[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

[00:00:00 - 00:07:12]

ANNE QUEEN:

In our last conversation we talked quite a bit about the issue of civil rights and the changes that were taking place in the South and in this community in the relationship between black and white, and the achievement of the rights for blacks. But there are some other issues that I'd like us to concentrate on this afternoon, and they may be actually related to the whole issue of civil rights. And these are some issues that would sort of come under the category of what it means to be free, and what it means to defend the freedom of people. This campus, perhaps more than any other campus in the state and maybe more than any other in the South, was a place where groups who many people would think are sort of alien to the South just sort of mushroomed. It was during the late fifties and the early sixties that some of the left-wing groups began to spring up. The one I think of first is a group that was called the New Left. It was organized by graduate students, and one of the graduate students who was very much involved was a Fabian socialist who had come to Yale. He had gone to the London School of Economics, was the son of a don at Oxford. He had gone to Yale to study psychology and came to the University in Chapel Hill to continue his graduate work. There were many people who felt that he came here—and his name was Nick Bateson—because he saw this as a more fruitful field for organizing. But anyway, he was one of the organizers of the New Left group. And there was Charles Parish, graduate student in Latin American history who was from Texas, a graduate student in economics from High Point …

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

Do you remember their names?

ANNE QUEEN:

I can't remember the names.

[Interruption]

ANNE QUEEN:

I'm sorry that I can't remember the names of the graduate students other than Nick Bateson. There was one undergraduate student who was very much involved in the organization of the New Left group. His name was Larry Phelps. He came from a textile background in Burlington. His mother worked in a textile mill. He was a very bright student, and he was a member of the New Left group, and then later a member of the Progressive Labor Club, which was organized by Nick Bateson and…Actually Nick was the only person who was not a southerner. Most of the organizers of the Progressive Labor Club were southerners. A student from Spindale… And most of them came from textile backgrounds, and they had become sort of disillusioned with life as they had experienced it.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

You mean they were the children of textile workers.

ANNE QUEEN:

Yes, they were children of textile workers; there were at least three of these students who were children… But there was another student from Chapel Hill; his name was Dennis King. He is the son of Dr. A. K. King, who was Professor in the School of Education and Director of the Summer School. And I don't think he was ever Dean of the School of Education, but he later worked in the Consolidated Office with Bill Friday. Dennis's mother was a sister to Mrs. Parker, whose husband was an Episcopal priest, and he had been very much involved in the radical movement of the Episcopal Church. He had been a priest in Chicago.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

He was active in the civil rights movement.

ANNE QUEEN:

Oh, yes, he's probably one of the best known personalities in the civil rights movement. But his wife and Mrs. King are sisters of Albert Coates. And this was a very difficult experience for the Kings, for their son to become so involved in left-wing politics. Dennis went to New York and was very much involved in the Progressive Labor Club. Larry Phelps went to New York. Larry and Nick and Dennis all married girls who had come here from the Memphis area. They had gone to one of the good colleges in Minnesota; I can't remember whether it was Macalester or… What's another good school? It's a good liberal arts school. Well, they transferred here from there. And I've always felt that one of the most ironic aspects of their transferring here was that when they first came, they were very much interested …

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

Carleton.

ANNE QUEEN:

Carleton; they transferred from Carleton College. They were very much interested in civil rights, and I believe they were all three Episcopalians. And they went to talk with someone in the Episcopal Church about joining the NAACP, and they were advised against joining this radical organization. Well, they didn't join the NAACP, but they became very much involved in the New Left Club and finally joined the Progressive Labor Club. And the three of them married members of the Progressive Labor Club. Larry and his wife went to New York, and he was killed in the Progressive Labor Club office in Harlem. He and his wife were the only whites who were in the club office that night. And I remember so well the night that I heard on the radio that Larry had been killed. The last conversation I ever had with him, we had a friendly but a vigorous argument about the use of violence for social change. Dennis and his wife were both injured later, but they recovered. One of the things that I remember most about Dennis, he and Larry and one of the other undergraduate students organized a trip to Cuba. Well, he first went to Claude Shotts and asked Claude if the Y would sponsor their trip to Cuba.

[00:07:13 - 00:10:39] (View excerpt detail page)

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JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

Was this just a group of people from Chapel Hill who were going, or part of a larger…

ANNE QUEEN:

It was a group from Chapel Hill. They finally went, and they joined a group in Canada. A Chapel Hill group organized the groups. And they went to cut cane.

