Oral History Interview with Sol Jacobs by Scott Ellsworth

              CIVIL RIGHTS GREENSBORO DIGITAL ARCHIVE PROJECT
William Henry Chafe Oral History Collection
INTERVIEWEE: Sol Jacobs
INTERVIEWER: William H. Chafe
DATE: December 1977
Scott Ellsworth: I may have to come back and look at some of this. This looks good. Or—
Sol Jacobs: This is it. This is a very significant thing: “The Trouble in Greensboro” [about]
that time over at Dudley High School and [North Carolina] A&T [State University] and
the unrest there.
SE: I don’t know if you’ve seen this or not. [pause] Yeah, I’ll have to tell him about this.
SJ: Yeah, that was a key turn. This is the thing that prompted the business community into
attempting to do something about it. That was the one big factor that really caused them
to move and to make the [Greensboro] Chamber of Commerce. Now that things are real
nice, why they’re deactivated and gone back to their traditional role.
SE: Right, right.
SJ: So that’s been kind of a sad thing.
SE: Right. Why don’t we just go ahead and jump in?
SJ: All right. It’s up to you. I mean, you know what you want. I have no idea.
SE: Okay. What I want to start out doing is what we call a life history interview. And if I
could just get you to start talking about where and when you were born, when you went
to school, when you—various jobs you’ve held, various places you may have lived in,
and just kind of run down a kind of a history like that. I guess better get your full name
first. It’s Solomon, I trust.
SJ: No, it isn’t, strangely enough. It’s—my folks were smart. They named me S-o-l. You
know what that means in the army. That’s my full name.
SE: [laughs]
SJ: It’s Sol M. Jacobs. Middle—Sol Max Jacobs.
SE: Sol Max, okay.
SJ: Born in Pittsburgh, 1910.
SE: Okay. And what did your parents do for a living?
SJ: They both came here from—my father from what is now Russia, my mother from
Romania. My dad originally worked for a wholesale grocery house and opened his own
grocery and meat market. And this place was successful until the great steel strike in ’21
when he went broke giving credit to the steelworkers.
SE: Right.
SJ: And he never quite recovered from that, and struggled along from that point on, and went
into various things, and finally came to Greensboro. My brother, my eldest brother,
came—followed in ’32. [He] graduated from the University of Pittsburgh, and really
followed his girlfriend, who had moved to Greensboro. That’s how he came here. He’s a
CPA [Certified Public Accountant] now.
SE: What’s his name?
SJ: Cy, C-y. And he was the only one that—[unclear]—he was the only one who wasn’t in
the service during World War II. Mother and Dad were both sick. They moved down here
to be near him during the war, and the rest of us, gradually after the war, came down here
and made Greensboro, really, the family center.
SE: Let’s see. When did you leave school? Did you go to school in Pittsburgh?
SJ: Oh, yeah. I left school when I was fifteen years old. I dropped out. I was in the tenth
grade. And my father was sick and my mother was sick, and I dropped out and went to
work.
SE: What did you do?
SJ: Well, I started out driving a truck illegally [laughter], and I found there was no future in
that. So I went into an iron shop to learn a trade and stayed with that for a few years until
the Depression came along and I lost that job. And then I knocked about on whatever
jobs I could get.
SE: In Pennsylvania?
SJ: In Pittsburgh. Until—let’s see, when was it—‘41 when I went into the service.
SE: Okay.
SJ: And I was in—I volunteered for a one-year enlistment prior to—one-year enlistment
prior to when the draft came up. What had happened, my wife and I at that time, we had
decided we were going to get married. Everybody ran to get married and [that had been
a?] terrible thing for you. We went through life with the idea that you got married in
order to avoid the draft, so—
At that time, I was working for DeVeaux[?] Corporation, a structured steel shop,
and talked to them, and they agreed that it would be a good idea to go ahead and get it
over with. So I went in and served my year, got out right before Pearl Harbor, and, of
course, was called back in immediately.
SE: Right, right.
SJ: And I was in for a total of almost five and a half years.
SE: In the army, or?
SJ: In the army. Then I came out of the service in Pittsburgh for a couple of years.
SE: Back to the steel shop?
SJ: No. They were on strike, and I got—the first job I finally got was selling insulation,
believe it or not.
SE: Okay.
SJ: And the first few jobs I had, I turned in [unclear]. They couldn’t repair any houses except
those of veterans, so I lost that. Meanwhile, those who I’d sold it to, I went to tell him
they couldn’t do his job, he offered me a job at a wholesale hosiery plant. And I got a job
with him in the plant. Then he decided to open up a chain of ladies’ fashion shops he had
started, and I took over that operation for a couple years. And then we had a little
misunderstanding, so I came down here.
SE: Okay.
SJ: Actually, I was going to—really going to get my mother and dad to—they had a little
place, a little deli.
SE: Right, here in Greensboro.
SJ: Yes. They both were sick, and we had to sell it. They would probably be happier in
Pittsburgh, and I was going to take them back up there. And we got down here on a visit,
the week after we got here [with the idea of selling it?] the lease on the place ran out the
next week [unclear] three days to sign up or get out, so I signed up with the idea of
selling it.
SE: And there you are. Now, let’s see. It’s called Jay’s [Deli] now, right?
SJ: It’s called Jay’s.
SE: Was it called Jay’s back then?
SJ: No, it was the Sam Lejeune.
SE: The Sam Lejeune? And is it—has it been in a number of locations?
SJ: This is the second location in Friendly Shopping Center. We—I told my wife originally I
wasn’t accustomed to the type of operation. My experience told me it would take a year,
that type of seven-day operation, before I could get it organized. And after a year, I told
her I’d have to remodel, and I remodeled. And then, six years later, I decided I’d have to
have another location if we wanted to make a [unclear] in the shopping center, and this is
our twenty-first year there.
SE: Okay, and before that it was downtown?
