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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-0062, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Ashley Davis arrived as a student at University of North Carolina in 1968 and became involved with the Black Student Movement (BSM). Still in its infancy, the BSM was a growing force on campus, and in 1969, the food workers at UNC asked the BSM for its support in their strike. Davis describes how leading up to the strike, Preston Dobbins, leader of the BSM, had gathered funds to hire Otis Light to work with service workers on campus. Primarily African American, service workers on campus often faced poor working conditions and low pay. By 1968, workers in the cafeteria had become especially discontent with low wages, split shifts, and unpaid overtime work. In the spring of 1969, the cafeteria workers, led by a group of women who worked in the Pine Room at Lenoir Hall, decided to go on strike. Davis emphasizes throughout the interview that the food workers led their own strike and that any assistance the BSM provided was supportive only. The BSM was there from the beginning, says Davis, helping to slow down service in the cafeteria by holding up the lines, thereby giving food workers the opportunity to walk out and begin their strike. During the rest of the strike, the BSM helped by boycotting and picketing outside of Lenoir Hall. In addition, the BSM raised funds in order to set up an alternative "soul food cafeteria" in Manning Hall so that food workers could continue working and so that students boycotting the cafeterias had somewhere to eat. Davis describes how the Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC) was one of the BSM's main outlets of support during the food workers strike. According to Davis, however, the BSM's support of the striking food workers led to tensions between African American students and conservative white students. He describes how a series of confrontations led Governor Terry Sanford to call in state troopers to mediate the situation, and he explains how the presence of these troopers ultimately worked in favor of the strikers. In addition, Davis discusses at some length the reaction of Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson to the BSM and the strike. He concludes by offering his thoughts on the outcome of the strike and the impact of the BSM's role in the conflict.
Ashley Davis was a member of the Black Student Movement (BSM) at the University of North Carolina during the late 1960s and early 1970s. In this interview, he describes how the BSM supported the striking food workers at UNC in 1969.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
…I think they feel that what they know about the strike is pretty much said by the newspaper accounts and all, which…
Right. Well, I'll tell you what. If sometime you want to ask a little question while I'm telling you this, you can just stop me and ask, O.K.?
All right.
And there might be some people who would disagree with what I say, or what I think happened, and so that's the way they see it.
But let me just say this, I came to Carolina in the fall of 1968, and
already you could tell that we were going to get into a lot of things
that were coming up, you know, with BSM activity. And I think that at
that time, Black student movements thrived a little more on controversy.
When did Otis start…
Start working? Now, my problem here is that I get so confused with my years. I think that the first strike was in the spring of…
The first one here was in the spring of '69.
Right. I think that was in the spring of '69. Because this is what I'm saying, Otis had started working in the fall of '68.
And when he started working, he was hired specifically to work with…
…to work with the people. This is what I understand. Now, only on one or two conversations did I run into this, this is what Otis was hired to do. Just to work with them, helping them to get themselves together and talking. O.K. Now, in this talk, I must emphasize that there were two particular groups of workers who had high potential. The Monogram Club, which was on campus over there where the Admissions Office is now, groups of ladies that worked down there, very active and outspoken. And then you had a group of ladies who worked in the Pine Room, and I think that this was the major center of the strike right there. It started with these ladies in the Pine Room.
Why were they more susceptible than others?
Well, because I tend to think that they had two or three combinations of
people down there who were…a Mrs. Smith, you'll
Well, I haven't, but…
Well, someone probably will…Mrs. Smith and some other ladies down there,
really seemed to be out with the system. They were actually running the
Pine Room and all. Mrs. Smith, I think, was ordering stuff, she was
generally doing the managing. What was happening was that these ladies
were managing the cafeteria system, but none of them were made managers,
you see. So, they had no black managers as such. They had four managers,
but the managers that they did have were kind of mean to the ladies,
talking mean and they were making people do all kinds of stuff, like
they would make you come to work and work four hours in the morning, say
from six to ten, split your day and then you would go back to work from
two to six. Now, that's an eight hour day, sure, but what do you do from
ten until two? You see, and what they would do is just sit around from
ten o'clock until two o'clock, if they weren't working, because you had
to go back to work at two o'clock. Well, a lot of these people lived in
Durham. And I mean, these people, from my understanding, wrote letters
to people in the University and you get the same old bull jive from
people who would say, "Oh, yes, we understand." But I think that the
real situation was that the people up in South Building, the Chancellor
at that time, Chancellor Sitterson, I don't think really had a hold on
what was going on with fiscal policy. With a school this size, a
tremendous campus, it's hard to keep a hold on
O.K. I think that in there, the Duke people had already struck. They struck in the spring of 1968, a very effective strike, they struck the whole campus, I mean everything. And justeverything. Over in the hospital, all the people were on strike, all over.
