Oral history interview with Key L. Barkley, 1991 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Key L. Barkley
INTERVIEWER: William “Bill” Link
DATE: June 7, 1991
[Begin Tape 1, Side A]
WL: Okay. Professor, Professor Barkley, I'd like you just to start just by telling me a little bit about your background, where you were born and where you were educated—
KB: Yes, okay.
WL: —and sort of bring us up to date, bring us up to the time that you arrived at [The] Woman's College [of the University of North Carolina].
KB: Okay. I was born in Iredell County on a farm which had belonged to my ancestors for a long time. It was a slave plantation. I grew up there. I went to the public schools in that neighborhood back in the days when we did not have a state program of public education. We had to have subscription schools.
I went to school in an old log school house to start with, which had been built back about the Revolutionary War period. There was a 400 mile, square mile area of Iredell County in which there was not another school beyond the seventh grade to which a person could go for advanced education or secondary education beyond the seventh grade. So there was no place to go when one finished the seventh grade. The end result was I stayed in the seventh grade for five years.
I, in that time, found that when I had finished the seventh grade of my regular school and stayed there two years, the board of education said, "Well, you old bird, you can't come back any more." So they wouldn't let me go back to school there. Then I discovered one year that there was a school some two or three miles west of where I lived in another district called Gray Crest where they were willing to, where the teachers were willing to take some of those post-seventh graders and give them special training in unusual courses.
I had a buddy who went there to school and he told me about her. So I hot-footed it over there and said to that teacher, "Would you let me come and join these seventh grade graduates and take these special classes?" And she allowed me to come. So in the fall of 1920, I guess it was, I went to Gray Crest School and took special courses, classes in that school.
WL: How old were you then?
KB: I was eighteen years old, you see. Eighteen—I really, ’17-’18 or ’18-’19. I would be 2
seventeen or eighteen years old. I could get that straight in just a moment maybe.
But among other things which I took there in that school as a special class was art with the first graders. I took art with the first graders in that school. I must say that the first graders knew a whole lot more about art than I did.
The only thing we had to use for coloring or painting was children's crayons. But I made some pictures, some of which I still have. I learned a great deal more from those children than I did from the teacher with respect to what to do with art. But I prize to this day my learning in that school in art.
The next year, 1918-19 years, I was seventeen or eighteen—this next year was 1918-19. I entered high school as a boarding student in Troutman, North Carolina. Well, almost the very day when I went there, the flu broke out. We had—I had two, three, I had three roommates where I was staying. All of them, and I too, became ill with the flu.
So after only about four or five days in school, they closed the school until Christmas because the flu was so terrible, and people were dying right and left. Two of my roommates nearly died.
On the day when the first armistice was mentioned in the end of the World War I, I was there in school, caught the train to Statesville and went back out to my home. And when the bells were ringing and the whistles were blowing and people were shouting and singing in celebration of the coming of the Armistice. That must have been about December the eighth, I imagine.
WL: November.
KB: What?
WL: Would have been November if it was the Armistice.
KB: Yeah, November the eighth, yes. Well, then some three days later, November eleventh, the Armistice really and truly was signed. This is Mrs. Barkley here.
[tape paused]
KB: —in 1918. But after the school closed there in November, they decided they would open the school again, I think it was in early January. But it turned out to be so difficult to start the work there, my buddy, my friend and I who went down there to try out that high school arrangement just simply gave up and came home.
Then there I was in early January 1919 with nothing to do. But I heard that another school that was three or four miles on the other side of my home, in a different district where I had some buddies, were offering special classes again. So I hot-footed it down there and asked if I could come and take those classes.
The teachers were magnanimous people who didn't mind doing a little extra work, so they said I could come down there, too. And my friend and cousin who went with me through the high school in Troutman and I both went down there that year and took special classes in a school that was not supposed to be taught beyond the seventh grade. That was in 3
Wayside School, which is still there on the Salisbury Road about four miles east of Statesville near what is called Chapel Hill Methodist Church.
But in the latter year, I stayed at home, at the end of that school year I stayed at home and worked on the farm with my father. But then one of my kinsmen, the same one who went with me to the Troutman High School, discovered the Asheville Farm School up there at Swannanoa, where they were putting on the first grade—first year of high school on top of the seventh grade group, which they had been teaching there for some fifty years or so.
My friend and cousin who wanted to go on to dental school went up, registered at Farm School. And when he got up there a few days, he had been there a few days, he wrote to me, said he was lonesome up there, "Why don't you come to Farm School?" Not Reform School, Farm School. [laughs]
WL: Farm School.
KB: And so I scouted around to see if I could possibly go. And sometime in the early fall 1919, I went to the Asheville Farm School and entered the first grade—first year of high school there. Then at the end of that year I came back and stayed on the farm with my father, but the next year the Asheville Farm School put on the second year of high school at Swannanoa and so I went back.
The end result was that in the two years, 1920 and 1921, I graduated in the spring twice from the school at Farm School. But then they didn't put on another grade there, so what could I possibly do?
Now the principal of the school, Farm School, was a brother-in-law of the president of Berea College in Kentucky, William Goodell Frost. One day when we were going from Black Mountain back to the Farm School following a baseball game, Professor Marsh and his wife were taking my friend, Barkley, Karl Barkley, and his and my cousin George Barkley back to Farm School. We stopped on the road back from Black Mountain to Swannanoa to have supper at a restaurant.
And then on the way to Farm School, Mr. Marsh turned to us boys sitting in the back seat of the car. He said, "Well, you three Barkley boys would just suit and fit into Berea College." I didn't do a thing in the world about it. He made the arrangements for the three of us to go, to attend the Berea Academy, which had a full four-year high school curriculum. In the fall of 1921, then, we three boys went to Berea to enter the Berea Academy.
When we got there, the dean of the school said to us—we'd been in school now just a few months there at Farm School. He said to us, "Well, if you boys will make A and B grades, I'll graduate you." We had our—he had our transcripts.
He could say that, I think, because at Farm School we didn't have necessarily just class period, but we could do all the work we wanted to do on our own. The end result was we did independent work and got credit on some high school courses which we ordinarily would have to go a full year to attend.
When we got to Berea, as I said, the dean said to us, "If you boys will make A and B grades, we'll graduate you." And so we set-to to make A and B grades. But we also were allowed to take examinations in courses such as some English courses and what not—and I've forgotten what else—to get high school credit for it. 4
I stayed there then at Berea Academy and studied one year in high school. Then they had told me if I made A and B grades that they'd graduate me, but I just turned loose and made the highest grade of anybody in the academy class that year. And so I graduated from the high school in Berea Academy in the spring of 1922 with enough credits, high school credits that I could transfer one year of mathematics and trigonometry to college credit.
One of the things I did by myself at the, in the Berea Academy was to take the second-year algebra course by myself independently. I don't appreciate what grade I made because the professor apparently had a hunch that perhaps about all I could do with that was to make a D. So the only D grade in my whole educational career is on that first year—second year algebra class in the Berea Academy.
