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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-0145, 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 the Speaker Ban controversy that engulfed the university system from 1963 to 1968. The ban forbade any communist—or anyone who refused during a formal hearing to disavow allegiance to communism—to speak on campus. Friday begins by describing the General Assembly's passage of the Speaker Ban law in 1963. He argues that the law reflected general opposition to the university's emphasis on academic freedom. Later in the interview, Friday revisits what he understood as the General Assembly's "anti-intellectualism" and argues that he believed the Speaker Ban to also reflect residual tension about Frank Porter Graham's senatorial bid and his general support of civil rights measures. Friday devotes considerable attention to a discussion of his own reaction and that of the university to the speaker ban. Focusing primarily on the university's effort to have the law overturned, Friday addresses the role of student leadership in the opposition, the formation of the Britt Commission, his relationship with the press, and tensions between him and the Board of Trustees. Friday also situates the controversy within the broader context of campus unrest during the 1960s and early 1970s. Overall, Friday expresses pride in the university's ability to avoid direct confrontation or violence during the various protests and demonstrations that were held during this time.
President of the University of North Carolina System, William Friday, discusses the Speaker Ban controversy. The ban, enforced from 1963 to 1968, forbade any communist—or anyone who refused during a formal hearing to disavow allegiance to communism—to speak on campus. Throughout the interview, Friday focuses on issues of academic freedom, his efforts to have the law overturned, and the broader social unrest that characterized campus politics during that era.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
I'd like to talk today about the Speaker Ban, and your handling of that academic crisis. Let's start first by talking a little about the background, before the law was actually passed in June 1963. For example, what sorts of policy decisions have been made towards speakers, at the University prior to 1963.
We had established the policy of academic freedom, which is the one
that's traditionally that of any major university in the United States.
In fact, I have looked at quite a few of them, they were Trustees when
they first qualified the code of the University had carried forward in
the laws of the institution. A very full and complete statement about
academic freedom that was drawn-up by Victor Bryant. The idea there was
to codify what was, at that time, a common law tradition, so that
everybody in any one of the campuses would know exactly where they
stood. What rights were there. What guarantees were there. And the Board
adopted that, and its in every document that I've seen since then. I
believe its still in the codes, if they didn't delete it in the last
three
Sure.
...too much of it. But I do know those very difficult times.
Let me ask you, there are two things that I hear that you partly mentioned—you mentioned these two things on writing your explanations of the origins of the law, the passage of the law in June 1963. And one was the general atmosphere of —
Accumulated animosity.
Animosity and polarization that you got over civil rights.
That's right. Primarily.
With all of the marches that were going on the streets.
And the confrontations at Sir Walter.
Exactly.
And George Hall over there with Mr. Frank Taylor, and others. All of that fitted together.
And there was a collective image of the University that included students and faculty participating in this kind of thing.
Yeah.
The other thing that I've heard is the beating that the University took on the name change.
Oh, I don't think that has anything —
Is that —
Oh, I think the name change was—well, that's a separate subject to talk about, but it was a very unfortunate thing, that should never have taken place. Literally. The only reason it did, was it was out-growth of all the reorganization. And I asked Chancellor Caldwell, early on, I said, "Now, are they going to change the name at Greensboro? Suppose they did the same at N.C. State, what difference would that make?" He said, "Oh, none." And that's one he misjudged. I didn't tell that story publicly, because it wouldn't do any good. I just bored the brunt of all that went on. But, there was not much substance to that argument. It was all emotion. And it went away as fast as it arose, as you've noticed. But I don't think that had a thing to do with—you see, the actors were not the same people.
A different group of people.
When you had the speaker that—the people like Clifton Blue, Senator Godwin, people like that. They couldn't care less. They were all Wake Forest people. They couldn't care less about the other thing. That—don't diminish the sense of the impact of any controversial issue, on the psyching of a body. And they were just in a bad mood, an angry mood, a vengeful mood. And it showed up, right there in that very simple little deal. And I will—I'll never forget how shocked I was to find Clifton Blue doing this. He was a newspaper editor, of all people. And he never once ever said a word to me about that. And what's so interesting is that not one of the people who were involved in that thing, has ever mentioned that bill to me, at any time, for any reason, for over a quarter of century. Godwin, Phil Godwin, who was speaker, you know, and senator at one time, has gone out of his way to praise the University in my presence, at other times since then. And I think all of them have a sense of guilt about it, after it was over. I really do. It was just a bad moment in North Carolina's history.