SJ: It was—right. Up in uptown, so to speak, in the 600 block of North Elm Street, which
was right off of downtown.
SE: Okay, right. Okay.
SJ: [unclear]
SE: Right, right.
SJ: And that’s pretty much up to date.
SE: What—let me maybe trace now—and I’ll get to some specifics, too—your interest in
civil rights, especially here, but if you can trace things in your mind, why you were
interested.
SJ: Yeah, let’s start with a little of that. First of all, I’m Jewish. I took the religion matter
seriously. During the Depression [I was] concerned about poor folks and black folks.
When I went into the service, I had an unusual experience. I, first of all, got into that set-up
the Holoburg[?], the public transport center in [unclear], and for some reason I was
made a instructor in the engine section for a period. I had the first class who was
integrated, the first blacks that came into a white class. And these were—the white class
were primarily national guardsmen from the South who were being retrained for federal
service. And they called me in, and I had several classes. They called me in and asked me
my background, and asked me if I would handle black troops. And I said to them we had
integrated schools in Pittsburgh, and I certainly saw no—so it started then.
SE: Well, just describe—this was about 1942?
SJ: That’s right.
SE: Okay. Well, keep going.
SJ: There was really no difficulty. We had twenty men in the section, the class, and this was
a thirty day course. And the first day, there were four empty seats. And the second day,
why, in walked four black troops, and I saw the rest of the guys really rile up, you know.
They’re all [first graders?]. At the break time, why, the master sergeant came up to me
and said, “Sarge, what is this? You know, we’re from the South, and we don’t associate
with niggers.”
And I said, “It doesn’t matter where you’re from. You’re not associating with
anybody. You’re in the service, and you’re doing your thing, and they’re doing theirs,”
you know?
And they grumbled a little bit, but it turned out the blacks, two of them, were
excellent mechanics, and the afternoon we went and worked in the engine bay and before
you knew it, the guys were gathering around the black men to see how they were doing it.
There was really no difficulty.
The interesting thing was that I couldn’t get close to the blacks. They’d have
nothing to do with me. They didn’t trust me. They kept to themselves. I tried to approach
them, but they didn’t respond [and went off?] by themselves.
SE: Sure, sure.
SJ: And later on, I became first sergeant down here in Fort Bragg [North Carolina]. And
there were North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee boys, and, of course, we had
orientation for—I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, but the army had a weekly
orientation in which the officer was supposed to give the state of the war, the state of the
nation, and so forth and so on. And I had a lot of fun with that. [unclear] I got the—we’d
get our stuff three weeks in advance, the material we were supposed to use. This one
time, a pamphlet came through: “The Races of Mankind” [by Ruth Benedict and Gene
Weltfish]. I forget who it was by. And I thought, “Here’s what I’m going to do to have a
lot of fun,” because it gave statistics where in World War I the average IQ [intelligence
quotient] of the blacks from the northern states were higher than the average IQs of
whites from four of the best southern states. And I think, “Now this is real good.”
But the next week we got a red board letter from G-2 [intelligence office] saying
these pamphlets had to be turned in immediately. And I lost mine. And I was called up to
division headquarters and told I surer than hell better find it. And I did find it, and turned
it back in. And some months later, the pamphlet came through again. I was quite
surprised to see it. Here it was, the same pamphlet, “The Races of Mankind.” I opened it
up and found that the average IQ of Negroes inducted in World War II was higher than
that of those inducted in World War I. [chuckles] The contrast had disappeared. It was
interesting—Do you want me to ramble on?
SE: Yeah, this is wonderful. Yeah.
SJ: When we went overseas, we sailed out of Pittsburg, California. We went on shipboard,
and the transport had about half white and half black troops, and, of course, you went on
and you went into quarters by outfit, you know. We were—there were blacks on either
side of us, and my outfit was assigned the guard duty on the trip across.
SE: Was this to, like, Honolulu [Hawaii] or—
SJ: We went to New Guinea, actually. And the second day out, the sergeant, deck sergeant,
came running down and said, “Sol, you better get everybody out. It’s getting a little—
we’re having trouble with the niggers.”
So I went up on deck, you know, and said, “What’s the trouble?”
They said, “We wanted to clean the port side off. They told us to clear the
starboard side. They just won’t move.”
So I went up and there was a great big, gray-haired, black first sergeant. And I
said, “Sergeant, we have to have this deck cleared. You know, the navy wants to clear it.”
And he said, “Will you tell him that?”
And I said, “Of course, I’ll tell him that. What seems to be the trouble?”
And he goes, “Sarge, we’re going over here to fight this war together, you
know?”
And I said, “I’m perfectly aware of that,” you know. And I said, “Well, tell me,
what’s the problem with clearing the damned deck?”
He said, “My problem is this.” He says, “your men are come along here with their
billy stick, and when they see a white soldier, they say, ‘Buddy, you know you’ve got to
move over to the other side.’ They come over to my men and dig them in the ribs and
say, ‘Nigger, you’ve got to move over.’ And they ain’t going to take that shit.”
[unclear] I told him, “Look, when you have anything to do here, you come up to
this man here, and you tell him what your orders are. And you ask him [unclear].”
And he said, “That’s fine.” And he turned around and moved his men right over.
A few days later, we had a USO [United Service Organizations] troupe onboard,
you know, and we get an alert that everybody’s going to have to turn in their arms and
everything else. They wanted to entertain white [unclear]. Dancing, of course. If they
wanted to dance with the blacks, they wouldn’t permit them to. The ship’s officers
wouldn’t permit them to. There was a rattle onboard, and the USO refused to perform for
the rest of the trip across. But there was tension all the way across. And that dissipated.
We got into New Guinea. We were in there for some time, and we were in
ordinance that day. We had trouble keeping up with the needs of the front line troops.
And our guys were really working like hell, working themselves to death doing a good
job. We needed help and we asked for help, and the captain calls me in. He says, “We’re
getting a platoon with us.” He was just afraid to—he says, “But they’re black.”