At the end of that year, I went up north and worked in the wheat fields of Ohio and scouted all around up there keeping bread on my table for the summer. And then at the end of that summer for the first time since I had gone away to Berea, I came home to visit in my home in Iredell County.
I graduated from the high school then, as I say, after Berea, and came home that summer for three days’ visit, went back to Berea to enter the work there. I also entered in college, you see, and studied for freshman year there.
I believe I got that mixed up a little bit with regards the year when I did what. I believe the year I graduated from high school in, at Berea, I went to work in the coal regions of eastern Kentucky. I've got the years mixed up a little bit. I went to work in the coal mining region of eastern Kentucky.
One day as I was walking along, almost dead broke, I saw a man sitting on the railroad track there. And I went up to him, I said to him, "My name is Barkley." He stuck out his hand and he said, "My name is Bird." I found out he was the office supervisor of the Kenmont Coal Company. He said to me, "What are you doing?" And I said, "Well, I just came up here from high school not long ago." And I said to him then, "Do you know any place around here where I might get a job?"
He said, "Well, I don't know but I might have a suggestion. How much education have you had?" And I told him I just graduated from high school a few days ago. So he said, "Well, how much mathematics have you had?" I said, "I've had mathematics up through trigonometry." And he said, "Well, how good were you in mathematics?" I said, "I think I did pretty well. I made a hundred on my final exam in trigonometry." He said, "Well, in that case, I suggest you go down there and talk to the superintendent of the mine and tell him that I sent you down there,” to see whether or not he might accept me to take the position of scrip man in the office of the coal company. You know what scrip man meant?
WL: You’d write out the scrip?
KB: Scrip man. I wrote out the scrip that they used instead of United States money. And so I went down there and saw the superintendent. He said, "Well,"—he was a very gruff fellow—"Well, whatever you and Mr. Bird work out be all right with me." I went up there to talked to Mr. Bird. I said, "Mr. Bird, he said that anything you and I could work out would be all right with him." He said, "All right, I’ll give you that job at seventy five dollars a month." I looked him right straight in the face and I said, "Well, I'll take it if you raise it to a hundred after one month." [laughs]
WL: Did he agree with that, or—? 5
KB: Well, I went there to work on that and it was—the job was strictly mathematical, I guess I’d say, keeping the books on the scrip, on the tipple sheet coming down from the mine. How much coal each person loaded on the cars and got credit so we could figure out his wages on a great big long book like this.
Well, I learned that in two or three days, wasn't a bit more trouble at all. So Mr. Bird said, "Well, since you've learned this job more quickly than anybody else that's ever been here, after two weeks I'll raise you to a hundred." So I stayed there that summer to work in that company at a hundred dollars a month.
At the end of that summer I went back to register in Berea College as a freshman. I stayed there as a freshman that year. And then when I got out of the freshman year I went north to work in the wheat fields and in construction work up there in Ohio and Indiana and round about. I had a wonderful experience, learned a lot, learned how to cut stone and to some extent lay brick.
I’ve had some adventures in which scared me practically out of my life because one time we were building a three story framed hospital. And the time came when they had to spike the rafters to this ridge pole way up yonder, three stories high. And there was nothing between the person who rode the ridge pole to spike up the rafters but air and way down there all that timber, which would smash us to smithereens.
Nobody else wanted to go up but I was the first man to be sacrificed. He said, "Barkley, go up and spike the rafters of the ridge pole." So I went up there and spiked the rafters to the ridge pole. I was scared to death, I must admit. But the end result was the end of that summer I had gained a goodly amount of cash on hand. And it was then that I decided I'd come home for the first and only time when I was away from home for five years.
When I went back to Berea—then I went back to Berea in the fall of 1922—no, 1923, fall of 1923—for my sophomore year in college. While I was there, I worked on the college newspaper and did other things along that line. And I also remembered that I had not read a single assigned English textbook in high school when I entered high school because I’d read every one of them before I got to the high school.
I then looked around for work in the, for the summer of 1924. I guess that'd be right, wouldn't it? I looked around and found work for the summer of 1924. I heard that the editor of a country weekly newspaper would like to travel in the summertime and he wanted someone to take his place as the editor of the country weekly and the supervisor of a printing shop that published five newspapers and magazines. [laughs] So I went over there and said, "I'd like to have that job." And he gave it to me.
So that summer I started in working as the associate or assistant editor of that country weekly newspaper and supervisor of the printing shop plant. I worked my heart out, and I would say I worked something else off if it was in order to say it. But I did the job. That was one of the most training experiences I've ever had.
Then, from then on, I came back for the junior year at Berea and worked at that newspaper over the summertime. I did then my senior year at college. I worked at the newspaper. Then after that summer, I decided I wanted to go to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a graduate student with a major in the psychology of advertising.
I didn't have the money to go, but I borrowed the money from the credit union at Berea College of which I'd been serving as a student director. I borrowed the sum of five hundred 6
dollars, I think it was, to come to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to study in the field of the psychology of advertising.
WL: How did you get interested in psychology?
KB: Pardon?
WL: How did you get interested in that subject?
KB: The reason I got interested in the psychology of advertising was from my work on the newspaper there. I did everything on the newspaper, everything except doing the mechanical work. I wrote editorials, I wrote advertising, I wrote reports of weddings and murders and every kind of thing. So I wrote everything that can be written in a country newspaper.
But one thing I was supposed to do was to get some advertising. Well, one thing I discovered was that I didn't know a thing about advertising and especially about the psychology of advertising. So I said to myself, “Well, the thing for you to do is to go down somewhere and study about that and learn about the psychology of advertising. “
So I came to [the University of North Carolina at] Chapel Hill in the fall of 1926 to enter graduate school with a major in psychology and a minor in philosophy to work for my master’s degree. And I wanted to do a master’s thesis in the psychology of advertising. I found a professor there who was trained in the psychology of advertising, and he took me on to write a paper—a thesis in the psychology of advertising. I’ve forgotten what I called it then.
But he was one of the toughest task masters anybody ever had in this world. He didn't let me breathe without his approval. He put me through my paces. I studied late at night and early in the morning, worked hard all day long. And by the end of nine months in that school at Chapel Hill, psychology department, I had qualified for my master’s degree. I never heard of anybody before or since who did that in nine months. But under the masterful supervision of that fellow, I got my degree in the psychology of advertising in nine months. That’s a master’s degree.
WL: So that was in 1928?
KB: That was 1927.
WL: Nineteen twenty-seven.
KB: Yeah, 1927.
WL: Spring of 1927.
KB: I left some out. Then the editor of the paper back in Kentucky asked me to come back to put out the newspaper for him that summer. So I went back and worked on that newspaper again that summer.
