Oral History Interview with Joe Knox by William Chafe

              CIVIL RIGHTS GREENSBORO DIGITAL ARCHIVE PROJECT
William Henry Chafe Oral History Collection
INTERVIEWEE: Joe Knox
INTERVIEWER: William Chafe
DATE: June 17, 1977
William Chafe: When did you first—Well, first, did you grow up in Greensboro?
Joe Knox: No, my home is in the western part of the state in Newton. It’s one
hundred miles west of here [unclear].
WC: I had a student that came from Newton, named—what’s his name—Mike—
JK: Gaither. Gaither?
WC: Gaither! Yes. Do you know Mike?
JK: [unclear] I think a block away.
WC: No kidding.
JK: A very fine family. Mike is the same age as my daughter, and they were very close when
they were in high school.
WC: Terrific. Well, that’s great. So you came to Greensboro for the first time when you came
to the [Greensboro] Daily News?
JK: Yes, I came directly here in ’55.
WC: When was the first time that you were assigned to, or asked to do, a story involving race
relations in Greensboro?
JK: Well, when I came here I was first assigned to the police beat. In those days, most new
reporters coming to the newspaper were assigned—given this assignment, simply to get
them acquainted with the city. It’s a very quick way to get really involved in what’s
going on in a town, to work the police scene. I don’t recall that, in the two years
following coming here, that I was involved at all in matters that you could describe as
racial per se. Of course, the black community always produced a larger proportion of the
police activity at the time, as I guess it has in most communities in the state.
I left here in ‘57 and worked in New York for three years before coming back in
1960. And it was then that I did become very well, very thoroughly, involved in covering
racial activities, because it was during in the early sixties that this community went
through traumatic experiences, one after another, up through I guess—I’m foggy on the
dates, but certainly through ‘63 and ‘64.
WC: Now, you describe those events as traumatic. Why do you use that word?
JK: Your first name is Bill?
WC: Yeah.
JK: They were traumatic in that it really, when the demonstrations began—and I’m really
unsure about the years. I should’ve looked.
WC: That’s okay. February 1960 was the first sit-ins.
JK: In the succeeding years, the black community here was very active in pressing their
demands. I think one of the reasons for this is that we have a major state university in the
city [North Carolina A&T State University], and also a liberal arts college [Bennett
College] that has a fine reputation for bringing in quality students from all over the
country and all over the world. Anyway, these two institutions, being close together and
being composed, generally—the student body being composed, generally, of people who
were immediately interested in this—the impulse, the urge, the desire to gain equality on
the streets and eating places and the movie houses, this was a very important thing to
them.
And they began staging demonstrations, which consisted of gathering in the area
of A&T—which is just about a mile down on East Market Street—gathering of both
A&T and Bennett College students. Very often they were joined by small groups from
UNCG [University of North Carolina at Greensboro]—and Greensboro College and
Guilford [College] also had students—but most of them were black. They would come
marching uptown and in lines by the hundreds, and sometimes we would calculate
maybe—I don’t know—over a thousand or so.
WC: Yeah, right.
JK: And, of course, this generates news. This is headline-making news when such a huge
body of people come into the midtown. And I can’t say that they—except on the rare
occasion—that they caused any—deliberately caused problems. They tried to work with
the police, and the police tried to work with them. It was a rare situation in which there
was an understanding on both sides to that—to let all hell break loose was going to do
nobody any good.
WC: I just interrupt you to ask you who in the police do you think—can you recall the names
of the people in the police who would have been most important in negotiating those
arrangements with the students?
JK: Yes, there was one guy, and his name was Jackson.
WC: Paul Jackson?
JK: No, it wasn’t Paul—Bill, William.
WC: William Jackson.
JK: Right.
WC: Do you know if he is still around here?
JK: He’s still around here, and he would be a very valuable source to you. He retired from the
police department I think probably within the last eighteen months or two years. But he
was highly respected in those days. Bill is not a college graduate, you understand. I’m not
sure just what his educational level is, but he had a practical sense in which he could deal
with these people. He could talk on their level.
WC: Now, there were two sets of sit-ins in Greensboro. I guess the first one was there when
the first four students from A&T went down to sit-in at Woolworth. Did you cover that
story?
JK: No. I was not in Greensboro at that time.
WC: In February ‘60?
JK: [unclear]
WC: Did you come back before that was all settled? I mean it took about six or eight months
before that really finally was resolved.
JK: It was beginning to simmer down when I came here in September. I didn’t really see very
much of that. I was not—I did some later follow-up stories, anniversary stories, later on.
WC: Now, did you recall, from talking to your colleagues, there were people—the names of
the people who were the first four were Ezell Blair, David Richmond, Franklin McCain
and one other, whose name I forget [Joseph McNeil]. Do you recall any sense of what the
leadership was there, or whether there was one rather than another who was most
effective in negotiating or leading the movement?
JK: No, I can’t honestly say that I’m aware that any one of those four was the leader. They
were just school kids who talked this over [unclear].
