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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview L-0144, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
William C. Friday served as the president of the University of North Carolina system from 1957 to 1986. This interview is part of a longer, multi-part interview conducted with Friday in 1990. Here, Friday focuses primarily on his relationship with and perception of preceding presidents of the university, including Frank Porter Graham and Gordon Gray, as well as his work with other leading university administrators, including William Carmichael. Friday begins the interview by describing his first interactions with Frank Porter Graham when Friday served as the student body president of North Carolina State University during the 1930s. In 1950, Friday campaigned for Graham during his senatorial bid, and he explains how the vitriolic nature of the opposition's campaign dissuaded Friday from pursuing his own career in politics. During the 1950s, Friday worked as then-president Gordon Gray's assistant, priming himself to take over as president in 1957. Friday describes his appointment to the position, emphasizing the importance of the University of North Carolina's Board of Trustees in the relationship between state and university politics during the late 1950s and into the 1960s. In addition, Friday discusses the process of desegregation during his years of service to the University. Likening his own position to that of Frank Porter Graham's, Friday focuses on how he believed that the University needed legal precedent in order to effect change and that winning over the "hearts of people" was crucial to the success of desegregation. Friday concludes the interview by discussing the formation, structure, and function of the North Carolina Board of Higher Education, his perception of various members of the University of North Carolina Board of Governors, and his professional relationship with Governor Luther Hodges.
Former president of the University of North Carolina System William Friday describes his relationship with and perception of his predecessors Frank Porter Graham and Gordon Gray. In addition, he describes various aspects of his own presidency, including his approach to desegregation and his relationships with a variety of individuals and organizations.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Last time we were talking about Frank Porter Graham. And I have a couple of questions about Graham, and I wonder if you could clear them up for me. You have mentioned that you had worked with him as a student at North Carolina State, had you met him before?
No. That budget hearing was the first that I knew of him, of course, but the first time that I ever encountered him. I was president of class at N.C. State, and that through me into this kind of public adventure. And so I went merrily on downtown and sat there in the budget hearing, along with the president of the student body, and some others.
The president of the student body's from all over, well, of the three?
There was three at that time.
Right.
He rallied student support.
Did you, as a law student, have contacts, or —
No. But we were in touch, of course. But we were all too busy trying to get out of law school. And see, we all came back the average age of that class, at that time was about twenty-seven. That was Bill Aycock, and Judge Dickson Phillips, and William Dees, and John Jordan, and L. P. McClendon, Jr., a whole group there that, it was really five classes that telescoped into one, because of the war. And most of us were married, that wanted to get on with it, and we went to school around the clock. Two sessions in the summer right straight through. A very hard grind, to be honest about it. I wouldn't do it again. But it was where we formed the friendships that lasted for forty years there.
When would you say your first extensive contacts with Frank Graham were?
When I came back when I went to work here in September 1948. I was
upstairs in the Dean of Students office with Fred Weaver. And few people
were as close to Dr. Graham as Fred was. That was ages old. And when
Fred, when I went to work there Fred wanted to finish his advanced work,
so I filled-in as acting dean, while Fred went to Harvard, and then to
Columbia. And he never did finish his Ph.D. work. And later after I
assumed office, he came down and was with me for a while as vice
president. And then he wanted to go abroad, so he took a Ford Foundation
appointment to India, and died there, unexpectedly, playing tennis one
day of a heart attack. But that was a friendship that reached back to
1939. Because I had known Fred, in those days, when I was at N.C. State,
and he was here. But it was probably primarily through that relationship
and Billy Carmichael, who was vice president of the University, with Dr.
Graham. I had known him before World War II, also. And when I came back
he pulled me into his work orbit and that meant Dr. Graham and Mr.
Claude Teague. That was Dr. Graham's team that he put together. I was
certainly the minor junior member. I carried the books, and did all of
that. But, then that just led to a succession of things, where you
watched Dr. Frank operate, you knew what he did. He was a good teacher.
And I used to, I'd drive, you know, do whatever was necessary to
accommodate. Because it was a real learning process. None of that is in
the textbooks anywhere. And then when he went to the Senate, of course,
that appointment was made. I never will forget that occasion because,
that very afternoon, which was March 22, 1949, I
Was there much, I gather he had a lot of hesitation about accepting it? Frank Graham did.
