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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 E-0006, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Wilbur Hobby was born in Durham, North Carolina, in 1925. In the early 1930s, Hobby's father, a bricklayer, deserted his mother, leaving her to raise five sons on her own. Hobby describes growing up impoverished in the Edgemont section of Durham, where most of his friends had parents who worked in the tobacco or textile mills. Hobby remained in school through the ninth grade only, dropping out after spending a summer in Ohio working as a batboy for the Durham Bulls. Shortly after leaving school, Hobby's mother signed a waiver for him to join the Navy at the age of seventeen, and he served in the South Pacific during World War II. He returned to Durham following the war and worked briefly with his father as a bricklayer before becoming employed by the American Tobacco Company. During these years, Hobby married. Although he argues that he had little awareness of the labor movement, with only foggy memories of the 1934 general strike as it occurred in Durham, Hobby explains how he became increasingly involved in labor politics during the late 1940s. Joining the union at the American Tobacco Company in 1946, he soon became actively involved and was eventually elected president of the night shift workers. From there, Hobby became an active participant in the Voters for Better Government in Durham, a coalition of laborers, African Americans, and liberal intellectuals from Duke University. Hobby describes how they became a formidable force in local politics during the late 1940s and 1950s. In addition, Hobby discusses his involvement with other labor organizations, such as Labor's League for Political Education (LLPE) and the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education (COPE). In 1958 and 1959, Hobby worked briefly for the textile unions in Florida and Georgia after he was fired from the American Tobacco Company. Because of his work with both tobacco and textile unions and the Voters for Better Government, Hobby had become well known enough in the movement to become elected as director of COPE in 1959—a position he held until 1969.
Wilbur Hobby describes growing up impoverished in Durham, North Carolina, during the Great Depression and his eventual involvement in the labor movement. Employed by the American Tobacco Company after World War II, he became an active member of the union and eventually became a leader in such organizations as the Voters for Better Government and the Committee on Political Education.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Wilbur, why don't we start from the beginning. You were born in Durham?
Right.
What year was that?
On November 8, 1925.
Where?
At Watts Hospital.
How many brothers and sisters did you have?
I have four brothers and no sisters. There were five boys in the family.
Are you the first?
No, I was the second child. My oldest brother was killed in France during
World War II. There are four brothers left. Two of them are active in
the union movement. All three of my brothers are union members. One of
them is an international representative with the Tobacco Workers
International Union, working on the R.J. Reynolds plant in Winston-Salem
and he is a former
What do you remember about your early years in Durham? Did you live in the town, or out in the country?
Yeah … I guess that I remember growing up in the Edgemont section of
town, which back in the early 30's, which the center of the textile
situation there. I remember rather vividly the general textile strike
that applied to Durham and to North Carolina, in that area which we used
to call The Lawn. I lived on Elm Street and the front porch of my house
faced The Lawn and it was a sort of a playground there. It's where
Operation Breakthrough was until a few weeks ago. There was nothing
there but a lawn and swings and a bandstand and
Was your father a textile worker?
No, my father was a bricklayer. He left my mother about the time that I was … well, about that time, I guess, when I was about six or seven years old. And although he came back for intermittent periods, I guess that after I was six or seven, he never did stay home very much. Just the five boys were there.
Your mother raised you boys? She didn't work in the mill herself?
No …well, Mother didn't work in the mill. Back during those Depression
years, she really cleaned chickens for a little store on the corner of
Angier Avenue and Elm Street that was run by Paul Talley. I worked
around the store and that was about all the money that we had. My
Were young boys still going into the textile mills that late? I know that in the 20's they were.
Yeah, there were some young boys, but there weren't many real young boys
going in. I guess that the child labor laws had been passed. This was
'33, '34. I guess that by that time, probably the child labor laws had
passed and most of us were going to school. We would stay out of school
one day a week and pull a little wagon over to get commodities, which
was food given out during the Depression. I remember pulling it home
with bags of grits and cabbage, half of which was rotted … you would
throw that half away and eat the other half …and sweet potatoes and
Irish potatoes and occasionally, some canned
Do you remember thinking that you were poor?
Oh, I knew that we were poor. I thought that everybody was poor.