WC: Do you recall, in going back again to that first set of sit-ins—I know you’re coming back
into them as they’re really ready to end, but do you recall anything about the process of
settlement: who would have been involved in that, whether or not—I know that someone
like Ed Zane was the chairman of the [Greensboro] City Council committee which was a
set up to oversee it, and there were a lot of other people; the mayor was certainly
involved and others. But I wondered whether you had any recollection at all of who the
kinds of people might have been who—either on the black side or the white side—helped
to settle that?
JK: That particular one?
WC: Yeah.
JK: No. I was not here during that time, and my knowledge of it would be only what [the
newspapers?]
WC: Right. Okay, let me ask you the same question about—before getting totally specific
about the various demonstrations—who would be the kinds of people who would have
been most directly involved in trying to find some way of resolving this conflict during
the years when you were covering it?
JK: Well, Mayor [David] Schenck certainly was deeply involved. It was almost a twenty-four
hour job with him, for weeks, months. Our senator, McNeil [“Mac”] Smith, was deeply
involved in it, with the role of the peacemaker.
WC: Was that an overt role or was that more covert?
JK: More covert. Mac didn’t get his name in the paper very often in this connection, but I
know that he had many meetings at his house with the black people. And this actually
happened among—I’m foggy with the names—but it happened repeatedly with other
[prominent citizens?] in the community. I know the church people had private meetings
in their homes, at the churches, trying to work something out.
WC: Would you have known at the time that Mac Smith was sort of acting as a kind of go-between?
JK: Yeah. Mac’s a personal friend. We went to school together. I was pretty aware of that. He
was not searching for publicity, and I myself didn’t want to put his name in the paper.
WC: Would he have been the most important one of those people who were acting as kind of
informal negotiators?
JK: No, I wouldn’t say he was the most important. He was certainly among the most
important. But the mayor was deeply involved with this, too. He died [unclear]. And
many people attributed his early death to some of this tremendous strain he was under.
And of course Ed Zane was—I was trying to think of some other names in the white
community.
[Discussion about reducing background noise redacted.]
WC: Well, we can go back to some of those names perhaps. Did you have a sense of—and
we’re talking, I guess, here about the period ‘61 to ’63. Do you remember when Martin
Luther King came to town?
JK: Yeah. I could tell you a couple of interesting stories about that. I can’t recall the dates,
but in one instance he came to—he was supposed to make an address at Bennett College,
and it had to be cancelled for reasons I don’t really recall. And I’m not sure that he ever
made an address over there. Maybe you know from reading that—
WC: I think at one point he did. I remember some confusion about it.
JK: On another occasion he came to Greensboro en route to Danville [unclear]. They were—
his strong magnetism in Greensboro had a way of filling the downtown with black
people. He came through one day, on a Sunday, as I recall, and I was the only person to
meet him at the airport. He was supposed to be meeting someone from Danville. No one
from Greensboro came out there. The black community was later embarrassed about that,
that no one—they knew he was coming, but they didn’t have any representation from the
black community out there to see him. He was just before getting in a car with me to
drive to Danville when a minister from Danville appeared, very embarrassed and shaken
that he had lost his way and hadn’t been able to find the airport. Anyway, that’s—those
are the two recollections I have of Martin Luther King [unclear]. There was never a
chapter of his organization [SCLC—Southern Christian Leadership Conference] in
Greensboro. Greensboro had attached itself to CORE [Congress of Racial Equality] with
James Farmer and the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People]. And our local man here was Dr. [George] Simkins. But CORE was the—
furnished the leadership for the college students.
WC: Do you remember Bill Thomas from CORE?
JK: Yes, I do.
WC: Tell me about him a little bit. What kind of person was he?
JK: Bill was basically a shy boy. He was outraged, indignant, of course, about the treatment
they were getting. He was—he told me at one time that I made him nervous; that every
time I went over to A&T or to a church, or at any time he was appearing and I happened
to be covering, he said that I upset him. He was afraid of what he was saying. [chuckles] I
tried to talk to him. I don’t think I ever really broke through to Bill. I was a little—I don’t
know what happened to him. I don’t even know what kind of student he was. But he left
here, and the last I heard—it’s been many years ago—he was in New York.
WC: Now, would he have been a kind of charismatic leader or an organizer?
JK: He was an organizer. He was not a charismatic fellow at all. He’s not the sort of fellow
you would think of as a leader. But, as you know, there are many students like that. They
talk among varying groups and they kept [unclear]. The charismatic here was Jesse
Jackson.
WC: How did Jesse Jackson and Bill Thomas get on together?
JK: There was no visible conflict. I’ve seen them on the street many times side-by-side. But
they were two totally different personalities. Jesse was the—he was the leader. He had
everything going for him in terms of personality and ability to stir emotions. This was
just beginning to emerge as he was a student here, and of course, it blossomed from there.
WC: Who would negotiate with Bill Jackson and the police department?
JK: Jesse.
WC: Jesse would?
JK: Yeah, and of course Bill Thomas would sit in. Bill Jackson arrested Jesse and quite a few
others over here in front of our old jail house [unclear] one day for blocking traffic or
whatever. We printed a picture the next morning of Bill Jackson and Jesse shaking hands.
Bill had a very disgruntled look on his face. He didn’t want that picture to appear in the
paper, but it did. [laughs] Part of the scene here.