In the, at the end of my year as master's student at Chapel Hill, I had to take a final 7
oral examination. Usually that exam would have been rather perfunctory, apparently. I mean, I never hear it lasted for more than about an hour and a half at the most. Well, I went and I never felt so lonesome in my life as I did as I walked from old Steele Dorm at Chapel Hill to the Peabody Hall on the campus to take that oral exam in the master’s, for the master’s degree.
My minor in philosophy that year was taught by Paul Green, the great playwright. He was a wonderful teacher and a magnificent personality. He steered me with sympathy and courage in that minor so I studied independently in philosophy quite a lot.
And then when the time came for me to take the master’s oral exam, he and—let me see if I can remember all of them—Mr. Paul Green, Dr. [?] Stagley [?], Dr. Harry W. Crane, and Dr. J. F. Dashiell were my master’s directing committee. So they got me in that room, and they started out questioning me and questioning me, and questioning me. They kept it up for two hours and forty minutes.
Finally Mr. Paul Green asked me a question in philosophy of something or other. I knew I ought to have known that but I said to him, "Mr. Green, I think I know the answer but I just can't think." They had worn me plumb out. So they then dismissed me from the exam, and I got out of that situation.
But three days later, Dr.[inaudible]—without any application on my part or anything of that sort—Dr. John Frederick Dashiell offered me a half time instructorship in the department of psychology and laid a PhD in my lap if I'd do the work. I then went right on working as a [sic] instructor in psychology beginning in the fall of 1927 and continued there for four years doing that work for my PhD degree.
Interestingly enough, they, professors oftentimes wanted to go away to do other things, so they would call on me to take their places and give their lectures in the classrooms. So I gave my first lectures in the department of psychology during the summertime of 1928. Would that be 1928? Whatever it was.
I continued there to work until 1930 when I got my PhD degree in psychology. But my PhD degree in psychology was based in part on a minor in sociology. They wouldn't let me take a major in philosophy because the head of the department of philosophy had such a bad reputation in terms of intellectual honesty that they wouldn't let me take further work in philosophy.
And I had to start with scratch and take a minor in sociology. I read more books and did more reading in the field of sociology as I ever did in psychology. But I finished.
WL: Who'd you work with in sociology?
KB: Pardon?
WL: Who did you do your work with in sociology?
KB: The person who was my major advisor was Dr. Howard Odum.
WL: Oh yeah.
KB: But I had classes under Dr. Howard Odum, Mr. E. R. Grove, Dr. Ellen Brooks, Dr.—oh, I can't remember all of their names right now. Dr.—oh, I can't remember all their names off 8
hand. But Odum and—
WL: Do you remember Odum pretty well?
KB: Oh yes, yes sir. I had wonderful instructors there, too, in sociology.
WL: What kind of—how would you describe Howard Odum?
KB: Dr. Odum was a very inspiring sort of chap. He could make you do something even if you didn't want to do it. He had, he had a head plumb full of ideas with respect to what you could do in the way of research work, what you could write papers on and so on. So I did a lot of work, more perhaps under him than any of the rest of them, any of the rest of the professors there at that time.
But I found him awfully difficult for one reason, that he would start his lecture on—start to say something very important but before he finished the sentence he'd start and say something else. And he made it necessary for me, at least, to take what little I got from his foreshortened sentences to finish them out so that I could know what he said. But I found that it was pretty much a learning experience, even doing that.
I also took the first course under Odum, what is called "In the Family," but there was no textbook on the family written at that time. But Mr. Grove was writing a textbook on the family at Boston University, I think it was. So Mr. Odum found out he was writing that book. He got Mr. Grove to send him the proof sheets as he wrote the book, and Dr. Odum would read the proof sheets to us in the class. [laughs] It was a wonderful experience but a funny one. So I took that course on the family.
I would say Dr. Odum was a remarkable, remarkable—I don't know what to call it. I don’t know, the only thing I can say is inspiring in that he could make you do something, as I said a while ago, get you to do something even if you didn't want to do it.
I developed there in sociology a strong interest in such things as juvenile delinquency and varying significance of attitudes—the whole business of making social adjustments and relationships in marriage and all that kind of stuff. So that in reality my research work and publications in psychology turned pretty much in that direction. And I published the majority of my papers in the course of my research work in the measurement and discussion of attitudes as a major emphasis on my—
WL: Social attitudes?
KB: What?
WL: Social attitudes, attitudes—?
KB: No, attitudes toward war, attitude toward law, attitude toward socialized medicine, attitude toward the Negro, attitudes—the levels of esteem which you might hold your own racial group as compared with another—a lot of stuff like that.
WL: And you would put them—this would be in terms of, in numerical terms, in terms of—?
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KB: Excuse me?
WL: You would quantify this? Were they, were attitudes—?
KB: Well, I used standardized material for measurements.
WL: I see.
KB: And most of those attitudes came from, were developed under Professor L. L. Thurstone of the University of Chicago. I made studies on such things as, for example, the influence of different courses of study in university on attitudes towards evolution, law, God and the church, and things like that.
WL: I see.
KB: Tremendously interesting. The [unclear] study of law I did along that line was made in Robeson County, North Carolina, where it was, the population was divided in such a way that you had about one third of the population in the county black, one third Indian and one third white. I used a standardized measurement in which I could get those people to indicate the level of esteem in which they held their own people and the levels of esteem in which they held the other people, sort of a round robin sort of thing.
Wonderful study, and I think it changed a lot of people's thinking about the matter of how you regard other groups because usually the findings in such studies had been to the effect that if there were a subordinate or a minority group who was being tested with respect to the level in which, the level of esteem in which they held their own people versus that in which they held other people, they nearly always low rate their own ethnic group.
Well, I decided that I didn't believe that was true to reality, and if those people were to be able to respond without hindrance regarding such things as what they thought the tester wanted them to say, they just wouldn't say that they were less worthwhile than the other group. So in the findings of my study which I made down there, I found that the Indians put themselves first in level of esteem, the Negroes put themselves first in level of esteem, and the whites put themselves first in level of esteem, which was almost completely contrary to the findings of the previous time.
In other words, when they were responding without hindrance to their fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers, uncles, aunts, sweethearts, and what not—without hindrance, that they thought well of their own people. I think that's the most significant among the studies I made along that line.
WL: That was about, when did you make that study? Remember about what year?
KB: I would say—I can't remember now. Somewhere in the 1940s, though.
WL: Nineteen forties, very interesting. Well, so how did you get to Woman's College? What brought you there?
KB: Excuse me? 10
WL: How did you get yourself to Woman's College? You came from the University of Illinois?
KB: Oh yes. I was teaching at the University of Illinois and had majored, had a strong minor in experimental psychology. Dr. J. A. Highsmith was the head of the department of psychology at UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro], or at Woman's College. He had had the inspiration to the effect that he would like to have psychology introduced into the curriculum at Woman's College as a natural science.
