1. This article results from research conducted at the Center for the Study of Civil Rights and Race Relations at Duke University. The Center, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, is committed to developing a social history of the civil rights movement through interdisciplinary research. One of the principal tools emphasized by the Center is the use of oral investigation as a supplement to traditional historical methods, and as a means of recovering a multi-racial perspective on American history. Although much exists in the written record about the history of desegregation and civil rights, a full and accurate story can be told only by developing sources whose views are not ordinarily represented in the written record. In the present instance, there would be no way to tell the story of desegregation and civil rights activism in Greensboro on the basis of news reports alone, or school records, or private manuscript collections. The black perspective, in particular, is often not present in those records. Thus the article presented here is an effort to combine the use of oral history and written sources in a way that allows each to inform the other and to create a more accurate perspective on recent history.

Much has been written about civil rights and desegregation in the 1950s. The sources used for general background in this paper have been: Muse, Benjamin, Ten Years of Prelude (New York: Viking Press, 1954)Google Scholar; Blaustein, Albert P. and Ferguson, Clyde, Desegregation and the Law (New York: Vintage Press, 1952)Google Scholar: Klugler, Richard, Simple Justice (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1975)Google Scholar: Lewis, Anthony, Portrait of a Decade (New York: Random House, 1954)Google Scholar: Bartley, Numan, The Rise of Massive Resistance (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1959)Google Scholar: McMillen, Neal, The Citizens Council: Organized Resistance to the Second Reconstruction (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Alexander, Charles C., Holding the Line: The Eisenhower Era, 1952–1961 (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1975)Google Scholar: and Lomax, Louis, The Negro Revolt (New York: Harper's, 1962).Google Scholar

2. Goodwyn, Lawrence has written about disfranchisement in two places. His study of populism, Democratic Promise (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1975)Google Scholar discusses the effort of some Populists to build a bi-racial coalition, and the effort of others to destroy it. His seminal article, “Populist Dreams and Negro Rights,” American Historical Review, 76 (12, 1971), 1435–56Google Scholar, shows how officially sanctioned terrorism was used as a means of taking the vote away from black people. McMillen, Neal's, The Citizens CouncilGoogle Scholar, and Bartley, Numan's, The Rise of Massive ResistanceGoogle Scholar deal with some of the forms of resistance in the 1950s.

3. A group of Princeton sociologists who conducted a survey of the Greensboro area in 1956 and 1957 described the city “as among the most prosperous and industrialized political units in the state. The city is virtually a metropolis compared to other areas in the south.” Tumin, Melvin et al. , Desegregation: Resistance and Readiness (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1958), p. 168Google Scholar. In 1960 Greensboro had a population of 117,000, 26 percent of which was black. The city serves as the headquarters for such companies as Burlington Mills, Cone Mills and Jefferson-Standard Life Insurance Company.

4. Greensboro, Daily News, 05 19, 1954Google Scholar: School Board minutes, May 18, 1954: interviews with D. Hudgins, Edward, 07 19, 1972Google Scholar: Foster, John, 01 and 02 1973Google Scholar: Snider, William, 11 1974Google Scholar; and Ashby, Warren, 11 1974Google Scholar. Superintendent of schools Benjamin Smith died shortly after retiring in 1958 and the information presented about him was gathered from his associates, as well as from his personal papers in the Duke University Library. John Foster has been a member of the School Board and subsequently became its chairman. William Snider was with the Greensboro newspaper and subsequently became its editor-in-chief. Warren Ashby has been a professor of English at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro for more than twenty years and has been involved in bi-racial activities much of that time.

5. Greensboro, Daily News, 05 19 and 21, 1954Google Scholar: interviews with former Mayor George Roach, July 1972: with Rev. Joseph Flora, December 1974: Louise Smith, February 1973: John Foster: George Simkins, July 1973: Ezell Blair, Sr., July 1973; and Rev. Otis Hairston, July 1973. Louise Smith has long been active in the YWCA and church activities. Rev. Joseph Flora has been in Greensboro since the 1950s, and until recently has been associated with the First Presbyterian Church. Both Rev. Flora and Louise Smith are white. George Simkins has been the head of the NAACP since the late 1950s and has long been an activist in the community. Ezell Blair, Sr. has been an active member of the NAACP as well as a teacher in the school system. He is the father of one of the initial sit-in participants. Rev. Otis Hairston was brought up in Greensboro and returned in the late 1950s to become pastor of the Shiloh Baptist Church. Simkins, Blair, and Hairston are black.