Howard Fuller was involved with that strike.
Sure, Howard Fuller.
Was Dobbins at all?
Let me say this. Howard Fuller was involved with the strike, but I tend
to not play up the role of Howard Fuller in stuff like this, because
Fuller is more an…and other people might disagree with what Fuller does
and doesn't do, but as far as I saw it, Fuller was more the kind of man
who could come in and give a good speech. And I think this is what
happened in part with Chapel Hill. Now, Fuller never really did play a
part in the strike here. Fuller came and gave lip service on occassion.
I think that what happens, though, is that, now, I'm in Communications
and I see that where the media seeks
All right, so then, they told us one day that they were going to go on
strike and we had a meeting upstairs in Lenoir Hall, at the north end of
Lenoir. This was a place up…it's an art studio now…and we all took our
dinners up there and ate dinner and the ladies and Preston, Mrs. Smith
and all of them were there, and they were saying that we were going…Mrs.
Brooks from Hillsborough, said that "we want to go on strike and we want
the BSM to help us and we want to start it tomorrow." And they made it
quite clear, too, and let me make it clear, this was not a BSM led
strike, we did not lead those strikes. Those people asked us and there
was a vote taken, as I remember, a vote as to whether or not we would
assist them in the strike. No time during the strike, and I would like
to make that very clear, because I
Right.
Well, they askeus the next day, I think that it was a Saturday or Sunday, would we come into the Pine Room and to slow service. And this would start the thing out. So, the next day in the Pine Room, we came in and slowed service to the point where they had to close the Pine Room that day. The ladies wouldn't work, the ladies came from behind the counter and people were standing around and they had to close the Pine Room. Then there were other meetings held to determine what type of strategy would be followed. So, for a while, you know, it mainly became a strategy of strike. You know, just march, march, march, march. Just marching around.
Can I ask a question right now, about the beginnings of it? Do you think they would have struck without the guidance of say, Otis Light or other leaders?
I have no idea what Otis did with people. I know that he was not working
when they started because I think that the funds he had gotten, by that
time, they weren't there anymore. And I'm not sure where the funds came
from. They might have come from certain individuals, whatever, you know.
You'll have to ask Preston Dobbin about that. I'll tell you, I might do
you a favor, too. I'm going
So, when the BSM originally came in, they had no idea that there was necessarily going to be a strike. What kind of role did they see themselves playing?
Well, in terms of roles just as helpers. What could we do to help. O.K. And this is what came out in this meeting. People were going to picket the cafeteria, this kind of thing, so therefore, they wanted the BSM members to picket the cafeteria, collect money in support of the thing, just to support the general strike. People were told at this meeting that there was going to be a strike, but it had been intimated to people earlier that there was a strike being planned and all.
I got the impression that the University was aware that a strike was in
the making. If it wasn't…I'm going to be honest too, I'm going to say
something that maybe I shouldn't say. But I had very little faith or
very little respect for the administrative
Was it essentially a racial thing? I mean, that they thought they could put this over on the black workers and the white workers were not…
Well, there were very few white workers. In fact, to my knowledge, I don't think there was but maybe one or two white ladies who were cashiers, but just about everybody who worked in that kitchen in that cafeteria were black. Like I said, the black people really ran the cafeteria system. I mean they did, in essence. The people that they put down here as managers had no training. Whoever in this University was doing the buying and hiring really should be having his behind knocked to the wall. The University lost money in the cafeteria because they didn't know how to run a cafeteria. This was what I was saying when I first came in, about the waiting and too many people. So, the people had a lot of grievances, a letter was sent to different people in the University. The people, I think, who were involved in the strike were very formalized and they were very optimistic, whereas I think that some of us tended to be pessimistic. Because we had noticed already how the University had responded to this kind of thing. It seemed that whenever things would happen, the University would act just like it didn't care. I think perhaps, the University is more responsive now, because it's seen the problems that it had in the past, the real headaches that it got.
