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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 H-0218, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Conrad Odell Pearson grew up in Durham, North Carolina. In 1932, immediately following his graduation from Howard School of Law, Pearson became involved in legally challenging segregation in higher education. The first part of the interview is dedicated to a detailed discussion of his work with fellow attorney Cecil McCoy on a case that challenged the decision of the University of North Carolina to deny admission to Thomas Hocutt, an African American, to the school of pharmacy. After the case failed in the state legal system, Pearson helped to reintroduce it at the federal level as a challenge to the Fourteenth Amendment, where it was ultimately thrown out on a technicality. Pearson continued to litigate against institutional segregation from the 1930s on, and in 1935 he helped to found the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs. In addition to describing his legal and political work for civil rights, Pearson offers an insider's perspective on race relations in Durham, primarily from the 1920s through the 1940s. Pearson devotes considerable attention to describing the ways in which James Shepard, president of the North Carolina College for Negroes (later North Carolina Central University), and C. C. Spaulding, president of North Carolina Mutual, were leading members within the African American community. In so doing, Pearson offers numerous examples of Shepard's and Spaulding's leadership qualities and their ability to work closely with white politicians for the benefit of African Americans. Throughout the interview, Pearson expresses admiration for the leadership capabilities of these men while simultaneously drawing distinctions between their moderate politics and his more radical politics regarding race relations. In addition, Pearson emphasizes that he saw Durham as more progressive in terms of race relations than many other southern communities, citing a general lack of racial discord as evidence. Whereas Pearson devotes considerable attention to describing the role of African American leaders in shaping race relations in Durham, he also offers commentary on the ways in which industrial leaders, like the Duke family and Julian Shakespeare Carr, also shaped the social and racial landscape of Durham. Finally, Pearson discusses the organization of tobacco workers as it affected African Americans in Durham. This interview offers a lively and complicated portrait of race relations in Durham, North Carolina, and the struggle for socioeconomic equality in that city.
Conrad Odell Pearson grew up in Durham, North Carolina. After obtaining his law degree at Howard School of Law in the early 1930s, Pearson returned to Durham, where he became actively involved in legal struggles against segregation in higher education. In this interview, he describes his participation in various civil rights activities, his perception of African American leaders James Shepard and C. C. Spaulding, and race relations in Durham.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
You're talking about Richard Kluger's book, Simple
Justice?
Yeah. And if you'll hand me that… "William H. Hastie and the Vindication of Civil Rights." He had better records than I have. You'll find it in here.
Is that also by Kluger?
No. That's by somebody at the Howard Law School
Journal.
Jonathan Rush.
Put my name and address on it and you can take that with you.
Well, I can check this out of the library. I'll make a note of that.
Well, I'll just read it and it'll be on tape here. It's the Howard Law Journal, Volume 21, #3, 1978, "William H. Hastie
and the Vindication of Civil Rights", by Jonathan J. Rush.
He has better records than I have. I lost all of my records.
He was working mostly out of the NAACP files?
Yeah.
Well, I'm interested, and they're interested in this oral history program in kind of the background—and maybe there are some things that people don't know, particularly about the community. Do you know how the case began? Who made the first move?
Well, I conceived of the idea when I was in Howard Law School.
And that would have been when?
1932. I graduated in 1932, and I took the bar in December of '31, and passed it. So I was lawyer in law school. So I conceived of it, and came back to North Carolina and talked about it. I had an associate by the name of Cecil A. McCoy.
Where was he from?
He was from Durham, but I think he finished Brooklyn Law School. Somewhere in Long Island.
How long had he been here?
This was his home.
But I mean, how long had he been in the law?
I don't think he finished law school. I think he did enough to comply with the requirements of the North Carolina bar at that time.
But he was a practicing attorney in Durham when you got out of law school?
Yes. And I discussed it with him, and he was for it. The next thing we
had to do was find a plaintiff. And we went to the high schools and
talked with the principals and tried to find out who the brilliant
students were. And we went to all of their houses and they turned it
down. They were afraid of reprisals. And Hocutt had worked in the
drugstore for years. I don't know what his background was. I don't think
he had anybody to help him or anything. And in the meantime he was going
to school down here at the North Carolina College, at that time—it's
North Carolina Central now. So he wanted to be a pharmacist. So we
interested him in it, and we drew the complaint. 'Course a complaint
drawn back in those days, lawyers would probably laugh at it now. The
law has progressed so, since from that time. And we made a cardinal
mistake because we should never have brought him [the case] in state
court. Because the state court, judicially at that time, was committed
to the status quo, and Jesus Christ couldn't have won the case if he had
been the lawyer on the case. Well, it was radical in that no one had
ever challenged the system of discriminating on the base of race in
state institutions. And we found out from this law suit that you aren't
going to win anything in the state courts. Because they could tie you
up, and they could write a decision, and keep it balled up, and keep it
from ever getting to the Supreme Court, you know. So we went back to the
drawing board, and we came up with the idea of bringing all these cases
under the Fourteenth Amendment in the federal courts.
Had you thought about other state institutions or public schools? What made you focus on Chapel Hill?
Well, I looked at, it was called Miche Statutes of North Carolina, and looked at the constitution. And there was nothing in the constitution that barred blacks from the University of North Carolina. It said that the legislature is hereby empowered to constitute one or more universities for the training of the youth of the land. It didn't say anything about race or anything. But traditionally no Negroes had ever applied. And that was the basis of it.
So, in effect, there was no Jim Crow law for the University.
It was custom and usage.
Now, you had thought of this when you were in law school at Howard. And then when you came to Durham you got in touch with Cecil McCoy?
Cecil McCoy and I, we had adjoining offices. And we talked it over and he
was for it. None of the other lawyers in town had ever thought about it
or dreamed about it. After we started it, then they all wanted to get
into it. And, of course, we wouldn't let them in. And it divided the
town, because, you see, we were just emerging out of the Reconstruction
period. And there had been riots in this state. The Wilmington Riot is
well known. And the Red Shirt Movement was run by Josephus Daniels
Do you think that fear was real on the part of someone like C.C. Spaulding? Do you think he was really frightened?
Yes.
What about Shepard?
Shepard capitalized on it. We talked with Shepard about it in confidence,
and told him what we were going to do. And we pledged him to
confidentiality and silence. And the next morning we woke up and the Greensboro Daily News had broke the story. And it was
a fellow that worked for the Greensboro Daily News—I
can't recall his name [Tom Bost]—but he worked for the Daily News back at that time. He was a special writer for the
Greensboro Daily News. I think he was on Dr.
Shepard's payroll—a P.R. man with him, dealing with the legislature. And
after he broke it, then we went to the Morning Herald
and told them if we were going to break the story, we would have told
them about it. But Dr. Shepard had broken it without our knowledge. And
the editor was enraged, not at the story being broke, but the fact that
we were bringing the law suit. He said, "As far as I'm concerned" (as I
recall, the editor said), "all of you can go back to Africa. It'd be
better off for the country." He wrote an editorial: "Playing with
Fire."
What was this man's name? Was this Council?
I don't know what his name was. He was the Morning
Herald editor. Morning Herald. I think they had these other people working
for them. And the case was filed.
Now, this was when it was filed as a federal case, you're talking about?
No, filed in the state. And the judge said he would hear it, but he thought we were making a mistake, and that in his practice, he would rather have a case where a Negro was suing a white man because, you know the old Southern idea of an aristocrat looking after the well-being of a Negro. His name was Barnhill. And we wrote to the NAACP and asked them for help; and they sent Bill Hastie down. Bill Hastie had already graduated from Harvard in the first tenth of his class, and was considered very brilliant, a legal scholar. He'd gone back to Harvard to get his S.J.D., and he was working on his S.J.D., and NAACP sent him down. He was really a brilliant man, no question about it, a scholar. And he amazed… The courthouse was filled. And his performance just amazed the people; they hadn't ever seen anybody as brilliant as he was. And his colloquy with the judge and so forth, and how well-mannered he was, soft-spoken, no anger. He made quite an impression. And, in fact, it was the start of his career. He later became a solicitor in the Department of the Interior under Ickes. And I think he became an aide to someone during the war. And I think he went to the Virgin Islands as a district attorney, U.S. district attorney, and later became governor of the Virgin Islands. After that I don't know whether he became a district federal judge—I think he went directly to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Philadelphia and New York and so forth. And he had quite a career, made quite a reputation as a legal scholar.
Did he see this as a case that could be won, do you think?
I doubt it, because he didn't think that we should appeal it. He didn't
think that we had laid the proper groundwork, and didn't think that the
Supreme Court was ready to hear a case of that sort. It would have been
interesting if the case had gone to the Supreme Court of the United
States, to see what they would have done. Because they had Plessy v. Ferguson before them, which grew out of whether a
man could be segregated on a boat. And they had said that he could. Then
they went into the field of education. It would've been interesting,
historically, to know just how they would have acted on it. But after we
got into the federal courts, we began to get relief, and cases sprang up
all over the country. No one had ever thought about challenging the
state. Maryland had a dual system, and Delaware, Texas, Kansas, North
and South Carolina, Virginia—all had dual systems. And there was no
black university in the whole South. It isn't one [Negro university] to
this day that is supported by the state. This doesn't speak well, does
it, well of the separate but equal doctrine.
This did not get beyond, then, the state level?
No. Now, the Hocutt Case, we didn't appeal it. We went back to the drawing board, and decided that all cases of this nature, we would bring to the federal court. And we began having some success in the federal court. Then some of the states started setting up separate law schools, to keep Negroes out of the white law schools. Texas set up one; North Carolina set up one; I don't think Virginia set up one. I think Texas set up an elaborate law school to keep Negroes out of the University of Texas.
This was what, Texas Southern?
I forget the name of that school now. I don't know whether it's in
operation now. South Carolina set up one; Florida set up one. But I
think they eventually closed the school in South Carolina and Florida.
Did you think that the NAACP, in part, had this in mind as a short-run gain? That is, if you couldn't integrate an institution like the University of North Carolina that you might get separate professional schools?
That was probably the idea at that time; they wouldn't support that idea now.
Do you think Hastie was aware of that?
He wouldn't have supported that idea. I don't think, in my judgment.
What about the NAACP in general, the office, Walter White?
I don't think they would have either. At the same time, suits began to
spring up on two issues. On the Plessy v. Ferguson,
the separate-but-equal doctrine, they started bringing in law suits to
force the state to equalize the schools. And that went along for a long
time. And the next thing was the salary schedule. They paid white
teachers in the public school system one salary, and Negro teachers a
lower salary. And then Virginia brought a suit and the courts forced the
state of Virginia to pay the same salary. And North Carolina did so
without a law suit, because they knew that they couldn't win, so they
went on and equalized the school teachers' salary.
You don't think that the NAACP might have used this threat to have integration when they didn't think, perhaps, it was possible to get these lesser demands, such as equal teacher salaries?
I don't think it was part of that policy then. Do you remember Judge
Waring in South Carolina, who ruled in favor of the NAACP on a case Brown
was born. And this judge, when that case was brought in South
Carolina—it was a three-judge court as I remember—and he voted that Plessy v. Ferguson should be overruled, and
discrimination inherently was wrong. And you'd have to integrate the
schools. I think it was two-to-one, or something like that. But he
incurred the wrath of the people in South Carolina. And I think when he
lost all of his friends he eventually, I think, left and went to New
York to live. I think his name was Judge Waring.
