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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 C-0031, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
William and Josephine Clement were married in 1941 and first moved to Durham, North Carolina, during the 1940s. Both were born and raised in the South, had always been strong advocates for racial progress, and quickly became involved in community organizations, particularly in support of school integration. Josephine eventually was elected to the Durham City Board of Education in the early 1970s and became increasingly involved in local politics after that. In this interview, both Josephine and William discuss their family histories and cover a broad range of topics while doing so. Josephine speaks at great length about her experiences growing up in Atlanta, Georgia, during the 1920s and 1930s. She emphasizes the examples her parents set for her and her sisters. She explains her father's inclination towards radical politics, his efforts to challenge and break racial barriers, and the presence of strong African American woman role models. In addition, she describes her own education and her strong dedication to her family. William likewise describes his family background, but focuses more on his involvement with the Masons and his work with North Carolina Mutual. Throughout the interview, the Clements stress the importance of confidence and self-esteem for African Americans, as well as the importance of group solidarity in achieving progress for changing race relations.
William and Josephine Clement were both born and raised in the South. They describe their family backgrounds and education. Josephine focuses on race relations in Atlanta and her father's radical politics, while William describes his participation with the Masons and his work with North Carolina Mutual.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is oral history interview for the Southern Oral History program with William and Josephine Clement, June 19, 1986, at their home in Durham, North Carolina. Why don't you begin again, Mrs. Clement, and retrace our steps here.
All right. I was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on February 9th, 1918. My parents were Irene Ophelia Thompson, formerly of Columbus, Mississippi. And my father was John Wesley Dobbs, a native of the state of Georgia; he was born in Cobb County in 1882 but his family had actually moved into Atlanta in 1897. They were married on June 6, 1906. Lived all of their lives in Atlanta, and had a family of six girls of which I am the fourth. I went to school at Atlanta city schools until the sixth grade. I went to Morris Brown one year in the seventh grade and then entered Spelman High, but during the time I was in high school we had the consolidation of the university.
Now there were no public high schools for black children at the time in Atlanta?
There were, but they were not quite adequate. And at that time all of the
colleges ran their own high schools. I also went to private
kindergarten, too, because obviously we didn't have any public
kindergarten. During the time I was in high school they had the
consolidation of the various colleges into Atlanta University and they
gave up their individual high schools and formed the Atlanta University
Laboratory High School. I graduated there in 1933 and entered Spelman
College in the fall and graduated there in 1937. I went to Columbia
University the next year and got a master's degree in home economics
education
Meanwhile, in 1946—oh, I'll go back a little bit—I did teach at the
Morris Brown College in Atlanta for two years during that time. Bill was
1-A in the draft, didn't know when he might have been taken. He was
almost on the verge of going when Roosevelt declared a moratorium. But
anyhow, I taught those two years. Then my second child was born. I had
the first one, Bill, Jr., then Wesley was named for my father, Wesley
Dobbs. And he (Bill) was transferred to Durham, to the home office of
North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company in 1946. We moved here with
my parents. Didn't know very much about Durham; I had been here once. We
were driving through to New York. Of course
During that time, and in the long interval that I had (between children)
I did teach at North Carolina Central University off and on, and mostly
part-time. I taught around my family. I haven't taught in about twelve
or fifteen years. In 1973, I was appointed to the Durham City Board of
Education. In talking to Bill about it he thought it would be a nice
assignment, that I would enjoy it, particularly since it was not an
elective board. Two years into my term the legislature changed it and
made it an elective board. After much deliberation, because in 1975
there were not many black people running for office, and certainly not
many black women, we decided that I would continue. So I ran in 1975 and
led the ticket, there were eleven people on there, men and women, black
What's his name?
He's Dr. Cleaveland Hammonds. He came here from eastern Michigan. He's still here.
After ten years (on the board), and five years in the chair, and I guess
because I was sixty-five, I thought I should retire. And I came off the
board and in about two months was approached by the Durham Committee on
the Affairs of Black People, which is our social action committee which
had sponsored me before. Well, I might say, when I ran the first time I
was sponsored by the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People
which was seeking to get more blacks on public boards and the League of
Women Voters which was seeking to get more women. But anyhow, they asked
if I would run for county commissioner. Bill laughingly told one of the
children that it took me all of five minutes to make up my mind. So I
did run. This was different. I was not
Is he or she a strong candidate?
Well, there are stronger people. He seems to be a person who's not very well known. He's only been in the city two years and people don't generally know him, so. You have to be careful about things like that but he is not one of the better known Republicans, not one of the strong ones. So that occupies most of my time outside of the home. It's the focal point of my work outside the home because I've had to give up most everything else because it generates so much activity in and of itself. But it's very interesting and very challenging and I'm enjoying it.
Have there been women county commissioners before?
One. Oh, pardon me, by the time I came on there had been two. There was one black woman, Eleanor Spaulding.
How is she related to Asa?
His wife.
That's funny, I don't know her as Eleanor. I know her as …
Elna, E-L-N-A.
Wait a minute, I'm talking about Asa Senior and I bet you're talking about …
No, this is Asa Senior. She was the first woman, black or white, on the board of county commissioners. It's still a bastion of white males. Most everywhere you go to the meetings there are a sprinkling of blacks and very few black women on the board. But Elna, let's see, about the same time I was running for board of education, I think she ran for the board of county commissioners. And she served for about ten years. So it was her vacancy that they asked me to fill.
Had Asa been county commissioner before?
Yes, he was, for a short period of time.
He'd been the first black person to serve on the county commission.
Yes, he was the first.
William, why don't you begin then. Is it 1912, am I right?
1912 is correct, May 6, 1912. I was born in Charleston, South Carolina.
My parents: Sadie Kathleen Jones and Arthur John Clement. My mother was
a native of Charleston and my father was a native of Rowan County in
North Carolina. I went to a Catholic school for eight years, and then
from there I went to Avery Institute. Avery is an American Missionary
school. I don't know if you are familiar with the American Missionary
school. They started Fisk University and Tougaloo and so forth, but they
had secondary schools. And I finished Avery in 1930. I
John L. Wheeler?
John L. Wheeler, correct. And I worked with him. And then in 1946 I was
transferred and promoted to agency supervisor and I worked in the home
office. And during that period I worked as agency director,
vice-president. And then I became vice-president in charge of agency
operations. And then I also retired as executive vice-president in
charge of our field operations. I was elected to the board of directors
in 1962 and
Now, in connection with my extracurricular activities, I became involved as soon as I got to Durham, really, in the Durham Committee and also the Scarboro Nursery board which I served, and then got involved with the United Fund (then, it's now the United Way). And in 1970 I was elected president of the United Way, which was really the first black that they had ever elected to serve in that capacity in the South at that time, according to the research that they made. And we had wonderful success. I had a great team. We'd had problems in trying to really reach our goal during the late '60s and we decided to have a conference out at Quail Roost, a group of leading citizens, and we worked out a six-point plan to try to revitalize the United Way and we did. We implemented that program in 1970, and, believe it or not, we raised our goal that year and we have not missed our goal in Durham since that year. Last year, we went to around two million five hundred thousand dollars.
Then I got involved in the scouting. Our sons got involved in scouting,
and I became what we call a division chairman, and they used that term
during that particular period because that kept you from becoming a part
of the council. You were a part of the district and not of the division.
But anyhow, we finally
Then in the Durham Committee I became a member of the education committee and eventually chairman of that committee, and it was during the time that we were suing the city for separate but equal, that was the suit that was being heard. Thurgood Marshall was working with the NAACP; he was the attorney that came down. And in the meantime, in 1954, the Brown decision came down, so that eliminated that.
Then we started working on the matter of integration, and so, you know,
about what went on in Virginia, and North Carolina, and finally, we had
the pupil assignment law passed in North Carolina, and it was our
committee's responsibility to go into sections of Durham to get the
parents to agree to petition the school board for reassignment because
the kids were leaving that community, walking past elementary schools,
coming across to the black community. So we were able to get some of the
parents and finally after a long period of time, I recall the many
visits that we went up to the school board and I can hear the chairman
of the board, now, Mr. Fuller, saying, "Never! Never! Never!" And they
did a lot of things. They tried to start a double
Would this have been in the early sixties, late fifties?
No, this was in the middle sixties, I imagine. During the early sixties.
Josephine, are you on the board at this time?
No, she didn't go on the board until August 1973…
No, another era.
Yeah. There were no blacks on the board at all. It was really interesting. Some of the papers that I turned over to the Southern Historical Society [The Southern Historical Collection], some of the clippings from the papers, we were fortunate to have saved them. I had a very good secretary who really kept files, that's why my files, I think, were in pretty good shape.
So that was quite an experience. We finally got the school to approve six
blacks to be integrated and there were three members on our committee
and we took those three young students to one of the elementary schools
for that whole year. We alternated. And then we got the parents and the
friends, got clothes, remember we got clothes for the girls, and so
forth. That was another really thrilling experience. So then I really
retired more or less from the Durham Committee as chairman. I'm still on
their committee and on the executive committee.
I became involved in education through North Carolina Central. North Carolina Central was made a part of the university system in '72 and I succeeded—gosh, what's his name, the big lawyer—Chambers, Julius Chambers. Julius Chambers was a member of the North Carolina Central trustee board but he then became a member of the board of governors for the university system in '72 and I was appointed to fulfill his unexpired term, which I did. So I served on the board as trustee for ten years—almost ten, nine and a half years— and served as chairman of the trustee board for a period of almost five years. I was elected chairman of the trustee board; that was another very interesting and thrilling experience because we went through some trying times. The university litigation was in effect. You know about that case, and that lasted for a long period of time and finally settled it, worked out an agreement whereby the university decided to set up some goals and so forth. My term expired and I went off the trustee board.
Another very interesting time was the law school got into difficulty and
we were cited by the American Bar Association as to whether or not we
should lose our accreditation. So we were able to get Mr. Strong, he was
a professor at the University of North Carolina law school and it's
known as the Strong Report, and he came and took a look. We worked with
him on that. And they outlined some requirements that we had to meet.
The physical need was a big need because we were meeting in the old
library building on the campus, that's where the school of law
And Governor Hunt got interested in some of the things that I was doing, I suppose, and he appointed me to the State Ports Authority, and I was the first black to serve on that. We had the responsibility of trying to improve our operations in Wilmington and Morehead and I served on that board for about three, four, or five years. And when Governor Martin, who is a Republican, came in, the next day I was released.
In the meantime, I was appointed, when I retired in 1978, I was appointed
by the city of Durham to represent the city on the Raleigh-Durham
Airport Authority. The airport is owned by the four governing bodies,
the city of Durham, the city of Raleigh, the county of Wake, and the
county of Durham. And each agency appoints two representatives, so we
have a board of eight. And I
That brings us up to date.
Oh, I forgot about the Masons, gosh, I forgot that.
We have a family tradition there.
And that's the tradition, really, the connection. My father was a master Mason in Charleston, South Carolina. He was a member of the Nehemiah Lodge. I looked that lodge up the other day when I went down to visit the grand lodge of South Carolina.
But my father-in-law, John Wesley Dobbs, was an outstanding Mason and a
Masonic scholar. And we (Josephine and I) got married. I didn't go into
our marriage because Josephine related that, but we were married in
1941, December the 24th, and our office really was in the Masonic
temple, North Carolina Mutual regional office, and so I was going to
Georgia, we were making a tour through Georgia in 1941 celebrating our
30th anniversary and that's really when I met Josephine. But Mr. Dobbs's
office and we got to be good friends and so forth. And finally, after we
married, and having no sons, he talked with me about Masonry. He told me
that, "Bill, I know you want to be a businessman and you are dedicated
to North Carolina Mutual, and I don't want to interfere with that, but a
little Masonry will not hurt you." And so I accepted that challenge and
became a master Mason, was raised by him in his lodge in Atlanta, H. R.