So I called the men together and told them, and there was grumbling, you know.
And “We got to eat together?”
And I said, “No, you don’t have to eat together. The chow line—they’re guests.
They go into the line first. And we’ll assign them their areas, you know, and that’s all
there is to it.”
The guys came in, they were good workers, and typical of the South. Within three
or four days, you wouldn’t have known there was any color difference at all. [They were
all playing together, drinking games, and so on?]
The next—I’ll carry on.
SE: Yeah. I think this is wonderful. Keep going!
SJ: [It’s here?] on my mind. Coming back when the war was over, we went back by number
of points. You know, you earned so many points based on as long as you’d been overseas
and so on and so forth, and so we got on shipboard by points. And there was—Outfits
didn’t matter at all, you know? And we got into a stateroom. We were given a stateroom
because we [were first 3-graders?]. And there were fourteen men in my room. They were
three decks high. And Reynolds and myself and another guy from Pennsylvania from my
outfit were two of the four whites there, and the rest were all blacks. And everybody was
mixed up on the whole ship in the same manner, just by points. And everything went
along beautifully.
We were on shipboard Christmas day, and somebody went out to the navy, and
the navy boys were in the back with three quarts of liquor, you know. They had no
glasses, and the bottles were passed round and round and round. I looked, and to tell you
the truth, [I had a little difficulty putting it to my lips at first?] till I got the first few shots.
But it didn’t bother anybody. And there was such a warm spirit with the guys, you know.
And when we landed, it was buddy-buddy and “Where are you from?” and all this thing,
you know? And then we were separated by race at the thing there as we waited for
transportation back east, and we heard that there was a race riot on the base there.
And the other [chuckles] significant experience: we got on, finally, got on Civil
War-type coaches to make the trip across. That’s the only thing they had available.
ES: Okay, okay.
SJ: And once again, were lined up by grade. And we had this big long car, just first three
graders, and it was my good luck the major came in and called me and said, “Sergeant,
you’re in charge of this car. [unclear] responsible for keeping order, responsible for
furnishing four latrine orderlies and four KPs [men on kitchen patrol], morning and
night.”
Well, that wasn’t a very pleasant assignment coming back for first three graders.
So I—as soon as I got it, why, I got up and told the guys what our situation was. And I
said, “We’re going to start at the front, you know. There’s four guys seated across. First
four guys will go on KP duty in the morning, last four in the rear will go on latrine, and
we’ll work towards the center of the car.”
There was nothing said, and it worked very beautifully for about two days. And
we had a layover somewhere, and surer than hell, some of the guys got up and got some
liquor. And the next time I called for the latrine orderlies, why, I called and looked over,
and three guys got up and one guy remained seated. And I called again and there was no
action. And I went up to him and I just started, “You’re on latrine duty.”
So he got up, and he looked about six feet, twelve inches tall [laughter], a very big
guy. And he looked down at me and said, “Son, do you see these?” [unclear] master
sergeant emblems. He said “Do you see these?” He said, “I’ve been overseas for three
years. And I ain’t [unclear]. I ain’t about to clean no goddamn toilets.”
So I explained, “Well, what the hell do I do now?”
SE: Yeah, for sure.
SJ: But the blacks had gathered around, and the guys—One of the guys said, “Hey Sergeant,
do you see these? Do you see here? I’m not cleaning those goddamn latrines. You can
clean [unclear].” Word travelled across [unclear].
They saw they were getting equal treatment, they responded and supported, and I
found this to be true all the way through.
And an interesting experience: before, I was active in American Veterans
Committee. I was on the state delegation in Pittsburgh before I came down here. And
when some of the guys found out I was moving South, they warned me to keep my
goddamn month shut when I’d come down here or I would get into trouble. And I found
out very quickly—and my wife, who has been active, too—that the atmosphere was
completely different here. And we were aware of the fact that the problem would be
resolved much more quickly here than it ever would up north.
SE: “Here” meaning the South?
SJ: In the South, and particularly with our experience in Greensboro, because there was this
history of close association, close personal association. And what we found, it was quite
obvious any black that they were close to, they loved them, got along with them,
anything. I mean they were a fellow human being. Anyone they didn’t know was a
nigger. But—and it’s proven true. I mean, our problem segreg—desegregating the
schools went very quickly in Greensboro. And the actual relations that I see are quite
shocking. [They’ve seen the flow of?] blacks in the positions that were predominantly
white in the banks, the clerks. You see the white, the blacks, the [secular? sexual?]
mixture coming in socially, in the store, for instance. And so that was—
Now, of course, I found out in our store. Originally I was open for seven days a
week, until midnight every night, when I first opened up. It became a gathering place, a
sort of discussion place where people came in. And I found out very quickly in order—in
talking about race, I mean there would be some loudmouth, who would sound off about
niggers and so forth and so on, and somebody else might chip in, but the majority of
people would keep quiet. But the minute I took off on it, I found I got support
immediately. They were looking for somebody. They, they—you would assume that they
all felt the same way the loudmouths did, but they didn’t. They followed the leadership.
And I didn’t—I sounded off all the time. I never got in any trouble. And my real
involvement—I guess I really became active in the community was in the—‘54 with the
desegregation of the schools.
SE: Okay. Talk about that.
SJ: Well, at that time, we had a—Ben L. Smith was our superintendent of schools, really
progressive. And even at that point, really, my wife and I had both been impressed with
the Greensboro school system. We had kids in it. It was really so superior to everything
in personal relation to what we’d known in Pittsburgh. But we—we had the support of
the [unclear]. I had some of the young school teachers came into the store for one of the
discussion groups. Among them was Bill Caffrey, who was one of the, I think,
significant—well, he’s now an attorney for the school board. And when the Supreme
Court decision [Brown v. Board of Education] came out, the newspapers went to Smith
immediately and said, “Jeez. What are you going to do?”
