This July 12, 1977, oral history interview conducted by William Chafe with William Jackson documents Jackson's participation in and recollections of significant local civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s as a captain in the Greensboro Police Department. Jackson provides an overview of his career and responsibilities with the police department, and notes his role as commanding officer of the juvenile division during the 1957 school desegregation and the February 1960 sit-ins, in which his major activity was protecting the demonstrators from white teenagers. Jackson discusses the events of 1962-1963 at length, including the roles of Jesse Jackson, William Thomas, Ezell Blair, John Marshall Stevenson Kilimanjaro, and James Farmer; his impression of Bennett College and Willa Player; NC A&T State University students, faculty, and administrators; the local CORE chapter; mass marches in 1963; the sit-down in Jefferson Square; arresting 1,400 protesters; arresting Jesse Jackson; and conferencing with students and march leaders. Of the November 1969 incident at Dudley High School and A&T, he Jackson describes attending a rally at the Dudley gym; a staged wreck in front of the school; being removed from the situation by his superiors; and attending a conference with faculty at A&T. Other topics include local Ku Klux Klan presence in the late 1950s and his surveillance of a Klan member, and the influence of communist faculty at Bennett and A&T.
