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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-0145, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
William C. Friday served as the president of the University of North Carolina system from 1957 to 1986. This interview is part of a longer, multi-part interview conducted with Friday in 1990. Here, Friday focuses primarily on the Speaker Ban Controversy that engulfed the University system from 1963 to 1968. The ban forbade any communist—or anyone who refused during a formal hearing to disavow allegiance to communism—to speak on campus. Friday begins by describing the General Assembly's passage of the Speaker Ban Law in 1963. He argues that the law reflected general opposition to the University's emphasis on academic freedom. Later in the interview, Friday revisits what he understood as the General Assembly's "anti-intellectualism" and argues that he believed the Speaker Ban to also reflect residual tension about Frank Porter Graham's senatorial bid and his general support of civil rights measures. Friday devotes considerable attention to a discussion of his own reaction and that of the University to the speaker ban. Focusing primarily on the University's effort to have the law overturned, Friday addresses the role of student leadership in the opposition, the formation of the Britt Commission, his relationship with the press, and tensions between him and the Board of Trustees. Friday also situates the controversy within the broader context of campus unrest during the 1960s and early 1970s. Overall, Friday expresses pride in the University's ability to avoid direct confrontation or violence during the various protests and demonstrations that were held during this time.
President of the University of North Carolina System, William Friday, discusses the Speaker Ban Controversy at the University of North Carolina. The ban was enforced from 1963 to 1968 and forbade any communist—or anyone who refused during a formal hearing to disavow allegiance to communism—to speak on campus. Throughout the interview, Friday focuses on issues of academic freedom, his efforts to have the law overturned, and the broader social unrest that characterized campus politics during that era.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
I'd like to talk today about the Speaker Ban, and your handling of that academic crisis. Let's start first by talking a little about the background, before the law was actually passed in June 1963. For example, what sorts of policy decisions have been made towards speakers, at the University prior to 1963.
We had established the policy of academic freedom, which is the one
that's traditionally that of any major university in the
United States. In fact, I have looked at quite a few of them, they were
Trustees when they first qualified the code of the University had
carried forward in the laws of the institution. A very full and complete
statement about academic freedom that was drawn-up by Victor Bryant. The
idea there was to codify what was, at that time, a common law tradition,
so that everybody in any one of the campuses would know exactly where
they stood. What rights were there. What guarantees were there. And the
Board adopted that, and its in every document that I've seen
since then. I believe its still in the codes, if they didn't
delete it in the last three
Sure.
...too much of it. But I do know those very difficult times.
Let me ask you, there are two things that I hear that you partly mentioned—you mentioned these two things on writing your explanations of the origins of the law, the passage of the law in June 1963. And one was the general atmosphere of —
Accumulated animosity.
Animosity and polarization that you got over civil rights.
That's right. Primarily.
With all of the marches that were going on the streets.
And the confrontations at Sir Walter.
Exactly.
And George Hall over there with Mr. Frank Taylor, and others. All of that fitted together.
And there was a collective image of the University that included students and faculty participating in this kind of thing.
Yeah.
The other thing that I've heard is the beating that the University took on the name change.
Oh, I don't think that has anything —
Is that —
Oh, I think the name change was—well, that's a separate subject to talk about, but it was a very unfortunate thing, that should never have taken place. Literally. The only reason it did, was it was out-growth of all the reorganization. And I asked Chancellor Caldwell, early on, I said, "Now, are they going to change the name at Greensboro? Suppose they did the same at N.C. State, what difference would that make?" He said, "Oh, none." And that's one he misjudged. I didn't tell that story publicly, because it wouldn't do any good. I just bored the brunt of all that went on. But, there was not much substance to that argument. It was all emotion. And it went away as fast as it arose, as you've noticed. But I don't think that had a thing to do with—you see, the actors were not the same people.
A different group of people.