[Interruption]

ANNE QUEEN:

Claude Shotts didn't want to say no to Dennis, so he sent Dennis to talk to me. And I said to Dennis, "Well, now, this decision is not mine to make. It has to be made by the Executive Committee of the YM-YW, and I will take that to the Executive Committee, but I'll be sitting in on that meeting, and my vote will be no. But I think the students should be able to…" [Laughter] He was so honest. He said, "Well, you know what we really want is we want to use the Y, because we want a respectable organization to sponsor us."

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

Was that why you said your vote would be no?

ANNE QUEEN:

No, because I just felt that if the idea in the first place was not initiated by the Y, that we shouldn't have a group come in and use the Y, and I told him so. But I was very frank with him about it, and I said, "If the students vote to sponsor you, I'll support them in it, but my vote will be no." And I said, "What you need is not a respectable organization; if you're going and break the law, you need a good lawyer." Well, that sort of ended it. But Dennis and I ended on very friendly terms, but I made my position very clear. When the Progressive Labor Club was organized—and I think this was Nick Bateson's idea—they organized in the community and not on campus, because Nick was very careful. He appreciated the Y's defense of his right to organize and to join organizations which he wished to, but he would never use the Y because he wanted to protect the freedom of the Y. So the Progressive Labor Club was actually never organized on campus; it was a community-wide organization. And, as I said in our earlier conversation, the real issue for me was to defend the right of these people to organize and to join whatever movement they wished as long as it was not violent. When I parted company with them was if they used violence as a method for social change. And I've reflected a great deal on this since Tom Hayden's campaign for the senate in California, and I think Tom may be right that the radicalism of the fifties and the sixties has in some ways become the common sense of the 1970's, as we look back now on where some of these people are.

[00:10:40 - 00:13:45]

One of the people that I knew in the left-wing movement here, who is still apparently involved, is Nick Bateson. Nick married one of the girls from Memphis, Valerie Armstrong, and they live in London now. And he continues to be involved in left-wing activities. I don't know whether he ever joined the British Communist Party, but he's been very much involved in left-wing activities in England. Was the London School of Economics or the University of London, was it shut down once?

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

There were a lot of British universities that were, but I don't remember.

ANNE QUEEN:

Well, he's been very much involved in the more radical politics. His major professor here, John Schopler, was a very good friend of his. And I sort of keep up with Nick through John Schopler. He sees Nick when he goes to England, and he sees the parents. And I used to hear from Nick's parents every Christmas. His parents came here once, and I had a dinner party for them. And it was very interesting. His father was a very eminent scholar in England, and one of the people that his father wanted to have at the dinner party was the older Dougald MacMillan. And I had Dougald and Laura MacMillan here that night, and of course most of the other people were people who'd been involved in the New Left Club with Nick.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

I get the impression that the number of people who were active in these radical activities, whether it's in the 1960's or the 1930's or whenever, is actually quite small.

ANNE QUEEN:

Oh, very small. Just last night I was at Bob Johnson's for dinner, and there was a girl who studied here from Bynum. And she became a member of the Progressive Labor Club. Actually she got involved in the Progressive Labor Club when she went to Union Seminary in New York. She first went to the Peace Corps in the Philippines, and then she came back and went to Union Seminary. And she came through one time in Chapel Hill on her way to Atlanta. And she talked about being a member of this group that was going to bring the revolution. And I said, "Well, this is very interesting. How many do you have?" And she said, "There are five members." This was in Georgia, and this was after the Progressive Labor Club had really begun to sort of deteriorate. But she apparently is still committed to this as a method of achieving social change. But I think they're pretty naive, but I say as long as they do not use violence I will defend their right to organize.

[00:13:46 - 00:16:05] (View excerpt detail page)

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JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

This question of how many people are involved in radical activity came up in the discussion in Hillsborough last week, when the jury was out during the play version of the Junius Scales trial. And someone asked Joe Straley, who was there, how many people he thought were involved in the Communist Party in this area in the late forties or early fifties. And he seemed to think that it was at most between a dozen and twenty people.

ANNE QUEEN:

Oh, really.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

And I wonder what you make of the very small numbers of people who are active in radical activity, and the reaction which those small numbers elicit from the population of the state at large.

ANNE QUEEN:

Well, it's always troubled me that there was so much fear in the face of this small group of people. I think in this community, and maybe throughout the South, one of the organizations that offered an alternative to some of these groups was the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen and the Southern Regional Council, though the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen was working more on the cutting edge at that time of some of the issues that the left-wing groups claimed to be working in. But I think it offered an alternative. I know that it offered an alternative in the days when Reinhold Niebuhr and Scottie Cowan and John Bennett and those people organized it. Because there were people in the church in the South who were turning to Marxism and to the Communist Party because they felt they had no alternative, and this group of people got together and organized the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

Which is designed to show that there is an alternative to Marxism.