Such as the strike.
Such as the strikes, such as the problems with the BSM, such
Was it good?
The food?
Yeah.
The food was very good. I think that anybody who knows anything about
cafeteria management would tell you that if you go anywhere into a
cafeteria, if the food is good, it tells you something about the staff
in that cafeteria. The staff is happy. If the food is bad, the staff is
unhappy. You see. I think that holds up generally down the line. Now,
what we started doing is…and it really became an interesting thing, man,
because like the students at that time… I think the students really got
into it. They were looking, and this was something else for them to get
into. This was something where there was no danger. One thing that has
to be mentioned at this point is the question of what were dangerous
situations and
You think that it's more dangerous now?
Yeah, I'm saying that it's more dangerous now in the fact that we know
now that the police have learned that the tactic to deal with this is to
make something legal illegal and then you deal with it. And this is what
they did later on, I'll get to that. O.K. So, we were marching around,
having meetings and missing classes, a whole lot just missing classes,
and what we'd do, we'd get up early in the morning, real early, like
four or five o'clock in the morning. I just wasn't used to this myself.
I say, this was a real challenge for me. Because those people who they
called "scabs" and all this kind of adjectives, the people who didn't
want to come in, that came to work…you went to work at four o'clock in
the morning, by the way. I should tell you this, a lot of people went to
work at four o'clock in the morning, to prepare to cook breakfast and
all. This is what I was telling you, some people worked from four to
eight, and then twelve to four, you know, this
Well, the strike progressed and finally, we got to one day where…we had
students working with us on the strike, and these students belonged to
SSOC, Southern Students Organizing Committee. And you know, this was a
break-off of SNIC, and we had SSOC people working for us. And what was
happening was that there were white kids who were intimidating the SSOC
people who were working with us, in the dormitories. I mean, like, in
Dorm and all, you had SSOC people handing out leaflets and you had
students come out there and try to cram leaflets out the SSOC people's
mouths
Well, why this early aggression toward the SSOC people?
Well, because I think that the nature of the campus at that time…I think
that now, this campus has changed and part of it… some people say it's
the drug culture, some people say it's a lot of things, but at that
time, people cared a lot about things, even if it was negative things.
There were a lot of guys who were conservative and they meant to be
conservative. They were honestly conservative. They didn't like black
students. They thought it was a privilege for black students to be here.
Black students should come here and be assimilated. And we had submitted
a list of demands to the Chancellor before, you know. All these things
are going along at one and the same time. The demand, this hassle and
this hassle, so, it was a merry old time. And you can see the whole
structure of Carolina, how it dealt with it. Like I say, Chancellor
Sitterson, he was just a man
So, it was a racial matter before the BSM was ever involved?
Sure, I mean that it was racist in that you had the cafeteria workers that could not move up in the University hierarchy. They were not managers and you had these people sitting in the cafeterias working these split shifts. You had a Chancellor who, like I say, had a choice.
He was either a criminal or he was negligent, you see, about running the
fiscal policy of the University. Now what should have happened is that
after that cafeteria fiasco, if it had been in private industry, a
vice-president would have retired. But it didn't happen here. I think
that nowdays you might have more retiring being done, because people
can't play with that kind of thing anymore. Man, you start messing up
money, they have to retire you. O.K. so anyway, the SSOC people were
constantly being attacked and it finally came to a head one day, when we
were having…oh yeah, we had to do a few things to in the wildness of the
period. We would go in a few classes and ask people to strike classes,
you know. And I remember one professor's class that we went in and I
found out later that it was some guy who had been in Austria before the
Germans came in, an old guy. And another
One day, what happened in Lenoir, it finally came to a head, because we had our people, something started in there and some football players came into the cafeteria and they began to…I think that it started out because we had SSOC people and some other people sitting in the cafeteria, just sitting in chairs, occupying seats. They would go up and buy a drink, or some crunch, or some dessert or something, just sitting in the seats. And we did fill half the cafeteria like that. And we had the cafeteria closed for awhile, and then they reopened and we had this other thing with people sitting in there and we were still picketing out around the cafeteria and going in the mornings and stuff. And then the major development that happened then, it got real bad when these football boys, and some other people, as I understand it, were going to eject some of the SSOC people and that came to a big head. It came down to the case where we understood that some white students were going to band together and attack us, like at Manning as such. You know what I mean?