He had made up a set of courses in the curriculum through which that could be accomplished. But they didn't have anybody on the staff there who could teach psychology at that level and also set up and build the lab. So Mr. Highsmith looked around to find someone who was capable of doing that and found that the best qualifications he could find was mine from Chapel Hill when I was teaching at Illinois. So he sent me a letter asking me if I'd come down and take over and set up a lab at UNCG, or Woman's College, and teach the courses in psychology as a natural science. I accepted him, his offer and came there in the fall of 1931.
I found the situation was absolutely impossible [laughs] because it was 1931, see. The college was dead broke and had no money to do anything with. They had almost nothing in the world in the way of laboratory equipment. I came there and started to try to set up the course in psychology to be taught as a natural science course, three hour credit with two hours lecture and three hour lab, that sort of thing. But there wasn't anything to use in the laboratory.
So I concocted every kind of device and used all the ingenuity I had to keep it going for a time, but I found that I was being snowed under. So I went to Mr. Teague, C. E. Teague, then business manager of UNC, Woman's College. And I said to him, "Well, Mr. Teague, I'm in a terrible dilemma here because I'm supposed to teach that class over there in experimental psychology as a natural science, but I don't have any equipment. And it's just absolutely impossible for me to create respect for my work."
And he took a slant—even though they weren’t buying anything at all—then he took a slant, "Well, if the university brought you here to do a job and we don't have what it takes to do the job, the university has an obligation to furnish you with the equipment to do his job, do the job." So he said, "Well, you go ahead and you shoot the orders in here to me, and we'll see what we can do with it."
Well, in one year's time, under those circumstances, we were able to purchase—during the Depression, mind you—the equipment which enabled us to set up the lab as a full-year laboratory course with sections of twenty each. We had every piece of equipment we needed to do it. He bought every single item I put the order in for.
I therefore refer to Mr. Teague as the godfather of psychology at the university, at UNCG. Except for his taking that slant and doing that job, it would have taken twenty years to build that laboratory like we were able to do it in one year. I was real proud of that achievement.
And then I stayed there teaching that course for seventeen years. We started with seven students in the class in the fall of 1931, and when I left to come to State College [North Carolina State University], one hundred and eighty students were registered for that course. I say that’s a, that’s a marvelous success.
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WL: Amazing.
KB: And in the meantime, I was going to say that one thing I did over there at Woman's College was to sponsor the development of psychology as a natural science be taught and credited on a par with chemistry, physics, and biology and so on and so on. And by the time—before I left there we had attained that goal.
Now the department of psychology continues as a natural science course at UNCG, and I think it probably is either one of the strongest science courses on the campus or maybe the strongest one. And it all began with that study of psychology as a natural science in the fall of 1931.
WL: Yeah. Well, how many people were in the psychology department when you—?
KB: When I came there?
WL: Yes, sir.
KB: Just two, I believe there were, two—Dr. [James A.] Highsmith and Mr. Martin. I can't remember if there was anybody else. There might have been a girl by the name of Miss Chinister [?] there. But at the most there were three. I made the fourth one.
Now there's an interesting little comment should be made at this point that I think will give a slant on my experience there at Woman's College. In 1930, the President [Julius] Foust over there released thirty-two professors at that campus. He was determined to build his faculty with having more PhD's and better qualified academic members of the staff, so he fired, as I remember, thirty-two people.
And by the way, Dr. [Evalyn F.] Segal was a member of the department of psychology over there, yeah, that's right. Dr. Segal had been a member of the department before I came. But when I came, Dr. Martin and Dr. Highsmith were the only ones who were there. But I came to take Dr. Segal's place because she went to Sophie Newcombe College to head the department down there in Louisiana.
But when I came to Woman's College, a little old squirt who rattled in his britches when he walked, thirty-one years of age with a PhD degree, I was looked upon as a scab because I was in a sense coming in there to take the places of people who had been fired one way or another.
WL: Why were these people fired?
KB: What?
WL: What was the basis for their firing? Why were thirty people—?
KB: Best I understood it, Mr. Foust wanted to get rid of those sort of unprepared people and put in PhD's in their places.
WL: These were people without PhD's?
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KB: Yes. Well, I came in the fall of '31 with a PhD degree but I was not part of that program.
WL: Okay.
KB: I came to replace Dr. Segal, and I was not a scab. But I was received as if I were the most outrageous person in the world. On—when I started, when I took up residence on McIver Street there with my wife and two children. From the time of my arrival in late August to early September until Christmas, only one person out of the whole faculty ever so much as called on us to welcome us to the place.
And not only that, you know Harriet Elliott perhaps? Well, she was my constant and everlasting ingenious enemy. I took a house next door to hers there on McIver Street, and the first day I was in the house I heard a knock on the door. And I went to the door and there was the strangest looking person I ever saw in this world, I do believe.
And she said, "I'm Miss Elliott. I live next door. Do you have a radio?" Well, I thought that was the funniest question. I told her I hadn't even dressed from getting up [unclear] first time in the morning I lived in that house. And I said, "No, we don't have a radio."
And she turned around and yelled at her roommate, Miss Elva, Elva something, Elva—I forgot her last name, Elva what, can't remember what her last name was. She said, "Elva, Elva, they don't have a radio." Then she turned to me and she said, "Well, now, if you do get a radio don't put it over that window right there under my house because [babbles incoherently]." Something like that. [laughs]
Well, the end result was we were, we were treated as if we had the plague or something. Nobody would come near us. I drove around over the campus after that and burned to know somebody new. When I met somebody, when I’d meet somebody, they'd say, "Where do you live?" I’d say, "I rent that little brown house next to Miss Elliott's house." Then they say, "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Are you the people?"
Miss Elliott had spread around the most terrible gossip about what awful people we were. My very gentle, wonderful wife—she put her down as if she were the lowest scum of the earth. So we were received in very bad order. The people, faculty members, who lived next door and two doors down the hill never even—
[End Tape 1, Side A-Start Tape 1, Side B]
KB: —Miss Elliott because she was, became the most powerful person there. Do you know a Mr. Jackson, by any chance? W. C. Jackson?
WL: Sure, I know of him.
KB: W. C. Jackson.
WL: W. C. Jackson, Walter C. Jackson, yeah.
KB: Well, he was a very valuable person for the university, I think, but he never stood for 13
anything. He wouldn't stand up for any cause. He was, I would call him an acquiescer. Is that a pretty good term?
WL: Yeah.
KB: He was an acquiescer. A very genteel person and kindly person, but he just wouldn't, he wouldn’t stand up for any cause. That was my opinion of him. Well, anyway—
WL: So he chose to get kind of rolled over by—he would get overwhelmed by stronger personalities?
KB: Yeah, like Miss Elliott. Miss Elliott was a terrific person. And I’d like to pay a tribute to her before I quit. But in the course of time I had a running battle beginning on that first day I was on the campus. I became a sort of outlaw on the campus especially because—as I will show from these things here—I espoused some causes which were not welcome at the Woman's College.