Everybody I knew was poor. It was an extremely poor section of the city,
still is. There was a little clinic, which they don't have now. The one
thing that I remember now, though, and I guess that this was because of
the mill. It was a mill village type of thing in Edgemont at that time,
because all of the Golden Belt was there and what they called Durham
Hosiery Mill was down there. And then they had another hosiery mill and
textile mill up on Henderson Street and Walker Street. The houses were
close together, most of the people worked in the mill. They even had a
big area over there where Few Gardens is now, that was a garden where
the mill owned the land and allowed people to grow gardens. As they
built East Durham Junior High School, as we got a little older, we used
to walk through that area going to junior high school over there. The
first year that it was built, we would walk right through the middle of
the gardens which are now where Few Gardens is. I don't know if that's
where they got the name, "gardens" from or not. I never thought
That WPA sewing room was on Liberty Street, right at the railroad and that old place is still there and it has been an army surplus type of thing run by old man Herndon, I guess, for the last twenty or twenty-five years. But during that time, it was a WPA sewing room, which my mother worked at.
What do you remember about that textile environment, either of the tent city or … were your friends' fathers and mothers in the mill?
Most of the people who worked there, all of the mill help really ran more back from Main Street to Holloway Street, all of that was company houses down there in what runs from Main Street to Liberty Street now.
You didn't live in a company house yourself?
No, we didn't live in a company house because my father never worked in
the plant and my mother, like I say, worked at the WPA sewing room. I
can remember, she did work in that little hosiery mill down on Maple
Street,
You moved around?
Yeah. I can remember at least twenty-five houses that we lived in in that part of town.
Always renting?
Always renting. I can remember in one area there where we lived in five
different houses which sat side by side. I don't know why we would move
so often, maybe because the rent would come due. I would almost think,
however, that probably all the houses were owned by the same people.
Then, we lived all up and down what is known as Dell Avenue and Lilac
Avenue and Lion Street, which is now Stoke Street. In fact, I lived on
Stoke Street when I first got married when I came back after the war. We
still lived on Stoke Street. I didn't get out of Edgemont until the war
was over and I was out
What do you remember about the schools there? I understand that you went to school with Clayburn Ellis?
Yeah, at East Durham Junior High School, I went to school with Clayburn Ellis.
He turned out to be active in the Klan for a good many years.
Yeah. Clayburn came from about the same background as I did, he probably didn't have quite as hard a time as I did because I guess that his mother and father probably lived together and maybe both worked. Most parents did. The fact that we only had one parent from the time that I was eight years old, well, after I was seven or eight years old, we never had a father. He was there occasionally, but there was never a man around the house and to my knowledge, my mother never looked at another man. She was in love with my father and stayed that way and is that way, I guess, today, although he is dead now. He would go off and find a common law wife and he finally married another woman, but my mother never looked at another man.
Did that make you bitter toward your father?
Not really, Bill. I guess that I shouldhave been a couple of times,
because I know how he treated her, but I just don't really have too much
bitterness in me against anybody, you know. I get mad and I feel a
little bad about some things, but I don't know if I have the capacity to
hate, really. I don't even hate some of the bosses that I think are
extremely bad. I can get along with them but I resent what they doing
and yet, I don't really hate. I don't know if I got this from my
background or what, because you know, there are a lot of people who come
out of that section down there, like Claybourn, who I think hated
blacks, were actually bitterly opposed to blacks. I never did feel
hatred towards blacks. One thing I can say about my father, probably the
only good thing I could say about him, was that he didn't … well, I
could say two or three things, I guess.
You never ate with black families, things like that, though?
Well, I don't remember too much eating. I was telling someone today that
I could remember when racial hatred was so bad, I remember that after
the Frank Graham campaign, I had to go to New Orleans to catch a ship
because I was in the naval reserve and when I got my tray, I had been in
the navy in World War II, but the blacks who were on ship had to eat at
separate tables, even during the war. Well, when I got down there after
that racial campaign which had been so bitter against Frank Graham, and
although I had worked so closely with the black
That was the first time?
