4.23.693-01 |
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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
Object Description
| Title | [Notes on interview with D. Edward Hudgins by William H. Chafe] |
| Date | 1972-07-06 |
| Creator | Chafe, William H., 1942- |
| Biographical/historical note |
William H. Chafe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1942. He was raised in Cambridge, attended the public schools there, and then went to Harvard College, where he graduated magna cum laude in history in 1962. After a year at Union Theological Seminary in New York, he taught for two years at Columbia Grammar School, a private preparatory school in New York City. Starting in 1965, he was a student in the graduate program in American history at Columbia University where he received his Ph.D. in 1971. He taught for one year at Vassar College, and then in 1971 began his career at Duke University. Much of Dean Chafe's professional scholarship reflects his long-term interest in issue of race and gender equality. His dissertation and first book focused on the changing social and economic roles of American women in the fifty years after the woman suffrage amendment. Subsequent books compared the patterns of race and gender discrimination in America. His book on the origins of the sit-in movement in North Carolina helped to re-orient scholarship on civil rights toward social history and community studies. Chafe has written two books on the history of post-World War II America, and a biography of the liberal crusader Allard Lowenstein. The author of eight books overall, he has received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award (1981) for Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina and the Black Struggle for Freedom (1980) and the Sidney Hillman book award (1994) for Never Stop Running: Allard Lowenstein and the Struggle to Save American Liberalism (1993). Professor Chafe's activities at Duke have also reflected these interests. He has been co-director of the Duke Oral History Program, and its Center for the Study of Civil Rights and Race Relations; he is a founder and the former Academic Director of the Duke-UNC Center for Research on Women; he is also a founder and senior research associate of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. In 1988 he was named the Alice Mary Baldwin Distinguished Professor of History. He is the recipient of numerous fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Humanities Center, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavior Sciences. From 1990 to 1995 Chafe chaired the Duke University Department of History. In 1995 he became Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and in 1997 added to that title new responsibilities as Dean of Trinity College. He has most recently been appointed Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education. He is married to Lorna Waterhouse Chafe, Coordinator of Child Care Services at Duke. They have two children, Christopher, 30, and Jennifer, 28. -From Chafe's personal webpage, http://www.aas.duke.edu/admin/deans/faculty/chafe.html. |
| Subject headings | Segregation in education--United States;Greensboro (N.C.) -- History -- 20th century |
| Topics | School desegregation, 1954-1958;Greensboro civic organizations |
| Place | Greensboro (N.C.) |
| Description | This is a six-page, typed set of notes by William Chafe from a July 6, 1972, interview with D. Edward Hudgins. Shorthand is used throughout, including "GB" for "Greensboro." Chafe notes that Hudgins discussed the Greensboro Board of Education's response to Brown v. Board of Education, including passing a resolution to comply; creating neighborhood schools instead of focusing on racial balance; backlash against the board's resolution. He shared his personal feelings on school desegregation, saying that he thought the decision was inevitable, but that he understood why many Southerners were unable to accept it. He said that he felt there weren't enough people of the power-structure speaking out on desegregation, and discussed the involvement of the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce, local churches, local media, and people in higher education. At the end of the notes on the interview are Chafe�s observations of Hudgins and the interview. These interview notes form part of Duke History professor William Chafe�s research culminating in his 1980 book Civilities and Civil Rights. |
| Type | text |
| Original format | reports |
| Original dimensions | 11" x 8.5" |
| Original publisher | [Place of publication not identified] : [publisher not identified] |
| Language | en |
| Contributing institution | Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University |
| Source collection | RL.00207 William Henry Chafe Oral History Collection |
| Finding aid link | http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/findingaids/chafe/ |
| Rights statement | http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Additional rights information | IN COPYRIGHT. This item is subject to copyright. Contact the contributing institution for permission to reuse. |
| Object ID | Duke_RL.00207.0693 |
| Digital publisher | The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, University Libraries, PO Box 26170, Greensboro NC 27402-6170, 336.334.5305 -- http://library.uncg.edu/ |
| Sponsor | LSTA grant administered by the North Carolina State Library -- http://statelibrary.ncdcr.gov/ld/grants/lsta.html |
| OCLC number | 884367660 |
Page/Item Description
| Title | 4.23.693-01 |
| Full text | 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 |
