The Durham Committee on Negro Affairs and interactions with local white politicians
Pearson describes some of the ways in which the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs interacted with local white politicians. In particular, Pearson focuses on how the Committee, with Spaulding as its leader, focused on issues of community improvement. In addition to seek infrastructure improvements, the Committee was particularly concerned with getting the city to hire African American police officers and firefighters.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Conrad Odell Pearson, April 18, 1979. Interview H-0218. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- WALTER WEARE:
-
In the early days, what kind of things could the Committee ask of these
white politicians who came before them?
- CONRAD ODELL PEARSON:
-
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.
- WALTER WEARE:
-
In these early days, were they asking for community things like street
lights or paved streets or black policemen?
- CONRAD ODELL PEARSON:
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Yes, like fire department and police and things of that sort.
- WALTER WEARE:
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Do you think it had some effect there?
- CONRAD ODELL PEARSON:
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Yes. Now Mr. Spaulding took part in that, in policemen and the fire
department. When they built the fire department down here on
Fayetteville Street, they wouldn't
admit Negroes to the white fire departments, which is tragic. Because
when they had volunteer firemen, there was a squad called the Hook and
Ladder that was controlled by Negroes, who fought fires all over the
City of Durham. And then when the city started to pay the firemen, they
fired just the black firemen and gave the jobs to whites, and I guess
twenty-five or thirty years passed before ever a Negro got on the
payroll. And I can remember when they were asking for policemen. Mr.
Spaulding headed that up, because he went to the City Council about it
and made a speech and asked them about a police. And I think the mayor
was a relative of Julian S. Carr.
- WALTER WEARE:
-
Watts Carr?
- CONRAD ODELL PEARSON:
-
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.
[laughter] And eventually we got Negro
police; we got Negro firemen. So now the fire department is no longer
segregated; it is integrated. Mr. Spaulding headed up that here.
- WALTER WEARE:
-
Initially, this was to get black policemen in the black
neighborhoods.
- CONRAD ODELL PEARSON:
-
Yes.
- WALTER WEARE:
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That was what, the thirties, forties?
- CONRAD ODELL PEARSON:
-
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.
- WALTER WEARE:
-
And the fire department?
- CONRAD ODELL PEARSON:
-
They built a separate fire department down here right in front of North
Carolina Central, and that's integrated now.
- WALTER WEARE:
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But initially that was not …
- CONRAD ODELL PEARSON:
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All black.
- WALTER WEARE:
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And Spaulding had played a role in getting that built down here?
- CONRAD ODELL PEARSON:
-
Yes.
- WALTER WEARE:
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Could they get other things like street lights and more paved streets in
the black community?
- CONRAD ODELL PEARSON:
-
Yes, Mr. Spaulding was very much interested in paved streets. That
wasn't considered radical, you know; there's
nothing radical about that.