That was the first time, I guess and a lot of this was because of the
kind of racial campaign that they threw at Doctor Frank. But I was
visibly surprised when I didn't feel any physical pain. I was
twenty-five years old, Bill. Twenty-five years old and expecting
physical pain just because I sat down and ate with them. Things have
changed a lot in the South. I was talking to somebody today that brought
that up … well, I was talking to one of the senators and he was asking
why doctors and lawyers were so opposed to unions. I said, "Well, they
don't know union people. They think that everybody is a crook because
they think that everybody is like what they read what Jimmy Hoffa was.
They haven't had your experience." This is a senator from the west part
of the state where they know Weaver Chapman and they
Did you have any kind of orientation in your family toward the union?
No, I grew up and except for that strike, and I didn't know what the
strike was about or anything, it was just a lot of fun to me out there
eating with them, walking and singing with them, I didn't really know
what a strike was. My family as such, was not involved in it. I never
did know anything. In fact, Bill, I guess that I was anti-labor to start
with, when I grew up a little bit. The first thing that I remember about
the union is an anti-union feeling that I had during World War II when I
was in the South Pacific and the coal miners struck. You know, I was one
of these patriotic fellows, I joined the Navy on Monday after I was
seventeen on Sunday and went off to fight for
The Southern Summer School out in the mountains?
No, this was a school for workers all over the South and Brownie Lee was
headquartered in Richmond. She is now retired and living in San
Francisco and is about eighty years old. I guess that Brownie Lee
probably had more to do with educating me because as I was active … I
met first a young girl in Durham in 1949 named Carla Myerson. She was a
young Jewish girl from Baltimore who was working with the Southern
School for Workers. I had gotten active in the group known as Voters for
Better Government, which was a political coalition of blacks and labor
and liberals
Let me stop you there, there are a couple of things and I don't want to lose the threads. Who orchestrated that takeover of the Voters for Better Government? Was John Wheeler involved?
Yeah, but the key black in my opinion, for the first five years that I
worked with them, was a small short fellow by the name of Dan Martin.
Dan Martin was the comptroller for North Carolina Mutual and he was
chairman of the political committee of the Durham Committee on Negro
Affairs. And Dan Martin, I think, was probably the greatest political
organizer that I ever met, just a terrific guy who stood about five
foot, one inch. He was chairman of the Hillside precinct and I can
remember that in the
It's kept that name, Voters for Better Government?
No, he was the chairman of the Durham Committee. I got active in '49 in the city council elections when we had a black man, Rencher Harris, running for the city council and Sparky Williamson was also running. I got active in that campaign and we elected Sparky Williamson to the city council and we elected Dan Edwards mayor of Durham, beating the old mayor William F. Kerr, who had been mayor for thirty years.
Were either of these ones union members?
No. Williamson was head of the postal union, was editor of the labor paper and former post office clerk, part time, secretary of the central labor union. I kind of followed Sparky up, every job that he had, when he gave it up when he moved up, I took it over, right on up through COPE director. Sparky was a tremendous speaker and was a graduate of Duke, post office clerk there in Durham for a long period of time. He ran for Congress in 1950, when Graham ran, and carried Durham County by about 1200 votes in that election against Carl Durham, but lost in the Greensboro area when they completely blacked him out. The newspapers wouldn't even mention his name, you know.
The Greensboro Daily News?
Yeah, we got no publicity. At that time, the Sixth Congressional District was Durham, Orange, Alamance and Guilford. There was only four or five thousand votes difference.
And he was still a member of the postal workers?
Yeah and he was still a member of the Durham city council for a four year
term. He ran for Congress and lost but there was a lot of feeling that
if the Graham election hadn't brought out so many conservatives, he
would have won that Congressional election. There is also the Gazette, is that …
Arkansas Gazette?
Yeah, out of Little Rock, and he came up here and ran a good liberal campaign and Sparky was a good speaker and did a good job. He did a creditable job for the labor movement in the campaign.
Before we go on, and I do want to talk about the Graham campaign and that coalition some more, but I'd like to go back. We missed a couple of things. I asked you about union influences and you started talking about the navy and the coal miners. Was your father a union member?
My father became a union member, but he wasn't an active union member, Bill. I think he was a union member because he needed a job and the unions in the building trades were at that time strong, much stronger than they are now. So, to do some of the work, he needed to be in the union. He never influenced me in the union at all.
How about his work with black brick masons, was that outside the union mostly? Do you know, or were you too young?