Butler. And then
So I transferred to Durham and became a member of Doric Lodge, number 28, in 1946. And in 1948 I was elected senior warden and then in '49 I was elected worshipful master of my lodge and served for two years and that makes you eligible to become a member of the grand lodge. And so I started attending the grand lodge of North Carolina and in 1959 the grand master, who has the power to appoint some of his officers, he appointed me as a special deputy grand master and I served in that capacity for fifteen years until 1974. And then he retired as grand master and Bishop Shaw, Herbert Bell Shaw, of the A.M.E. Zion Church, became our grand master and he appointed me deputy. And he died suddenly in 1980 in Indianapolis attending a church convention, and I succeeded him to the office. Now I had to be elected. He died in January; our grand lodge meets in October. And so in October I was duly elected grand master of the jurisdiction of North Carolina, which is one of the largest jurisdictions in the country. We have 20,000 financial Masons. We must have a hundred Masons, but we have 20,000 financial; we have 18,000 Eastern Stars. And so we have a big operation.
That's really one of my big operations now. We're in the process of having our regional meetings. We donate to charity more than $70,000 a year. We have a scholarship fund of $25,000 that we give to North Carolinians who are finishing high school going into college, any college of their choice, and it's male or female. And what we did, we established an endowment of $250,000 and the investment from that. So it's perpetual; we don't have to allocate it every year and vote it. We just allocate the funds from the endowment. And the resources now of the grand lodge are in excess of two and a quarter million dollars. I'm glad you mentioned it because that's really been fantastic.
It's been an important part of your career.
Oh, yes. Particularly in the later years. I've always been involved in Masonry but since I retired and had the time and so forth to give to it, it has really been fascinating and we have a tremendous program, and we are now concerned about helping people. We have an orphanage that we give $20,000 every year. We've given the NAACP $10,000 in the last fifteen years. And we just made a special contribution to the NAACP in connection with their moving their headquarters from New York to Baltimore. And we also give funds to the United Negro College Fund and many other charities in the state and also in the country. Fantastic program.
In the future, there may be people listening to this who aren't aware that in—well, it really begins in the eighteenth century, what Prince Hall founded in 1787, I think.
Well, Prince Hall himself was raised to master Mason in 1775. He was born in Barbados and he came to Boston at the age of fifteen. In 1765 the British regiment was stationed there in Boston protecting their harbor and because of the tea and so forth and all. He was raised by the British regiment in '75. That was one year before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. But the regiment moved on, and these newly-made Masons had no charter. You cannot operate as a Mason without a charter. But he had the foresight to petition the grand lodge of England, because the regiment was an English lodge chartered by the grand lodge of England. And so they granted a charter in 1784. I had the pleasure two years ago of going up to Boston to see the original charter, African Lodge, 459. It's now in a vault; they only bring it out on special occasions. They have it sealed and everything and it's under security. But he had the foresight and so in 1790, the grand lodge of Massachusetts was established and he was elected grand master. And one of the landmarks of a grand master is to issue dispensations, and he issued a dispensation to establish a grand lodge in Rhode Island, in New York, in Pennsylvania, and in New Jersey. And so we trace our origin back to the grand lodge of New York.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
… King Solomon Lodge, number one, and it's still operating. That same
year we established another lodge in Wilmington, Giblin Lodge, number
two. And then the year later,
That's a nice little sidelight because a lot of historians in the future, scholars listening to this or reading the transcript, may not be aware that, as I was going to say, back in the seventeen hundreds, the eighteen hundreds, and on into the twentieth century, that there was a black organization and a white organization; particularly a lot of whites don't realize that there was a separate organization.
They have not come together yet.
Black history is very important because of the legitimacy of Prince Hall.
That's why whenever you see a grand lodge that's named—and Josephine's
father was responsible for this—in the forties, they went around and got
all of the jurisdictions to change the name of their grand lodge to the
Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge, to identify it because we can
trace our legitimacy to the charter that was issued by the grand lodge
of England. You did have three grand lodges in England back in those
times: there was the grand lodge of Scotland
Well, you're talking about the grand lodge of Scotland.
That's a legitimate grand lodge. That's a legitimate grand lodge, because we went down to Trinidad on a visit and my host was a member of the Masonic family, but his charter and history goes back to the grand lodge of Scotland, which is legitimate. But it's very important as far as black history is concerned in America, because this is the only charter that has ever been issued to blacks on the North American continent by the grand lodge of England. And so we feel that we are legitimate. So we refer to persons who are not members of Prince Hall as non-Prince Hall Masons. We don't call them clandestine but non-Prince Hall.
There's a pretty good history, a recent scholarly work, on Prince Hall …
Oh, yes. I have some books here.
… done by a graduate student out at the University of California, Berkeley. And then another done on fraternal organizations in general, looking at Odd Fellows, Elks and others.
Is there a counterpart for women?
Yes, they have auxiliaries. But you know, that's really a continuum from African history; they had those secret societies in Africa.
Oh, yes. It's interesting; we went to the Museum of Natural History in New York and we saw the ritual and so forth. And we went to Africa in '73, and went to Senegal and talked with some. And then "Roots," you know, they talk about it in "Roots."
And we visited a lodge in Liberia.
In Liberia, right. In fact, the lodge that was burned down when they had the coup, remember, we had visited that lodge. It was right there by the hotel. And I don't want to take up much time talking about it but that's a very interesting story because we went over there just to visit. And the gentleman who was there at the time, who was a Mason, he knew Mr. Dobbs personally.
Dad went over there for their liberation in 1957 when they declared their independence.
You're thinking about Ghana, Sweetheart, we're talking about Liberia.
Oh, yes, Ghana, right, OK.
This is Liberia. But he went over there, see, Liberia was free long before that and the Tubmans were all Masons, and Mr. Dobbs was very much involved with them and they made periodic visits. But anyhow, this gentleman knew Mr. Dobbs and he found out that Josephine was the daughter, he stayed with us all day and he was killed in the coup when Liberia had its uprising. He was killed.
He was a graduate of M.I.T.
Streak, was his name. That's another side, that's a story in itself.
Well, while we're talking about Masonry and your father, maybe now is the
time to make this transition and get back to talking about your parents
and your childhood and early memories like that. Tell us a little bit
about your mother and
Yes. My father was born in Kennesaw, out from Kennesaw, in Cobb County.
This is Georgia?
In Georgia, yes. They were poor farming people. His father died and his mother left the two children with the father's parents. She went to Savannah to work. So he grew up with that large family along with some of the younger ones. She did not forget them, though. He always said he could have stayed up there in Kennesaw, but she came back and got them. I presume when they were old enough to take care of themselves, because she had to work and they had to work. They went to Savannah first and then they came to Atlanta. He was fifteen years old when they came to Atlanta. My father was born in 1882. And he was able to attend the academy at Morehouse. Here, again, all of the colleges had their own high schools, and the academy was an outstanding part of their offering. He would like to tell stories about how he would get up early. He worked for a physician by the name of McDougald, who incidentally was a brother to the McDougalds here.
R. L.
Yes. He was the oldest brother in that family and he was a pharmacist. He
had a drugstore and it was my father's job to open it up in the morning,
clean it up, in the winter time to make the fire; in other words, to get
it ready for
My mother had a more middle-class upbringing. Her father was a barber and a businessman. He and his partner owned two barbershops in Columbus—one for whites and one for blacks. And they lived rather well for the little town of Columbus, that they had. My mother was privately educated and was a graduate of Union Academy in Columbus, at sixteen years of age. Got her certificate, her license to teach. But her father would not permit her to leave Columbus. He said if she could get a job in Columbus she could teach, but conditions were very bad.
Was Union a church-related school?
I really don't know anything about it. I'm sorry that I don't.
It no longer exists, does it?
I doubt it. I would doubt it, but that would be interesting to try to find out. But she graduated in 1901.
Do we have her maiden name?
Irene Ophelia Thompson, she was. And her father would not let her go out to teach because conditions were so bad for young unprotected girls, and particularly if they were attractive and my mother was sort of, I guess you'd call, a ? woman type.
Anyhow, she had a sister who was married and living in Atlanta and she would go up to visit her periodically and when her new baby was coming, and she met my father when she was nineteen. They married two years after that. They were very much in love. They had a marriage of fifty-five years. I can remember one day my mother said, "Just think, I'm seventy-five years old and my husband sent me yellow roses." That was her favorite. Very romantic. There were six girls born in my family; they had no sons. (My father was hopeful to the end.)
They were very musical, my mother and father were. I can remember my
father playing the piano. That was a great treat when he sat down to
play the piano. He played in a style of Scott Joplin. As soon as I heard
Scott Joplin's music, you know, when it came back, I thought about my
father and always that syncopated that kind of rhythm. He played by ear.
My mother was a trained musician. She had had piano lessons and she knew
how to read music. And so between the two of them, they kept up with all
of the music. They had a piano when they first married; that was very
important to them, to have a piano. And they loved music. And I can
remember when they would go to New York to see Broadway shows and would
bring sheet music back from all the latest shows. Not so long ago we saw
"Eubie," the life of Eubie
Was there ever any conflict between your father and mother over the style of music, because if she is classically trained, she didn't want the children playing syncopated music?
No, except I can remember my father putting his foot down on a radio—having a radio in the house, he said because we would not play music. Everybody had to take music lessons, beginning at seven. The first four took from a teacher across town. I think the last two took from Ruth Wheeler; here again, the Wheelers were our neighbors in Atlanta. They took from her, but everybody took piano lessons. Singing was very important to us. We sang in the college glee club; we sang in the church choir; whatever music was around, we participated in that. And of course, my sister, Mattiwilda, became a world-renowned operatic star and is still doing some concertizing. But all of us were involved. My oldest sister, Irene, was a very accomplished pianist. She was the only one who followed through with her piano music. She took music and French through Spelman. All six of us graduated from Spelman. Two have the doctorate degree, and everybody else had the master's degree.
In what fields?
Irene was in languages, and she lives here, incidentally. She's the mother of Maynard Jackson, who was the first black mayor of Atlanta. That's an interesting story; I'll come back to that. She taught French; she studied in France at the University of Grenoble and then again at Toulouse.
My second sister, who went to Jackson, Mississippi, got her master's from Atlanta University and became chairman of the language arts area at Jackson College, and there is a building named for her—the Willie Dobbs Blackburn building there on campus.
My next sister, Millicent, taught at Arkansas State and then came back to Atlanta and then taught at Spelman and she just retired in the last two or three years; and she is an authority on Africa, Afro-American history, African art. She was planning to make her eleventh trip to Africa this year, but because of the terrorist situation, she didn't go.
Then I'm the next one. Then Mattiwilda was next. And then my youngest sister, June, is in counseling; she's a marriage and sex counselor. She has her doctorate in education and a master's in counseling from NYU, and has taught at Tennessee State. She was married to Hugh Butts, who was a psychiatrist; they have since divorced. But June trained with Masters and Johnson, and she's now working in Washington.
So we were a very happy family. Spelman was an important part of our
life, because we went there over such a long period of time. And some of
our earliest memories—in fact, I was born in the infirmary on campus at
that time. For a period of time
Maybe we could capture more of Spelman, Atlanta, the myth and reality of early Atlanta.
Well, I had a happy childhood. Unlike some things you read, and as I have thought back on it and looked at it, I think the reason was because we were so severely segregated. We were really protected from some of the more traumatic experiences that some other people had. They had a large community of black people in Atlanta. It has always had a good, strong black community. And later, of course, as you got older, you ran into some of this. My father's philosophy was that you never accepted segregation unless you absolutely had to. That meant you didn't go to theaters, you didn't go places for amusement because there was no pleasure to go in the back door there. If you had to go on the streetcar to go to school that was worth the sacrifice. And he fought segregation for integration at every turn. I can remember when he decided that he was not going in the side door of the terminal station anymore.