This was what, in the forties? This was long after the…
That was the forerunner of Brown.
There was a time, then, after the Hocutt case, when the NAACP was arguing for equal salaries and that sort of thing?
Now, see, first you had the Hocutt case. It awakened people to the idea
that state schools should be open to everybody. And you had a slew of
cases on that issue. Then you had Plessy v. Ferguson
that said you can have separate schools, but they had to be equal. And
you had a slew of law suits to equalize the schools. Then you had Brown to come along next. But that idea was generated,
as I understand it, by Judge Waring, who was a United States district
judge. He planted the idea in Thurgood Marshall's head. And the NAACP
changed its policy.
What about the Gaines' case? Was there any relationship between Gaines and Hocutt?
Gaines grew out of the Hocutt case. Gaines came way after the Hocutt case.
Yes, that was what, 1938?
Yes.
Well now, to back up a moment, there's some interesting local history. We were talking about Dr. Shepard and his motivations. What do you think were his motivations?
He capitalized on it to get, I think, the state to pass a statute to allow him to have a school of pharmacy. And he also got a school of law out of it. He capitalized on it. He wasn't in sympathy with it at all. The weakness in the Hocutt case was, under the rules of the University of North Carolina—and I guess all the schools—is that when you apply, your record has to be sent up from the school that you last attended. Dr. Shepard wouldn't send his record over there. So we had Hocutt to go over to Dr. Shepard to get his record. And Hocutt sent it over there himself. But that didn't comply with the rules of the University, which left a hole in your law suit.
Is that the technicality that it was thrown out of court on?
That was one of the reasons. And the next was that the judge said that he
didn't think Hocutt was qualified. Yet, all you needed at that time to
attend the School of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina was be
a high school graduate.
So you're saying that Shepard had these motivations to capitalize on it, and you think that he got a law school and a pharmacy school.
The pharmacy school never developed, but the law school did. And he got
money for capitalization, new buildings and things of that sort.
That was the first report on the case, from the Greensboro
Daily News?
Let's see if we can find out when the case was filed.
…to do some research for them. And as a result of this research, some
fella that died left his son a large amount of money. His son was kind
of eccentric and he turned the money over to the NAACP. I think his name
was Garland Morning Herald and the Greensboro Daily
News, I'd like to have a copy of it myself. You see, that would
give whoever's going to write about it, the attitude of the status quo
people. Because the newspapers would certainly reflect the opinion of
the majority.
You feel satisfied that it was Dr. Shepard who broke it to the Greensboro Daily News?
Oh, yes. He had an angle for doing it.
Is it possible that the case could've gone any further had he not sabotaged it?
If Dr. Shepard hadn't sabotaged the case, we would have had a stronger
case to carry to the Supreme Court. Supreme Court of the State of
What was Hastie's advice on this?
That we not appeal. That we go ahead and start working out procedure to get these cases in federal court. Because you're not going to get any relief from the state court. It was like Brer Rabbit: don't throw him into the briar patch. They'd welcome all the cases into the state courts.
What was Hocutt's feeling about this?
Hocutt would have done anything that we suggested that he do.
You had actually selected him personally?
He was the only one we could get.
But you and McCoy had gone to Hocutt and actually interviewed him and said, "Would you do this?"
Yes. We had tried a whole lot of students besides Holcutt, but Holcutt's the only one who would agree to be a plaintiff. And Dr. Shepard brought James T. Taylor, who was on his faculty but was studying at Ohio State University. He brought him back. And A.E. Elder, who later became President after Dr. Shepard. And they did all they could to get Holcutt to withdraw. But Hocutt wouldn't withdraw.
Was Hocutt hopeful? Did he really think he might be admitted? Or did he see this as a kind of test?
I think he wanted to be a pharmacist, and I guess he figured if we could get him in, that we could raise the money to pay for his schooling over there. But he ended up going to New York and he became some sort of supervisor in the subway. He died about a couple of years ago.
He never did go on to graduate school?
No. He was very proud of his contribution. Everytime he'd come to North
Carolina, he'd look me up. And he would come to the campus.
Did Kluger interview him, I wonder?
I don't know whether Kluger did or not. I doubt it.
What about Hocutt's family? Did you know anything about his background?
No, I don't; I really don't.
He had been an undergraduate major in science? He had a strong record, you said, and that should have got him admitted.
If he was a high school graduate at that time, the University of North Carolina—as I remember reading the catalogue. Because we wrote for a catalogue. Of course, they didn't know me from Adam's house cat. So they sent the catalogue, and we looked at the catalogue. And the only requirement at that time was to be a high school graduate to enter the School of Pharmacy. Of course, that has changed now.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
… degree there.
In pharmacy. All you had to do was to be a high school graduate, and he was supposed to be admitted.
There's a story that Louis Austin used to tell about you and he actually carrying Hocutt over there.
We carried him over.
Can you tell me that in as much detail as you remember?
As I remember it now, Dr. J. N. Mills, who's now deceased, had an
automobile, and we got in his car, Hocutt, Louis Austin, Cecil McCoy,
myself, and
Was there any response in the meantime? Did word get out that you had tried this? Did the people of Chapel Hill react?
No. I do remember there was a law school professor there who was from Illinois. He went to school in Illinois with Negroes in his class and so forth. And he made a statement I never did forget. He said, "Of course you had a right to bring this case, and you had a right to bring it under mandamus, to make a state officer do what he is supposed to do." He said, "It's just like a child coming into the parlor and demanding his play toy to play before the guests." Then he said, "We kept our ears to the ground to see what the reaction would be, because we didn't want anything to happen to you." I forget that fellow's name. I think he was dean at one time. And the name of the attorney general at that time was Brummett. So they brought in Brummett, the person who was teaching constitutional law at the University, and Victor S. Bryant, a prominent lawyer here in town.
Mr. Bryant is still alive?
He's still alive. [Died 1980] And it was amusing. When we got to the
courthouse to try the case, the hearing, the attorney general said he
wanted to talk to us. So we would go into this room, and all the Negro
citizens stand out in the hall. We went in there to talk, and the
attorney general said, "Well, now, I'll tell you what I'll do. If you
fellows drop this suit, I'll get the state to appropriate money to pay
your tuition outside the state." We asked for assurances. He said,
"Well, all I can say is that I would probably do it," and when we come
back and tell
These were black lawyers from Durham.
Yes. They felt that the suit should be dropped, and we should follow the state's proposal to furnish tuition to Negroes who wanted to go to state schools outside, to such jurisdictions that would admit them. We wouldn't agree to it unless we got a firm commitment. Well, the attorney general couldn't commit the legislature to do anything; all he could say was he'd try. So we wouldn't accept. Then later on a bill was introduced to that effect, but the legislature was mad; they wouldn't pass it. Later on they did pass such a bill, and you know who had control of it: Dr. Shepard. If you wanted to go to Chicago to study medicine or anything of that sort, why, you had to go to Dr. Shepard. If he okayed it, then you'd get your stipend. And several of the southern states then followed that.
Did Shepard have contacts in the legislature?
Oh, yes, because he was a clever politician. If he'd been white, he would have been governor of this state.
Tell me a little bit more about him. He was a Republican, wasn't he?
Yes.
That didn't make any difference?
No, no, because Shepard was a very, very clever… He was a highly educated
man. He was clever. He finished in pharmacy.
Was Bryant in the legislature at this time?
No. He had been in the legislature, but he wasn't a member at that time.
You said that Bryant was one of the people who was trying to control this. Were Bryant and Shepard together on this?
No, I don't think so. I think Shepard's lawyer was Bob Gant, Sr., who was a member of the legislature at that time. He's now deceased. Bob Gant, Sr. was a lawyer and a politician. Dr. Shepard was working through him.
Was there a clear division then in the black community over the Hocutt case, would you say, with the black citizens being on one side, and then the feeling that Shepard and a handful of others [were] on the other side?
Yes. The people who were closely related to the Reconstruction problems
naturally were cautious, for fear that there might
Was there any division at all among the whites?
I had letters from people from all over the state who supported. I can't remember receiving a letter from anyone that was derogatory, who didn't support it.
What about in Durham? Any white citizens who were supportive?
No, I don't remember anybody.
Was there any division at all? Was there anybody who stood out as the chief opponent, and then people who were more moderate?
No. Brummett was the attorney general. I guess the people of the status quo figured that you wasn't going to get anywhere with it anyway. It was their ballpark, and you couldn't win on the home court. That was their home court. They didn't think you could win anyway. I don't think they were disturbed at all.
So among whites who might have had some voice, there was nobody in Durham who spoke up in favor, who supported it?
No, not as I can recall it.
Any younger white citizens who would …
No.
Now this division between the citizens on the one hand and those, you
say, who remembered Reconstruction on the other. Shepard had this extra
motivation, you're saying, of perhaps getting a law school or something.
Now Spaulding's motivation was pretty much fear,
I wouldn't call it fear. He was afraid that the repercussions might cause the same conditions that you had in the Wilmington riots.
Did he ever talk to you about this?
I don't recall ever having a conversation, but I know what he was doing at that time. I knew he was opposed to it. He'd think that we ought to go ahead and compromise in the matter. And I can understand his feelings about it, because he had seen racial discord. As we spoke about earlier, in the Red Shirt Movement in the state, when Negroes were shot down at the polls and the race riot in Wilmington. That's the way Aycock and Josephus Daniels—the elder, were leading it. And after they got it under control, the legislature passed a law that would prohibit Negroes from participating in politics again, "to read and write the Constitution in the English language to the satisfaction of the registrar." Well, that last line there, "to the satisfaction of the registrar," he could be a fourth-grade student, and you could stand before him as a Ph.D., and all he had to do was say, "You don't satisfy me." I went all over the state collecting affidavits and sent them to the FBI in Washington to be investigated. They came down and investigated, and that'd be all you'd get. The federal government was in sympathy with it at that time.
There was a story about Spaulding actually trying to call maybe it was you, perhaps Louis Austin, kind of on the carpet up at the Mutual Building about this.
I remember we did have a meeting up there, and they were trying to get us
to withdraw it. At that time, the Mutual had a kind of forum where all
the employees would come in. We had a meeting up there,
I've looked into the NAACP records, just looking up something else, and there is a letter in there from Spaulding to the NAACP in which Spaulding says that "Some of our lawyers"—and he mentions you and McCoy—"are interested in a case that would do much good," or he says something like that. And he seemed to be actually inviting the NAACP. Do you ever remember him at the first being supportive, and then getting frightened? Do you ever remember going to him initially and asking …
The only person we consulted, talked with first, was Dr. Shepard. Of course, Dr. Shepard could control Mr. Spaulding. If Mr. Spaulding listened to Dr. Shepard, Dr. Shepard would have controlled him. We were talking about Dr. Shepard a few minutes ago. If he had been born white, he'd have been governor of the state. He had come up through that rough-and-tumble politics during Reconstruction. He knew his way around. When he built and started this school, the National Religious Training School, if you started a school and Booker T. Washington didn't okay it, you couldn't get any money from the northern philanthropists. And he never gave Dr. Shepard approval. Dr. Shepard went directly to people in Boston and raised money. He kept raising money and going almost bankrupt and raising money, and finally he got the state to take the school over.