The BSM?
Yeah. Well, attack, like individually, that's what I mean. This is what
we came to understand. And see, the way the University was handling this
situation, the campus police, and the white students, and I still say
this today, the white students could do about anything. Without
question. It is my firm belief that if some white students attacked some
black students and beat that black student to death… look at James cates
there. The University did nothing at all. I remember that even we had a
hassle later on about that because if they had a list of black people in
Chapel Hill that they wouldn't let come on campus and the names of the
Storm Troopers wasn't up there. Now, we asked Dean specifically why
those names weren't up there. In that one instance, I'm just trying to
pick for you how…the administration then, you had in there as Dean of
Students, and Dean
Would you really call it violence, though?
In terms of the system, sure it was violent. We didn't hurt anybody, we didn't plan to hurt anybody. We just wanted to let people know that we weren't going to let the people from SSOC, who worked with us, be hurt. We weren't going to let cafeteria workers be hurt, we had heard at that time that there were certain students who…and I believe that we had students with that mentality then and now, who would hurt a worker. Because I don't think that students really even attempted to understand. A lot of stuff was just plain reaction and the reaction is, "I'm not going to let you blacks come up here and take over our University. We were doing so well before you got here and we'll do well when you leave here. So, you're fortunate to be here, …" I think that's the main thing, the "fortunate to be here" part. It doesn't matter if your taxes are paying for it, or that the University is taking over black man's land through escheats or other things, it doesn't matter. "You are lucky to be here." And this attitude, I think it just prevailed on the whole campus, if not outwardly, then inwardly. Well, so we went through and a few chairs were thrown and tables were overturned and all the white students who were down there to make a big stand with pitchers and stuff, moved back out. O.K., and that was all. We came back through the cafeteria and went back over to Manning Hall.
So, there was actually a confrontation down there?
It wasn't really a confrontation. The white kids didn't try to confront us. I think that what happened, the white kids, and I found this to be true at that time, that white people really bothered me so much then and I could hardly understand it, that they could be so insensitive to things and to have such great egos. I mean, they just would tear me up. How can people so insensitive, I mean, you can tell that there was real racism involved, people going into that cafeteria early, and people serving them food and stuff, and they don't even see them. For some of them, the people serving them in that cafeteria might as well be robots. They weren't even human to these people. And then that ego, "what are you doing to our University?" "Why do you students want to do this?" "Don't you know why you come to school?"
Now, let me tell you though, after a basketball game, when Carolina would
win, these students would go out and throw around over a thousand rolls
of toilet paper across trees. O.K., now, these were the kinds of things
that were being discussed in these meetings, "how could these white kids
go out here and throw toilet paper over these trees?" All right, who
cleaned up that toilet paper off the lawn and stuff? Black people! No
consideration. And I think that to white kids then, and maybe one thing
that is good about this energy crisis, maybe it has made white people
appreciate the service people. Like the service station. You begin to
appreciate people who serve you. People that you don't even see or
consider human, you just used to say, "Fill'er up." "Gimme that." You
know, this kind of
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
The first instance of violence that really broke out was probably the turning over of the tables?
Yeah.
Was that a spontaneous thing, or was there a method in the madness there…?
Well, no, it was part spontaneous. See, this problem is like murder trials. What is violence, first of all? Well, when our SSOC people are hit in the head and we know that the SSOC people are supporting us, well, that's violence against us.
Did you feel like this would counter the SSOC violence, the violence against the SSOC people?
Well, no, I think that what we had been telling people, we had been telling people that we were tired of that, like I say, certain students were actively hostile over this thing and the women and everybody and had certain comments. And we said that if things got that bad, we would come out and stand up for these people, even if it meant coming down to fistcuffs. Well, it had gotten to the point, I believe, where people wanted to test us. They didn't believe any more that we would do that. We could tell it, because once people started messing with the SSOC people and other people and threatening the ladies and stuff, this told us that people didn't take our word. So, in that sense, there was a support for doing the cafeteria thing, to illustrate to people, "Now, look here, we're not playing with you." But on the other hand, the fact that things that happened that day, there was a series of events, I say that the potential was there, and the activities, the kid getting hit in the head with a sugar shaker, he had to have about fourteen or fifteen stitches in his head, really set the thing on end to what happened that night.