ANNE QUEEN:

That's right, or to communism. There may have been some of those who were students of Marx and who were committed to what would be called Christian Marxism.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

But it seems to me that it really didn't make much difference whether the radicals or communists or other kinds of Marxists or even not Marxists at all, that the reaction to these groups is at times almost hysterical.

ANNE QUEEN:

Oh, it was hysterical. And you know, there were a number of people in Chapel Hill who demonstrated hysteria.

[00:16:06 - 00:20:27]

Colonel Royal was one, a retired Army colonel. And then Mrs. Emery, who wrote Blood on the Old Well, was another. And of course this was in response to Southern Conference , which was the organization… What was Dombrowski's organization?

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

Southern Conference for Human Welfare.

ANNE QUEEN:

Yes. The Southern Conference Education Fund was organized when the Southern Conference for Human Welfare folded up. One of the interesting experiences that I had during this time was a conference that was held here sponsored by the Southern Conference Education Fund. Ann Braden, while Carl Braden was in prison, was travelling for the Southern Conference Education Fund. And she came to Chapel Hill to organize a conference on the First Amendment. And she asked a number of us to serve on the planning committee. And I'd had an experience, when I worked for the Friends Service Committee, with Dombrowski… I think Dombrowski used people. And I have nothing but real affection for Ann, but I think Carl used people. And she called me up from New Orleans and said that Jim Dombrowski wanted me to serve on the planning committee, and I told her that I wouldn't serve on the planning committee, and I told her why, but that I'd be very glad to serve on what I would call a local arrangements committee. So we had a local arrangements committee which made all the local arrangements for the conference. And Mrs. Emery and some of her group picketed the conference. It was held at the Presbyterian Church. And one of the people who attended this conference and …

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

This was after Charlie Jones had left the Presbyterian Church.

ANNE QUEEN:

Oh, yes. And this was at the Presbyterian Student Center on Henderson Street. Tom Hayden was at this conference. And I felt, in the process of the day's proceedings, that a number of times the First Amendment was violated by a number of people who obviously were very rigid. And they, in the name of the First Amendment, were really very reluctant to have people who disagreed with them speak out. And one of the things that I remember is that Tom Hayden spoke up against the reluctance to have people who presented a much more right-wing point of view. And my appreciation for Tom …

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

You mean as a less left-wing.

ANNE QUEEN:

Yes.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

Can you give me an example—it doesn't have to involve directly either Jim Dombrowski or Carl Braden—but what you mean by being used by …

ANNE QUEEN:

Oh, yes. When I worked for the American Friends Service Committee, the Southern Conference Education Fund called a conference at Allen University in Columbia [S.C.]. And they sent out a call listing as the sponsoring organizations the American Friends Service Committee, the Catholic Committee of the South, and the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen, neither of whom he had asked. He had not asked any of them. And when Tartt Bell first called Jim, whom he knew, and told him that he just has not been asked and that the Friends Service Committee will not be used, a priest from the Catholic Committee of the South in Rock Hill called the same day. And Nell Morton was then with the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen. And so none of the groups had been asked. And so that was the experience that I had where I just felt that Jim would use groups if he could. But he failed in that.

[00:20:28 - 00:24:55] (View excerpt detail page)

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JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

How about the Southern Student Organizing Committee, SSOC?

ANNE QUEEN:

I know some of the people in the regionwide organization. Of course, you know SSOC was very much involved in the cafeteria workers' strike here. SSOC, for the most part, was all white students.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

I think that it was designed to be a kind of parallel organization for SNCC.

ANNE QUEEN:

Parallel to SNCC, that's right. I thought there were some pretty naive people in that, but there were also some people who were real dedicated. One of the people who's still in Chapel Hill and who was involved with SSOC was Scott Bradley. I have tremendous respect for Scott. And I think Scott came here as a very idealistic young man. He had been influenced by Bill Coffin at Exeter, I believe; he had gone to one of the New England prep schools. And he'd come here very idealistic, and I think he found this as a channel through which he could express his concern. And I think one of the tragedies of some of these left-wing groups is that the people who became hysterical or near-hysterical in their fear of these groups really intensified the radicalism. Do you feel that that may have been true, that the more they fought the freedom of these groups the more radical the groups became. And especially the young ones, because of their sort of rebellion against this hysterical fear.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

I remember being at a dinner party—I don't remember the exact date of it—but there were some older citizens of Chapel Hill present. And they were talking about the threat they perceived in giving the vote to eighteen- to twenty-year-olders. And this was the time when Nyle Frank was active in Chapel Hill, with his little organization with his little newsletter. And they actually seriously were discussing the possibility of Nyle Frank being elected Mayor of Chapel Hill. I still don't know what to say to people like that.