When you had the speaker that—the people like Clifton Blue, Senator Godwin, people like that. They couldn't care less. They were all Wake Forest people. They couldn't care less about the other thing. That—don't diminish the sense of the impact of any controversial issue, on the psyching of a body. And they were just in a bad mood, an angry mood, a vengeful mood. And it showed up, right there in that very simple little deal. And I will—I'll never forget how shocked I was to find Clifton Blue doing this. He was a newspaper editor, of all people. And he never once ever said a word to me about that. And what's so interesting is that not one of the people who were involved in that thing, has ever mentioned that bill to me, at any time, for any reason, for over a quarter of century. Godwin, Phil Godwin, who was speaker, you know, and senator at one time, has gone out of his way to praise the University in my presence, at other times since then. And I think all of them have a sense of guilt about it, after it was over. I really do. It was just a bad moment in North Carolina's history.
Do you think it was a conscious—it seemed to have been a conscious effort, prearranged —
Oh, premeditated —
Premeditation.
From top to bottom. That was no accident. No, they'd gone and looked at other bills, in other state. And I have my suspicions about where they got help. And you do too, but I can't prove anything. So I don't name them. But I think he had as much to do with drafting that thing, as anybody. And because, it was just too pat. The thing was too nicely drawn. It showed where they'd looked at other constitutional questions. And as I had hired attorneys to look at it quickly. And they said, "This thing is no accident." It was as planned as anything that they'd ever done in that General Assembly. And they thought they had the horses by the—if we'd turned two people around, we'd beat them. And that really made me heart-sick that night. It's the one time I really felt like walking away. You know, I felt so rejected after that Trustee meeting. And I said to myself, 'Well, if I quit, I've turned it over to them.' You know? And that's no way to mend that. I'd let all of these faculty people down. And all these students whose tried to help. And its the one time that I felt an enormous unity in the University. There was really power there. No dissent anywhere, over anything. We went at them as a solid wall. And —
How do you think this fit in to this—1963 begins almost a
decade of rather intense
It all began with Dr. Graham's election. You've
got to go back there. The roots of all of this were planted right there.
Because that second primary got to be so violent, so intense, and so
full of hate, that it takes twenty-five years to dissipate that. And
that was a part of it, too. Don't discount that.
I'm as sure as that as I'm sitting here. Because I
was involved with it. And I think, well, two things have got to be said
here, Bill, one is: the University is a public body. It's
into things. And I always contended the University is the part of the
political process, but it's not in it as a partisan, and
never should be, and never should be thought to be. And
And certainly in that period, especially.
Whoa. When I look back at that now, I wonder how I survived it, physically.
Yeah.
Because I know it took an enormous amount of energy. And the strain of it was so great. But I had wonderful people to work with. You see, Ed and I, among all of that, you see, we had this HEW controversy hanging over us. And it hung there for twelve years. And that was enough standing by itself.
Yeah. Following the passage of the law, did your strategy remain constant? Was there a point, for example, that you believed that the law could be repealed, and then you later believed it could not?
The first effort had to be to try to repeal. That led, after some
debate, to the Britt Commission. Because the only way that we could get
structured to do it. When that didn't work out the way it
should have, and then the Trustees themselves took the position they
took. And Dr.
Did you think that the Britt Commission's solutions, the amendment of the law, to what extent did you think that was going?
Well, I thought it was a step forward coming back. And I thought we could do pretty much anything under the law, to tell you the truth, with the way it was phrased. It was ambiguous enough that you could work. It was all that could be gotten. Whatever you thought of, that was as far as you could push the thing, at that time. But I had in the back of my head then, that I knew that it wouldn't be long before somebody would file suit. And I knew then that's a different ball game altogether, when you get over into the courts. Because their line of decision was abundantly clear. And as you've seen since, on all these issues. The first real rupture in that was last week, in that CNN case. The first time I've ever seen the Supreme Court vary from the hard line consistent free speech position. Which I regret that decision. I don't know if CNN was right or wrong. I haven't looked at it that carefully. But, I just hate to see any erosion. Because there not many things left in this country that you can stand on without any fear. And one of them is the right to say what you think. But its getting more costly. And we paid a terrible price for it here, before we were through. But we've vindicated it. But, yes, this was a composite strategy. I always conferred with Bill Aycock, and John Caldwell, and our lawyers. And all of the people in the Board who were attorney's. We'd meet them from time to time. There always working toward any way to kill the starkness of that thing. And it's so harsh. And so inclusive. And meant to be, you see. I've often suspected that the drafters of the legislation put it that way so that as they lost cases, they still had some residual to fall back on, you know. But, when it got to the Federal Courts, it was all over.