The actual fact of the matter is if I were to give a general characterization of the university at that time, the last thing they wanted on that campus was a new idea. And more than that, President Foust was violently opposed to people who do anything in the way of creative work like research and publishing. And he thought that if people engaged in research and publishing, they were thereby made less significant and capable as teachers.
So he cornered, he collared me a dozen times or more on the campus and said to me, "Barkley, I think the thing for you to do is to throw away your rats and teach." He preached that guff to me over and over and over again. And not only that, but he had so cowed the faculty as a whole that there wasn't a single person so far as I know on the campus at the time when I arrived there who was willing to do research and publishing. They were too afraid, too scared to do that. They thought they'd be—that would be against the rules, the aims of the administration of the college.
He maintained that attitude, Mr. Foust did, as long as I stayed there. But I couldn't afford to listen to him, because if I did I would besmirch and spoil my own professional development. So I went right on and did my research and publishing right along anyhow. And I believe that when I was there for the first year, I was the only person on campus who did research and publishing in a professional journal. So far as I know, I was the only one.
Then in 1937, a new development occurred. Dr. Highsmith [?] was a quiet fellow who held his cards close to his face. And he had a protégé who was one of his favorite students in, while she was a student at UNCG, or at Woman's College. Not only that but she was known to and respected by [UNC] President [Frank Porter] Graham.
The rumor was to the effect that as a young sixteen- or seventeen-year-old girl in Newland, North Carolina, she had been, had had dates with President Graham. He was a shortish fellow, if you knew him. Did you know him at all?
WL: No.
KB: He must not have been a bit over five feet, four or five inches tall, a short fellow, very short. But this woman was tall and aggressive as the dickens, and it was said that she ran circles around him and cowed him to death as the day in [unclear].
Deleted: Edward Kidder
Deleted: , [Jr.]14
Well, one day I waked up in the morning and read the newspapers, and it was to the effect that Dr.—Dr. [Elizabeth] Duffy was her name—had been appointed as a special professor in the department of psychology and that she would have the rank of full professor. Well, that made me so damn made I could chew nails.
WL: That was here? That was at the Woman's College?
KB: Yeah. But here I was, I'd been teaching there for seven years and working my tail off to get the thing going, when some gravy came along, they went out and got a protégé of Highsmith’s and—
WL: Graham.
KB: —Graham and put her in there as a full professor when I was still kept as an assistant professor.
Well, I called her hand on it, and, of course, that didn't sit very well. I told them to their teeth I thought it was terribly unfair, unjust, and indecent, but I didn't do anything to hurt my welfare. The end result was, oh, I stayed there for seventeen years, and in the course of seventeen years, I got one promotion from assistant professor to associate professor and got only one single—so far as I remember—raise, which is my own individual raise of one hundred dollars a year. [laughs] Seventeen years.
WL: You didn't get any raise?
KB: What?
WL: You got one raise in seventeen years?
KB: Yes, one. It was one hundred dollars a year. That just peeved the heck out of me. So I wrote President—I mean Mr. Jackson a letter, and I said to him, "This raise,"—I felt like sending it back to them, not accepting it. But I wrote him a letter, and I said to him, “I'm reminded of Jacob and his work for his bride over there. He works five years, seven years to have Rachel for his wife. Well when the time came for the marriage, they performed it according to their ways, and then the next morning, you know, he wakes up, and there was Leah in the bed with him. And he went back to his father-in-law and said, ‘Look here, I worked these seven years for Rachel, and here I come find Leah in my bed.’ And then the father-in-law said, ‘Well, if you'll work so many more years, you can have Rachel, too.’” So you know the story, perhaps, from the Bible. But anyway, I wrote President Jackson a note sassy as the dickens. I said to him, "Now that Leah has come, I hope Rachel is not far behind." [laughs]
Well, the end result was I never got any raise at all. I, I, they just wouldn’t raise me at all. I couldn't get a nickel raise for anything, no matter how hard I worked, how successful I was or anything. And I think—kennen sie Deutsch sprechen? Can you speak in German?
WL: Yes, a little.
KB: Es gibt einen Neger in das holtzplotz. Did you understand that? 15
WL: I didn't understand the last part of it.
KB: Es gibt einen Neger in das holtzplotz. There's a nigger in the woodpile.
WL: The old expression.
KB: I thought the nigger in the woodpile right along was Miss Harriet Elliott because she stymied me at every move and every way and constantly, viciously, in every possible way she could. And I'm not just simply paranoid about that. I think that's true. Well—
WL: Did—was your experience unique or was there a lot of this kind of thing that went on?
KB: Excuse me?
WL: Was your own experience unique or was a lot of this kind of thing going on among faculty, kind of backstabbing?
KB: I have other evidence that showed the same sort of thing. Well, anyway, Miss Elliott got to be the most powerful person on campus and she had the strength to do it. She was, she sacrificed academia for politics, I think, and I didn't appreciate that. For example, when she was made dean of women—President Graham just didn't understand women and all their needs so he made Miss Elliott dean of women when, as far as I could tell, she had no qualification whatsoever for her job.
Well, anyway, I went to listen to her first speech in chapel in the auditorium there after she had been made dean of women. She was a wonderful speaker, a powerful speaker. I expected to hear her lay out something of her program as dean of women. But the things she said made me slide down into my seat until I rested the back of my neck on the back of my seat.
She said, "I want you girls to know that my office door is open to discuss with you matters of state." [laughs] Now, who would think of freshmen and sophomores being interested to go to the dean of women to talk about matters of the state? But that indicates what her approach was.
But she learned in the course of time and did a lot of good, I think, as dean of women. And I think that they ought to build her a monument over there by reason of one thing that she did.
One thing that bothers me when I went there to Woman's College was that the girls were not treated as people, as I saw it. They were treated sort of like animals in a corral to be made ready for the market without being considered as personalities and people. I really think that. I thought that. So I appreciated the fact that in the course of time she created the idea of "responsible freedom." You wouldn't happen to have heard that over there.
WL: Right, yes.
KB: Well, that was a wonderful move for that college because up to the time I went there and for long before that, I think they were so close minded, as I said, the last thing they wanted was 16
a new idea. And not only that, but the girls were subjected to a whole lot of social rules and circumscriptions, which in my estimation were horrendous and terrible. So one of the things I sponsored over there was that we’d have those sorts of rules moved from what's called the blue book—maybe you know it, the handbook that they kept over there.
WL: Right.
KB: For example, one rule was to the effect—and by the way, I was the only person in the department of psychology who they, academicians would allow to have advisees. So many of the rest of them had so many cranky notions that they wouldn't let them have advisees. But I had advisees, at least twenty-four every year, I think. And had much to do in terms of determining their life and development one way or another.
Well, anyway, Miss Elliott—they would invite, a student would invite me to come to what they called a pre-college conference. They'd say to me, "Come with your head full of new ideas." Well, I'd go over there, and I had given some thought to it, accept their invitation and offer some new ideas.