ANNE QUEEN:

Well, I don't know what to say to them, either, because they're living in such an unreal world. I happened to like Nyle Frank very well, but I just didn't conceive [Laughter] that he'd ever be elected Mayor of Chapel Hill. I find him sort of refreshing, in a way. Another organization—and it came along, and it's related to one of the issues that I think was one of the most crucial issues for the University during the sixties—was the Students for a Democratic Society. And of course this was organized before the Speaker Ban Law was passed. And in some ways the Speaker Ban Law, I think, was directed at SDS. SDS had more members; it had a larger number of people who were active in it than the New Left or the Progressive Labor Club. I don't know whether it had more than SSOC or not.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

Are you talking now of fifty people?

ANNE QUEEN:

You know, I can't tell you how many, but I think there were more.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

Even more than fifty, perhaps.

ANNE QUEEN:

It may have been. I don't know. No, the Speaker Ban Law was not directed against them, because they're the ones who attempted to test it. And I do believe that, had it not been for the insight and the commitment of some of the leaders in student government, that we might not have been able to get the speaker ban issue resolved as soon as we did. Because some of the leaders in SDS, I think, were more committed to confrontation than they were to resolving the speaker ban.

[00:24:56 - 00:39:53]

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

Was there any single incident which provoked the legislature to enact the Speaker Ban Act? I remember something about Herbert Aptheker.

ANNE QUEEN:

No, Herbert Aptheker was here to test the Speaker Ban.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

Yes.

ANNE QUEEN:

Jesse Helms, I think, takes some credit for the Speaker Ban. It was introduced in the legislature by a member of the House from Warren County, I believe. And you know, they suspended the rules and had a voice vote and passed the Speaker Ban without any debate. And there were some members who opposed the Speaker Ban who never forgave the people who really pushed it through. There was a Judge Hamilton from eastern North Carolina who'd been a [n I. Beverly] Lake supporter, who got up at every meeting of the Board of Trustees where they were really trying to deal with the Speaker Ban and talked about what an abuse of freedom this had been to pass a law like this without debate and having just a voice vote. I think that one of the most exciting times for me in the University was the effort to deal with the Speaker Ban. Dickson Phillips, who was formerly Dean of the Law School, and a physician from Charlotte named Dewey Dorsett organized hearings in Raleigh where they brought some of the most distinguished alumni of the University to testify against the Speaker Ban. And I attended all of those hearings in Raleigh, and this was really a very exciting time. The alumni of the University, presidents of the student body, and people who really cared about the University came to the defense of the University. Of course, the Speaker Ban was really directed at Chapel Hill; there's no doubt about that.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

Were there people here at the University who supported the idea of the Speaker Ban Law?

ANNE QUEEN:

I'm sure there were. I can't remember any that I can identify now. The person who I think brought the most eloquent opposition to the Speaker Ban of anyone in the University was Chancellor Aycock. He went up and down the state speaking against it. And of course a member of the state Senate who did an eloquent job of opposing it was Ralph Scott. He voted against it. And there was a senator from Northampton County named Perry Martin who had also been a Lake supporter who voted against it, and used every opportunity that he could to oppose the Speaker Ban. But then, of course, the Speaker Ban was tested by bringing Aptheker and Frank Wilkinson, but of course they were not allowed to speak on campus, and Wilkinson spoke at Hillel and Aptheker spoke, I believe, at Community Church. Charles Jones was by then… And I think Aptheker also spoke on the sidewalk right across from Hector's. And the cartoonist for the Charlotte Observer did a beautiful job. He had workmen with sharp instruments breaking down a wall and quoted Robert Frost, who said, "There is something about a wall that man doesn't like." That was really devastating. The papers in the state did really an outstanding job of oppos… And I think that during the Speaker Ban crisis, the North Carolina press was at its best.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

And not just the big city dailies, but …

ANNE QUEEN:

Oh, no.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

… the small town weeklies?

