Oral history interview with Lawrence "Larry" Queen, Jr., 2010 [text/print transcript]

              1
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT GREENSBORO
INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Lawrence “Larry” Queen, Jr.
INTERVIEWER: Hermann Trojanowski
DATE: July 15, 2010
HT: Today is Thursday, July 15, 2010. I’m with Lawrence “Larry” Queen, Jr. in the Jackson
Library, and we’re here to conduct an oral history interview for the UNCG Institutional
Memory Collection. Mr. Queen, thank you so much for coming out this morning to
Jackson Library. If you would give me your full name. We’ll use this as a test.
LQ: And thank you for the opportunity to share whatever any part of which might be useful to
anybody. We cherish the thought of that. My full name is Lawrence, L-A-W-R-E-N-C-E,
Talmadge, T-A-L-MA-D-G-E, Queen, Q-U-E-E-N, Jr. That is a tribute to remember for
my father, a mountain man who had none of these benefits of education, orphaned when
he was three, victim and beneficiary of the hardships that resulted.
HT: Again, thank you. Tell me a little bit, something, about your family and your home life
when you were growing up.
LQ: Okay. My family and home life when I was growing up having been born August 14,
1925. I’ve lived through many administrations of presidents from yin to yang, a few of
them really worthwhile, and some of “it’s a shame.” And I lean strongly to the left. But I
[think] anybody who reads this or hears this would understand in those growing up years,
born in 1925, [by] the time I was four years old the last great crash—we’re in another one
now in a new dark age, [in my] not particularly humble opinion we will survive it
because of young people who care and give us hope. But [in] ’29 I was four years old.
And that meant that I was just in time to enjoy, quote, unquote, the full benefit of
catastrophic times economically for the United States of America, which I happen to love
very much, as part of the international picture, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the
greatest thing in my mind since the Magna Charta.
So, 1930, ’31, ’32, of course, the Great Depression. And into this situation came
one whom I considered to be one of the greatest presidents of all time, and his wife, of
course, the girls are greater than the guys, I’m talking about Franklin Delano Roosevelt
and his superior wife, superior to him even and gave him superior talents, Eleanor
Roosevelt, who to me is one of the greatest [persons of our] modern times. And, so, my
mother and father, of course, were victims and beneficiaries, because adversity brings out
the best or worst in any and all of us, and it brought out the best in them so that they tried
to keep my sister, who is three years older than I, and is still living, Julia Marie Queen
2
Charpentier. She married a French Canadian of Connecticut. So, she consorted with the
Yankees, and I dropped that in, just for color. But she—
HT: Excuse me, how do you spell her last name?
LQ: C-H-A-R-P-E-N-T-I-E-R. Now, they Anglicized that in Connecticut to Charpentier. They
had a very fruitful life there for about twenty years—before they came down here—in
theater, restaurant business, that kind of thing. But since she married this man, who was a
good man, we’ve lost him now, and she is coming up in September on age eighty-eight,
which I think has a kind of poetic irony to what is now come to pass. She is now a
resident of a home for the elderly at Kings Mountain, North Carolina, because that is both
North Carolina and South Carolina, just right on the border.
Now, the reason I say that is poetic is that I know about my ancestors back to their
first coming down to North Carolina in Colonial Days. And they trained on the South
Fork of the New River in what is now Ashe County under a gentleman leader type
called—assumed title of colonel—in the [American] Revolution. And, so, they trained for
the American Revolution on the South Fork of the New River under Colonel Benjamin
Cleveland. If they had a horse, they rode; the others walked, and joined the others on the
way to fight in the Battle of Kings Mountain. And that is where Francis Queen [my great
grandfather six generations removed], was a participant. And it was the beginning of the
end of the rule of the British in the Colonies. They were weakened at Kings Mountain.
And from there they came on down and segued to the Battle of Guilford Courthouse,
further weakening the [British]. So, it was inevitable that the British would surrender at
Yorktown. Well, that’s a circuitous route Hermann. But I think you’ll see that there’s a
certain poetic mathematical probability that my sister is now living on the mountain
where our great grandfather six times removed fought for freedom of the United States of
America. I’ll stop.
HT: That’s great. Well, tell me something about growing up during the Great Depression,
about your high school days.
LQ: Okay. Tangentially to that, Hermann, I think I can say with some accuracy that I was
born not only into a closed segregated society, where there were no questions about it.
My people believed that they were doing the right thing for the blacks. And in fact my
grandfather owned slaves. He rationalized [his] position. And that is to say to you that by
the age of four I’d had some awareness that a lot of people, and I would expect you
included, have experienced or have very early on, by the age of four or five.
DNA was causing me to recognize things that many people didn’t and don’t
recognize even yet by the time they’re fifty. In other words an awareness so that when
you ask me what was it like growing up in the Great Depression (I didn’t lose it, did I?)
Part of that was awareness that something fundamentally was wrong with a closed
society in which minorities were discriminated against, and you, Hermann, by your name
and your German background know something about that, too. And it is insidious and if
voices are not raised against it in behalf of minorities, then we will implode and mankind
will be justifiably wiped out and start over with a better species. That sounds pompous,
but I mean it, and I’m sure, looking at me, you know I mean it. So, growing up in the
3
Great Depression, for me being aware of that, being aware of the have-nots. “At four or
five, Larry, really?” Really? I was aware of it. And that there are in awareness and
different facets of it that come from [being] fortunate in DNA, which we have absolutely
nothing to do with as recipients, except what we do with it, Okay? So, what was it like
growing up? I was acutely aware of the have-nots. I’m still aware of the have-nots. That
is the reason that when the university insisted, through its leadership particularly in the
library, for some kind of a recognition ceremony for me in Hodges Reading Room here at
Jackson, I knew that it shouldn’t be about me, it should be about Edward R. Morrow who
helped save Western civilization and which you as a member of a minority, I’m sure will
be well aware of, because he was one of the leaders in stopping Herr Schicklgruber,
Adolph Hitler, who was well on his way of taking the world. He had taken Europe except
Russia is so big after he got control there it was like Napoleon, he still didn’t control
Russia. They were taking the world, and Edward R. Morrow went to Europe and
broadcast back and said, “You better wake up America.” This is a circuitous response to
you, but it is part of my growing up, being aware of that, and the have-nots, and the need
for us to do what we can to have the courage, and it takes a great courage, and we are all
human, and I don’t want to say anything here, hopefully, that would embarrass my
beloved wife, who is Middle Eastern. She is—her mother and father came separately
from Lebanon. And she is a product of that environment, which has some similarities to
your own, because Lebanese are Semitic people. And this is seldom brought up. I’m sure
you know that that’s true.
HT: That’s true.
LQ: And the people of the Middle East, and the birth of religions, going back we know at
least [to the] Phoenicians 6,000 years [or more] ago. How circuitous my route is. And I
would ask you to forgive me Hermann for that circuitous route, except I grew up with an
awareness of the suffering of minorities, and I meant to do something about it. And I
didn’t do a very good job, because it’s still around and upon us. But I’m running into
young people, [more] than I, they mean to do something about it. And if any of them hear
my voice here down the road in research, they will know that I’m saying bravo! And, yes,
I believe you will. Yes, I believe you will.
You remember the Norton Lectures at Harvard where Leonard Bernstein, when
his turn came about 1971 on the “Unanswered Question,” traced to Charles Ives’
composition by that name? In that last lecture Bernstein says, you know, a little
facetiously but not really altogether—I encountered him personally, and I know what
extraordinary creative human being he was when he came to Winston-Salem, [North
Carolina] the School of the Arts, where I taught 1985, ’86, and ’87. He said in those
Norton Lectures, which I commend to you if you’ve not read, seen the actually with
photographs of Leonard Bernstein who says in that last lecture, “I’m no longer really sure
of the question, but I know that the answer is yes.” And that’s my message to young
people who mean to make a difference on this silly little planet as Edward R. Morrow
was smart enough to recognize our absurdities. Well, that was circuitous. So, growing up
with awareness that my parents were suffering for me, that they were trying to keep me
and my sister, Julia Marie Queen Charpenteier, from realizing how difficult things were.
So, they went without to give us money to go to school in our childhood, or to pack us a
4
good lunch and gave us money. When we took money to eat in the then [Great]
Depression era at the opening of a period when they had food on the premises at
Sedgefield [Elementary] School, which is a yin and yang, because Sedgefield was the
dividing line of the poor, and the super wealthy, and still is, although this community
may not be aware of it. Some of the wealthiest people in the territory have mansions in
Sedgefield. They’re dying out now. Well, so they tried to keep us from knowing how bad
things were. And, well, they kept us in clothes where people in our school were not kept
in clothes. They were that poor, and they came to school barefooted in the wintertime,
and children not knowing better made fun of them.
HT: This was here in Guilford County, Sedgefield, just south of here?
LQ: Sedgefield Elementary School, and I went from there and the teachers were so dedicated
to us, to their profession, to their ministry, Hermann, mission. That’s a very important
word. Whether we can really believe it or not. And I got that from Trudy Bee, that huge
black woman from upper New York State who became the orchestrator over here at the
[UNCG] coffeehouse before Starbucks and the new administration came along. It was
called, oh, I can’t remember his name. But he was supposed to be a mystery. It turned out
to be the husband of Chancellor Patricia Sullivan. So, you may remember his name. And
that was the name of that coffee house.
HT: His name is Charlie [Sullivan].
LQ: Charlie. That’s right. And I’ll lift a cup to Charlie. He was an inspiration and so was
Patricia Sullivan, although when she came here and I was teaching here—in fact, I came
here to teach in 1985 after retiring from other lives, she came here to speak before she
was anointed, and she spoke in Aycock [Auditorium]. And I thought to myself, “She’s
not going to be able to cut it.” Now, that’s Southern talk, Hermann. It means, I didn’t
think she could do it. And she turned out to be one of the most remarkable chancellors
that this university has ever had. Now, I come to [the] Dr. Frank Porter Graham era at
Chapel Hill. And he was a hero to me. And Dr. Patricia Sullivan turned out to walk in no
small degree in the footsteps of that remarkable man. And, so, she wasn’t about to allow
a misguided young people here who protested the naming of a building on this campus
for Dr. Frank Porter Graham, she wasn’t about to accede to that. She stood firm. And she
stood firm for Edward R. Murrow [Heritage Gallery]. The reason I’m sitting here talking
to you, and if it sounds like I’m digressing, it all fits together. It all fits together. The
reason I’m here talking to you Hermann is that Dr. Patricia Sullivan and I felt that this
university in this community, in this state, and the South, at least, and maybe beyond
needed to get a fresh awareness, for most of them for the first time of Edward R. Morrow
and how he helped to save Western civilization. And Patricia Sullivan wrote a letter in
my behalf to the head of library here and saying, “I advocate what Mr. Queen is
proposing for this library.” Edward R. Morrow Heritage Gallery honoring—not a
monument—but a place to go and learn about his high principals, Quaker principles as it
turns out. And Edward R. Morrow had them. And he stood high in them, and that helped
to save Western civilization. So, I grew up with some awareness of that, have-nots and
5
haves. And that we needed to do something about it. And I vowed that I was going to do
that.
And I never dreamed in the beginning that I would become a student at Duke
University. And you can stop me anywhere, Hermann, but I’ll just complete this
sentence. This has to do with growing up in the Depression. And a high school teacher at
Jamestown High School, which is now community center and a library, with Doric
columns, was saved. I had a teacher there named Elizabeth Hanner, H-A-N-N-E-R, who
reminds me of another great educator who was here at this university, Elizabeth Zinser,
Z-I-N-S-E-R. And she evoked fear and, in some, hatred because she was a no-nonsense
girl who meant: get with it. Elizabeth Zinser was one of the greatest administrators, and
this will cause shivering among many people on this campus. But she was one of the
greatest leaders this university ever had. And I—that DNA came in there again. And you
think I’m digressing. I am going to end this sentence.