During the Brent Commission the—or prior to the Brent Commission—I've forgotten the name of the organization —the accrediting organization, that sort of forced —
Emmett Fields. Southern Association. That brought on intense controversy. But you have to give Dr. Fields a lot of credit. He was in at Vanderbilt. And they'd brought themselves into this issue, to testify in the Britt Commission here. And divided their handling of it, but always was there as an increasing threat just to the accreditation of the University. I felt that they would—I never did feel they were ever going to take it away. Because I didn't feel like we would wind up that helpless. Because somewhere, somehow the intelligence of the State would come to bear. And I never will forget the testimony over there one day. Judge John J. Parker's brother, who was a Congressional Medal of Honor man in World War I, of all the speeches that I ever heard, that fellow was powerful. And he made that Commission listen. And they listened to him. And it shook them up.
You knew this kind of challenge
I didn't fear it as a ultimate consequence. I always had faith that somehow, someway we were going to reverse this thing. I didn't know how it become about in the end. There was no way you could. There was nothing to go by. You had no precedent in Dr. Graham's administration. And Mr. Gray's and I had looked at everything I could find. He was sort of making it up each day as you went along. But always aiming squarely at the removal of that law. And that's the one thing that never, never changed. Our determination on that part.
How did the composition of the Britt Commission occur? And was there ever a point at which you had some input into —
No. I was asked about David, whether I would be
I've read the transcript of the Commissions, and one of the—I may be wrong in this perception, but one of the antagonist in the University seems to be Colonel Joyner, is that an accurate —
Oh, he was the attorney. And was a very —
Inquisitorial.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. He was trying to prove that he was—I think he was a past Commander of the Legion, wasn't he?
I believe that's right.
Yeah. No, he was not what I'd call a friendly participant.
What when he had Fields, one of the things he was trying to prove, for example, was that you put Fields up to this.
Yeah. I had engineered the thing from top to bottom, and I didn't do any such thing.
Yeah.
Because you see, when you get to where reputable people start casting motivations upon you, what you did or didn't do, that's not sticking to the issue. That's trying to create a reaction. And that kind of stuff was hard to contend with. He's a very skillful lawmen, in his days. That was no accident.
And you mentioned 1950, having just read this book on Frank Graham, I noticed he was involved with that, as well. On the Anti-Graham side.
He saw it all the way through.
Yeah.
He and Robert Morgan. Wasn't he in the Attorney General's office at the time? When this was all going on? Or he was in the state legislature.
State legislature.
One or the other.
Yeah. I was going to ask you about Morgan
Robert Morgan, Colonel Jordan. They were a good system. Have always been. And I knew exactly where they stood. You read that testimony of Morgan's?
Right.
It told you exactly where he was.
He was part of that whole line up. The Britt Commission between the conclusion of the Britt Commission's last hearings and the point in which Legislature considers the matter—considers the question of amendment. There's a period of rather intense negotiation, I gather, —
There always is. I can't recall anything specific about it,
but we've never—once you've got that
Commission report out, you just couldn't do your other work,
you had to stay right with it. The difficulty was we had to get changed.
The other side could just sit still. They didn't have to do
anything. We had to overcome all of that accumulated
Sure.
You know, been in the press for weeks and weeks and weeks. And they just got abused by it. And they thought—Channel Five was not on our side at all. And everything, you see, was working against us, in the sense of pressure for a change. And it was really a pretty disheartening time to be dealing with an issue like that. But that's what makes it tough. And in the process its where you learn the rule that adversity strengthens the character of a man. We certainly got plenty of opportunity to learn that.
Did your handling of the crisis involve mainly the chancellor's?
Yeah.
And the key people on the Executive Committee?
The Trustees, the Chancellor's, and some members of the
Legislature, and the press. I kept them as fully informed as I was
capable of doing. Because I realized they were the one ally I had. They
could keep people, thoughtful people who
weren't—one of the real problems you have, Bill,
being a university administrator, is that you get so immersed in
something, you begin to believe that everybody else knows what you know.