ANNE QUEEN:

There were small town papers, and I think they had a great impact on some of the citizens of the state who might otherwise have supported the Speaker Ban. But this was a great crisis in the life of the University, and Dr. Graham was in New York then. And during the time when they were really trying to resolve it, for about ten days he called me every night at ten o'clock. And he was always giving me instructions about what should be done, and how the faculty should become involved in this. And Paul Dickson, who was president of the student body, I learned later was a distant cousin of Dr. Graham's. And I think this state and the university owe Paul a debt that may never pay. Paul was killed in an automobile accident a few years ago. Of course there were demonstrations. There was a rally in Memorial Hall one night, and the students who were in the rally marched to President Friday's house. And I remember I was at the beauty shop the next day, and Jane Patterson was there, and she whispered to Ida Friday, "I was at your house last night." And Ida said to her, "If I'd have been your age, I'd have been there …

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

ANNE QUEEN:

Ralph Scott called me one evening to tell me that he was very worried about the University and all the bad publicity it was getting and that he would like to talk with some of those young people. And I said, "Well, Ralph, if you will be at my house at nine o'clock in the morning, I'll have someone here to talk with you." Well, the only person I could get was Paul Dickson, but they stayed for three hours, and Paul sat right there where you're sitting and talked with Ralph for three hours about why the students had to do what they were doing. And Ralph really heard him. You know, actually a group of students became the plaintiffs, and Paul Dickson was one, and his father was the publisher of a small paper, and he had owned several papers in eastern North Carolina. Paul was from Raeford. Paul Dickson; Jim Medford, who was president of the YMCA and who was the son of a member of the Board of Trustees; Hank Patterson, who is now a lawyer in Greensboro; they were three that I think of right off. And the girl who was president of the YWCA agreed to be one of the plaintiffs, but her family opposed, and she really had a serious inner conflict over this and finally withdrew as one of the plaintiffs. And you know, McNeill Smith and Jim Turner were the attorneys who handled the case. And of course it was declared unconstitutional by a three-judge panel. George Butler's father was one of the judges; Haynesworth was one of the judges; I can't remember the third one. But that's probably the most notable thing Haynesworth ever did.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

McNeill Smith told me that when he was preparing the case that he had a call or letter from Frank Graham, reminding him that back in the days when Frank Graham was a student here the students had invited Judge Butler's uncle [Marion Butler], the populist leader, to speak on the campus, and the faculty had vetoed this invitation. And the students—this was in 1907 or so—had taken the case to court and won.

ANNE QUEEN:

Yes, and that, I'm sure, made a great impact on Judge Butler.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

Today it's very fashionable to deplore the excesses of students in the 1960's and talk about how wonderful things are today, in contrast. What do you think of that fad?

ANNE QUEEN:

I don't share that deploring of the excesses. I think many of the students, as I reflect on them now, were terribly naive. But I think they made a great contribution to keeping freedom alive. I have a friend who used to teach at Mercer University in Georgia, and he's now at Wake Forest in Winston-Salem. And he contends that the only way that freedom can stay alive is that we continually win a new freedom by bearing witness to it every day. And even though there were excesses and there was just incredible naivete, I have deep appreciation for the contribution that the students made. And as Hayden said, I think that the radicalism of the fifties and sixties, now as we look back on it, could be called the common sense of the seventies. I was never afraid of it. And I felt that it was very important, and I think the Y made a contribution in helping to keep an environment in which people were free. As long as a group of students were open and non-violent, I felt that we had a responsibility to champion their right to exist.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

What do you think about the more quiescent atmosphere on university and college campuses now?

ANNE QUEEN:

I regret it very much. I'll give you an example of how things have changed, and regrettably so. During the height of the protest against the Vietnam War, you could get students' protest groups that would just be a sea of bodies from South Building almost to the library. And classes in many cases were postponed so the nature of the war could be discussed. I think it was the issue of the war that made Tommy Bello's administration as president of the student body. But I'll never forget that during the Cambodian incursion that Charles Jeffress and Buck Goldstein called me, and there were about a half a dozen of us who met over there that night, and, you know, you just couldn't arouse people. And then there was one other occasion in which Nixon… It was after Cambodia; there was another…

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

Oh, the bombing of Haiphong Harbor.

ANNE QUEEN:

Oh, yes. About two or three people telephoned each other and discussed it, but there was nothing that could be done. And I must say that I was rather surprised and sorry that students didn't get more aroused over Watergate. I don't think there was such an outcry as I expected, because I think there should have been. Were you surprised at the …

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

I'm not so much surprised, and I certainly regret it, how jaded some students seem to be, as if this is something to be expected.

