I came—after finishing college, I finished in February of '57. I went to
New York and worked for Columbia University. From there I was drafted
into the United States Army, went to Fort Hood in Texas and from there
went to Germany. Served the country for two years. When I got out I went
back to New York and back to my job at Columbia University. And worked
my way up to where I was supervisor of the
Page 2lab in
biochemistry. Stayed in New York for about seven years, and I was
getting quite a bit of pressure from my father because I had children
and he wanted to be near his grandchildren. Every summer I would come
home to visit he would apply pressure, "when are you coming home?" In
October of '63 I recruited for a job here at Memorial Hospital to take
over its chemical lab. At the time they were having problems with the
lab as far as quality control. That was one of the things I specialized
at Columbia, doing research, investigating new analytical procedures,
and so forth. They asked me to take that over. I also interviewed at the
Research Triangle Park, just in case. I gave a month's notice at
Columbia. They didn't want me to leave. They said it would find it very
difficult to replace me. I decided to come home. So when I got back to
Chapel Hill I reported to Memorial Hospital. Found out I didn't have a
job. The man apologized and said that my application had been held up. I
think that they found out that I was not who they thought I ought to be.
Too much money and the fact that I was also black. He reported that it
looked like my application would be held up forever. So I reported to
the Research Triangle Park, and that's where I worked. I worked for
company in the Research Triangle Park called Monsanto, it really was
Chemstrand, but Chemstrand was a division of Monsanto, worked there for
about five years.
How I got involved in education, was there were not many potential black
leaders coming back. I was college educated, people always looked up,
that I would be a leader, I guess, because of my family. So I came back
and before I knew it I was put on every advisory committee and every
committee and so forth. A person by the name of Rebecca Clark and some
other key leaders thought I ought to run for the school board. At that
time Reverend Manley was on the school board and he was not going to run
again, so
Page 3they were looking for somebody to run. I
was not really qualified, I was coming back, I didn't know politics, I
didn't know very much of anything. But I ran, and almost got elected.
From that I found myself being put on a lot of, asked to volunteer for a
lot of, committees and so forth.
I got involved in politics because that was the height of the Civil
Rights Movement. The leaders of the Civil Rights Movement were already
chosen. The Civil Rights Movement was moving at its own steam and I did
not feel that there was a place for me in that. I did not agree with
some of the tactics that they were proposing. Many of the leaders and so
forth, there were some from Chapel Hill, but there were quite a few
leaders from other places that were calling the shots. One specific
thing that I disagreed with was they wanted to put some of the older
people out front in a march. It was reported that people were coming up
from Georgia. Mr. Maddox had sent some people up from Georgia with axe
handles and so forth. So therefore it had the potential of being not
good. I stood up and said the older people that you are asking to lead
the march were parents of some my classmates, they were people I always
looked up to. I don't agree with that. I voiced that. I guess the fact
that I stood up—there were quite a few of the adults that said, "no
since Ed said that, I don't think I want to go out there." I think the
young people took the leadership role. I don't think anything happened,
but the police were waiting, they had things under control.
So I began to look for places that I thought I would be effective. I
decided to get involved in voter registration, I felt that it would be
nice to break down barriers of segregation and public accommodation, but
I also thought that we needed a certain power. I didn't think we could
muster economic power, but we certainly could begin to
Page 4have some political power. At that time the business merchants ruled
the town. There was about a hundred business people and they were on
every board, they pretty much controlled the elections and so forth. I
said to myself, "hundred some people control politics."
I had worked with a person by the name of Tony Mason. Tony Mason was a
white student, I am not quite sure if he was in high school or in
college, may have been his first second year of college. Tony wanted to
be in the civil rights movement, his parents were a little afraid that
he may get hurt so they tried to look for other places for Tony to work.
Tony and I co-chaired a voter registration campaign and we registered a
lot of people. I have a lot of respect for Tony because he did a super
job. I learned a lot from him even though he was young. He was fearless.