This was the bus terminal?
No, it was the train terminal. And he drove up to the front door in his Cadillac and his driver, and got out and walked in the front door. I don't know, what year do you think that was?
I don't know, probably in the fifties. I can remember it, all right.
But everybody was horror-stricken, and all the black porters came to greet him and to take his bags, and he strolled through and went on back and nobody touched him.
This would have been, do you think, before World War II, that early, or would it have been …
It was in the forties.
Gosh, it probably was or late thirties, somewhere in there.
Mattiwilda—remember, she was on her trip back and he alerted Chief Jenkins.
He had a good relationship with … As Grand Master Mason, he had a rule that each Master Mason must be a registered voter, also. This posed a problem for people in rural Georgia trying to get registered. And so they would appeal to the grand lodge and my father and a big lawyer from Atlanta, the best lawyer they could employ, would go to these little places. Sometimes they were successful, sometimes they were not. Trying to help people get registered. Sometimes they were chased out by the Ku Klux Klan. Sometimes the Ku Klux Klan would come to Atlanta looking for him. But he had a good relationship with the sheriff of Fulton County, who told him never to open his door to anybody because they would have to serve a warrant through him, they could not serve it directly. And this saved him, I think.
How do you account for that relationship?
There have always been some good white people.
Not usually the sheriff.
Really!
Chief Jenkins was the chief of police.
I thought he was the sheriff of Fulton County.
I think it was Chief Jenkins.
But Atlanta has been an unusual place. It's been forward, progressive. But my father continued that through the thirties and forties, voter registration. There in about—when did they form the Atlanta Voters League, that was before we married and went to Atlanta—the late thirties?
The late thirties, because it was going very strong in 1940-41.
There were about four hundred registered black voters in Atlanta and my father and attorney Austin Walden, who was a Republican (my father was a Democrat). Let me say this: my father was a Republican all his life, as most black people were, to pay their debt of gratitude to the Republican party. He became dissatisfied with it, and in searching for something better, he moved to the Socialist party with Norman Thomas.
What year would that have been, do you know?
It was before Franklin Roosevelt, so that probably was back in the
twenties. Roosevelt came in the thirties, so probably in the twenties. I
think he said he voted for Norman Thomas twice. Seeking something that
would help people, would better them. There was not the connotation that
you have today with socialism. When Roosevelt came to office in
He was the last person to see Mr. Roosevelt at night, he put him to bed; he was the first one to see him in the morning, you know, because he was disabled.
McDuffie.
So he was able to get my father in, and of course, Mr. Roosevelt was a Mason himself, and they talked about forty-five minutes; they had a good conversation. So my father, as I said, stumped for Roosevelt. But then after Roosevelt went out, he went back to the Republican party. At the time of his death, he was vice-chairman of the Republican Georgia state committee. But anyhow, he and Mr. Walden formulated the bipartisan Atlanta Voters League. Built that up and then began going into other places to build up voter registration. When Maynard ran for office, that was his political base.
This is Maynard Jackson.
Mm-hmm. My oldest sister's son. He was the first grandson of these six daughters.
Your oldest sister, Irene?
Irene. There were no sons in my family, and I think the first three grandchildren that came were girls, and then finally this boy. At the time Maynard was inaugurated, I suppose my father's name was on more lips than Maynard's. People were saying, "Oh, if Mr. Dobbs were only here." I always said, "I'm sure he's here because he wouldn't miss this for anything."
What year did you father die?
He died in 1961, the year they integrated the schools, the city schools in Atlanta. But he was a staunch fighter, a civil rights fighter all of his life.
When you mentioned about the name: he always taught us not to accept anything less. The interesting thing now is I've lived long enough to see that reversed. White people will come in and say, "Well, hello, Mary! Hello, John!" Or, "How do you do, Mrs. Clement?" You know, if they don't know it's a kind of reverse. But anyhow, that part is all right. But he really gave us a sense of self-esteem and self-respect that so many of our black children don't get.
Did that carry over in the schools? You talked about the irony, perhaps, of the complete segregation giving you something of an advantage in this regard.
Yes, because we had black teachers in Atlanta and teaching and teachers, the whole profession was very different then—people took a personal interest. And maybe it was just the times. We've lost some of that now.
Teachers, I imagine, had prestige.
Yes, this is very true, this is very true. Because it meant that you had gone to school. Nobody ever asked you if you wanted to teach. If you were fortunate enough to go to school you taught; that was all there was for you to do.
But, I think of him so often, and the tremendous courage he showed, and
where he got his sense of self-worth, having been born in a barren land
up in Cobb County, reared by this
He also had a love of poetry. We have a letter in his handwriting that he wrote my mother. Do you remember that letter?
Yes.
Penmanship, English, poetry, everything—it was just a marvel. But anyhow, I had a very happy and very pleasant childhood.
Was he a religious man?
Not too much.
Was he out of a Methodist tradition?
Well, actually, his mother was Baptist. I can remember my grandmother
being in the Baptist church. My mother
I can remember that we could always take people home to dinner and being in Atlanta there were a lot of girls in boarding school from different places. We could always bring them. There was a place where people could stop by. He knew people like Adam Clayton Powell. Oh, he came in one day and we heard the piano going and everybody rushed in to see who this was and it was Duke Ellington, he brought him home from Auburn Avenue. He was very cosmopolitan, traveled a lot in his latter days. He went to Africa to the liberation of most of the countries that came about. And just thoroughly enjoyed life. He and my mother both, they had a very good life and lived it to the fullest.
I think we should switch over to and we'll come back because I would like to hear more about Spelman as an institution, your memories from that. And maybe something about sweet Auburn Avenue and black Atlanta.
And I would like to know, too, about the Klan. Were you aware of the danger that your father was in and was that …
Well, I was grown about this time, you see, by the time he was doing this kind of thing. But yes, there was real fear. I was talking to someone the other day when they were talking about terrorism and how glad they were it wasn't in America. And I said, "Oh, but we've had terrorism in America always." I said, "The Ku Klux Klan was a terrorist organization. The express purpose was to keep black people down."
But you know, by being in Atlanta, Atlanta was an oasis and really didn't belong to Georgia. When you got out of Atlanta, I used to drive from Atlanta to Savannah, and my mother would always hate to see me go on that trip but my father would encourage me to go. As I look back on it now, he didn't talk about women's liberation, but he insisted that we all prepare ourselves and we have education, be prepared to work, and he instilled something in us that a lot of women don't have. He wanted us to be married and to be good wives and good mothers and all, but there was a feeling there that women should have a certain amount of independence, I think, that was a little unusual for that time.
Do you think, while we are on it—because this is, I think, a key question that scholars in the future will be interested in—do you think that black women historically have been more independent, and why?
In whatever way they could. Well, they had to be independent, not overtly
but covertly, because the society would not permit black men to play
their rightful roles, and America has always feared black men. But black
women could say
Roosevelt declared that all persons who had thirty years of service could retire. They were trying to create jobs.
But then they blocked him.
That's why he went down to Warm Springs to talk with the president.
He didn't want to retire at that particular time, he wasn't ready. But when he got ready, they blocked him.
And he got to Roosevelt through the valet.
McDuffie.
That's intriguing. And it was at Warm Springs, Georgia, that that took place?
You see, McDuffie was a barber and he worked for Herndon in Atlanta and
when the president started going to Warm Springs, his friends there
wanted to get someone to come
And McDuffie had been a barber for Herndon?
Yes. He worked in …
This is Alonzo Herndon?
Alonzo Herndon, right, on Peachtree Street. And so, he kept on telling the president when he put to bed and so forth, "You know, my grand master's pension hasn't come through, yet." He said, "Well, the next time I go down to Georgia I'd like to meet him." He told him about his Masonry and so forth and all. So finally, that's when he made a trip down to Warm Springs and they arranged this appointment for John Wesley Dobbs to see the president, and he told him about this incident. And so the—
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
…Jim Farley (Post Master General under FDR). And they got the wheels turning, and the next thing he knew, he was officially retired and his pension checks started coming. What happened was, according to Mr. Dobbs's story to me, that he went into the mail service around twenty-one. So he was fifty-one. So it meant that he would get his pension beginning at age fiftyone and such a long period of time to be on pension, and that's why they were really blocking it.
So he was the Grand Master in the Masons at the same time he was working at…
No, no, this was a later period…He always did one or two extra things to earn money; he had a large and growing family and there really was not much that a black girl could do between teaching and nursing work, and he couldn't get summer jobs and things to help out. So he would sell insurance, sell stocks and bonds, whatever, to try to augment his income and help his family.
Did your mother ever get to teach?
No, and you know, after he died, Mama came here to live with me. In his
characteristic fashion, he had arranged for everything. And I found I
got to know my mother better at that time; you know, I was a middle-aged
woman myself, and I guess we could understand each other. She had never
written a check in her life, she had never worked outside the home, and
she'd clearly worked inside the home, because I can remember how Mama
used to sew, she used to fix hats, get these beaver hats in the winter,
straws in the summer, redecorate them and pass them around, the
different ones; and we laugh now, and say sometimes that when we went
out, Mama would have made everything we had on, except our shoes. So she
certainly worked, and did her share, but it was always in the home, and
this was part of the protective quality, I think. My father had lived
through the race riots—well, I can't tell you the disrespect that white
men had for black women, and he always tried to prevent any white man
But it sounds as if he were more protective of your mother than perhaps the daughters—you and your sisters—that he would encourage you to express yourselves…
After we were grown, and everybody went out, he kept his hand on everybody.
After you were grown and married
Did he see you and your sisters as having careers; was this ever broached as a possibility?
Well, teaching, that was the only thing that we'd do; and I think all of us came up more oriented to families than toward teaching. I think I always thought of my family first, and teaching around my family, rather than teaching and looking after the children;—fortunately, I was able to do that, and I'm very thankful that I was. We have a large family, we have six children, and they were spread out; so every time I went back to teaching, there'd be another one, and I'd have an interruption.
He was more the role model, then, than your mother, in your immediate family?
Um … They were very different; both very strong, very strong characters,
but my mother had a very sweet and soft-spoken way, she was a very
gentle person, whereas he was more forceful, and she was completely of
the old school, deferring to his wishes on everything, so that she never
had any problem there. But my mother was an unusual woman, in that she
worked in the home, we had company, I never heard her complain about
Was she a clubwoman; in addition to being an Eastern Star, was she in the National Association of Colored Women, for example?
Well, she was president of the YWCA, and I told this story when I was speaking to the YWCA on one occasion. I thought—well, they were talking about civil rights and integration, and I told them I thought the story of my family illustrated the changes that we had come through. My mother was president of the Phillis Wheatley branch of the YWCA in Atlanta, which was completely segregated. She took a great interest in the Y; I can remember, now, that she gave our Victrola to the Y. We had one of those, with records from Caruso to Bessie Smith. I came here, and somebody told them that I was the Y worker; I was not the Y worker, it was my mother, but anyhow, I couldn't get out of it, so they put me on the board there. And I didn't do a lot outside the home, then. I worked with the Scouts—Bill mentioned the Scouting program—and I had the Cub pack, I was a den mother, and I worked for the PTA, and so forth. But I did go on the board, and that was the time of integration: during the time I served on the board, they integrated the Y—the YWCA—and they put two black women on the central board, and each year, they put two more, to integrate it gradually. That meant I was one of the first two that went on.
They would have been proud of you.
Yes, but then our daughter, our oldest daughter, who lives in Potomac, Maryland, outside of Washington, has just finished a term as the president of the greater metropolitian YWCA. So I thought that was interesting, and told the story.
Do you remember black women in Atlanta who were leaders and role models, that you looked up to?
Yes. My mother had a black physician, with our last two children, Dr. Georgia Dwelle.
How do you spell the last name?
D-W-E-L-L-E. Georgia Dwelle. She had her own clinic.
