Some political setbacks for Caldwell
After working to elect Howard Lee mayor of Chapel Hill, Caldwell decided to run for the school board, but he was more of an organizer than a politician, and "couldn't get elected." A losing but impressive showing in a county commissioner's primary earned him a reputation, however; but after he rejected the political offers that reputation garnered, he lost the race badly.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Edwin Caldwell, March 2, 2001. Interview K-0202. 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
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. They 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-
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
- EDWIN CALDWELL:
-
So I was still trying to run an independent campaign. They were
determined that we were going to run as a coalition, and my campaign
started to come apart because I started to loose votes that I had been
able to count on from the white community. All kinds of stories began to
come out that I had called for what they call a bullet vote or single
shot vote. Which I didn't. I just said I was running my own campaign. I
had my own literature my own organization. I had people working for me.
They were supposed to be doing the same thing and I didn't need to them
on the brink come in and question how I was running my campaign. I
didn't need that. I didn't need to bring other people in because I all
ready had my campaign people that had worked with me. People like Billy
Barnes, his wife Ann Barnes, Ann was in the
[unclear]
for many years. Berlin
[unclear]
just a number of persons were in my campaign. I had a pretty
good campaign staff. I knew also that if I didn't come in the first
time, that was held in May, the first week in May. Well the University
closed down the first week in May, students went away, I lost that vote.
I lost the vote of the professors that had to go on their vacations
during that period before summer school started. I said, "its
all over for me if I can't come in, and I missed that by twenty
votes." And I knew it was all over. I did more-I
didn't campaign, I did more trying to hold onto the votes that I had. I
was losing them because they were writing letters and editorials that Ed
had called for single shotting, he didn't want to support others in a
coalition. I got letters home now that I kept. That really bothered me
and hurt me, and I was looking for my resume and was looking at the
newspaper that I have at home. It says "The Northern Walker
Boys and somebody else slaughters Ed Caldwell." And they pretty
much did. I knew I couldn't win it, if I couldn't win it on the first
time around with ten people in there. I couldn't
carry that kind of vote. You've got to understand that Northern Orange
was very conservative, very conservative. There were know Klan, I guess
you call them Klavets or something. Where they had little organizations
in the county, and we knew where they were. Because we had white friends
who would say, "Don't go in there. Stay away from there. You
ain't doing nothing but risking your life if you go in there. You're not
going to get any votes out of there." They let me know where I
could go in and that sort of thing. But in the county I depended mainly
on the black vote, got very few white votes in the county. Quite an
experience, enjoyed it, quite an experience. Got to be. Because I had
contacts, I developed a lot of friendships, therefore, I was better
known in Northern Orange.