To get back to Spaulding, if he hadn't been worried about the impact—that
is, the possibility of race riots—do you think he would
I would say Mr. Spaulding was a very cautious man. I don't think Mr. Spaulding had education beyond that of a high school graduate, but you never would have been able to tell it. By talking to him and so forth, you wouldn't have been able to tell it. He was a kind man, a gentle man, and he was really interested in advancing his race.
You mentioned Merrick reacting to being called a "handkerchief-head." Would anybody have ever called Spaulding or Shepard that?
Probably somebody would have called Mr. Spaulding that, but they wouldn't call Shepard. Because Shepard went down there to the Capitol to see somebody, and they told him to get on the freight elevator. He refused. He was going down to see about getting money, and he refused. He told me of an incident. It was customary that if a white man came to your office, he wore his hat, wouldn't take his hat off. He said this white fellow came to his office to see him about something. He kept his hat on. So Dr. Shepard said, "Well, now, let's go outdoors and talk, because I don't want to embarrass you and ask you to take your hat off, and I think you'll be more comfortable on the outside."
Did the fellow take his hat off?
Yes. And I think they went on outside to talk, but the fellow got the hint. He got the hint. And that's the reason why the North Carolina Mutual made its growth for us, that the insurance man come to your house keep his hat on in your house, and they capitalized on it. And that helped their insurance company grow.
In looking at Spaulding, you see him as a different kind of person altogether than Shepard? Is it mostly a matter of education?
Shepard had a better education and a far better mind, but I think Mr. Spaulding was a kind, gentle man who had a deep concern for his fellow man.
How do you think the black community saw the two people? Did they see Shepard or Spaulding as the leader, or both working together?
Shepard never left his office to attend any meetings or anything, yet he controlled everything through other people. He was a politician. You don't see no politician out there carrying nobody to the polls; he's sitting up in his office pushing buttons. That's the type of fellow Dr. Shepard was.
So you might see Spaulding more out front, but Shepard was behind pulling the strings.
That's right, pulling the strings.
To get to the other side of the community, that was offering the support in the Hocutt case, were the black workers in the tobacco factories organized this early?
No.
Was there any kind of sentiment coming out of the workers?
I don't think that they were concerned, other than the sensational part about it. I don't think that anywhere in the country people had thought about it. And when they hit the national media, then that started people to thinking. Because everybody had the same problems. If you went to Maryland, Delaware, and come south, everybody knew about the problems, and some of the midwestern states like Kansas, Oklahoma; they had those problems. So that's when people started thinking about it.
Did the word go out after the Hocutt case was dropped that it
No, I don't think… The only time I ever heard it discussed was, we were invited to Howard University Law School to lecture to the students about the case. When we were introduced—not introduced, because the fellows there knew us; I was just out a year ahead of them—Charlie Houston told them one of the weaknesses in the case was Dr. Shepard, his attitude toward it and what he did. Charlie Houston's words were very bitter toward Dr. Shepard. And Dr. Shepard's son-in-law who had married Dr. Shepard's daughter, by the name of Smith, was going to law school at that time. He was sitting right in there.
But I detect from you no sense of bitterness at all towards Shepard.
No, Shepard and my uncle were very good friends for years, and I admired Dr. Shepard. He did more good than he did harm.
Did you and he ever discuss this Hocutt case after it was dismissed?
The only time it came up was, they had a meeting over at the University in Chapel Hill, held under some kind of auspices of the Human Relations.
The Commission on Interracial Cooperation?
That's right. I was invited. I don't know why, because Austin and myself
were never invited to any of the meetings like that. I went over there,
and the president of Johnson C. Smith was presiding. And there was a
white fellow—I forget his name [Newbold]—who was in charge of… He was on
some kind of a foundation to advise the state about Negro education. It
irked me that he came in and handed the president of Johnson C. Smith,
who was the chairman, a piece of paper. That was the
He was from North Carolina or where?
He was in Raleigh, but he was on a foundation. The Ford people or
somebody sent him down here to help Negroes out in the field of
education. You can find out what his name was; most anybody can tell
you.
And then nominated a black man, too.
No, I don't think I did. I don't think it ever came up. Mr. Spaulding and
I got along nicely together. I drew his will, and his daughter and I
went to school together. And we never had any ill feeling.
Would the white community see Spaulding as having quite a lot of power in the black community?
He got a good press. I think Mr. Spaulding was practically, due to the mass media, known all over the world. He got a better press than Dr. Shepard.
I mentioned a while ago that some people might have seen both Spaulding and Shepard as "handkerchief-heads" because of the Hocutt case. But apparently the black community was not so divided that it turned out that way over the Hocutt case?
No. They soon forgot it. Shepard practically dominated the city of Durham
in the white and black communities, because he just knew how. And Mr.
Spaulding was liked because he never clashed with them. And secondly, it
was to the [advantage of the] status quo people to have a C. C.
Spaulding, because they could say, "Notwithstanding the handicaps,
here's a man that succeeded." And they publicized him all over the
world.
Was he clever enough to use this image, though? That is, did the fact that he had this image and good press enable him to go to the white community and get certain things, perhaps?
I don't think that he ever entered that area. I know we tried to get him on the City Council once, and they turned him down. Then they wanted to put him on the Board of Education, and some of the people went to him and told him they didn't think he should serve, because they figured he was going to be used. And he turned them [the Board] down, said on the advice of his physician; his health wouldn't allow him.
You mean he rejected it because he thought they were seeing him as …
The fellows went to him and told him that they thought that they were trying to use him.
And so Spaulding resented the whites seeing him so conservative that they thought they could use him?
Yes, and we convinced him that it was the best interests for him not to accept it, and he didn't accept it.
Do you think they could have used him, had he been on?
You know, you can use a person knowingly and unknowingly. Without his knowledge, he could have been used.
It wasn't too long after the Hocutt case that the Durham community became more and more active politically with the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs. I think that was formed in about 1935.
The way that started was this way. I was working with the
Was it your thinking at the time that Spaulding would make a good chairman because of his image, or what?
I think that was done to get it started, because there was a lot of people from the North Carolina Mutual in it. And if Spaulding hadn't given his okay …
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
I'm interested in him and trying to get some sense of what power he had
in the community and to what extent he was used and to what extent he
used his image to perhaps use others. You're suggesting that he wasn't
nearly as clever as Shepard, but I'm wondering if he was clever enough,
though, to sort of play off of his conservative image and then get some
things done. There's some evidence that he worked with Louis
He would do Austin a favor and do me a favor. When Louis needed some money, he would loan it. He wasn't a man to carry any ill feeling. He was just a man who had succeeded with a country background. He'd been on a farm down in the eastern part of the state, Columbus County, and he was brought here by some of his kinsmen. And he started working with the North Carolina Mutual when it first got started, as their field representative. He eventually worked himself up the ladder; as others died out, he became president. And by the time he became president, he was a man in his middle age with flowing gray hair. He looked the part. When you said "President of the North Carolina Mutual," he just looked the part.
Did that help him, too, in the political circles?
He never was interested in politics. He had a great deal of influence in town.
In the black community.
And white.
I guess that's what I mean by "politics," at that kind of informal level.
Yes.
But you see him more as a figurehead in the DCNA, though, the Durham Committee.
Oh, yes, they made him president because that was the only way they could get it started. Of course, Dr. Shepard didn't care, because he figured he was going to control it anyway.
But it would indicate, though, that he had some power, if people
Oh, Mr. Spaulding had influence in both the white and black communities.
So he was not one of these classic Uncle Tom figures who was just a white man's Negro.
No, I wouldn't picture him that type of a person.
Was the community divided one more level, where there were people like that who would in fact be so under the control of white people that they had no voice of their own, no room to maneuver at all?
Durham is a peculiar town. You see, the Dukes started the tobacco thing, and started the American Tobacco thing. Then you had the Erwin Cotton Mill, which is now the Burlington Industries. So they had a mortal lock on common cheap labor, and it was to their advantage to keep peace in the community. So Durham never had the traumatic racial explosions you had in other counties. It was to the [advantage of the] Dukes and the American Tobacco Company people and the Burlington Mills to keep peace in the community. Never had any trouble racially in Durham.
Were black leaders like Spaulding and Shepard sophisticated enough to understand that all they wanted was peace, and that if they could keep that racial peace they could ask for other things?
I don't think it ever crossed Dr. Shepard's mind.
What would have been his stand, for example, on a tobacco workers' union, Shepard or Spaulding?
I think both would have been against it, because when the North Carolina
Mutual was being organized in Philadelphia, the Mutual opposed it
bitterly. Dr. Shepard had no sympathy for labor organizations
Were you interested in the tobacco workers' movement?
I made speeches for them when they were trying to organize.
So Shepard would support you up to a point, or Spaulding would support you up to a point, but …
Spaulding had nothing to do with it. He wasn't interested.
I mean he wouldn't support you on the tobacco workers, but he would support you on other things, apparently.
Oh, yes, I remember a boy got into difficulty down here. What happened
was this. We had what we called the county home, and if you were drunk,
they'd give you thirty days and send you to the county home rather than
send you to work on the road. And there was a fellow out there named
Turner who'd been made a trustie, and somebody slipped off and went to
town and bought a gallon of whiskey, and all of them got drunk. And the
"captain"—the man that had charge of the prisoners out there—found out
who did it, and he was punishing the people who brought the whiskey in.
And they figured that Turner had told the captain who brought the
whiskey in, so they sent word to him they were going to get him. And
they were killing hogs at that time, and the captain told him, "If they
bother you, you defend yourself." So Turner had a butcher knife in his
waist. When he came out of the gate where they'd been to eat, a white
fellow from Burlington, who was in there for being drunk and was serving
thirty days, and some other fellows jumped Turner, and Turner
disemboweled this fellow from Burlington. And he was charged with first
degree murder. And Mr. Spaulding put up some money for me to go out
there and investigate the case and so forth. And they brought the case
to trial, and I raised the issue of the exclusion of Negroes from the
jury(s). And the judge called me after he heard part of the testimony.
He said, "This is not a first
Were there other things like that you can remember, where he worked behind …
He didn't do anything publicly; it was all private.
Can you remember other private things like that?
That's the only one I can remember.
But this was the way he saw himself working.
Yes, Mr. Spaulding was a decent sort of a fellow. But due to his rural background, his thinking was not as progressive or contemporary on issues as mine was during those times.
What about your uncle? Where would he appear in this lineup of community leaders?
He and Dr. Shepard were just like twin brothers. He and Dr. Shepard were great friends. My uncle was well-to-do at one time and considered wealthy. If Shepard got into trouble financially, he'd let him have the money to keep his school going and so forth. They were just close, very close.
Do you think there's much to the notion that Shepard, Spaulding, W. G. Pearson …
They pretty well ran the town.
Do you think these were meaningful connections they had with the Dukes?