I don't know about the event with the sugar shaker.
It was during the day, like I say, the kids were sitting in the
cafeteria, we had kids to sit in and get in line and go slow in line and
stuff and my understanding was that football players, some football
player came in there and got pissed off and football players by style at
that time, they were supposed to get pissed because they
Need I guess?
Need you guess? Not a thing. Nothing was done. The campus police did
absolutely nothing. Now, if you are going to stopt violence on one side,
you stop violence on the other. The campus did not stop violence for
people that were working for us, they did not stop people from insulting
those workers, ;this kind of situation. So, that led up to that
incidence that night, and the press you know, made a big play on that
and everything. Then the question came up, for the University, "How do
we handle this situation." After that night that the governor sent in
the State Troopers, now that was mistake number one on the old
governor's side. That was a big mistake.
So, while this was going on, we got us a record player and we were over
in Manning and we were laying it on them, "don't eat in the pig pen with
the pigs" and all this kind of good old action. And oh, by the way, the
governor called the Chancellor on the telephone and said, "I don't care
what you said about that building, I want those students out of there."
So, the Chancellor didn't want to look real bad, he didn't want to go
back on his words, I guess. He didn't want to use force. So, what he
did, he sent campus police over every night to come through the building
and what they would attempt to do was to catch the building at one
time…and they would come through there and lock doors systematically as
they through and if they could catch that building empty, they would
lock it up. You see what I mean? And lock people out and then arrest
anybody that tried
So,
Right.
So, you see that there's no way, in terms of history, there's no way you
can trust what is written in terms of legal history and documents,
because that depends on who is being sounded out and what would be
arrest for one person is not worthy of arrest for somebody else. And
what might seem criminal for black people…it's like the point that the
late Dr. Brewer mentioned, he said, "For a black man to walk down the
street and look the wrong way was criminal." So, if you look back and
say that there was tremendous crime in the black community, what is a
crime for black News and Observer, the Charlotte
Observer was the first place that I really noticed, they began
to editorialize a little bit and were becoming more critical of the
governor sending the troops. Evidently a lot of students had given a lot
of negative feedback to home. You know, "Mommy, you should have seen all
them police over on the University campus. I mean, they are just taking
over." And I know how students talk about blacks and so I know how they
must talk about police. I think there was a negative feedback that
started. A whole lot more negative feedback was beginning and the first
thing we saw happen was, as I remember correctly, the Troopers were
taken off campus and there was a settlement made.
Preston and them,and
But they didn't come in right after the first strike.
No, no, but see, they were here before that. They came in at the end of the first strike, I might be wrong, I get confused in the years, but as I remember, they were there at the end of the first strike, because part of the agreement was that the University had planned to sell the cafeteria system, even then. This was one of the considerations.
This was before the first strike?
I don't know about before the strike, but I know that after the strike,
one of the considerations was that the ladies were saying that they had
heard that the University was going to sell the cafeteria system,
because they were losing money. And they wanted to get from the
University an agreement that the University would maintain whatever wage
they got from this job to the next job. And also placement in jobs from
this system to the next. This was one of the guarrantees. The University
never really…I'm trying to think if they ever gave that guarrantee in
writing. If they did, I'm sure that it was a very tied-up promise to do
it. Because the University did not want to do it. They didn't want to do
it at all. And what I wanted to say that bothered us…when these union
people came in, like I say, we were only helping, in terms of advice, we
could't tell them what to do. And so, they went with AFSCME, I think.
But without really giving it the time that we wanted them to give to it,
really thinking about it. And
Do you think that if the BSM had had more control over it and had been
less in the background, that the strike would have
That's a possibility. I don't know that, you see. I can only say what my
thinking was, our strategy, what we saw. O.k., what I saw and the people
that I talked to saw, and what we expressed to them was, number one,
they should be wary of the union people and beware of the things the
University offered. Because of people whom we knew who were conservative
and had no like for the cafeteria people all of a sudden find themselves
available to help and do things…this kind of thing. So, in terms of the
outcome, BSM may have made more input, I don't know…because what happens
is the question of when you make input, whether or not people like your
input. Oh yeah, let me tell you what happened, too. At the end of the
strike, Chambers found out…they got over $180,000 in back pay, you can
find out the exact figures, they went through the records…now, those
records, from my understanding were over there and a guy from the U.S.