And that's true about one percent. So, you have to drop
yourself down a notch and say, "Well, why can't I
get everything told the way that it should be told, from the point of
view being fair?"
I wonder if you could elaborate a little bit more on the nature of your contacts with editor's, the editorial page people —
Yeah. What happens in the case involving something as sensitive as this, you see they see it from their own interests. Because what you can do to an institution, you can do to anybody else, too. The Legislature—but they also saw it as something driving a nail right through the heart of the University, because it had to be a free—a place of free ideas, of free expression, and free debate, or it's no University at all. Each one of them had been to school here, or had been associated with the place. They'd been associated with the Daily Tarheel, or something. And they all understood this, very carefully. And Bill Snider, and Claude Sitton particularly—the News and Observer paper, were very strong in the advocacy of the University, and our position. And what we were trying to do. I don't think there was any major movement here, that I didn't keep them advised about. Because—not for my sake, but for the institution's sake. Because I knew, that—unless they knew exactly why Emmett Fields came into this picture, who he was representing. What his arguments were? Did I differ with him? What would the consequences be? All of that took an enormous amount of time, but it had to be done, because you would never understand the issue, if we didn't. Because your natural reaction when somebody like the Southern Association comes upon the seam, and they say, "Well, let's run those fellows out of here." They've got no business telling us what to do. When they were trying to get the position of saying, "We are your best friend. Because we hold the power that the General Assembly can't impact. We can take your accreditation away." Well, a threat is one thing. The fact is another. And you couldn't say to them, "Stay out of here." That's not our option. They have the right to do that. But you can say, "Let's try to work with people." And that's what I was doing. Fields and all of his people. And it took a lot of doing. But, a hard road.
The point of which you mentioned earlier that the Board of Trustee's, and Executive Committee, essentially reversed your position.
That's right.
Didn't support the position that you took.
Turned me down flat. Well, it was seven to two. Something like that. But a very decisive move against me.
Can you date the kind of origins of this vote? Do you think—
No. Well, they finally forwarded an index of the Trustee minutes that's available to you.
No. That's not what I mean. I mean, were there—do you think this goes back to the beginning of the Speaker Ban crisis?
No. This way long into the controversy. Because the vote that they took was over a yet further modification that Carlyle Sitterson had come with as Chancellor. And I was supportive.
Right. Right.
And anytime you go before the Board, I had to be the spokesman. But I made it very clear that this was something we were doing together. And it was smacko. And I think it was from that decision that the sidewalk incidence came. After that.
I don't think I asked the question very well, because what I meant was, was there a background, you think, of differences of opinion between yourself and the Board?
Yes.
That you were aware of?
Well, I knew where Mr. White would like to have come down. And Mr.
Barber, I think he was still on the Board. Mr. Taylor. I knew that I was
skating on thin ice. But I had no option. I had to do it. And I wanted
to. Because I thought this was another case of eroding the law away a
little more. You just keep chipping, and keep chipping, and keep
chipping. But when they came out flat, as flat as they categorically
know, then I knew it was all over.
Do you think—how do you explain it? Do you think the Board and
the Executive Committee was going to
I think they really believed it. I really do. Their
position—not the Board, but those who voted on it. But there
position was to keep these people off the campus, doesn't
infringe on anything. Your still free to do what you want to do in the
classrooms. We just don't want this kind of person speaking
on the campus. My answer to that was, "That's
precisely why you have the rule." You have people that speak
out that way, who are contentious. Who are argumentative. Who bother us.
Because societies must change. You have to know what the options of
change are. The one's who are extremist, you never go with,
but you need to know what their thinking, because somewhere between
where you are, and where they are, is where your going come down. And
how would you understand that, if you don't hear his case? I
said, "I don't agree with these people anymore than
you do. But that isn't the issue." Not accepting a
doctrine, what your trying to say is this is a free country. And most of
all, universities are places where freedom should be spoken. It stood
for it. You've got to keep these places open. I
couldn't win. We've been over that argument so
many times, they've just grown weary. And what I really
believe in their hearts, is they wish we'd never brought the
thing before. But Carlyle Sitterson and I knew that you can't
stop a movement like this. It's got to go. So, we just
marched right in and we knew what was going to happen. I did. I felt it.