WC: The Jackson brothers [laughs] doing their thing. Was there—Did you have a sense, in
covering that story, of the relationship between the student movement at A&T and the
administration at A&T?
JK: Well, I don’t know what went on over there. The administration was generally quiet
during the demonstration period. Dr.—I don’t remember if Dr. [Samuel] Proctor was here
at that time, but Lewis Dowdy was the chancellor, I think, for most of the period. And my
belief is that—my recollection is that the administration stood beside. And if there was
any direct communication with the students, if there was any counseling, I don’t know.
WC: But you would not describe it as hostile to the students?
JK: Oh, no.
WC: So that at least there was tacit support in a sense of letting it happen—
JK: Yes, that’s true.
WC: —and not kicking the kids out of school who took part in the demonstrations or anything
like that.
JK: No.
WC: How about Bennett? Would you say the same thing was true of the administration at
Bennett?
JK: Yes, I would.
WC: Do you know Isaac Miller [Bennett president, 1968-1986]?
JK: Yes, I know him very well.
WC: And how would you describe his whole attitude toward student demonstrations during the
period?
JK: Benevolent, certainly. He was nothing but an affirmative in what they wanted and what
they were trying to do.
WC: Did you have the sense anyplace in Greensboro, black community, of opposition to what
the students were doing?
JK: Well, it’s very difficult to say exactly, because where such opposition might have
existed—and I think it did among some of the upper-class professional groups of very
well-to-do people—they were not vocal about it and they didn’t really make themselves
very—there was no—they saw no point to. But I think there were certain lawyers and
maybe a few doctors who were sort of disenchanted with it.
WC: Would Dr. George Evans have been one of those?
JK: Dr. Evans may have been. He’s a conservative, I think. I’ve observed him here for years,
several years, on the city school board as being a conservative in his viewpoint, and I
think perhaps he may have been distressed over some of the things that happened.
WC: Was there active involvement by the older members of the black community in this
student movement?
JK: To a limited degree. Dr. Simkins was in the NAACP and it—as an organization, it did
not—the organization was composed mostly of adults in the community. During the
height of the demonstrations, my recollection is that the NAACP did not really get
involved in this student movement. It seemed to be rolling so well on its own, I think they
probably were content to stand aside and observe.
WC: Did you have a sense that there was a problem between the older and the younger? Did
the older feel, perhaps, not wanted or left out?
JK: No, I wouldn’t have been aware of that.
WC: Would you have at that point, for example, have had contact with people like Vance
Chavis in the older community? When you were covering the story, you were covering
the student part of the story primarily?
JK: The NAACP came on later, only after the student movement had died down. George
Simkins then became much more active.
WC: This would be after the sit-ins?
JK: Oh, yes, long after the sit-ins, long after our major demonstrations through the early
sixties.
WC: And what kind of activity would that have involved?
JK: A very peaceful, very—not very volcanic demonstrations. I can remember most notably
over at one of the public housing projects where integration was not going [unclear] at
all, and a small group of, generally, college faculty people would assemble and stage a
little demonstration.
WC: How would you say Simkins is viewed by the black community, as you understand it at
least?
JK: Well, he is a respected member of the community, no question about that. In the later
years, he’s all but dropped from sight. He’s had problems with the income tax people. I
understand charges have been—I don’t really know what happened. I think maybe he
dropped them.
WC: How about from the white community’s point of view? What kinds of things did you
sense about Simkins from—
JK: Well, a man to be reckoned with, certainly, because he represented the Negro
establishment in Greensboro. He was the person you would go to get involved with black
leaders.
WC: During that period of the ‘63-‘62 demonstrations, how about the black church
participation? Where and who would have been the people who would have been most
supportive or involved?
JK: You will have to go back and check for names and names of churches. My memory’s
hardly [keen on it?]. But I do know that the churches were very supportive of this thing,
and this is where much of the many discussions took place, and where—the churches
served as meeting places, rallying points. And I can remember just time after time that
the churches over there were being filled, just jammed with students and townspeople for
a pep rally—sometimes attended by a prominent person like [James] Farmer. Farmer has
been here many times.
WC: Many times?
JK: Maybe I might as well amend that to say several times. But he was a [tremendous?]
figure in Greensboro. He participated in, oh, I don’t know, two or three marches uptown.
WC: Now, you spent some time with Farmer, didn’t you?
JK: I can’t recall if I did an interview or not, but I was certainly on the scene when he was
here. And I remember he appeared in my stories, I think.
WC: Did he—do you recall one night when he went to dinner at John and Betsy Taylor’s
house and had a meeting with people, white liberals?
JK: No. I wasn’t there.
WC: There was also, I think, somewhere in the file, some communications that you had with
Armistead Sapp. I wonder if you could talk about him and what kinds of people he
represented.
JK: Well, Armistead was a self-confessed bigot, and he appeared that way, I think, to many
people in the community, both black and white. He represented S&W Cafeteria and Belk
department store, and several other stores downtown that were resisting public
accommodation.
WC: He was their attorney?