And he made a very simple statement. He says, “We’ve always operated within
the law, and we will continue to operate within the law.”
And he called his staff and teachers and said, “There’s one simple rule. Next year,
no child in Greensboro will have to go past a school in order to go to school.” Here the
blacks had been bused. And he began to train the teachers, and they pointed out the key
schools. And Caffrey at that time was assistant principal of Aycock Junior High.
Caldwell School was obviously going to be the key school in this process. It was the
worst primary school in the community. It was on Asheboro Street [now Martin Luther
King Jr. Drive], the poorest section, right in between a poor black and a poor white
community. It would have been the one school that would have been completely
segregated by the—completely integrated by this thing. And they sent Bill Caffrey, who
was a Morehead City [North Carolina] boy, a native North Carolinian, was put in as
principal of that school specifically with the idea that there was going to be a problem.
And there was an entire training process going on within the school system to prepare the
teachers and the staff for this thing. And of course, then when it was publicized, why,
they began to get public reaction. They burned crosses on Smith’s lawn, they broke his
windows, they made threatening phone calls. But he went ahead with the plans, the
general plan, and Caffrey went into the school.
And then Governor [Luther] Hodges proposed the Pearsall Plan, which made it
impossible for the local school system to go ahead with their plan. You know, the state
made it—
SE: Do you think Smith wanted to go ahead with the plan?
SJ: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He definitely did want to go ahead, and I think that his staff did at
the time. I think they were prepared to do it. And it’s one of the unfortunate things I
always stress: if they had—if the public, if they had supported him at that time, we would
have—we would have been in compliance. We would have had no busing. We’d have
had neighborhood schools. But they wouldn’t do it. The public wouldn’t support him.
One of the interesting things along that line: they announced that there was going
to be a school board meeting for pupil assignment right before the Pearsall Plan was
announced. And I picked up the paper and saw that the Ku Klux Klan was going to attend
the board meeting. Well, the school office was just two blocks from where my store was
at the time, and, hell, they had to have some support during this.
SE: Now what year was this?
SJ: This was in ‘54.
SE: Okay. Okay.
SJ: So I—I’m not a very good dresser, but I dressed rather nice. Our lunch period ran out at
2:30 [p.m.], and I threw off my apron and ran over there. And it was a small room where
the school board was meeting. The whole thing was occupied by these rough looking
characters. There was one seat among them and I sat down between these [unclear]. But
the school board was intimidated by the group, and they postponed any decision on
assignment.
Shortly after I got back to the store, a friend of mine called me and he says,
“Yeah, I got a peculiar call from a friend of mine who’s a member of the school board.
He said he was real shocked to find you were a member of the Ku Klux Klan.” [laughter]
The guy kids me about it ever since. But shortly after that, the Pearsall Plan was
announced and that went on. So we muddled along.
SE: Who’s “we?”
SJ: Those of us who were interested.
SE: Okay.
SJ: Insofar as the chamber of commerce, and there was a lot of muttering in the black
community, and the Black Panthers began to get some publicity, you know.
SE: Okay, now we’re jumping way ahead to [the] late sixties by now.
SJ: No, no. It was earlier than that. Maybe the black militants, shall I say? There was some
movement. There was some—
SE: Okay. We’re still in the fifties.
SJ: Yeah, we’re still in the fifties. Well, very late fifties now, come to think of it. And the
chamber—I mean the business community began to get a little bit fearful about what was
going on.
SE: Right.
SJ: Let me get some—see if I can gather some of this stuff up. I was trying to really place the
time on it.
SE: Can I flick a light on so I can see my tape?
SJ: Yeah. [pause] Let’s see what I got here. I really should have gone through this mess.
Really, my concept of time is—
SE: Oh, that’s okay. Why don’t we keep talking, and we’ll get back to that.
SJ: Well, what happened was they—I had been a member of the chamber of commerce, and I
was really disgusted with the fact that they did nothing meaningful, and I dropped out.
And the management of the shopping center—now let’s see. I went into the shopping
center in ‘57. It was about ‘58 or ‘59, but the manager, he was a relatively good friend of
mine. He was—
SE: What’s his name?
SJ: [Arnold J.] “Cap” Coffey. He wasn’t the manager at that time. He was the promotion
director.
SE: Okay.
SJ: He came to me and said, “Look. We’ve got a meeting down at the chamber of commerce.
How about coming down with us?”
And I said, “Hell. I don’t have time to waste on that foolishness.”
He said, “Just come on down for the one meeting.”
And I went down. You got the bigmouths and a lot of people sitting around. And
went through the usual talk, which I thought was meaningless. And then I got up and
said, you know, that I thought [unclear] was just a waste of time. There wasn’t much said,
and a young fellow that was sitting there came up. He was a member of the chamber
staff, and he says, “Let me tell you something. Things are going to be different around
here.” He introduced himself, “I’m Hal Sieber.” He says, “Give us a chance.” He says,
“Come on down and join up, you know”
And I says, “Okay.”
Hal became one of the real significant people in the community. Is the name
familiar?
SE: Yes.
SJ: And he was the one who developed the chamber program and implemented it and
changed some of the individuals in chamber leadership, I mean just changed it
completely and did a really amazing job. The thing I’m really concerned with is people
like Hal, and like Jim Clark. They get a little far out ahead, too far ahead, and they’re
chewed up and spit out. This is what happened to Hal. He resolved the crisis. They
eventually leveled off. Things were going beautifully, so Hal—[recording error—
unclear].