That was a little bit of each. I don't believe that he was in the union
when he first worked with black brick masons. I think that blacks had
taken up that trade because it was hard work. That's a hard job and my
father used to be a hard taskmaster on that. I worked with him some as a
kid and like I say, he was one of the hardest working men I ever knew.
He wasn't afraid to work, of all his shortcomings, that wasn't one of
them. He, in fact, had sort of an assembly line. We talk about the
automobiles having an assembly line. My father was an expert brick mason
and he hired expert brick masons and he hired a man to help and if my
father hired someone and was working and reached back for that second
brick, there better be a damn brick waiting to be stuck in his hand by a
helper. If it wasn't, he would holler to them as he did to me as a kid,
"Dollar waiting on a dime." Because you paid a brick mason a good wage
and a helper made just a little wage and if a brick mason who was making
what he called a dollar and the other guy was making a dime and didn't
put the brick in his damn hand, he got
Did you ever work in cafes and stuff like that too?
Not much, no. He made money during the war by running a lot of cafes,
while I was in the navy. I came back and was going to put all I had
saved in the navy, ?1500, into what was going to be a dinner club. He
was living with this woman and during an argument, she shot him right
through the knee and they put her in jail. I stayed at his house and he
was doing a little brick work and I put my whole ?1500 into the thing
and we were going to be partners and I told him, "If you ever see that
woman again, we are through." Money gave out and we had to have
I went and got Dan Edwards, who had been elected mayor … when I was shining shoes, I used to do it up in the Hill Building and I was one of the few people who could shine shoes in the building up there …
How come?
I don't know. I just started doing it and the people liked me and they
would let me come in but they wouldn't let others. After I started
shining "the big boys" shoes to get more money, I met Dan Edwards when
he was just a young lawyer getting started and he went overseas and
became a war hero. They wrote a book about him getting
They remembered you?
Yeah and Lesley had been the chairman of the Democratic party that was
elected in '48. He is now on the city council and has turned awfully
conservative. But at that time, he was in with the liberal group in the
You went into the navy with a ninth grade education?
Yeah, I left the ninth grade to … I quit school when I was sixteen and went to work in Ohio and came back and started to school again, after spending a summer in Ohio working with a baseball club up there. I was the batboy …
With the Durham Bulls?
Yeah, I was the first batboy with the Durham Bulls that had a uniform. In fact, they had a special night for me.
In Ohio?
No, in Durham. My number was 0 and I became known as "Zero Hobby." I traveled with the ball club and sort of worked as the assistant trainer. I went to Ohio as the assistant trainer for the Dayton Ducks. When I came back, I started back to school, I was still sixteen. The war was going on and November rolled around and I became seventeen and so I threatened to kill myself if my mother didn't sign for me to get into the navy. So, she signed.
Why did you want to go into the navy so badly?
Most of the boys that I grew up with had gone into the navy. I knew one boy over there who was actually only fifteen years old and had already been in the South Pacific and had had two ships blown out from under him and he had come back a big hero, you know.
Were you still an adolescent and wanted to impress the girls or was it more …
Well, the way I think of it… people talked and you talked very
patriotically at that time. It was a little bit of both. After going to
Ohio, you know and
How long were you in the navy?
I was in the navy three years and four months.
'41 to '44?
I went into the navy on November 7, 1942 and I got out on February 15, 1946 and I went down to work at American … well, I worked with my father as a brick-layer and all and then when I broke up with my relationship with him, I went down to the American Tobacco Company and went to work on August 5, 1946.
How did you happen to pick the tobacco company? That turned out to be important later.
Yeah. Well, I guess just because they were hiring, Bill, and I knew they had a pretty good record of having one of the best jobs around Durham. So, I went down there and went to work for 75¢ an hour on the night shift.
Were you married?
No, not at that time. I met my wife within four or five months. I got married about five months later. In fact, I got married on New Year's Eve of '46. My wife came to work down there about two months after I did.
You met her in the plant?
In the plant, yeah. I went out on a double-date with her, but I was with
the other girl.
You sent it down?