Well, he told me that he had been asked three different times. Jonathan Daniels was really the pressure, generator on this. He wanted Dr. Graham up there. And, he then called, I think he had all of the Chancellor's together, Mr. Harrelson, Mr. Jackson, and Mr. House, and talked it over with him. But I don't think anybody, at that time, could have anticipated what ultimately happened, when he had to run for election. But it was one of those cases of a Governor having to convince somebody that that was the next thing he should do. Dr. Graham had been President of the University for what, about nineteen years, I think, at the time. I think he was ready to move on. He was ready to move up to that level of national involvement, and he did. Had he been re-elected, he would have been one of the historic members of the Senate. But he moved on over to the United Nations, after he was defeated, and did equally well.
Did you have much involvement in the campaign? The 19 —
It was purely secondary, because I was working in the University then, and state employees could not do that. But I would do things that were on my time, like driving and working to get up material, and stuff like that. No. That was all done by Judge Johnson, who was his campaign manager. He kept control over everything. And I would more or less respond to Dr. Graham personally. When he would ask me for something, or, I was not out trying to get votes, in the formal sense, or in the organized sense, because I knew that was against the law. But, I stayed close to him, and then that little scene that I described for you happening on the steps of South Building, that's when it ended. From that moment on, it was sort of at loose ends. And the next time that I ever got involved with him in any closeness, was when he asked me one day about someone to go to India-Pakistan, and I characterized that episode for you, and that's when I discussed Chancellor Aycock with him. And then he would come in and out, and then the United Nations. And then when I took office, he came down and spoke and took part in the ceremony with me. And it was that way, and then he moved back here eventually, after Marian's death, which was a terribly, terribly hard blow to him. Because I met him at the airport. Brought him home. And I could tell he could hardly move, he was in such a state of shock. They were an inseparable pair. It was really very sad.
When was this, that she died?
I've forgotten. But it was thereafter they'd gone back up to New York, and they were living in New York. And she became ill up there, sometime later.
How did the Senate race of 1950 affect you? In your view, did it affect you, at all?
Yes. Well, I, like anybody else, at that age, at that time, I didn't become bitter about it, I just knew that that was no way for a state to make a decision. The racial hatred part of it, to me, was just a disaster. But it drove me away from political involvement, as a participant. I said, "I don't want to waste my life fooling with that kind of garbage and trash." And I haven't regretted that decision at all, because I learned that someone in an administrative position in a university, at the level that I was privileged to serve, can do so much more than a governor or senator, when it comes to getting lasting things done in a state. And I've often said that being President of the University was a much better position than being Governor of the State anytime, because for that reason. Now, you don't go out and gain a lot of notoriety, and they don't do this-or-that. But, if that's what you want to do you ought to go on and get in politics, and take your chances. But, more than that, I really did not approve of what happened there, in any way personally. And that influenced me as much as anything in this most recent Senatorial decision. And it's a terrible commentary on our State, but it has to acknowledge it, it's true.
So, it sort of affected the way that, subsequently, when you, the
possibility of political involvement,
I worked through other people. I worked to help Terry Sanford. And then
I think I've been involved with nine different Governor's. And in each
of cases, my—I felt my opportunity was to show them how effectively the
University could serve the State, but not be dominated by the political
process. Keep it cleaner and
No.
And that poll showed that in the first series of questions, and that's
pollster's way of doing things, they asked eight questions right out,
and then they discuss several areas of crisis in a given situation, and
then they ask another series of questions. Well, the first question, of
course, is just a flat-out: If you had to vote between these two people,
who would you chose? Well, two percentage points separated us on that
question, and he was first. When they finished the interview, the thing
shifted and forty-two
Yeah. You mentioned several people that were important in Frank Graham's administration, that continue to be important all through the '50s, at least, even after Frank Graham had left. Could you describe in a little bit more detail the administrative set-up, that the people, key people, what kind of function they played in Graham's administration?