So Billy Little, who was the executive vice president of the [unclear] in Alabama
[unclear] who had backed Hal—he had a little problem drinking until [ten or fifteen
months?] and was followed by a young fellow taken from the newspaper called Dave
Alexander, who certainly wasn’t radical at all. He attempted to do something, so out he
went. And they’ve got [unclear] The only reason I’d go down there is because I know
they’d like me to quit because I keep stirring things up. It’s a really sad thing to see how
short-sighted they are, you know. [It’s fine to take a crisis and resolve it?], and they did it
in a very clever way [unclear]. I sometimes wonder what it was. But they took the black
leadership out of the community and took them into the chamber, gave some of them
opportunities, [unclear] opportunities, assisted them—
[Recording paused]
SJ: —the decision was. We preempted the mayor, Concerned Citizens, because in other
places opponents of desegregation had taken that sort of thing around. And Hal Sieber
was the driving force in that. He organized the thing.
SE: This is still the Dudley?
SJ: After.
SE: After? Okay. Right.
SJ: Wait a minute. Let’s see. Is it before or after? You’ve got me confused here.
SE: Okay.
SJ: I think it’s—
SE: Okay. All right.
SJ: No, no. It had to be before.
SE: Okay. Okay.
SJ: I’m not too sure.
SE: That’s all right. Keep going. That’s all right. We can get that later.
SJ: Hal then succeeded in getting some federal funding and getting up an organization, which
was [unclear] the chamber of commerce. And prior to that, and during that period, he
organized discussion cells over the community, called them discussion cells, [unclear] on
that in the black community, and they were well attended during periods of crisis with
people who came and told them what their problems were, and attempts were made to
resolve them. And as we went along and they’d see things quieted down, of course, the
attendance at the cells dropped off.
SE: Right.
SJ: And eventually they became—had no meaning whatsoever.
Well, in that period, among the conflicts that came up, of course, was the city
government. There was no black representation on the [Greensboro] City Council.
SE: Right.
SJ: And the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] became
aware of that and found an old 1808 [year of Greensboro’s city charter] statute, and
started a referendum for what was called “Plan B” to change the form of the city
government to twelve wards, do away with the city management system, and put some
ridiculous salaries in for the councilmen. And it scared the hell out of the business
community. And the chamber itself organized opposition to that. And I worked in
opposition to it, too.
The chamber set up a study group, and the study group came back with a report
saying that the present system was not representative, but, of course, that the Plan B was
certainly wasn’t. So the chamber pledged itself, first of all to defeat Plan B, and then to
appoint a committee to propose a plan which would be representative of the community.
And we on the community unity division worked on that plan. And finally the committee
came in with a report which was accepted by the chamber recommending a change in the
form of government, and it was a quadrant system we came through with. Each quadrant
would elect its councilman and there would be three councilmen elected at large, and a
mayor at large.
And the blacks felt that this was not acceptable, so the unity division called in all
the people who were interested in change, who had been active in it: that was the Junior
Chamber [of Commerce, Jaycees] and the League of Women Voters and the NAACP. I
forget how many different organizations, and we sat down together. They finally came up
with a proposal for an eight-three-one [eight council members elected from districts,
three elected at large, and one mayor] plan, and it was then presented to the various
organizations by the committee. It was accepted by everyone involved except the
chamber of commerce and the NAACP. They both refused to accept it.
So those of us that were interested, that was as far as we could go in the chamber.
We moved out of the chamber and we formed a Citizens for a Representative
Government [CRG] group. We restarted the thing, and some damn hotheads on it went
and presented the plan before the whole thing—disruption of the group, because they
presented it before the whole group had had a chance to approve it. But anyway, they got
it to where we had to have a referendum on it. We worked like hell on it and were
defeated.
SE: And what year was this, approximately?
SJ: I’ll have to look it up.
SE: Okay. All right.
SJ: I’ve got it all here. Years I’m very poor on.
SE: That’s okay.
SJ: But anyway, the campaign against it was not on the basis of the program, but on the basis
that city council had not been given the opportunity to study and make input on the
proposed plan. And so it was defeated. And we got together, and we then got the
organizations together again, and we got everybody to back a six-three-one plan except
the chamber of commerce. They refused to do it. And we got city council to put it on the
ballot again. And we had a hell of a campaign, which I thought surely would win. But the
chamber became frightened, and they made a counter-organization and they had a lot of
money to start announcements on TV and on radio and on street signs. And I was real
shocked anyway. They defeated us last time around.
SE: Right.
SJ: And that pretty much—we had an increased variety of personal controversy on that, the
fact that the unity division had traditionally handled this area of the thing. And we
wondered—asked for the chamber’s stand on it. I was personally told that the chamber
would not take any stand on the thing. Then our meeting was just postponed without
reason at all. And I kept pushing and kept calling, wanting to know when the meeting
was going to be, and finally, right before the election, the chamber came out with a
statement opposing the plan. And when I made inquiries, they said it had come—instead
of going through the unity division, it had come through the governmental action
committee. And I assumed that they had railroaded it through.
I went to the governmental action committee. I happened to know the young
fellow on there who had made the presentation to the board, and I asked him. And he told
me, “Look,” he says, “I’m going to get into trouble. Because my boss is a young member
of a large firm,” he said, “we voted to support the plan in committee, but they made us
[unclear] before the executive committee report opposing.”
And I wrote to the newspapers and got into a controversy with the president of the
chamber, and issued—of course, they issued a statement to the newspaper which—the
day before the election—is completely distorted. And I was real sharp. I called the person
I’d been dealing with and he said, “We’ll publish the retraction tomorrow morning.” This
is the day of the election.
And it didn’t show up. And I called and spoke to [reporter] Jo Spivey, and she
said, “Sol, I hate to tell you, but the only thing we can do is run a letter to the editor.”
And I tried to take it up with the chamber. I did—I’ve got quite a document here
which I’d like to show you which I brought to them. And we got a hell of a response from
the unity division, and they were going to raise hell, but then it quieted down. It just died
away. That’s all.
But in the course of the whole thing, a lot of the younger people who were
involved in the referendum drive were really horribly disappointed. But we did make a
lot of progress. Our mayor had learned, so really we made a tremendous amount of
progress. They learned a lot. The council was much more responsive to the needs of the
total community than they ever were, and it’s only as a result of this type of campaign
that [it could be done?].