Do you know where she took her training—at Meharry Medical School in Nashville.
I don't know… (to her husband): do you?
No, I didn't know her very well.
But she had a clinic on Boulevard, and Mattiwilda and June were born there, I remember.
I can remember black women in Atlanta as teachers, businesswomen,
clubwomen, like my mother, who presented themselves well, dressed well,
were leaders in the church, those activities. Atlanta was a great
society town; there were a lot of wealthy people, black people, in
Atlanta. I had a friend who I grew up with, lived about two blocks from
me, and we were classmates all the way through, whose father was a
physician. The mother had her own car (that's back when I was growing
up), and she would take us places. Not many black families had two cars,
and not many black women drove, in those days. And she
I think maybe we'd better finish up, and let you (to William Clement) have the mike for a while.
Well, I was just thinking, really, both of us have had really strong family backgrounds. My mother, as I said, was a native of Charleston, and she finished Avery Institute, same school that I had graduated from, in 1891. That's her graduating exercise program; I went back there and got it. My father, as I mentioned, was a native of North Carolina. He went to Johnson C. Smith; it was Biddle University at that time. And he went there in 1901.
And this is in Charlotte.
Charlotte, North Carolina. And he graduated from college in 1905. And he walked from Rowan County, which is about forty miles, to Charlotte, in order to get his college education.
My grandfather and grandmother on my paternal side were very strong persons. I knew them better than my maternal grandparents. My maternal grandmother lived with us, she worked for some white people down on the Battery in Charleston (that's downtown) but during the time that I was young, coming up, she did not work, and she really lived across town, and finally lived with us, and died with us, with my mother.
But my paternal grandparents, both of them were slaves. They were slaves
up around Hickory, North Carolina, and when the Emancipation
Proclamation was signed, they left the plantation, going north; they got
as far as Rowan County, which is about
Then he came back and gave a part of that land to the Presbyterian
Church, and he became a member of that church, and was a ruling elder in
that church, sixty-five years; until I reached the age of fifteen, my
brother and I—incidentally, I had one brother and one sister; both of
them are living—we went up there, my brother and I used to go up to
Cleveland to work with my grandfather on the farm. We got there in time
to lay by the crop, to do the last plowing and so forth, but our biggest
assignment was—he had customers that he furnished wood for, in the town
of Cleveland, North Carolina, and he knew—the grates in each room had a
fireplace—and he knew the size that we would cut the tree down, and saw
it back and forth. And then we would take
So that was a tremendous experience, and he told us a lot; I'm sorry now that I didn't really record a lot of that, because he was an unusually—and my grandmother was very unusual—she developed a cleaning business. I don't know if you've ever seen clothes cleaned using gasoline and salt, mixing. And those customers would come by and leave their clothes the first part of the week, and she would clean them and so forth, pressed them, and they would come back on the weekend and pick them up.
Kind of early dry cleaners.
Yeah, right. And then they were very religious, particularly my grandfather, and in the rural areas, they had church services every other Sunday, maybe at the Presbyterian church the first and third, and the Presbyterian church the second and fourth. But anyway you had church. The church is still there now. Incidentally, we still own that property. Been in our family now since 1870.
My father was a very industrious person. He always was very careful and
conservative with his money. And one of the first things he did, he
bought an additional farm for his parents, for his grandfather to farm,
in order to make a livelihood, because the tract that my grandfather had
bought was around eleven or twelve acres. But then my father bought this
hundred-acre tract, which was about three miles from Cleveland, down
going toward
Now, my father was very, very interested in extra-curricular activities in Charleston, particularly the YMCA. And my mother, incidentally, was involved in the YWCA. I can recall as a youngster, going with her—she was the president of the board in Charleston, and I would go with her—we didn't have a babysitter, so you had to go with your parents to a meeting. And she'd put me in a room, and give me a little something to do while she was in the meeting. Then my father was very much interested in the YMCA, and really, was responsible for bringing all of the concert artists: Marian Anderson, the Jubilee Singers, the Johnson Trio, Hazel Harrison—all these are names I just happened to think of—that's how he raised the money for the YMCA to support their programs and so forth. So he was a very interesting person.
But the Dobbs family, when I came into the Dobbs family, in 1941, as I
said, I had been widowed, I was only twenty-nine years of age, with this
baby of four years of age, the Dobbs family just took us in. I remember
courting Josephine—she was just twenty-three—I said, "you know, you've
got a difficult assignment, to learn how to love not just one person,
but two," and to take on this responsibility at that age. And my mother
really wanted this daughter to stay with her, but somehow, I made a
decision that she was going with us. And fortunately, it was a good
decision, and my father—I'll never forget—he finally told us it was the
best decision. We got married in Atlanta, we went to Charleston, got
Alexine, and brought her right back to
Family people.
Family people. And June and Mattiwilda. They were just teenagers. And they took Alexine over. And then we had these two boys, and the others came along.
But he had a very close family relationship, and I think that has influenced our family. We've been married forty-five years, but we have developed a very close family. They believed in educating; we've done the same thing. Our oldest daughter finished Spelman, went to the University of Iowa and got her master's in speech pathology. Then our son went to Morehouse College, and he finished his training and went to the Wharton School and got his M.B.A. The next son finished Morehouse, and he went to Meharry and got his M.D., and now he's an opthalmologist in Charlotte, and the other son was the first one to attend and graduate from the School of Design at North Carolina State University—that's a story in itself, because—by the way, he went to Deerfield Academy. Albert Manly, I don't know if that name rings a bell with you—he was president of Spelman, and they were trying to recruit some blacks to be principals up in New England, and so our son, really the youngest son, was interested in going. And so he went to Deerfield, and did very well, and when he finished, he went down to State, at the School of Design. And he was the first black to finish at the School of Design. And they did everything they could to discourage him. It was a five-year program, and I remember—
Architecture.
Architecture. And they called us over there, at the end of the third year, and wanted to know whether we felt that he was dedicated. Well, he hadn't failed anything. But they said, "now this is the expensive part of the educational program, and we've never had a black to finish it." But anyhow, he finished, to make a long story short.
What year was that?
'71.
'71. And they wanted to make a big to-do about it, the same dean that gave him all this trouble, they went back to the very schools to get their diploma.
And then they want to take credit for it.
Exactly.
And so he came to me, he said, "I'd like to announce that your son is the first black to complete this program." I said, "you'd better ask him; he's very independent." During that time, he was wearing a daishiki.
He graduated in one. Big Afro under his cap.
He didn't even want to march! And we told him we insisted, he really did it for us. So we told him, no, he's not the first this, the first that, he's just graduating.
Then he left and went to MIT, and got his master's in architecture, and he's in Atlanta now.
And they wanted him to come back and teach.
Right. And he's president of his firm, the Diversified Project Management Company in Atlanta.
A development company?
Yeah, he's a project manager.
Construction manager.
Construction manager. And our oldest son has his consulting firm in financial planning. He was appointed by—I'm talking about Bill, Jr.—he was appointed by Carter as the associate director for SBA, and worked with Carter when he was president, in Washington. But after he left the federal goverment, he decided to go into consulting business for himself, and he's developing a very unique business, and he's the financial advisor for the county, for the city of Atlanta. Maynard put a lot of this in place, because they had to have joint participation and so forth, and so he works with Robinson and Humphrey, and also Merrill-Lynch. Last year, they participated in issuing close to a billion dollars worth of bonds: water, city of Atlanta, and so forth.
So two of your children are in Atlanta now?
Two of them are in Atlanta. Then, Arthur John went into construction with a company in South Carolina for a while; then he went to Atlanta and started working, and now he's president of his company.
Then, we have these two girls. Cathy finished high school here, and she
went on to the University of North Carolina, and finished, majored in
psychology, and then went to Indiana University and got her M.B.A. The
summer before she completed it, she interned at I.B.M., and they
employed her on the
She's just completed three years.
Three years. Then our youngest daughter just completed her training. Now, she went to Madiera; you remember—
Right, the headmistress—
Right, Jean Harris. In fact, I forgot to mention that: I was on their trustee board, and was on the search committee that selected her. She was really a dual personality. (We won't get into that.) Anyhow, Julia—her name is Josephine, named for her mother; we call her Julia—went to Spelman, and got early admission into Howard University dental school, and just completed her server program and was conferred her DDS degree.
All six of our children fall into the same tradition that got established by the Dobbs family, and so we invested very heavily in our children's education. Fortunately, some of them were able to get scholarships. We could not get loans, because I made just enough not to qualify.
They didn't qualify very well for academic scholarships, and we didn't qualify for the financial scholarships.
So we paid every penny of their education, and not one of them came out of school in debt. Jody was just telling us how many of the kids in her class came out of school fifty, and sixty thousand dollars in debt. But I don't know how we did it; we struggled, we worked together and sacrificed.
Our high priority was education.
Right. Josephine said she did a lot in the home, a lot of sewing, like her mother did. She did the same thing for our children.
Right.
No joke. She sewed for herself, and for the girls, and always had what we called a piece of money. My grandmother said "go to Josephine and Mama for a piece of money when you get in trouble."
So we've had a struggle, we've struggled, we've stuck together. But life has been good to us. Every way you look at it, it's really been good to us. My grandfather—his story is just fantastic, what he was able to do, and my grandmother, particularly on my father's side.
I wanted to get back to the Dobbs-Clement tradition here. I'd like to hear more about this dramatic meeting between you two.
Oh, let me tell that!
It was Georgia State then.
So, what happened: Josephine was very much in love with another gentleman. So, she had a very good friend who was detatched, and her name was Dorothy Scott. Some good things come about meeting people at the night club. So, we went to the night club that night and there was Josephine and her friend, and then Dorothy and I. And so, I saw Josephine and I looked at her and thought, gol-lee: I got to meet that young lady. So Dorothy made the mistake of going to Havana, Cuba.
Yes, the University of Havana. She taught Spanish. We taught together at Georgia State.
She left that summer to go there. In the meantime, we did make a trip to Atlanta, and Josephine took her friend Dorothy up there. Mr. Dobbs—I was running around taking both of them out, and he said, "By the way, Josephine, who is Bill coming to see?" She said, "Dorothy."
Well, anyhow, Dorothy left, went to the University of Havana to study
that summer, and in the meantime, I had to go back to Savannah for a
meeting of the National Insurance Association, and we started going out
together. That was the beginning of it, and we started from that point
on. And I remember George Cox: he was there, and he was a very good
friend—I always looked up to him and he was really my mentor—so one
night, we were going home, and I said to him, "Mr. Cox, you want me to
drop you off at my brother's?" (That's where he was staying). I wasn't,
I was driving up seven, eight miles, like a thunderbolt. He said, "I'll
ride on up there with you." He's told that story over and
Bill was trying to get a chance to really spend a little time with Josephine, and there I was, "no, I'll ride on up there with you." And we'd come back together.
But you know, our courtship—in the meantime, I had to go back to Charleston, get Alexine. And bring her down, we had weekends—I have a letter in my file that our daughter wrote to Josephine when she was five. She wrote how much she enjoyed the weekend, and so forth. And as I said, this was a three-way situation.
Our courtship lasted six months. We were married within six months. And I think Mr. and Mrs. Dobbs kind of pushed it along. What happened was, when she finished summer school, I was in Atlanta, and we would ride and court every night, and come back drive up in front of the house and sit outside and talk. And I thought Mr. and Mrs. Dobbs were asleep. And so the next morning, Josephine said, "you know, Mom and Dad were awake."
I was a grown young lady, teaching, had a career—
So finally, I think she kind of said, "Josephine, I had agreed that we were going to get married, possibly at Christmas." [?]
My mother said to me one day, "I really can't understand where you and
Mr. Clement find to go every night."