Well, the University, at that time, structurally was very small. Only three campuses: Raleigh, Chapel Hill, and Greensboro. Dr. Graham, I don't know how he ran the University in the mid-30s, because I was still at Raleigh. But he had a very small staff. Ms. Billie Curtis was with him for a long, long time. She just died out here at Carol Woods. She was his secretary, records keeper, travel arranger, she did it all. Perfectly, wonderful woman who dedicated her entire life to him. And she kept the records of the Board of Trustee's meetings. She looked after him in the professional sense. The Chief of Finance was Vice President Billy B. Carmichael, Jr., who came back here from his own firm on Wall Street; Carmichael and Carson. And he became the legislative liaison, the finance chief, the man who organized all public occasions. He brought public television to the State. And he initiated the notion of raising large sums of money for public institutions, and he did it well. He's one of the unsung people, in the history of the place. There was no chief academic officer in those days, because Dr. Graham envisioned himself as being the chief academic officer, really. Then, Mr. Buster Shepherd, was an Assistant Treasurer, but he was not a member of the—Dr. Graham's office team, but he was pulled in by Mr. Carmichael all the time, to help develop the budget proposals, and everything that had to go to the Legislation. I didn't get involved as a member of Dr. Graham's team, having been put on his staff, I was always pulled from upstairs, in the local administration. Once Dr. Graham left, Mr. Gray brought in a firm from New York; Cresap, McCormick and Pagett, and they did a thorough going study of the University structure. And it was completely revamped. And that's when Logan Wilson became the Chief Academic Officer, and Mr. Carmichael the Chief Finance person, and then the Assistant to the President, and that's the job I had. And it began to grow then, to its present posture. But, Dr. Graham ran it himself.
You have, I gather, a fairly close working relationship with Billy Carmichael?
Very close. He and I were good friends. And working partners, and that stayed that way everyday.
You knew him, you mentioned earlier that you had first met him when you were a student at State? Is that right?
That's right.
What was the contacts there?
The same thing. Legislative things. Although, he was more involved in
the life of an institution at the time, and I remember very well, that
one time Kay Kyser was over there with him NBC radio show, and Mr.
Carmichael brought him out to the Riddick Stadium, where we were having
this huge pep rally between State and Carolina, and WRAL Radio, at that
time, had opened lines between the two campuses, and they'd do one thing
on this campus, and it would be answered over here, and then vice versa
it. It worked up quite a forbear. He brought Kay out there, and that was
my first exposure to him, which developed into a reach and deep
friendship forty years later. But, he was very sports oriented. And
loved to get out and meet people, and get involved. Billy Carmichael had
a very tender spot in him. A lot of people didn't know that. He was an
exceedingly sensitive person, in a lot of ways. He was a very gentle
man. I've never seen him hurt anybody. But, he'd work himself to the
point of exhaustion. And he would not let anybody drive the car. He'd
always had to. And only one time, in all those years, we were down, we
were down in Kinston, at some occasion and he got very sick, and I just
put him on the back seat and let him go to sleep. And I drove his car
all the way home. He did a lot to position knowledge about the
University out in the State. He worked hard at organizing the foundation
and structure you see in North Carolina right now at all of our
campuses. He got the major wealth in the State to start giving to these
institutions. And he built buildings, and
That is the foundation of the public, what became public television?
That's right. We got the allocation of the channels and kept them, and went on from there.
He was a very key figure in the lobbying efforts?
He was it. Nobody could touch him. He was that good. And he was very effective. He worked his way through all of his contemporaries at the university were then power structure of the legislature. And he organized them. It was really amazing to see the man work. And he didn't know any of that till he came here. He had never made a public speech until he came back here to work. And when his career ended, he was probably the most sought after speaker ever here, because he was a good entertainer. Very, very close to Charlie Justice, and Kay Kiser, and that group. All of the great athletes were his buddies. He enjoyed them. But he moved in the circles of economic power, which were very important to Chapel Hill. And State, and Woman's College, at the time.
So he was able to push the University out there?
And did. Very much so. A rather remarkable achievement, in the end, it really was.
What about Teague? Tell me —
Well, he's a quiet, a contemporary of Dr. Graham's. They were classmates, as I remember it, or close to it. He used to be the business chief at Greensboro, when it was the Woman's College. I know Dr. Jackson. And Dr. Graham was so fond of him that he brought him to Chapel Hill. And he dealt in the legislature with the people Mr. Carmichael couldn't touch. Because there was a block then of men who came out of the school houses, and off the farms that Claude Teague knew, because they were all his contemporaries. But Billy never got to know them, because he came back from New York, and his world was Robert Hanes, and Charlie Cannon, and Spencer Love, or that group. Mr. Teague's world were the little fellows. And his greatest asset was that he was a superb listener. He could walk into a Legislative Session, and walk through, and never say much to anybody, but he'd pick up more information and sift through it, and tell you which way the trend looked, or what the current rascality was, or who was involved, and all that. But he was a man who worked at it systematically, and knew what he was doing. He was an old school man. And he was a great compliment to Dr. Graham in another way. So, he really had two major field officer's in those two guys. And Mr. Carmichael and Mr. Teague were very compatible people and got along handsome.