It isn’t fair to you, Hermann. But the moment I met Zinser, she gave—tiny
diminutive woman, stood up [at an annual university leadership gathering] to give about a
ten-minute address on the invitation of Dr. [William] Moran, chancellor at that time of
the university, and he says, “Now, we’ll have a report on the State of the [Academy] from
Dr. Elizabeth Zinser.” And she stood up, and she’s been standing taller and taller in my
mind ever since. I had to meet her, and did. Okay. Forgive— no, don’t forgive me,
because if I’m of any value to you in this documentation and to these young people who
are looking for leaders and inspiration, Zinser is one of them. I told Dr. Zinser, wrote her
and said, “I don’t know who you are, but you’re one of the—surely one of the great
forces on this campus.” And she wrote back and says, “I was writing an address for the
commencement at [the University of California at] Berkeley,” and that tells you
something, and [she wrote me,] “I had hit a stone wall, and your note came. And I’ve
completed it, and I thought you would like to read it.” Well, I should apologize because
you’re the one conducting this interview. And it’s a value. And its survival will depend
on you. So, I stop.
HT: Well, tell me about—did you go to college immediately after graduating after high
school, or did you go to the army?
LQ: What happened there was both of the above, although I had a dream that the army had
interrupted. Elizabeth Hanner asked me one day at the old Jamestown High School, she
says, “I want to talk to you. You stay in here.” I go, “Oh, hell, what have I done wrong
today?” And because I’ve always been something of a maverick. But, Hermann, I’m a
believer even when I find scanty evidence to believe. I’m a believer not in the religious
sense of divine, but in the sense of humankind and other life on this planet [to have the]
ability to make sense out of it. So, when Hanner says to me at that luncheon meeting,
“Where are you going to go to college?” I wouldn’t have dared to sneer. And I didn’t feel
sneer. I just felt a kind of, “Good heavens almighty, what do you mean college? There’s
no chance for me to go to college.” My folks were denying themselves food to keep me
and my sister, Julia Marie clothed and with enough money. When we went to school and
ate at school they gave us fifteen cents, and that got us a meal, Hermann. Go to college?
And she says, “Well, don’t be [too sure]”—she says, “Well, you dream about it, don’t
you?” I says, “I don’t dare to dream.” And that’s the message I don’t want any young
6
people who happen to stumble on this runaway idiot’s thoughts to accept. Dare to dream.
And, oh, yes, things will happen because we believe in the possibility. And Hanner says
to me, “Well, you can dream. Surely, you dream?” And I says—well, back then I was
pretty much into divine creation back then, underline that. But that doesn’t mean I have
no faith in anything. I do in our capacity to rise above the level of force and achieve some
of the grace of tragedy. And you and I know that I stole that. That comes from Dr. Steven
Weinburg in The First Three Minutes, one of the most impressive thoughts that I have
encountered. So, let me make this short. Hanner says, she says, “Well, where would you
go?” And I thought of cathedrals. Throughout history, even though they brought [have]
plenty of misery on humankind, they’ve also been a message of hope, the palaces of the
poor, all over Europe, those magnificent cathedrals. Messages of hope to the poor. And,
so, I thought of cathedrals. And she says, “Where?” And I says, “Well, Notre Dame,
Indianapolis, and Duke University.” As difficult as you can sense for me to talk about
this, because Elizabeth Hanner and Duke University in its magnificent cathedral, which I
never dreamed of going to; because of Elizabeth Hanner, she says, “Just try harder.”
That’s a message, too. And I did. I fought with all of my capacities to excel in everything
I did, so that what happened was that I won a work scholarship to Duke University in
1942 when the war was at a critical stage. If you—you know your history and you know
what was going on in Europe, and also in Asia in ’41 Japan and the Great Empire had
joined in the fray. And here I was dreaming and got on the Duke campus, and the idea
was a pre-legal to get a law degree and go on to Georgetown University. Oh, yes,
Hermann, I had a dream, and it didn’t altogether abort. I had a dream to go on to
Georgetown and get the post-graduate degree and go on into International Affairs and
change the course of humankind, which is what Edward R. Morrow did. It’s an honor to
this university to have a heritage gallery for Edward R. Morrow, and there are people on
this campus like Rosann Bazirjian—who is enormously impressive—who grasp that
larger picture, as did Dr. [Kathy] Crowe. I encountered her first—just mad man myself
went [into Jackson Library administrative offices] and said, “Something needs to be done
to get Edward R. Morrow in the rightful place with his teachings, his broadcasts from
Europe when Hitler was taking Europe. He saved, helped Winston Churchill [save]
western civilization.”
And, so, I had hope, I still have hope, and there’s a guy named Studs Terkel, and
if you don’t know about him, shame on you. You’re supposed to know about Studs
Terkel. He was [among] the greatest interviewers of our time. And I required, and that’s a
dirty four-letter word, you can strike that out. But I required my students to read Studs
Terkel over here in this library. The books were on reserve, and the good news is they
actually wore out, and they had to replace them. Studs Terkel, and Bill Moyers, Oriano
Fallaci who is an outrage, but a necessary outrage, to fire the minds of young people at
this university and beyond. And Edward R. Morrow was required reading in my courses.
I was teaching journalism here, and I was teaching British literature to North Carolina
School of the Arts. So, they learned in British literature over there about great British
writers like Euripides [I sneaked Euripides in!]. You got to be a little presumptuous,
Hermann, and I know that you know that because of your background, which I’ll only
begin into. Okay. Go ahead.
HT: Well, tell me. You went to Duke University for a little while.
7
LQ: Yes.
HT: And you must have joined the army somewhere later.
LQ: Well, I didn’t join the army, and I did my best not to join the army because I had a dream.
And if I was going to the army how could I fulfill that dream? And so I hoped to get a
deferment. However, they needed bodies. They needed men. And they were taking
youngsters, and they were taking old men. Old in those times thirty-two and on up to
forty, they needed troops. And, so, they were drafting them out of school, and some of
my dearest friends, who were enormously gifted far beyond my dreams, died quickly in
the inferno. So, and I saw—I held out as long as I could. Went to work in Norfolk Navy
Yard, which was at Portsmouth [Virginia] thinking I would get a deferment and I could
go on and fulfill that dream of saving mankind. But they needed troops. So, I was drafted
the instant I was eighteen and went into training. I was inducted, I guess, at Camp Croft,
South Carolina and, then, sent to Fort Jackson, [South Carolina] to be processed for
wherever they felt that I might be useful. And they thought that I should go to—I was
interested in the Air Force. And they thought that I scored high enough so that I qualified
for any branch. And, so, I was going to go into the Air Force and help to save mankind
that way. But when they did interviews with me pursuant to that, they, I think, correctly,
recognized since that I was not a fighter, soldier type. I was a liberal arts and artist type
and that I would be in the wrong place dropping bombs on Hitler’s people. And I guess I
would have been. So, instead they redirected me, and yin and yang, they sent me to Fort
Jackson, and they saw from the test, that I probably could be serviceable in of all
things—even though I was not a fighter type, the combat engineers, which was
inconsistent with not letting me go into the Air Force. So, I went to Fort Leonard Wood,
[Missouri]. They needed engineers. So, that’s how I got in there, a combat engineer at
Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and Leonard Wood is back in the news again.
I’ll not take time to even try to remember that again now. In the Ozark Mountains
of Missouri, which also happened to be Mark Twain territory? Mark Twain National
Forest, and Twain is one of my heroes. Well, I don’t want to monopolize with my
drifting, and that’s what I try to make clear to you before this interview that you would
need to move in on the old man, [me].
HT: That’s fine. Well, tell me about your time in the—this is the army?
LQ: Yes, I went into the army, as I told you, and then in 1945 I was stationed in St. Louis,
Missouri with military police there. They decided that maybe I’d be useful. They kept
looking at my test scores, and they were trying to figure out where I could be used most
effectively. And whatever their rationale was, and I’m grateful for it, because I went from
Leonard Wood, I went to Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis, which had been the parade
grounds for all the great generals for several hundred years, I guess. And I went into the
military police staff. And from military police I went—they announced one day in early
1945 we’ve got the [Hitler and associates matter] settled in Europe. Now, it’s time for the
big push to settle it with Hirohito, the Emperor of Japan. So, we decided to invade. And,
Hermann, neither you, nor the people who may hear some little parts of this that might be
useful, can really imagine what was involved in what they announced to us at the
8
Jefferson Barracks. We decided to make the big push on Hirohito. And, so, we are going
to—we’re asking for volunteers. Because this has got to be something that one feels a
sense of mission about. We are going to gather an armada at San Francisco, beginning
there with many of other vessels joining that armada. Once it sailed out from under the
Golden Gate Bridge and into the South Pacific, into a huge armada, the biggest in history
for the invasion of mainland Japan. And the reason I said it is not possible for you to
imagine what that entailed and what was implicit in invading the mainland of Japan
where people were—and, yes, suddenly you can envision people were fanatics who
would do anything for the emperor as they would do for der Fuhrer. Same thing. And
they would have fought to the death. They would not have surrendered. And, so, we
would have lost—it would have been the bloodiest losses in history if we had gone. And,
of course, the math was such that I couldn’t possibly have survived to be sitting here with
you.
HT: I understand that the United States government anticipated millions of men on both sides
being killed.
LQ: Oh, of course. And here is something to be said for the emperor. Emperor Hirohito
despite the military complex that wanted to take over and fight to the death. In the
night—and there’s a book on this, and a copy of it is here in this library. The last days of
World War II— Hirohito knew that he would go down in infamy and history despite the
revisionists who are warping and misshaping history, the truths eventually surface. In the
night he decided—in August—he decided to go in the imperial complex from the palace
to the radio room, walking in the darkness, with his entourage to the radio room to
surrender. And in the darkness headed towards the palace to take him captive were the
leaders of the military complex, and they passed on separate sides of a connecting
building in between the palace and the radio room, oblivious to each other. And they
went to the palace where he was not, and he went to the radio room on August 14, which
is easy to remember for me. Depending on which side of the international dateline you
were, August 14 was my birthday. And, so, the war ended. He called for the surrender,
unconditional surrender of all Japanese troops. And whatever he said to do, they did. It
was just like Hitler. They did it. And, so, ironically Hirohito saved humankind from one
of the worst bloodbaths in all history, including Genghis Khan.
And, so, then there we were, this great armada off the coast of the Philippines,
and we were on the fantail where the radio rooms were on a converted troop transport
from a cargo vessel. And we were all just about to capsize that little vessel that only
carried 2,500 troops, and [crew]. What are they going to do with us? And, so, of course,
there were guys out in that Pacific that had been out there as much as four years. So, they
needed to send them home first. And they diverted us to various places. And I went to
Luzon, Manila and just north to near Clark Air Force Base, [Philippines]. And, of course,
many Japanese didn’t know the war was over and everything was mined. So, we had to
be very careful about every move we made. And, then, they decided to send me to the
south, in Luzon to a place called Batangas, a town inside of a province, Batangas
Province. And because of my background, they put me, and I went to Batangas. I was
sent to regional headquarters to work in criminal CID and CIA [Central Intelligence
Agency], Criminal Investigation [Division] working to arrest deserters who had become
9
as fanatical in their power of unlimited wealth, [relativistically], as Hirohito and Hitler.
Now, that makes no sense at all perhaps. But I got a hunch you understand what I’m
saying. And I think these young people are so bright, they’ll understand.
HT: A good question for you. CID, does that stand for Criminal Investigation Department?
LQ: Yes, Criminal Investigation Division.
HT: Division.
LQ: The CIA, which is Central Intelligence Agency. And that was what I was into. And, so,
that’s where I spent my—the remainder of my time abroad. And, then, my turn came to
come home. Well, we came back. We went over on a converted—they were using—it
was a desperate time in ’40s, Hermann. And if you check with your [forbearers], they
will tell you all about it, a desperate time. And the objective had to be to stop a madman.
And now two madmen, fanatics, religious fanatics, who intended to take the world. And
they could have done it, Hermann. They could have done it. Hitler had just about
achieved it when Ed Morrow went over there in 1939 and started broadcasting back what
Hitler was doing to London. He was wiping them out. The Luftwaffe—around the clock.