Rev. Hairston suggested, and former Mayor Roach confirmed, that the City Council was under serious pressure to name more conservatives to the board in the aftermath of the initial school board vote. Dr. William Hampton's re-appointment to the school board went through the Council on a four to three vote, and a number of similar votes can be traced to the same tension or division. There was no mention in the press of either the pressure on the Council or the division within it, showing again the need to go beyond the written record in order to discern what was happening.

6. Interviews with Louise Smith: Bardolph, Richard, 07 1972Google Scholar: Margaret, and Falkener, Waldo, 07 1972Google Scholar: and Mrs. George Simkins, July 1972. Professor Bardolph became active in interracial activities in the 1940s. Mrs. Simkins is the wife of the head of the NAACP, and Margaret Falkener has been a prominent black figure in the Democratic Party in North Carolina. The women, in particular, were active in the YWCA's interracial luncheon groups. Women were much more likely to have engaged in liberal and integrated activities than men.

7. The 1960 Census shows that in comparison with Durham, and other cities with approximately the same number of blacks, Negroes in Greensboro earned a higher median family income ($3,183 versus $2,822) and spent a great er number of years in school. Population Census of the United States, 1960 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1963), I, Pt. XXXVGoogle Scholar. The census data from earlier years show the same trends. See also interviews with Randolph Blackwell, March 1973; DrSimkins, George, 07 1972Google Scholar; Ezell Blair, Sr.: Rev. Otis Hairston: Stephenson, John Marshall, 01 1973Google Scholar: Vance Chavis, May 1973: Rev. Edmonds, Edwin, 11 1974Google Scholar; Coley, Nell, 11 1974Google Scholar: and Jarrett, Hobart, 11 1974Google Scholar. Stephenson, whose name has since been changed to Kiliminjaro, has been a professor at A&T University since the 1950s. Blackwell became a staff member of SCLC and the Voter Registration Project after leaving Greensboro. Vance Chavis, a black teacher, was active in the school system until the late 1960s and has been on the City Council of Greensboro. Nell Coley was a teacher in the Greensboro school system and is remembered as one of the strongest figures in the school system. Rev. Edmonds came to Greensboro in the mid-1950s as a professor at Bennett and became head of the NAACP. He left at the end of the 1950s for New Haven, Connec ticut. Professor Hobart Jarrett was a leader in the Greensboro Citizens Association and taught at Bennett during the 1950s.

8. Interviews with Blackwell, Simkins, Hairston, Blair, Edmonds, Chavis, and Stephenson, and Coley. Blackwell recalls only two teachers who were open about their NAACP membership. Mrs. Ezell Blair corroborates this general impression. The principal of her school gave twenty-five dollars annually to the NAACP but would never allow her contribution to be known. Stephenson was fired during the late 1950s for urging that money raised at A&T be given to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Perhaps the most revealing story about the tensions within the black community involves Blackwell's political campaign. It was clear that he was embarrassing A&T College where he was still a student, because he was attacking those who helped to fund the college. The president of A&T could ill afford to be associated with Blackwell. Yet he told Blackwell in private that he would turn his head the other way if Blackwell wanted to use A&T facilities without permission.

9. Interviews with Blackwell, Blair, Edmonds, Simkins, and Hairston. In each election from 1946 to 1950 one or more black candidates ran. There was some division between “establishment” candidates and “street” candidates, but the campaign served to mobilize black political activism and increase voter registration so that a consensus candidate like Dr. William Hampton could be elected in 1950. (Hampton was later appointed to the school board). The political success of black candidates also bolstered the optimism of black leaders and probably encouraged their belief that change was possible.