And one time I said to myself, "I just cannot stand this rule in the blue book," I said to myself, "in which they say to the students you cannot have dates, you cannot go home on, visits to home, or you cannot attend lectures, " I don't know what all else. But a set of circumscriptions like that. You'll stay home and study until you get a C average. If you didn't have a C average, they couldn't have those privileges of the collegiate life.
Well, that was to me a most horrendous sort of thing at all. So I said to them over there, I suggested we take that out the blue book because that is certainly the most ineffective means of motivating people to study that could ever be thought of in the world. He says, “ If we follow around with them, ask them as women and say, ‘Study or I'll beat you, study or I'll beat you, study or I'll beat you.’”
And I think it was disgraceful, and not only that, it was a harm to the people who most need the freedom to participate in this collegiate life since they were the lower level and perhaps the least well developed. And they by all means ought to have the full privilege to use, participate in campus life and free activities otherwise.
And so I said to them, "I want to see that you remove this terrible rule from the blue book." Well, the dean, the dean of women, wasn't there but her representatives were. Well, they thought that I was just the most absolutely foolish person in the world because they thought the students needed to be guided, or driven, or protected—especially from themselves, as they put it—so that they'd study and measure up.
But I said to them finally, I said, "This rule is just about the most unbelievable thing in the world, and in particular I'd like to suggest that the voice of those who are thus circumscribed has never been heard in the councils where this rule was made." And then I added to that, "When wiser people are in control, this rule will be removed from the blue book." That's the way I saw it. But they just chewed me up and cut me in pieces and threw me out the window. [laughs] But in two years the rule was off the books. Well, that’s the kind of thing that made me sore when I was all, over there because I advocated things that didn't fit in with the status quo.
17
WL: Students were under a whole, students were under a whole set of rules, weren't they?
KB: Oh, a terrible lot of them. You could scarcely breathe without violating a rule. I don't want to exaggerate that, but there—some of them you just couldn't believe would be there. This just happens to be one that I picked on.
WL: Yeah. What—how would you describe some of the main features, the most prominent features of student life at Woman's College?
KB: Yeah. Well, one thing about the collegiate life I'd like to suggest, before I go on to that. I think they were just—did I say that once before? The faculty and the administration combined together were simply the most close-minded people I ever had anything to do with. And you can see the reasons why. I told you about those thirty-two people who had been fired.
Well, the whole atmosphere of that institution when I first went there was fear, fear, fear. Well, they couldn't be free to act and to perform and to do something different. And the president said, "The thing for you to do is teach." Well, I found that nine out of ten of the people who worked there at that time did one thing. They would go to the classroom and teach, and that's all they'd do. They made no effort to participate or contribute or be anything else in the world.
And it seemed to me that the very doctrine that was advocated robbed the institution of a major part of their services. So I didn't like that. I advocated, therefore, that the school be changed into a university, that it be open to all people in the region since half of the people in the state were in commuting distance of the college, and on this I found no—nothing but condemnation.
WL: You men—admitting men as well? Becoming co-ed?
KB: Pardon?
WL: Did you mean becoming co-ed?
KB: I meant becoming a university, and becoming co-ed would be incidental. But interesting enough, in 1932, I think it was—I forgot whether it was '32 or '33—the college was almost closed down. Very few people could come to college because they didn't have the money. But there were a whole lot of boys around, and Mr. Foust was away from the campus at the time.
I scouted around, talked to a lot of the boys in the city of Greensboro, and I found out that I learned the interest of about 200 of them. And they wanted to go to school somewhere but they couldn't go to school and not stay at home.
Well, I wrote President Foust a letter when he was away from—on vacation. So what I said to him, "Mr. Foust, I know the interest of 200 boys here in the city of Raleigh [sic] who want to go to college, but they can't go because they don't have the money to go off away from home." And I said, "How about letting them come to Woman's College to study as day students?" And you know what he did? He wrote back, he said, "Tell those boys to come on to the Woman's College." And he made me dean of men for a whole year. 18
WL: Oh did he?
KB: In a women's college. Well, it was a big job and it was so big I couldn't possibly—I had to teach right on even though they gave me full charge of those men. And that—I don't know how many came now, but they gave me full charge of those men. And I couldn't do that
work and do my academic work, too, so I asked for some relief. He, Mr. Foust, gave me permission to select some person on the faculty to be my assistant dean of men in the Woman’s College. I choose Dr. Theil [?] of the physics department. And he and I handled the affairs of those men for a whole year.
And President Foust told me there was nothing in the charter of the institution to prevent men from coming there to school and that insofar as he was concerned, he made it completely clear to me that from there on, the Woman's College was going to be co-educational.
But then he ran up against President [Frank Porter] Graham. President Graham had a peculiar Carolina prejudice against women, as I think of it. Anything that involved women in men's affairs spoiled the affairs for men.
And so if you read in the record about the consolidation of the university, he said, he constantly harped on the obvious need for a women's college. And he claimed to have consulted with faculty of the Woman's College about continuing it as a women's college. But I never saw President Graham and I don't believe many other faculty members saw him. The only ones he consulted, I think, were Harriet Elliott, Miss [Louise Brevard] Alexander, Mrs. Cone in the city of Raleigh [sic], and a few people like that who were right in his pocket. So they came and changed the college—when the university was integrated, they turned it back into a secluded place for women. Let’s see, what else was I going to say?
I, then—well, this comes later, but I tried to get along with the people, with men coming back into [unclear] so they wouldn’t have to go to school that far. I heard the administration at Chapel Hill say that 32,000 people, I guess it was, in the state of North Carolina were not able to go to school because they didn't have the money to go to school. Do you know the one who said that at the meeting? [William D.] Billy Carmichael [controller of UNC General Administration].
And I said to him, "Now look here, you say all those 32,000 people can't go to school. How about continuing an arrangement to let those men come to UNCG, or to Woman's College to study?" But he never gave me the courtesy of replying to my letter. But they returned it back to a school for only for girls.
WL: So this happened as a result of consolidation? Of the consolidation?
KB: Yes. If it hadn't been for consolidation, Woman's College would have been coeducational.
WL: That's interesting. They were already moving down that road. They were moving down the road—
KB: Well, Mr. Foust made it very plain to me that from here on, Woman's College was going to be coeducational. And he called to my attention that there was nothing in the charter to 19
prevent it from becoming coeducational. And if it hadn't been for consolidation, he had the power to continue that, we would have been coeducational.
WL: I see. That's interesting.
KB: But that's one of those things in which I didn't win.
WL: Yeah. Well—
KB: Now, go on to ask me your question.
WL: Yeah, what—
KB: I had an interesting life over there, you see.
WL: Yes, very interesting. Students that you had—how would you describe the students that you had, the ones that you had while you were there in the 1930s?