And it hurt.
Could it also have been that although many of these people were great
supporters of the University over the years,
Well, the people who brought it on in the first place, you're absolutely right, they never—well, let's put it this way. They always felt comfortable with the University until some of these things happen. It was always a where they wanted their children to go to. They knew that it was right. That it was good. Not exactly knowing why specifically. But, you know, Bill Friday's over there. And Tom Pearsall's on the Board. And Watts is on the Board. And Victor's on the Board. Everything's all right. You don't have to worry. Now that element stayed together. It's when the strategy that was worked out by Senator Godwin, and those who supported him. And they got to some members of the Board that didn't operate at the level these others did, and pulled them away. And put them under intense personal pressure. Because keep in mind, that Trustee membership was determined by the same General Assembly that passed the law. And that was speaking with a voice that a lot of them heard. Some of them were up for reelection. I'm sure of that. And that gets to be a problem, you know.
What about the governors during this crisis?
Well, I had no problem with Governor Dan Moore. He was the principle all the way through. He was a judge himself. He understood this. He did everything he could to keep it in balance. To keep it—he was very helpful to me. He really was. He stayed out of it, in the sense of not using his office unduly to influence it. He had no sympathy at all for the speaker's. I'm sure of that. And he didn't think that they ought to be speaking on the campus. But he didn't step across the line. And he has never—he never once turned me down on any conversation about this whole quest. About where we should go. He did not vote in that Executive Committee vote, because there was not ties, so he didn't have to vote. He sought more clearly that most people, the damage this was doing to the University. Because he was getting it from everywhere. And being a personality that dealt in the national scene, he was getting it from there too. And it's like today now, when you take—I can't go anywhere in the United States today, without the first question coming up, "What's happened to North Carolina?" And that's a media identification. But, Dan Moore, from my point of view, he was an ally. Although we were not of the same mind, as to the academic freedom. His was more of a judicial orientation. Mine was the academia. He never once used any effort to influence me at all. He left me alone. And he was always very respectful, as I was to try and be to him. And that sort of relationship is much to be cherished. Because there have been lots Governor's who try to, you know, to box you in.
So, generally, he's a Governor that's just as consistent with his attitude toward you?
That's a clear of a beautiful illustration of the
man's personality. He was born to judge. Was always a judge.
And lived as a judge, in my opinion. He just had a tremendously
significant judicial manner that nobody ever flustered him.
You'd come in there with any argument that you want,
What about Terry Sanford? Did he have much of an involvement in any of
this?
Yes. In a way. He said that at the end of it, he would have vetoed it, if he'd had the power. But Terry was very helpful in every way. He never once—in fact, I don't know of anybody in the gubernatorial chain that had anything but the best willingness to help. They looked upon it as the University's argument with the Legislature. And then it became the University and the public. But, no, quite the other way around. They were all very positive. They had different judgments as to where it should come out, as Dan Moore did. But, there was never any—you never felt that they were manipulating in any way. A political game. Because actually in a thing like this, once the law was passed there was no probability what we gained to be had. Everybody got hurt in this one. It was a no win situation. From top to bottom.
Tell me a little bit more about your communication with student leaders. Were you in contact with anyone aside from Paul Dixon?
Nope. Because he was—well, the others got active and got interested, but no one communicated the way Dixon did. I had none him for a good long while. And we had a very unusual personal relationship, there for a president and the student body president. We were perfectly open with each other. We understood each other. He was a controversial figure on campus himself. But he saw, as clearly as I've ever seen —
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
We were acting with more emotion than reason. But he was working with attorney's, and I think they disciplined the thing as much as they could. But I admired him very much. It was a real tragedy when that boy was killed. A terrible loss to the State.
So, you had known Paul Dixon —
As a student.
As a student?
Yeah.
Before he ever became Student Body President. I did not get that involved with the Greensboro and State. Some reason that State, it just didn't become that great an issue. The Faculty Senate did its thing, and AAUP Chapter, but that was about it. The same thing as Greensboro. It was looked upon as Chapel Hill's problem. And I guess it was. At least they thought so here.