10. Interviews with John Foster, D. Edward Hudgins, Louise Smith, Otis Hairston, Ezell Blair, Rev. Edmonds, Rev. Joseph Flora, and Vance Chavis. Blacks and whites were unanimous in their assessment of Smith's conviction. Dr. Hampton, the black school board member, frequently told Rev. Hairston how committed Smith was. In addition, Smith's church associates commented on his devout religious faith, and his personal papers which are available in the manuscript collection of the Perkins Library at Duke University, testify to the consistency and depth of his concern with this issue.

11. Interview with D. Edward Hudgins.

12. Interviews with John Foster: Louise Smith: Rev. Joseph Flora.

13. Interview with John Foster.

14. Interviews with Foster: Rev. Edmonds: Randolph Blackwell: Nell Coley: and Brown, Sara Mendenhall, 07 1973Google Scholar. See also the Greensboro, Daily News, 08 25, 1956Google Scholar and September 4, 1957 where Tarpley and Hampton are cited as saying that blacks only wanted the “legal” right to go to school with whites and that the vast majority would prefer to continue in separate schools.

15. School Board minutes, 1954–1956.

16. For an example of Eisenhower's equivocation, see the New York Times, 09 1–6, 1956Google Scholar. The issue at that time was court ordered desegregation of the Mansfield, Texas school system. Despite repeated decisions of various Appeals Courts that mandated immediate desegregation, Governor Allan Shivers ordered the Texas Rangers into Mansfield to prevent blacks from attending the previously all-white schools. In addition, Shivers announced that he should be held accountable for blocking the implementation of the Federal Court decision. When asked about this at a press conference, Eisenhower suggested that no one would favor the interference with local police authority by the Federal Government. When told that Shivers had directly violated a Federal Court order, Eisenhower refused comment. He also refused to either endorse or not endorse the Brown Decision.

17. Tumin, et al. , Desegregation, p. 159Google Scholar; interviews with Hudgins, Zane, Edward R., 11 1972Google Scholar: Rev. Joseph Flora; Mayor George Roach: Mrs. Charles Bowles. Mrs. Bowles is the wife of one of the more outspoken white ministers in the community. The business leader was J. Spencer Love, head of Burlington Industries. Although his name is not cited in public by anyone, his identity as the person in question seems clear based on the correspondence of oral information and published material. On the basis of all of the evidence I have seen, Love seems to have been a key behind the scenes figure in white Greensboro. Although he refrained from leadership in the school desegregation controversy, he became deeply involved in the sit-in controversy through the work of his close associate, Edward R. Zane.

Hudgins and Louise Smith in particular emphasized that the school board was waiting for the State Board of Education to take a stand. If the business elite had acted, Hudgins believed, matters would never have reached a crisis stage.

18. “The Segregation Problem In The Public Schools of North Carolina: Summary Of Statements And Actions By Governor Luther H. Hodges,” 10 3, 1957Google Scholar; Hodges, Luther, Businessman In The State House (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1962), pp. 79–125Google Scholar. Foster recalls that “ever since I knew Hodges … he was for Luther Hodges. … Anything that might have been damaging to his political strength, he would not have any part of it … so he was not going to jeapordize his position with Eastern Carolina. And he was not going to condone or express an opinion in support of Central North Carolina or Western North Carolina.” The East, it should be noted, is a rural area reputed to be more conservative in its attitude towards the race issue. John Marshall Stephenson commented that Hodges' speech meant that “white folks were going to volunteer to segregate, and blacks were going to accept it.” When Hodges came to A&T in the mid-1950s and called Negroes “Nigras,” the student body forced a halt to his speech.

19. Raleigh, News and Observer, 07 24–26, 1956Google Scholar; Charlotte, Observer, 07 24–26, 1956Google Scholar: Greensboro, Daily News, 04 1956–September 1956Google Scholar. These paragraphs are based on news stories and legislative and public debate over the Pearsall Plan. With only a few exceptions, the newspapers of the state supported the Pearsall Plan, albeit with tortured reasoning. The Greensboro Daily News has a file of editorial opinions on the Pearsall Plan from across the state and I have benefitted from having access to it.