We did it right. We selected block captains, on every block that we used
to find out who was registered or whatever. We used block captains very
effectively. We printed a newsletter. We did a lot of surveys and found
out who was registered and who wasn't registered. We worked with them to
get them registered. The person didn't read very well we helped them go
over what they had to read to get registered. In those days it wasn't
easy to get registered. The registrars were a little hostile to anybody
black coming into the courthouse. I remember the first time I registered
I just didn't feel comfortable going in there. Just the hostility and
how the questions they asked you and whatever, and I was college
trained. I think I had to read the constitution of North Carolina or
something. After I became registered we went around and we registered a
lot of people. I think Tony must have gone back off to school.
Therefore, I continued to work in voter registration. We were very
successful in registering a lot of people.
Page 5
We needed to be able to form some kind of political organization. At that
time I was working with—my father introduced me to Martha McKay and
Virginia Nicholson, they were the movers and the shakers of the
Democratic Party. They were very good. So I started working with them
and I just watched them to see how they organized things. How they got
the vote out, just how they did it. I was learning. I learned everything
I could from them. When it came time to begin, we started to get the
vote out. As a young idealistic black man I was surprised the first time
I was working trying to get the vote out. What I learned at the time was
whatever we planned, before we got out of the meeting, the white power
structure knew everything that we were doing what we were planning.
There were people planted in some of our meetings that just ran back and
told them everything that we were doing. That was the first surprise, I
think the second surprise that I had while I was out working in some of
the campaigns as well as some of the elections, was that leaders and
people that I respected were working for the opposition. They were being
paid, and they said they were being paid. I am out here working for the
cause. That bothered me because, one person was my cousin's father, I
had always looked up to him. After I got strong enough and began to have
a reputation I began to speak out against them. Told them if they want
to take the money take the money but you don't have to work, don't work
against us. After a period of time I was able to say that I began to get
a reputation throughout the Democratic Party and other places that I was
a leader. I had other persons, like Braxton Foushee and Hilla Cladwell
and Howard Lee, we formed a political party called PRAD, don't ask me
what PRAD stands for because I don't know right now. We named it PRAD it
had specific names. Howard Lee became the chairman and I was the vice
chairman. Hilla was the treasure. Braxton
Page 6Foushee had
a position. This was our venture into politics, we had a political party
and we were doing it. We were calling the shots. We had quite a few
white professors at that time working with us. We couldn't have done
this by ourselves. We said to them that we needed to be the officers and
they agreed. We were officers; we had people like Ann Queen at the Y
with us, there was a person named Jean Lucar. I don't know where Jean
is. I'd like to see Jean. Jean also worked at the Y. She and her husband
were just dynamic in helping us with politics, elections and so forth.
We began to meet a lot of other professors, with the institute of
government, you are going to be interviewing Peachie Wicker, her
husbands name is Jake. All these people at the University who were
considered liberal were working with us. We continued to operate PRAD.
They formed their own political organization. I am trying to remember
who the president was running at the time. But they rallied behind this
fellow, can't remember his name, but he didn't get elected, but he
mobilized just a lot of support. During that time it was just exciting
we were doing things that we never had done before. For an example, PRAD
we weren't local. We were calling folks all over the nation to come into
Chapel Hill. I remember there was a person, a dentist out of Charlotte,
running for governor. He didn't have a campaign he was just somebody who
threw his hat in the ring. What was his name, he had a son here,
Hawkins. Hawkins for Governor. Hawkins, in the primary we turned out
more people for Hawkins, we carried Chapel Hill for Hawkins. We had just
gotten that powerful. Later on the Governor, Governor Scott punished us
because we didn't support him. For years and years Highway 54 never got
paved, Highway 54 was paved from Chapel Hill/Carrboro to Alamance
County, cause Alamance County is where he lived. He and his brother, his
brother was in the legislature. They had beautiful highways from
Page 7Chapel Hill to Alamance but from Chapel Hill to
Raleigh on 54 was a death trap. So he punished us for years, the
Department of Transportation, we never got anything from them. They let
us know they didn't appreciate us going for Hawkins.