So that the nature of your communication with Dixon was to urge subtly,
or not so subtly urge
The purpose of the business was he would come and say,
"Here's what I'm doing." It
Do you think—this particular crisis seems to be a good example of a rather unusual you had to play as a President of a public university, particularly a public university in this specific historical context. Interpreter you had to bridge some rather wide gaps, as to what was going on over here, and —
Awfully hard. In fact, you don't—there was no way
if you set out to try to succeed at doing that, your going to fail to
start with. You don't—you finally realize that
there's only one course of action you can follow. And that is
to take the circumstance, try to judge the reality of it as best you
can, that is, where are the obstacles that have got to be overcome? Who
is the defensive structure? What's the best tactics? Or, what
are the best tactics to ploy now, looking strategically at this
objective? And then you just go at it as best you can. You
can't—that's why your doing that.
Because ideally, you see, your working with the press over here. Your
trying to persuade some Trustees over here. Your picking on going to see
a Legislator or two here. But an enormous amount of this time had to be
alumni associations. And AAUP Chapters. And faculty senates. And
you'd just wear yourself completely out, trying to get one
message. That's all you could do. And you keep all these
lines open, and all of them working toward that objective. And you hope
that its going to work out somewhere. But once you learn something like
that, this one will go faster than this one. And
You think that by the time this was over, that my perception is that there are other issues on the horizon, but even at the Chapel Hill level, or the Chapel Hill campus, there is a whole new degree of student unrest, that is beginning to appear that makes all of this seem —
Vietnam.
Vietnam and the unrest of '69, particularly at this campus, and some of the others within the system.
I've even forgotten what was in '69. Was that the restaurant workers?
Yes.
Well, that was all in the same
Right.
And, yes, those were very trying times. In fact, there was a ten to
twelve year span there, when we were not put out some very severe
crisis. And I'll tell you, it is very hard to keep a program
going while your dealing with all of that. And that particular issue
just moved the actors over into another arena. But the intensity factor
didn't diminish. The public factor didn't
diminish. The animus, if anything, increased rather than decreased. And
the extent of it—the spread of it all over was bigger. And,
maybe I told you before, with reference to the cafeteria issues. Howard
Fuller was the man who was leading the workers' side of this
thing. And I knew that he knew of all the controversy that was going on
with Governor Scott and everybody else, about the troops, or no troops.
And I've never met the man, but I give him credit for
avoiding, what would have been a very unfortunate confrontation kind of
thing. He took his people out of the
Is that right?
Running some kind of college over there. You might be interested in reviewing his point of view.
Yeah. I didn't realize he was in Greensboro.
He just dropped out of the whole activism cycle, at that time. I don't what or where he went. But he's at Greensboro, I think, running a college over there of some kind.
Did you—One of the—I guess the culmination of that conflict over the cafeteria strike was the intervention plan of Bob Scott. Did you see that coming? Did you see —
Well, you don't see it that clearly. Any of these things.
Your there, with living literally hour by hour. It wasn't day
by day. You didn't know where it would break out. And I think
the wisest thing that happened was the whole business of saying that the
personnel office would be willing to sit down, and go through all of the
job qualifications. You had problems there of reaction to supervision.
Hostility toward them—you see, all of these kinds of things a
president never hears. Or never knows about. Or nor
chancellor's as far as I know. It's just something
that should be settled down at another level of administration. But when
it boils over, you know where it is. And it was a part of the syndrome
of the times. It was going on all over the United States. And happily
for us though, it worked out the way it did. Because we avoided gun fire
and burning, and stopping school. And all of these things. We
didn't do a bit of. You've got to give
people—the participants a lot of credit here. I've
often felt Bill, that Chapel Hill, in terms of student self-discipline,
with all the violence that you see here, there is still something
that's very important here. And I think that when all those
thousands gathered out there in the mall of the South Building to Wilson
Library one day, and listened to the Chancellor and had their say, and
all of it worked out in a conversational way.
As a president of a system, and working with chancellor's, you would only be involved—you were only involved when things got —
Well, most of the time they'd call and we'd be
talking a long before anything happened. That's a problem.