JK: He was their attorney, right. And Armistead thought—praised—saw his role as defending
his tyrants’ interest. That’s the way he described it to me. That’s how he became pretty
much the spokesman for the downtown merchants [unclear]. I remember once he had
made a talk over at A&T for a group of students, where he made this inflammatory
remark. He described himself as a white—as a bigot [laughs], so it grabbed their
attention. He really wasn’t all that bad, though.
WC: As I recall, a thing I saw from him to you had to do with communist connections of the
demonstrators. Was that something which was widely brooded about or—
JK: I’ll tell you, Armistead has a rich imagination. He’s a colorful figure. He has a way with
words. He was given on numerous occasions to calling me on the phone and giving me
what he would describe as a press release. [laughs] And many of them were just way out
and beyond imagining. And he got printed for, I guess, things of substance [unclear]. He
got to be sort of a nuisance after a time, and I recall distinctly at one point the
management of this company sent word back down the line to tell Knox to cool it with
Armistead.
WC: What would that mean “to cool it?” Just to layoff the contact or—
JK: Armistead’s name was getting to be—it was getting to irritate the management.
WC: I see.
JK: And they just didn’t want to see it anymore. Well, I took that with a grain of salt and I did
not follow it exactly, but I told Armistead. So he was [laughs]—I guess he was wounded
in a way. Let me give you an example of his press releases. If you remember—if you’ve
read our paper, you know there was great trouble in the town of Lexington. There was a
boy killed. He got on the phone within an hour after that news came out and said to look
for the next large demonstration to come from Lexington and Concord. Well, that was
one that did not get in the paper. Later he thanked me for it.
WC: [laughs] As you were covering the story, did you see evidence of the [Ku Klux] Klan as a
significant force in the community?
JK: Well, it was certainly an irritating force. If it was significant, it’s hard to say. I do know
that there were many white citizens of some substance who embraced the Klan, because
in their view, this was their only protection against what they saw as a terrible thing
happening to their world.
WC: Who would some of those people be, or who would they represent?
JK: The wife of the manager of one of our largest stores downtown called me aside one day
and said, “Where else are we going to go? Who else can we count on? The police are not
going to do anything.” That was one example. It’s hard to name names. Out in the
Hamilton Lakes and some of our more affluent sections of town, but the people were
there who contributed to the Klan, not openly, but they supported it with money.
WC: Did Benjamin’s name ever come up?
JK: I can’t say I was actually aware that he would have been involved.
WC: Now, these people, who would be middle or upper class, were nevertheless saying that
they would support the Klan?
JK: Well, they were not saying it out loud.
WC: Right, but they would say it privately.
JK: Yes.
WC: How about things like the White Citizens’ Council or The Patriots, as it was called here.
Would these people have been open enough to belong to the Patriots, some of them?
JK: Possibly so.
WC: How about Stark Dillard? Was that someone who you had any involvement with?
JK: No. He might have been one of them. I don’t know.
WC: Well, his name is on the list of The Patriots board. I just didn’t know whether he was—
how overtly he was involved.
JK: Well, every community has people who think [unclear] was right, and Greensboro has its
share, and certainly did then. I just never probed that, never did learn much.
WC: But your impression was that they were an irritant,t but they were not necessarily a threat.
Would that be accurate?
JK: Yeah, I think so. They made news. They were headline-makers sometimes.
WC: Have you heard the story—I’m sure you have—that [George] Dorsett was actually an
FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] informer?
JK: Yes, sir. Yeah.
WC: And you believe that?
JK: I do. I saw him on the street one night down here at a little restaurant in a brand new
automobile. It was a racy type of automobile, very snazzy and expensive type. Now,
George is a house painter by trade, and he got very little money from the Klan. It was just
a pittance, not enough to live on, really. And I asked George about his new car. Oh, he
was beaming and just so pleased with that machine. He said, “That’s my getaway car.”
And I thought at that time, “He’s got something going somewhere.”
WC: How long ago was that?
JK: That was during—I would say that was near the end of the—that was probably after the
demonstrations had settled. Everything was quiet by that time. But George was still
trying. I could be mistaken about that.
WC: Now, the rumor about his being an informer is fairly recent isn’t it?
JK: It’s a fact. There’s no rumor about it.
WC: It’s a fact?
JK: It’s fact, yes.
WC: It’s a fact. We know that from the Freedom of Information files. Was it talked about back
then as being a possibility? I guess I’m trying—
JK: No. No, I don’t think so. But I remember being very much impressed with this
automobile that George had.
WC: So you were a little bit suspicious back then?
JK: I was suspicious. I mean I didn’t—I hadn’t—it really didn’t occur to me that the FBI was
involved ever. George is a very clever fellow, very devious, too. [laughs] I didn’t know
where he was getting his money, but he certainly wasn’t making it with visible—
WC: When was that written up? I have not seen it. I’ve just heard about it.
JK: You mean the fact George being involved with the FBI?
WC: Yeah.
JK: It would have been two or three years ago. I didn’t have anything to do with those stories.
And I don’t—I just don’t really recall, but it’s been fairly recently.
WC: Okay. When the demonstrations came to an end, what do you think was involved in their
coming to an end? What kinds of—what helped to bring that situation to a point of, if not
agreement, then stability?