So in the schools are just, as far as I’m concerned, doing beautifully. They have
the problems which are normal to schools, but now everybody’s aware of them because
everybody now—their tendency is to blame it on the racial issue. But talking with the
people within the school system who I know are dedicated, they feel it just isn’t so. The
thing is working smoothly. And there’s no question about it, we had a drop at the high
school and junior high level when they first integrated, a distinct drop—my youngest kid
was in school at the time—in the teaching and the caliber of the thing, but it’s now
coming right back up. And I think we’ll eventually be better than it was as a result of this.
SE: Right. Let’s drift back to a few things in the sixties. Well first, were you ever—you were
never a member of the NAACP were you?
SJ: No.
SE: Okay. Well, surely you remember the 1960 sit-ins, Woolworth’s, and all that.
SJ: Oh, yeah.
SE: Tell me your reaction to that. Did you know about it beforehand?
SJ: No, I had no idea. No, I did not know anything about it at all. I saw it in the newspaper,
and, of course, we served anybody who came into the place. And we were tested. Right
next door to us was a restaurant run by the ex-mayor of the town, Boyd Morris, and he’s
the guy who had the [Mayfair] Cafeteria downtown and stood out and barred blacks from
coming in. This was the [unclear] time. But we served anybody who came in, and all I
got were people came up and thanked me for doing it. We had a counter and there was
never an empty seat at the counter. And we had blacks come in to test the thing. They
were, some of them, not too good-looking, some of them were a little loud, but there was
never any difficulty at all, and I’d say I had no problem.
One of the significant people during that era was the mayor at the time, David
Schenck, who was a hell of a good guy. And I remember he called a meeting of all
restaurant operators, and made the appeal to them to open up to anybody. This was prior
to the passage of the Civil Rights Act [of 1964].
SE: Okay, this was after the Woolworth thing?
SJ: It’s right during that period.
SE: Okay.
SJ: While that was going on. And he made the appeal. And one after another stood up and
said, “My waitresses will quit. We’ll lose all our business. There will be bloodshed,” and
so on and so forth. And I told them at the time that I was serving with no problems at all.
But they wouldn’t do it, of course, until the Civil Rights Act was passed.
SE: Right. Well, let’s see. I guess there were sit-ins again in 1963. Did people come and test
your restaurant then, too, or—
SJ: Yeah. They was a constant—but they began to come in naturally after a while. There was
just a—it was Guilford College, I think, mixed. They had black students come there,
ministerial students, you know, for programs. And they would call me up, you know, and
have a group that would like to come in, you know, but four of them were black. I said,
“Bring them in.” There was never any difficulty at all.
SE: Well, what about—well, during the—okay, so the things are going on at Woolworth’s
and black students come and test your restaurant. And I guess the guy who had the
cafeteria, the former mayor I mean, he wasn’t serving blacks at that time.
SJ: No. No, he wasn’t.
SE: And you were in that shopping center. Was there any pressure on you from him or the
owner of the shopping center or anything like that to segregate?
SJ: No. As a matter of fact, at the merchants’ meeting, I suggested to them that we publish an
ad in the paper, four-page ad saying that everyone in the shopping center served
everybody regardless of race, creed, and color. I told them that would be a damned good
business move, but they didn’t believe it, though. But they never pressured me.
SE: This was the shopping center’s merchant group?
SJ: That’s right. Now Boyd Morris, who was next to me, attended the meeting at the mayor’s
office at the time, and I told him—now I got up and told him that, my God, he needed to
get up to date or else he would go out of business, you know. And he said, “Well, I’ll go
down fighting.” And he did. He went broke.
SE: So I might—let me throw some names at you and see if you know these people or get
opinions on them, and whatever, especially with regards to the ongoing development of
movements for civil rights here in town. Did you know Ralph Johns [white store owner
and local NAACP officer]?
SJ: Yes.
SE: When did you meet him?
SJ: Ralph was a customer of mine, I guess in ‘50, ‘51, ’52. He used to come in. And I met
Ralph—one of the other things, we had a hell of a campaign on fluoridation of the water,
and Ralph was one of the leaders of the opposition. [chuckles]
SE: And you were in favor of it?
SJ: Yeah, that’s right.
SE: Okay.
SJ: And we had quite a dialogue. But Ralph was quite—I can’t really say how active Ralph
was. He was in the—he had a store in the black community. He did quite well,
apparently. He drove his Cadillac. He was friendly with blacks and helpful to them. At
this time, he claims a lot of credit for setting up the sit-ins. I don’t know how true that is,
really. I think Ralph—and Ralph became—well, he felt he was a leader, and possibly he
was to a certain extent, but it got to the point where finally the blacks asked him to go out
and work in the white community because they said there were problems there and they
could handle their own. And Ralph was very well-meaning. I’m sure he was well-intentioned.
SE: Did you discuss racial issues with him in the fifties?
SJ: Oh, yes. He was good racially. There was no question about it. I mean we had no
argument at all. And I thought his tactics and his ideas and his—he had a messianic
complex like he was the great leader who was going to lead them to freedom, and I don’t
think he quite had the capacity to do it. And he eventually lost his business, his family
broke up. He left. He’s now back, remarried, and running a little neighborhood
newspaper [The Courier], which is absolutely non-controversial. It’s only good news.
SE: Right. Okay. What about—did you know, or ever know, any of the original four who sat
in at Woolworth’s?
SJ: I didn’t know them. I met a couple of them casually at the chamber. I never even had an
opportunity to talk with them.
SE: Okay. How about [Woolworth’s manager] C. L. [“Curly”] Harris?
SJ: [unclear]
SE: Let’s see. Dr. George Simkins?
SJ: Oh, yeah.
SE: How did you know him?
SJ: Well, I met him, of course. My closest association with him was during the campaign.