And they have a kind of division of labor when they would go through lobbying, say he would cover one area —
Always had a strategy, you know, he'd go into the building, you knew exactly who you were going to see, and you'd bide a certain amount of time, and when that was over, you came back and rendezvoused, and said, "What have we learned?" And then when you knew there was a weakness somewhere, you went over and tried to plug it. And that's the way you did it.
And you would, a number of these quarries, you'd go with them?
Most all of them. Yeah, Mr. Carmichael was very generous with me. He was
sort of wanting to raise me up. I think he wanted me to help him, until
Mr. Gray came. And he was a great teacher. And I still
Let me ask you about Gordon Gray.
Well, the University Board had a rather large Committee that was chaired
by Victor Bryant. There were nine members of it. From time to time I did
some staff work for them. They got interested in President Stewart at
West Virginia. They had three names they were looking at. One was the
dean of the college at Yale, Dr. Devane. He'd became Mr. Bryant's
obvious choice. He wanted to move on and get Dr. Devane to move in. It
developed into a contest between those who felt that bent, and those who
felt more administratively public oriented people, which is Mr.
Carmichael's accent. He won. And Mr. Gray became President. He had been
here at the school as an undergraduate, of course. And led his class
here. And at Yale in the law school. He made the highest score in any
recruit made in the United States Army, in that competition in World War
II. Enlisted as a private. When he came here, he had been Secretary of
the Army. His heart was just where it should be. He was totally
committed to the place, as was his family. And I've never known anybody
who worked harder at trying to learn how to be a college president, than
did he. The decision process within an institution was not anything like
he'd ever experienced before anywhere. Because here it's persuasion.
Rank, authority, those things really don't make any difference. If you
want to be an effective university president, you have to lead people
into decisions, and help them see what the options are, and hope that
you see it together. And he became very unhappy about this. He didn't
seem to think anything was moving. But then he hit on the idea that we
would have a State of the University Conference. And we'd talk about:
Where are we? What do we need to do? And, Where are we going? And he got
some very strong people to head those groups. Dr. Howard Oldham, for
example, was the first, I believe, the very first Chairman of the very
first one. And Mr. Gray would work hard at getting some very prominent
figures to come and talk. We'd bring the representatives together from
each campus, and really worked at it. The companion to that was his
pretention of Cresap, McCormick and Pagett, to do this big, thorough
going management study, which got into some arguments with the
faculty's, because they didn't want to see this kind of thing happen. I
don't think they ever really understood what Mr. Gray had wanted to
achieve. Always fearful of structure, in those days. And I think some
were afraid of him, because he represented big business, big government,
bureaucracy. He was not a man who came up through the academic ranks to
be President. And before he really had solidified what he'd set out to
do, Mrs. Gray died. And that was just an utterly devastating thing to
have happened. Because he had young sons. And I used to go down and get
those son's, and take them to basketball games, for them night after
night. Because, he was not physically strong in those years. He'd always
come up with all kinds of pulmonary problems. And he smoked an awful
lot, and I don't think he ever got that behind him. But, I am devoted to
him because I think several things
He still had his hands in a lot of things going on in Washington?
Well, it was just inevitable. He was too bright a person. Too well
connected a person. And a few people had the intellectual power that he
had, and just
He was one of the boy's that you took to basketball games?
One of the four. Yeah. Gordon, Boyden, Bowman, and I've forgotten the fourth one's name. But they were great young men.
What were the circumstances in which you first met Gordon Gray?
After he had come here. I didn't know the man, at all. And my
appointment there was strictly at the behest of Mr. Carmichael. There
isn't any doubt about that. And it took some doing for us to learn to
work together, because he came out of the prep school, Yale, you know,
Chapel Hill, great wealth. And I was the exactly opposite. I came from a
high school that had twelve graduates from the senior class. And poor as
we could be from a cotton-belt of Gaston County. But we soon became very
compatible people. And I sensed that what I could do for him was to help
him identify with people, in my
How would you describe his relations with the Board of Trustees? I gather that was one of the things you became involved with.
Yes. I did. I arranged all of the meetings for him. Set the agenda for
him. And did all the pre-meeting work. Quite good. They respected the
man for his intelligence and his ability. The saddest part of the whole
experience was when he and Mr. Carmichael began to fall out. And that
occurred over intercollegiate athletics. And it was specifically over
Jim Tatum's return to the University. I never will forget on New Year's
Day, one year. I was at home, during the morning, Mr. Gray called me and
asked me if I could be at the office at 1:30, and I said, "On New's
Day?" And he said, "Yes, on New Year's Day." So I went. And he and Mr.
