Charlie Scott breaks the color line in UNC athletics
Pollitt describes his role in helping to recruit Charlie Scott to UNC. In 1966, Scott became the first African American student to attend UNC on athletic scholarship. Pollitt explains how as the faculty advisor to the NAACP he had been striving to introduce more African American role models to campus. Scott describes how UNC took notice of Scott and how he worked with Dean Smith to recruit him. In addition, the passage sheds light on various aspects of African American education in the South by way of Pollitt's detailed description of the prep school Scott attended in Laurinburg, North Carolina.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Daniel H. Pollitt, February 15, 1991. Interview L-0064-4. 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
But then Charlie Scott was
"Mr. Big". He was the number one high school star that
everybody wanted and he was from New York City, but attending Laurinburg
Institute.
- ANN MCCOLL:
-
In Virginia?
- DANIEL POLLITT:
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No, it's in Laurinburg, North Carolina, down on the South
Carolina border. Scotland County.
- ANN MCCOLL:
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Is it a high school?
- DANIEL POLLITT:
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It's a prep school and it's a very interesting one
in that the…. I forget the headmaster's name, but
it's something like McLaurin or McDuffy. The founder of the
institute had gone down to Tuskeegee Institute when George Washington
Carver or Booker T. Washington was the President. What the emphasis was
was on how to be good farmers for the men and how to be good housewives
for the women and you know, sanitation and cleanliness and promptness
and honesty and all the virtues. So Mr. McDuffy, if that was his name,
returned when he graduated from Tuskeegee; came up to Laurinburg which
was his place and started a little institute to teach the black farmers
how to farm better and the women how to do household chores and skills
and crafts. In any event, in World War I a number of
blacks in the South went north to work in the defense plants and the
male, the men, the husband would go and then when he found a place and
had some money, he'd send for his wife and then
he'd send for the kids. Well, that left the wife and the kids
and the Institute became the school for the kids.
- ANN MCCOLL:
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So this was early.
- DANIEL POLLITT:
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Yes. This was World War I we're talking about now and it was
an ongoing thing. Then if there was a depression in the north and the
husband was laid off, he would send the kids back to grandma and then
the wife, and he'd look for a job. So Laurinburg became the
school where the kids from the north came back to grandma and would go
there. I guess there wasn't a public school for blacks or it
wasn't very good or something.
- ANN MCCOLL:
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What county is this?
- DANIEL POLLITT:
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This is in Scotland County. If you just go down on 15-501
you'll run into it just before the South Carolina line. So
then that same thing happened in World War II where the blacks went
north. The husband would get the job, send for the wife, send for the
kids and then if he was laid off, he would send them back. So Laurinburg
Academy became the school for a lot of northern kids who would go home
during bad times, but it also became in the process, sort of a
prestigious prep school for northern kids who would go south to this
prestigious prep school. To make it prestigious they would give
scholarships to promising athletes in basketball and baseball. A lot of
the famous black baseball players went to Laurinburg Academy, and also
the basketball players. So Laurinburg Academy had a
great basketball team. The year Charlie Scott played for them, and he
came down from New York City, they had five of them and every one of
them was a scholarship at a top ten basketball school. In any event,
Charlie Scott was the best and he was at Laurinburg Academy. They all
wore blue blazers and the men wore gray flannel trousers and the women
wore gray flannel skirts and a white shirt every day. In the dining room
they all stood up and the headmaster would give the prayer and then they
would sit down, so it was very proper and had high standards. It was a
very attractive campus. So Mr. McDuffy, if that's his name,
because they kept on, the son took over from the father, was the
headmaster and the coach of the basketball team. And unbeknownst to me,
he was in the audience when I spoke to the state convention of the NAACP
on Brown against the School Board and what has happened since, or what
has not happened since. So he apparently liked my speech. So
that's the background. Lefty Drizell was the coach at
Davidson at the time and Short Border had built Davidson up into a
powerhouse basketball team. He was great at recruiting and they were up
there. They were invited to the NCAA annual tournament when they only
invited thirty or whatever. So it was announced that Charlie Scott had
signed to go to Davidson. So he's gone to Davidson. A few
weeks later, or some period thereafter, he had not seen Davidson, so he
called the coach or the coach called him and said, "How would
you like to come see the campus and look it over. It's an
attractive campus." So Lefty, the coach, went down to
Laurinburg which is a four or five hour drive and
picked Charlie up on a Sunday and drove back to Davidson to show him the
campus. Well, at that time at Davidson, and the same thing was true
here, they did not have Sunday evening meals on the campus, but they did
have them at the churches. Every church had a Sunday dinner, and so the
universities cooperated by not serving food so they'd have to
go to the church to get a dinner. So the dormitories which were the
dining facilities at the University at Davidson were closed when Charlie
got there. The coach didn't want to take him to a church. So
they went to one of the two or the three restaurants in town and they
all told the coach in Charlie's presence, "We
don't serve blacks. He can't eat here."
So Charlie decided he didn't want to go to a town where he
couldn't eat in the restaurants. So he cancelled. He
cancelled his letter of intent and no protests were made because how
could you defend it, you know? So then McDuffy, the headmaster at
Laurinburg, called Dean Smith and said that nobody from Laurinburg had
ever been admitted at the University of North Carolina and maybe you
would like to start the thing off with Charlie Scott.
- ANN MCCOLL:
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Dean Smith is now the basketball coach?
- DANIEL POLLITT:
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Dean Smith is now the basketball coach and he suggested that maybe Dean
Smith would like to bring me down to interview Charlie Scott. So Dean
Smith called me and asked me if I'd like to go down and see
Charlie Scott and I didn't know who Charlie Scott was, but I
said, "Sure". That's what we'd
been trying to do was to recruit a role model. So we drove down to
Laurinburg and we took with us…. What the headmaster had told
Dean Smith was that Charlie Scott was interested in
being a doctor. He wanted to be pre-med. So there was one black medical
student at that time, so he went down. So the three of us drove down to
Laurinburg, Coach Dean Smith and me from the NAACP, and…. The
name will come to me. His wife later became the head of the YMCA
here.
- ANN MCCOLL:
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The pre-med student's wife?
- DANIEL POLLITT:
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Yes. He was a med student. So in any event, we went down and we saw a
basketball game and I didn't know which one was Charlie
Scott. They all looked so great to me. But then after the basketball
game we had steak dinner at the headmaster's house and it was
about 8:00. There was the headmaster and his wife and his brother-in-law
and the coach and me and the black medical student and Charlie Scott.
And Charlie Scott was very deferential and "Yes, sir".
All the students are, "Yes, sir," and "Yes,
ma'am". So then they invited him to come up to look
at this campus. No pains were left undone.