Do you think it was a conscious—it seemed to have been a conscious effort, prearranged —
Oh, premeditated —
Premeditation.
From top to bottom. That was no accident. No, they'd gone and looked at other bills, in other state. And I have my suspicions about where they got help. And you do too, but I can't prove anything. So I don't name them. But I think he had as much to do with drafting that thing, as anybody. And because, it was just too pat. The thing was too nicely drawn. It showed where they'd looked at other constitutional questions. And as I had hired attorneys to look at it quickly. And they said, "This thing is no accident." It was as planned as anything that they'd ever done in that General Assembly. And they thought they had the horses by the—if we'd turned two people around, we'd beat them. And that really made me heart-sick that night. It's the one time I really felt like walking away. You know, I felt so rejected after that Trustee meeting. And I said to myself, 'Well, if I quit, I've turned it over to them.' You know? And that's no way to mend that. I'd let all of these faculty people down. And all these students whose tried to help. And its the one time that I felt an enormous unity in the University. There was really power there. No dissent anywhere, over anything. We went at them as a solid wall. And —
How do you think this fit in to this—1963 begins almost a decade of
rather intense
It all began with Dr. Graham's election. You've got to go back there.
The roots of all of this were planted right there. Because that second
primary got to be so violent, so intense, and so full of hate, that it
takes twenty-five years to dissipate that. And that was a part of it,
too. Don't discount that. I'm as sure as that as I'm sitting here.
Because I was involved with it. And I think, well, two things have got
to be said here, Bill, one is: the University is a public body. It's
into things. And I always contended the University is the part of the
political process, but it's not in it as a partisan, and never should
be, and never should be thought to be. And
And certainly in that period, especially.
Whoa. When I look back at that now, I wonder how I survived it, physically.
Yeah.
Because I know it took an enormous amount of energy. And the strain of it was so great. But I had wonderful people to work with. You see, Ed and I, among all of that, you see, we had this HEW controversy hanging over us. And it hung there for twelve years. And that was enough standing by itself.
Yeah. Following the passage of the law, did your strategy remain constant? Was there a point, for example, that you believed that the law could be repealed, and then you later believed it could not?
The first effort had to be to try to repeal. That led, after some
debate, to the Britt Commission. Because the only way that we could get
structured to do it. When that didn't work out the way it should have,
and then the Trustees themselves took the position they took. And Dr.
Did you think that the Britt Commission's solutions, the amendment of the law, to what extent did you think that was going?
Well, I thought it was a step forward coming back. And I thought we could do pretty much anything under the law, to tell you the truth, with the way it was phrased. It was ambiguous enough that you could work. It was all that could be gotten. Whatever you thought of, that was as far as you could push the thing, at that time. But I had in the back of my head then, that I knew that it wouldn't be long before somebody would file suit. And I knew then that's a different ball game altogether, when you get over into the courts. Because their line of decision was abundantly clear. And as you've seen since, on all these issues. The first real rupture in that was last week, in that CNN case. The first time I've ever seen the Supreme Court vary from the hard line consistent free speech position. Which I regret that decision. I don't know if CNN was right or wrong. I haven't looked at it that carefully. But, I just hate to see any erosion. Because there not many things left in this country that you can stand on without any fear. And one of them is the right to say what you think. But its getting more costly. And we paid a terrible price for it here, before we were through. But we've vindicated it. But, yes, this was a composite strategy. I always conferred with Bill Aycock, and John Caldwell, and our lawyers. And all of the people in the Board who were attorney's. We'd meet them from time to time. There always working toward any way to kill the starkness of that thing. And it's so harsh. And so inclusive. And meant to be, you see. I've often suspected that the drafters of the legislation put it that way so that as they lost cases, they still had some residual to fall back on, you know. But, when it got to the Federal Courts, it was all over.