And the courage of those British people is beyond definition. They were—would stand
fast. Winston Churchill wasn’t kidding when he announced to the world, “We’ll fight you
on the beaches. We will fight you in the countryside. We will fight you in the streets. We
will never surrender.” Winston Churchill meant that. And anybody that doubts that can
never pay the respect that they need to pay to Winston Churchill and one of his top
confidents, Edward R. Morrow, of Pole Cat Creek right down [in the southeast corner of
Guilford County in North Carolina]. Who believes that? I tell you, and I don’t believe it.
But it’s true. Edward R. Morrow went over there and [broadcast back]: “Wake up,
America.” This mad genius. And he was a genius. And what a contradiction. You know,
[ironically], there was Jewish blood in Hitler’s line. Yin-yang. What is this crazy world?
And can we do anything about it to get above it? [Author] Stephen Weinburg says, “Yes,
we can lift ourselves above a level of farce,” which otherwise we are. And Edward R.
Morrow’s message was that to the world. And he and Winston Churchill stopped that
madman. They stopped it. And it can be done again. And we can [tell] the young people,
inspire them, yes, you can. Leonard Bernstein, the answer is, yes. God, I’ll never forget.
What a man.
HT: When did you get out of the army?
LQ: They kept me over there, as they should, sent the others home. And, so, needless to say
my middle initial is T, as in trouble, right here in River City. Okay? And people that
know the “Music Man” will understand what I’m saying. I’m a maverick. And, so, it
seemed like it was inevitable that wherever I was I would be a challenger, and I would be
challenged. And, so, when we came time for us to come home—and, Hermann, I take it
as being no accident as Colonel Jay Meyer told me when he met me on a South Fork of
the New River and wanted to know what that book was [that I was carrying], I told him,
and I says, “A collection of Chekov works.” I told you once. That great Russian writer.
10
Jay Meyer said to me [on the south fork of the New River], “This meeting is no
accident.” And I want to tell you, Hermann, I’m—not a great believer into the divine, but
mathematical probability if you read some guys like “One, Two, Three, Infinity,” or one
great book by a fellow you want to know better because he said what we take to be “how
surprising,” no, said he. What is his name? [Dr. George Wald, Nobel Laureate in math.]
They say, “What a coincidence.” He would just shake his head, “No.” And not drag this
out. They say, “It’s impossible.” “No.” And what he concluded was in the greater
mathematics of the universe it’s just real as anything you and I will ever face in the great
incomprehensibility of mathematics of the universe in which it becomes inevitable. Now,
there’s a book. It was the only book for which he is really known—[Dr. Steven
Weinberg’s The First Three Minutes—the theory of the big bang], but that’s all he
needed. Like Proust, one book will do it.
Inevitable. So, it was inevitable that when I shipped out in early ’46 to come
home I was on a huge transport. It was inevitable that while I was waiting [to board ship],
I was the only white man in an all-black tent. Here I was a Southern redneck boy. But the
DNA had told me something. You think I’m crazy. But I’m not. And if you just study the
line of those who survived among your own in background, you’ll understand it better.
Mathematics is at work, and only those who are left, not one of them were left, but those
that did, some among them had the genetics to see a larger picture, and to keep instilling
hope in mankind. So, naturally, I proposed just what I said to you. I was in that tent with
all blacks, and they were speaking their own patois. You know all about Yiddish. And
somebody like Paul Muni had that kind of a background. It’s another language. But you
want to go beyond that. Like Margo Bender. You know Margo?
HT: I do not.
LQ: Well, it’s your duty to get to know Margo Bender who is in languages over here at the
university. At the moment she’s with Dr. Sole’s group [who with various helpers] has
been excavating on Crete for thirty years. And she’s down in there digging. Margo
Bender has mastered eight languages, reading, and writing. She’s a woman to know.
All right, what’s that got to do with me sitting here talking to you about whatever
for [UNCG University Libraries Director] Rosann Bazirjian? My answer to that would be
take a minute to sit down with Rosann, and maybe Dr. Crowe who, for reasons known
only to her, has begun to recede, to distance. She is still the head of faculty senate where I
arose once to say, if you want to be a mediocre university, you’re right on course. Or if
you want to do something about it, you can make this into a great university. As this will
be. It will be a great library, Hermann. And Rosann Bazirjian, and people like Dr. Crowe,
despite the fact that I don’t feel her presence. But she’s sure got good reasons, and she
might tell them to you. And you’d say, “Well, God almighty, I’m glad you told me.”
That’s Okay. I don’t care. What I care about was [and is] those students, Hermann.
HT: Are you talking about Kathy Crowe by any chance?
LQ: Yes, that’s who I am talking about. And the first person I saw when I laid sight at this
university after Greensboro Historical Museum, and maybe they got better leadership
now, and I think they have, but I went down there one day. I decided— I don’t know
11
exactly when, but it’s been some years ago, five or six maybe, and I went down there and
said, “What have you got on Edward R. Murrow in this Greensboro Historical Museum?”
And he says, “Well, the family gave us a few things and once in a while we’ll lay out an
exhibit.” And I says, “Thank you very much. I’m glad to have met you.” I knew I was in
the wrong place. And where was the right place? Where is the right place for saving
civilization in any epoch? Why do the barbarians go for it first? You know what I’m
talking about, the library. The bastion for civilization. And, so, I came over here.
Somebody is going to do something about getting something to perpetuate the principles
of Edward R. Morrow who helped to save Western civilization. What we had in the
poetic collection, we had one thing named for Morrow, and it was a dead-end boulevard
over on the eastside where the poor folks. Wasn’t that poetic? The blacks who have
suffered through all of this, and I was with them in the streets, and I feel honored when
they were in the streets here in the ’60s, and I was a newspaper man. And I went into the
streets. “Tell me a story.” And at first it was passive. And, then, it was active. Then it was
rioting. And I was in the streets for all of it. When I left town at Lexington where the
rioting really, really turned ugly because [of rampant whites], “I won’t have no ‘niggers’
taking over our territory.” They were in the streets rioting, the blacks, and the undercover
of darkness. You know about that from the history of minorities?
HT: Is this in Lexington, North Carolina?
LQ: Lexington, North Carolina. There was shooting and rioting, and overturning vehicles.
And the High Point [North Carolina] news reporter got shot over there. And it spread.
But the worst of the rioting that I remember was in Lexington, North Carolina. And I’m
presumptuous. So, and, therefore, I’m expendable. So, if there was calamity [for our
newspaper to cover—I was police reporter at the time for the Winston-Salem Journal],
“Send Queen.” If I didn’t come back, no great loss. I’m a little facetious, but I love the
man who chose me to go down there, Fred Flagler, F-L-A-G-L-E-R. the Flaglers. We did
a memorial service for Fred. [Anyway]. Fred sent me down there. “Queen, we’re going to
send you.” [Once, the Journal was] going to send me down East to the worst hurricane.
They said, “No, we’re not going to do that.” They called us back. So, I didn’t get to cover
that [Hurricane] Hazel, whatever. But, anyway, he said [about the Lexington riots], “I’m
going to send you down. We’ve got to send somebody down.” I was the utter-chaos
reporter. And they knew that I had a—now, you’re going to flinch a little when I say this.
Hermann, I felt a sense of mission. “Really? Come on, man. Mission? Come off that gas.
This is the real world.” There wouldn’t be a real world without a sense of mission like
Edward R. Morrow and Winston Churchill had. And a few guys, trying to think of that
great book, and some of those people, Jewish suffering during those terrible times who
were knocked down by the Nazis into the dirt. And I remember one of them. What is his
name? [Elie Wiesel]. You know this. You can fill in the blanks. But he survived. And
their message is still being told. But not enough of the message. They need to get all the
others in there, too. I’m speaking turkey with you. The blacks. And even the Gypsies.
The Gypsies? Who cares about the Gypsies? They’d steal you blind. I had one stealing
my wallet, and a deputy sheriff standing right beside me. It was challenge. In a Gypsy
camp in Winston-Salem [North Carolina]. And she had her hand on my wallet. It was
challenge. Can I do this thing? And challenge, I say to young Americans and wherever
12
you are, yeah. Although don’t carry it so far as a Gypsy. A Gypsy once told me the only
real good chicken has got to be stolen.
HT: Well, if we can digress to after you got out of the army you went to Chapel Hill, I
understand.
LQ: Yeah, what happened was—
HT: How did that come about?
LQ: I came back [from] the army, Dr. Alan K. Manchester, which is reason that [I not only
was a crusading journalist, but later a caring teacher at] UNCG, as well as the School of
the Arts—it all started with the School of the Arts. The post mortem, whatever is left, I
want to go to them for the students, and the needy students, and of them the gifted
students. Therefore, Warren Ashby [at UNCG] said “You can filter and get those who
can do something most to save and improve the lot of humankind.’ So, when I came
back—and I was—Dr. Alan K. Manchester of whom I am trying to honor now, at Duke
University, and that led me to meet Dr. Deborah Jakubs, J-A-K-U-B-S, [Director of
Libraries at Duke University]. And it is your duty to encounter [such people]. She is good
friends with Rosann [Bazirjian who] will tell you about Deborah Jakubs. She’s the result
of pogrom filtering out and suffering, those who have managed to survive.
HT: Is Dr. Jakubs at Duke University?
LQ: She is [Library] Director at Duke University, and one of the vice provosts there. And she
is so outrageously gifted—the DNA. And, you see, a lot of them died in the ovens,
Hermann. But some managed to live through it. But we must not overlook the—all of the
minorities and the have-nots of the world in our enthusiasm and our determination never
again. We’ve got to remember them. And that’s the reason when I—when they told me
we’ve got to have a little ceremony over here at Jackson [Library] for whatever. For what
you are trying to do for whatever is left [in bequest] for gifted, needy students, filtering
through the Residential College. But, also, there’s another program. And I’m not going to
take time to tell what it is, guaranteed another program here on campus that takes
students that didn’t have a chance of a snowball, and don’t—snowball in hell—and say,
“Hey, we’ve got a little bit of money here.” I don’t know what money [is] going to be.
But whatever it is, residual, that’s going to be part of it. And that’s going to be part of it
here for Edward R. Morrow Heritage Gallery. And people like Dr. Crowe. When I came
over here [to challenge Jackson Library leadership] and Rosann was not here. And I was
in overdrive by that time. I’m a sports car man, Okay? But only with the [ones that] have
the gear, the stick. So, when I talk 308 Ferrari, I’m talking with a stick. No automatic
transmission thank you very much. You rob generations with automatic transmissions.
That’s a primitive metaphor. They’ve got to discover what they’re capable of becoming
by adversity. And the most brilliant soul I ever met was from the Iran. So, we are going
to label her a terrorist? She’s a holy terror. She’s [of the] Muslim [culture but no
fanatics]. She’s married to a Jewish guy who is heading up one of the major newspapers.
But they found some meeting ground, Okay? I sound like I’m digressing here. I ain’t
13
digressing one bit, baby. I’m talking survival for people to make this a better planet and
[Dr. George Wald, Nobel Laureate in ultimate mathematics], wrote that book. It says if
we’re so stupid that we don’t use what—the best DNA for positives, then we will nuke
each other out, and that will kill everything above ground, and above the water. But it
doesn’t kill everything down below in the deep seas, does it that we know so very little
about? And the deep subterranean earth, it will still be around. And [Dr. Wald] says, if
that happens, maybe the next evolution will come up with a life that’s better and more
deserving to bring about equality for humankind. If we don’t bring about equity for the
haves and the have-nots, we don’t deserve to live on this planet. And if we announce all
that wealth and it’s in the hands of a few with deference and care and love in one case or
two—Min Klein, oh, God, I love her. I’m glad I got that in. One of these days you’ll find
out who Min Klein was, you’ll find out who the Samet family is if you don’t already
know. And when you find out about them, you’ll find out about Min Klein. And she’s got
a place in this university. And she came over here [to UNCG] trying to improve, trying to
improve others, herself and others.