Hawkins came to Chapel Hill and we had press conferences and TV cameras
rolling, he got excited about this thing. He wanted to move his campaign
office form Charlotte to here and they were consulting with us. We
brought Ed Napter in, flew him in from Atlanta. We had a rally in
Raleigh, the whole mall down there, we had people out there.
It was an exciting time, here we are participating in politics and we are
not thinking small we are thinking globally, nationally. After the
election with Hawkins we decided to keep this thing going, that's how we
formed PRAD. I had mentioned that Howard Lee was the president. Howard
always had political ambitions, Howard said, "I think I want to run for
mayor." The group that we were involved in, let me back up and say, by
that time we had taken over all the precincts we had just become that
organized. We plotted and schemed and when it came time to go in to have
the precincts meeting we had that place packed with our people. We took
them over because we had more people there. Therefore, we became a
force. We had taken over all the precincts. We replaced all the hostile
judges and put our own people in there. There were some very good whites
that were still in some of the precincts, and when we took them over. I
know I was chairman of the Northside precinct for years, I didn't really
want to be chairman but they elected me chairman, this one lady said she
was the registrar and she said, "I would be glad to continue to be
registrar and I will work with you." So we began to replace and
registration began to be a little easier. Wasn't as hostile. People
didn't feel as
Page 8uncomfortable about going to register.
We fine-tuned and began to work at turning out votes.
So when Howard decided he wanted to run—the Liberal Coalition had already
decided they were going to run their own candidate, who was Gordon
Cleveland. Gordon Cleveland had been in politics in Orange County for a
long time. He was on the County Commissioners but he was from Chapel
Hill. They had gone around and asked him if he would run, and he
reluctantly agreed that he would.
When we went into the meeting and they announced who their candidate was,
it was Gordon Cleveland. Gordon was a good man. We said, "you already
picked him but you didn't consult with us." I let them know, "don't send
nobody else back into the black community you always pick these people
and send them over for us to support. This time we have our own
candidate, Howard Lee." They said, "nah, we think its to soon for Howard
to run for mayor why don't he run for Board of Aldermen." I said,
"Howard you want to run for Board of Aldermen?" He said, "no I want to
run for mayor." We had this strategy meeting, we were outvoted in there
we had about five people in there from PRAD. I guess they must have had
about twenty-five thirty in there from the other organization. We just
said, "Look, you are going to need us, you need us. We may not have a
lot but we can turn out people at election." We said Howard was going to
run, you don't run then the business people get back in, because we
control the elections, we control a sizable number of votes. So we
played the trump card. And they said no- - I forgot a lot of the
persons' names, they no longer live here, but they were shakers and
movers. I just said, "Come on group. You go your way and we'll go ours,
but you are going to need these black votes, and we can guarantee all of
them." Gordon Cleveland
Page 9said, "Well I really don't
want to run anyway. If Howard wants to run for mayor let him run."
That's how Howard got the chance to run.
Well we were small-time, but Howard was organized. Howard came out with a
platform. He came out with everything. He had coffee's he had things set
up. He had press conferences. This was unheard of in Chapel Hill, but
Howard was organized. Howard has his stuff together he was a good
speaker. Rollen Giddes was selected by Sandy McClamrock and the
business. Sandy McClamrock ran everything. He was the mayor at the time.
Sandy owned the Chapel Hill WCHL. He was mayor. Sandy had plenty of
money, he just controlled things. Rollin Giddes was handpicked by Sandy
McClamrock, because Sandy wanted to step down. Rollen had been on the
town board and Rollen had prepared himself, he had been toastmaster, he
had done a lot of things. It was just a foregone conclusion that he
would just automatically go in. It got kind of tight, Howard was running
a good campaign, at first they just said, "this black man he just a
protest." But then people started to get excited, we had these coffees,
and people started giving money and people started working. It got to be
very, very close. Rollin Giddes said, "I am in a rat race here." When it
came down to that election it was close.