And that reflects the personality relationship you have with each one of
these people. Happily, I was the one who recommended that John be in the
office with me at
I had a colleague of mine a while ago tell me that, at Greensboro, he remembered you appearing during their crisis in '69. And I think that it may have been, if I can recall correctly, in the wee hours of the morning —
Spencer Hall. Was that it?
That's right. The cafeteria. The similar sort of thing as Chapel Hill. I think, almost identical. ARA.
Yeah. I remember that.
And I think he remembers you, and in the early morning hours, Ferguson, Jim Ferguson.
I was there with no specific plan in mind. I just wanted to give him
comfort, that I was there. Whatever value that meant to him. It was
important to me, for my Chancellor to understand that there was no gap
here. That I was there to be used. To help him. To participate with him.
And to say to the others, you see, "You've got to
deal with both of us. And we're two different people, but we
have one common. And you know what it is? So, if you want to talk,
let's sit down." And none of these experiences did
we ever close the door. Because when you do that, you've
admitted to defeat, I think. Because if there ever was—if any
place in America society, where that conversational option should always
remain open, is in the university. And more so than ever in critical
stress situations. Particularly when people are beginning to harden, and
grow very bitter. And they slip off into camps of opinions. Which is
easy to do. And, it's again another one of those
illustrations of where when you are in a public university and you have
a visible executive on campus; be it chancellor or president, or both of
them, they more than anybody else have to keep in mind that the
professor in the School of Home Economics doesn't know
anything. So, now all this hurly burly that's going on around
your head, you find time to sit down, and say, "Look
colleagues, here's what's happening."
That's one of the reasons I went over there. Because I knew
being there was testimony to those people, although I didn't
say a word. He cares enough, this is important enough that
he's over here trying to help. And that's what
your trying to do. It's confidence
What if the Board of Trustee's and the Legislator's had trouble understanding the whole Speaker Ban question, they must have certainly had even greater trouble understanding all of this. Do you think the Speaker Ban had an effect of educating them toward understanding —
I think the Speaker Ban Law had the effect
literally. And you had to start feeling your way in the darkness. That didn't permit of hasty decisions which troubled some people. They would take the baseball bat and go at it. But in the end I think you always come out with a better level, when you've been as deliberate as you know how to be. And that's why so much time and effort went into these things. Jim Ferguson was as fine a human being, as I've ever known. As decent in a man. He was so decent that people took it as weakness, sometime. But when Jim Ferguson got his dander up, he could be as hard as anybody I've ever worked with. And that was because—it was not something borne in him, or me, I hope, so much of anger, as it was a massive disappointment. That people would sit down and find out what was going on. No, we had to win. You know, this attitude, "I'm in it." And I said, "We've got to drive the administration to the wall." Or, "Why don't you go and drive them to the wall? Don't sit there and be so patient with them. Your being too —" My answer to that is, if I can't do it the way it should be done, get you somebody else. You just finally come to that decision. And then that issue doesn't get drawn in. It was a very trying time. But when you put all of those things back to back, and look at the next ten years, you see, look how quiet it got. Not only on campuses, but all over the country. Mr. Reagan introduced a sleep title. Intellectually speaking. What troubles me about today, Bill, is that I think they are vastly misjudging what the academic campus student reactions are going to be if they go into the war. It doesn't have to have a draft to provoke this bunch of young people. The television set has made them so imminent, that they'll see blood, and death, and body bags. And they'll all immediately say, "Uh-oh, me." And you talk about reaction. And I fear for the day. Because that one will be very deep. And they'll throw over a president, like they did Lyndon Johnson. It can be done. You and I have lived to see it.
I'm wondering about Bob Scott's role in this. And—
Well, once Howard Fuller pulled his people out, it just dropped.
Yeah.
He didn't—as far as I know, now he could have done
things I don't know about. But he was not belligerent and
hostile. He was under an enormous pressure. I acknowledged that. And he
really tried to find a
He felt as though he had to act and had to —
Well, he really was fearful of damage in property, and the Governor has that option. Not for very long. He doesn't have it very long. If there had been a fire or something like that, the criticism would have moved entirely from the University onto to his back. And I understood that. It was just one of those things that you just pray for some rational solution. And it worked out the right way. But it just didn't happen. There was a lot of hard work in it.