During the Brent Commission the—or prior to the Brent Commission—I've forgotten the name of the organization —the accrediting organization, that sort of forced —
Emmett Fields. Southern Association. That brought on intense controversy. But you have to give Dr. Fields a lot of credit. He was in at Vanderbilt. And they'd brought themselves into this issue, to testify in the Britt Commission here. And divided their handling of it, but always was there as an increasing threat just to the accreditation of the University. I felt that they would—I never did feel they were ever going to take it away. Because I didn't feel like we would wind up that helpless. Because somewhere, somehow the intelligence of the State would come to bear. And I never will forget the testimony over there one day. Judge John J. Parker's brother, who was a Congressional Medal of Honor man in World War I, of all the speeches that I ever heard, that fellow was powerful. And he made that Commission listen. And they listened to him. And it shook them up.
You knew this kind of challenge
I didn't fear it as a ultimate consequence. I always had faith that somehow, someway we were going to reverse this thing. I didn't know how it become about in the end. There was no way you could. There was nothing to go by. You had no precedent in Dr. Graham's administration. And Mr. Gray's and I had looked at everything I could find. He was sort of making it up each day as you went along. But always aiming squarely at the removal of that law. And that's the one thing that never, never changed. Our determination on that part.
How did the composition of the Britt Commission occur? And was there ever a point at which you had some input into —
No. I was asked about David, whether I would be
I've read the transcript of the Commissions, and one of the—I may be wrong in this perception, but one of the antagonist in the University seems to be Colonel Joyner, is that an accurate —
Oh, he was the attorney. And was a very —
Inquisitorial.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. He was trying to prove that he was—I think he was a past Commander of the Legion, wasn't he?
I believe that's right.
Yeah. No, he was not what I'd call a friendly participant.
What when he had Fields, one of the things he was trying to prove, for example, was that you put Fields up to this.
Yeah. I had engineered the thing from top to bottom, and I didn't do any such thing.
Yeah.
Because you see, when you get to where reputable people start casting motivations upon you, what you did or didn't do, that's not sticking to the issue. That's trying to create a reaction. And that kind of stuff was hard to contend with. He's a very skillful lawmen, in his days. That was no accident.
And you mentioned 1950, having just read this book on Frank Graham, I noticed he was involved with that, as well. On the Anti-Graham side.
He saw it all the way through.
Yeah.
He and Robert Morgan. Wasn't he in the Attorney General's office at the time? When this was all going on? Or he was in the state legislature.
State legislature.
One or the other.
Yeah. I was going to ask you about Morgan
Robert Morgan, Colonel Jordan. They were a good system. Have always been. And I knew exactly where they stood. You read that testimony of Morgan's?
Right.
It told you exactly where he was.
He was part of that whole line up. The Britt Commission between the conclusion of the Britt Commission's last hearings and the point in which Legislature considers the matter—considers the question of amendment. There's a period of rather intense negotiation, I gather, —
There always is. I can't recall anything specific about it, but we've
never—once you've got that Commission report out, you just couldn't do
your other work, you had to stay right with it. The difficulty was we
had to get changed. The other side could just sit still. They didn't
have to do anything. We had to overcome all of that accumulated
Sure.
You know, been in the press for weeks and weeks and weeks. And they just got abused by it. And they thought—Channel Five was not on our side at all. And everything, you see, was working against us, in the sense of pressure for a change. And it was really a pretty disheartening time to be dealing with an issue like that. But that's what makes it tough. And in the process its where you learn the rule that adversity strengthens the character of a man. We certainly got plenty of opportunity to learn that.
Did your handling of the crisis involve mainly the chancellor's?
Yeah.
And the key people on the Executive Committee?
The Trustees, the Chancellor's, and some members of the Legislature, and the press. I kept them as fully informed as I was capable of doing. Because I realized they were the one ally I had. They could keep people, thoughtful people who weren't—one of the real problems you have, Bill, being a university administrator, is that you get so immersed in something, you begin to believe that everybody else knows what you know. And that's true about one percent. So, you have to drop yourself down a notch and say, "Well, why can't I get everything told the way that it should be told, from the point of view being fair?"