Carmichael and I sat there, and they got into a discussion about Coach
Tatum coming back to Chapel Hill. And it was in someway a very
unfortunate kind of confrontation. And Mr. Carmichael was very—he wanted
to have a big, strong athletic program. And Jim Tatum was kin to Mr.
Carmichael, distantly. Most people had no idea that that was so. And
then soon after that visit, that conversation, Mr. Carmichael was
driving to the Greensboro Campus one day, and he developed this nose
bleed, and had to go over to the Alamance Hospital for packing; stopping
it. He was a hypertension case, by that time, and he had to be tended,
and that was a signal to Mr. Gray, in some ways, I think. He was fearful
that he would cause him to have physical dislocation.
We were on Mr. Carmichael and Mr. Gray?
Yes. Talking about the athletic
Well, it was after that that Mr. Tatum came. And I knew then that, while
he never said it, I felt that Mr. Gray would leave when it was
appropriate for him to do so. He did his best, as I'm sure you've noted,
every university president has to face the question of athletics
sometime. Sooner or later. Dr. Graham raised it and lost. Gordon felt
that he raised it and lost. So when my time came, although I'd say this,
he—Mr. Gray did set up a way of handling intercollegiate sports that's
still there today. He put it in the hands of the chancellor. And he did,
this, this, and this. I appropriated that, because I helped him write
it. But he did so many other good things, for example, the Atlantic
Coast Conference was formed right here up in the Faculty Lounge in the
Morehead Building. Because I helped him arrange the meeting with he, and
H
And that was an attempt to network control over the situation?
That's right. To bring some order into it among comparable institutions.
And those kinds of things he did, and he didn't get a lot of credit for
it. But when the invitation came from the President, to come back to
Washington, he decided to leave. And then Mr. Carmichael, well, Mr. Gray
had brought Dr. Harris Purks here, from the Rockefeller Organization, to
be the Chief Academic Officer. And at the time of Mr. Gray's departure,
the President's office was composed of: Mr. Carmichael, Mr. Gray, I
mean, Mr. Carmichael, Mr. Purkes, and then myself. We were it. But Miss
Curtis, and some others that were there in a different role. Mr.
Carmichael had been acting president and didn't want to be again. Dr.
Purkes felt that he would rather be the Head of the new Board of Higher
Education, which was being created. So, in January the succession was
worked out. And he left, I think it was the first of March, and I took
over as the acting President. And no one expected me to be there more
than ninety days, or whenever the Committee got through. Mr. Bryant was
Chairman again. And this Committee had some very powerful Trustee's on
it, like Virginia Lathrop, Kent Battle, Mr. Harvey Mann, and Miss May
Thomas, and so on. And I had a couple of conversations with them. One
was a very interesting point. I was asked by the Committee if I would be
willing to say, where I invited to be the president, would I be willing
to say to them, that I would agree that Dr. Bethea would be Chief
Academic Officer, and I said, "No." Because I don't think any President
ought to take the job with any prior commitments of any kind. Because if
you do, then you aren't your own man. And you can't function that way.
And the rest of the Board was not in on any agreement like that. And,
the day I was asked to take on this arrangement, we were meeting over in
the Capital. And Governor Hodges was presiding over the Executive
Committee that day, and there had been some discussion among the members
of the Executive Committee, about the state of the University, so to
speak. There was a lot of unrest, about the uneasiness in
Administration. Mr. Gray's departure and people who were just worried.
And there had been some other people invited by the Committee to appear,
just for conversation, and probe. I didn't know who they were. And then
I was invited in, and after about the sixth or seventh question, I could
tell that all that I was saying was in direct contradiction of what had
been said just before. Meaning that I was for, I was trying to outline
some options for progressive action. That is, "Let's get on." "Let's
move." The others were more conservative. "Let's pull back." "Let's
regroup." This kind of talk. And I walked out of the Governor's office,
and I never will forget, I walked around to the Worth Bagley Monument.
It's
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
But the Board of Trustee's of the University, at that time, was in, for
my perception, easily, the most cherished public service appointment,
anybody could have in North Carolina. Men and women worked hard to be
elected that Board. A mark of great distinction in the State. It had, in
Was the Executive Committee, I guess, did —
It was the all-powerful body. It ran things. Because it had to. There was no way you could function with a hundred members, except as advocates, interpreters, people who stood by the Institution when the issues were drawn. People have looked in horror at me when I was telling them I had a hundred trustees. But I have said, "That's the best insulation I saw a president have." Because nobody ran over the place. No one. No Governor. Nor anyone. Because they just wouldn't tolerate it. As long as the motivation was pure, and high, and simple, that works very well. And it worked that way.