All right. That’s digressing all over the place and isn’t fair to you. It’s eleven
o’clock now. And we’re supposed to be out of here in an hour or so. So, let me—I will
say this that I was going to say, then, and then I keep going on. I have to answer your
question about Duke. And what happened to me and going to [the University of North]
Carolina [at Chapel Hill]. I came back, and Dr. Manchester, I got in touch with him, and
he says, “I want you to go up to Appalachian State Teachers [College],” it was teachers’
college then, not university. “I want you to go up there. It’s a good school. And they’ve
got some good professors, because they retired out of the Up-East schools to commune
with nature. And he was exactly right. Some of the greatest professors I’ve ever met,
Cratis Williams, and another one was teaching World Government. Well, anyway, [Dr.
Manchester] says, “Stay up there until I can get an opening for you. Because you came
back here [from World War II] later than the others. And I’ve got to find an opening, and
I’ll get you back in here, and you’ll go on and fulfill your dream that you and I know
about.” And by that time I did some arithmetic. Wait a minute, here. If I wait and then go
on to Duke, law degree, and Georgetown, etcetera, etcetera, I’m going to be at least forty-two
years old. I wasn’t going to wait. I was too eager to save the world. I tried to—I
applied to the State Department and got accepted. They said, “You’ll have to wait.” I was
editor and janitor of a little weekly. Left-wing, real—people today don’t know what
liberal and left-wing are. But I was the real stuff. And one or two of us still extant around
here. And funny thing, Min Klein was one of them. Isn’t that remarkable? She was a
remarkable woman. And, so, I says, “I’m not going to do that. I’m going to go down to
[University of North Carolina at] Chapel Hill. Here I was a Duke man. And I got caught
over at Chapel Hill when I was at Duke over there painting up the steps, “Go Duke.” You
see, I was bad as—I could be baddest. If I was going to do it, I wanted to excel at it. And,
so, we got caught over at Duke—I mean over at Carolina painting this steps with Duke
blue, and they had a little one-room police station. And what they did was administered
justice. They held us in that place until they let the Carolina students know that some
Duke men had come over and painted up the steps in Duke Blue. And, then, they told us
after a sea of heads were lined up outside on each side of the walkway from the police
shack to the street where a car had pulled up, a sea head awaited us all Carolina men and
women. And, then, the police chief says—there were several of us from Duke on this
14
caper. And, then, the police says, “Gentleman, you are free to go.” Through that sea,
lining up each side of that walkway to awaiting station wagon we were free to go. So, we
ended up in a fraternity house where they shaved our heads in unimaginable and
outrageous disorders and painted on us, and [then] they say, “Okay, guys, you can go
back to Duke now.” So, we had to clean ourselves up. And I was on a scholarship at
Duke—work, working in a coffee shop for the super-rich from up East, you know, to
serve them and their dates to come over to the coffee shop. And I had to shave my head
clean to get the paint off and everything and go to work. So, I was the one early shaven-head
dudes. And somebody about the level of provost of the West Campus, he was the
top honcho, came into that coffee house soon after that and took my table. And he says—
he eyeballed that shaven head. And, of course, he knew everything. He says, “Your
name?” In those days—this was days where freshman wore dinks. You know what I’m
talking about? I was like, little heads indicated our stupidity and servility. And whatever
any upper classman told us to do—it was kind of like—
HT: A little beanie?
LQ: That’s right. It was a little beanie. And, so, the head of the west campus says, “What is
your name, again?” Well, I hadn’t said anything. But he knew my table. And I says,
“Well my name, sir, is Larry Queen.” And he says, “Well, you know, Larry, sometime
I’d like—I would really like for you to drop by my office and talk to me.” I never got
there. If he waited, he waited in vain. He never called. He never issued orders for [me] to
be brought in. Well, that was an invasion of Chapel Hill. And, then, as it turned out I
couldn’t wait. And, so, I went down to Chapel Hill, and I thought I’ll get a journalism
degree, and I’ll save civilization that way. Meanwhile I was already been accepted for the
state—United States Department of State for Foreign Service. But I couldn’t wait,
Hermann. I don’t know whether I can vividly enough stir in your sensibilities my
necessity not to wait.
HT: Listen—
LQ: I was an idiot.
HT: Well, not really, because many of the guys who came back from Second World War felt
like they had lost so much of their youth, and they really wanted to—
LQ: Do something.
HT: Do something and get on with their life.
LQ: That’s right. That’s exactly right. So, you are paraphrasing excellently. Perhaps not with
the fervor. I’m not sure. You’ve got to talk to your forbearers to talk about fervor.
Because, man, you were lucky. I mean you just had to do something. Well, for the stupid
planet to bring about—instead of saying “War, kill,” sit here at the table. I’m a big United
Nations advocate. But forces have suffered, so are not for the United Nations; because
they think it may allow their nation to be wiped out. And your heritage is involved in
15
that. And what are we going to do? We’ve got to sit down at the United Nations. And the
good news is like I feel it right here on this campus, and in these students, slouching off
to Bethlehem waiting to be born. They’re going to do something. They’re going to do
something. God, I get—I’m so thrilled when I encounter these students. But there are
reactionaries there, because they’ve been dumbed down. But they’re going to make a
difference. They’re going to make a positive difference. Elizabeth Zinser could talk to
you about that. Dr. Crowe, even though she—I feel like Dr. Crowe flinches now when
my name is raised. And it may undo any respect you have. I don’t know. And, frankly, if
it does, then I will shake my fist at the universe. Because I believe, in one thing I do truly
believe. And that is that we’ve got a duty, those of us with opportunity and the DNA, to
stand up. And I have to be careful, because I’ve got a lady love who thinks opposite to
me. Don’t make yourself a target. It won’t get anything done that way. But that’s the
reason I had to have Trudy Bee over there in that all-white entourage of leadership, and I
knew some people there who had a higher, larger vision and I think Rosann is one of
them.
HT: What is Trudy Bee’s last name?
LQ: Ain’t that awful? You’ll have to ask somebody else, or I can e-mail it to you. [Her
maiden name is Trudy Bee].
HT: Okay. That will be fine.
LQ: Trudy Bee is a blood-line mix of African American and Jamaican, and very proud of it,
hoorah, who—she was born in upper New York State next door to West Point. And, so,
her first job to speak of was working in something akin to coffee house confectionary,
quick, whatever—on campus at West Point. And she came down here. Trudy Bee. I’ll e-mail
it to you. But Trudy Bee—and she recognizes, Hermann, Trudy Bee recognizes
what this old Southern redneck [is all about]. “Are you doing this for me?” She
recognizes what I was trying to do. “Hey, white folks, pay attention.” And that’s all
minorities and majorities, Hermann. Pay attention. We’re in this thing together, or we’ll
die together. We’ll all nuke each other out. That’s a syllogism that cannot be refuted. And
Edward R. Morrow was smart enough to know it. When you go home, you’ve got
children, haven’t you?
HT: No.
LQ: Okay. You’ve got nieces and nephews, haven’t you?
HT: Yes.
LQ: Yeah. And they mean something to you, too.
HT: Yes.
16
LQ: And you can hug them, and they’re manifestations of genealogy, of races—not races but
generations of people who have known suffering like as how unto. We don’t even dare
talk about it. Welcome, and would you permit me to be outrageous enough to ask you to
the one that you know is most gifted in that light. In your heart you know there’s one. It
will probably be a girl, because genetically they are more gifted then men, not without
practical reason. They bring to life perpetually. And they don’t want little children to be
born on a battlefield. So, who’s going to protest? Look down in South America. The
mothers taking to the streets. Wow. Scary, ain’t it. And I know when I’m using ignorant
patois, too. And you know I know it. Choose the one that you know, and I’m into this
every day with people from the Middle East on my beloved wife’s line. And I see certain
ones among them who really got it, who can really do something to make a positive
difference in the lives of as many people as possible. Otherwise, what have we got,
barbarity?
HT: Well, tell me about your life as a journalist. I know you’ve had—
LQ: Okay. All right. So, I went down and got the undergraduate degree at Chapel Hill. And I
came back to Greensboro. And I—as of now you know that the “T” in Larry T. Queen
was for trouble. If they call it trouble, then I’m very proud of it, because, yes, I was the
editor of a real left-wing [weekly newspaper]. Yes, I was the editor of a real liberal, ultra-liberal
then. There ain’t none of them no more, because everybody’s afraid. And they’re
looking out for their own. And I’m not too big on me, me, me, me, me, and dough,
dough, dough. Hermann, we have a duty to these young people. We’ve got a duty.
Edward R. Morrow is personification of it. So, that was my work as editor and janitor of
that little left-wing weekly newspaper, the Democrat, and there’s a lot of history down
there. That’s where the mega billion dollar NASCAR empire began. Bill France had
offices upstairs over mine. You ever heard of Bill France?
HT: I have. I think I saw him on TV one time.
LQ: You bet your booties. They own most of it. Well, what they don’t own, other groups [do].
What he was, he was a mega billion dollar empire. And he started out stock car races
over at Winston-Salem. There were the guys in Wilkes County, bootleggers that wanted
to show they could outrun anybody. And that’s the birth of the Blues and the birth of the
Bill France empire. And he was upstairs, and I was downstairs attacking the [Ku Klux]
Klan. And there were people, Unitarian Church, some of them, they saw some things.
And I was—see, I am just an old Southern redneck, stumbling into people who were
turning on lights in my mind. And, so, with people like Min Klein, with people like I
wish I could remember her name. Because she was a world government advocate. She
was an advocate for let’s sit down, and we’re supposed to be above an animal level. We
don’t have to kill. We can reason this thing out. And meanwhile you say, “No, no, they’re
killing our people.” But we can get enough people who have power like the United States
has had, but it’s now being misused.
But [Barack] Obama and, yes, I am an Obama man. And, yes, I was proud when a
black man was elected the president of the United States of America. And I was thrilled.
And I stood in a long line downtown to march down there where Obama came to the train
17
station and risked his life. He could have been shot down. And he stands in danger of it
right now. If Obama lives through to complete this term, it will be a miracle. It will be
even more of a miracle if he gets reelected, because the forces of fear and parties of God
are out to get him. Because they fear for themselves. Now, how much shall we fear for
ourselves at the expense of humankind? Somebody has got to stand up. And you know
people in your own world who stood up with great courage, great courage. And that takes
some courage. And you can get shot down when you do that. And, so, Obama very—it’s
a very real threat that he’ll get shot down. But if he isn’t, he is going to do things for the
have-nots. And how can you do things for the have-nots? If you own a world empire, and
you’ve got homes in Rome, and Madrid, and Paris, and Croatia, and Poland, and Russia,
how can you dare to stand up for the have-nots? As a gal across the street here, and I’m
not going to pretend to represent her position, but I can tell you one thing, she’s a girl
worth knowing. And in a minute I’ll tell you what her name is. She’s the head of Russian
studies. And she is—what is her name? Dr. [Kathy Ahern] in languages, and she goes to
Russia, and she goes to Poland. And she’s a—she’s a very gifted gal. Are you getting any
imagery? She’s head of Russian studies here.
HT: I can probably look it up, but I don’t—
LQ: Yeah, do. You still got time. For the sake of hugging of your most gifted niece or
nephew, you’ve still got time, Hermann. Now, I’m a nut, Okay? But I may be a nut with
a little bit more intuitive, instinctive DNA grasp of larger horizons than maybe apparent
at this moment. Me, me, me, doesn’t get it. Dough, dough, dough doesn’t get it. So, that’s
the reason I’m here talking to you today. And my wife didn’t want me doing this. Mind
your own. Do your business. And you probably do more damage than good by going
public. Well, Dr. Crowe, what’s her first name?
HT: Kathy.
LQ: Kathy Crowe, she didn’t get to where she is. She’s too smart for that. She’s a gifted
human being. Rosann, too. And when Kathy Crowe told me [Edward R. Morrow was her
hero when] I burst into her office, the village idiot, but with a dream. And a mission. And
I mentioned Edward R. Morrow, her face went radiant. Let me repeat that to you. Dr.