Oh, yes. I don't think that Shepard was connected with the
Can you remember if you and McCoy and Austin were aware or conscious at the time of these whimsical relationships between the rich whites and, say, Shepard or Spaulding or your uncle, and that you wanted to change that relationship, or was that an issue at all?
That wasn't the issue.
That that part could stay intact, but you wanted other things to change.
Well, you see, it never occurred to us about—these are my afterthoughts—why there was so much peace and tranquility in Durham County when you had the opposite in other counties. I drew that conclusion myself, that since they had this cheap labor, it was to their benefit to keep things cool and quiet and peaceful.
How would they do this, for the most part?
You never had any racial explosion. Racial explosions always come from the white side, not from the Negro side.
But how would they control the whites?
Well, if you're a multi-millionaire, you don't have to control any
people.
I don't think it was obvious, like somebody was telling me
Would it be through, then, Spaulding and Shepard that they had this indirect influence, perhaps?
On whom?
On the black community. That is, are Shepard and Spaulding kind of intermediaries here in keeping peace in the black community?
Oh, I think so, yes.
So this would mean that if Shepard and Spaulding are going to have any credibility in the black community, they in turn have to be getting something from that white power structure. What could they deliver?
Well, let me tell you, Dr. Shepard became the Worshipful Master of the
Masons statewide. And every year he made a speech, like the President
makes every year, the state of the nation. And in this speech he'd
always praise the State of North Carolina, and he would name different
personalities, white and so forth. Then when he ended his speech, he
would make demands from the Negro community. And he used to say that the
price of prejudice comes high. And consequently, he was just looked upon
as a statewide leader. He had all these Masonic lodges in every large
city and every county in the state, so he just
I want to ask you about Carr in a minute. But in trying to figure out how Spaulding, for example, through this Durham Committee, might have some influence because of his influence in the white community. Could he go to the white power structure and ask for certain things and get them?
No, he wasn't that type. He was put in there to get the thing started, and after he came out then the younger group started putting people in the position to make demands. If he hadn't been there in the beginning, they never would have gotten the committee started. So during the time he was president, no demands were made, no political advances, except that Negroes started to register. Drives through the Citizens' Committee to register. Of course, there's nothing radical about that.
So his function was to get it off the ground.
That's right. He was being used, but he didn't know it.
You say it wasn't particularly radical to get people registered to vote.
Not in Durham County.
Were they registering and voting, though, before 1935?
Yes, a small number. See, the people who would go down and register would
be educated people, and they wouldn't have no trouble.
Were Spaulding and Shepard in favor of registering the masses to vote?
Oh, yes, they were in favor of that, but they didn't take no lead in it.
Can you remember those who were taking the lead before?
I think the late R. L. MacDougald was the main factor behind it. He was Vice President of the North Carolina Mutual and Vice President of the Mechanics and Farmers Bank.
Were there any other attorneys before you who were active in town?
I think they all could see the value of having people register; none of them opposed that.
You mentioned Winston-Salem a moment ago, that the black community had more trouble there getting organized than it did in Durham.
I was speaking about the labor union. Winston-Salem had a black bus company—they got a franchise out there—and I think it's still going. I'm not sure.
Safety Bus Company.
Yes. That grew out of the fact that you didn't want whites and blacks on the same busses for fear you might have difficulty, and the Negroes capitalized on it, and I think it's still going.
I think it might have grown out of a boycott earlier.
Yes.
But now Winston, with about the same-sized black population, I
I think Durham was far more progressive in all lines, because you had Winston-Salem Teachers' College there. I don't know whether they had a bank over there that failed or not. But the Reynolds Tobacco Company was very progressive, because here in Durham they didn't allow Negroes to work in the cigarette side of the factories. And I went to Winston-Salem once and went through the Reynolds Tobacco Company. They made cigarettes in the whole building; they had one floor that was controlled by Negroes, who were making the cigarettes. And when you went through there, they gave you a package of cigarettes. Anytime you had a convention or a church convention there, you'd go through there and see it. It was good publicity for them. But they didn't have that in Durham. All the cigarette-making was done by whites.
Did unionization begin to change that?
Yes, after they got unionized.
Were the Winston workers unionized before the Durham workers?
No, I think Durham was organized before Winston-Salem. They didn't have any success there, I don't think, until after the War. And then that didn't last but about a year, and then they voted them out.
Do you remember any overt conflict between the tobacco workers in Durham on the one hand trying to get organized, and the Negro leadership on the other hand, represented by Spaulding and Shepard?
Oh, they didn't have anything to do with the labor movement.
Now in this Durham Committee, that did begin to get into the labor
Yes, they supported the labor movement.
Who in the Durham Committee would have been active in supporting the labor movement?
I think the Committee as a whole supported it, no particular personality.
Is there anybody that stands out in your memory as the most active of the organizers? Were they outsiders or people in town? Did the International send in people from the outside?
Yes. One fellow started it, who was a local, and he left here. Then later on they did get a union started here. Then the International came here and hired several of the tobacco workers and sent them all over the country where they had these factories to organize.
You don't remember that figure who started it here.
I can't remember the fellow's name. It was years ago.
Was he a tobacco worker?
Yes, he started a private labor organization. And he started trying to get them organized, and they were meeting at the Wonderland Theater, and I spoke down there for them, white and black sitting in there. And the press was opposed to it. And eventually they did get organized. I imagine it was done through the International Workers.
They tell me they had one man who was president, secretary, and treasurer
of the International Tobacco Workers' Association back at that time. I
don't know how true that was. But after they got the tobacco workers
organized into separate locals, they came in and hired several people to
go all over the country where they had tobacco unions, in Kentucky in
the eastern part of the state, where they had what they called seasonal
When does John Wheeler get active in this? Was he active this early?
He was in it when it first started, but he didn't have any position in it. Neither did I. I later became chairman of the political division. And then when J. S. Stewart, who was chairman, was elected to the City Council, that's when John Wheeler came in.
Do you remember a man named Dan Martin?
Yes.
Was he the political …
I was his assistant, and then he died and I was supposed to succeed him.
But the Negro power structure knew that they couldn't control me, so,
instead of me succeeding Dan Martin, they said that they'd have to have
an election. So they had an election, and I won the election.
Would Wheeler not have had the following, say, as Ruffin or Fuller?
Not as large a following as Ruffin or Fuller. In the sixties, the leaders appealed to the masses. Wheeler was of another time period and class. Ruffin and Fuller [had?] people from the streets as followers, often young and not as seasoned.
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
…kind of from the outside of Wheeler that he was always
Yes. You might cut that off.
You see, at the North Carolina Mutual, they had their employees. Then you had the Mechanics and Farmers Bank and the Mutual Savings and Loan. Stewart was working under R. L. MacDougald in the Mutual Savings and Loan. John Wheeler was working under R. L. MacDougald, who was Vice President of the Mechanics and Farmers Bank. And so you had two groups there. And as the older ones died out, the young ones filled their places and began to gather power in the community. People who handle the money in your community always have power, you know. I know if an issue came up in the Citizens' Committee and I would take issue with some of the fellows down there, then when I'd get home the telephone would ring and say, "Man, I agree with everything you said. I certainly was proud of what you did", and so I'd say, "Why didn't you vote?" "Oh, if I'd stood up with you, I never would be able to get a note from the bank or the building and loan. I never would be able to get a loan from the building and loan."
Getting back to this point about how, in fact, then somebody like
Spaulding might have controlled the black community to the satisfaction
of the white community, it could have been this economic control you're
suggesting, then? Let's just say hypothetically that the white power
I never had any trouble getting any loans from the Mechanics and Farmers Bank or the Mutual. And Mr. Spaulding was particularly interested in seeing that the Negroes had money to build homes, and I think that's one of the selling points that made the Mutual great in the Negro community, is that they loaned them money to build homes. At that time in many cities in North Carolina, it was difficult for the Negro to get a loan from a white lending institution. So if the Mutual would loan money to its policyholders, it helped them in their business. I had no difficulty.
Nonetheless, you expressed there was the feeling that if people got too far out of line, they might get themselves in trouble.
They could draw the line on it, and they could pull the strings anytime they wanted to.
What about Louis Austin? What was his relationship with the black power structure?
He got along with them, because MacDougald and them would loan him money, and he had other people who would loan him money, George Logan and Champ Husband, who was a tobacco worker but had saved his money. He and Louis were very good friends. He was in a position to loan Louis $200 or $300 a week.
Was his name Champ Husband?
James Husband. He used to play baseball, and they called him "Champ".
Was he active in the Tobacco Workers?
Yes. He was one of the organizers for the International for a while.
But this is not the man you were trying to think of a while ago.
No. This fellow I was trying to think of was a white fellow. He left here and went to Wilmington. I can't recall his name. It's been thirty years ago or more.
So Austin generally got along with the black leaders. How long did McCoy stay here?
McCoy left during the Depression. He went to Chicago. He had a brother who lived in Chicago who was on the police force. And he left there and went to Indiana. And I think that at that time in Indiana, you did not have to pass a bar to practice law; all you had to do was exhibit your license from another state or your graduation from a law school, and you could open up your office. I think it's changed now. I imagine that they require you to pass a bar, now.
Would you, Austin, and McCoy have been seen as the town radicals in the Hocutt case?
Yes, we were considered the town radicals.
Was it mostly because of the Hocutt case?
And anything and everything else we opposed the status quo people on.
Can you give me some more examples of the kinds of activities that would come up over which there would be conflict? Maybe in this Durham Committee, for example.
We would try to get things done. Mr. Spaulding opposed them; he thought
they was too radical. I can't remember instances now. But I
We were talking a while ago about whether he had real power in the community, or he was just a white man's version of what a Negro should be.
No, Mr. Spaulding had influence in the black community.
Do you remember in 1937, there was what was called a race riot—I don't believe it was—in Durham when Joe Louis knocked out James Braddock?
Oh, yes, I remember that.
And it was always said that Spaulding stopped a race riot there. Do you remember anything about that?
I remember. I don't know if Mr. Spaulding was involved in it. What
happened was, when the fight was over some kids started going down the
street beating pans and things. And the police were mad about it, and
they beat up Ed Avon
But do you think if Spaulding …
But we tried to push it, but Ed Merrick, who was a mentor of Lathrop Austin, didn't want it pushed, and we didn't push it.
Pushing what?
Taking action against the police.
If Spaulding had come out in the street and counseled the citizens to stop, do you think he would have had …
But it wasn't any riot. It was just these kids who were coming down the street, and the police didn't like the idea of Joe Louis knocking this fellow out, and they took it out on… I don't know but two people that were involved, and that was Ed Avon and Lathrop Austin. They were beaten up by the police for no reason in the world except that the police were mad. But I do believe if the Negroes had started a riot and Mr. Spaulding had come down the street and asked them to cool it, I believe they would have followed his advice.
What about Shepard?
Shepard probably wouldn't come out. He would probably have sent somebody.
But did he have the same kind of image as patriarch of the community as Spaulding did? As the two men walked down Pettigrew Street where there were a lot of common folks, which one would they have seen as the town leader? These are people completely outside of politics; they don't know anything about that.
I think probably Mr. Spaulding would have had the most influence, because Dr. Shepard was sheltered at the college. He didn't mix out in public life much.