ANNE QUEEN:

Yes. I just regretted it very much.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

Although I do remember, when Senator Ervin—I think it was only a month or so after the Ervin committee hearings were finished in the fall of 1973—he spoke in Carmichael Auditorium, and he packed the building.

ANNE QUEEN:

Yes. Yes, I remember that. But it was different; just to come and, in a sense, sit passively and listen to a person is different than getting out and really trying to exert some effort to give manifestation to outrage.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

You wanted to say something earlier about the case involving Michael Paul.

ANNE QUEEN:

Oh, yes. In 1965 I worked with the Yale Summer High School in New Haven.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

Can you say something about what that program was about?

ANNE QUEEN:

The Yale Summer High School was organized by Joel Fleishman and Richard Sewall and Charles McCarthy, and he was in the Admissions Office at Yale at that time. And it was an effort to bring to New Haven black students and some whites—but it was predominantly black students—who had potential but who had not realized the fulfillment of this potential. And the Yale Summer High School was different than most of the later Upward Bound programs in that it brought students from all over the country. And Charles McCarthy helped form the board. Do you remember Charles McCarthy? He was from Hartford, and he had gone to Yale and was Director of Admissions at Yale at that time.

[00:39:54 - 00:44:58] (View excerpt detail page)

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I was so impressed with what had happened in this experience that I came back to Chapel Hill, and the Y just happened to get some information sent to us by a student who had been active in the Y and was then working for the Anti-Poverty Program in Washington. And she sent me some material announcing the possibility of the Upward Bound program on campuses. Nancy Elkins and then Jean Luker came the next year, and we helped organize the Upward Bound. Michael Paul was one of the teachers, and that's how I got to know Michael. He was one of the teachers in Upward Bound, but just a brilliant teacher, and he really cared about his students. I've never seen anyone who could bring students out more than Michael could. And he was doing graduate work in Old English, but he was teaching as an instructor teaching freshman English. And he had his students to read Marvell's poem "To His Coy Mistress." And a student in the class, his mother …

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

These are freshman students.

ANNE QUEEN:

Freshman students. He was also editor of the Carolina Quarterly, and Leon Rooks had written an article in the Carolina Quarterly which was pretty sexy, and somehow Helms got hold of the Carolina Quarterly. I think the student's mother got that to him and then talked with Helms about the assignment to read "To His Coy Mistress." And Helms started a campaign against Paul, and Michael Paul was relieved of his instructor responsibilities.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

In the middle of the term.

ANNE QUEEN:

In the middle of the term, yes. And I don't think I've ever seen an issue where one person… Actually there were two people on the committee. A committee was formed to investigate the Michael Paul case, and of course you knew it became a nationwide case. But all of the networks had people here to interview Paul and interview people in the administration. And Michael was a very shy person, and he didn't like this publicity. All he wanted to do was to get this resolved and get back to teaching. And Dan Pollitt was sort of advising him; he was, I guess, his attorney, in a sense. And he called Dan and said, "Mr. Pollitt, what shall I do? NBC is out here and CBS is out here, and I don't want to go out and talk to them. What shall I do?" And so Dan told him to crawl out the window [Laughter] in Bingham. And then he called me that afternoon, and there was a group organized to deliver victory to Michael Paul, and they met in Gerrard Hall. And I can't remember what that group was called, but anyway they had a rally, and Mike said, "I don't want to go. What shall I do?" So I told him to come to my house that night, and I'd have a party for him. And they came over to give him a report later, Darryl Powell, who was a good friend of his. But the administration appointed a committee to make an investigation of the Michael Paul case, and the person who was chairman of that committee was Jim Gaskin. And it was one of the most beautiful reports that I'd ever read. The two of the people that I remember distinctly on the committee and who made a great contribution were Jim Gaskin and Dan Patterson. And there was one sentence in that report that I'll never forget. Jim wrote the report, and he said, "We wish that the people in the administration who made the decision about Mr. Paul's case had had the facts which we have as a basis on which to make their decision, and we don't think it was Mr. Paul's fault that they didn't have the facts."

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

So that it was someone in South Building who made the decision— before the report, that is—to relieve him of his responsibilities.