Crowe’s face—and I don’t stand on propriety. You pretty well got the evidence on that,
haven’t you? Dr. Crowe’s face went radiant. And she says to me what makes all the sense
in the world. And look at your heritage. And think of Edward R. Morrow and whom he
stopped. And, then, you can understand. She says, “Edward R. Morrow is my hero.” Now
that’s a quote. If she denies it, she’s really retrenching. And she could have good reason
to deny it, because they can get you, boy. They can get you for putting in too much time
with me, because I’m a troublemaker right here in River City. I see that we can work
things out without killing. I believe that. Why? Because I’ve got to believe it, Hermann. I
got to believe it. And Min Klein was a knight in the shining armor. Min knew it. And you
knowing the folks over at Temple Emmanuel, the new one.
HT: I’ve been there one time for open house.
18
LQ: Okay. Well, and I’ve got buddies who keep contacts there, and the rabbi extraordinaire
and I used to vie for the favors of Min Klein. Larry Sommers, I believe his name is. But,
anyway, I’m saying this to you, because I’m saying we have got to set down and the
people that really are gifted with a larger vision. I can’t just speak for the Gypsies, and
for the Lebanese, and Lord a mercy you got a gal here, woo, is she set. You know who
I’m talking about? She’s heading up—she just became the head [of the Warren Ashby
Residential College]. Micheline Chalhoub-Deville. You’ve got to know. Because you are
in an important position. Micheline Chalhoub-Deville. I think she married a Frenchman
or something. She’s the head of the Residential College and with an attendant title like
vice provost or whatever. She just took that job. And they wanted her. [Some] were
disappointed that—I think the provost wanted her to move up in that direct line. Because
this girl is going to do something. Well, so, that’s the reason I’m here. And when I
went—I’m trying to recoup here. I came back attacking the Klan, left-wing. Bill France
was upstairs. And then I got, oh, yeah, I wouldn’t want to miss that. Where in the world
did I come from, Hermann? We’re talking about DNA, Hermann. And that sounds like
Hitler, doesn’t it?
HT: Yes.
LQ: And it is. But what could be for consummate good or evil. It has been both, hasn’t it? All
right. I was down there on South Elm at Deal Printing Company writing, and attacking
the Klan, and calling for world government, stopping warfare. And, so, I was reaching
out until there were fingers of people who felt the same way reaching back. And, so,
Unitarian, [Bahá'í], and so forth. I met a lot of people who thought the same way. And I
want to complete this thought.
Oh, yeah, among them—this was 1952 -’53 when I was doing that. I found out
that the Democrat newspaper where I was given a free hand—I really thought Carson
Deal, a mountain man who was hiring blacks when—for [skilled] jobs when nobody else
would in Greensboro or anywhere else, and they wouldn’t serve them at Boyd Morris’
Mayfair Cafeteria. I’m talking about where I was in those days, and what was happening.
Boyd Morris had the Mayfair Cafeteria and stood in the door telling those black people,
“Ain’t no way. No, I’m very sorry, but we cannot serve you.” And, then, some years later
at Woolworth some people sat in, and they weren’t all blacks. But, you know, it’s easy
for other courageous people to get lost when you’re looking after your own. That’s a very
important statement I just made to you. But there were white people who were also sit-ins
down there. Now keep in mind that was 1960, February 1960.
In 1952, 1952, ’53, Dr. David Jones, who is one of the greatest citizens that this
state ever had, as was Edward R. Morrow, and as was Frank Porter Graham. Dr. Frank
Porter—forgive me, Dr. David Jones, who had the DNA, and the whites would say,
“Yeah, I see some white blood in there. He’s a nigger, but I see some white blood in
there.” Are you picking up, Hermann, on what I’m really saying to you? Dr. David Jones
was the president of Bennett College for black, all-black women, a very—but there were
a few whites over there on the faculty. And there were some—a lot of, what did they call
them? White-black mixes, mulattos. And almost-white. And Dr. David Jones made the
point to me when he invited—he went through, boy, I got to be quick here, because this is
important. If anything I’ve got to say to you is important. Dr. Jones, there was a Deal
19
Printing Company, which saw beyond the end of their noses that people are people, and
that they’ve got it, they need to be given the opportunity to advance and become leaders
for their people, and not just for their people but for others. Carson Deal said, yes, if a
black is good enough that they know how to operate a linotype machine. Unheard of.
Operate a press, unheard of. Set type, unheard of. Get a black newspaper printed here.
Deal Printing Company, unheard of. Carson Deal did all of those things. And, so, the
black man who was getting out the black newspaper called The Future Outlook. A man
named J. F. Johnson, who had been working on a cotton plantation down in South
Carolina, and he was living in the basement, dirt basement of a tenant house for blacks,
dirt basement of a tenant house for blacks. He had to have a plank over the threshold to
walk out to hard ground because it had washed out, and taken “old Rhoadie” and a single
plow, hand-plow, and plowing acres and acres to raise cotton, which he then would pick.
And one day, Hermann, J. F. Johnson one day he told me because he and I understood
that there’s more to life than me, me, me, me, Okay? And we can do something to help
ourselves,, and when we do we can help others, too. And one day he took me aside and J.
F. Johnson and I had always been able to talk man-to-man. And, suddenly, one day we
were working at the compositor’s work bench, and I was putting together the Democrat,
and he was putting together the Future Outlook, he started acting—he’s a huge black
man. He started acting very nervous. It wasn’t Johnson at all. He was somebody else. He
had become what the whites made of blacks, as they made of Jews and others,
subservient. And here was this huge black man saying—kind of shuffling like Stepin
Fetchit. He was somebody completely different. And I says, “What’s going on?” He says,
“Boss man,” I says, “Boss man?” He says, “Well, I got to talk to you.” I says, “Well,
talk.” He says, “No, no, no, I got to talk to you off in a corner, privately.” I said, “Okay.”
So, we went off in the corner, Hermann, and he says, “I don’t want to say anything to
offend you.” I don’t know if you can fully appreciate this, but your granddaddy can. “I
don’t want to say anything to offend you, but I have been asked by Dr. David Jones, the
president of Bennett College, he called me in his office and asked me what I thought,
knowing that you, me, and David Jones knew each other and worked side by side and he
had a reputation for giving opportunity. Dr. Jones asked J.F. Johnson, what [Johnson]
thought about the idea of approaching Mr. Queen. And telling him that I, Dr. Jones,
would feel privileged if Mr. Queen might find the time that he could come by my office.
Now, that’s what you got to underline. A black man telling a white man to come by that
black man’s office? You can’t imagine that, can you? But your granddaddy sure as hell
can. “What do you think, Mr. Johnson?” And he was very formal. Oh, he was an elegant
man. If you go over to the main library downtown and look at the montage painted on the
walls, it will show people like revolutionaries like Dr. Jones, and Pfeiffer [Chapel] which
is the chapel [at Bennett College]. The tower of that chapel, and you’ve seen minorities
gave them the money, the Cone family gave them the money.
Don’t you see how it works? But we’ve got to somehow reach more of the
disenfranchised. And right here, this university, and I believe Rosann Bazirjian, I believe
she sees that larger picture. And Kathy Crowe, whatever happened to Kathy, I don’t
know. I’m sorry. And I still believe that she is a top-flight lieutenant who is saying and a
top-flight lieutenant to the faculty senate [where I] appeared and told them they could be
either mediocre, or they could be great. It’s just up to them. A result of that was that the
head of the Board of Trustees was Bell. Remember Bell, Kathy Bell? You may not—I
20
believe that’s right. She liked what I had to say. I didn’t know that she was there at the
meeting at Faculty Senate. And she called for a meeting of the heads of all the schools
and departments to sit down and talk about what could be done to improve this and lead
this university towards greatness.
And, well, there was some wonderful people there, some of them who are no
longer among us. Regimes change, and I’m going to try to keep optimistic about that.
But, Okay, we got to get on with this thing, and I know you’re chomping at the bit, that’s
an old Southern expression. We can bring people to the table and right here, this can
become a great library, and by God I know it’s going to, because Rosann’s hand’s in it. It
takes a bunch of courage, and you’ve got to play ball, politics all over the place. You’ve
got to get along and play footsie, or they’ll get you. And that’s where Obama is right
now. And that’s where Rosann is, and that’s where Kathy is, but I believe I see
something in Rosann. She comes out of that [Armenian] background, and they know
something about something about where they can get you. And middle Europe, I’ve got
friends from Croatia who think just exactly the opposite, PhDs, and well, maybe
something in that mishmash.
There’s a family here, primarily Jewish, New Jersey girl of marvelous
individually, and collectively, named Spaulding, S-P-A-U-L-D-I-N-G. The New Jersey
girl who comes from a background—pogrom—ancestry. And her family, very successful,
department store. They survived. And she’s got a couple of most gifted children, two
girls. Well, anyway, the mama, has. She cuts across the paths of the new Temple
Emmanuel. Min Klein was at the old Temple Emmanuel. She got out the temple
newspaper for thirty-two years. And she didn’t want to move. But you know how it is, if
you can’t change, you’ll collapse. But she didn’t collapse till the end, thank God.
All right, where is this leading? I hope it’s leading to what Bill told me, Bill
Spaulding told me in the chaos corner down here, Tate Street Coffeehouse, which is
going through throws of calamitous possible change at the moment. But he told me one
day, they’re coming to that corner, and they know that they can challenge me, and they
know that I’ll be a beneficiary in being challenged and keeps me from caving in, and
giving up, and losing all hope. Bill told me one day, we were sitting back there, and we
got a guy right here in this library is one of the most – one of the brightest stars of any I
know, he and the gal from Iran. And they come in the chaos corner to provoke the old
man, hoping to maybe something out of all this blabber may be a glimmer of light. And
that’s what I’m hoping. And here with you, Hermann, and Bill Spaulding says, “You
know, Larry,” and he’s with Federal Reserve Board, and a builder, went off in the woods
like Thoreau. Ask the Big Questions like Stephen Weinberg says if you don’t, your life
will be a very limited existence no matter. And Spaulding says, “You know, Larry,
somewhere in all this mumbling, I know there is a point. If we can only find it. And that’s
kind of where I am with you now, Hermann. I do believe there’s one in there, and I kind
of got a hunch that if you think about your nieces and nephews you may think so, too. So,
go ahead. What do you need to know?
HT: Well, let’s see. So, you went to work at Bennett College, I understand for a few years.
LQ: I went to work there, and I made a miss-move. I should have stayed there until I moved
upward, and onward, and to the State Department, which I could have done. But, instead,
21
I was director of public relations for Bennett College in 1952 and 1953 in which time Dr.
David Jones, who was all—those girls were like his daughters. He adored them. Those
students. And I’m going to tell you something, I’m nuts enough. That’s the way I felt
about my students. I really loved them. Why in the world did I feel that? Was I trying to
be God? Maybe so. I hope that somebody in there might rise up above the masses and
save humankind from its folly.
HT: How long did you stay at Bennett College?
LQ: I was there ’52, end of ’52, ’53. ’54 I came to the attention of the newspaper, the News &
Record, and they wanted me. And I saw a chance for more money, and that was a
mistake, one of the biggest mistakes I ever made. I went there. But it’s essentially to tell
you this, that while I was the director of public relations, a white man in an all-black
woman’s college.
HT: It must have been difficult.
LQ: It was marvelously difficult, and all of my white friends wanted to ask me that question
and didn’t know how. “Where is it you work?” “I work at Bennett College.” “Isn’t that
an”—and some of them would say “nigger,” and some of them would say “black” trying
to be more open-minded than they were. “Isn’t that a black school? Isn’t that a ‘nigger’
college?” “Yes.” “You mean you work for a ‘nigger?’” Can you imagine that? I got it.
Now, let me tell you what—
HT: That must have been very difficult in 1953.
LQ: It was the luckiest thing that ever happened to me, because it lifted me above the level. ? I
was getting there. But I was down at—and the Klan was raising hell. And people like
Unitarians and Min Klein, but she came later. But she was part of the progression, was
helping me to see a larger picture.