Would Spaulding go out amongst the people?
Oh, yes. Shepard, by the way, could tell you who the
What was that?
Hooey and all of his kinsmen up there were well …
Was that Governor Hooey?
Yes, Governor Hooey. And what Shepard would do, he would invite the person who was next in line to be Governor and have him speak at North Carolina College. Then he'd have him to speak at the White Rock Baptist Church. And Shepard would get up and introduce him as the man most likely to be your next Governor. And he would be the next Governor.
Is this after black citizens are voting in North Carolina much?
They didn't have that much strength. He was just in with the Hooey (conservative block of the Democratic Party) group over there. A very powerful politician, Governor Hooey, and his associates. And they were the ones that beat Frank Graham, you know, when he was running after Scott appointed Graham to the Senate. When he came back to run, he was defeated. That was the Hooey gang that defeated him.
So this was personal politics with Shepard and these figures.
Oh, yes.
But he couldn't deliver the vote.
No, the vote wasn't in it. Shepard was just in with them.
Was there the feeling then that Spaulding, the Democrat and the head of the Committee, could deliver the vote? Did he have more power in that sense as this Committee developed?
I think by the time they developed some power, that Spaulding wasn't involved.
But was there a feeling in any case that the Committee could
We got to the place where we did develop that. What we would do, anyone who was a candidate who wanted to would come before the Committee and state his views, and they'd ask him questions and so forth. And then they would decide on whether or not they would support him. But they wouldn't make it public until the following day, to keep the backlash from organizing against the candidate.
You mean a white backlash.
Yes. It got to the place where—I don't know whether it was a good thing or not—people just coming in the polls, if they were black you just handed them a slip of paper with the people that the Citizens' Committee were backing, and they would vote for it. I don't know whether now that's a good idea or not, because people get to the place where they just rely on… Like they rely on the television. Instead of making up your own mind, let somebody else make up your mind for you. I don't know whether it's a good idea now or not.
Were they getting something in return? Would these white politicians have to …
They would put up the money to get people in and out of the polls, and
indirectly that gave the Committee political clout to get appointments
and so forth, and they started running their own candidates. And they've
got four or five people on the City Council now, and the City Board of
Education is ninety-nine percent black. I don't think much of them, but
anyway they're ninety-six [sic] percent black. I think that the
discharge of the present Superintendent was just a very, very bad thing.
I think they discharged him because they wanted to put a black
superintendent in, since the school system now is about eighty percent
black. Racism is bad, I don't care who wields the sword, whether
In the early days, what kind of things could the Committee ask of these white politicians who came before them?
Well, they got a whole lot of things. The first thing, you see, the way the Democratic Party operates is on a precinct level. If you get enough people at the precinct level, you can elect officers. As the population grew and the housing changed and so forth, you had a white precinct in a Negro neighborhood. So the Negroes would just go there and poke the whites out. So then they started dividing precincts up and giving them the precinct chairman and the registrar and so forth. I guess you've got four or five precincts in Durham that are controlled entirely by blacks. They got that out of the power structure. And then you've got two members of the County Commissioners, and you've got four or five people on the City Council, and you've got all of the City Board of Education are black except one person, Rodenhizer. I think there have been Negroes on the Board of Education in the County, but there are not now, not at this time. And then on a statewide basis, you see, if a politician could get the Durham vote, it'd help him and it gave the people who were heading up the Citizens' Committee a lot of political clout.
In these early days, were they asking for community things like street lights or paved streets or black policemen?
Yes, like fire department and police and things of that sort.
Do you think it had some effect there?
Yes. Now Mr. Spaulding took part in that, in policemen and the fire
department. When they built the fire department down here on
Watts Carr?
No, it wasn't Watts Carr. Another Carr; he was mayor of the town. He said
no white man would ever submit to a Negro making an arrest. And
eventually some other city started hiring Negroes as policemen on the
theory that it takes a thief to find a thief.
Initially, this was to get black policemen in the black neighborhoods.
Yes.
That was what, the thirties, forties?
Yes. Now Negroes didn't ask for that. They just asked them to appoint a policeman. But when they did appoint him, they'd assign him to a Negro community. But they don't do that anymore now.
And the fire department?
They built a separate fire department down here right in front of North Carolina Central, and that's integrated now.
But initially that was not …
All black.
And Spaulding had played a role in getting that built down here?
Yes.
Could they get other things like street lights and more paved streets in the black community?
Yes, Mr. Spaulding was very much interested in paved streets. That wasn't considered radical, you know; there's nothing radical about that.
What made you and Austin and McCoy stand out as radical then? What was that line you were pushing beyond that caused you trouble? Why would C. C. Spaulding say something harsh to you?
I forget now what it was. I probably was pushing something that he didn't think I should push, and I can't recall now what it was. But, you know, there wasn't any bad relationship between Mr. Spaulding and myself. Naturally, being younger and not having the same background and having had more education than he had, my ideas would be different from his. He would be cautious when I wouldn't be cautious. I had the same trouble with my uncle when I was saying that schoolteachers ought to be paid the same thing as white teachers. He felt it was an assault on him, that I was repudiating his leadership in the community. Because he was looked upon as the assistant black superintendent; in fact, he was, but not in name. His influence was over all the black schools in the city and county; whatever he said went. If they needed a principal, you had to come by him. And I was saying that the Negro schoolteachers ought to be paid the same salary as white schoolteachers. He felt that was a reflection on his leadership, and he was just as hard on me about that as Mr. Spaulding would have been.
You mean your uncle, W. G. Pearson, thought you were casting aspersions on his leadership because they weren't already equal.
That's right. I wanted them equal.
Now he wasn't opposed to them being equal.
No. But he had gotten the City of Durham to make concessions, and his teachers were drawing a better salary than most people.
I see. After the Hocutt case, would you and Austin and McCoy continue to push for integration? Was that an issue?
That didn't come up till years later, much later. We never were able to find a plan to sue the University of North Carolina till fellows started going to the law school down here. And they became dissatisfied because they didn't think they were getting the same training they were getting at the University of North Carolina. So they applied to the University of North Carolina, a fellow named Epps and a fellow named Glass. And Epps graduated, and Glass was to graduate the following year while the case was pending. Glass was from Alabama. And so the people in Alabama wrote some people in North Carolina and told them that Glass was drawing a stipend from the State of Alabama to go to school up here, and therefore he was not a resident of the State of North Carolina, and he wasn't eligible to bring any lawsuit against the state because he wasn't a resident of the State of North Carolina. So that left us without any plaintiff at all. Then McKissick came along.
Floyd McKissick.
Yes. And some other fellows, and they intervened in the case. And then we
had a big lawsuit over it, and the court ruled in our favor. And Kenneth
Lee from Greensboro and several fellows, Frye
Was it you who began then the case to integrate the University of North Carolina Law School? This is what, after World War II, '47 or '48?
Yes. I integrated the Law School, the undergraduate school, and the Graduate School. The only school that I didn't integrate was, somebody applied to the Medical School, and they admitted him. Let me have that red thing right there. I think, in the doctorate I got from the University of North Carolina [N.C. Central], I think they cite this. Here. You can read that into your records, if you want.
"Conrad Odell Pearson, graduate of the Durham public schools, Wilburforce
University, Howard University of Law, practicing lawyer in this city and
state since July, 1932, pioneer defender of the rights of the
underprivileged, dauntless advocate of full citizenship and unqualified
respect for black Americans, your contributions through the law to the
desegregation of educational institutions in North Carolina and to the
safeguarding of civil rights are unrivaled. The significance of your
arguments in North Carolina v. Tucker, the Hocutt
case, Epps v. Carmichael, McKissick v. Carmichael, and
Frazier v. the University of North Carolina
North
Carolina v. Tucker, that's the Law School?
The state school. You know, I was telling you about the fellow disemboweling the man.
Oh, yes. And then the Hocutt case. I see. And then Epps v.
Carmichael is the Law School.
Yes.
And McKissick v. …
That was the Law School.
And Frazier …
The undergraduate school.
And then the graduate then followed in the wake of the undergraduate?
Yes. Now the Frazier case, Friday was an aide to Gray. I think Gray was
the President at that time, wasn't he? And Friday wanted the Frazier
boys admitted. And after we filed the Frazier case and went to
Greensboro and had the case, the three-judge court ruled with us.
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
… that there wouldn't be any picture-taking. So he wrote an article in
the Pittsburgh Courier, gave me down the country.
Gave you what?
Down the country. Blessed me out. So the white fellow
He was your law partner for a while?
No, I was regional counsel for the Legal Defense Fund. And after he finished the University of North Carolina, I think he went to Columbia, and then he went to the home office of the Legal Defense Fund and worked in there for a year or two. Then he came to North Carolina and worked under me, and later on I turned everything over to him. And no ill feeling. I mean we had fine feeling; we worked together.
There's this outside image of North Carolina as very liberal.
It's not deserved.
That it's different than the rest of the South.
The way it started, way back there was a fellow named Odum, a sociologist over there.
Howard W. Odum.
And they used to write articles about the South. And in it they would
point out that holding the Negro back was holding the South
Did Odum support that?
I don't know whether he did or not. Odum did a lot of research in the field of sociology, and he used to tell me, "If you just let me handle this, I can get things done in a way that you can't. You just let me handle it my way." And Paul Green's books, and wasn't there a fellow named Streeter?
Yes. James Streeter.
Their novels and writings and so forth. They created this image. Frank Porter Graham, the President, had quite a reputation of being a liberal, but the University of North Carolina has never been liberal, in reality.
There's this idea that they have the outside image, but internally …
That's right, they've been …
How do they keep the image, other than people writing about it? That is, you don't get the violence, as a rule, here. Nobody stood in the schoolhouse door.
No. Like George Wallace did.
Maybe this is the first time they've gotten so much publicity out of their resistance.
Yes, maybe so. The only thing the people outside of the state receive is probably something in there, "Lawsuit Filed Against the University of North Carolina," and that wouldn't damage their reputation at all.
Much of your legal career, then, has been directing integration of public education in the state. What about accommodations …
Hospitals.
That's been a part of your efforts as well.
Yes. Hospitals and… You know, when they had the sit-in demonstration, they said it started in Greensboro, but in reality it started in Durham at the Royal Ice Cream Company. A fellow named Doug Moe, who was a minister at Asbury United Methodist, organized the first one, and it was over here at the Royal Ice Cream Company on Roxboro Road.
Is this generally known?
Greensboro got the press, and it's always been referred to as the first one, but in reality Durham was the first place.
Moe was a black minister?
Yes.
At what church?
Asbury United Methodist. And he moved to Washington, and he was a member of the city council there. I think he lost out in the last election. He organized the first one, and we represented those people.
And it was at an ice cream store?
Yes, called the Royal Ice Cream Company. He had a partition in the store,
which was located in a Negro neighborhood, whites on this side and
Negroes on the other side. And they went in and sat on the white side,
and refused to move. The policemen told them to leave and they wouldn't
leave, so then they were arrested, and then later we got to set bonds on
them. And we had to bring another case before we could get the law
straightened out. Because the City of Durham had passed an ordinance
that where you served both races, you had to have a partition to
separate white from black. And we neglected to put that ordinance in the
record, and the court cannot take judicial notice of a city ordinance.