He looked at it, sent it back up and drove off and said that if he wanted
to see her he would send for her. He wouldn't speak to her. We were both
working in the night shift at the tobacco plant and she loved her mother
very much, so I used to take her out to see her mother … they lived
about six miles out of town … and I would sit out in the car on the road
while she would visit with her mother in the afternoon before we went to
work. At that time, we would go to work at 4:25 and work until two
o'clock in the morning. So, after about two weeks, her mother just
insisted that I come in and I wouldn't go in for several trips and then
finally, I did go in. I was sitting there and her old man walked in.
That must have shocked you both.
It did. He didn't say anything to me and I didn't say anything to him. He
had been an OP meat grader during the war and was a butcher and at that
time, was buying cows and butchering them. She had a brother who was
about two years older and they had been off to a sale and there was
nothing there and they came home early that day. So, he walked out of
the house and down to the slaughter pen and after he got out, I got out.
I guess that I really didn't have much to say to him. At that time, I …
I drank a little bit when I first got out of the navy, but I quit
drinking then and I guess that it was a couple or three months later … I
didn't go back into the house … so, it was a couple of months later and
I was going down one Saturday night to her aunts who lived down at
Zebulon, and we were going down the old Wake Forest Road, 298, and just
before I got into Zebulon, a guy walked out into front of me. I cut left
and he cut on infront of me. He was in a dark suit and I couldn't see
anything of his face, I was right up on him. So, I threw on the brakes
and went into the ditch on the other side, but just as I crossed the
white line, I hit him with my right front fender. So, we called the
police and he
Fifty minutes?
Yeah. So, they carried me down and talked to me and asked me if I had
been drinking. I said, "No, and if there is any doubt in your mind, I
demand that you take me to a hospital right now and have a blood test."
This was on Saturday night, so the next day, they turned me loose and I
went on down to her aunt's about nine or ten miles the other side of
Zebulon at a little town called Samaria. So, the next day, I went back
through Raleigh over here at Rex Hospital and saw the old man. He had
never regained consciousness. He had just been let out of Dix Hill for
alcoholism and had just been at a little service station drinking and
asked his daughter to carry him home and she refused to carry him home.
So, he had started to walk home. In fact, one of the daughters came by
while he was laying in the room and didn't come in. I guess that the old
man had given them trouble all the time. So, I went to work on Monday
and
Were there any charges against you?
No, they turned me loose at the coroner's hearing. But we went out to tell her daddy about it then, after this happened, I guess that this was the first time that I had talked to him. It had been three or four months. He went to the funeral with us. He didn't have much of an education, but he was a smart man and a hard working man. His only vice was gambling. He was pretty good at it and had made quite a bit of money from it. He was quite a card player. So, they made a real bad scene at the funeral, you know. It surprised me because of a couple of things that had happened. Like I said, one of the daughters came by and didn't even get out of the car …
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
… if I had any money, any insurance and
Well, Wilbur, when you started in the American Tobacco Company, what did you know about the union?
I didn't know anything about the union, Bill, at all.
They had a union, though?
They had a union there and after I worked there for sixty days, there was
a provision in the union contract that said that management would call
the new employees together and explain to them what the union was and
that they would like
They said that they would like for you to join the union?
Yeah. In the little group that I was in, there were about twelve of us and they called us into the stairwell of the steps out there. This is still, I think, a provision in the contract with the American Tobacco Company. So, we joined the union and I guess that I paid my dues and that was all there was to it for about two months. Then, I was oiling cigarette machines and as I oiled it, if you hurried you could get through in two or three hours.
For an eight hour shift?
Yeah. Or you could let things go that didn't have to be done. So, I would
do my work and go into the washroom and just go around and talk to
people. I came in one day and they told me that I had to oil the fourth
floor. I was on the third floor. They said, "You have to oil the third
and the fourth floors." I grumbled a little bit to myself about it and
went into the washroom on the third floor
President of …
Of the American Tobacco Company night shift group, which was about three
hundred workers. I hadn't been there for about six for five months. My
predecessor, who I said was sharp, well, he got out there and he started
calling my hands on things and making a fool out of me, really. It was
kind of a joke to him to show that I didn't know anything. So, I took it
on myself to learn the contract and to learn Robert's Rules of Order and
be able to handle him, you know. I was able, when he started to bring up
points of order, because he had been bringing up things that were out of
line but nobody knew any better, so I called him out of order a few
times and called him down and he appealed my decision and people sided
with me. I became a pretty good chairman and was doing the work there
and was interested in it. While I was chairing one of those meetings
there that year, Sparky Williamson came up and he asked Leo Hicks, who
was president of the local union and was active in the central labor
union and Leo and Sparky were good friends and they came up asking
This wasn't a union meeting, this was just a meeting to help their campaign?
