Witness Two in a similar situation. And so through the Y, we rented buses. Gustavison and me signed our names to the list. We agreed to pay eight hundred dollars or eight thousand dollars, I don't know, for the buses. The buses were to be at the Planetarium at four in the morning or five in the morning or something, and we'd go up to Washington. And I think the first time we went, we were to meet our Congressman. Nick Delafinicus was our Congressman from Durham. He and Bill Friday made the arrangements with all the congressional delegation to meet with groups. And then the two senators would meet with all of us. We had a great big forum there on Capitol Hill. So, we had eight or nine buses and a couple of thousand students. We all went up. The Y did it all. And then, "Where are we going to eat?" The arrangements were made by the Y that we would have box lunches at the Methodist Building which was right across the street from the Capitol. Then we had to wait for the bus drivers to have so many hours between, and then we came back. We stopped somewhere in Virginia and they were expecting us and we had a late supper. So, it was a twenty hour day or something, but that was done through the Y. Then we had our second one. We had Washington Witness Two. It was another event. It might have been the killings at Kent State or something which prompted another trip. Again, the faculty council endorsed it and there were a thousand people around Pope Place wanting to see the Chancellor. And this was to diffuse, not really to diffuse, but to be constructive. What do you do when you're angry and upset? Do you have a teach-in or something? Or do you cancel classes? So, that's for the demands. But we didn't want to burn down the NROTC. They were having their anniversary or something around then and they were going to have a big parade and so on. And they really feared that there might be trouble at that point. They thought, "Get everybody out of town." We had Washington Witness Two. And this time we saw new Congressmen. We'd seen our other Congressman, but they were on our list. We saw a new Congressman. Father Drinon was there from Massachusetts and what's her name from Long Island? The one who wore the hats. I don't know. And then there was the new one from Colorado, the woman. And Ron Dellams. There were a whole bunch of new Congressmen. We thought, "This time we'll see new Congresspeople as well as our old." And then you sign up for who you want to see and you see one. Al Lowenstein was one of them. You see one of them for forty-five minutes and then you move on and you see another one. It was a great day. I was with Anne.
So, she did go on this trip?
Oh, yes, she went on the trips. I took my whole family, but we were with
Anne. And we signed up for whatever there was nobody
What did you see as her role? She has been credited or referred to in playing a role in keeping these activities at Chapel Hill non-violent.
Yes, well, that was one of the things. I know that Dan Okin was chairman of the faculty at that time and he was going to not go. He was going to stay here and witness the NROTC marching around to stop anybody from setting fire to the NROTC business. So, what we tried to do was find something constructive because there were a lot of excess energies, you know, and people wanted to do something. And so, we thought, "What's a good way of doing something constructive?" And that was really why the Washington Witness program went into effect. We had at least five thousand students. And then what they did there, we met with our two senators and it was set up so that selected people could speak for three minutes on the mike. And that was the President of the Student Body, the editor-in-chief of the Law Review. You know, the head of the Interfraternity and Intersorority Councils. They'd say, "My name is so and so and I'm from such and such, North Carolina. I'm against the war and here's why." And they would give very inspirational things and then Senator Ervin would explain why the war was lawful and legal and necessary. And the other senator, whose name escapes me, at the end of the day he says, "I'm convinced. I'm not going to vote for the war anymore." Up to that very day before, he had been voting for appropriations and things. So, he turned around after hearing all these inspiring statements. And then some people went to the White House to audiences there. It was really extremely constructive and helpful and it felt very good that you were doing something. It was the YMCA, you know, who arranged for the buses, who arranged for the food, who arranged to have supper when supper is ready, who arranged for the rendezvous and the meetings and got the various Congressmen to say, "I'll meet with you." It was a lot of work. And then there was the press. We had announced everything and that was in the Y Building, you know, and it was somebody from the Y who had newspaper experience. So, it was a campus Y operation.
Can we talk a little bit about the food worker's strike and Anne's role in that strike?
The strike was for wages and more than that, for dignity. And it was a
dirty thing that the University did in that they were working people
eight hours and paying them eight hours, but they were not paying them
minimum wage on the theory that minimum wage doesn't apply to state
employees. It did. So they were wrong. But the eight hours would start
at 6:00 in the morning when the people would come to prepare breakfast
and end at 8:30. Then it would start again at 11:00 and go until 2:00
and then it would stop. It would start again at 5:00 until 7:30. I don't
know how many hours that is, but they would get eight hours a day of
work in, but they had to be there fourteen hours, you know. There's
nothing much you can do between 9:30 and 11:00. They used to hang around
outside Lenoir Hall with nothing to do. So, that was one thing. And
then, the guy who ran it, there were a lot of grievances about, "Why
can't I be a cashier? Why do only whites get to be cashiers?" And things
like that. You'd been there so many years, and that didn't help you to
get to be a cook. So, there was no upgrading. The people really felt
abused and I don't think there was any particular spark of any sort that
started it. But they went on the strike. I was the President of the AAUP
then and we were having a meeting of the Executive Committee of the AAUP
at one of the food places which has now since been closed. And we found
out we couldn't be served because there was a strike. So, we then
thought, "Should we get involved in this?" And I thought, "Well, we are
involved in it." We can't even have our meeting. The faculty is
involved." So, we started an expanded executive Committee and we invited
the Food Worker's Union and the graduate
So she was really important in formulating this first grievance process?