I had to rely on the press, because I couldn't rely on the Board of
Trustees at that time. So, Bill Snyder and Joe Doster, and Claude
Sitton, and Pete McKnight, and his successor's. I'm sure that we talked
every week. Because they were the one's that said the people, like
yourself,
I wonder if you could elaborate a little bit more on the nature of your contacts with editor's, the editorial page people —
Yeah. What happens in the case involving something as sensitive as this, you see they see it from their own interests. Because what you can do to an institution, you can do to anybody else, too. The Legislature—but they also saw it as something driving a nail right through the heart of the University, because it had to be a free—a place of free ideas, of free expression, and free debate, or it's no University at all. Each one of them had been to school here, or had been associated with the place. They'd been associated with the Daily Tarheel, or something. And they all understood this, very carefully. And Bill Snider, and Claude Sitton particularly—the News and Observer paper, were very strong in the advocacy of the University, and our position. And what we were trying to do. I don't think there was any major movement here, that I didn't keep them advised about. Because—not for my sake, but for the institution's sake. Because I knew, that—unless they knew exactly why Emmett Fields came into this picture, who he was representing. What his arguments were? Did I differ with him? What would the consequences be? All of that took an enormous amount of time, but it had to be done, because you would never understand the issue, if we didn't. Because your natural reaction when somebody like the Southern Association comes upon the seam, and they say, "Well, let's run those fellows out of here." They've got no business telling us what to do. When they were trying to get the position of saying, "We are your best friend. Because we hold the power that the General Assembly can't impact. We can take your accreditation away." Well, a threat is one thing. The fact is another. And you couldn't say to them, "Stay out of here." That's not our option. They have the right to do that. But you can say, "Let's try to work with people." And that's what I was doing. Fields and all of his people. And it took a lot of doing. But, a hard road.
The point of which you mentioned earlier that the Board of Trustee's, and Executive Committee, essentially reversed your position.
That's right.
Didn't support the position that you took.
Turned me down flat. Well, it was seven to two. Something like that. But a very decisive move against me.
Can you date the kind of origins of this vote? Do you think—
No. Well, they finally forwarded an index of the Trustee minutes that's available to you.
No. That's not what I mean. I mean, were there—do you think this goes back to the beginning of the Speaker Ban crisis?
No. This way long into the controversy. Because the vote that they took was over a yet further modification that Carlyle Sitterson had come with as Chancellor. And I was supportive.
Right. Right.
And anytime you go before the Board, I had to be the spokesman. But I made it very clear that this was something we were doing together. And it was smacko. And I think it was from that decision that the sidewalk incidence came. After that.
I don't think I asked the question very well, because what I meant was, was there a background, you think, of differences of opinion between yourself and the Board?
Yes.
That you were aware of?
Well, I knew where Mr. White would like to have come down. And Mr.
Barber, I think he was still on the Board. Mr. Taylor. I knew that I was
skating on thin ice. But I had no option. I had to do it. And I wanted
to. Because I thought this was another case of eroding the law away a
little more. You just keep chipping, and keep chipping, and keep
chipping. But when they came out flat, as flat as they categorically
know, then I knew it was all over.
Do you think—how do you explain it? Do you think the Board and the
Executive Committee was going to
I think they really believed it. I really do. Their position—not the
Board, but those who voted on it. But there position was to keep these
people off the campus, doesn't infringe on anything. Your still free to
do what you want to do in the classrooms. We just don't want this kind
of person speaking on the campus. My answer to that was, "That's
precisely why you have the rule." You have people that speak out that
way, who are contentious. Who are argumentative. Who bother us. Because
societies must change. You have to know what the options of change are.
The one's who are extremist, you never go with, but you need to know
what their thinking, because somewhere between where you are, and where
they are, is where your going come down. And how would you understand
that, if you don't hear his case? I said, "I don't agree with these
people anymore than you do. But that isn't the issue." Not accepting a
doctrine, what your trying to say is this is a free country. And most of
all, universities are places where freedom should be spoken. It stood
for it. You've got to keep these places open. I couldn't win. We've been
over that argument so many times, they've just grown weary. And what I
really believe in their hearts, is they wish we'd never brought the
thing before. But Carlyle Sitterson and I knew that you can't stop a
movement like this. It's got to go. So, we just marched right in and we
knew what was going to happen. I did. I felt it. And it hurt.