We had gone up, there was a fellow in Durham named Bill Davis, me and
Bill were working on elections. Bill had gone to Bennett College to talk
with the history professor up there, to give credit for anybody that
wanted to work in the campaign. That's what they did, we had all the
class come down and work in Chapel Hill. They worked in, they just did a
lot of things. Week in and week out that was their class project. We
also had people coming down from the North. They had heard about this
black man running. There were a lot of colleges and so forth with kids
that wanted to
Page 10come South and work. They were
coming every weekend, and they were going around trying register and
they were talking and whatever. This thing turned into a big campaign.
I knew that I could turn out a sizable number of votes. I had my stuff
together. I had gotten The registrars to agree to allow us to have poll
watchers to come in. Well, this was our precinct we had picked the
judges so they agreed, "yeah, Ed you can have people here,
[unclear] you can have your people here." So we had poll watchers. What I
was doing is, I had all the black registered voters on lists by street
and alphabetical order. If somebody came in what they would do in the
poll is read their name off and we would check them off. So we knew who
had voted and who hadn't voted. At three o'clock we passed the lists
out, we had carbon copies behind about five of these names all mashed up
together. At three o'clock we tore the first list off. I had cars. I had
these classes from Bennett. I had high school kids that were excited
working in this campaign. There was Doug Clark and the Hot Nut's he had
his bus, his bus running all over everywhere. We had cars all over
everywhere "Howard Lee for Mayor." We put about two or three people
student and a person who the identified in the car. We sent them out. We
went to the grocery stores. We went everywhere. We went to their doors,
because we could look to see who had voted and who hadn't voted. We
would go to Miss So-and-so we want to take you down to vote, "I've voted
already," I said "no there must be some mistake here, cause we got
people in the polls and you haven't voted." "I can't go, I can't walk."
We got a car here. "I got to go to the grocery store." As soon as you go
vote we will take you to the grocery store. "Well, OK." And they would
go in there and get dressed up and we take them off. That's what we did
we searched and we combed. We combed in
Page 11neighborhoods, we found people. We went on their jobs and got them.
Business people got a little worried. Because they could see that we
were highly organized. This was something they just weren't quite sure
of. We had students voting. We had student registered on the campus, and
they were working. The Black Student Movement was working. There was
excitement in the air on that day. We work the streets until the polls
closed, and we knew Howard was going to win, we knew. Because we could
count votes. We could count all of our votes, and we were hoping they
wouldn't be able to get theirs out. So what the business's decided to do
is, because we had poll watchers and people at the poll passing out
literature—One other thing that we did, to ensure that they voted for
the right person. We had a slip of paper that we would put in their
hands who they were supposed to vote for when they went in the thing. We
would say, "Look, who are you going to vote for?" "Well you know I'm
going to let the Lord." I said, "No, we ain't going to let the Lord
choose today. You take this piece of paper, this is who you vote for.
You let the lord choose some other day." So we pretty much told them who
to vote for. We controlled things. They went in there and they came out
and people were proud. You talking about South Africa and voting, people
were voting in Chapel Hill and they were proud the same way. You could
just see their backs straighten up and see how proud they were. I worked
the streets until the polls closed, we got every vote that we could
find. We almost wrestled some people in that didn't want to go, but once
they went and voted they were proud.
When I got to the church, Howard had set up the Second Baptist Church, no
CME the Methodist Church on Rosemary Street, was where he was supposed
to give his acceptance speech. The man already thought that he was going
to win. I couldn't even
Page 12get in the church, and here
I was a key person in his campaign. My job was to turn the vote out. His
job was the campaign, have the tea's, the platform. I told him, "Don't
you worry about the votes, I'll turn them out." I couldn't get in the
church. There were people standing up there with him that hadn't done a
lick of work. It's surprising how people come out of the woodwork and
say I'm on your team and they didn't do nothing. We did it all. We found
out that he had won, the returns started coming in, it was very close,
he didn't win by very much but he won, because we turned out every vote
that we could find. Then when he got elected, Howard had his stuff
together, he was going to have office in the Town Hall. Nobody ever had
the office of the mayor in Town Hall. Howard was the first to have an
office, office hours. He took that job very seriously. He went to
different things in the town. Howard put Chapel Hill on the map. Howard
put the mayor's office on the map. Before that time it was a city
manager, city manager ran the town. The mayor was more of a figurehead.