Department of Labor was going to come down. So, what we did, was that we
wanted to stick around and watch. We started keeping our eye on
buildings where we knew records was being kept. We wanted to see what
was going on. After this was announced, we wanted to see if there was
all of a sudden going to be a big moving program, or people going to do
a little midnight work, we were very interested in this kind of thing,
you know. So, we kept an eye out for that, and we watched where people
were going and different things, and kept an
There were a lot of other groups besides BSM involved in it. A lot of them just offered some kind of minor sympathy, and a lot of them offered some kind of facilities and then a lot of them were actively involved. Things like the Baptist Student Union, the Y,
This is what I'm saying, the dividing line was what's safe and what's not safe.
For some reason, the BSM seems so much closer than any of the other groups, though. Did they resent the involvement, you know, after the first week, or the first ten days were over, of these other, mostly white student groups coming in?
No, that's what I'm saying about the SSOC affair. Some people are saying
that we were against, well, what we've always said, BSM has always been
a very coalitionist oriented thing. People will say, and this is
like…the press, it's just terrible. Now, I'm going to say it like I said
it then. Back
Right, they said that they would not talk to black students as representatives of the workers. I remember they told this to white students, they didn't even tell it to the workers.
The point was, we don't want to represent nobody, we just wanted to be in
there in the meeting, to help the people intrepet what they were saying
to them. For instance, a good case in point on that, when Chambers, the
way that this back pay was, if you signed this piece saying that you
would accept this back pay, you immediately deny yourself the right to
prosecute for further pay. I think that the people in that cafeteria, if
they had had a real strong union, they would probably have lawsuited,
and not only would they have gotten back pay, they would probably have
gotten damages. You see, against the University. But most people just
got the things, and I think that most people just signed them. And we
ran all over Durham telling people, "Look, don't sign these things,
let's talk about it a little bit, let's have a meeting about it.
Beware." But they just went ahead and they got the checks. But these are
the
Did the role of the Black Student Movement change before and after the strike? In other words, was this part of the growth of the BSM?
Yeah, I think it was. We had to learn some things. That was a real major
test, right there. You learn ideology and you sing songs like, "No More
Brothers in Jail,' " and you get arrested, and this kind of thing. And
people grew. Some people were caused to mellow and not participate so
actively, or participate on different slants, what it did mainly,
though, was to tire people out. That kind of stuff is tremendously
tiresome. When you come out of it, you realize something. You say, "Man,
I got grades out here on the line. I won't be here." And a lot of
students that way in the strikes just aren't here, they never did finish
their school. They just couldn't hack it. And you know, it's so
interesting about the strike. We had a guy named Larry Bonds who is a
medical student at Duke now. And Bonds was one of… we had people
marching through the buildings, and Bonds was a zoo major and I think
that Bonds was a…he didn't even have to take classes, he was this kind
of a student. I think you know, that he had some meetings and he was the
independent study type, in college.
How about the organization?
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
Now, you were asking what now?
Well, just about the fact that the BSM was crisis oriented.
I tend to think that it was, because we really didn't have…well, BSM had only been started for about a year.
So, it was sort of an untiied thing?
Yeah, it was…well, first of all, Preston distinguishes himself I think, because he went down to the KA house and pulled the Confederate flag down with some boys, like I say, people seriously considered but, I think that we had people here who were more prone toward that. Prone by, number one, by respect for themselves, they didn't like certain things that were happening and others that didn't care as much. You've got to remember the period, '67, '68, '69 was a very low point in terms of students' academic drive, I think there was much more freedom about going through, people would go to summer school and take one course, they would take a little more time to get out of college, you know. A guy would take four, five years to get out, "I'm going to get out, but I'm not going to break my neck to get out." You know? Now, kids go through in three, two and a half if they can make it, and bust on, get out. Worrying about recommendations and their grades. I think there was a lot more laxity at that time. For some. It was funny, because you generally had two groups of kids. You had the group that hit that library every day and another group that wavered. It was interesting, too, that Jack McLean was in Navy ROTC, I don't know if you know that. He was an ROTC cadet, he was a math major, too. At that time, this was before the strike. And I think that the Navy said that Jack's involvement with the strike and BSM's demands and all, kind of got in the way of people…the guy tried to squre it with people in Washington, and they couldn't square it and so…
Well, were there any kind of consequences for the strikers, or for any of
Well, the consequences were that people were constantly getting back.
