Working for North Carolina Mutual
William Clement describes his work with North Carolina Mutual. His father had first started to work for the company in 1906, in Columbia, South Carolina. William's father had a close relationship with one of the founding leaders, C.C. Spaulding. William describes his own transition into the company and his mobility within it. Finally, whereas earlier William identified opportunity for community involvement as a positive aspect of life in Durham, here he points to the economic and business opportunities living in Durham—the base of North Carolina Mutual—afforded him over the years.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with William and Josephine Clement, June 19, 1986. Interview C-0031. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- WILLIAM CLEMENT:
-
Oh, gosh, he was a member of our family. My father started with the
company in 1906, and C. C. Spaulding came from the country in 1899, and
John Merrick and Doctor Moore, they were both
involved - you know that story as well as I
do - and they brought C. C. Spaulding, who was the
first agent, the first general manager - he built
the company. He didn't become president until '23,
when Doctor Moore died, but he was the man who built it, and he built it
by really gathering people and giving them responsibility. He never
graduated from college, in fact he didn't finish high
school.
- WALTER WEARE:
-
Did he have a large influence on your father?
- WILLIAM CLEMENT:
-
Oh, yes, definitely. And he would come to Charleston when I was a little
boy, growing up. See, I was born in '12, and he was coming
there before I was born. And when Spaulding started coming from
Charleston, I knew Mr. Merrick. I was a little fella when he died in
1919, and Mr. Merrick and Mr. Moore in '23. And when they
would be making trips to Charleston, they stayed at our home. And my
mother would start cleaning the house two months before.
(laughter)
And I remember one day I went down to the corner for a loaf of
bread, and I came back with the bread - I
must've been about six, seven years
old - and he said, "gosh, the bread is as
large as the boy."
So C. C. Spaulding was a great man; yeah, he was my man.
They've never developed another man like C. C. Spaulding.
- WALTER WEARE:
-
Now, your father never came to the home office.
- WILLIAM CLEMENT:
-
No, but he was on the board. They wanted him to come to Durham, but my
father was very conservative. He was successful in
Charleston, for his day and time. He bought a little piece of property
there, and he kept it, and he was a man who wanted his
independence . . .
(End of Tape III, Side A)
[TAPE III SIDE B]
BEGIN TAPE III, SIDE B
- WILLIAM CLEMENT:
-
. . . Well, he retired in '49, and he died in
'56; he was still on the board when he died.
So C. C. Spaulding was just like a brother member of our family, and I
knew him. When I came to Durham, I used to drive Mr. Spaulding around,
on trips to visit people. He liked to go on field trips, and he had a
way of advertising: he'd sit in the car and he'd
have a piece of literature or something that he wanted to drop out so
that people could pick it up. And he developed a
technique - that he would know exactly when to let
it fall, and it would fall right at their feet. So people would pick it
up and read "North Carolina Mutual."
Oh, he built it, he built it. We've never had an entrepeneur
like C.C. Spaulding. Joe Goodloe and Kennedy and
Asa - Asa was a different breed. Asa was selfish,
and he built himself.
- WALTER WEARE:
-
So you knew Charleston firsthand; you knew Atlanta firsthand, you know
Durham firsthand - I guess, coming back to that
question of your coming to Durham: how did it first impress you? Of
course, I suppose you'd been here before, but, that is,
coming here to live . . .
- WILLIAM CLEMENT:
-
Oh, I was excited. Just the idea of coming to the home
office - now, my father did not want me to come.
That was very unusual. He knew the family situation better than I did.
My father was never really one to talk about North Carolina Mutual, but
he knew that there was a struggle between the Merrick family and the
Spaulding family, which really got the Kennedys involved. And he knew
that, and he thought that I wouldn't be able to deal with
that, and he thought that I should stay in Charleston.
But the reason why I left Charleston - I lost my
first wife. We'd only been married five years; she died from
cancer. And that was a tremendous blow. And I really wanted to get away
from Charleston. And then I got to Atlanta, and I enjoyed Atlanta. And
we were just getting started, because we had the baby to start with, and
then we had two babies in Atlanta, so we really hadn't gotten
into the social life, or the ongoing society, and so forth in Atlanta.
But Atlanta was just a fascinating place at that time. And Durham was no
Atlanta.
But Durham had so much business opportunites. It was Wall Street for
blacks in this country. And you had a cohesiveness. I've
always been interested in black businesses, and I still am.
I've never worked for anyone else but the North Carolina
Mutual. So that inspired me: I wanted to come; it was different. And
then on top of that, when we got here, the Durham
Committee -
- WALTER WEARE:
-
What Josephine called the Committee on Negro Affairs.
- WILLIAM CLEMENT:
-
Right. It was very active, trying to improve the quality of life, and Mr.
Cox got me involved in that immediately. And
it's still a very strong
organization - in fact, it's stronger
now than it was then, politically. But it had a political committee, an
economic committee, an education committee - for
five committees. And they were all working very hard, trying to improve
the quality. And downtown Durham was very conservative, very fearful of
what the action would be.
I liked that. Church life was very good, we had a very dynamic preacher,
the Reverend Miles Mark Fisher, the boys got involved in the scouting
program, Troop 55. They produced so many Eagle Scouts. We got involved
in the schools around here, Josephine got
involved - so we just fell in love with Durham.
Really, you never can tell, but I imagine we'll die in
Durham.
- WALTER WEARE:
-
So it didn't feel like a big step down?
- WILLIAM CLEMENT:
-
No, no, it felt like a step up. Because I always felt I wanted to be an
officer. In fact, I had ambitions one time of being president one day,
and got right up to the door. But that didn't disturb me
after I didn't get it, it didn't affect my loyalty
to the institution. I kept moving right on up. And then these
opportunities that I had for getting involved in the
industry - that was stimulating, to able to be on
the same boards with the president of Prudential and Metropolitan, New
York Life, Equitable, and so forth. And I knew people firsthand, I could
call them if I had a problem.