You mentioned there's a kind of restiveness that was apparent by the time you were named acting President.
Well, I think it was because there was some people who were a bit angry at Mr. Gray for leaving out so soon, in their view. Secondly, there was some animosity toward Mr. Carmichael, over why over this thing. And thirdly, I was too young, too inexperienced, and scared of them. I was just thirty-five years old then. And they just felt like, you know, the thing's at lose ends. And there was trouble on the Greensboro campus, the then chancellor. And there was argument here about retiring the chancellor here who was getting to be sixty-five. So, all of these problems were looming large, and there was nobody holding the helm, so to speak.
Tell me a little bit more about the manner in which the University was desegregated in the 1950's? Or was it before? Were you involved in that, at all?
Well, I was not early on. I've been doing a little reading about that
lately, for another reason. And I asked Carlyle Sitterson the other day,
and John Sanders, if Dr. Graham ever really openly advocated the
integration of the University. And he did not. And then that led me to
say, "Well, where was he, when it came to a hard position?" I knew where
he stood, because I had read the 1948 Civil Rights Commission Report, in
which he took the position that you don't ever use Federal fiscal power
to course action in an institution. That was precisely the position I
took twenty years later. And didn't know it. I just didn't know what
he'd done. I suppose it's much like we said the last time, that once the
issues begin to be drawn, you went to litigation, so that you had the
protection of the federal court decision. That took a little more time,
but it also prevented all disruptiveness afterwards. And you noticed
this place never had one semblance of that. There was some tense days
here. People didn't know, you know, where anything was going to land.
Special session of the legislature to decide the Brown decision. Public
television aired every word of that debate. But it was so sensitive,
that we had an arrangement with the then Speaker of the House, that if
it got out of control, and people started using the camera for publicity
purposes, that he would give the signal, and we would've taken the
cameras out of the building. We're just not going to allow demagoguery.
He didn't want it that way. But that was the beginning of something very
important, I thought. Sharing with people what really does happen in the
public process, as it happens, raw, unedited television. But when you
look back on it now, and people are so willing to criticize, you know,
everything that was done then, it's so unfair. Because if you're not
caught up in it, and faced with it twenty-four hours a day, you don't
understand it. Because you realize the enormity of social change that
was taking place. But you couldn't destroy every social institution you
had to affect change, in that process. There were people who were
willing to do
No.
And she was very abrasive, and very hostile, when we first got in there.
And I had the Chairman of the Board, and all of my team with me. I was
really caught by surprise. I didn't expect her to do that. I thought she
would be straightforward with me. In fact, it was so hostile, that I had
something to happen that never happened before or since. But that night
when I got home, I had a call from somebody in the Bureau, who had been
there that day. And the voice said, "Mr. Friday, I'm not going to
introduce myself, because there's no point in it. But I want you to
understand, and I want you to tell all of your fellows, that what
happened there today
I know with the case, back to the '50s, that in the case of Greensboro, the first black students came to Woman's College about 1956, or '57?
I don't remember.
Yeah. Similar things were happening at all three campuses at the same time.
All orchestrated. All planned.
I gather there was a great deal of planning involved in terms of putting the students in the right place and avoiding —
Yeah. You knew it was happening and it was wiser that it happened that
way. But you wanted to avoid, at all cost, was confrontational tactics
that led to guns, and that kind of thing, which was so disastrous, at
Yeah. We can talk later, I've got a whole set of questions about what happened in the '70s, and up to the early '80s, but that will take another afternoon —
Sure.
Let me ask you about the Woman's College. This seems to have been the first substantial crisis that you faced, or substantial challenge perhaps, that you faced as acting President—you were acting President?
That's right.
Can you tell me more about the origins? This is really a very unusual thing, where you have a chancellor whose been this much trouble. You don't see it happen that often, do you?
Well, when I got into office, the first thing I learned was that the
then established so-called Visiting Committee, had been holding hearings
in the basement of some church over there. And Mr. Robert Hanes was from
Winston-Salem, was the Chairman. And he came to see me and told me what
he had been doing, and how he was doing it, and that they were going to
do this, and this, and this. And I said, "Now, Mr. Hanes, I'm here and
this is the way I think that we've got to do it." And I asked Vice
President Carmichael, and Vice President Whyburn, and Whatley Pierson. A
three-member team, to go over there and listen to everybody. And then
tell me what there judgment was. Now, that's easy to say that, but that
process took weeks, and weeks, and weeks. In the end, the Chancellor
knew what had to happen. So he brought his resignation to me. I didn't
have to ask. And that meeting was in Gerrard Hall. And Ed Graham had
been a good friend of mine all during my time with Gordon Gray. And it
had
He was well known around Chapel Hill?