First of all for Plan B, and I was against him and for the others, and we worked quite a bit
together in attempting to develop the plan, so I knew him over quite a long period of
time, worked with him closely after we were defeated in out referendum, I tried to get
him to work on the next one. He refused to do it.
But George has, I think, made a real significant contribution to the black
community until he became affluent, and then I think his affluence got the better of him.
It made me real angry because I was on the Head Start advisory board, and we had one of
the finest programs that I’ve ever seen in Greensboro. And finally, we had trouble getting
some medical and dental service, but we got our medical services resolved, and finally
we got dental service going. We got to George and he was charging full retail rates for
our children, you know, and we had a limited budget on the thing. And many of the other
dentists were donating their time and services to it. And I was a little angry, but I guess
the guy works so goddamn hard that he finally reached the point that he wanted to enjoy
what he had, you know?
SE: Sure.
SJ: He’s been in trouble. He’s been in a little tax trouble and he’s been in a little trouble—
they charged him with selling amphetamines, something like that. This was hushed over.
But I think George now is sitting back and enjoying the affluence which he worked very
hard to achieve.
SE: Okay. How about Dr. Hobart Jarrett [Bennett College faculty member]?
SJ: I met him, but I really don’t know how much I know him.
SE: Okay. How about, if you didn’t meet, maybe you knew of Dr. [Warmouth T.] Gibbs at
A&T?
SJ: I knew of him.
SE: How about—I’ll probably throw some names you may not know—I’ll keep on—
somebody named Mitch Bell? Okay. How about George Dorsett?
SJ: Yes.
SE: Okay. Did you ever meet him, or—
SJ: I think George was present at the school board meeting.
SE: Okay.
SJ: As part of the Klan group. I think subsequently, he was exposed as an FBI agent. [laughs]
SE: Okay. How about James Townsend?
SJ: That rings a bell, but I can’t [unclear].
SE: I think he was city manager back in—
SJ: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
SE: —during the sit-ins. Okay. Did you know Police Chief [Paul B.] Calhoun?
SJ: Yes.
SE: Okay. During any of the sit-in time, or did you know him through the chamber, or—
SJ: I knew him through the chamber, and he didn’t take a very active part in—he would be
there if we had the police in, and he would answer questions, but he would express no
opinions at all. I think he seemed to be operating under pretty strict orders.
SE: Right, right. Okay. How about George Roach?
SJ: Well, he was the city mayor. Let’s see, before or after. I knew him very casually.
SE: How did you think he handled the sit-in?
SJ: Oh, I think he backed off from it. I don’t think [unclear] the law, didn’t take any role. I
think he made the statement at the time that the city had nothing to do but to maintain
order and enforce the law. I think that was his position.
SE: Were there any—anyone in the city government that you thought was taking a stance that
you might agree more with during that?
SJ: No. Law and order was the rule as far as I could tell at that time.
SE: Would that include [city councilman and Human Rights Commission chair] Ed Zane,
too?
SJ: I don’t know. Ed Zane was kind of a progressive guy, and later on—I know in the study
of one city government that they—progressive—I remember he was out here at Hamilton
Lakes, which was not part of the city originally. It had been brought into the city at that
time. And I really didn’t—I wondered about him, but I never really could get a line on
him, but I always had a feeling that he was one of the progressive elements in the
community.
SE: But you never—
SJ: No, I never did.
SE: —know him. Okay. Let’s see. We talked about Ben Smith before, didn’t we?
SJ: Yes.
SE: Okay. What about Hugdins? D.E. [“Ed”] Hudgins?
SJ: Let’s see. I don’t know. Trying to make the connection. I have difficulty tying names
with people.
SE: All right.
SJ: I can’t place him.
SE: Okay. He was—I believe he was the chairman of the school board when the Brown
decision came out.
SE: Oh, yeah. That’s right.
SJ: Let’s see. We talked about Hal Sieber. How about—did you know much of Dr.
[Ferdinand D.] Bluford at A&T?
SJ: I met him. Talked to him several times, but really I couldn’t say that I knew him.
SE: Okay. How about a police captain by the name of William Jackson?
SJ: Also met him at the chamber, but I didn’t know him.
SE: Did you—Jesse Jackson was—
SJ: He was more of a sit-in person.
SE: Right. Did you ever—did he come to your deli, do you know, or anything? Or how did
you react to his leadership in 1963 during that second sit-in?
SJ: Well frankly, I don’t have too much of a memory of just what he did. I think at that time
we weren’t that involved. In our particular area, it was pretty much resolved, the problem.
SE: Right. Okay. You mentioned to a degree how you felt about Luther Hodges before. Let’s
see. [pause] I’m trying to think of names to ask you. Who—[pause] How about—Oh,
here’s another name: Edward Benjamin [founder of Starmount Co. and Friendly
Shopping Center]. Did you know him?
SJ: He’s my landlord. [laughs]
SE: He’s your landlord at Friendly Shopping Center?
SJ: At Friendly Shopping Center, yeah.
SE: Was—well, how did—okay, what do you think of him? [laughs]
SJ: He’s one of the wealthiest men in the area. He owns—he owns the shopping center. He
owned all this land all out in here in this area. That’s the—all the prime residential area,
and developed it. He married the woman whose father took it over and developed it in a
fantastic manner, and made a tremendous amount of money. He’s one of the savviest
people I’ve ever met.
SE: Okay, well how did—all right now, let’s go back to—let’s see. They’re having the sit-ins
and you suggest to the shopping center’s merchant association that they publish
something about how “We don’t segregate.” Did he catch wind of your suggestion?
SJ: Oh, no. But Ed didn’t have any really serious—no direct relationship with management
of the center. He had a manager who you went—you never dealt directly with Ed at the
time. [chuckles] He was progressive to the point where, early in our time in the center,
why, one of the organizations, civic organizations, started to have yearly meetings where
they had foods of all nations. Booths, you know. And we set up and helped sponsor the
Jewish booth, you know? And a manager of the center came in and said, “Mr. Benjamin
felt it wasn’t in very good taste to set that up specifically and he felt he would rather not
have it.” We told him we thought we rather would and then continued it. We continued
this. We did keep it up.