Now, like I say, this is why I mention this thing with Bonds. I think
there were professors here who never forgot, who still haven't forgotten
and won't forget about the strike. You know, in terms of people who were
in it. Some people I don't think understood it, I don't think they
bothered to understand it. They would read the Tar
Heel, which is dangerous, super-dangerous, and the newspapers to
find out what happened in the strike and of course, lots of the writing
in the Tar Heel, to me, was somewhat biased. We made
lots of gripes about the Tar Heel, you know, some of
the things they were writing and how they chose to get their facts and
this kind of thing, you know what I mean? Like, they would go to one
cafeteria workers who would choose to go to work instead of going on
strike and say, "Well, how do you like working at the cafeteria now?"
And then "Workers at the cafeteria don't really want…" well, they may
have talked to two workers. I think there were repercussions, in terms
of being tired, kids were tired, they were worn down, people kind of
laxed off. It really killed a lot of drive to do anything after that for
awhile, because people were just tired. People had just had enough. You
can just have so much at a time and we really felt bad. Because people
could see this in the demands of the strikers, that this was not going
to last. You knew that the University was going to renig on the
promises, because the University here doesn't consider people and we
never even thought that they considered the cafeteria workers people to
begin with. They weren't going to treat people they didn't think were,
like people…I mean, to treat a dog like a human. And I've seen dogs…and
this is another thing that infuriated us, man, I hated the dogs on this
campus, I hated everyone. It's amazing how good white folks could treat
dogs and how bad they could treat people. I mean,
Was it purposeful, you think, or was it just sort of…
Purposeful? Yes. They believed what they were putting out. Well, what the assumption is is, "we can do wrong, but it's not wrong." I still think that system still rests with the University.
Well, it must have changed. I mean, it just seems to be more aware to some degree now.
I tend to think that it is more aware, and I think that you can see the changes, because there has been a change in South Building, there have been some changes in Steele Hall. Let me tell you an incident, that shows why…
Can you relate it to the strike? Do you think that the strike had an effect in changing people's ideas and the role of the University, the role of the student in the University?
It only did it because of the trouble. You see, this university, it took a lot of trouble for this university to get changed. Anyway, a little bit. And it really hasn't changed that much. For instance, the effect of that first strike was that it made everybody weary of demonstrations of this sort. We had been carrying on other activities, man, this whole thing was just wearing people down. And throughout all of this, The BSM you know had submitted demands and you know, we just had a lot of things going during this period and all and it had just wore everybody down and I think it wore people in the University down. It wore Chancellor Sitterson out and it wore a lot of people out. People were looking foward to summer school, they were glad that the thing was solved. As far as changing the University, no. Because the University made no concrete offers. I mean they did with the money, they did just what they had to do with the strike to settle it and stop it.
I was looking at this strike, and it seems like the one real lasting contribution of which the strike made to the school or the state was that it sort of opened up the possibility of this kind of thing and it opened up eyes around the University.
Right. I tell you what, I agree with you on that and I think this was
essential. This will tell you something about the response. Black people
at other schools, other white schools, UNC-G and others in the South
have joked with us about this. The point is, you can do stuff on other
campuses in North Carolina, but when you do it on the UNC campus, that
is bad, because what that says is, if you can do it in Chapel Hill, you
can do it in Raleigh, you can do it in Greensboro, you can do it here,
you can do it there. I think this is the way that the people in Raleigh
understand that. And this was the point, "We're not going to let them do
it in Chapel Hill." Having the strike in Chapel Hill, I think was good,
because it did get people looking at that. But I'll tell you why, see,
I'm prone to measure things in terms of what actual events have taken
place. And of yet, the State employees
You approve then of both Taylor and Friday?
Well, let me say about Taylor. Taylor, he's not saying he's any better than Sitterson, but he evidently shows more business-like response and that response in one of, "I won't give you anything, but I won't refuse you anything."
Do you think the new attitude then might go back to things like the strike?