We'd better say something. And so finally, I told Mr. Dobbs I'd like to see him. (His office was right across the hall from my office.) I was supposed to see him at three o'clock. He had a way of going home and sleeping, and Josephine told him to be sure to wake up at three o'clock. So finally he woke up and came down there, and I went across the hall to start talking. I never did get an opportunity to ask for her. He started talking right away; he knew what I wanted to do, what I wanted to say, and everything, and all he said was, "Bill, I want you to be good to Josephine, and if you can't treat her right, always bring her back home—see, I love Josephine." So finally, we went home to dinner, and Mr. Dobbs made this announcement, and Mrs. Dobbs didn't like it. Oh, gosh, you could tell. She's a very fine person, a lovely person—
She had been left out.
She had been left out. And so she said, "Well, it seems as though I should have something to say about things." And there I was, now—
She didn't raise up often, but when she did, she made her point.
So finally—this is September then—Josephine had to go back to Georgia State to start teaching, and so I stayed next door to a friend, and so finally, Mrs. Dobbs and I got together, and she would invite me over for breakfast, and we became perfect friends, and she was a beautiful person, and I'm telling you truly, I never met anyone better.
She didn't know Bill that well then.
No. Mr. Dobbs knew me, by North Carolina Mutual, but she just didn't know
me. And she didn't know who this guy was who after six months was going
to come and take away her daughter and didn't even ask for her.
Oh, they had some of the largest family reunions, that was a big thing. The children would all go 'round there, and she would prepare the food, and Mr. Dobbs would start cooking, and bringing people in to cook—it was just tremendous, really. So we've had strong family support, and I think it has encouraged us to do some of the things—and he was a man who never really valued money. He thought that he was a messenger. He'd say, "I am a messenger of God," and he always kept dollars in his pocket, go out Auburn Avenue, passing it to people needing money, that type of thing. And the grandchildren would come around, and Grandpa would have this roll of money, and they'd love that.
But they were fine people, and we really have been very, very fortunate.
Do you think that families like yours—my perception is that this was a small world in which most everybody knew each other, and that your experience is not—
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
I can remember my grandmother talking about Reverend A. D. Williams, who
was the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist
Are you talking about Daddy King?
Senior, right. Married the daughter of this minister, to whom he was assistant. The children in that family were younger than I was. But M.L. was—that's Martin Luther King, Jr.—was along with my sister June, and they were very close friends—not romantically—they went through school together, and always maintained a very close relationship. And we all lived in the same general neighborhood. They lived in the mother's home, the Reverend and Mrs. Williams's home, because they had this one daughter, and she lived with them after they were married. But then the Kings moved about a block from us, and after he and Coretta married, they lived in the Wheeler home, which was on the next street behind us.
John Leonidas Wheeler?
Right, he had died, and Mrs. Wheeler had come here. And she lived right around the corner; John got a house for her and ?'s sister. And of course my mother had come here; they were friends and able to see each other here.
He lived in the Wheeler home (that was before the city took it over; all
that area's cleared out now—urban renewal), and I
But my father saw him grow up, and heard him preach, and just became crazy about him, and predicted big things for this young man. And the attraction seemed to have been mutual. In fact, I have heard some phrases that M. L. used that my father used, that I think he got from him. But there was always the agreement that he would come when my father died, and participate in his funeral. He was up in Cape Cod, vacationing, when Daddy died. And he took a plane out right away, and he came, and he offered prayer at his funeral.
My granddaughter in Atlanta was writing a paper on Martin Luther King—she's thirteen—and didn't remember anything about Martin Luther King, and he seemed like somebody back in the past to her. So my son suggested that she call me and talk to me about some of this, and I was telling her some information, and found one of the funeral programs that had his name on it, and she was shocked to see this on her great-grandfather's funeral program.
I was going to ask, before I forget, about your father in Atlanta in the 1930s, about Angelo Herndon. I don't know if this name means anything to you or not.
Yes, I know who you're talking about.
May have been in the Communist Party; I'm not sure.
Right, yes, I started to say it, but I wouldn't.
It would be interesting to know what your father felt about that, having been in the Socialist…
Yes. I don't remember specifically anything about that. We were very close to the Davis family; they were naighbors of ours too.
Are you familiar with Ben Davis?
Oh yes; now, maybe, for the the record, we ought to state that Benjamin Davis, Senior, was head of the Odd Fellows.
Right. And editor of the Atlanta Independent.
He gave the dedicatorial speech here, when North Carolina Mutual dedicated its home office in 1921, or it was 1923.
But I know who you're talking about, but I don't have any recollection—
And Ben Davis, Junior, was a member of the Communist Party, wasn't he?
Yes, oh, yes, definitely.
And he and his father, I don't believe, split over that?
Yes, I think they went different ways.
Although I think the father continued to respect him, even though they disagreed politically.
Right.
But what I was trying to capture was that radical time in Atlanta in the 1930s, and how your father viewed that.
Right. I don't have any memories of Angelo Herndon and my father; I do know the name, and who he was.
You would have to really go back and know how it was with black people. I have read someplace—I don't know where I read it—that the nadir for black people in America was 1915. Now if this be true—because here I was born three years after this, my parents lived through it and all—in the '20s and the '30s, you were not very far away. Race riots that they had—I remember my father, being a railway postal clerk, had a gun as part of his standard equipment. I really don't know what they did in the race riots, but he did something in it; I was too young, I suppose, to remember anything about that, I really don't know when they took place, but I heard him talk about it. One day my mother had a younger sister who was visiting or staying with them, and a white man followed her down the street in his horse and buggy. He had, I guess, harassed her all the way in. By this time, she was weeping, coming down the street, and she ran up the steps, and he stopped—he had a horse and buggy—and ran up the steps after her. And my father came out, and that's the time he had his gun, and he told him if he didn't get off his front porch, he was going to blast his head off.
Do you remember that?
No, I don't remember that.
Well, he had probably lived through the Atlanta riots. He was in Atlanta
in 1906, wasn't he? 1906 was the year of the
Well, that's what I was about to say when you were talking about the
radicalism. It was enough to drive people to the extremes like that, I
suppose, although back in that time, they were not as radical. I
remember when I went to Columbia University, that was my first
experience in integrated education. We had white teachers at Spelman,
had them in high school and college, but they were women who had come
down from New England or those places, really, like missionaries. They
had given up their lives, they didn't have any friends in the cities,
they were people who were ostracized, they were quite pariahs. But this
was my first experience with going to school with white people. As I
look back on it now—it was so different from Atlanta, such a step
forward—but there was a great deal of hidden, of veiled, racism. For
instance: my sister Millie and I went together. We couldn't stay on
campus. We lived at the YWCA, in Harlem, on 137th Street, in the Emma
Ransome house, they called it, went back and forth. But the people who
were friendly to us, who extended a hand of friendship, were the Jewish
people, and many of them were Communists. Maybe I should say they were
the Communist people; the Communists really came after young black
students from the South, because you were just ripe for this sort of
thing. And many of them were Jewish people. Many of them were first,
second-generation immigrants.
Do you think that, in the '30s, ironically, perhaps, that there wasn't quite the same stigma against the Left that there was after World War II, in the '50s and '60s, with McCarthyism? Because if you think about what I call the old black Left, whether you're talking about DuBois or even E. Franklin Frazier or Abram Harris or Ira Reid, names that scholars you're familiar with—St. Clair Drake—they were all—Richard Wright—were either in the Party or flirting with it in the '30s.
Absolutely, yes.
So there was something going on there, and I was wondering if it was in Atlanta.
Well, it was because of the outreach, I think. Because they were friendly to you— it was as simple as that.
I was not really involved with that type of experience as far as to the
Left, because I really didn't get into New York until about 1939; made
my first trip in 1940. But I was very much aware of segregation, and we
had the same commitment in regards to not participating in segregated
places and so forth. We explained it to our children, and I can recall
that we had some problems, because their friends were going to the
theaters here. But for some reason, because of the explanation that we
gave, they decided not to go, and they were glad eventually that they
did not go. I had a personal
That's Chartered Life Underwriters?
Yes. And I knew what it meant to me professionally if I could qualify for my designation, but you have to get into a study group, and I tried several times in Atlanta to enroll, and because I was black, or Negro, I could not.
And I remember when I came to Durham, and I saw Dan McGill—I don't know whether that name rings a bell with you—but Dan McGill was then teaching over at the University of Tennessee, and was being employed by the University of North Carolina as the first Julian Price professor of insurance. He had come through the Wharton program, he was a Huebner fellow, and so forth, and as soon as I saw he was interested in the CLU program, I wrote him a letter, and told him that I would like to enroll, and he was glad to know that someone here knew about the program. But when he got here, he found out that I was black. It didn't make him any difference, but the problem was, the study group was going to be either at Duke or Carolina, and I could not participate because of segregation.
Well, all of those were kind of bitter experiences. But I saw the young
man, two weeks ago, who took the leadership—that was over thirty, forty
years ago—in getting me into the class: John Clayton, he was with
Prudential. And so finally, I got into the class through his leadership,
and finally qualified for my designation. And Dan and I became personal
friends, and he
I got involved, really, in the integrating of organizations not through protesting or radical approaches, but really people sponsoring me, and then after getting in, being able to make some kind of a contribution. That has really been my personal approach. You've done a lot of study on North Carolina Mutual, and we were able to do a lot of things that you didn't bring out in your book, as far as exposing North Carolina Mutual to the trade organizations because of my working with some of the leading marketing people, and C. C. Spaulding, and also George Wayne Cox, pushed some of us younger fellows, coming along. You made me think about it because you were talking about this matter of radicalism and protest. But I think a lot of it can be accomplished by learning how to negotiate the system.
This is Vivian Henderson's statement. I heard him speak twenty-five years ago, and he was saying: "the black man, if he's going to rise in the business world in this country, he's going to have to learn how to negotiate this system," and I think that has really stuck with me as far as my personal growth and development is concerned, and whatever contribution I was able to make to North Carolina Mutual, in trying to integrate North Carolina Mutual in some of the leading trade organizations.
We've only had one black on the LIMRA Board, the Life Insurance Management Research Association. I was the first one, and stayed on that board for a number of years. We went to many of the affairs together, and became good friends. Bob Becker—I got a note from him just about a month ago, personally inviting me to come back to the American College, for the dedication of a building there. They were trying to get all of the old directors to come back. You know Bob Beck, he's president of Prudential, and what they've done in developing that institution. All of these things have come about, I think, as a result of learning how to negotiate the system. I know a lot of people have been very radical, and we've made a lot of progress that way, and I think you need both.
What intrigues historians, though, is that you didn't know how it was going to turn out, that you were going to have this happy outcome, that there was going to be integration, yet you continued the work anyway. Now what really intrigues me is how both of you—and one could list countless people—kept from becoming bitter. How is it that you kept your sense of balance, that you didn't become so frustrated—what would keep you, after untoward incident, from just kind of going off the deep end?—and of course, some people have. Is there something special, do you think, that explains this?
I think there are two factors: first, a strong family. A strong family
can receive you back when you've been buffeted by the community. You get
your first sense of self-esteem from your family, and we were never
allowed to feel that
I remember once we were going down to South Carolina—Bill stopped to go in the office there—and I had Kathy—she was a little girl—in the car, and she got restless, and I got out and walked along the sidewalk with her. This elderly black man came up to me and said, "pardon me, Miss, but are you from around here?" I said, "no, I'm not." He said, "I didn't think so. I just watched you going down the street with your head held high and your good clothes on." And I didn't even think I had good clothes on—just traveling in the car, you know—nor was I aware that I had my head held high. These were the things that the family gave us.
And the second was: enough economic security not to have to be at the beck and call of everybody and everything. You didn't have to worry about survival, you could develop yourself and get your education. And so I think it gave us a base to withstand some of those things.
