Cusick credits his prison sentence rather than UNC in forming his activist stance
Cusick rebuts Terry Sanford's implication that UNC shaped his pro-civil rights stance. Instead, he insists that his prison sentence proved most decisive to his activism.
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:
-
So in a rather strange way, not the way, I'm sure, the
University intended, your experience at the University of North
Carolina, your college years, were, in fact, very formative.
- PAT CUSICK:
-
That's right. They certainly succeeded in driving us out of
the South. But when I met Terry Sanford in 1980, we were discussing a
poverty institute at Duke, and he said that he was glad that the prison
experience didn't leave any permanent scars on me. Which I
thought was a patronizing statement.
- PAMELA DEAN:
-
Yes.