JK: Well, the last one, as I recall, happened on June the sixth in, what, 1963? And that was
probably, in terms of people, probably the largest of all and certainly a dramatic thing.
They came up town. They came marching up East Market Street and occupied Jefferson
Square, just the whole block there, just sat down. And there were many, many arrests
[over that?] There was a small amount of violence involved, but the police put them in
buses and everything available and turned the [Greensboro] Coliseum into a temporary
jail. This was a dramatic thing that I think—and it was the last one that ever happened
here, and I think it was sort of the fix—the point at which both sides seemed to sense as a
climax. Talks became very serious. They became—both sides were very diligent, I think,
in trying to resolve this.
The merchants were just sick of these people coming uptown and ruining their
business. And it did that. Greensboro began to—downtown began to—it was deserted
during that time. The people wouldn’t shop. They were afraid to even talk with black
people. And things began to fold. One store after another said, “Well, this can’t go on.
My business is hurting.” S&W folded. S&W became a tremendous symbol. It was the
place to crack. If we could just get in there and eat with those white people, everything
else would open up.
WC: Why was that such a symbol, you think? Was it because of the eating?
JK: Well, the eating was part of it, certainly. It was highly visible, too, because it was on their
way uptown. Just one, just a half block off the square.
WC: Was it the personality of Boyd Morris, was that part of it?
JK: No, I don’t really think [laughs]—his attitude toward the situation was really no different
from that of others. Boyd had another cafeteria around the corner.
WC: Yeah. Mayfair?
JK: Yeah. He was absolutely adamant. S&W was a little—not quite as—
WC: I see, yeah.
JK: Well, at that time I think the Congress was just before passing this public
accommodations bill [Civil Rights Act of 1964]. And all these stores downtown saw this
handwriting on the wall so they just folded. Everything [unclear] in a very short time—in
a very short time, you began to see clerks in the stores, tellers in the bank, and so forth.
WC: Now who would have arranged for that? Who were the people who had the power to
persuade the banks and the stores to start hiring black clerks and to implement open
public accommodations?
JK: Well, Mayor Schenck certainly was a leader in that. He had some very honest talks with
the downtown merchants. I think the chamber was partly involved in that. I don’t know
who was heading it up during that time.
WC: [Allen] Wannamaker?
JK: Yes, I remember Wannamaker was in there. He was—was it president? I don’t—I’m
really foggy, but I think—I’m reasonably sure the chamber had a good deal of input into
and busting some of these merchants.
WC: So they just couldn’t resist any longer?
JK: No, they held out as long as they knew they could. Their business was hurting. I mean
those demonstrations really worked. They served a function, a real purpose.
WC: Do you recall anything different about that last march from the other marches, besides its
size?
JK: Well, this was the first time, and the only time, that they ever really sat down in the
middle of the street and refused to budge, and this resulted in mass arrests. The police
were helpless to do anything but arrest them, I guess. They had to uphold the law.
WC: Was this when they were putting them in recreation—in playing fields—using playing
fields for jails, for detention?
JK: This was the last time—[pause]. As I recall, most of them on this occasion were taken
over to the coliseum. They were put on buses. The buses were rounded up from various
sources; some of them were damaged. I also recall an old hospital being used on another
occasion, out in the east part of town. [unclear] Playing fields, I don’t—possibly.
WC: No, I think you are right. I was thinking of—the coliseum is what I was thinking about.
Let me think of what I was going to ask. Oh, were you conscious—do you remember
being conscious of there being a large number of older blacks at that last demonstration?
JK: I can’t say that I was—no, not a number of them.
WC: Mostly students?
JK: Mostly students. I remember there were kids, and they were scared, some of them. Some
of them you could just see it in their faces, but they believed it was in a righteous cause.
There were a number of A&T professors in that march, too. One of them—there’s a
picture, the big spread on the front page. We had—the next day we had a picture of one
of them, John Marshall Stevenson. He later changed his name to John Marshall
Kilimanjaro. He’s an English professor at A&T now, and he has undoubtedly
recollections of those demonstrations, marches.
WC: Yeah. During that period, would you have been consulted by the editorial staff as they
wrote their editorials, or did they just sort of—I mean how much contact did you have
with the editorial writers?
JK: Very little.
WC: Very little. Is that kind of the custom, that—
JK: I guess it’s sort of a custom. I don’t—think probably I was consulted maybe a few times,
but not on a sustained basis or anything. I felt very often that they should have.
WC: So you didn’t think they necessarily knew what they were talking about?
JK: [unclear] Our editorials writers have traditionally been people to sit and read [unclear]
WC: [laughter] Yeah. So I would take it, at least by inference, that you weren’t happy with all
the editorials that came out—
JK: No, not all of them, certainly not.
WC: —during that period. Now, when the demonstrations were over, you kept on doing some
writing in this area, isn’t that true—covering in the race relations area?
JK: Yes, I think—yes, I did.
WC: What would that have primarily involved—the schools?