Yes. And at the same time, the black student movements went on. The black students allied themselves with the black cafeteria workers. And they had their grievances and their grievances were such that they wanted a black history week or the black Afro-American program and that there be efforts to recruit black professors. So, let me backtrack a little bit. When we first started to integrate here, there were very few blacks and the YMCA, under Anne Queen, started an outreach program where the YMCA people would visit the black high schools and tell them you don't have to be afraid at UNC and come and give it a trial.
The Upward Bound program? Is that what you're referring to?
Well, first it was just a visitation. And then there was, "Let's have
them come on the same weekend and show them the place." And then there
was the summer program for the Upward Bound to invite the people to come
in who are admitted, I guess, to spend six weeks here. All those were
YMCA programs which were gradually assimilated by the administration.
But Anne Queen initiated all of those. Then they put out pamphlets, "Why
UNC is a good place to come." And they'd have a picture of a white and a
black on the front. Those went out to every black high school in the
state. That was out of the Y budget and there was a committee on all
this. So, those were the ones that were too far to visit. But the Y
would go out in teams of two or three and then we would go to the
Student Council or the College Council or whatever and tell them, "Think
of us. And here's why you should think of us." So Anne Queen initiated
How did you perceive Anne's religious background and how that influenced her work at the Y and with other colleagues of hers?
Well, she kept it under control. You know, she went to Berea. You can get in there if you're in the lower half of the economic stratum of your Appalachian county. So, you have to be there and she went there after ten years in the paper mill. And her sister is there in the paper mill and I guess her parents were. And I remember she was at our house once and we were playing some labor songs and there was something about you don't get out and you never see the sun. When you get out of work it's dark and she commented that it's really terrible to get out of work and it's always dark. I think her religious posture was motivated by her social concerns. When I was on the Y board, we opened with a prayer every meeting. Do you still do that? I think that disappeared somewhere during Anne's tutelage. But whoever would give it would really work on it. They didn't ad lib the prayer. I mean, they had something written down which was usually worth listening to. It was a Christian association and it was open to everybody and it was non-denominational and non-creedal, non-anything, but she treasured her years at the Yale divinity school and would comment on them like the people she met there. And then, I don't know, she went to work for Friend's Service Committee, which is religious, but not very. And then to the UN. As I recall, she worked at the Friend's Service Committee at the UN as one of their observers or something. And from there, she went to Georgia to be a religious person. And she left the religious job at Georgia to come here to be in a non-religious YMCA, which changed it's name to Campus Y to eliminate "men" and "Christian" from the name. It wasn't men and it wasn't Christian. It was anybody. So, she secularized the YMCA. The ministers in town had an association and she went to them and she had a sense of belonging there and of being there. We had a great group of campus ministers at the Methodist Foundation and the Catholic, the Baptist and they are all nice, very enthusiastic, intelligent, well-meaning, doing good young people. Anne was in that crowd and felt very comfortable. I think they were her real social people. I think she got more out of the meetings of the Minister's Alliance or whatever it was called. I think she got a lot of support there and felt very good and comfortable going there. But she never imposed any religiosity on anybody. I mean, unless you knew her, you had no idea that she was a minister. I mean, she never said she was a minister and never referred to herself as a minister. There were no crosses or religious emblems of any sort in her office or in her home. And then she retired. She retired before she had to retire. I asked her, "Why do you want to go? We need you here." Everybody said that, but she was going home to Canton and to live in a log cabin that her grandfather had built, which if it had electricity, it was fairly recent. And if it had indoor plumbing, it was fairly recent. She said she was going to go home and take care of her elder sister or sisters. They spent all their lives working in that damn paper mill in Canton and then she broke just a little bit loose and went down to the Community College in Charlotte where she taught and did some YMCA work like work she had done here. But she basically stayed in Canton. And she would come back for the annual International Bazaars.
Well, thank you so much for spending time with me.
Okay, well, as you may have gathered, any time I can spend discussing Anne Queen is a privilege.
Thank you so much.
END OF INTERVIEW