Oh, yes. And then I got the dreadful news that he had died. And I was walking, my every Sunday morning early walks, and I walked through the cemetery the other day, and went by their family plot up there, to be sure that it was cared for. And it was just a terribly sad thing. But a lot of damage got done there. Stand-offs, and people hardened in opinions before they should have. They got bitter. And it serves no purpose when that happens. You really do create all kinds of difficulty and stress. But it couldn't be avoided.
I gather the faculty was divided right down the middle, or at least, as you say, completely at odds over —
Well, it got so that it split the Alumni Association. It split the Board. It split everything. And Ed knew that he couldn't ever heal that. You know, there's no way that you could ever come back from that. And he had had sort of a charmed life, you know. He was Assistant to the President of Cornell. And then Mr. Gray brought him here to be Chancellor. And he could have been president of the University. And, in fact, he should have been before I became President. His turn was then. But it didn't work out. His dear wife Elizabeth, I think she's still around here, somewhere. She used to work at Duke University Library. I'd see her up here, at lunch, at the Carolina Inn every once in a while. But as to where his children are, I just don't know. But it was a sad day in the life of the Institution.
I guess in the aftermath of that crisis, one of your objectives was to heal those divisions?
And happily Dr. Pierson was available. And his wife, Mary
I gather the first Chancellor you appointed was Blackwell? Is that right?
Well, Bill Aycock was the first Chancellor. I appointed both the same day. Aycock here, and Blackwell there.
I see.
And Mr. Gray had already replaced Chancellor Harrelson at N.C. State, which was in the older generation of chancellor. And Gordon, I think, did a good job over there. They liked him. Elizabeth, his wife, was a very charming lady. They still are. I didn't think he'd go to Florida State, but he got down there and got interested, and it was his own world. And you can understand that, when somebody wants to be a president. And I'm sure he was a real asset to Florida State. He followed behind Pierson. They had known each other for years. Were great friends. And Gordon was a very sensitive man. He'd take everybody's view, and let everybody have a chance to be heard. But a great thing about him too, was he pulled that community back into the life of that school. And that was terribly important, because that same divisiveness reached out into the community. There's no doubt about that. And it very harmful, in a lot of ways. So —
So, you think by the time he left, these divisions were smoothed over?
Yeah. We had other issues, in our minds after that. And we're going on.
Tell me about the Board of Higher Education. First of all, how was it created? And then let's talk a little bit about the evolution of this agency as a Coordinating Board. An early form of the Coordinating Board.
I'm not absolutely certain of this, but I think it first generated in the minds of Governor Hodges planning. And he enlisted Major McClendon and Hayden Ramsey, and Bob Lassiter, and people of that stature, and it was created in the hope that it would work as a companion agency to the board of trustees, although the board of trustees should participate all under its overall umbrella. And I think we did. The mistake in it was that you cannot have two board's governing the same institutions, and not have divisiveness. It don't make any difference who the actor's were. And it was just a matter of time, and a succession of decisions to let kind of a confrontation. It started a chain of things. And first of it was amended little statute, it gave it this authority. And Governor Scott put himself on the Board, along with the Chairman of all the money committee's to try and strengthen it that way. And it's not a personality problem. It was a function problem. There is no governing board that I know of, anywhere in the country, that has ever survived with that kind of structure underneath it. When you are going to put the authority to decide something, its got to be explicit, clear, and free-standing. And that led to all the '71, '72, very, I think, regrettable arguing and debates, and fuss, which didn't help the University, or them, or anybody else, in the public confidence factor. But it was resolved by absorbing it into the University structure that emerged in '71.
Did the Board originally, I have heard that the Board originally was created as a protective device for the University.
