Cusick counters the image of a liberal UNC-Chapel Hill
Cusick captures a snapshot undergraduate life at the University of North Carolina. Class tensions distanced him from upper-class fraternity students. Moreover, Cusick dismisses the notion that Chapel Hill was a hotbed of liberalism. Instead, he viewed a lot of resistance to anti-war causes.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Pat Cusick, June 19, 1989. Interview L-0043. 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
- PAMELA DEAN:
-
Did you get involved in University life, in
extracurricular….
- PAT CUSICK:
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Not really, because I was working full-time, going to school full-time. I
was working about forty hours a week. I developed a distaste for the
fraternity-sorority system. For one of my jobs at Graham Memorial we
rented out little portable pianos for the fraternity bashes, especially
during the fall. Myself and another person, we had to move the pianos in
and out of the fraternity houses. We were called names and stuff like
that. I developed sort of an antagonistic mind-set toward the beautiful
fraternity houses.
- PAMELA DEAN:
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Can you recall the names?
- PAT CUSICK:
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I don't remember exactly, but they were derogatory names. We
were the hired help moving in the stuff.
- PAMELA DEAN:
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You clearly were not the sort they were going to recruit?
- PAT CUSICK:
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So I pretty much was uninvolved. I worked and had my own little circle. I
formed a—God, the naivete of this—I had seen a
leaflet of a group called the Student Peace Union. You needed five
students to form a chapter. There were no chapters in the South. I
formed a chapter. That was the start, because that was very
controversial. We were the only thing left, if you want to put it in
left-right terms, of the young Democrats. We were raising the issue of
the Vietnam War… Jack Kennedy was president. We would have
weekly sessions saying, "This is wrong, and it's
going to get us into a major war." We were looked upon as
extremely radical and caught a lot of abuse. Eventually the
Daily Tar Heel did support us.
- PAMELA DEAN:
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Chapel Hill has always had this reputation. North Carolina is supposed to
be the most liberal state in the South, and Chapel Hill is the hot-bed
of liberalism in North Carolina. You are suggesting that you were not
encountering anything that you or I would describe as liberalism?
- PAT CUSICK:
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No.
- PAMELA DEAN:
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Not among the students?
- PAT CUSICK:
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Definitely not.
- PAMELA DEAN:
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Except for a small handful that you personally had become acquainted
with?
- PAT CUSICK:
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There had been the tradition so that we were able to debate. In order to
get chartered as a student organization, and thereby be able to use the
facilities around campus and actually even hold
programs, you had to have a faculty advisor. So someone told me to go
see Joe Straley. He and I have laughed about this since then. Joe was
really hesitant. He said, "You're not going to be a
radical group, doing things like picketing and things are you?"
And we said, "No, this is just a discussion group."
Joe had evidently caught a lot of hell previously at some point. He just
did not want to go through a lot of stuff, but he felt he would be our
faculty advisor. "Oh no, we're not going to do
anything like that; no picketing or stuff." I did not foresee
the events as they were to unfold. So Joe became our faculty
advisor.
- PAMELA DEAN:
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He's in the chemistry department, isn't he?
physics?
- PAT CUSICK:
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Physics.
- PAMELA DEAN:
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Had you taken any classes with anybody that made you aware that there
were other people in the University?
- PAT CUSICK:
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No. I had taken a class with a physics professor who turned out to be
very supportive, but I wouldn't have known it from his class.
I didn't know him except for that. That was Wayne Bowers.
They lived on Franklin Street, Wayne and Maryellen Bowers. They were
very supportive of the Student Peace Union. Maryellen was, and
I'm sure still is, a member, along with Lucy Straley, of the
Durham-Chapel Hill branch of the Women's International League
of Peace and Freedom (W.I.L.P.F.). They were very supportive of this
very small peace group of ours and the Straleys. We then started talking
about how we could be doing all this stuff about international peace
when so much was happening right in the South. I went to Ocracoke Island
off the coast and spent a week by myself in a tent,
and that had a great effect on me. I went ahead with this peace group.
It was a major step for me. Looking back, I wonder if that
wasn't an easier step, obviously, than jumping right into the
civil rights movement. I don't think I realized that. But
then we did get involved in civil rights. There went the band wagon.
- PAMELA DEAN:
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You started out with a small group of people. Who were they?
- PAT CUSICK:
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Mike Putzel, who is now with the White House press corps. He was one of
the initial five. He did not get all that involved with the civil rights
part of it, because by that point he was writing for the
Daily Tar Heel, and all the Tar Heel kids
became stringers for the U.P.I., A.P., and that type of thing. We wanted
them to, because they were sympathetic. Wayne King was in that category.
Wayne was the Washington bureau chief for the Times. I
think he is back in New York now. We talked on the phone once last
year.
- PAMELA DEAN:
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That's four. You said you had to have five. Who's
the other?
- PAT CUSICK:
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John Creel. I don't know what happened to him, and Lou
Calhoun. I'm still in touch with Lou. He, like myself, was a
white Southerner. John Donne is dead, I guess you know now. He died in
'82. Joe Straley came up for his memorial service. We rode up
to Vermont together where he lived. [interruption]
It has shaped everything that has come after for me. That is why these
charts are on the wall and stuff. It is very close
to me in a lot of ways. I'm still schizoid about the state of
North Carolina, and the University. I love it and I hate it. Of course,
I think North Carolina is a schizoid state. It has very progressive
elements and very right-wing elements, in a way that makes things
exciting, because at least things are in flux.