Yeah, this was a meeting of the voters for better government, to plan on
the participation. When I got to the meeting, there were Dan Edwards and
Lesley Atkins. It was the first meeting that I had ever been there.
Well, they were claiming that there were almost 15,000 union members in
Durham and that included Durham county. But as I sat there that day and
they were talking about 15,000 union members and how there would only be
about 8,000 votes cast, I had a vision you know, that the labor movement
could run this thing and the workers ought to have it. I had this vision
and it didn't ever occur to me that half of our people weren't
registered, half of them wouldn't go vote. I just got this vision and
so, I got active in Voters for Better Government. I got Professor
Douglas Magg, a constitutional lawyer at Duke Law School and he and a
young college student by the name of Henry Hall Wilson, drew up the
by-laws for Voters for Better Government. We got
Your house was built by this time?
Yeah.
So you had more time?
Yes. So, I put a lot of time in it both day and night.
This is for that city council election?
Yes. And in early 1950, they had elections for Voters for Better
Government and Sparky Williamson and Leo and all pushed me for president
of it. By this time, I had learned how to be a chairman and I accepted
it. To my knowledge, I didn't have any opposition and I accepted it. So,
when Frank Graham, who had been appointed by Kerr Scott to the Senate
and the labor movement wanted him re-elected, so …the merger had not
been consumated between the AFL-CIO, we had the AFL down here and we had
set up in 1947, a group with NFL called Labor League for Political
Education. So, they sent a fellow down to work on this thing and they
paid my salary and I got a leave of absence and I worked for about four
months. I had plenty of money, they hired me about twelve secretaries
and we copied the registration list. Every week we had a registration
drive and we copied all the union
You must have worked just with union members then?
Yeah, well, we were the only ones working, really. Outsides of the
blacks. There was no Graham headquarters in Durham in 1950. I remember
that during that time, a young seventeen year old college student by the
name of Al House, who was a freshman at Carolina, came over and said
that he wanted to work for Dr. Graham but couldn't find anybody that was
working. So, I put him out knocking on doors in the precincts and
delivering literature and he worked on election day. Al House later
became the national president of the Young Democratic Clubs of America.
He was a very brilliant young Democrat and represented his country at
Paris at the youth conference of outstanding young political leaders
from all over the world. He later killed himself, committed suicide. He
was very close to his sister. I almost lost my job over it, but I went
on up and became director of COPE in 1960, when John Kennedy was
elected. Then in '62, they were gearing up for the election of the
president of the Young Democratic Clubs and Al House, who was a liberal,
was running from North Carolina and there was a guy by the name of
O'Malley, a young personable business agent for
And you put House against the union guy?
Well, you see, I talked to Barkin about this and Barkin got to thinking that since Bobby Kennedy had gone in '62 and gotten himself elected Senator … this was in '63 … And Barkin's theory was that people weren't going to buy a young, Irish, Boston Catholic in every damn job and so, he thought that if he got a good liberal from the South, it would be good to expand it. So, I talked with all my fellow COPE directors around the country and they weren't involved in Young Democratic politics, so they didn't know that O'Malley was an IBW guy. I got them all committed with Barkin's knowledge at first. Meanwhile, Barkin was the number two man and the number one man died …
Barkin wasn't the headof COPE?
No, the number one man, Jim McDevitt, died at the COPE conference in
Oklahoma City and so they put off the … then John Kennedy got shot and
they put off the YDC Convention. I had laid the damn groundwork, you
know. I had people like Jim Hunt working with me and Bob Futrell and
other people, George Autrey and Tom Gilmore. We were pushing Al House.
So, it came down to a knock-down-drag-out
So, Al House was working with you in the Graham campaign, that's where he got his start?
He was sort of a protege. Al worked right on up.
These other women that you mentioned, Brownie Lee Jones and Carla Myerson, were they still around working in the Graham campaign?