JK: Yes. I really can’t recall specifically. I do remember one round-up story I did sort of
rehashing that whole bit. The NAACP became more active in affairs after the
demonstrations subsided. And there were some stories written about them and George
Simkins. I don’t have a clear recollection. [laughs] I’ll have to review some of the old
clips to—
WC: I was just wondering, particularly about the school situation—Greensboro, of course,
desegregated on a token basis in ’57, and really remained almost at the level of ‘57 all the
way through ‘64-’65. I wonder what your sense was about the school board and the
leadership of people like—
JK: Phil Weaver?
WC: Phil Weaver and then Mr. [Wayne] House, yeah.
JK: Well, my recollection is that I felt—my own feeling was they were moving too slow.
They had constituency to deal with, however, that held them back. They were [unclear],
too. They knew that to rush into things without the public, so to speak, being prepared,
was to invite a great deal of trouble. I think they were right in that respect. I think they
sort of—my feeling was that they were sort of waiting for the time—for the appropriate
time to move. I think on their own they may have moved much further—
WC: But then they fought so hard, when that pressure came, against it.
JK: Yeah.
WC: So I wonder if they were really waiting as much as they were—
JK: I guess you’re right.
WC: I don’t know. It seems to me that they could have moved a lot earlier.
JK: There’s no question about that.
WC: And I wondered why they—
[End Tape 1, Side A—Begin Tape 1, Side B. Due to very poor sound quality, portions of the
remainder of the transcript could not be verified with the audio recording. ]
WC: In‘64, ’65, ’66, before busing was even talked about, there still seemed to be a fair
amount of resistance even to freedom of choice. And I just didn’t know whether that
reflected—what that could have meant in terms of the school board and the community as
a whole, really.
JK: Free choice was the going thing in those days, and it did frighten many people. I don’t
know that—my recollection is that it really didn’t result in very much integration. It was
very slight over [at the major high schools?], at Greensboro High, Grimsley High School.
And at Page [High School], too, many the students of some prominent black families
were there, not many.
WC: Not many, yeah. Did you cover the period after King’s assassination? Were you writing
those stories when the violence occurred and the National Guard was brought in?
JK: I was a member of a team that worked on—I think we had other people coming into this,
other reporters much more involved after this happened. [unclear] about what happened.
WC: Mayor [Carson] Bain called the National Guard almost immediately, and the reports in
the newspapers don’t really indicate why. But that was a rather strong action to take
before there had been any kind of real violence, and of course, the black argument is
that—or the argument of the demonstrators at A&T—is that the Guard provoked the
violence that did occur rather than its being a response to any violence. I just didn’t know
if you might have some recollections of that event or what might have been involved in
it.
JK: I’m so foggy on it [unclear]. I do recall that the presidents of the colleges were bitterly
resented by the blacks, and they did accuse him of [unclear] trouble. [unclear] He’s very
vocal.
WC: If I could, I’d like to give you a rundown on a bunch of names, and let me preface that by
asking you this general question: different communities are thought to have different
degrees that have a power structure, and I wonder how—what you think of the
Greensboro power structure and how effective it is, and who it is or who it represents?
JK: Well, we certainly have a power structure, yet it is unlike—I think it’s unlike the one in
Winston-Salem. Winston-Salem is a town that has acquired many of its finer things and it
has gone out and brought them in, because there is a great concentration of the wealth
[unclear]. That has not happened in Greensboro. We have wealthy people, but the college
is no wealthy [unclear]
But a power structure does exist, and did exist in those days—always has, I guess.
My feeling is that it has always been one with a soft touch. It has never been a
hammering thing. It has never beaten people over the head. I think that the role of the
power structure in Greensboro is—during the demonstrations and the race relations
problems—was decisive and influential. But there again it was a matter of gradualism,
recognizing what was happening and saying, “Well, we just have got to go along with
this.” I don’t believe the power structure here has been impressive.
WC: Do you think that the ‘63 demonstrations made a significant difference in the way in
which race relations have evolved in Greensboro?
JK: Well, they certainly made the town race-conscious—aware of—I don’t know that what
we have today is any different from what’s in Raleigh or Charlotte or wherever.
Greensboro lives with these two major institutions which are seats of learning, and they
attract people—the occupants, the administration [unclear] education—who have never
been anything but—have never tried to assert themselves alone. They have always tried
to involve themselves with the white people. It took a long time to bust the chamber of
commerce. I think our good relations that apparently exist today result more from the
input of the black rather than the reverse.
WC: I had some sense, I guess, that after ‘63 it was much more likely that the white power
structure would recognize the need to act, to forestall protest, and to recognize and
respect the black community as an autonomous force which could no longer be ignored
or suppressed in things like employment practices, in a sense knowing that if they didn’t
do something the federal government was going to come in and make them do it. I really
don’t have any kind of—I guess if I could find evidence that Burlington or Cone started
hiring practices before the Civil Rights Act then I guess that would be good evidence of
that being true, but there probably isn’t such evidence.
JK: I doubt that there is in any significant degree at all. My feelings about the hiring practices
is that—I was never aware of any organization that [unclear]. But I had the feeling that it
was more a matter of [unclear].
WC: Let me go through a few of these names. Caesar Cone.
JK: How do you want me to—?