Not just that one strike, I think a number of things. A number of problems. You see, I think there's a total effect here. You have to look at what the particular incident of the strike, at what was happening outside the University in the state, what was happening outside the University in the nation, and then on the University campus, the interaction of those things, I think, made the difference. And one, I'm going to say it like I know it, the Chancellor was having trouble with his son. Now, some people say that the reason that Chancellor Sitterson had to go away was that he didn't handle the strikes properly. That was not it. I think he had to go because he couldn't handle his son. And his son was involved constantly in one thing or another. That part of the situation. I don't think that Bill Friday and Chancellor Sitterson got along. I got that impression, maybe I'm wrong, but I just thought that Friday thought that Sitterson was a dumb-dumb. And I think Taylor is more Friday's sort of man.
Let me ask you just one to two more questions and I'll set you free.
O.K., and I'll give you specific answers, I'm going back down to Town Hall tonight.
I was just wondering if you could sort of characterize what you fell the black students, the BSM contribution to the strike was. I think that is a general question, but I meant it to be more specific. What specifically was their place, what did they do that nobody else did and why were they in a position to di it?
All right. Number one, I think that the workers approached BSM simply
because BSM had shown actual committment, the leaders had shown
committment and interest prior to the strike and I think that people
were looking for this. Like I say, we were committed, when we started
out initially, we were committed. WE didn't just talk. You know, we
mentioned some people at the beginning of this
Then, this last thing…I'm reading right here, this is Joe Shedd. Do you remember Joe Shedd.
Yes.
He was one of the white leaders that was meeting with the administration
back then. He has written up some conclusions which is his point of
view. But one of the things that he condemns the white groups for, was
that they seemed, he says,
No, no. I tell you what. There was a big difference. That's a good point that he brought up too. Because there was a big difference between…and this has always been the problem with black and white coalitions. The problem is always that what blacks wanted, whites didn't want, whereas blacks wanted stability… you know what I mean. A car, a good home, security, to go where you want to, to the beach or wherever, a good job…the whites who supported the blacks in this were doing so only because they were coming back from that kind of thing. What would happen would be that we would have white students who would say, "We want to take this building." We'd say, "Man, we don't want to take no building. We don't want to get hurt. Why should we want to get hurt." This is why people didn't want to stay in Manning Hall. Why should I stay in Manning Hall and get my head busted. I had no desire to get my head busted. I want no fight with no state trooper. Well, we always operated on the idea that everything we did was tied to particular goals. And the thing at the cafeteria, that too. We got to the point where we had strained our ability and had to tell people to leave our workers alone. Now, there were some white kids and some black kids who wanted to take a building, "we ought to tear it up and rip it off." But that wasn't us, like you say.
By another token, do you think the strike was really aided by the soul music and the loud speakers in Manning and the turning over the tables and the calling the Chancellor "Champ". Do you think these were…do you think they hurt the strike?
No, I don't think so. Number one, I think what you are asking me if the
strike was not solved the way it was, would it have hurt the strike? As
opposed
That's what I'm talking about…
Right. In other directions, with their gripes with the University, gripes with students, gripes with a lot of things. And they looked around for any particular perfect vehicle. The Kent State situation was beautiful. I mean, it provided the kids with a nice…even this was sanctioned under the law, that's why it was really nice, you know what I mean? That was the tops for this kind of thing.
But, the actions of the BSM were actually just pragmatic and very controlled.
Pragmatic and controlled.
With the workers in mind.
Yeah. And we invited Howard Fuller to speak after the strike. So, that's it and…
And yet…
And everybody would say, "Howard Fuller solved the strike." But I think
that the thing that is essential to remember is that BSM has done all
this, we have been commited. When it came to arresting, when it came to
being out there on the
How's that?
Because there were jobs. '68 and '69, there were jobs. Ain't no one going to get your job, but now, you call a strike now, there ain't no jobs anyway. These are things that we said, so in general, like I say, I see the role of the BSM as a role of assisting throughout that entire strike. For us, the black students suffered in that strike because we got nothing out of it, you know, there wasn't a gain for us in terms of…it was a gain for us in terms of helping the people, but we weren't in it to attract glory. Check it out for me now. That wasn't it, because that four o'clock in the morning shit just did not cut. We weren't in it just to be against the University. That wasn't our bag. We had our own bag. That was outside, that was a different matter. But what we did, these people asked us to support them and…
END OF INTERVIEW