Brownie Lee came down from Richmond and lived
Is she still with this …
No, she is sort of retired now.
But she was then, with the … what was it?
The Southern School for Workers.
It was in Richmond?
Headquartered out of Richmond. They had some money left to them by some old rich person.
You don't know anymore about that? It wasn't tied with the Southern Summer School in Asheville?
No.
Did you know about that school?
Well, there are a lot of summer schools that are around Asheville. I don't know which one you are talking about. They used to have them with the YMCA area up there. Of course, a lot of the internationals have summer schools at Black Mountain and at … what is the place where the YMCA is? Do you know what I'm talking about?
Yeah, but I don't know the name of it, though.
I was up there for an alcoholic institute a little while ago. They've built a nice new center up there. It used to be nothing but old cruddy cabins, but it is a terrific meeting place now.
So, was the Voters for Better Government evolving into mostly a labor organization? Because the LL …what is it?
LLPE.
Because the LLPE put money in?
Well, we kept Voters for Better Government until the merger of AFL-CIO,
which was in December of '55. By this time, the Brown decision had come
down from the Supreme Court and by this time we were having terrific
fights. They organized the White Citizens Council in Durham. There was
that and there was a group called DUPEC, Durham United Political
Were you still working in the tobacco factory?
I was still working in the tobacco factory and going to Duke full time and president of the Voters for Better Government and commander of the damn vets organization.
Commander of what?
Veterans of World War II. And so, Williamson had been named the secretary-treasurer when they took over the Democratic party …
Secretary-treasurer of the county Democratic party?
The county Democratic executive committee. So, he went with LLPE and then
later with COPE. So, he resigned in '55. He resigned from the city
council because he was working twelve states and he resigned from
secretary. Well, I was doing all the work. Williamson was sitting up
there with a lot of authority, but I did all the work. So, I became the
When was this?
That was in '55. Well, they went all out to beat us in the precincts in '56 and they used the union vehicle to organize the conservative whites into the White Citizens Council. They made as the president of it, a guy in my local union who was a pretty strong fellow named Joe Spence. They put out leaflets against me, that I was selling jobs and the people in the American Tobacco Company printed leaflets. So, 1956, I won my precinct again and we won in the election. We had a knock-down-drag-out battle with about 400 people in the Democratic county convention and then Atkins won by one vote.
He beat you?
No, Atkins won the chairmanship by one vote. And after Atkins won, they
didn't put up anybody against me. So, in '58, I got beaten in my
precinct. They had some 400 people in my precinct that time, most of
them my own union members. It was a racial issue by this time and it was
real hot on the schools. So, we got beat enough in the precinct so that
there was no way that we could win. They bought off some of the people
that I had gotten to be precinct chairman. We lost the board of
elections. We had a union man on the board and old man Everret was the
chairman. They took three guys out of my local union that I had gotten
to be precinct chairmen
This is what year, now?
This is 1958. I have slept on the job many times and had been caught several times, but the morning I was fired, I was not sleeping. It was because of the argument that we had had in that meeting the night before. So, I went to work for the textile union and worked in the South for them.
TWUA?
Yeah. I didn't run again for the secretary because I knew that we were beaten. Atkins ran and got beaten by about eight votes. You know, I can count. Hell, when there isn't but thirty precinct chairmen, who know who they all are. Atkins just wouldn't give up.
So, I went on and worked for textiles and went to Florida and worked for Claude Pepper …
You were working with their political …
I was their political director in the South.
Oh, you were?
Yeah. In 1958. I met a lot of people. So, I went over there and
meanwhile, my local union voted to arbitrate my case, my grievance. Six
or seven months later, we won the arbitration. Well, I wasn't making but
?85 a week for textiles and I had been working two jobs and everything
and I didn't see any future in it. I had really gone on with this
because Williamson had begun to drink real badly and he had gotten into
trouble in Durham. He had been down to this black cathouse and had
gotten rolled and instead of letting it be, he had reported it to the
police, that he had lost his wallet and watch. There was a big newspaper
spread about it. There had always been some inter-union rivalry between
Williamson and the 176 group at Ligget-Myers who were very active
politically and who were kind of he aded up by a fellow by the name of
Sam Blane, a very shrewd old man. He died here about six months ago. He
was either the first or second vice-president of the tobacco workers
international union and he had dabbled in politics in Durham there for
years and he had gotten a group of right good workers, guys like Millard
Barbee and Al Atwater, who went on the city council for a very brief
period and Sam Latta, P.R. Latta's brother. They had been in a very
bitter fight since 1948, it started before I got into it. I don't
So, you had letters from there?