I’ll tell you the type of guy Benjamin was. You know the chamber gives awards
for various—awards in the city. I was going down to a meeting one time, and I passed the
office there, and Bill Little called me and says, “Come on in here for a few minutes. I
want to show you something.” He said, “Would you read this letter?”
And it was quite a long letter, and it was a recommendation for a citizen of the
year award. You know, the chamber did ask for those. And I read the first page and I
started to laugh, and the second page and I was laughing harder, and the third page and
I—
And he says, “You haven’t come to the funny part yet. That is a recommendation
for Edward P. Benjamin for citizen of the year.” And I turned to the last page and it was
put by Edward P. Benjamin. But this was typical of the guy: reaching out for recognition.
SE: Who was—who was the manager of the shopping center back then during the sixties?
You mentioned his name before.
SJ: I’m not sure who I mentioned before. Oh, you’re talking about Cap Coffey.
SE: You threw him out of the store?
SJ: I threw the manager out of the store.
SE: Of the shopping center? Why?
SJ: Well, we [chuckles]—the time—this was not related to race [laughs]. You want to hear
it?
SE: Oh. [chuckles] Sure. Go ahead.
SJ: Well, we had had difficulty, the merchant’s association, with the manager. In the
beginning, why, business was tough, really. And we started to examine the thing, and we
found out that the smaller merchants were paying much more proportionally to
promotional affairs than the big merchants were. And the result was, why, some of them
dropped out and were not paying, and the merchant’s association got into debt. And our
president, who was Bernie Shepherd, who now runs a clothing store there, wasn’t aware
of it, and they threatened to put him in jail for not paying the federal withholding taxes
for employees, you know?
So we appointed a committee, which I chaired, to find out what was an equitable
manner of financing the association. And we met, and we wrote to various associations
and groups, and finally assembled a plan, and then made up a report, and invited this
Frank Huffman[?], who was manager, to come to a meeting. In the proposal, we
suggested a square foot arrangement for payments, and suggested because of the debt that
the center pay a substantial sum of money to start off with, and that the bigger stores
increase their payments. The center pays that substantial sum just for the first year till we
could get out of debt and get on our feet. And if it ended up that if this plan was not
adopted, we recommended that the merchant’s association be suspended, that the
operation be suspended, that the staff be let go until we got out of debt. And it was
adopted at the meeting. And the meeting ended at eleven o’clock. I was in the middle of
lunch. I was working in my kitchen, and he walks in. He walked into my kitchen, and he
says, “Did you present a resolution suspending merchants association?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Well, I’m going to have you thrown out of here.”
Just like that. Well, I really lost my temper, and I picked him up and I carried him
through the store and threw him out. And I wrote a letter to the management telling them
that if he had any business to conduct with me, as long as my rent was paid, this guy
could do it by telephone or by letter. I never wanted him in my store again. And one of
Benjamin’s secretaries came down and apologized to me for this. And the guy never
did—at all our meetings he became very friendly afterwards.
SE: Right. But there was never—was there ever any pressure on you during the whole—the
thing about the restaurants by anyone in control of the shopping center?
SJ: No, there never was. The only pressure I got was I would put political posters up in the
window, and they objected to it. I put them up on the outside, and they tore them down,
so I put them up on the inside. But that was Frank Huffman’s idea. He had different ideas
politically. But I never got any [unclear] at all from selling, and I’ve had lease renewals,
and they never gave me any trouble on renewals.
SE: What about any trouble from the Klan or anyone like that, harassed you for having an
integrated clientele?
SJ: Never in the [shopping] center, never had a real problem. On Elm Street, very early, I
came down to find “Jew” written on the front of my big plate window. But the neighbors
in the office building across the street came over and cleaned the thing up and
apologized. That was the only incident I had.
SE: This was when you first moved in?
SJ: It was in—I guess it was in the early 1950s.
SE: To the shopping center?
SJ: No, no. This was on Elm Street. I’ve never had a bit of trouble–
SE: This was when you moved into a neighborhood, a house?
SJ: No, no. This was in the store, in the store on Elm Street.
SE: Okay.
SJ: But that was the only—I’ve had some guys raise some hell in the store, you know, but
nothing serious like that, no threats.
SE: Right. Why—I mean, why have you been active in civil rights? Why have you done this?
SJ: It just seems meaningful to me. I mean, I think it’s the American way, that’s all.
SE: Okay.
SJ: I think it’s the only way. I have the old feeling that we’re all in the same damn boat
together and we’re going to sail or we’re going to sink with it. I think it’s a very practical
approach. I’ve got four kids, and I think it’s important that they [unclear].
SE: Sure, sure. Okay, well—
SJ: I think domestically it’s happening.
SE: Good. Good. Well, this has been good. I would like to talk more, but I have to run to get
back to Durham unfortunately. So I’m going to—I’ll be back in town in January.
[Recording paused]
SJ: Nelson Johnson.
SE: Yes, I’ve heard of him.
SJ: Well, he was—I think he was potentially one of the best leaders in the community, black
or white.
SE: Yeah. Nelson Johnson?
SJ: Nelson. And he’s one of the ones that they never could [unclear]. First of all, when I first
met him, he wouldn’t even talk to a white person. And we developed sort of a grudging
friendship on his part. I see very little of him. When I do see him, it’s on a very good
base. I’m always interested in seeing what he is doing from time to time, you know. I
really don’t know. But he’s the guys who started this whole Dudley incident. And it’s a
very interesting thing, because that started out as a purely racial bit. You aren’t familiar
with it at all?
SE: No.
SJ: What happened was that Dudley was a primarily—was a black high school, and
traditionally you had the Benbow Park section, the affluent section of the blacks had the
student leadership all the time. Well, Nelson came along and organized a—
[End of Interview]