Could it also have been that although many of these people were great
supporters of the University over the years,
Well, the people who brought it on in the first place, you're absolutely right, they never—well, let's put it this way. They always felt comfortable with the University until some of these things happen. It was always a where they wanted their children to go to. They knew that it was right. That it was good. Not exactly knowing why specifically. But, you know, Bill Friday's over there. And Tom Pearsall's on the Board. And Watts is on the Board. And Victor's on the Board. Everything's all right. You don't have to worry. Now that element stayed together. It's when the strategy that was worked out by Senator Godwin, and those who supported him. And they got to some members of the Board that didn't operate at the level these others did, and pulled them away. And put them under intense personal pressure. Because keep in mind, that Trustee membership was determined by the same General Assembly that passed the law. And that was speaking with a voice that a lot of them heard. Some of them were up for reelection. I'm sure of that. And that gets to be a problem, you know.
What about the governors during this crisis?
Well, I had no problem with Governor Dan Moore. He was the principle all the way through. He was a judge himself. He understood this. He did everything he could to keep it in balance. To keep it—he was very helpful to me. He really was. He stayed out of it, in the sense of not using his office unduly to influence it. He had no sympathy at all for the speaker's. I'm sure of that. And he didn't think that they ought to be speaking on the campus. But he didn't step across the line. And he has never—he never once turned me down on any conversation about this whole quest. About where we should go. He did not vote in that Executive Committee vote, because there was not ties, so he didn't have to vote. He sought more clearly that most people, the damage this was doing to the University. Because he was getting it from everywhere. And being a personality that dealt in the national scene, he was getting it from there too. And it's like today now, when you take—I can't go anywhere in the United States today, without the first question coming up, "What's happened to North Carolina?" And that's a media identification. But, Dan Moore, from my point of view, he was an ally. Although we were not of the same mind, as to the academic freedom. His was more of a judicial orientation. Mine was the academia. He never once used any effort to influence me at all. He left me alone. And he was always very respectful, as I was to try and be to him. And that sort of relationship is much to be cherished. Because there have been lots Governor's who try to, you know, to box you in.
So, generally, he's a Governor that's just as consistent with his attitude toward you?
That's a clear of a beautiful illustration of the man's personality. He
was born to judge. Was always a judge. And lived as a judge, in my
opinion. He just had a tremendously significant judicial manner that
nobody ever flustered him. You'd come in there with any argument that
you want,
What about Terry Sanford? Did he have much of an involvement in any of
this?
Yes. In a way. He said that at the end of it, he would have vetoed it, if he'd had the power. But Terry was very helpful in every way. He never once—in fact, I don't know of anybody in the gubernatorial chain that had anything but the best willingness to help. They looked upon it as the University's argument with the Legislature. And then it became the University and the public. But, no, quite the other way around. They were all very positive. They had different judgments as to where it should come out, as Dan Moore did. But, there was never any—you never felt that they were manipulating in any way. A political game. Because actually in a thing like this, once the law was passed there was no probability what we gained to be had. Everybody got hurt in this one. It was a no win situation. From top to bottom.
Tell me a little bit more about your communication with student leaders. Were you in contact with anyone aside from Paul Dixon?
Nope. Because he was—well, the others got active and got interested, but no one communicated the way Dixon did. I had none him for a good long while. And we had a very unusual personal relationship, there for a president and the student body president. We were perfectly open with each other. We understood each other. He was a controversial figure on campus himself. But he saw, as clearly as I've ever seen —
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
We were acting with more emotion than reason. But he was working with attorney's, and I think they disciplined the thing as much as they could. But I admired him very much. It was a real tragedy when that boy was killed. A terrible loss to the State.
So, you had known Paul Dixon —
As a student.
As a student?
Yeah.
Before he ever became Student Body President. I did not get that involved with the Greensboro and State. Some reason that State, it just didn't become that great an issue. The Faculty Senate did its thing, and AAUP Chapter, but that was about it. The same thing as Greensboro. It was looked upon as Chapel Hill's problem. And I guess it was. At least they thought so here.