WC: Well, the impressions you have of them and role they might have played in terms of race
in Greensboro.
JK: Caesar was very quiet, as far as the public statements were concerned. He was in
sympathy with blacks. I’m aware of that. I know him very well because he—for many,
many years he headed up the airport authority, and that’s one of my specialties. And [I
talked to him about it?] [unclear] I remember one remark. He said that he understood how
the blacks must feel [unclear]
WC: How about Spencer Love?
JK: Well, I don’t recall when he died. [unclear]
WC: The mid-sixties I think.
JK: Could have been. I know I wrote his obituary and it went on and on and on. I’ve sort of
drawn a blank on him. He was such a tremendous operator. I’m not sure [unclear].
WC: How about Howard Holderness?
JK: There again [unclear]
WC: J.T. [Cowan?]
JK: No.
WC: How about Reverend Otis Hairston?
JK: Well, he was very active in the church as a minister, and he had participated in I think
practically all of the demonstrations, served as spokesman number sof times. There were
many meetings at his church.
WC: Would you say that—maybe if I just mentioned three or four ministers in the black
community and see how you would, on a very subjective scale, rate them in terms of their
protest leadership: Hairston, Julius Douglas, Cecil Bishop—well, let’s say just those
three.
JK: I would say that Cecil is about one of the most effective. He had a way of being able to—
he had input in the white community where Hairston did not, not too much.
WC: Why would that be?
JK: I don’t know. It’s a matter of personality. He was well-spoken. He could get along with
people. Hairston is much more reserved, much more restrained.
WC: Was Douglas active in any way during that period? He may not have been. He was
getting older.
JK: It’s hard to recall.
WC: Do you know where Bishop has moved?
JK: No.
WC: I need to find him. How about people like Hal Sieber?
JK: Hal was very active. He’s—he died you know.
WC: Hal died? When?
JK: The chamber of commerce man?
WC: Yeah.
JK: He left here. I think he went to—I have a recollection that I think he may have gone to
Texas.
WC: He did. I’ve seen him in Texas.
JK: This has been several years ago.
WC: Oh, no, because he called me on the phone last summer. He had a bad heart attack.
JK: Maybe that was it. Maybe [unclear]
WC: I know he had a very severe heart attack and so it was believable to me that he could have
had another one, but he called me sometime within the last nine months. [laughter]
JK: [unclear]
WC: Well, he almost died from a heart attack.
JK: Well, anyway Hal had good rapport with the black community, and I think accounted for
some very positive moves that resulted in a real peace after ‘63. He instituted an
organization sponsored by the chamber which people could get together on an informal
basis for breakfast and just talk to each other in the face and straighten their problems
out, and it was I think a real valuable thing that [unclear]. He himself made many trips
into the black community [unclear] soup kitchens [unclear]
WC: How about someone like Lewis Dowdy?
JK: Lewis has stayed pretty much on the sidelines, but I do believe, and there is no question
that he approved of what went on. He just didn’t want to get himself or his faculty as a
group involved, though many faculty members did participate.
WC: How about Charles Bowles?
JK: You’ll have to refresh my memory there.
WC: He was the minister of West Market Street [United Methodist Church]. Maybe he was
gone by the time you came back from New York.
JK: I don’t remember that name.
WC: John Redford, First Presbyterian [Church]?
JK: He was among those who participated in these quiet discussions that went on, little
church gatherings and meetings in homes. [unclear] I don’t recall that he was really an
active leader that you could identify. He was one that stayed in the background who did a
tremendous amount of good work.
WC: Would you say that, in terms of where people go to church is a reflection of what kind of
influence they have? Would you say the First Presbyterian Church would be the most
powerful church in the community?
JK: [unclear] [It’s a—it has attracted people, and I do know positively that some people hold
there for that reason and want to be associated with the power structure.?]
WC: Right. How about [L. Richardson] Preyer? Did Preyer get involved in any of this at all? I
don’t see his name. I guess he was a judge during part of this.
JK: He began his adventure for the governor’s race. That was sixty—
WC: He ran in ‘64 against Beverly Lake and Dan Moore.
JK: That’s funny. He resigned his judgeship to do that, and my recollection is that he had
little to say. There’s no question about [unclear]. But for the record he said almost
nothing, but here again I think he probably acted as did many members of his church did.
Keeping conversation going.
WC: How about Jack Elam? Do you know Jack Elam?
JK: The mayor?
WC: Yeah. What would he have been like?
JK: Jack sort of comes out of the power structure too as a lawyer for Cone Mills. I don’t
recall Jack as being a lazy liberal. [unclear] He was an excellent administrator, I thought,
very good. He liked to keep a tight rein on things. I don’t recall. I really don’t recall what
his input would have been.
WC: Do you recall the name Warren Ashby at all?
JK: It’s sort of fuzzy.
WC: Professor of English at UNCG.
JK: No.
WC: Kay Troxler?
JK: No.
WC: Someone like Betsy Taylor, these people who really were coming out of the YWCA
[Young Women’s Christian Association] and United [Council of] Church Women kind of
background?
JK: No.
WC: How about a guy named Stories, Tom Stories[?], does that name ring a bell?