It can take judicial notice of a statute, but not of a municipal
ordinance. So we had to bring another one, and that was Streeter v. the City of Durham, and it went to the United
States Supreme Court. It ruled in our favor. And I don't know how many
people we represented. Greensboro, Durham; it was breaking out all over
the state.
How far ahead of the Greensboro sit-ins was this?
I think Greensboro came shortly after the Durham case. That's where they got the idea.
It was 1960. Then are you saying this is '59 or still in '60? Is it a matter of months?
You remember when the demonstrations started about sitting in in restaurants and so forth?
That was in 1960 in Greensboro.
Well, it was 1960 in Durham, but Durham would just have to have been a month or so ahead of Greensboro. But Greensboro got the credit, because theirs was well publicized.
Were there efforts before this to integrate public facilities in Durham?
No, it had never occurred to me. The idea, really, maybe [mainly?] was the Rev. Doug Moe's. He's in Washington now. It was his idea.
What about efforts to get black people white jobs or jobs in white businesses, that sort of thing? Were there efforts going back?
That came along later. That started in New York with [Adam Clayton] Powell, and then I think in Richmond. "Don't work where…"
"Don't buy where you can't work."
And that spread over the country, but it started in New York with Powell, who later became a member of the City Council, and later a member of the Congress.
Now there was some of this going on, though, in New York as early as the 1930's.
Yes. I remember Frank's Place, a famous restaurant right there in the Negro neighborhood. He had all white employees, and some of his clientele was white and some… It had been a famous restaurant, but it was being engulfed. Eventually, with the whites moving out and the Negroes moving in, it had become a famous restaurant on the fringes of the Negro neighborhood.
Did the Durham Committee get active, can you remember, in those old days about that issue?
Oh, yes, they were very active in the sit-in demonstrations.
Was there a unity between the so-called "radicals" and the so-called "moderates" on that?
Yes, they all agreed with that. The white power structure started calling
me, Walgreen's and these other chain people who had stores here in
Durham and so forth. And overnight it just broke down.
The white power structure.
Yes.
But this was because of the power of the Committee?
No, I guess they saw that economically it was hurting.
Is that well ahead of what we call the civil rights movements of the fifties and sixties, or is that a part of it?
A part of it.
So in the thirties and forties these efforts were not altogether successful.
No. I mean these ideas came after the thirties.
Now back to the tobacco workers. A lot of people are interested in this. Everybody that you knew, that is, the people working with you in the Hocutt case, would have been involved in the organization of the tobacco workers. You …
Right.
Austin. Was McCoy still here?
No, McCoy wasn't here.
And you said you met, the first time you can recall, in the Wonderland Theater?
Yes.
What happened after that?
After that, the International started coming in. This was a man who
started to organize locally his own union. And he left here and
For blacks.
Yes. One for white, one for black.
You mentioned, though, that there were some meetings where there were both blacks and whites.
That was in an organizational meeting, getting the idea propagated.
But the union as it turned out was a separate union for blacks?
Yes, a separate one for black and a separate for white, and it went along that way until later on I think the Supreme Court or somebody passed a ruling that they couldn't have separate unions; they had to have one union. Then they combined.
Was there great resistance from the white workers to having a united union, in the first instance?
I think they were following the pattern. The pattern was separate but equal in everything.
Is there any direct evidence that you remember that the white power structure was trying to influence the white workers, using the race issue to keep them from uniting?
I don't recall any, but I'm sure they were opposed to the labor union movement. Because after the whites organized, they didn't want Negroes in their union, so the Negroes had to organize their own union.
Do you recall any campaign through the press, though, a kind of whipping up of anti-Negro sentiment because of this labor union activity?
I can't recall any.
After the Wonderland Theater and the organization got started, where would the black union meetings take place?
I don't know. I know it ended up with the black unions building their own
building on Roxboro Street, which was Price Street then. And then they
had what they called a Central Labor Union, with all of the labor unions
being members; black and white and all the unions were members. That was
a Political Club
We, in the City of Durham, can be the difference, but we can't elect anyone. And if a Negro runs for public office and he doesn't have a base in the white community, he can't get elected. Now Bulware had been very active in his church, the Presbyterian church, and in civic matters and had been before the public, and he had no difficulty getting elected to City Council.
Before you became Political Chairman, we mentioned this man Dan Martin. He was a businessman, right?
He worked at North Carolina Mutual.
How was he seen in the community? Was he seen in your group as a town radical?
No. All I can say is, Dan was after the money. And after
So he might have been kind of a ward heeler.
A ward heeler, yes.
But did he have a radical pose? Some people remember him as kind of a radical. Did he have a flourish?
I never considered Dan radical. He was smart and clever. He knew how to get along with whites and blacks. Dan Martin and J. S. Stewart and a fellow named Leslie Atkins (white), who's now deceased, and Brooks, who was a lawyer, controlled the City of Durham politics for years.
In the black community.
And white. Oh, everybody. Controlled the whole thing. Leslie Atkins was the Chairman of the Democratic Party. So after a while the hierarchy got mad, and at one of the conventions Basil Watkins, Attorney, and Holloman, Attorney, led the fight against Leslie Atkins. And they ousted Leslie Atkins. I think he later became a member of the City Council. But they really had a mortal lock on the town. They would select the people to run in the primaries and so forth. And if anybody got out of line… I remember that somebody in the county wasn't going along with them, and they got Governor Scott, who was then Senator Scott, to give him a ring, you know. They really had it tied up; they ran the town politically.
The Durham Committee, then, could work with that machine.
Yes. Stewart was in it; Dan Martin was in it.
So when they sent up a candidate to you, you knew that he had a base.
Though I remember when Brooks was going to run against the fellow who was
Secretary of the Security Savings and Loan, now deceased. And I was
called to a meeting, and Brooks was telling them about his father
About what year are we talking about?
I can't recall now whether it was before or after the War. But anyway, we
were strong. It split the labor union [up?] enough so that it was a long
time before they could ever get back together, but we went right on
together. So I wouldn't support Brooks. And one of the Committee members
brought in a minority report. And, of course, Stewart and his crowd had
the votes, so they voted to support Brooks, and Brooks lost. And when
the Democratic Party met the next time, they put Leslie Atkins out, who
was a decent sort of a fellow. He had set up several black precincts,
split the precincts and so forth. And I think they made Alton Knight the
next Chairman of the Party, and then he became Clerk of Superior Court.
And I don't recall who followed him. But they had a mortal lock on
Durham. They'd select who they wanted to run in the primary. With their
backing, they could get the Duke liberals and get the labor people. Of
course, there was a lot of labor people you had to pay off, you know,
for their support and so forth. But they controlled it for a long time,
You mentioned the split in the labor union. Was there a time when black and white workers were together politically, then the split came?
Yes, the split came when the white labor part of them were against Brooks, because he had opposed these Negroes who were striking at the Central Carolina Farmers' Exchange. It was a labor issue there.
Now let me get this straight. White labor was opposed to Brooks?
Yes. Not all; part of them were.
Because Brooks had opposed the black workers.
That's right. He'd helped break up the strike as the lawyer for the Farmers' Exchange. He was a lawyer; that was his job. But the white labor didn't like it because he was breaking up the workers contrary to the principles of labor, and some of them opposed him on that issue, and I opposed him on it.
Do you think the white workers were sympathetic to the black workers?
Yes. Not because they were black or white, but because of the labor issue.
That's not a black-white split in the labor movement here, is it?
Not now. That's healed. That's gone.
No, what I'm asking is, if white and black workers were together for a while, working in the DCNA, and then they fell out over race, and then they come back together?
It took them a long time. No, they never did get back together. The whites never did. We healed over. It split us, too. It split our Citizens' Committee. But we came together afterwards and forgot about it. But there was a division in labor over that for a long time.
But this is in the thirties, that you're trying to put this coalition together, black and white tobacco workers.
That's right.
What about textile workers?
They had the Central Labor Union, which took in all the little
I see. A grand coalition of all of those.
Yes.
Is there a time as early as the thirties when all of that is together, working with the DCNA?
I don't know when the labor unions were organized. I doubt whether it was in the early thirties, or if it had been in the mid-thirties.
Or the late thirties, I'm thinking.
Yes.
That there was this time when you had black workers, white workers, even textile workers forming a political coalition in connection with the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs.
Yes. We furnished the votes, and whenever there was a white person involved, he would probably get elected. But whenever we ran a candidate, we would get the endorsement but wouldn't get the votes.
So it's over this issue that you began to fall out.
That's right.
And it's not put back together again until…
I don't think the labor endorsement helps anybody now. It probably is a hindrance.
So this is kind of a brief honeymoon in the thirties …
Yes.
… that fell out. Did Wheeler have a role in getting that together?
No. Wilbur Hobby is head of the Federation of Labor in this state, but it
looks like to me that everything he endorses, that he stands for, loses,
fails. Of course, North Carolina's a very poor labor state anyway, as
you know. They got the Right to Work law. And I have always supported a
right to work law, because I know that the history of the labor movement
has been to keep Negroes out. And back in those days, if they had got a
union shop, it would have been difficult for any Negro to get in there.
Probably if the Right to Work law was withdrawn now, it might be a
different situation. And then I don't like the idea of a labor union
collecting your dues, and a few people getting together and saying,
"Well, we're going to support John Doe politically." Well, you and John
Doe's political philosophy could be just as far as night from day. But
you've got to go along. You don't have to vote for him, of course, but
your money is promoting that man. A lot of people have that view, and
some say if the Right to Work law is withdrawn that it will aid the
labor unions. I don't think it would, not in North Carolina, in the
South. They just oppose the labor union, because they figure that the
labor union is going to be strong politically and be able to challenge
them. And if you notice the pendulum over the time… I know when I was
going to college, we used to debate collective bargaining, and everybody
was sympathetic toward the labor union. But after President Roosevelt
came
[END OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE B]
Let's see, that's what, the late 1920's.
Yes, I remember that, mostly.
The white power structure here was, obviously, aware of that, and would Spaulding and Shepard have been astute enough to use that as a kind of tactic, so that they might have said, "Well, now, we won't be for unions, but we're going to have this Committee here, and we're going to try to get the vote …"
I don't think that issue was ever raised. As I said in the beginning, I
think that the Dukes and the American Tobacco Company and the Erwin
Cotton Mill people used their influence to keep the town
So the whites had control of the white workers, and to a certain extent the blacks had control of the black workers?
That's right. And the Dukes and the Duke Fac …
We talked about the Dukes, but we haven't mentioned Julian Shakespeare Carr and the influence he had. He was close to your uncle, was he not?
Yes.
His connection was a very close one there historically?
Yes, it was. Right after or during Reconstruction, my uncle was making a
stump speech for the Republican Party, and Julian Carr heard him. He
took him and a fellow named Husband and another named Sowell, and he
sent them all to Shaw University and educated them. And my uncle came
back, and the Negro principal died. I think his name was Whitted. And
the question was, who was going to succeed Whitted? And the Negro
leadership at the time was supporting Mr. Husband, and Mr. Carr
supported my uncle, and of course my uncle won, de facto
of all the Negro schools in the county. Mr. Carr was
This is what they called Oceneechee Farm?