Howard changed all that. Howard started going to Washington,
[unclear] "First Black Mayor of the South in a predominately Southern
town." People wanted to give him grants. Chapel Hill got put on the map.
He bought a lot of money in, lots of streets got paved, a lot of houses
got built. Worked right in to the sort of things that we wanted to do.
Because it wasn't just running a political campaign, we wanted to
improve our communities. That's pretty much what happened. Essentially,
I worked very close with Howard, ever since then we became very good
friends. His wife, we are like brothers and sisters really, we are just
that close. His kids are just like family, my kids are like family to
him. I've maintained a great relationship with him even though he has
gone on to other things.
Page 13
I decided—after Howard ran for mayor, I decided I was going to run for
school board again. I want to say to you its different when you are
running for something and not controlling the elections. I couldn't very
well run for the school board and call the shots and run the kind of
political get out the vote. I couldn't get elected. I didn't have
anybody else to step in and do that sort of thing. Everybody sort of
expected me to turn the vote out. So I never got elected.
I ran for the county commissioners. That's difficult because we are
talking county wide, Chapel Hill was an oasis within the county. People
would say, "Chapel Hill Liberal you know." Jessie Helms has even said
"Chapel Hill liberal we need to build a fence around that University."
He thought that for years. When you start talking about running in the
county you are talking about a different ballgame. But, I put my name up
and I ran for County Commissioners. There were several other people that
ran; there was Jimmy Wallace, who later became mayor of Chapel Hill.
There was a guy named George Harris, George ran Glenwood Pharmacy. They
just sort of put their names up, they didn't think they could win, it
was just a good opportunity to get some exposure. I ran seriously, I
organized the county the same way I organized Chapel Hill. I made
contact with all the political leaders from the North that were black.
We organized and got people registered, we knew who was out there. We
were going to do the same thing for turning out the vote in Northern
Orange that we had done in Chapel Hill. I had worked with them and we
were able to do that, let me back up and say how I was able to do that.
Jimmy Wallace and George Harris were not know outside of Chapel Hill,
very popular in Chapel Hill, but they didn't know anybody in the county.
I knew quite a few people in the county. Let me back up and say that my
uncle was Albert Leon Stanback.
Page 14They have a school
named after him up in Northern Orange. Everybody knew the principal of
the school, everybody knew my Aunt Catherine Stanback. My mother had
also taught school up at Cedar Grove and all those people remembered my
mother as a teacher. When I went in they all said, "We know you. You are
Miss Pearl Caldwell's son. How's she doing? You got our help that's our
teacher." A lot of things were already in place because I was going off
the reputation of my mother. A lot of people knew my father in Northern
Orange because he used to hunt he just has a lot of friends there. Uncle
Leon and Aunt Catherine. Everybody knew me up there and they were
willing to work. We had this thing organized. One of the things that
happened was there were ten people in the race. I knew, and I had
calculated, that if I was going to win a seat on the County
Commissioners I needed to win it in the first primary. I needed to get
the number of votes that I needed so I didn't have to be in a runoff. I
think I missed that by twenty something. Which put me in a runoff. Got
murdered next time around. Because I think there were about four people
that I had to run against. And all those folks who went to those other
white candidates went to the people in Northern Orange. What happened in
Chapel Hill, because I did so well in the first primary, they said,
"he's serious, serious candidate." And when they began to realize that I
was running a serious campaign. I was running to win I wasn't running
for the sake of running I was running to win. The shakers and movers of
the Democratic Party started saying "I want you to run as a coalition
between Jimmy Wallace and George Harris." They wanted to put them on my
shirttails. I said, "No, I'm running my own independent campaign, I
don't run with anybody else, I don't want to go in—