And the textile people got letters for me from all these people. I finally got the job and two years later, I walked into the Social Securities department to see Nelson Cruikshank and some girl said, "Can I tell him who is calling?" I said, "Yeah, Wilbur Hobby." This girl said, "Are you Wilbur Hobby." I said, "Yeah." She said, "Well, I was working for COPE just before you got that job and I have never seen anybody with so many friends in my life as you had." I really got the mail in there. Hell, I bet that I had four hundred letters and two hundred telegrams in there.
Maybe that's a good place to stop.
Yeah, I've got to get out and … we'd need another hour or two, I think, Bill.
Yeah, we will finish later. Let me just be sure that I've got this straight. You worked at American Tobacco, then, from '47 …
'46.
'46 until '58, for twelve years. Then from '58 until '59, you worked for textiles and …
I worked for about nine months for textiles and then I went back after winning the arbitration case. I went back in either September or October of '58. Then, on April 16 or 17 of '59, I went to work for COPE.
And you worked for COPE until …
August 16 of '69.
Then, you were elected president?
Yeah.
During those COPE years, to help me connect the time, what would you say … you were involved in so many elections, what were the most important events of that time for you and for the labor movement?
Well, I worked in Olin Johnston's election in South Carolina against
Hollings, which was a very bitter
All of these, you think are important for labor's involvement in the campaign?
Yes. And I worked in Kentucky in the election for Wilson Wyatt. We lost that election, but I did some right good work out there.
Let me ask you a couple of more questions about some things so we won't have to go back. Did you never know David Burgess, during the Frank Graham campaign?
Yes.
Was there close cooperation in that campaign between the AFL and the CIO?
Yeah. Extremely close. As I said, we had the group known as the UAOPC committee and we met almost every Sunday, Bill. We would meet one Sunday in Durham and the next Sunday in Greensboro or High Point. At that time, the CIO was set up there. I don't remember where … I guess that there was a young fellow by the name of Harry Kahn. Harry was with the PAC group. Harry's brother was Lou Kahn and at that time, he was state CIO director and Harry came down and worked with me in '50 in the Graham campaign. I met Dan Powell in the Graham campaign. He was one of the guys who did a lot to guide me along. He was a PAC director for the South. He is now the COPE director and was one of the people who also helped me get on the COPE staff.
What was the thing about Frank Graham that got people so motivated? He was, in a way, the turning point for you politically.
Well, all I know is what I've read. Frank Graham had been a defender of
the textile workers. Not necessarily the union workers, but the textile
worker that was being exploited in the mills. He was a great
humanitarian and particularly the CIO people had a real fondness for
him. By this time, the AFL had gotten into
But everybody felt strongly about Graham because of his history. You didn't meet him personally at the time?
I met him about that time and read a little bit about him, but I didn't
really know him or know much about him in 1950, except that he was our
Senator and he was good and Willis Smith was the devil. I know a
pathetic story. I had about twelve secretaries, as I told you, and I had
this guy come into the labor temple up there who donated forty hours a
week there and I couldn't ever get him to take anybody to register. He
had this old car. I had two calls in one day and nobody was there with a
car and he was there and I bawled him out. He was twenty years older
than I was but I bawled him out because he wouldn't go to register. It
turns out that he was an old labor worker for textiles and his
Well, we'll cover those COPE years and your political involvement in North Carolina next time.
You might want to cover some of my time with textiles, too. I got into Senator Gore's election and worked very hard in his election over there. I worked in Kefauver's last election, although it was not my area, in the last primary election in Tennessee.
What year was that?
That was in '60. I didn't have any important elections, all my primaries were over in the spring in my area, but in Tennessee, the primaries are in August and September and so, I offered to help then. I worked in Kefauver's last election over there.
Well, I don't want to make you late.
END OF INTERVIEW