Another thing to consider, Jo: I don't think we ever had our conflicts in
the presence of white people. We had enough intelligence to carry on
some kind of conversation, and regardless of what direction it went— we
weren't an authority and all that—but at least you had an opinion, you
could have solved what was being said, and you could make a
contribution. And people were just amazed. White people were just amazed
that
I always found out that you and the white man, on one-on-one, he would
deal with you. But if you came in a mass, then he became frightened. And
I remember Whitney Young making a statement—he was executive director of
the Urban League—he said, "Yes, we need Jesse Jackson, we need Martin
Luther King, we need McKissick, and
We have always been strong advocates of equality, not only for ourselves, but for everybody. You felt like you were a committee of one for the whole black race—that's what my father always told us.
I remember we were down at Montgomery, Alabama, when they were having the Montgomery boycott; we had a district down there, and Mr. Kennedy—this is Bill Kennedy's father; he'd just been elected president—and our manager was very much involved. And we went to that meeting that night.
This is that famous boycott that came about in 1955?
Oh yes, absolutely. Rosa Parks. And we went to that meeting, and we got
involved in it, Mr. Kennedy made a contribution, we contributed (not in
the name of the company); we
This is Albany, Georgia.
Albany, Georgia. That's the only failure that Martin Luther King had. He left there and went on to Birmingham where he met with great success eventually, and many times, I was in Birmingham when he was there, conducting these marches and so forth, there at the church. What was the name of that church?
Dexter Avenue.
No, that was Montgomery. But Sixteenth Street where the kids got bombed.
Oh, yes.
But we were involved. Personally, I think you need all types to bring about any progress. We play a role, you play a role, you bring it all together, and as a team, you move forward.
Josephine, you ought to really tell about your experience with Governor Hunt. I think that is very unique.
I'd like to get to that. I'm thinking that at some points in your life, though, you must have grown introspective and thought about, with your education and your intelligence: if I were a white person, I would be at Prudential, or there wouldn't be this question about the CLU, or whatever. How would you handle that, internally?
Well, you do think about it, but I don't ever remember it being a problem that you brood over, or feel badly.
Do you know people who do brood over that, and would it ultimately destroy them?
Well, I think with the high incidence of mental illness and drug abuse there must be people—I think those are reasons. I can remember my father taking us to New York, to Chicago, all through New England to see the historic spots, to see how people lived, and see places where there was no segregation. And I can also remember going in stores, and the clerk trying to get you to come to the back of the store, and he'd say, "no, I want to sit right here." And he'd sit down in front. We'd stop at a gas station, and it was always understood that he was not going to buy any gas unless they'd let you use the restroom.
But you remember the incident we had going to Atlanta. Remember, we went to Atlanta, and I stopped to get some gas?
Mm-hmm.
Around Spartanburg, South Carolina. And you and the children got up to go around to the restroom. And the fellow hollered, said you couldn't go in there?
Mm-hmm.
And I told him, "Stop that gas." And I paid whatever it was—about a dollar. I didn't know what he was going to do—it was Spartanburg, South Carolina. And as a result of that incident, we never let our tank get more than half empty.
Sometimes, you may have to give up and get gas.
Back in those days, they had "White Men," "White Women," and "Colored." They finally got to that point. Are you familiar with that?
Sure.
So I think one or two times, we had to submit ourselves to that, because of necessity. But we fought it on an individual basis wherever we went. I never accepted that, to be honest with you.
The only time that I swallowed, really, an insult, was when I attended the first meeting of the Life Insurance Management Agency Association in 1947 at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago. I never will forget it. We were going for the first time, we had just been admitted. And the managing director called us backstage. Dave Deans and I went. And they said that they hoped that we would not attend the banquet. (to Josephine): You remember I called you from Chicago that night? I was ready to come back home. And I said, "well, North Carolina Mutual needs this membership." We had struggled so hard to get it—it took us several years to get it, they kept on deferring, deferring, and so forth—and I finally stayed in Chicago, and went to the open meetings, but not the social affairs. You talk about bitter—but then, eventually—
You came to be on the board!
Eventually, in Toronto, Canada (the headline was in the paper—I don't know if I turned those papers over or not)—the headlines that "blacks elected to the LIMRA board for the first time." And I felt vindicated.
You know, when Arthur John, the architect, was trying to draw—he was trying to draw a building plan for North Carolina Mutual, he always wanted to be an architect—I was trying to get some drawing lessons, some art lessons someplace, and I called all around: the college didn't have any provisions for children and whatnot. I called what was known as Allied Arts—it's the Durham Arts Council now. I told them, "We're a black family, and I have a son who is interested in drawing; I would like to get some art lessons for him," and there was this kind of pause, and she said, well, she would have to get back in touch with me. Well, she was a volunteer on the telephone, she couldn't say anything, and it turned out to have been Mary Hill, who is the wife of Watts Hill, Jr. She went back and told Watts, and Watts talked to Bill about it—they knew each other. And he tried to get it going, but they were getting ready to have a fund-raiser, they were afraid to rock the boat and they were getting ready to go before the public. Well, you know, it came to the point, in years later, that I was asked to serve on the board. These are the things that Bill was talking about: it's a sacrifice, if it's worth it. And if you're on the inside, you can open up for other people.
But first you've got to get on the inside.
You've got to butt your head against the wall, and if you are one of those, sometimes—
Now the Arts Council is supporting you as county commisssioner.
Right, and I served on the North Carolina Arts Council.
Let me tell you this about Jim Hunt, because I've got to go—there's a North Carolina Federation of Women's Clubs meeting, and I'm bringing greetings from the county. I worked very closely with Jim Hunt in two campaigns. I was co-chair in Durham County for his gubernatorial campaign in 1980, and his senatorial campaign in 1984, and all of us were close personal friends, and it was just a joy to get to know him, and that was a real privilege, and one of the high points of my life.
Do you think you'll continue to be active in politics on a state-wide level?
No, I don't think I want to get involved in another campaign like that.
If—and it looks like you will—win in November, for the county commissioner, do you see anything beyond that?
Oh, you mean for myself?
Mm-hmm.
If I were younger. But I think that at my age, perhaps not. I would have, and I think I could have, won the race for the state House, at least I thought so.
I think you would now, if you ran.
Well, I think I'm a little old. I'm sixty-eight now.
But you don't look it!
And you don't act it, and apparently you don't feel it.
I really don't feel it. I have to convince myself sometimes.
I want to show you this picture—I know this doesn't go over on the
recorder—but that was taken—somewhere in there it tells—some rich white
woman on Park Avenue after Mattiwilda had sung at one of her concerts.
(Book: Certain People by Stephen Birmingham)
This is your family.
Yes, uh-huh. That's my mother, and that's my father, and that's Mattie Wilbur, and that's my sister Irene, and that's June, and that's me.
But, you know, talking about Mattiwilda, and the Metropolitan Opera—Mr.
Dobbs and Mrs. Dobbs would sponsor family reunions at that particular
time. We would all gather in New York, I remember, and she made her
debut at the Metropolitan. All of us went up and stayed at the Taft
Hotel. (I was up in New York last month, and the Taft was just gone.)
But we would have these big family reunions, go down to Sun Luck, A
Chinese restaurant around the corner on 51st and whatever the street
was, and have dinner, and go down to the Metropolitan. I remember that
night, we came back to the hotel and we'd gone and stopped at one of the
stores, got cheese and crackers, drinks, and so forth, waiting for the
New York Times to come out to see what the
She was there for eight years, and we did that each year while she was performing: we went up. And what we would do, we would get the records and the libretto, and read it, and understand the plot and so forth, and it was just fantastic.
But it's been interesting—
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
… No, not Sullivan, he's here in Durham, the Sanford administration, and
the administration before Sanford, talked about developing these
industrial centers to try to prepare people for technical training,
those who had not finished high school and that type of thing. But
anyhow, those were some of the reports that we were making to the Durham
Committee. And the point I wanted to make: we were in the midst of the
integration fight here in Durham, in the school system, and we didn't
want Durham Technical Institute to open up on a segregated basis.
And Watts Hill, Jr., and I worked on that, and that was really a compromise. Finally, they graduated 500 students the other night, down at the civic center.
And it's now co-ed?
Oh, yes. co-ed, and integrated, and everything else. And I was telling President Phil Wynn about this, and I borrowed this from my file on the integration (Southern Historical Collection).
That's interesting. They would do race, but not race and gender.
Absolutely.
Did they talk openly about their feelings? I mean, you and I know, but would the white opponents—would they talk openly?
Well, I tell you what: at that time, we were negotiating with Watts Hill, Jr. He was in the state legislature. (Watts was very young; I predicted that Watts was going to be governor of North Carolina, but things happened—he had marital problems and everything else.) He and Mary Seamans were on the city council in the early '50s, and they were dynamic, they were liberal—gosh, the things that they were saying and doing were just fantastic. And everybody was riling about it.
So he went on to the state legislature as a senator, and they were voting
on this matter of these technical institutes to be located across North
Carolina—they called them industrial centers. And the problem was how
they were to open. But they
From Charlotte.
Charlotte. Well, it was during that time when he was talking about
vertical integration: in other words, take all the seats out from around
the lunch counter, and let them come in and stand up, because when you
sat down, that created the problem. And so the same thing was true when
we finally worked up the decision here. Well, at least, they didn't want
the blacks and white females to be associated at that time, so what we
agreed on, rather than vertical—they had to sit down and study—that it
ought to be male. Eighteen and above.
What did Watts say about that?
Well, that was the deal that we worked on.
But, I mean, personally, did he agree with this or not, do you think?
Well, that was the best that we could do. That's what I'm talking about:
sometimes you have to negotiate as as far as you can go to get the door
cracked, and then after you
But we've had an interesting—and I'm sure there are millions of stories just similar to ours—we've had strong support: one for the other, as well as our families, and our children, and the closeness, and so forth. We can sit down and communicate and talk, and I think the relationship has been strong.
Our son, William A. Clement, Jr., was Maynard's treasurer when he ran for vice-mayor.
In Atlanta?
In Atlanta. In fact, he and another fellow, David Franklin, mortgaged
their homes, took a second mortgage to borrow the money in order to
start his campaign going. Our son in Charlotte—although usually doctors
don't get that involved—he worked some for Harvey Gantt, and he is on
the police review board. He takes time off from his practice to sit
there, a whole afternoon, once or twice a month, whatever it is, to
review these cases that come before the police review board. You don't
even have one in Durham. And Arthur John, the youngest one, is very much
involved. And our oldest daughter—as Josephine said, she was president
of the Metropolitan—they had a budget that was up
Oh, that was the New York Philharmonic, under Zubin Mehta.
That's right.
It was part of a series. And because it was Zubin Mehta, the Indian embassy entertained for him and his wife afterwards.
Right. Okay, bye.
Bye-bye. Pleasure to meet you both. Enjoyed it.
Enjoyed talking to you. So much.
See you. (leaves)
So we've tried to pass it on to the children, tried to perpetuate that. Because you need all types, I think, to solve. The unfortunate thing, I think, about our situation: I think we are really losing some ground.
I'm working on a speech that I'm going to give in Winston-Salem, and I've
been trying to think how I'm going to approach it without being
misunderstood. The subject of it is "It is Time
I didn't; we've been on the road, but I know that this is certainly very much in the air.
Oh yes, and the leadership that Robb is giving to this matter of self-reliance; I noticed the morning's paper had an editorial on it. Now, there are two sides to it; but, really, I believe that there is time for us take our destiny more in our hands. We've got to be vigilant; we've got to keep on fighting for civil rights and maintaining affirmative action and that type of thing. But I think blacks need to do more for themselves, and they can. There's no reason why we should let our families disintegrate, why fifty percent of the families in America are headed by single parents. There's no reason why three out of every four, I think it is, babies that are being born to teenagers are black. And that the unemployment rate has been fourteen percent the last two years, twice that of the average. I think that it's time for us to begin to really speak out. As I said, I'm working on this outline; I'm going to have to be very careful.
