Well, they knew very well that I wouldn't permit that kind of
legislation. It was toward the end. I think within three or four days of
the end of the session. Bill Friday had—who was more directly affected
than the governor, and of course the governor only because it affected
the universities—Bill had closed shop, all but gone home. I was over in
Winston-Salem dedicating a Westinghouse Plant or speaking at a
Westinghouse Plant for, I believe, a ceremony relative to accidents or
something. Anyway, it was one of those things that you didn't have to go
to, but we were getting into a more relaxed season. This would have been
in the spring of '63. I came back to find, or might have found out by
radio before I got back, that they'd passed, on suspension of rules, a
speaker ban bill. Well, I got back and, of course, Bill Friday was all
agitated.
It turned out that it was totally illegal, the procedure used. Clarence
Stone who was a pretty good friend of mine—I had done a lot of things
for him—but he was a very reactionary, unreconstructed person who was
still fighting the Civil War, a wonderful old gentleman really—was a
good personal friend but nonetheless he had… Thad Eure had picked this
bill up somewhere. It was part of two or three right-wing bills. One of
which would have permitted a Council of State chief justices to overrule
the Supreme Court, and another one somewhat similar, and this one.
Anyhow, a little package of things that hadn't gotten very far in North
Carolina. I think all of them were introduced.
This one was introduced and passed on suspension of rules. Well, the
suspension of rules means absolutely unanimous. There's no way that bill
could have been passed if anybody had objected. Well, who was objecting?
Ralph Scott was standing on the Senate floor yelling that he objected.
Two or three others were doing the same thing. In other words it wasn't
a unanimous consent at all. Then they rushed it over to get it enrolled,
which meant that we had to have two-thirds to get it back on the floor.
Well, I didn't have any trouble getting two-thirds of the vote in normal
times, for anything just about. That had been so all during the session.
I wasn't lame duck by any means. Everything we wanted, we got,
everything substantial. So I started lobbying around, and here's Gordon
Hanes who couldn't possibly misunderstand the implications of this.
You've got to remember that everybody was absolutely exhausted. It was a
fairly long session. They'd carried out the budget. They'd finally, I
think, redistricted congress, or maybe it was the State Senate. Anyhow,
they'd had two or three things like that that were very tough. It was a
long session, and they were coming to the end of it. This might have
been Thursday, and they were going to leave on Saturday, anyhow, that
close a time. So Gordon said, "What difference does it make? It made old
Clarence happy," and said, "I don't see any reason for going against
Clarence." Well, that was more or less typical reaction of people that
ought have known better. I remembered Gordon so well because that was a
shocker. Now I attempted to twist arms, and we called it back out. We
got more than fifty percent but we didn't get
two-thirds or whatever we had to have. I think it was two-thirds. So
then the next move was both the courts and the accreditation
organization, the Southern Association of Colleges and Universities, I
suppose, in Atlanta. Saying, all right, we are going to remove from
accreditation one thing and another.