[Notes on interview with D. Edward Hudgins by William H. Chafe]

              I
I
J       Interview with D.E. Hudgins, July.6, 1972
Interview with Mr. D, Edward Hudgins — chairman of Board of Education
when the Brown decision was made — lawyer in general practice for
23years, then General Counsel to Jefferson Pilot, and Jefferson Standard
Life -- former Rhodes Scholar
Some months before Brown, Hudgins and Ben Smith (superintendent of schools)
0, II foresaw the upcoming decision and were determined that GB not get into
( a position of defiance vis a vis the Court. Decided to ask the Board to
'*pass a resolution pledging compliance. Hudgins wrote out the resolution
himself, and it so happened that the Board met the"day after Brown came
down, and at that meeting passed the resolution,
Hudgins believed +-Ms wa? a **\tf'iv(*Ay  mjid action. He never
anticipated precipitate or immediate action on desgregatlon— rather,
/ r     felt that a contribution conld be made Dy issuing a statement o?
principle — hpped^or a statement by the Governor or the state board
of education that local boards could then tail in with in teams of
actual compliance.
4
The resolution was debated at length and passed by 6 to 1 —
the one dissident was not opposed in principle to the resolution, and
certainly did not support breaking the law — but voted no on the
£ issue of time, feeling it was too soon for the local Board to take
steps ~ wanted to wait until sentiment crystallized in the state.
There was one black man on the board, Dr. David Jones, pres.
-  ^ fl of Bennett — a restrained man (some blacks would probably call him a
H°     II Tom today).
-      The leaders in the community were not racists — moderate people
[/who abhorred the style and content of racism — cf. Zane and Spencer
Love in the Woolworth crisis.
Extremely important — none of the Board or Hudgins or the others
fe  ever even contemplated anything but a neighborhood school system—
K>    tney had no thought whatsoever~of anything like racial balance — only
fI of drawing school lines to avoid discrimination, an d of providing some
[freedom of choice plan — but nothing more ~ no one had even heard
of the distinction between de jure and de facto segregation, and the
Court's decision was seen in a very narrow context.
Judge John Parser tnada a statement that as he read the Brown
C-  decision, it did not require integration^ only an end to discrimination
against anindlvldual on the basis of race in going to school -- this
point of view reflects the Board's attitude at the time — general
£ -feeling was we will comply with an end to legalized discrimination,
put not integration. Hudgins thinks the later decisions of the Court
demanding more were a direct result of the failure of the South to
\fibide by this minimum standard set forth in Parkers' remarks ~ in
pother words, the resistance produced a demand for much more social
£ change than the original decision was seen to require.
\\d