Strong anti-integrationist beliefs led Lake to seek political office
Lake expresses sentiments which will be repeated later in the interview. He explains that his rationale for running for governor centered on public education. Lake argues that good schools relied on superior teachers and students, and not integration. To Lake, integration would result in the abandonment of solid public schools as wealthier white and academically stronger students would attend private schools. He points to Washington D.C.'s public schools as the model for the failures of integration.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with I. Beverly Lake Sr., September 8, 1987. Interview C-0043. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- CHARLES DUNN:
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No sir! Going on, what prompted you to run for Governor in 1960?
- I. BEVERLY LAKE:
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Well, my opponents thought that I was running for Governor because I
wanted to ride in on the racial program and racial animosity. That I can
truthfully say, always have said, that was not my motive. My motive was
that I could see, as the Legislature had said, and
as everybody else could see, that the public school system in North
Carolina was in very grave danger. The great danger perhaps was not our
official abolition of public schools but a desertion of the public
schools by children of all the white families who could afford to send
them to private schools. That did develop and has continued. The private
school in North Carolina began springing up. We have many, many
excellent private schools, academies, in North Carolina, such
as--Ravenscroft was already established--such as
Hale School in Raleigh, Wake Christian Academy, and various other
Christian Academies, Enfield Academy, Albermarle Academy down in
Elizabeth City. Those are the ones that particularly come to mind. Those
are good schools.
What I foresaw has actually happened, perhaps not as completely as I
thought it would, still, remarkably so. The white children, with the
natural ability, would be withdrawn from the public schools and be sent
to private schools. The remaining white children in the public schools,
to a large degree--of course not universal, there are always
exceptions--but to such a large degree, would be composed of
white children who came from underprivileged homes; homes not quite so
interested in education, not affording the background of culture. Those
children going to the private schools would leave the public
schools--I mean the other children going to private schools
would leave the public schools crowded with colored children who, for
various reasons, and no need to go into all of that, various
reasons, not all the colored children, of course,
were not as well qualified for high calibre school work.
I knew from my own teaching experience that the success of the school
depends on two things: one, as I said, was the ability of teacher, and
the other is the ability of the pupils. A good teacher with substandard
children cannot produce as good a product as a good teacher with a cross
section of students. The students do their best work when they have to
do good work in order to make good grades. When you take out all of your
top students, or most of your top students, and leave the class composed
of, well I'll say, mediocre students, for one reason or
another, either in ability or background, then your quality of teaching
and instruction goes down. I have always said, as I said in my campaign,
it is one thing to keep the school physically open. It's
another thing to keep the school efficiently operating as an educational
institution.
I thought the Legislature was right in saying that to integrate the
schools completely would destroy the schools of North Carolina as an
educational institution. I think the result of the last twenty years,
twenty-seven years now, have pretty well born out what I said. That is
more especially illustrated in the schools of Washington, D.C. which,
under Eisenhower's administration, were supposed to become a
model for the country. Well, the Washington public school system became
a model but not the kind that he was talking about. The schools in
Washington became disorderly, in extreme, unsafe for teachers and
students, and basically did not produce good education. I wanted to save
the State of North Carolina from that. I felt
like, and I still feel like, that had I been Governor, we could have
promoted a much better system of education, whereby not only the
affluent children but other children would be aided financially so that
they too could go to the superior schools, white or black. I have never
had any animosity for the Negro people. I have today, and I always have
had, numerous, devoted friends among the colored people, particularly
at Wake Forest and also in Raleigh.