And Dr. David Jones, while I was there, end of ’52, beginning of ’53, and into
’54, white man in an all-black environment except there was one woman from Europe,
maybe from wherever who looked white, and plenty of mulattos. But Dr. Jones hired me
as Director of Public Relations in that time period. And in that time period the first black
ever to win this nation’s Book of the Year award was Ralph Ellison. If you don’t know
about Ralph Ellison, for God’s sake, hell’s sake, and I’m not a divine creationist, Google
him. Ralph Ellison wrote a book which became the first book ever to win this nation’s
Book of the Year award written by a black man. And he did it. And he won.
HT: That was what, mid 1950s, 1954?
LQ: It was 1950s—end of 1952, and that book was—and told it all, Hermann. The title of that
book was the Invisible Man. It was like I just saw this movie, “A Song to Remember,”
where Russia was oppressing the people of Poland. And, so, if you were a minority being
oppressed you were invisible to the rulers. You just brought the food. You did the menial
jobs, the Invisible Man, it’s a book really—I got no business except is there is any reason
22
for me to still be on the planet, and Trudy Bee told me there was, that I had a mission.
And I said, “Come on, Trudy Bee” And I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. I was over
there before daylight. And what’s the name of that place, Charlie’s Place, Chancellor’s
husband. And she let me in there at five o’clock in the morning. And I loved it. You have
to have some alone time. No matter all those around you, you’ve got to have some alone
time, totally private. And Trudy Bee allowed me to have it. I could get in there before her
opening and do—I could contemplate the Bigger Questions. I could write. I could read,
essentially reading. I could plot for how I was going to sell real estate in the real world,
and leave my beloved safe. She’s my reason for being, my wife. After all these years. I
walked into that little store, Lebanese immigrant store, on South Elm Street, and she was
sitting there. And you don’t believe in love at first sight, do you, Hermann?
HT: No.
LQ: Okay. Well, I’m going to tell you, Hermann, the minute I looked into that little girl’s
eyes, that was it.
HT: And when did you meet your wife?
LQ: That was in about 1946, and the parents individually met over in this country [after]
coming from Lebanon. And typically immigrant store, owned a little store, down across
the tracks to sell the working girls. And Blue Bell was down there. So, were the working
girls. And, so, Blue Bell and I have been in touch with the guy who was the principal in
that, in building Blue Bell and the following over at the Wrangler’s. See, he started
Wrangler’s. And that went up here to VF, which is that big high-rise center up across
from Panache, and the head of relationships there is a super bright girl, and she found out
about this crazy old man (me). So, she has done some interviewing and recording on that.
But the thing was that the fellow who did it all, started out at Blue Bell, and he’s the one
down on South Elm there next door to Deal Printing Company, and Bill France upstairs.
History was made. And the blue bloods of this city, early blue bloods lived down there on
what was on Asheboro Street, and now how ironic. Now it’s Martin Luther [King, Jr.]
Boulevard. And they were the blue bloods of the city. Well, I’m saying as much as I can
to you and still meet the deadline. But what was that guy’s name that was head of [Blue
Bell]—McNair. He may have been on the Board of Trustees of Blue Bell, but there was
another man who started it. But let me see if I can bring this thing to a tie together.
HT: Well, tell me about your time at UNCG—because you taught here for several years on
campus?
LQ: On the campus?
HT: Yes.
LQ: Oh, I got—now I want to be sure that you understand fully the great significance of the
fact that the first black to ever in this nation to win the Book of the Year award was
Ralph Ellison.
23
HT: Right.
LQ: And, so, Dr. Jones wanted the best for his girls. So, he would have this annual
homecoming. What he called it, the best for his girls. Now, Hermann, they couldn’t be
just first class. They came to be known as the Bennett Belles, B-E-L-L-E-S, and one of
them became the mayor of this city, and that was a triumph beyond understanding,
because—and the white leadership of this town was paying no attention whatever to the
blacks. And they voted against any funding for the February One. I’m going to name a
name. That was the banker from out at Guilford College. Isn’t that ironic? Because
Guilford College is where the Quakers were from. And what was his name? Holliday,
David Holliday. And I campaigned with his [advocate, father-in-law, I think] before the
break of dawn. I started to oppose campaigning. Well, I’m glad I knew his relative that
campaigned with me before daylight. But David Holliday has got to live with the legacy
that he leaves this town. And, yet, they honored him at the February One event where
they had—guys and I was in the rent house business back in the days when Jesse Jackson
was a student over at [North Carolina] A&T [State University]. And, so, and I had bought
a house from a gal who became also one of the top black leaders and moved to the west
[side of town], Alexander, Elreta Alexander. Know that name?
HT: Yes.
LQ: Well, she and I owned property of her forebears there, and I knocked the house down and
put in a parking lot. And I was down there all the time, had to be, because people would
poach on your property. And I rented the back part of the house next door where the
revolutionaries were meeting at night, Jesse Jackson, among them. And they accepted
me. I got accepted. There was just something about me. I think they believed that I might
be a contact for those bastards, the whites. And that I—maybe I saw a little bit of both
sides.
HT: And was—this was when Jesse Jackson was attending A&T State University?
LQ: Absolutely. And attending meetings next door in that house of subversives. You could
track this out. There are people who would substantiate this. But, anyway, that we had
Ralph Ellison [at Bennett College] as one of two people during that homecoming week.
And I was the head of public relations then. And I was their liaison with the white folks.
And when the white folks, one of the postal warehouses down there would be leering and
sneering and thinking, “Boy, that mulatto would be awful nice in bed,” and saying such
things to them, and here were the Bennett Belles taught by, what a yin-yang, huh? Taught
by Dr. Jones, “You must be better than the best. And wear gloves, white gloves.” That’s
the Bennett Belles. A guy like you, Hermann, for reasons of your nephews and nieces
need to know about this. That’s the reason I’m here. And I don’t know what it is with
Becky or Rachel, whatever her name is, Crowe, she needs to know. ’cause I might be—I
may have said things that kind of stepped on us.
HT: What made you decide to leave Bennett College?
24
LQ: A stupid mistake, money. From Bennett College, I should have gone right on to the
Department—the United States Department of State and gone on abroad. And, hell, I
would have saved civilization for you, [facetious of course]. I let you down. I flat out let
you down. But you know the good news? The students are going to do it. And you know
they tell me that? You think I’m kidding. You think this crazy, old man has had too much
cognac, or I’ve aged out. But a little bit of the latter, and soon going to be some of the
former, because me and a guy that worked with cripples who smile because of him, we’re
going to get the best cognac. And I have a guy who has made a fortune, he’s a multi-millionaire
comes to my house every year with a fifth of the best cognac. I’ve got a
collection. And I rarely ever touch it, because if I did, I might ‘break bad.” But that’s a
fact. And he made a fortune. His son opened a bank here. And you’d know it. But,
anyway.
HT: Well, how did you end up teaching at UNCG? Tell me about that?
LQ: I got to tell you, and I don’t want to neglect to tell you that when Ralph Ellison was there,
and he also had a gravel voice. [A white] internationally known bureau chief for every
big newspaper that has ever existed up in New York area named Allen Raymond, A-L-L-E-
N, R-A-Y-M-O-N-D [was there]. And you’ll find, because they interviewed him for
the local newspaper. And they also, because of my friend from New York City, I’m real
weird. One of my longest time and dearest friends, although he’s gotten all into the high
end academy religious group and has started a new church, and he married a gal about
twenty years younger, and she’s still beautiful. She could leave him right there on the
porch, you know, when you find somebody much younger. But she wouldn’t find
anybody quite as special as he is. And he was born [and spent] his early years in New
York City. And his daddy became—I’ll not tell you too much, because you’ll be able to
identify him, but his daddy moved South to high places in finance. And, so, that brought
him South. And he says, “Well, hell,” his son says, “I’ll save the ignorant bastards down
there.” He came South, and he and I ended up co-chairing—it was all mathematics. When
I decided to go to Chapel Hill and get on with it, and save the world, there was a guy
down there, oh, God, it’s hard not to cry because it was so beautiful. I went into this class
as a junior. It was the Department of Journalism being headed up by a fiercely old world
newspaper man who smoked cigars endlessly. One had to fan the air to get to see his eyes
named Skipper Coffin—O. J. Coffin, C-O-F-F-I-N.
All of this is a matter of record. And I was a hunt-and-peck boy. Because I was so
fast at it by that time I had tried taking touch typing, and it slowed me down. And he
says, “We can’t wait, Queen, get on with it. Go with the hunt-and-peck.” That was fine
on uprights. But when we got those sensitive keyboards, the computers in the ’70s at our
newspaper, the big, old thunderous fingers were brushing across keys and that tender
little touch type keyboard wouldn’t take it. And it blow up Moscow and sent reams of
copy, incorrect copy, and typos. So, that slowed me down to keep—and even now you’ll
see that my typing is typo-ridden.
But, anyway, I got into that university and picked up a little change being—
tutoring on the side and had some superb professors. But O. J. Skipper Coffin, he was the
man. And I says, “Don’t you think I ought to take touch-typing?” “Hell, no, you’re faster
than anybody. Don’t fool around. What I want, I want the stories.” Oh, and he was
25
thunder and lightning. So, I went into this class. It was headed by a guy from Louisiana
who was so gifted that he was in constant pain of perception as my Iranian friend, the
most brilliant of the lot, describes it. You are so aware that it just—it gives you fits at
times of depression, and you’re lucky if you don’t turn to booze. This Iranian has times of
depression. I know a number of people, and some of them over here, like that—they’re
just too damn gifted, too DNA wise. Okay. So, we decided—my friend, Allen Raymond,
we were sitting in my office on that campus one day in early 1953. He, Allen Raymond,
and Ralph Ellison and this redneck reconstructed Southern boy heading up [public
relations at] an all-black women school in 1952 and ’53, unheard of, impossible. What
was I trying to prove? I don’t know. But I thought I was trying to do something for
humankind and bring about more equalization and haves and have-nots. Save the world. I
really was foolish enough to believe that. And I’m still foolish enough to believe the
students can do a little bit. It doesn’t have to be all at once, but a little bit. And [Edward]
Gibbons’Decline and Fall of the Civilization [Ed. note: The History and the Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire] in 1700s he said, Why don’t these people wise up? They’re
making the same stupid mistakes over again, and over. And, so, Rise and Fall, and here
we are again doing the same thing. If they can keep Obama in wraps. So, Allen Raymond
said to me, “Tell you what, guys”—Allen Raymond, that white gravel voice, he was as
typical New England—brilliant gravel voice newsman extraordinaire international,
credentially. And he talked that way. And here sits Allen in one chair, and me in another,
and Ralph Ellison in another. Now, Hermann, there is no way in the world, in the
universe, other than mathematical probability that I could have been a member of that
trio. And if I had to explain that to you, it’s kind of like when somebody asked Louis
Armstrong, “What is jazz?” And he says, “If you have to ask, you’ll never know.” There
was no way that I, Lawrence Talmadge Queen, Jr., a reconstructionist of a primitive
brutal South that I loved, did you hear the end of that sentence? It was my world. Do
something about it dumb-dumb. That’s me, I’m talking to. No way in the world for me to
be sitting there with Allen Raymond, and the man, the black man, the first black to ever
win this nations’ Book of the Year award. I couldn’t be there.
HT: Was Mr. Ellison in town for a special event?
LQ: For that home—
HT: Homecoming?
LQ: I think it was something like home making weekend, or something like that. It’s a matter
of record, because my friend from New York City, whose name—I’ll not get too deep
here, I love the guy. And we’ve got something. We’ve been there. We’ve been through
the valleys of the shadow of death. We have—his daddy was of the Irving Park crowd.
And a chief financial officer, [who] came down from Manhattan. And I, the [grandson] of
slave owners, the grandson of slave owners, and brutality of a primitive South, and I end
up down at Chapel Hill for reasons that you’ve already heard about, and go into a class
and Skipper says, “Let me get my schedule of classes.” And the first class I walked into
the professor was a guy named John W. McReynolds, M-C, capital R-E-Y-N-O-L-D-S.
John W. McReynolds. And he came to be known to us with great love as “Johnny Mac.”
