Remembering Les Dunbar and Paul Anthony
Wright describes two SRC leaders: Les Dunbar and Paul Anthony. Leadership of the SRC was passed straight down from one man to another, Wright remembers.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Marion Wright, March 8, 1978. Interview B-0034. 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
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
Les Dunbar came up through pretty much the same route that Harold Fleming
had come up through, didn't he? He was Research Director, I think.
- MARION WRIGHT:
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He was, and I think in that capacity he probably got out the
New South, which was the successor to Southern
Frontiers. He came there, I think, from Mount Holyoke. He was a
college professor, He came to us in this research and public relations
capacity. But when Harold Fleming left, he and Dunbar had become close
friends. They were both able men. And it was almost inevitable that we
turned to Les. He had attended all Board meetings; he was a very
thoughtful, philosophical kind of person, moved slowly but correctly
almost all the time. A thoroughly admirable character, and a very able
man. Like Harold, he was called up higher. The Field Foundation, with
which he had negotiated grants, had been impressed by him, and so they
then called him in as Director of the Field Foundation.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
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It sounds as if there wasn't much question about who would become the
next Executive Director down through these people. It was pretty much
handed on from man to man.
- MARION WRIGHT:
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It was. It was almost a hierarchy, and the power passed from one to the
other. Les's departure brought to the front another director, Paul
Anthony. He had been there, I think, as the liaison between the state
organizations and the Southern Regional Council; he was the contact man,
we'll say. I know that we had on the staff a certain person whose duty
was to ride herd on state groups and be of such assistance as he could.
Paul was an agreeable personality, lacking the
background of any of his predecessors. I don't know what his background
was, but the others had more than a dash of the scholarly about them.
Paul was eminently a person whose feet were on the ground, and
practical. So he never had the aura that his predecessors had. But I
think he labored as earnestly as he could to keep the Council going.