[00:44:59 - 00:55:21]

ANNE QUEEN:

Yes. And one of the sad things about this whole case was that Carroll Hollis was then chairman of the department, but he was on leave, and Raymond Adams was acting chairman of the department. And there's no one I am more fond of than Raymond Adams, and I have great respect for him, but I was disappointed that he… You know, he's a Thoreau expert, and I was very disappointed that he somehow didn't have the capacity to come to Mike's defense more than he did, because this was a real issue of freedom, and I thought… And, of course, after the recommendation of the committee went to the English Department, and the report was accepted, and they recommended that his instructorship be restored and that he be given back his class, and he was. But I think it probably did great harm to the University, because it was such a clear-cut issue of freedom. And here again the North Carolina press… And I think it was a clear case of intimidation by WRAL. And Jesse Helms would do a commentary on it, and he'd say, "Now I'm going to rest my case." And the next night he'd be right back on. And he kept talking about this story in the Carolina Quarterly which "dealt with the issue of fornication on a hundred-pound icebox." It was called "The Ice House Gang." [Laughter] Oh, it was just incredible.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

But if you hold the idea you expressed earlier about how the only way to preserve and protect freedom is to exercise it and to test restraints against freedom, then maybe the Paul case was a good thing.

ANNE QUEEN:

Yes, I think it may have been. And I don't think there's anyone who would have been more willing to test the restraints on freedom than Michael Paul. Oh, no, I agree, and I'm glad you raised this question, that they take a great deal of emotional energy, but I do think that all these issues were in the long run good for us, and good for the University, I think. Because it really does test the people who are committed.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

How many people are committed?

ANNE QUEEN:

I don't know. We don't ever know until we have an issue like this. I think the one thing about the Speaker Ban crisis that I was grateful for is that there were more people who came to the defense of the University than I think many people thought might. I think that was the most serious threat to the freedom of the University of anything that's happened.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

I'm thinking back to my own work dealing with the University in the 1930's and 1940's, when the University is under rather regular attack from conservative and reactionary people throughout the state and the region for its liberalism and its social activism, when really, all the time, this liberalism and social activism is espoused by only a relatively small number of people.

ANNE QUEEN:

Yes, it is.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

And I suspect that a large number of faculty members at any time support that activism and liberalism in a passive manner, but they're never really called upon to personally de …

ANNE QUEEN:

I think there were more people who were called upon personally during the Speaker Ban crisis than ever before. There are some faculty here that you could always count on like Joe Straley and Wayne Bowers and Dan Pollitt. These were people who would always rise to the occasion.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

I remember during the incursion of American troops into Cambodia, there was that general faculty meeting to which several hundred or a couple of thousand students were outside Hill Hall listening to the proceedings over the public address system. And I don't know who the man was, but he was a professor in the Dental School. And the motion, I think, on the floor of the faculty was whether classes should be suspended for one day to serve as some kind of witness by the University to what was going on in Cambodia. And this professor of dentistry argued something to the effect that if his students missed one day of classes, they wouldn't be the kind of dentists which the University …

ANNE QUEEN:

That meeting was in Hill Hall.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

Yes.

ANNE QUEEN:

Yes, I remember that. I can't remember his name.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

And his idea of education—or at least the education of dentists—seemed to be measured very much in terms of minutes and hours.

ANNE QUEEN:

Joe, I think really, as I reflect back over the issue of the Speaker Ban and the Michael Paul case, civil rights, I think that the press in this state has been one of the great defenders of freedom. And during this last presidential campaign, I've become very concerned about the American press.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

In what way?

ANNE QUEEN:

I felt that so many of the press, and especially television media, were nit-pickers. They kept charging Governor Carter with fuzziness on the issues when they seemed to be looking always for blunders which would give them …

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

The "ethnic purity" controversy.

ANNE QUEEN:

Yes, the "ethnic purity." And a good example of this was when he was in Miami, and I learned next day that he made an excellent speech on health care. Frank Reynolds reported in ABC news that night an incident that was so frivolous to me. He was to go to a supermarket, and he went to the wrong supermarket; that was the report of Carter's activities for the day. It didn't even mention the health care speech, and PBS the next night did excerpts from the health care speech and did an analysis of it. And this is the kind of thing that really did concern me.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

Especially since so many people do rely so heavily on television for the news.

ANNE QUEEN:

That's right. And I'm wondering. The Center Magazine has an article in the current issue analyzing the role of the press, and Donald MacDonald, the editor, wrote this. And he contends that the monopoly in the press is really doing great harm to the press in this country, and I'm inclined to agree with him.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

I just read in yesterday's Times that some Australian publishing magnate had bought the New York Post.

ANNE QUEEN:

I heard that on the news Friday night.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

What about the election?