KB: Yeah, well, that really is an interesting question. I got so peeved at some cussed people there on the Woman's College campus I felt like shooting them just to rid the university and the universe of them. I don't say there were too many, but there was one person of high note on the Woman's College staff who corralled me and collared me and time and time again, tried to explain why he didn't get his PhD degree. He was so horrified that here I was a young squirt of thirty-one years of age with a PhD degree, and he was a full grown man and didn't have one. He tried to explain why.
Well, he was a wonderful fellow and a genius in his own right, I think, but he had no respect for women. I think just almost no respect because he said to me on many occasions, "Barkley, you know if there's a single course on this campus, on this—a single course on this campus which was taught at a proper level, there's not a single student on this campus who could pass it."
Now he said that to me time and time again. And there were others there who had the same viewpoint. I didn't think much of that, of course. And I thought he was pretty much of an ass to hold it himself, but that was the way it was. Now there were other people there who had the same sort of viewpoint—that women somehow or other just didn't measure up when it came to scholarship.
But I want to give you my opinion now. President Foust had many virtues as well as some few lacks. But one of his great virtues was that he left academia up to the academics. The dean—I can't remember what his name was now, who was the president, was the academic dean at that time—and the faculty he left free to organize curricula and present and to handle the job of teaching in the very best way they could.
And I came to see that the Woman's College was perhaps the most effective teaching institution in which I had ever had any connection. But—and another thing, I think that the social administration over there was superb because I believed, and still do believe it, that the arrangements for the safety, health care, nourishment, and housing of the students at the UNCG, as I knew it, was the best of any institution of which I was acquainted anywhere in the country.
Deleted: 20
So in terms of teaching and in terms of student care, I think they offered the best possible, the best program I ever had anything to do with. And I’ve taught at big universities and small colleges and all around about, and I still hold that opinion. But anyway, that's one impression that makes it plain.
On the other hand, now, about my impression of the students. I had a tremendous advantage in my teaching and lab work in that the students who took that lab work were all, almost exclusively in the eighty percentile of the entire class student body and up. So I had wonderful, wonderful students in that work. And not only that, but they made beautiful, splendid, marvelous progress in the study of psychology.
I was able to get quite a number of them to go off to graduate school for studies at Chapel Hill, Duke [University], [University of] Pittsburgh, Northwestern [University], and I can't remember all the places. But time and time again I had letters coming back saying, "Send us more students like this." And that was particularly true at Chapel Hill. Those students were prepared well and they had what it took.
Well, now, I'd say that the students in general were top notchers, that they were highly capable people. And by the way, I had something to do with setting up Phi Beta Kappa over there. I'm bragging about being a Phi Beta Kappa now. But I'm a member of the Alpha Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. And I think I'm one of only two that I've ever known who were elected to that chapter on the same basis.
I was—my college of Berea in Kentucky did not have a Phi Beta Kappa chapter. I had Phi Beta Kappa grades at Woman's College. When I came to Chapel Hill as a graduate student and on the basis of my achievements there, I was elected as a member of Phi Beta Kappa at Chapel Hill. And so far as I know I'm one of only two ever so elected.
Well, what I did at Woman's College then was to join what is called a Science Club, I guess it was, and there was some other group, I can't recall what they called it. It was a group that, sort of like an honor society in the college. I can't remember exactly what it was like, but we were interested in promoting scholarship at the institution. In the course of time we got around to considering the possibility of getting a Phi Beta Kappa chapter at the Woman's College.
Now I was a member of the chapter at Chapel Hill and I had entré there, I had friendship, I had powerful people on my side at Chapel Hill in the national organization of Phi Beta Kappa. Not for anything I did particularly, but it just turned out that way because of my life and connection with them down there. But I had an entré and a sort of power backing.
So we were considering seeking a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa at Woman's College. I said, "Now listen here, I suggest this. Instead of us asking for a independent chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, we ask for the establishment here of a branch of the Alpha Chapter of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill." Well, those fellows over at Chapel Hill, checked with the idea, we got busy on it, and in just unbelievably short time we had a branch of the Alpha Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa at Chapel Hill.
WL: There wasn't any opposition to that? No problem?
KB: My goodness, we had opposition on our own campus.
21
WL: Oh really.
KB: President [Julius] Foust took me aside time and time again. He said, "Now Barkley, look here. It's either an independent chapter or nothing." And I said, "Well, now look, Mr. Foust, I'm just the secretary of the committee. I can't determine what's going to happen." But I didn't listen to him. He would have died if he could have done it to keep us from having Phi Beta Kappa as a chapter—branch of the chapter at Chapel Hill.
Oh, I can understand it. It was his big baby, and he didn't want to play second fiddle to Chapel Hill here. But we got that chapter of Phi Beta Kappa at Woman's College at least twenty years before they ever could have done it, maybe forty years before they ever could have done it otherwise.
WL: Who else was on that committee that got it started? Do you remember?
KB: At Woman's College?
WL: Who else was on the committee that you were secretary of?
KB: Oh, oh, I wasn't secretary of that committee. I was secretary of Phi Beta Kappa Chapter after it was established.
WL: I see. Okay.
KB: I can't remember, but who were some of the ones who worked with me there? Well, there was a lady by the name of Miss Edna Myer Sink [?], and Dean [Henry Hugh] Altvater of the School of Music, and there’s one person in history whose name I haven't thought of, and Dr. [Helen] Barton of mathematics. They were all Phi Beta Kappa people. But they're the ones who—they had a committee in order to get Chapel—Phi Beta Kappa. I can't remember who all they were. But I worked as the secretary because I had had some experience with that line of work for a while, and for many years I continued as a secretary for Phi Beta Kappa.
WL: Was that recording secretary or corresponding secretary?
KB: I was the secretary, corresponding and recording, too.
WL: I see.
KB: I did everything along that line.
WL: So you did the whole thing, really.
KB: I'll tell you what I did. You see, when it came the time to have elections to Phi Beta Kappa, I was the bird who handled the negotiations and the presentations and so on and so on. So I had reasons to know that they were marvelous people in the student body at Woman's College, lots of them, lots of them. I have every regard for their intellectual power and for 22
their willingness to work, their character, and their steadfast effort. They were marvelous people there.
On the other—and then also, I had advisees. In addition to that, I taught the people in—I taught more courses over there than anybody else ever would. I taught the people in child psychology, in educational psychology, in mental hygiene and education—mental hygiene—abnormal psychology and mental hygiene, in applied psychology, in measurements. I forgot how they called it, but in measurements, like for job applications and so on, and special courses in introductory psychology, lab psychology, and all of them.
Well, I met a cross section of the student body who were in teaching or in music and in BSSA., bachelor’s in secretarial administration. I had a special course that I taught for them and so on. So I had a cross section of students and many scores of them, too, to come to know what they were like.
And I want to say that in the course of my experience there, I flunked very few people. They used to rag me at the registrar's office because I didn't flunk a lot of people. I said, "Well, look here, in my estimation when a person flunks a course it's the professor’s the one who failed more than anybody else." I said, "I don't play—what do you say—favors for these students at all. I just simply get them to do the work."
