Religious discrimination fails to bother Cone
Cone ran into some obstacles as a result of his Jewish heritage—he was denied admission at a prep school and could not join a fraternity at UNC or play golf at a number of courses, for example—but he says that his religion never limited his opportunities or bothered him emotionally. What does bother him is organized religion, which he thinks has caused more harm than good.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Caesar Cone, January 7, 1983. Interview C-0003. 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
- HARRY WATSON:
-
Your family is Jewish, and that makes you a little bit unique in terms of
southern industrialists. Has it ever made a difference in your family
history, the way that you've worked in the Southeast?
- CEASAR CONE:
-
It never made any difference coming along here in Greensboro. The town
was pretty small, and my folks had been over here for a good many years,
generations back. My father and his brother were born in a little town
over in Tennessee. My grandfather emigrated from Germany in about
1820-odd—he was eighteen years old, I think—and
got married in this country to a girl who family was from Lynchburg,
Virginia, and they moved out to Tennessee. My mother's family
had been over here for some generations. My grandmother on her side was
born in Maryland in the 1840's or so. Anyway, I never ran
into it here in Greensboro. The town was small; we were rich. The first
time my family ran into it… My father died when I was nine,
and my folks thought I ought to go off to prep school, and Woodbury
Forest was considered the elite prep school. My brother had been to
Carolina, and a lot of boys in Greensboro had been
there. They applied for me to go to Woodbury, and they turned me down
and said I wouldn't be happy up there because I was Jewish.
This was Woodbury Forest in 1922. I didn't give a damn about
Woodbury. As far as I was concerned, I'd just as soon stay
here. I was fourteen years old. So I went out to Oak Ridge. I went to
Carolina, and all my friends from Greensboro and around were invited
into fraternities. No fraternity. Jewish. But it didn't
affect me too much. I got along all right at Chapel Hill and
didn't run into a problem down there, because I had all my
friends from Greensboro and met a lot of folks from the rest of the
state that knew my family and all. Other than that fraternity
affiliation thing, it really didn't affect me. I was Business
Manager of the Yackety-Yack down there my senior year,
got mixed up in politics, was on the tennis team, and other things. I
went to the Business School, and it didn't affect me up
there. I roomed with a non-Jewish boy named Shepard from Raleigh, a
friend of mine from school. My second year he didn't come
back. We had an apartment up there, and I roomed with a Catholic and a
couple of Protestants. In New York, the same way: my friends from
Greensboro were not Jewish. But in New York, I ran into it. I played
quite a bit of golf in those days, and I was invited all over the damn
district up there to play golf. But I had no place to take my folks, so
I joined a Jewish country club up there in New York just to pay back
some of my obligations to my friends. My roommate was a member of the
New York Athletic Club, which was only a few blocks from where we had an
apartment. He put me up for membership, and they wouldn't
take me in. This was in 1932 or '3. They didn't
take Jews in the New York Athletic Club, which is on 59th Street and
faces Central Park. It didn't matter
too much, because my roommate used to invite me over there.
I'd pay him for the fees and all. But it was a little
embarrassing to go to a place. It was nice; it had a swimming pool and
Turkish bath and all that kind of stuff. I didn't feel that I
should stay away from the place and hurt myself. What the hell. I
didn't like it too much, but… Down on Worth
Street, where the textile industry was, there were two eating clubs. The
head of our sales office was Jewish, a fellow named Dribbin. He was not
a member of the Merchants' Club; they didn't take
Jews. He was a member of what they called the Arkwright Club, where they
did. This was the eating club only, down there, where the executives
went to eat. I never ran into it much. Now I did run into the New York
Jewish community considerably. My father had a summer place up in the
Adirondack Mountains, and it was a hundred percent Jewish up there.
Those Jews from around New York City didn't feel comfortable
with anybody but Jews—in my opinion—they, their
relatives and children. I mean they had a Jewish lawyer; they had a
Jewish doctor; they had a Jewish broker. I mean they weren't
religious, but they just kind of ghetto-ized themselves as far as their
social life was concerned. And none of the hotels would take Jews, and
the ones that did were a hundred percent Jewish. This was the resort
places up there. Well, right funny. I was Treasurer twenty-odd years
ago. We had a member of our Board of Directors that we acquired when we
had the Dwight Manufacturing Company merger, Janson Noyes, a partner in
a New York brokerage firm. He had a place down at Hobe Sound in Florida.
He was a member of the Everglades Club down there in Palm Beach. My
brother and I were down there for a convention of
the ATMI, the American Textile Manufacturers' Institute. He
invited us to go over to play golf with him at the Everglades Club. And
somebody said, "Oh, heck, members aren't even
supposed to invite Jews to the Everglades Club."
Couldn't even have Jewish guests. This Noyes fellow evidently
didn't know it; he should have. So somebody told him and that
was right, so that was cancelled. Couldn't even have Jewish
guests there at that place. Now maybe that was the way it was at the New
York Athletic Club, but my roommate never asked. I guess
that's the reason I got in with him when we would go over
there.
[Laughter]
But it never bothered me. I married a Gentile girl, an
Episcopalian from Greensboro—her family was originally from
Alabama, but she was living here for years—when I got back in
here in 1938. I was never religious to the extent of going to temple
except once or twice a year, the high holy days, to repent for all my
sins. I'm not much on organized religion, I don't
give a damn what church it is. I think you've got to have
your own religion in your head. I think the Ten Commandments are pretty
good to live by, but I don't think that's the word
of God. They were some smart guys that wrote those things a few years
back, but what the hell. But organized religion, in my book, has caused
more problems on this earth than it's caused good. I mean
this Jonestown thing and this Islam crowd, the old Holy Grail and all
that stuff, and the Holocaust, and the Inquisition. I mean not just Jews
but hell, the whole damn business. I never let it bother me. I guess the
Jews think I'm a son of a bitch by not being too cliquish and
clannish or having married out of the faith, and I guess the Christians
think I'm a son of a bitch for having
invaded their premises by marrying a Christian.
[Laughter]
No, I mean it. It's kind of like my philosophy. I
think I'm too liberal for the conservatives, and I think
I'm too conservative for the liberals. I've run
into that problem in the NAM, the National Association of
Manufacturers— I was on that board for a while—and
the U.S. Chamber. I mean I'm pretty conservative when it
comes to finances. I think I'm somewhat liberal but realistic
when it comes to social things.