ANNE QUEEN:

I'm very excited about the election. As you perhaps know, I was a supporter of Governor Sanford as long as he was in the race. I came to Carter maybe a little bit later than some people did, but I'm very excited about Governor Carter's election to the presidency. In some ways, I think it comes the nearest of being a fulfillment of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. I don't think I've been more moved than I was the closing night of the Democratic convention as Robert Strauss gathered on the platform Martin Luther King, Sr., Coretta King, George Wallace, oh, you name it, the people. It really brought together people who had been separated for years from the South by lines of race and economics. And as I thought about this, I feel that it happened only because there have been little groups in communities across the South working for years toward this goal, and I'm very proud to be a Southerner today and look forward very much. We still have the problems we had the day before the election, but the thing that excites me is that I think there's going to be a possibility for addressing these problems. Had it not been for the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act, I don't think Carter would have been elected. And when the blacks in Mississippi carried the state and the blacks in Louisiana, and, as Bill Moyers said, "Texas was snatched from the clutches of John Connally," this to me was a great victory. And what it says to me is that there's been a company of people across the South, and you're among them at Tougaloo, who have been working for this day, and I'm looking forward to it very much.

[00:55:22 - 00:59:40] (View excerpt detail page)

Read about this segment.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

… I can't think of anything else to say after that. There's been a lot of talk, of course, about how the South is finally, after a century, rejoining the union in Carter's election. What do you think about that?

ANNE QUEEN:

I don't know whether I'd put it in those terms or not, but I think there's been a kind of reconciliation. I like to think of it in theological terms.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

A lot was made of that back in 1912 when Wilson was elected. Even though he wasn't elected from one of the Southern states in which he lived, there was a lot of talk about how Southerners had returned to their fathers' house up in Washington.

ANNE QUEEN:

I like to think of it more as an opportunity for reconciliation. But I think one of the things that we must guard against—and I really hope that everyone who really cares about this whole country will guard against it—we must not become arrogant and smug and self-righteous, but continue, I think, to look at ourselves in a critical way. And I think one of the people who can really help us with this is Congressman Andrew Young, who, I think, has helped Carter arrive. He is in Washington today looking over the White House now, getting ready to move in, and …

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

I think Governor Carter has said as much, that the person most responsible for his nomination, and I suppose for his election, is Andrew Young. And he's of course said many times that the Voting Rights Act is the most important recent piece of federal legislation.

ANNE QUEEN:

And I agree with him. Did you see Congressman Young on "Issues and Answers" a week ago Sunday? He was asked about the Plains Baptist Church incident, and he said that the most segregated hour in American society is still eleven o'clock on Sunday morning. But he thinks the real issue of the Plains church is not whether or not blacks can go there to the eleven o'clock service, but whether or not the church will minister to the mentally ill, and Clennon King is really ill, and that he's ill because of all that he suffered in Mississippi when he was trying to help desegregate the University of Mississippi. So I think Andrew Young is a great leavening influence in this country today, and I'm glad that he'll be as close to the seat of power in this country. I don't know of anyone I would rather see close to the seat of power than Andrew Young.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

Now I should think that one great difference between Woodrow Wilson moving into the White House in 1912 or even Lyndon Johnson moving in thirteen years ago today, so to speak, is that Andrew Young and Barbara Jordan weren't there to help them move in.

ANNE QUEEN:

And of course, in spite of all that we may criticize Johnson for, Johnson was a member of this company that I talked about. Because he as a Southerner really pushed the Voting Rights Act. And here again, what many people looked on as the excesses of the sixties pushed him. And I think, going back to this question about the excesses, I think it's the excesses of the young and of some adults that push us to the point where we have to support change.

[00:59:41 - 01:01:20]

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

You do claim Lyndon Johnson as a Southerner.

ANNE QUEEN:

Yes, I do.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

There seems to be some question about that as some people perceive of himself, and think that maybe he even did, as a Southwesterner.

ANNE QUEEN:

Yes.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

Anthony Lewis in his last column—I think it was the day before the election—talked about Carter's plane flying back to Georgia, and the press corps in the plane singing "We Shall Overcome."

ANNE QUEEN:

Oh, really? You mean when he flew from Atlanta to Plains?

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

I think he was in California, and he was flying back to Georgia.

ANNE QUEEN:

Oh, really.

JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:

It's hard to think of that being sung on other planes with similar missions.

ANNE QUEEN:

Well, today is the thirteenth anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy, and we've come a long way in thirteen years. Thirteen years ago today the country was thrown in such turmoil, and little did any of us dream that we would be getting ready to inaugurate a deep Southerner for President who would take the position that Governor Carter has taken, and he's there only because he took those positions.