26
And, ironically, one of the e-mail addresses that I’m running into, and I can’t take time to
tell you involving all of this, totally unknown to the people, or to me, that e-mail address
is Johnny Mac.
HT: Now, was he on this campus, or was he at Chapel Hill?
LQ: He was down at Chapel Hill. And he was a journalism professor at the time of Skipper
Coffin, and he was so gifted and married to a woman, who was young and beautiful, and
we all “loved” his wife.. And he knew it. And he found it extremely funny. He was a
member of one of the fraternities. And I was a non-fraternity man. And, so, anyway, there
was a national columnist, I’m apologetic for taking time to remember. I’m too slow up
here. It was a national columnist, and he started a national drive to raise food for the
needy right at the time that I was in Johnny Mac’s class. And there was this prep school,
Episcopal, you know, upper echelon Manhattan kid came South with his daddy, and ends
up in the class with me, now. And Johnny MacReynold says, “This class”—Drew
Pearson was that guy’s name, the national columnist, he says, “This class,” and that’s the
way he did things. He says—we came in there about the second day. He says, “This class
has decided to take on a project. We’re going to do something to help the needy. We’re
going to sponsor the Chapel Hill portion of Drew Pearson’s national friendship train
drive.” And two members in this—you’ll get a smile out of this. “And two members of
this class have volunteered to co-chair it.” Manhattan super wealthy kid, Smith, and
redneck Southerner, Larry Queen. We co-chaired that job. That’s how we met. That was
just the beginning. And to this day closer than blood brothers, although he is [in] a bind.
It involves a mutual friend at Greensboro College, home campus for Guilford Tech. Hell,
you name it, North Carolina State [University], Duke [University], all of us were
involved in this. And I saw one of them this morning who is professor over at Greensboro
College. And I said, “You just tell Smith I still love him.” And he says, “Hell, he knows
that.” And I told him that I was going up here to the ninth floor. And he says, “That’s a
religion floor.” I says, “That’s all right.” See, he had all ? Okay. So, when Allen
Raymond proposed said, “Tell you what, we’ve been eating over here at the cafeteria at
Bennett all week. Tomorrow”—
God, I’d love to have a cup of coffee. I’m a coffee fanatic. I love the taste of pure
unadulterated coffee. It lifts the soul above the level of farce, and gives it some of the
grace of tragedy.
Al says, “Tell you what, guys, we, three, tomorrow, let’s go downtown and eat.”
Did you hear that, Hermann? In 19—that was in March of 1953. And Ellison had just
won this nation’s Book of the Year award. And Allen says, “Let’s go downtown
tomorrow and eat.” And Ralph Ellison sitting there across from me, the three of us now
around that table. Looked at me and raised his eyebrow says, “Wonder, what’s the hell is
wrong with him?” Of course, he knew I understood. And he looked at Raymond and says,
“We, three, are going to eat downtown?” And I can’t give you the tone, because it
wouldn’t be unkind. He could be incredulous, and he was. And so was I. Because this
Allen Raymond was nobody’s fool. He was playing the role of a fool, right? He had
decided—I know he never admitted it to us, but he had decided he was going to test it. He
was damn right. He said, “Damn right, we’re going to do it.” And he says, “I’m going to
arrange everything.” And Ralph Ellison said, “We can’t do that. They won’t serve us. No
27
place in this city will serve us.” The man just won the Book of the Year award for this
nation, made no difference.
What’s his name? Down at Charlotte, then, who did a lot for civilization, what
was his name? Jewish boy, what was his name? He came up with vertical integration.
Blacks and whites and Jews can all eat at the same table as long as they’re all standing
up. Do you know about that story?
HT: I had not heard that one, no.
LQ: Oh, you got to know it. You can’t go about your life and not know. You’ve got some
nieces and nephews. What is his name? Golden. Oh, he was a genius and a great man.
And he did as much to break down barriers in South as any human being on the planet.
Golden—Harry Golden. Now, we got it right. Harry Golden.
HT: I have heard of Harry Golden.
LQ: That is he. All right. And Harry came up with that solution. And in part it was true. You
stand up in some places. But there was no place in the City of Greensboro or anywhere
else that we could—that the black man who had won that award for the nation.
HT: So, where did you go to eat?
LQ: I, uh, I told them, I said, “You know, this ballgame ain’t over yet. By God, we three will
eat in an all-white section of Greensboro,” among whom there are some middle-to-upper
income including one that owned a trucking line. And I shared an apartment on those
premises. I got to be sure I don’t—let’s strike out as unusable, the part about—Okay, to
my apartment, shared with a young man on the West side of town.
HT: Sure.
LQ: Okay. It’s Okay to say I says, “I have a roommate at an apartment on the west side, right
in the heart of white Greensboro, and by God we can have lunch there in that apartment,
the three of us. Ralph Ellison, Allen Raymond, and the old reconstructed redneck, I think,
the end of that sentence. But I had to go to my roommate whose daddy owned that place.
And tell him, “Look, this is what we are planning to do, and I don’t believe your daddy
would like it.” So, if you don’t want me to bring them over here, I won’t do it.” You
know what he said? “Bring him.” I love that boy to the day I die. He’s got it. And we’re
talking something that relates back to your nieces and nephews, Hermann, that I hope
you’re a smart boy. I can see you got something going, but don’t let it get knocked.
Don’t let it get knocked. For that white boy, my roommate to buck his daddy, he
probably figured he would never know, but he was willing to take the chance. I’m taking
a chance with you, Hermann. But I’m willing to take it. And I think by now you and I
know why. God, we love those students and what we might be able to do turn them on.
HT: Mr. Queen, we have to wrap it up fairly soon.
28
LQ: Okay.
HT: Just a couple more questions. Well, tell me about—I think you taught some journalism
classes here at UNCG.
LQ: Okay.
HT: Tell me about that a little bit.
LQ: In my second life, or third whatever, and I made a wrong move going down to the
newspaper chair. Then for a time I just went into hiatus and went home on the farm and
helped my mom and daddy, both of them crippled. And you know his story. He went
from total paralysis to raising 10,000 turkeys. I think I told you, didn’t I?
HT: I haven’t heard that, no.
LQ: Well, that’s so you get a little bit of determination and where it came from. He was
totally paralyzed. Nothing. No control, no nothing, legs down. A year in the hospital, and
they said he could have a productive life, but he’d have to accept it. He’s going to live in
that wheelchair. And he says, “I respect you, but I’ll come out of this wheelchair.” And
he did. And he got a place in the country where he could crawl, drag himself, until he
could crawl. And, then, well, completely rehabilitated himself, became the biggest turkey
raiser in North Carolina till the Department of State, Department of Agriculture
Extension heard about this crippled, and all the neighbors wanted to help him when they
saw what he was doing. I mean there’s a lot of hope out there, Hermann. They want to
help him. And they came. And they said, “Let us—we’re going to put up that barbed wire
fence so you can raise some cattle.” And he started out with raising chickens. And, then,
they raised a few of them and sold them. Raised out clean and ready, and, of course, he
did his state-of-the-art. So, his became the chickens they wanted. Then he went—the
Agriculture Extension Department came—they heard about him. They said, “We’re
thinking about starting a turkey production experiment for the state. You want to pioneer
it?” He says, “Sure.” And, so, they said, “Okay, we’ll provide the turkeys for you. You
start with a small group.” And he started with thirty turkeys, and raising the grain. And
that grew into raising 10,000 turkeys at a time, the biggest turkey grower in the state. And
he had to buy another farm to raise, additionally—to add on to his other farm.
HT: And where was this here in North Carolina?
LQ: Iredell County.
HT: And that story is well documented. But do you see if I ain’t got nothing else, I’ve got—
from my daddy I’ve got perseverance. And that’s what I’m doing here with you now.
Because you take on telemetry that prefaces all of it. I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m just
puzzled about things I’ve seen. But you know T. S. Eliot and the Wasteland, right?
HT: Yes.
29
LQ: You remember those great lines at the end? Boy, they sure—that was before Eliot got too
much religion and got too, you know, British ties and all that nonsense, burning cathedral
and all that jazz. But when he wrote that The Waste Land, he was my man. And he said—
and if you don’t remember anything else out of what I say here, Hermann, because I
know, I just know because of Rosann that these students are going to get this chance. I
just know it. I just damn well know it. Eliot says, [pausing] and I’m biting my lip, and
you know why, he says—this may help. “These fragments have I shored,”S-H-O-R-E-D
“against my ruin,” R-U-I-N. That’s me. What I’m sharing with you, those fragments, out
of which like Bill Spaulding said, I know there’s a point in there somewhere for you. Just
find it. I have this. And you hugging your nieces and nephews. And there’s one among
them, I just know it. There’s one among them that’s gifted. And you tell him this crazy,
old man said that.
HT: I will, Okay.
LQ: And you’ll be glad. And they’ll be glad.
HT: Well, I don’t have any other questions for you today. Do you have anything you’d like to
add?
LQ: Well—
HT: As a final thought?
LQ: I think the final thought, and I’m trying to stay in the limitations. To give you Ellison, to
give you The Waste Land, to give you this dear man from New York City who came
South, if you get that, and you understand the utter marvelous absurdity that he and I
ended up—and one more thing, co-chairing that friendship train drive, I mean all the best.
You know, and here I was. I had no business ever going to college. And Hanner says,
“You can dream, can’t you?” And I said, “I can’t. I’m not going to be. I just not going to
do it.” But I did. I don’t mind. What she did for me. And Allen K. Manchester, the dean
of freshmen. And I got into his Western Civilization. Oh, did I “civilization” in his class.
And he took me aside, me and a guy from South America. And he talked to us. And the
essence of it was in language of the academy—and the one from South America was next
in line for an empire. And I was next in line for Salvation Army. And he took us and set
us down, Allen K. Manchester, and in his own sophisticated way, he let us know, “Boy,
I’m going to make something out of both of you. You’re not going to be a dictator, and
he ain’t going to be working driving John Henry when it happens.” He had that kind of
faith.
HT: It’s just wonderful to have people like that in your life.
LQ: That’s right. And that’s up to us now, Hermann. You, me, it’s up to us. And Trudy Bee
knows that. And that’s the reason she was there. I wouldn’t have gone without her. That’s
the reason tomorrow I’m going to be having 6:30 a.m. coffee with another one like that
who is so gifted. She is the daughter of the head of controversial up North university.
30
And she is so gifted she’s already got, I think, four novels, and I don’t want to identify
her to you of who is my good fortune that she came into my class. And I could see,
Hermann. See, that’s the only thing I got going. I can see. And once in a while I’m stupid
enough to take a chance. And I could see when she came into my class, and I would meet
over there in McIver [Building] in the lounge looking at prospects, because I couldn’t
take but twenty [students], because I had to read all those papers myself. I couldn’t turn
that over to a grad student, because I knew what I expected of them. And the grad student
couldn’t do that. You may not understand that. Graduate students couldn’t have graded
the papers of Queen’s class in journalism, which actually was a course in the Euripides
and every damn thing else. You know James Clark, Jim Clark?
HT: I do.
LQ: All right. Well Jim Clark, he’ll tell you about me, because I worked closely. When I had
somebody special I said, “You go talk to James Clark.” And a couple of others out there
that there’s no time to tell you about. But, oh, he was, oh, Lord I wish I could tell you.
I’m sorry, sorry. But if you talk to Jim Clark, it will be good enough.
HT: I’ll do that.
LQ: Walter Beale. Have you ever heard of Walter?
HT: I have.
LQ: Well, Walter Beale and Laurie White, they’ll tell you. They’ll tell you that crazy, old has-been,
used-up, poor childhood, nonetheless if you look in there somewhere close enough
you may find something that really needs to go to those young folks. All right. I’m trying
my damnest to do this. Wrap it up. And I just want to be sure. And what’s the guy who
wrote, “I’m One of You Forever?” Got a plaque outside the library for him?
HT: Fred Chappell?