It was never looked upon, by us, as that, at all. No, but I can understand that, because what it really was trying to do initially was to set some discipline amongst the other institutions that the Board itself did among the three institutions. And no one wanted to see the University umbrella spread over it at all at that time anyway. And, at bottom, that was really, on the educational grounds, that is really what they were trying to do. And that way it was commendable, because this business of institutional aggressiveness was just bursting out all over. And you remember back there in one of those years, by statute, every institution was authorized to award the Ph.D. degree. And, you know, when you get that kind of indiscriminate legislative intrusion, you're going to have trouble. And it was embarrassing to some of the institutional heads, because I actually had one come see me, and say, "I want you to know that I know I'm no university, and never will be. But, I can't stop this tide that's running." And I said, "Well, I don't expect you to." But it was a kind of task that I'm glad that I didn't have to attempt to do. Because there was no way you could succeed in it.
And this dated back to the '50s, the expansion in enrollments?
'57. The post-war year's, is when it burst open like that.
So the Board of Higher Education was a representative attempt to have more rationale control over all of these —
And it was happening all over the United States. War's were cropping up
all over everywhere. Because legislature's, the wive's leaders of
legislature's knew they couldn't reconcile the differences. They didn't
understand if a medical school was needed at Greenville, or not. Or a
school of
One of the—I think it's the two key personalities in the early history of the Board of Higher Education; Major McClendon and Hayden Ramsey.
That's right. They were two very strong men.
How did they happen to end up in the Board? Major McClendon used to be on the Board of Trustees —
He got defeated for reelection in the Legislature, and I'm sure that was one motivational factor.
What were the circumstances of his defeat?
I don't really know. He was perceived, at times, to be an arrogant man. To talk down to people, when that was not fair at all. But that was the way people viewed him. Because he was a giant of a man, you know, he had a booming voice you could hear all over. And he was a truly devoted University man. But, Major was just a picturesque fellow, if you want to put it that way. I guess Governor Hodges persuaded him that he was the man to come in there, and do what he did. Mr. Ramsey was exactly the opposite. A very quiet, piercing kind of editorialist. Just united the western part of the State. And Mr. Carmichael and I always had to go and visit with them, and you could feel the tension begin to grow, though. And we knew what was going to happen. In just a matter of time. It's sad, in the sense that progress has to come sometime, in dividing people that have been together for so long. But that actually happened.
Otherwise, you and Major McClendon and Hayden Ramsey would be —
Well, we'd been friends for years, and years, and years.
Yeah.
And still, we're not enemies, in any sense of the word, but we're dealing in a situation that's just on its face, was not compatible. You couldn't do it. And I think everybody tried very hard. Really tried. Watts Hill, Jr., William A. Dees. Bill was Chairman of that Board. It had some wonderful people on it. But they all knew, eventually, the issue had to be reconciled.
One of the major early conflicts between the Board of Higher Education, and Board of Trustees involved the question of married student housing.
Yeah. Self-liquidation. Who's judgment was right?
The issue —
They felt they had one view and we felt we had another. And we gave our reasons and they gave their's.
And you seemed to have, in a way, just looking at it from the perspective of thirty years, thirty-three years later, we seem to be talking about two different things.
That's right. That was the very point. We were talking from the responsibility that we had. They from their's. And there's no way you can bridge it. Because there were two different operations entirely. We were the people who carried the responsibility for the quality of the Institution. We had the authority. We also had the burden. They didn't. They didn't have to be accountable for the excellency, at either one of those schools. And that's where you get the irreconcilable problem. You had a president, and a chancellor over there, and they had separate boards, too. So, it was always confrontational. There was an inherent confrontation in that structure arrangement. Everybody knew it, if they knew anything about it. We just made some serious efforts to try to make it work. It just couldn't be made to work. From my point of view. I don't know what they'd say.
What was the position of Luther Hodges, in all of this?
He didn't interfere very much. He created the Board. He got all the actor's together, and he went onto other things. He was trying to build a community college system. He was stimulating that in every way he could. And he was really rolling on the industrial development, even then. And, at least I've never, he'd ever call me about it. He would not inject himself into the discussions we were having. Because he was Chairman of the University Board, you see. And that got him into some stress, too. Because the University Trustee's were looking straight at him every time an issue got called. And I stayed one step back. Because that was there problem to work out.
How would you describe your relationship with him? As a working relationship?
Well, as far as I—I know, in the beginning it was quite good. And I
worked hand and glove with him. And we kept going all along. When the
integration issue came up, he called me one day, and I could tell he had
something on his mind but he just wouldn't come right straight at me,
and finally he said, "Just had a legislator in here. What are you going
to do with the University President who goes to a church where that
fellow Charlie Jones is a preacher?" And the Governor sort of laughed.
And I said, "Well, it's true
Whew, my voice is about to give out on me.
END OF INTERVIEW