But there was a basic conflict between —
Well, he felt an obligation to exert the power of the office. My
argument was just as it had been the Speaker Ban Law. Leave it alone and
let us have it. We'll work it out. We are working it out. I
didn't read Bob Scott as wanting to make a big display for
publicity purposes. Some of the people around him would. But, I gave him
credit though. And I understood why he was trying to do what he was
trying to do. Because he realized that thing was really loaded with
dynamite. But it just worked out. Thank goodness. But, if he had done
something much more dramatic, you know, like call in the National Guard,
or something like that, we would have had—I think now looking
at it, some people are just waiting on something to trigger here. Just
the way at looking the Persian Gulf right now. Just any little incident
would have set-off a
It was that tense?
It was that tense, really. And I think before your through, I hope you'll talk to Carlyle Sitterson about this. The man just not got the credit for what he's done. And I want to give him credit.
You mentioned earlier that compared to other campuses, Chapel Hill got off rather lightly. Do you think that?
Yeah. Well, when I—you see, when—remember what happened at Cornell with my friend Jim Ferguson? Or at Berkeley? Or at Michigan? Or wherever? We've paid the price. No doubt about that, but ours was in the arena of debate. A compromised conversation. And change. Never did we step across the law. And to that I give the students credit. We could have had a really bad thing here. Very bad. But here, this is what renews your faith in the kind of student government we had. The leadership knew what was at stake. And they didn't listen to them.
Did this affect—do you think it affected the position of Chapel Hill in Legislature very much, by 1969, say?
No. I don't mean it
So there wasn't connection between reorganization and this all —
Now, that had an entirely different generating base. When the University took in Charlotte, no one—and certainly I didn't anticipated the flow from one decision. I thought we were going to do it the way we'd done Charlotte. Systematic. Careful analysis, the study of the demography of the place. The land availabilities. All these things. We spent an enormous amount of time. And did a thorough job with it. The next thing that happened was there was a bill in the Legislature saying that everyone in the public university was authorized to give Ph.D. degree tomorrow morning. And I never will forget Louis Dowdy; over at A&T. He was a dear friend of mine, called me and said, "I want you to understand that we know that we're not ready to do this. And we know that its not the right thing to do. But you know, and I know that I can't resist this politically." And there he was being as honest with me as he could be. And when your dealing with people like that, you know, you respect them. And you know there's bound to be a way that you can put back into some focus. But that decision and what happened behind that with Asheville and Wilmington four years later, set off all of this business of name change, for everybody. Medical school arguments. Veterinary school arguments. There was a massive scramble for whatever you can get to further legitimation of the use of the word university. Not by the politicians, but by boards, and administrators who knew they were going to be judged some day for what they've done in the educational contest. And no one of them knew that what happened was right. They all knew that. But here, I think, it was an inevitable thing. Because when you look at what happened after World War II, and the huge numbers of people, and the pressure that that generated. And we tried to answer one aspect of it by building a community college system, and starting it in the '50s. And that's now ballooned to a fifty-nine institutions all over the State. We converted Greensboro to a coeducational institution. We made all of the four-year colleges liberal arts institutions. All of these were steps in the process. And it was the beginning of the inevitable confrontation with the Board of Higher Education, as we talked about last time. Because when you went from three, to four, to six, the issue was drawn. And then the General Assembly began to rebel that all of this pressure; which you know generated in part from Leo Jenkins' ambitions of the ambitions of the University itself, and its Board of Trustees. And then how the others who were involved was the administrators. They sort of tapped their little wagon on to the fray, and off we went. And, as you look back on it, you can only conclude that all of it was an inevitable thing. Because what happened in North Carolina is not unique. It's happened in every major State in the Union. It had teacher's colleges that wanted to be universities. It had ambitions for industrial growth that brought on community colleges. You see this replicated in every State of any consequence. Like California. Or Michigan. Michigan now has five campuses. California has nine in the university. And thirty s