That was in Hillsborough. And he had a mill here that made flour, called Oconeechee Flour. He was in textiles; he had two mills. He had a mill for all black labor, and he had another mill, all white labor. You better cut this off, because it's the truth but I don't know, I don't want to get you in …
Is this about the two families?
Yes.
Well…
You already know about it.
I think that's widely known, and I'd like to hear your version.
Julian S. Carr and John O'Daniel had the same father but different mothers, and John O'Daniel was his handyman. When John O'Daniel died, Julian Carr's son and John O'Daniel's son was his pallbearers. And the O'Daniels looked like white, and you couldn't tell them. Of course, the Carrs were white.
Did the O'Daniel sons look like the Carr side, do you remember? Was it that close that people …
I didn't know many of Julian Carr's sons, except by reputation. There wasn't any question about John O'Daniel and Julian S. Carr having the same father.
They were half-brothers.
Yes.
Does anybody know the black woman who would have been O'Daniel's …
I think her name was Shaw, but I'm not sure about that.
Had she been a servant or something for Carr's father, or does anybody know?
I don't know how their relationship sprung up. Probably I would have asked now, but at the time here everybody just took it for granted.
Everybody seems to know about this, so it was open. It was no great secret, I guess.
Julian S. Carr was very nice to the O'Daniels.
Do you think that the sons on both sides knew that they were cousins?
I'm quite sure they did. The South has a whole lot of peculiarities.
Do you know any more cases like that? There's a man working on a book, trying to deal with these families throughout the South.
The Dukes are supposed to have some kinfolk here in Durham.
From Buck Duke, James Buchanan Duke?
I don't know which one of them. I know that when I was practicing law, a
fellow came
That's James Buchanan.
So he went to New York, and the Dukes gave him a job in the
And this fellow left Durham?
I don't know what became of him. He was living in Hillsborough. I don't know whether he's dead or living now.
He was light-colored?
No, he was fair, just as fair as Doris Duke. What I was going to do, I was going to write a letter to the man and not threaten them or anything like that but let them know that this fellow claimed to be their kinsman, and they ought to do something for him. Rather than have a whole lot of newspaper publicity about it, probably they might have made this concession. But he never did come back.
But if this is true, Duke never acknowledged it to the extent that Carr did.
No. See, Mr. Duke had a servant by the name of Sid Sims, and they lived
about two doors from me on Fayetteville Street. Whenever old man Duke
would come to town, these children he had by these different people, he
would give Sid the money and send Sid around, and Sid
This fellow Sims has been long since dead, I assume.
That was common during slavery. Of course, the master had children by any woman who attracted him who was a slave. And after the Civil War, many white families maintained two families, one in the white community and one in the black community. That was common. I was told once that a prominent senator in South Carolina used to go to a Negro school in South Carolina to see his daughter.
There is a story about Strom Thurmond.
I know that there's somebody else, a woman in Columbia, South Carolina, who knows this and I think has recorded on tape, giving a lot of detailed information on it, so these secrets are bound to …
Surface sometime.
This man who came to you who claimed to be Duke's son, you say he lived in Hillsborough?
Yes.
Would he be too old to be alive now? Was he younger than you?
He might be living, but I had lost… He never came back to my office, and this was in the thirties.
Do you remember his name?
I don't remember his name.
This mill for blacks only that Julian Shakespeare Carr began, do you remember anything about the origins of that? Was it called the O'Daniel Mill?
Yes, I think he named it after O'Daniel. And there was some of the most beautiful music you ever heard in your life, if you could pass by there and hear those girls in there working those machines and singing.
Was it mostly black women who worked there?
Yes.
What did they make?
I don't know. I don't have any idea about it. Whether the salaries were equal, I do not know.
I was wondering what they manufactured. I heard that they made …
Stockings.
… mostly cheaper stockings.
Yes. Those gray-looking socks they used to make.
And they made the better textiles over at the other mill, is what I heard.
Yes. They made stockings for females, I think.
What do you think about Carr's motivation in that, given his role with your uncle? Do you think that he was just interested in cheap labor, or was he interested in doing something?
They tell me that Carr really did have a concern for people less fortunate than himself. A fellow told me once that when they would have depression conditions that Carr would fill up his wagons and send them down with his servants and carry flour and meat to the needy families in the Negro community.
What about the issue of voting, though, or getting the franchise for blacks?
I imagine he would have been opposed to that. He called himself "General"
[Julian] S. Carr. I don't think he was ever a general
Yes, I've read that. He might have been quoting something I found. I quote that in the book on the Mutual.
I forget this fellow's name. He came to me, and he gave me a copy of his book. He was interested in slavery, and Carr's name came up some way, and he told me that Carr allegedly whipped a Negro woman in the streets of Chapel Hill.
Carr gave a speech when they erected the Confederate Memorial on the lawn of the University at Chapel Hill, in which he said that that's what this memorial meant, that it was dedicated to those Confederate soldiers who, despite the loss, their loyalty to an idea of white supremacy, along with the Ku Klux Klan, made it possible that there would not be black domination. And then he went on to tell this story about how he whipped this black woman because she had insulted a southern lady; he meant a white lady. Now whether he did or not, or whether he was just, you know …
Anyway, that's rumor.
… giving the speech to… This was in 1913 he gave the speech.
What else do you remember about some of these early figures? You were born when, 19…
Two.
1902. Well, you can remember Carr; you can remember the Dukes.
See, the Dukes had gone to New York when I came along. And all I can
remember about the Dukes is that they would come at least once a year to
St. Joseph's AME Church.
… Dukes, they'd give it to you. They were very generous to the people in… John O'Daniel was a prominent member in St. Joseph's AME Church, and the Dukes just gave St. Joseph's… Have you ever been in St. Joseph's and seen the picture of the Dukes up there, that big picture in the window? There's a beautiful picture there. You can't find that kind of stained glass anymore.
Yes, they're trying to preserve that.
Right. It's been preserved as a historical thing.
What Duke was to St. Joseph's, then Carr was to… Well, he didn't have any connection with…
Carr was a United Methodist. I think they have a church named for him. You've got the Trinity Methodist Church here. That's one of the older United Methodist churches.
Do you suppose that people like Merrick and your uncle, were they both …
Merrick was very close to the Dukes, because he used to shave them. He was a barber. Now they've got the rumor out that John Merrick organized the North Carolina Mutual, and he went to the Dukes and the Dukes told him it was a good idea. I doubt that seriously. I think that what happened is probably John Merrick said, "Mr. Duke, I've been asked to join in with a group who are going to organize an insurance company. Do you think it's a good idea?" And I imagine Mr. Duke said, "Yes, that's a good idea." But I don't think he went to Mr. Duke and said, "I'm getting ready to organize an insurance company. Do you think it's a good idea?"
Do you suppose that Merrick and your uncle voted in those early days?
Oh, yes, they voted, too. They were the crown princes of Durham; they didn't have any difficulty voting.
But they had to do this under the supervision or sanction of the Dukes or Carr.
Yes.
How do you explain your "radicalism"? Was it your education?
Maybe I'd put it like Billy Mays put it: he was born to be a
rebel-rouser. Born to be a rebel
You mean college undergraduate?
Yes.
Which one was this?
Wilberforce. That was the AME church school they organized before the Civil War. And most students who went to a state school had rigid discipline. For instance, if you finished at Tuskegee and you applied for a job and I applied for it, you, being from Tuskegee, would get the job, because they knew you were orientated to letting things stay as they are. But the church schools were different—they weren't getting any money from the state—and I guess that's where I got my radicalism from, if I had any.
Do you remember anybody there who influenced you?
I had one college professor named George David. He was way out, and maybe that influenced me some.
What did he teach?
Sociology.
Do you remember things that you read at that time that influenced you as
well? Did you read Soul's a Black Folk by Dubois?
Oh, yes. I think that's beautiful. Yes, I read that.
Did you go directly from Wilberforce to Howard Law School?
No, I came out and worked for years before I went to Howard Law School.
What kind of work?
My uncle was interested in a fraternal organization, and I was going around setting up lodges. I went to South Carolina, Georgia, Florida. I saw a lot of conditions.
Was this the Royal Knights of King David?
Yes. I saw a lot of conditions, and I've been in towns where they just had a lynching, and the fears that the people were under. Maybe that shaped my attitude.
Your uncle was not seen as a radical. Did you and he fall out over anything, though? Did he smile on your going to law school?
Oh, yes, he sent me to law school. I had gotten some books and started reading law, and he heard about it, and then he sent me to law school. I think he was proud of me, but when people get to the point where they are in control, they don't like to share that control even with a kinsman. I guess he looked upon me as somewhat of a rival.
Was there anybody in Howard Law School that influenced you, as you look back on it?
No, I don't think so. Just my own reading.
Was Ralph Bunche teaching when you were there, or Frazier?
The Law School was downtown near the Capital, and Howard was on what they
called "the hill" several miles from there. So what was
So you wouldn't have come into contact with Bunche or Frazier or Abram
No. There was another fellow named Sterling Brown, a poet.
There was a kind of movement in the thirties, though …
Yes, called the Renaissance, wasn't it?
Well, in the twenties more of a literary movement, but then in the thirties you get more and more people kind of moving toward the left.
Yes.
And I'm just wondering if that appealed to you, if that was in the air. Lacey Philip Randolph gets involved with the …
Pullman porters.
The Pullman porters, but I'm thinking of the National Negro Congress now, which was more of a leftist organization.
That grew out of the NAACP, because Farmer didn't think the NAACP was radical enough, so he went out and organized the CORE.
In the forties, yes.
Yes.
That was established in '42, I think. But I'm wondering if back in the thirties, when you were maturing, getting into the Hocutt case and other things, if there was this larger climate of black intellectuals being radical on the left, if any of that had any influence on you, if you were aware. It was mostly in the North, but…
I read about it. How much influence it had on me, I don't know.
You weren't in personal contact with …
No. All I knew about it is what Will Rogers used to say: "All I know
about it is what I Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender, and they were widely circulated, so
you had a pretty good view of what was going on in the Negro community
all over the United States.
Since we're just reminiscing, tell me a little bit about Louis Austin, speaking of newspaper men.
Louis Austin was a well read fellow. He knew the Bible and Shakespeare. A splendid public speaker and a brilliant writer of editorials from a Negro point of view. And I think his editorials sold his newspaper, because all the news in his paper was a week old. And he was a dedicated churchman. He said his father told him never to take a drink of whiskey, and he never did. The only thing he drank was gin and wine.
No, I don't think we influenced each other. We probably were comrades-in-arms, to a certain extent, I guess, at places where he differed with me and I differed with him.
Would he have been your closest ally in these early days?
Yes, it got to the place where the people downtown in ivory towers like the North Carolina Mutual could put the brakes on him.
Just because of advertising in the newspaper?
Yes, and he was borrowing money to keep his paper going and so forth. But I'd give him a clean bill of health as far as his inner feelings were concerned.
Were you all alone there for a while, or was there always somebody kind of working with you, supporting you in these unpopular causes? Could you depend on somebody?