JK: Sure [unclear] He moved down to Charlotte and is head of a [unclear] He was in
Greensboro during that time. And I think Tom was sympathetic at a distance, and I think
probably he passed the word down [unclear].
WC: So he would have been important in that regard?
JK: I think so.
WC: Are there any labor organizations in this area which are very powerful?
JK: Well, I guess there are some that are powerful within their own [unclear], but I don’t
recall any labor organizations that really knocked themselves out in any way.
WC: So basically this is a question of a dynamic in which there is a religious kind of group
over here, and the educational leaders here, and the black community—a young black
community and a more older, established black community—and you’ve got a newspaper
and a very elite well-off power structure, and how does it all come out? I mean if those
are the kinds of groups that are involved, it seems almost as though what’s going on here
is a protest initiated by students, and a response which is orchestrated by a power
structure with the intermediaries being the kind of middle-level merchants. Does that
sound fair to you as an overview? Are there over forces that I’m leaving out that are
important here?
JK: No. I would say that the blacks too had their power structure, and I think you’ve
mentioned many of the names that were in there. The newspaper of course had input
itself. It had its own influence. But I think that’s right.
WC: In terms of the newspaper’s influence, to whom it is responsive? What is it’s—not what
is its reading constituency, but what is its constituency in terms of—who does it most
want to please, or do you think it [unclear] in terms of its editorial policy?
JK: You’re talking just about maybe in a racial context or wide open?
WC: No, wide open.
JK: Well, this is a prosperous community. There is never traditionally and there isn’t now
[unclear]. And we have the world’s largest textile company. The community is well
diversified in industry. I would say that it goes mostly for middle-class white people or
[perhaps some?] well-educated leadership. Our editor, who was managing editor of our
editorial page, he was a Chapel Hill man—he’s been very mindful of higher education in
particular, in my judgment [unclear] But we’re not oriented to the black community
[unclear]. We treat [unclear] We treat A&T just like we do UNCG, I think. [unclear]
WC: Is there a black reporter who is responsible for covering the black community?
JK: We had black reporters, but we used to do that. I don’t think it worked out too well. The
black reporter maybe leaned too far to the left [unclear]
WC: And that involves [unclear] of the schools or did it involve other things as well?
JK: Mostly the schools.
WC: In terms of voluntary or private associations, what kinds of things would the paper cover
from the black community?
JK: Well, as we’re set up now, we don’t cover [unclear] or anything like that. We just cut
them out all together, so we don’t do that for either the blacks or the whites. As far as
specific black activities go on, I’m not aware that we did anything going [unclear]. We
covered their plays [unclear].
WC: How about things like if some group came to play at the Cosmos Club[?] would there be
any kind of attention paid to that? Are there sororities or fraternities which would get any
kind of coverage?
JK: Yeah, yeah.
WC: So that in this sense, what the newspaper staff knows of the black community, as well as
[what] the public knows, the [student?] newspaper revolve around those overtly public
and political or cultural kinds of things which—but not the kinds of infrastructure of
voluntary associations, groups of people who meet together.
JK: Not unless there is something unusual going on, unless there is this prominent speaker
coming or unusual talent.
WC: Do you remember when the first black reporter was hired on the News?
JK: No, I don’t really remember, but we’ve had them since certainly the late sixties [unclear]
The black reporters have not been stable. [unclear] We have two on the Daily News staff
now, an older black man who is very good and a graduate of the UNCG [unclear]. I do
know that at one time [unclear] made a pitch to some of the prominent people in
Greensboro to do black news. I just happen to be aware of this, and for whatever reasons
I don’t know what transpired [unclear]
WC: But she wanted it.
JK: She wanted it to. She said she wanted to establish communications with various
organizations, but that never worked out. It never turned up in the newspaper.
WC: Is it your sense from both covering and reading about things today that since the busing
has gone in, it established that—what you see as the kind of basic attitude now toward
race relations and outstanding problems between blacks and whites. What are they, if
they exist?
JK: I’m at a loss to tell you of [the current?] situations. I believe and I think this is true of
both [black?] institutions, of A&T certainly—well Bennett of course, too—both are
proud to be black. They want to be black, and they’re really upset at the idea that they
might be lost in a movement to whiten their ranks. A&T, as one specific example,
[Dowdy?] made a tremendous pitch to the board of trustees of the university, the board of
governors, [unclear] and they were bypassed for that. That caused a good deal of
bitterness among some of the younger black administrators over there and faculty
members. The newspapers supported the board of governors, and I think most people
who were looking at—in Greensboro who were looking at this situation supported the
board of governors too [unclear]. The blacks still feel that they deserve more [unclear]
WC: But wouldn’t it—so it’s not half and half?
JK: No, no. [unclear]
WC: If you want, we can put this off the record, but it strikes me as strange that there was
enough support at A&T that they [unclear].
JK: It struck me a little bit too, how [unclear] Chapel Hill [unclear]
WC: It seemed to me that the—I read the exchange of correspondence between the university
and HEW [Heath, Education & Welfare] and about the general question it seems to me
there was a pretty solid case [unclear]
JK: [unclear]
[Remainder of the recording is inaudible.]