LQ: Chappell. Talk to Fred Chappell. If you really want to know. And Fred will tell you, boy,
he’s crazy as hell. But he knew something, and he sent students to me, and Lord a mercy
those students—and one of them, I’m going to have—[pausing] I’m going to have coffee
and tea, and whatever at 6:30 in the morning at Tate Street because she’s so special, and
she knows that I know. She knows that I know. She got four or five novels out. And
another ready to come out. And she told me at one of the readings over here at Barnes
and Noble she was going to a reading back in one of the early ones. And she’s getting
more serious. She’s writing stuff, and writing stuff that sells. Now, the part of her that
that’s like Elizabeth Zinser, takes no guff from nobody, no how, no time, by God. Either
or for that matter Thelonious Monk. Write that down for me, Thelonious Monk, T-H-E-L-
O-N-I-O-U-S, M-O-N-K. One of the greatest jazz pianists, and one of the most
imaginative minds. And I even dream that someday in the heritage gallery, which is to
instruct the beliefs, not only of such as Quaker-driven Edward R. Morrow, but
Thelonious Monk, who is one of the greatest. I want to play it my way. If you want to
31
come along, Okay. If you don’t, see you later. Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane, who
is a jazz expert. These guys are coming along in the ’50s. And now they’ve got over in
High Point they’ve realized that got a commodity. They can sell a token like they had
down here on Ed Morrow. They got a little token museum on John Coltrane. Oh, he’s
superb.
And, all right, I am. I promise you. I am coming to the end. I think I’ve come far
enough so that if something in you says to you in the dead of the night, when you’re lying
there thinking about what your great granddaddy went through or grandmama, and the
courage and thinking about one of the more recent—that are so damned gifted it’s
outrageous. Who sees beyond. And you’re lying there in the dead of the night staring at
the ceiling and thinking about what this crazy old blabber motor mouth was talking
about. It’s going to be a moment in astronomy. I’m an imposter, so I was head of the
Greensboro Astronomy Club here at one time. And I met some of the most fantastic
people. And some of your own minority among them in the background fellow names
Bream, B-R-E-A-M, one of the most brilliant people I ever knew was physics and
astronomy at Wake Forest University. And, so, since I was president of the Greensboro
Astronomy [Club] I looked for them, like one out at Guilford College, Sheridan Simon. Is
that it? Sheridan Simon. Oh, I’m getting you some things of some people who will make
you suddenly walking down the street you threw your head up high, and throw your chest
out and defy the world. They were so marvelous. Sheridan Simon was one of them. So,
he came over to talk to our group, and then I had him come over and talk to—and it took
some guts, because how are you going to keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen
and heard Sheridan Simon, to the School of the Arts? What am I going to do? But you’ve
got to take those chances.
And you got to keep the cash flow, and you’ve got to keep your conversation, and
you’ve got to justify your ways to man, and that’s what Rosann is looking at. But
Rosann, Rosann, I think she’s got bunches of what they say in high society. Guts. She’s
got it. I can see it in her. I can see it in her. And she’s got to play politics and footsie and
all that. Not upstage the Historical Commission. That already has arisen. And, Hermann,
if you’re really lucky, some time when Rosann passes a whisper along to you, she’s here.
You’ll know she’s talking about, Deborah, R-A-H, Jakubs, J-A-K-U-B-S. You’ll know
she’s talking about Deborah Jakubs. And, man, if you missed that, you’ve missed the
whole ballgame. She is so utterly—she’s like this radiant one.
HT: Mr. Queen, before we have to give the room up—five minutes ago. So, if we can just—I
just thank you for the interview. This has just been wonderful.
LQ: “Pax vobiscum.”
HT: That’s right. All right.
[End of Interview]
32
Mr. Queen requested the following addendum be added to his interview:
LQ: How to begin this addendum, which I think could be useful to researchers, in the manner
of my being a journalist documenting, witness, participating in black civil rights
movement.
Perhaps, to begin this addendum by saying that, as I have already noted in the
interview, my personal experience, born into a totally segregated Southern society in
which blacks were first, slaves. Among slave owners, my own grandfather, Jesse Queen,
and while I myself was in the army in World War II, blacks served in military outfits
separately from white military operations. When I was in Luzon, the Philippine Islands in
1945, the military being completely segregated until then, just at the end of World War II,
summer of 1945. There was an all-black truck and heavy equipment company farther
down a dirt road at Batangas, in southern Luzon. But by early 1946 while I was still in
the Philippines, evidence of desegregation appears. So that when I was in a replacement
depot at Manila, awaiting a troop ship for passage home, I found myself in a (perhaps
thirty-man) tent with me the only white soldier sleeping in that tent. That was a very new
and very different experience for me as a native of the American south.
But some other specific incidents in which I was involved as a journalist,
especially with a major race riot, which involved most white racists attacking blacks in
the night on darkened (street lights smashed) main street in the heart of Lexington, [North
Carolina]. I do not have notes now but I believe that rioting occurred in June, 1963, in
downtown Lexington.
I was a veteran law enforcement journalist by then with the Winston-Salem
Journal, so if there was any calamitous situation especially in northwestern North
Carolina, the Journal sent me—and always a photographer. So that is what occurred after
dark one evening when our newsroom got a tip that a race riot was underway in
Lexington, probably no more than forty-five minutes south of Winston-Salem.
We ascertained that there already had been one person killed and a number of
people wounded and they were being brought by ambulance to the large Baptist Regional
Hospital at Winston-Salem. A photographer, Howard Walker, was quickly assigned to
me and we headed south toward Lexington in my car, meeting many ambulances, one
after another, inbound to Winston-Salem as we headed south toward the riot.
I believe there was some peripheral racial street fights reported in Greensboro and
High Point, and with racial tension also very high in Winston-Salem. The photographer,
Walker, a very intelligent man with a dry sense of humor, asked me as we headed south
into that bedlam "Queen, how long do you think we will be down at Lexington?" "We
may never come back," I responded with dark humor.
When we arrived in Lexington and made our way quickly to the heart of town,
many street lights had been smashed. Anonymous whites with lynching mob terror were
attacking a car just ahead of us on the main street, in which a black man and his wife and
small child were attempting to get away, head home. There is nothing more ugly than a
faceless mob, terrorizing with anonymity in the night. Bottles were flying in the air, one
of which bounced across the hood of our car and smashed into the concrete. The mob
surrounded the car with the black family, smashing the windows and yanking at the
doors. The mob overturned the car and dragged the man, his wife, and child out, beating
them.
33
By early evening, law enforcement radio had spread the alarm and summoned for
police help from nearby towns, along with a large contingent of the state highway patrol,
converging. Even with the officers surrounding the mob, the rampage continued until
late in the night. And so for more than a week afterward, large numbers of state and local
police were set up in Lexington to restore and preserve order. They, of course, worked in
closest rapport with Lexington's chief of police then, a huge man with a puckish sense of
humor in the midst of violence hanging heavy over the town.
The police chief, in a press conference, at his office after the rioting subsided, for
some reason chose me as his "go-between" with all the press that had gathered there
from across the state.
That often happened to me in calamitous violence in various places in north
western North Carolina. Part of that no doubt was by identification as "utter chaos"
reporter for the Winston-Salem Journal, for years considered among the most prestigious
few big newspapers in North Carolina. I wore the mantle of that prestige and always
strived greatly to be worthy of that.
Anyway, an uneasy peace hung over Lexington for more than a week, with flare-ups
also in Winston-Salem, High Point, and Greensboro. It is to be remembered that the sit-ins
of those brave A&T students, with several courageous white students also joining in,
that, led to the showdown at the Woolworth department store at Greensboro on February
1, 1960.
I was in Winston-Salem at that time but covered white-black confrontations both
at the K & W Cafeteria in Winston-Salem and Boyd Morris' Mayfair Cafeteria in
Greensboro. I stood beside lines of young blacks, students at A&T and also at Winston-
Salem State [College] in Winston-Salem, as they stood in line across the streets from
those cafeterias waiting their turn to cross the street and confront Grady Allred in
Winston-Salem and Boyd Morris, later mayor of Greensboro, at the entrance to the
Mayfair Cafeteria in Greensboro. It was vividly clear that many of these students were
frightened at what they were doing, but they held themselves together with great courage.
Sometimes I could see their lips tremble as they dared the confrontation. None ever
backed off. None.
In both cities, as the proprietors refused them entry to be served, each student
collapsed by plan and had to be carried by police officers loading them into buses to be
jailed.
In Winston-Salem, the number of protesters arrested this way filled up Forsyth
county jail where they were bussed. As the number of those arrested quickly pyramided,
the jail was full and the others were bused to Bowman Gray Stadium to be held there, and
masses of black residents gathered in front of Winston-Salem City Hall—hundreds upon
hundreds of them, peacefully demanded that police chief Justus Tucker free the others
jailed. I stood there beside the chief on the elevated door steps of the western front of
City Hall, viewing the countless blacks—and some sympathetic whites, too, who
gathered there stretching out across the huge city hall lawn and into and across the street.
The chief, just as the one at Lexington, leaned down to me—he was probably six feet-five
or more, and asked me to be liaison with the state press also gathered there. I did
what I could, consistent with my job. Then that huge crowd of blacks, began marching in
the street, joining others, in a protest march to the county jail. I commingled and walked
along with them, making press notes but then joining them in singing "We Shall
34
Overcome." for a long time, at county jail, the protesters, me among them, stood outside
the jail, encouraging protesters jailed there and singing "We Shall Overcome."
I thought about a huge black man who had been working as a newspaper delivery
truck driver back then, a marvelous man named El—can't remember his last name at the
moment, though I know it. El was named the first black man ever to become a Forsyth
[County] deputy sheriff. That was in the 60s too. Over some following years, El rose to
the rank of major and a key officer in the administration of high sheriff Ernie
Shore, a legend.
When El became a deputy sheriff and masses of black protesters, usually with
white protesters for their cause, it became clear, especially after that freedom march
through the streets, that there would be no turning back then.
All across the South, blacks and whites supporting them were joining in that
freedom song, "We Shall Overcome.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. arose in that time
frame to lead—eventually right to the nation’s capital.
That great leader, Dr. King, died a martyr's death as great people so often do. But
he left a message of hope in the minds and hearts of innumerable oppressed, victimized
people—all over the world, for there are Hitlers in the furthers reaches
Dr. King told the masses “I have a dream. I've been up on the mountain, and I
have seen the promised land." Evoking hope not just for ourselves and our loved ones but
all humankind. Talk to your predecessors, Hermann. Some of them have a
message for us all.
That has been at the center of my life and purpose, often stumbling and falling
along the way, but ever persistent That, I believe, is my duty. It gives meaning, purpose,
and caring for others too.
That is why I find the view of Nobel Laureate Steven Weinburg, Nobel astro-physicist
to seem so relevant, when he advises those most able, thereby for others, too, to
find time aside from mundane world cash flow and hubris problems. It asks "the big
questions, holding that it is only by that path that we can rise above the level of farce and
achieve some of the grace of tragedy.” That may sound bombastic, pompous, but it is
what I believe.
The great international news broadcaster Edward R. Murrow himself whom, I
hold as a role model for very high principles, himself developed a national radio program
titled, “This I Believe.”
While I was public relations director in the early 1950s here, and the very special
Dr. David Jones, president at Bennett College, had me to arrange with Greensboro radio
station WBIG-CBS to broadcast a recording of an interview with Dr. Jones by Murrow in
the national “This I believe” series, reflecting the shared high principles of these two men
that I have, over some recent years now conducted a personal campaign in tribute to him,
culminating now in a Murrow Heritage Gallery included in expansion plans for UNCG’s
Jackson Library. Promulgating, through access to his recorded works, his high ethical
leadership principles—values for which he stood and fought all of his life and for which
we are all beneficiaries internally, arising out of his broadcasts in World War II and
leadership afterwards.
By the time I was four years old, I knew it was very wrong to segregate and
deprive them of civil and human rights.
I fully realize endless shortcomings, but nevertheless, one must strive. And it is
35
because of such conceptuality—allied with opportunity in life experiences, that I felt
need to also share these few examples of what is at the center of my life.
Of course, I fully understand if this interview process with me already has gone as
far as it can go. Still, I will at least have said it. And keep a copy for myself. I thank you
greatly.