So that the nature of your communication with Dixon was to urge subtly,
or not so subtly urge
The purpose of the business was he would come and say, "Here's what I'm
doing." It
Do you think—this particular crisis seems to be a good example of a rather unusual you had to play as a President of a public university, particularly a public university in this specific historical context. Interpreter you had to bridge some rather wide gaps, as to what was going on over here, and —
Awfully hard. In fact, you don't—there was no way if you set out to try
to succeed at doing that, your going to fail to start with. You
don't—you finally realize that there's only one course of action you can
follow. And that is to take the circumstance, try to judge the reality
of it as best you can, that is, where are the obstacles that have got to
be overcome? Who is the defensive structure? What's the best tactics?
Or, what are the best tactics to ploy now, looking strategically at this
objective? And then you just go at it as best you can. You can't—that's
why your doing that. Because ideally, you see, your working with the
press over here. Your trying to persuade some Trustees over here. Your
picking on going to see a Legislator or two here. But an enormous amount
of this time had to be alumni associations. And AAUP Chapters. And
faculty senates. And you'd just wear yourself completely out, trying to
get one message. That's all you could do. And you keep all these lines
open, and all of them working toward that objective. And you hope that
its going to work out somewhere. But once you learn something like that,
this one will go faster than this one. And
You think that by the time this was over, that my perception is that there are other issues on the horizon, but even at the Chapel Hill level, or the Chapel Hill campus, there is a whole new degree of student unrest, that is beginning to appear that makes all of this seem —
Vietnam.
Vietnam and the unrest of '69, particularly at this campus, and some of the others within the system.
I've even forgotten what was in '69. Was that the restaurant workers?
Yes.
Well, that was all in the same
Right.
And, yes, those were very trying times. In fact, there was a ten to
twelve year span there, when we were not put out some very severe
crisis. And I'll tell you, it is very hard to keep a program going while
your dealing with all of that. And that particular issue just moved the
actors over into another arena. But the intensity factor didn't
diminish. The public factor didn't diminish. The animus, if anything,
increased rather than decreased. And the extent of it—the spread of it
all over was bigger. And, maybe I told you before, with reference to the
cafeteria issues. Howard Fuller was the man who was leading the workers'
side of this thing. And I knew that he knew of all the controversy that
was going on with Governor Scott and everybody else, about the troops,
or no troops. And I've never met the man, but I give him credit for
avoiding, what would have been a very unfortunate confrontation kind of
thing. He took his people out of the
Is that right?
Running some kind of college over there. You might be interested in reviewing his point of view.
Yeah. I didn't realize he was in Greensboro.
He just dropped out of the whole activism cycle, at that time. I don't what or where he went. But he's at Greensboro, I think, running a college over there of some kind.
Did you—One of the—I guess the culmination of that conflict over the cafeteria strike was the intervention plan of Bob Scott. Did you see that coming? Did you see —
Well, you don't see it that clearly. Any of these things. Your there,
with living literally hour by hour. It wasn't day by day. You didn't
know where it would break out. And I think the wisest thing that
happened was the whole business of saying that the personnel office
would be willing to sit down, and go through all of the job
qualifications. You had problems there of reaction to supervision.
Hostility toward them—you see, all of these kinds of things a president
never hears. Or never knows about. Or nor chancellor's as far as I know.
It's just something that should be settled down at another level of
administration. But when it boils over, you know where it is. And it was
a part of the syndrome of the times. It was going on all over the United
States. And happily for us though, it worked out the way it did. Because
we avoided gun fire and burning, and stopping school. And all of these
things. We didn't do a bit of. You've got to give people—the
participants a lot of credit here. I've often felt Bill, that Chapel
Hill, in terms of student self-discipline, with all the violence that
you see here, there is still something that's very important here. And I
think that when all those thousands gathered out there in the mall of
the South Building to Wilson Library one day, and listened to the
Chancellor and had their say, and all of it worked out in a
conversational way.
As a president of a system, and working with chancellor's, you would only be involved—you were only involved when things got —
Well, most of the time they'd call and we'd be talking a long before
anything happened. That's a problem. And that reflects the personality
relationship you have with each one of these people. Happily, I was the
one who recommended that John be in the office with me at
I had a colleague of mine a while ago tell me that, at Greensboro, he remembered you appearing during their crisis in '69. And I think that it may have been, if I can recall correctly, in the wee hours of the morning —
Spencer Hall. Was that it?
That's right. The cafeteria. The similar sort of thing as Chapel Hill. I think, almost identical. ARA.
Yeah. I remember that.