20. Ibid. It is impossible to over estimate the disastrous impact of the Pear sall Plan. It postponed meaningful desegregation in North Carolina for more than a decade—far longer than in some states where “massive resistance” was practiced. It placed the entire burden for seeking justice on the shoulders of the victim, without aid from the state or the law. Above all, it gave the moral sanction of the state to a policy of circumventing the law of the nation. Hodges' actions represented a devastating blow to the possibilities of securing white cooperation in the movement for racial equality.

21. Tumin, et al. , Desegregation, p. 163Google Scholar. Both the Tumin study and Lubell, Samuel's White and Black: Test of a Nation (New York: Harper & Row, 1954)Google Scholar find that resistance to school desegregation was not so great as politicians said it was. In addition, despite Hodges' protestations, there was no hue and cry from the East for further legislation. The legislator who had introduced the bill to close the schools in 1955 if integration occurred was sufficiently satisfied by the court's “deliberate speed” decision in May of 1955 that he felt no special session was necessary to enact further safeguards against desegregation. Thus it seems that Hodges was motivated at least in part by political ambition. His statements became more and more harsh as the time approached to announce his candidacy for re-election.

See also, Greensboro, Daily News, 08 4, 1956Google Scholar: interviews with Foster and Louise Smith: and Benjamin Smith Papers, Perkins Library.

22. Foster interviews: Greensboro, Daily News, 07 24, 1957Google Scholar: May 22, 1957: September 4–6, 1957; School Board minutes, May 21, 1957: July 22, 1957.

23. Time, 08 5, 1957Google Scholar: September 16, 1957: December 2, 1957: News week, 09 9, 1957Google Scholar: Tumin, et al. , pp. 168–70, 203.Google Scholar

24. Interviews with Ezell Blair, Sr., Otis Hairston, George Simkins: Lomax, Louis, The Negro Revolt, pp. 86, 87Google Scholar. Louise Smith, a white liberal, agreed with the black perception. “For a little while in 1954,” she said, “it looked like Greensboro might really do something. And then it all collapsed.” Although there was no violence when blacks went to white schools, everyone seems to agree that the experience of the black children was miserable. Josephine Boyd, the single black student at the Senior High School, encountered constant harrassment and only two or three white students stood by her. On one occasion she was spat upon and by the end of the year she was under a doctor's care for nervous exhaustion. Needless to say, the black community knew what was going on even though it was not reported in the papers.

25. The Pearsall Committee leader was Colonel William Joyner. His argu ments appeared in the Greensboro, Daily News, 11 4, 1956Google Scholar. Foster recalls that the school board talked about this problem frequently, and the paper used Joyner's contention in its support of the 1957 desegregation decision.

26. Interviews with Louise Smith, John Foster, Otis Hairston, and George Simkins: School Board minutes, 1958–1959, especially May and July each year: Greensboro, Daily News, 09 24, 1959Google Scholar, July 22, 1959, February 25, 1959, November 6, 1960. It is interesting to compare the applications for transfer of black and white children. In almost every case, the black applicants offered more cogent reasons for transferring schools. See School Board exhibit books IV, V.

27. Interviews with Simkins, Hairston, Warren Ashby, Mr. and Mrs. Ezell Blair, Sr., Otis Hairston, Rev. Edmonds.

28. Interview with Edmonds, Mr. and Mrs. Ezell Blair, Sr., Vance Chavis, George Simkins.

29. Interview with Rev. Edmonds, Mr. and Mrs. Ezell Blair, Sr.: Jabreel Kagan, November 1975. Jabreel Kagan is the former Ezell Blair, Jr., and the chief spokesman for the first sit-in demonstrators. He had been concerned that his parents might lose their jobs in the school system if he made trouble. Their response seems indicative of the attitude of many black activists, especially at this time. Ezell Blair, Sr. notes that it was really the sit-ins which “got the black community together” in the cause of protest. Thus the demonstrations must be seen as both an effect and a cause of black activism in Greensboro. They were consistent with the tradition of protest, but also helped to reinforce and extend that tradition to the entire community.

30. The comment on Hodges was made by former Mayor George Roach.

31. Interview with Rev. Edmonds.