I heard Governor Cuomo the other day. He greeted us, the grand masters; the conference met in New York; and he told about how his parents came over here from Italy, and how they were able to pull themselves up. Now, the trouble with the blacks has been skin, the color. It's true there has been a melting pot for a lot of racial groups, but I think that blacks ought to try to maintain at least their position and improve on it.
I can remember the time here in the city of Durham when you had
tremendous pride for North Carolina Mutual, Mechanics and Farmers Bank,
the Mutual Savings and Loan, these financial institutions made the white
institutions and kept them honest. Now that we can go down there and
make our deposits and make loans and so forth, we cannot forget North
Carolina Mutual and Mechanics and Farmers Bank. Blacks now have reached
the point—I got some statistics here the other day—209 billion dollars
of gross income for blacks. I remember Mr. Cox used to go around and
talk to the agents on the 30 billion dollar market, and now we're
talking about 209 billion dollars. And the money's just going through
our hands. Just one time, and you know with the Jew [?],
The matter of education: the decrease. We had thirty-four percent of
blacks finishing high school, going on to college, around three or four
years ago. Now it's dropped to twenty-eight percent. Now, I know that's
because of the cut-back—we can't take the pressure off the Reagan
administration, we can't do that—but it's coming, they are cutting—this
is the problem that they're having at the county commission: trying to
find funds to fund some of the programs that are going to be eliminated.
Worthwhile programs, and they just don't have enough money, they don't
want to increase the tax rate. But what we're going to have to do is do
the same thing that we did. But you have to get your priorities in
straight. A lot of things that we're doing now that we did not do when
these kids were coming through the
Jesse Jackson has been putting that message out for some time.
Right, I got a clipping here on Jesse Jackson. He spoke at the Medgar Evers School up in New York on this same theme. I notice Tom Bradley has subscribed to this program. But now, there's some blacks who are saying that we cannot get soft on the administration, on the government. And that we need to keep the pressure. But, you know, the national debt—what is it, two and a half trillion dollars? Our budget now is a trillion. And yet still they're taking out the money that we had available. So the money is not going to be there; they keep on talking about it. And it's not available. And so we're going to have to really do some things for ourselves.
Do you remember being pessimistic in the past about—quote—"the future of the race," in regard to family and social conditions, as you are now?
No.
Is this a low time, do you think?
Yes. I really thought that when we got our civil rights, and got our voting rights, that that was going to be the turning point, and that we would really begin to develop a base of independence, any way you look at it. But you look at the reports and the statistics now, you hate to say it, but, we haven't made much progress.
Do you think it's become more of a class issue than a race issue?
I think there's still racism. I'll admit to you, I've run into some racism. But I think that you're going to have to go around it, you can't become discouraged, or rationalize that the reason I'm not making the progress that I should make is because of racism, and go to sleep on that. I think you need to get your determination up.
I got a quote here that I want to give you. Frederick Douglass made the statement over a hundred years ago on self-determination: "Our destiny is largely in our own hands. If we find it, we shall have to seek to find it." Same thing with ?, I got a quote here from Dr. B. Mays, talking about goals: " It must be borne in mind that the tragedy in life does not lie in not reaching your goals, the tragedy lies in having no goals to reach." I mean, this is the kind of spirit and determination and drive that we're going to have to put in black people, and particularly young blacks.
I'm just reading the article that appeared in the Crisis magazine on the Buppies.
Yeah, the black counterpart of the Yuppies.
Yuppies, yeah, right. And some of them have gone up into the corporate
structure; they've got to remember that some of us didn't make it. And
that the NAACP and the Southern Christian Conference were responsible
for getting them where they are. And they need to invest some money in
these institutions so that others don't get over here in the suburbs
Bill Kennedy made a tremendous statement the other day. I don't know whether you read about it or not. The vice-president of Mobil resigned from the Fuqua School of Business because Duke University trustees passed a resolution to divest their investments. And he resigned. Knowing that Bill Kennedy was on their board, they called him, and he said he agreed with these people resigning too. In his position! President of the largest black institution, built by blacks and all. Even though you're on the board, that's a very handsome—a lot of dollars. And he said that the people that he talked with that came through here from South Africa, they are not interested in the businesses in America withdrawing. And so what they did, in the same article, they quoted Bishop Tutu—he was here on two occasions, at Duke, and he was the commencement speaker at North Carolina Central—and he was saying that we need economic sanctions, and we need to bring the screws on the South African government if we're going to get rid of apartheid.
You saw the broadcast last night? He and Peter Jennings had twenty minutes on the 6:30 news—twenty minutes of it was devoted to an interview he had with Bishop Tutu, and he said he may be arrested following this interview, because under the emergency, the people in South Africa are not supposed to talk with reporters.
But Bill Kennedy can't come out with a statement like that. It's ridiculous.
I didn't see it.
It was in the Durham papers also, and the News and Observer. He was trying to justify—he may resign too, because of what Duke and the students—I'm happy and glad they don't have a march going on at North Carolina Mutual.
Well, fifteen years ago, they might've.
Right!
These are more conservative times.
I'm not marching, but I'm telling you from the platform where if I get a chance to talk about it. But at the same time, I think that blacks are going to realize that they are going to have to take their destiny into their own hands, if they're going to try to make it in. And we need to conserve some of the monies that we are exposed to, and not spend every penny we earn, and also mortgage that which we haven't even received yet, until we cannot help people.
A lot of things that we do, there's no money involved in it. I've been
retired eight years, but we are busy, and involved, trying to help
improve the quality—like Josephine, going night and day, and she's
sixty-eight and I'm seventy-four. But I think it has helped us to remain
relevant. Now, our two youngest daughters, I think we talked about the
semi-colon
This would probably be a good place to end this, but in case nobody gets back, there's a question I think that maybe you could speak for Josephine on as well, and it has to do with Durham. You both having lived in Atlanta, or being well acquainted with Atlanta society, the institutions, black Atlanta, I'd sort of like your first impressions when you hit Durham, and the comparison.
Well, I was surprised, really, that Josephine agreed to leave Atlanta. I think if I were confronted with that decision today, it would have been far more difficult. Josephine was very submissive, and very cooperative, because of her mother. Her mother, whatever John Wesley Dobbs said, that was it. Occasionally, she would rise up. And Josephine was just sweet. Whatever she thought that I wanted, she just fell in line.
And she could not come to Durham, when Mr. Cox came by Atlanta in the
fall of '45, and said, "Bill, I need you in Durham, and I'd like for you
to be there the first of the year." We were expecting Wesley in April,
the eighteenth. Well, you know, at that time, women didn't move after
four, five, six, seven months. And so I came up—she had been through
here once—she said, "Bill, if you think that this is going to help your
Josephine in the last twenty-five years—we've been married forty-five—in the last ten or fifteen years, since she got involved in public life, and this matter of the feminist movement and the matter of taking charge of your life, and being recognized as a person—she's changed. Fortunately, I changed. And really, she's a far more beautiful person because of her attitude. She doesn't back up at all. She's very nice, and very polished, but don't you step over her rights, as a woman, as a person. She's very much involved in the equal rights movement here in North Carolina, and that's one thing that's attracted her to Governor Hunt. He was in favor of passing the Equal Rights Amendment—but you'd never pass it in North Carolina. We needed three states, you remember, for the amendment. But she was in that movement.
And so, she came—to answer your question, I got away—we came, really,
with a great deal of enthusiasm and drive, and determination. I was a
North Carolina Mutual person through and
Now when we got ready to retire, we thought about Atlanta. We got two boys in Atlanta, Josephine has a sister in Atlanta, and all. And we decided we didn't want to go back to Atlanta, we wanted to stay in Durham… The opportunites here are so great: we got involved, Joseephine is involved—I'm not a politician, I support her, but I'm involved in appointments.
In other words, working for governmental agencies.
You take the airport. That's one of the most fascinating assignments I've
ever had. I spoke today at the Durham board of realtors on the RDU
development. We've got two hundred billion dollars worth of projects
going on up there right now, developing the American hub, American
Airlines—you ought to go by and see it. We're spending a hundred and
thirteen million dollars to develop a hub for American Airlines.
Piedmont is expanding its operations. We're putting in another cargo
building, we're putting in a post office, we're putting in a catering
service—
A year ago, we didn't even know that American Airlines would have its hub here. They announced July 2nd that they had decided to put the north-south hub at Raleigh-Durham. And that was just a memorandum of agreement. We had to work up the agreements to support the commitment, which dealt with the financing, the leasing, and the construction. And we did all of that between July and November, and went to the market and sold a hundred and fourteen million dollars worth of bonds, in twenty-four hours. And we used what they called "facility." Special facility bonds—they had never been sold in North Carolina. We had the revenue industrial bonds, but they had never issued in North Carolina facility bonds. But they had used them in some other places, the law permitted it. And in North Carolina we have an unusual situation because the local government commission handles all of the public debt financing in the state. Years ago—maybe a hundred years ago—they had problems with small municipalities defaulting, and the credit of the state. So now, if you're going to issue any debt, public debt, the local government commission has to get involved in it and certify and work with the bond council. And we did that all last summer and went with the bond.
To be involved in something like that, and Josephine is involved in the
county commissioner's. She didn't tell you that they brought their first
black county manager and she was
Is he still the manager?
Yes.
So if she becomes the commissioner—
Well, she's already the commissioner. She's serving now.
Oh, I see.
She's running for re-election. And she has no Democratic opposition, she has this one Republican.
So the county manager's black, a commissioner's black.
Well the chairman of the county commission is black. Bill Bell is an IBM executive here. They have five of them.
What do you think C. C. Spaulding would think about all that?
Oh, brother. He would like it. You know, cooperation, my philosophy, negotiate—C. C. Spaulding built North Carolina Mutual by being Mr. Cooperation. He knew how to deal with white people. And he knew how to select men, and put them in positions to carry out a task, and he stayed out in front, in the public image, and developed North Carolina Mutual. He was fascinating. Every time I'd go in his office, "Bill, Billy-boy, push the button." And let the lights come on. He was fascinating.
You had met him before you came to Durham?
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.
Did he have a large influence on your father?
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.
So C. C. Spaulding was a great man; yeah, he was my man. They've never developed another man like C. C. Spaulding.
Now, your father never came to the home office.
No, but he was on the board. They wanted him to come to Durham, but my
father was very conservative. He was
[END OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE B]
… 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.
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…
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—
What Josephine called the Committee on Negro Affairs.
Right. It was very active, trying to improve the quality of life, and Mr.
Cox got me involved in that
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.
So it didn't feel like a big step down?
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.
We had some union problems in Philadelphia, and some places, and
Prudential was having them. Beale, then, was chief agency officer; he
became president of Prudential. And you could call him up, I'd go up
there and talk with him, about how to
Are companies like Mutual having trouble getting black agents to work when they can get work at Prudential, or—
Oh, yes, yeah, that's had an effect. The quality of our agents dropped considerably, because there was opportunity open elsewhere for them.
So—I don't know whether I've answered the question—I like Durham. I came
to Durham, I wanted to come, I have not been disappointed. Durham has
been good to us, and we love it, and we are glad to give back to the
community all that we have, and
Durham in those early days had this kind of mystique; some of them called it "the Durham spirit."
Oh, yes.
I'm just wondering if you could really feel that, coming into the community.
Oh, yes, oh, yes, definitely. Now, you don't feel it as much now as you did when we first came here. You see, the Research Triangle—some people have come in, some young, well-qualified people. It's just like the article we were talking about a while ago in Crisis Magazine: these people are a little above some of the problems that we had.
Now, Bill Bell, who's an IBM executive, he's very much involved in the
programs in Durham, and life in Durham, and politics in Durham. And the
chairman of the Durham Committee is an IBM executive, Willie Lovick. You
have a few, but it's not like it used to be there. Whatever North
Carolina Mutual officials used to say, that was it, but now, you got to
sell it.