R. L. MacDougald would support, until it conflicted with his
When did R. McCants Andrews leave? Was he here when you came?
He died shortly after I came back to practice law.
Was he any influence on you?
No. He was the first Negro lawyer to start going into court. He went to
Harvard—I don't think he finished—and he came here and opened up his
office and started practicing, and he went into court and won several
oases. He was unique, because most of the Negro lawyers back in those
days just did office work, didn't take any cases to court. And there was
two of them here. Both of them were named Cannaday
What about Miles Mark Fisher? Did you have connections with him?
Yes.
Was he your supporter?
To a certain extent, yes. He was like me. I got all the business out of
his church. But I came to the parting of ways when they had a
superintendent here, and the teachers went to him and told him that they
were having difficulty. My uncle had just come out of the school system,
and they had brought in a new principal, and this fellow brought in
another principal. And this other principal had a mental condition. And
if the teachers would go to the bathroom, he would go to the door and
stand and listen to see if they were talking against him. He had a
paranoia that somebody was organizing against him. And they went
So this contributed to a split between you and Fisher?
We never had a split. Fisher was one of my best clients. I did all the business for the White Rock Baptist Church. And any people that came to him for legal advice, he always sent them to me. We never had a split.
You said something about a parting of the ways.
No, no, we didn't.
We mentioned that the tobacco workers met in the Wonderland Theater. Did they ever meet in the White Rock Baptist Church?
Not that I know of.
Would Fisher have been in favor of that?
I'm quite sure he would have.
How do you explain that somebody like Fisher, being certainly more radical than Spaulding but maybe yet under Spaulding's control, how did he get along as pastor of White Rock?
When he came here, the North Carolina Mutual controlled White Rock
Baptist Church. They called him, and he saw what the picture
[END OF TAPE 3, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 4, SIDE A]
You were saying he and Spaulding did what?
They couldn't get along together, because Spaulding, and North Carolina
Mutual, ruled and ran White Rock. So after Mark Fisher got his
structure, there wasn't anything that Spaulding could do. So Spaulding
had a fellow by the name of Husband make a motion to declare the pulpit
vacant, and he couldn't even get a second. I said, "Reverend Fisher,
what did you do?" He said, "I didn't do a thing. I didn't open my mouth.
But when he died, I preached him a nice funeral."
So you think Spaulding would have gotten rid of him if he could.
If he could have, yes, because the Mutual had controlled White Rock from the days of Dr. Aaron Moore right on up through Spaulding.
Do you remember Dr. Moore?
Yes.
What was your impression of him?
I think he was the first Negro doctor in Durham. He was the only doctor I knew until I got to be grown and left town.
Did he doctor you?
Yes.
I had typhoid fever when I was a little boy. How I lived, I don't know,
because all I can remember they did, they got the well water and put
some ice in it and bathed me in there. You could have heard me hollering
to Duke University.
This was Lincoln Hospital?
Yes. But I did, and I survived the thing. Very few people survived it, but I did.
Was Dr. Moore seen as a community …
Dr. Moore was considered a radical. He couldn't get along with white
people, so that's why John Merrick came in. And Dr. Moore, of course,
was the only educated person in the group that finally got control of
the Mutual. He was the only one that had any education. He brought his
kinsmen in. Spaulding was kin to John Merrick and Dr. Moore.
When you were travelling around for your uncle organizing, you said you
saw some terrible conditions. Was Durham really different than
Oh, yes, Durham was a haven [compared] to some of the towns I saw in South Carolina. Yes, indeed.
To what do you attribute the difference?
I guess agriculture was the main income in many places in South Carolina, just plain agriculture and tenant farming and so forth. You see, you did have your factories here in Durham to go along with your agriculture.
So there was more income?
Yes.
But there were bad housing conditions, I would think.
Oh, their housing would be about the same all over the South. It might have been better here in Durham, because you had a bank, a building and loan, and the North Carolina Mutual where you could borrow money. It would be very difficult to borrow money in some places in the South at that time from the regular established lending concerns, unless you knew some body.
You mentioned race relations, you thought, were better in Durham.
Oh, yes. We never had any difficulty along race relations. The status quo people wanted to stay status quo, but as far as having riots and that sort, we didn't have any.
Were there things that you might be able as a black person to do in Durham you couldn't do elsewhere as far as crossing the color line, or was that about the same?
I doubt it. I think the same rigid lines you had were throughout the South, and subtly in the North and the Midwest.
Sometimes not so subtle. You told me a story once before that
Yes.
I thought that was interesting, how it said something about race relations. You had sat down beside a white man?
Yes. It was in the courtroom. He was not in the right place. He was sitting where lawyers sit.
The white man was.
Yes. And another one said, "There's a nigger sitting beside you." He
ignored him. "There's a nigger sitting beside you." "Yes, but he's a
lawyer."
You knew the white man you sat down beside?
No, I didn't know either one of them. I had seen them; I didn't know them by name.
He knew you were a lawyer.
Yes.
You know, they say that generally there'd be no distinctions made on the basis of class or education and all people would be treated alike. But from what you say about your uncle, he could vote. Could he ride a Pullman car?
Oh, yes, he, Spaulding, and Shepard could ride the Pullman, and they could get a Pullman for you. Dr. Shepard, I think, opened it up by going down there and buying up the people who sold the tickets. I think he greased them, and by greasing them… If you wanted to go to New York on a Pullman car, you'd go down and the man wouldn't sell you a ticket. If Dr. Shepard sent you down there, you could get a ticket.
Your uncle could do the same thing if he sent you down?
Yes.
Could you get a ticket?
I never had any difficulty getting a Pullman.
It didn't make any difference who you were; it was just who sent you.
That's right, who sent you.
What about voting before the Durham Committee? Would that work through that kind of connection, too?
They had a certain group that they had no difficulty in voting. Most of them were registered as Republicans anyway, and they didn't have any Republican Party; they only had a skeleton crew that handled the patronage.
So if they voted in the primary, it didn't make …
They couldn't vote in the primary, because they didn't have any primary, so it didn't make any difference to the Democrats how many Negro Republicans you had.
They couldn't vote in the Democratic primary, and the election was decided then.
That's right.
When you got out of Wilberforce, then you came back here and worked with your uncle.
That's right.
You would have been old enough to vote well before the 1930's, so were you able to vote in the twenties?
I registered, yes.
But generally speaking, a person would have trouble without these connections.
You'd have difficulty getting registered.
Long from Roxboro, was a prominent lawyer, and we were down in the
Supreme Court of the State of North Carolina and got to talking. And I
mentioned the fact that a lynching occurred years ago in Roxboro. He
said, "Yes, my daddy stood on the courthouse door and tried to prevent
it." And I kidded him about it. I said, "Well, if your daddy stood on
the courthouse door and tried to prevent it, he knew who committed the
lynching."
Precisely. But you don't remember much overt violence in Durham itself.
No. I never heard of a lynching in Durham.
Was the NAACP active before you got out of Howard?
No. When I came here from Wilberforce, Mr. John M. Avery, who was Vice President of the North Carolina Mutual, would go around every year with a slip of paper and put your name down, and you gave a dollar, and he would send it up to New York. They didn't even have a branch here. They didn't get a branch here till Miles Mark Fisher came. Then we organized a branch around Miles Mark Fisher.
Now that's about the same time as the Hocutt case.
That's right. That's the same time.
So a lot was happening there, '32, '33.
Miles Mark Fisher was in it. He was president of the branch at that time.
Do you think the Hocutt case had some influence in the NAACP getting established here and elsewhere in the South? Did it have any of that kind of impact?
Yes, I'm quite sure it did. Like it started a lot of people
Out of the Hocutt case, did you get to meet White and Houston and obviously Hastie and others like …
Oh, yes. I got to know them all. Oh, I can tell you. Hastie spent the
night with my uncle.
James Weldon Johnson had pretty much gotten out of the NAACP by the time you got active?
Oh, he was quite a character.
Do you remember him ever coming to Durham?
I don't think James Weldon Johnson ever came to Durham. I can't recall him.
He was Field Secretary before White, I believe.
Yes. But he was a writer, God's Trombones, and what was
the other, something about Manhattan?
Black Manhattan, Along This Way.
Yes. I used to have all those books. When you loan them to people, then you never get them back. He got killed in an automobile wreck, didn't he? That was tragic. And he was in the foreign service for the government, wasn't he?
Yes, he was Consul in Panama and Costa Rica, I think, or something
Yes.
That was before he got into the NAACP. So there was some activity in the twenties in the NAACP, but it was mostly just to send in the dues.
"Don't mention my name," yes.
I see. Now what about Avery, though? Was he out front on this?
No, he was just doing it because he didn't run any risk at all, didn't have any branch; he was just collecting money for the NAACP. Nobody knew anything about that but him and the people he approached.
Would he collect it then mostly out of the Mutual and the people …
Mutual and other well-to-do Negroes. All of them were sympathetic to the objectives of the NAACP.
Did they fear, though, that if they went any further they'd have been in trouble with somebody?
I know they didn't have an active branch, and that would probably indicate that they felt it was best for them not to have an active branch.
And to the best of your memory, it's the Rev. Miles Mark Fisher who began …
We organized the branch around him.
Who else would have been the leaders, you, Fisher?
Fisher, McCoy, and myself, and Prof. E. D. Mickels
Was there any heat from anybody on this?
Oh, no. Nobody paid any attention to it.
Now was this before or… I'm trying to get this in sequence.
This was before the Hocutt case. About 1933.
When Hastie came to town, you mentioned this impact that he had on the citizenry. Do you think that that was kind of the lasting legacy of the Hocutt case for the black people of Durham, the courtroom appearance?
He made quite an impact on the community. Hastie was a very brilliant fellow, and he was mild-mannered. He knew how to get a point over without making people mad. You know, some lawyers are very aggressive and make everybody mad. He knew how to get his points over without making people angry. And they hadn't seen a lawyer of his polish and of his brilliance before. And there were one or two lawyers who were Harvard graduates at the time, and you know there's a feeling between Harvard graduates. And Hastie made quite an impact on both communities.
When he went back, then, to the NAACP, did they keep up any kind of communication after the Hocutt case with you and McCoy?
Oh, yes. I went to Howard University and spoke, and Walter White was bragging. You know how much money I made out of the Hocutt case? I made fifty dollars.
From the NAACP?
That's what they sent me. They sent me a card and fifty dollars.
When you initiated this, had you written White?
No, we didn't consult anybody.
You just went ahead.
Just went ahead and asked for their assistance later on.
As they began to develop these other cases in the South, was it built on the experience of the Hocutt case in any way?
I had built a reputation because of the Hocutt case.
It wasn't long after that that there was this fight for equal teachers' salaries in the public schools. Did that come out of the Hocutt case? Did that have anything to do with it at all?
I think so.
Were you involved in that?
No, we didn't have to do it in this state. A suit was brought in Virginia, and the Supreme Court ruled with the Virginia people. Then North Carolina just went on and equalized the salaries without a lawsuit.
Wasn't that quite a bit later, though?
After that suit. I don't know how many years later. But they didn't have a leg to stand on; once the Supreme Court had ruled that you had to equalize the salary, there wasn't to need to fight.
END OF INTERVIEW