And I think he remembers you, and in the early morning hours, Ferguson, Jim Ferguson.
I was there with no specific plan in mind. I just wanted to give him
comfort, that I was there. Whatever value that meant to him. It was
important to me, for my Chancellor to understand that there was no gap
here. That I was there to be used. To help him. To participate with him.
And to say to the others, you see, "You've got to deal with both of us.
And we're two different people, but we have one common. And you know
what it is? So, if you want to talk, let's sit down." And none of these
experiences did we ever close the door. Because when you do that, you've
admitted to defeat, I think. Because if there ever was—if any place in
America society, where that conversational option should always remain
open, is in the university. And more so than ever in critical stress
situations. Particularly when people are beginning to harden, and grow
very bitter. And they slip off into camps of opinions. Which is easy to
do. And, it's again another one of those illustrations of where when you
are in a public university and you have a visible executive on campus;
be it chancellor or president, or both of them, they more than anybody
else have to keep in mind that the professor in the School of Home
Economics doesn't know anything. So, now all this hurly burly that's
going on around your head, you find time to sit down, and say, "Look
colleagues, here's what's happening." That's one of the reasons I went
over there. Because I knew being there was testimony to those people,
although I didn't say a word. He cares enough, this is important enough
that he's over here trying to help. And that's what your trying to do.
It's confidence
What if the Board of Trustee's and the Legislator's had trouble understanding the whole Speaker Ban question, they must have certainly had even greater trouble understanding all of this. Do you think the Speaker Ban had an effect of educating them toward understanding —
I think the Speaker Ban Law had the effect
literally. And you had to start feeling your way in the darkness. That didn't permit of hasty decisions which troubled some people. They would take the baseball bat and go at it. But in the end I think you always come out with a better level, when you've been as deliberate as you know how to be. And that's why so much time and effort went into these things. Jim Ferguson was as fine a human being, as I've ever known. As decent in a man. He was so decent that people took it as weakness, sometime. But when Jim Ferguson got his dander up, he could be as hard as anybody I've ever worked with. And that was because—it was not something borne in him, or me, I hope, so much of anger, as it was a massive disappointment. That people would sit down and find out what was going on. No, we had to win. You know, this attitude, "I'm in it." And I said, "We've got to drive the administration to the wall." Or, "Why don't you go and drive them to the wall? Don't sit there and be so patient with them. Your being too —" My answer to that is, if I can't do it the way it should be done, get you somebody else. You just finally come to that decision. And then that issue doesn't get drawn in. It was a very trying time. But when you put all of those things back to back, and look at the next ten years, you see, look how quiet it got. Not only on campuses, but all over the country. Mr. Reagan introduced a sleep title. Intellectually speaking. What troubles me about today, Bill, is that I think they are vastly misjudging what the academic campus student reactions are going to be if they go into the war. It doesn't have to have a draft to provoke this bunch of young people. The television set has made them so imminent, that they'll see blood, and death, and body bags. And they'll all immediately say, "Uh-oh, me." And you talk about reaction. And I fear for the day. Because that one will be very deep. And they'll throw over a president, like they did Lyndon Johnson. It can be done. You and I have lived to see it.
I'm wondering about Bob Scott's role in this. And—
Well, once Howard Fuller pulled his people out, it just dropped.
Yeah.
He didn't—as far as I know, now he could have done things I don't know
about. But he was not belligerent and hostile. He was under an enormous
pressure. I acknowledged that. And he really tried to find a
He felt as though he had to act and had to —
Well, he really was fearful of damage in property, and the Governor has that option. Not for very long. He doesn't have it very long. If there had been a fire or something like that, the criticism would have moved entirely from the University onto to his back. And I understood that. It was just one of those things that you just pray for some rational solution. And it worked out the right way. But it just didn't happen. There was a lot of hard work in it.
But there was a basic conflict between —
Well, he felt an obligation to exert the power of the office. My
argument was just as it had been the Speaker Ban Law. Leave it alone and
let us have it. We'll work it out. We are working it out. I didn't read
Bob Scott as wanting to make a big display for publicity purposes. Some
of the people around him would. But, I gave him credit though. And I
understood why he was trying to do what he was trying to do. Because he
realized that thing was really loaded with dynamite. But it just worked
out. Thank goodness. But, if he had done something much more dramatic,
you know, like call in the National Guard, or something like that, we
would have had—I think now looking at it, some people are just waiting
on something to trigger here. Just the way at looking the Persian Gulf
right now. Just any little incident would have set-off a
It was that tense?