It always struck me that that was a very special group and a very special time, in which you probably had a lot of overqualified people.
We did, yeah.
People who, these days, would be doing—they'd be at IBM, which goes back to my question about how you may have felt, that you could have gone on to something else.
Oh, no, I've never had a feeling of going to work for anyone else. Never. Particularly a white insurance company, I never had that. I had an offer to work with Supreme Liberty out in Chicago, which was a black company; they came out and sent three officers down here to talk with me about coming there, and they had a plan laid out that I was going to be the president. But my loyalties were with North Carolina Mutual, I wouldn't think of going somewhere else to become chief executive officer of a competitor like that.
Does that go back to your father, and then Spaulding?
Yes, yes. Spaulding was the man that I looked up to, and he was a great mentor, but George Cox was the man that exposed me, and gave me the opportunity to try to exemplify any talents that I had, in working with people, and trying to improve my qualifications, as far as the CLU program, and going to the LIMRA management marketing institutes up in New York and so forth. He just kept pushing me, which was very helpful. I learned a lot and made a lot of contacts. So I'm indebted to North Carclina Mutual.
Unfortunately, we have not been able to get any of our children into it.
I thought Bill was going to go to North Carolina Mutual. Because he was
interested in insurance; when he was a student at Morehouse, he was a
part-time agent for North Carolina Mutual. Sold some insurance while he
was in school. Then after he went to the Wharton School, he majored in
insurance and finance. But you see, at that time, North Carolina Mutual,
when he finished, was forty-three years of age. They had the
But when you were coming up, those opportunities weren't there; North Carolina Mutual would have been—
Well, I didn't even ask what the salary was. I got the original letter
that Mr. Cox wrote me when I was getting ready to graduate from
Talladega. He said, "Bill, I would like you to report to Durham on June
the first." I was graduating May 31st. I didn't even ask about the
salary. He gave me a ticket after six weeks; he said, "I'm going to send
you down to Memphis, Tennessee." He gave me a letter of introduction to
the manager, Dan Hancock. When Dan read the letter, he said, "did Mr.
Cox talk to you about salary?" I said, "no, he didn't say a word." he
said, "he's telling me to recommend twelve dollars and fifty cents." I
said, "thank you."
The same thing coming here to Durham. Josephine and I had three children.
When we were married, I was making about a hundred and twenty five
dollars, and then I got up to a hundred and sixty-two. When I got here,
I didn't even ask Mr. Cox what
Dan Martin, yes.
Dan Martin and I became very good friends. And Marie Ingram was Mr. Cox's
secretary. Dan said, "you know, I'm going to show you a memo Cox
received when he announced that you were coming." The memo was from W.
J. Kennedy, Jr.; he was secretary, and he wanted to know what I was
going to do, what was the assignment going to be. "Here I am, I'm
already here!"
But there wouldn't have been any quarrel over this; I mean, he misunderstood that your father—
Well, my father was easy. I mean, not that he didn't ever get involved in
but he left it up to Mr. Cox, really. My father was very supportive of
everything. He didn't want me to leave Charleston to start with, and
then on to Atlanta. But he eventually told Josephine and me, "It was a
good thing that you came to Durham," and the second thing was, Alexine
came when her grandmother was getting old, and to try to integrate her
into a family unit, five or ten years later. And no one knows it
Does she remember her real mother?
No, she doesn't.
Oh. That made the transition easy.
Right, right. So, I took a lot of chances. I wouldn't do it again; I would advise any young person nowadays, "bring your wife down, ride around." They employed an actuary the other day, gave him a relocation allowance, all that kind of stuff.
So Cox was your big supporter; then you were befriended by Dan Martin. Did you have a circle, a kind of support?
Oh, yes.
He's known as a radical.
Yeah, Dan was radical. He was outspoken.
Did he have any influence on you, politically?
Oh, yes, yes. Every morning we walk, two miles, two and a half miles, and there's hardly a morning I don't refer to Dan Martin or something he said. He had a lot of wit, and common sense. He was a fighter, and he didn't fit into the groove of George Cox very well.
But Dan knew the business, he knew the details. But they wouldn't let him rise in the company. He used to guide me, he directed me around many situations at North Carolina Mutual.
Aaron Day was another influence. Aaron Day was a man who inspired me to
get knowledge. He was the first person I ever heard talk about the CLU
program, the Charter Life Underwriter program. Because he had taken a
couple of exams himself, and didn't complete it. (He was at New York
University studying, and took some exams.) But he inspired me. He was
our training
How did Martin and Wheeler get along? Were they political allies in trying to change things? John Hervey Wheeler.
John Wheeler was a man who negotiated. He liked to pick up the telephone and talk. But one thing about John Wheeler: he did not commit black people. C. C. Spaulding would pick up the telephone and Victor Bryant would call him, for example—you've heard the name Victor Bryant—
Sure. Leading white attorney in Durham.
He'd go, "well, that's all right, Mr. Bryant, fine, that's settled, okay, we'll do that." Then he'd call Dan in, and tell Dan what he decided, and Dan would come back, and do what he thought best. But C. C. Spaulding can't get people to vote! Dan would get out on election day and get the people to the polls. But C. C. Spaulding didn't get involved that way.
Now, John Wheeler was a little different, because he was a good honest person; he wasn't trying to get something for himself, he was working on behalf of the people. I learned a lot from John in that regard. You could send him out to negotiate with white people, but you knew that you wouldn't be sold down the river. But some of these others, they'd: "Yes, oh, yes."
Dr. Shepard, he and C. C. Spaulding, whenever they felt that they'd
contacted those two in the black community, they could go to bed, and
think that was the end of it, but one or two
This is an interesting community. Small, but it's very interesting. I wouldn't take anything for it.
But you say Wheeler, although he wasn't conspicuous, and didn't run for office, that he was—
Only the king-maker.
He was the king-maker.
Oh, yes. No question about that. No one did anything 'til they'd put it by John. You don't have that now. You don't have anybody here who plays that role. You go by the Committee. And in some ways, the Committee has influence. But it's very effective, particularly in getting out the vote. They have a machine, a mechanism. It has been an honest organization; there's been no criticism, nothing they can point their fingers to as to mismanagement, taking money, that kind of thing, they file their reports. They have a very good record. They've tried everything, the papers…
Are whites still raising the question about block voting?
Oh, yes.
They still raise that question?
Oh, yes. But you know, white folks use block voting.
That's what politics is all about.
Absolutely. We learned it from them! And they criticize the "slate;" you
know, we don't announce our slate
(to WW) Did you get all your questions?
One little thing that a colleague of mine is interested in, and I doubt that you remember this, because it happened before you got here. It was a death penalty case where a man named Mason Wellman was sentenced to die. It was out in Winston-Salem, I believe—no, Statesville; and Governor Broughton of North Carolina actually pardoned the man. But it was an interesting build-up to this, involving the black community, and I think maybe I've seen a little correspondence with C. C. Spaulding to Broughton. My friend is writing a play about this.
Oh, yes?
Yes; Paul Green was involved. And so I thought that I would ask you if you recalled anything about this. It was in '44, two years before you got here.
No… What was the name?
The man's name was Mason Wellman, and he was accused of having raped a
white woman in Statesville—typical kind of thing; he was identified from
some photographs, and they found him, brought him in, and sentenced him
to die. And people got organized; and actually, I think it's one of the
few cases in all
I don't know, I've never heard that case.
Did you ever have trouble with the Klan?
Oh, yes. Not now, but years ago, oh, yes.
Personally?
Oh, no. I've never had any intimidations, really. But whenever your brother's intimidated, you're intimidated, see what I mean?
They're honoring Floyd McKissick Saturday night, and I can't go. I wrote a letter today and sent a check, saying that I would love to be there, because he is really a great fighter in this town, particularly during the civil rights movement.
Ben Chavis—I'm familiar with that case, the Wilmington nine case, and he was just installed as the executive director of the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, the organization that worked so well with him. The installation was at Duke, about a month ago. He was here, and now he's the executive director of—I can't think of the name. Anyhow, very much involved in the Wilmington Nine; I've been all through that.
Sad situations for Governor Hunt: they put a lot of pressure on him, he didn't give the Wilmington Nine any clemency, or reduce their sentences.
Some of those persons are still in prison?
Oh, no, no, they're all out now; but during the time the trial was going
on, they were convicted and served time [inaudible]
I was going to ask you: I'm sure Conrad Pearson has died, hasn't he?
Oh, yes. yes. In fact, the Southern Historical Society [Collection] has some of my correspondence in connection with Conrad Pearson, particularly in the schools. In pupil assignment, I worked very closely with him. I have letters in my file that have already been turned over to the historical collection.
I have a tray downstairs that I call upon the Durham Committee, because they celebrated their fiftieth anniversary, and I asked Carolyn Wallace to loan me that tray; I wanted to see about this and some other things. But Conrad Pearson, yes.
Wonderful, to get the balance of your papers. What did Wheeler do with his papers?
Wheeler's papers went to Morehouse, in Atlanta. I don't know where Pearson's papers went.
He would certainly know about this Mason Wellman case in the '40s.
Yes, yes. Oh, I'm sure of that. Because he was involved in the first integration sit-in over at Carolina in 1932.
Hocutt.
Hocutt case, yeah. Dr. Shepard was—what's the word I want to use? Anyhow,
he didn't cooperate. I'm
And then Leroy Fraser, the Fraser boys. Now, their papers—I don't think Leroy Fraser knows what he's going to do with those papers. You ought to get those papers. Because they were the first to integrate the undergraduate school. That was quite a case. Now their father kept a beautiful scrapbook; it's fantastic, the history and so forth. I've seen it.
John Wheeler—was he involved in that?
Oh, yes, and Conrad Pearson was involved, and also Hugh Thompson—I don't know if you remember that name.
Conrad was the North Carolina lawyer for the NAACP, and so he was really involved in all of these cases that involved the NAACP.
Next to John Wheelar and Conrad Pearson, and Dan Martin, are there other figures that, as you look back on it now, you would rank as important in the civil rights movement in Durham, in addition to yourself?
When you say civil rights movement, you mean—
Well, going all the way back to, say, the founding of the Durham Committee, which goes back to 1935.
Well, J.S. Shag Stewart now, we have not mentioned Shag Stewart—he played a very unique role. He's the only living person that was present when they organized the Durham Committee.
I wonder if he's been interviewed; do you know?
If he hasn't, he ought to be.
Is he alert, do you know?
Yes, very alert, very alert. John served on the city council sixteen years. John Wheeler succeeded him as chairman of the Durham Committee when he ran for city council. Shag Stewart is very alert and really knows the history. Ben Ruffin—that's a new name—do you know him?
A younger person.
Ben Ruffin: he was on the street. I heard him speak last night—he was with North Carolina Mutual, getting ready to leave North Carolina Mutual; I believe R. J. Reynolds offered him a fabulous opportunity. I told him that he could call and ask me [?] I swear you're going to have to give it some serious consideration; there's no ifs and ands about that.
But Bon Ruffin is probably one of the strongest young persons we have right now. on the scene in North Carolina, in Durham. He worked with the governor, he did a beautiful job.
Now, Willie Lovitt is a relatively new person, and he's chairman of the Committee, and he's a person who really ought to be interviewed.
And Bill Bell, you ought to interview him.
Another person that played a key role, and still plays a very key role,
is Dr. Charles Watts. He's the son-in-law of Edward R. Merrick. And now
he is playing a key role in North Carolina Mutual. He'll be seventy next
year, but he's really in his prime as far as directing affairs at North
Carolina Mutual. But his contribution to this town is the Lincoln
Community Health Center. We had to close up the Lincoln Hospital, and we
wanted
He married into the Merrick family.
Yoah, he married Constance. And he's chairman of the Heritage Room Committee at North Carolina Mutual.
END OF INTERVIEW