It was that tense, really. And I think before your through, I hope you'll talk to Carlyle Sitterson about this. The man just not got the credit for what he's done. And I want to give him credit.
You mentioned earlier that compared to other campuses, Chapel Hill got off rather lightly. Do you think that?
Yeah. Well, when I—you see, when—remember what happened at Cornell with my friend Jim Ferguson? Or at Berkeley? Or at Michigan? Or wherever? We've paid the price. No doubt about that, but ours was in the arena of debate. A compromised conversation. And change. Never did we step across the law. And to that I give the students credit. We could have had a really bad thing here. Very bad. But here, this is what renews your faith in the kind of student government we had. The leadership knew what was at stake. And they didn't listen to them.
Did this affect—do you think it affected the position of Chapel Hill in Legislature very much, by 1969, say?
No. I don't mean it
So there wasn't connection between reorganization and this all —
Now, that had an entirely different generating base. When the University took in Charlotte, no one—and certainly I didn't anticipated the flow from one decision. I thought we were going to do it the way we'd done Charlotte. Systematic. Careful analysis, the study of the demography of the place. The land availabilities. All these things. We spent an enormous amount of time. And did a thorough job with it. The next thing that happened was there was a bill in the Legislature saying that everyone in the public university was authorized to give Ph.D. degree tomorrow morning. And I never will forget Louis Dowdy; over at A&T. He was a dear friend of mine, called me and said, "I want you to understand that we know that we're not ready to do this. And we know that its not the right thing to do. But you know, and I know that I can't resist this politically." And there he was being as honest with me as he could be. And when your dealing with people like that, you know, you respect them. And you know there's bound to be a way that you can put back into some focus. But that decision and what happened behind that with Asheville and Wilmington four years later, set off all of this business of name change, for everybody. Medical school arguments. Veterinary school arguments. There was a massive scramble for whatever you can get to further legitimation of the use of the word university. Not by the politicians, but by boards, and administrators who knew they were going to be judged some day for what they've done in the educational contest. And no one of them knew that what happened was right. They all knew that. But here, I think, it was an inevitable thing. Because when you look at what happened after World War II, and the huge numbers of people, and the pressure that that generated. And we tried to answer one aspect of it by building a community college system, and starting it in the '50s. And that's now ballooned to a fifty-nine institutions all over the State. We converted Greensboro to a coeducational institution. We made all of the four-year colleges liberal arts institutions. All of these were steps in the process. And it was the beginning of the inevitable confrontation with the Board of Higher Education, as we talked about last time. Because when you went from three, to four, to six, the issue was drawn. And then the General Assembly began to rebel that all of this pressure; which you know generated in part from Leo Jenkins' ambitions of the ambitions of the University itself, and its Board of Trustees. And then how the others who were involved was the administrators. They sort of tapped their little wagon on to the fray, and off we went. And, as you look back on it, you can only conclude that all of it was an inevitable thing. Because what happened in North Carolina is not unique. It's happened in every major State in the Union. It had teacher's colleges that wanted to be universities. It had ambitions for industrial growth that brought on community colleges. You see this replicated in every State of any consequence. Like California. Or Michigan. Michigan now has five campuses. California has nine in the university. And thirty some in the State University System. And you can just go on. We kept ours under some sense of discipline. It worked out, I think, fairly well. But when I think back to that day in 1956, to say July 1, 1975, all that went on in that block of time, I'm amazed that we survived it as well as we did. Because there was so much controversy. And usually three and four at the same time. And that, in some sense, was good. Because there were different interests working. I don't the University ever wavered from its position in all of it. But the outside forces were different.
As a historian you tend to see these things happening one at a time, but as you say, they started happening simultaneously that that's going effect the way you view them.
They just sort of ran all over each other. You know, you've got the
expansion problem. The Speaker Ban problem. The HEW problem. The unrest
problem. The Vietnam problem. All were bunched right in that same
END OF INTERVIEW