WL: Did they want you to flunk more people? Was there—?
KB: Oh, some of the dumb eggs around—I think they were the dumbest of dumb eggs—said that you ought to curve the grades and flunk a certain percentage of a class all the time. That's the craziest, absolutely foolish notion in the world. And that's one of the things I tried to work against over there.
Just think of taking all those magnificent people and feel that for your own academic satisfaction, you'd have to flunk a certain fifteen percent of them or something. Crazy stuff. I didn't believe in that at all, so I didn't flunk many people at UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro]. I didn't have to flunk them because they did the job.
And I want to tell you that in my whole life experience with some like fifty years of teaching in the universities around the country, I—the most satisfying single class I ever had was a class in psychology, which, in which I had fifty students. In that section of psychology I did not have a single paper late, I did not have a single unsatisfactory report, I did not have anybody who made a failing grade. They just, everybody did a splendid job. And I think that was typical of the student body at Woman's College.
If you did your job of teaching, they were willing to work. They had the character, they had—they could do the job, and I didn't believe that many of them ought to flunk. That makes my point.
WL: What about in the way of student activities? I've been told that—I've been told that in the 1930s—
KB: Say it big.
WL: I've been told in the 1930s that there was a student peace movement at—
KB: Pacifistic movement. 23
WL: Yes. Do you recall that?
KB: Yeah, do I. I didn't think much of it. There was a pacifistic movement in which I thought the people were acting just plain downright nuts. They approached me and they wanted me to sign a note, a pledge to the effect that if war were to come, then I would pledge myself not to fight no matter what the cause.
And I said, "Well, you people are just plumb out of your heads." I said, I said that, "You let some people start some things," and I said, "Hell yes, I'll fight.” For example, just let somebody start tampering with the Supreme Court of the United States, I'd fight them at the drop of a hat because they are the, the Supreme Court, I think, is the greatest bulwark of our freedom.
But I would not have anything to do with them. The only other person on the campus who stood up to that bunch was Mr. Teague, I think. Mr. Teague and I would not kowtow to that. I thought it was foolishness, sort of like the demonstrations in the sixties, and I thought they were misled. I really do. I still think so now. They lost their devotion to their country, their patriotism, and their judgment, and their wisdom of citizens and so on, it seemed to me. So I didn't favor that movement at all. I did not support it. I eschewed it. Is that a good word? [laughs]
WL: Yes.
KB: I didn't act ugly about that, now, at all. I kept my peace with everybody. But I thought that pacifistic movement was downright uncalled for, unpatriotic, unjustified. Well, I guess that's enough to say.
WL: Was there much support among the faculty for the pacifist movement?
KB: Oh, so far as I knew—didn’t know—I tried not to know. I didn't, I didn't—I cannot mention one single faculty member who was in on that. I cannot, I don’t remember one, but I didn't try to know.
WL: Was there much student support or was it just a small number?
KB: Yes, there it was most, it seemed to me, something to do, something to get excited about and to march on and so on. It seemed to me it was just sort of like these demonstrations in the 1960s. They weren't nuts in the sense of being unintelligent, but they were misguided. And by the way, I'd like to say I believe most of them were out of state, not North Carolinians.
WL: Oh really.
KB: I believe, so far as I knew the leaders, they were almost universally out of staters.
WL: Was there much in the way of a— was there much on campus in the way of interest in race relations, for example, in looking at the way race relations operated in the city of 24
Greensboro? Did you experience much of that while you were there? Was it—
KB: Well, see, I left in '48. And that movement, the civil rights movement, had not got started very much.
WL: Yeah.
KB: I can't remember anything at all in the way of a general movement in that connection. But I do remember that there was a feeling of camaraderie among the faculty folk and the janitorial staff. So far as I'm concerned personally, I had a good friend among the black people.
And I'd like to say that I found that a bunch of faculty people—I mean service people over there, janitors, had good personalities, they were cooperative, dependable. And the relationships, so far as I knew, between the white folks on the campus and the black servants were really—we worked together happily. No, I don't know of anything at all in terms of relationships downtown.
WL: What kind of impact did the war have there at Woman's College?
KB: Which war are you talking about?
WL: The Second World War—1941 to 1945.
KB: Yeah. Well, I’ve lived through so many wars. See, I'm ninety-one years old now, and I lived through so many wars.
Second World War. Well, there were many ways in which it had a marked effect. First of all, quite a large number of the younger faculty men were called into the service. [Lawrence Starr] Ritchie, son-of-a-bitch Chase—that’s my name for him. Don't tell him I said that, but he was a son of a bitch. [Wilton Perry] Chase, Ritchie and Chase.
Well, there weren't many young men there to be called. But women were not called on to go. But we lost Chase in the psychology department. We lost Ritchie in the biology department. I can't remember. But nearly all the young men were called.
WL: Called up.
KB: I was invited to join to enter officer training work. I corresponded with Frank Graham about it. He told me that he hoped that I wouldn't go because I was then forty-one years old in the fall of 1941. But somebody had to stay home and hold up the rafters while the others went. I corresponded and took it into, under serious consideration and decided that, being at my age, I thought it better for me to stay there and support the university than to go.
But I might say I also said to myself that if those boys go over there and fight all those wars and all that sort of stuff, I'm going to stay here and teach these sophomores, juniors, and seniors, what not, and I ought to be able to, be willing to do as much as I could. So I, throughout the war, I taught eighteen hours a week. I had six preparations, six different courses I taught. It was a tremendously difficult thing and yet I'm glad I did it.
25
WL: Was the teaching load increased during the war?
KB: Oh, they wouldn't—you didn't have to do it. But we couldn't do the job in the department of psychology unless we did double up. So I taught eighteen hours a week and had six preparations.
WL: What had been your load before? What was your teaching load?
KB: At most fifteen hours and three preparations. That's at most. But I stood there—I stayed there and kept that up. Now, on the other hand, there's another very strong impact. You see, we had more soldiers quartered in the replacement depot, they called it over there, in Chapel Hill—I mean, in Greensboro. More people or soldiers were there than were citizens in the city of Greensboro.
WL: Is that right?
KB: Tremendous place. And that's where they came in. And they were cannon fodder, who went over and takes [sic] the place of those who were killed, you know, different agencies in the country. They were desperate young men and scared young men. I went out and talked to the groups oftentimes in what you called the USO [United Service Organizations]. Was that it?
WL: Yeah.
KB: Got acquainted with a lot of the soldiers and had some few of them come to my home. But one of the most direct ways in which I was involved, they loosed those boys from the camp, they'd come by the hundreds to the campus. They'd march in formation clear across town to come over just to have a look at those girls. Sometimes they'd come over on a Sunday, for example, and lie down by the scores just to see the girls walk by.
But then we arranged to have dances for them, and I—we always helped to chaperone those dances. But one of the things that I did for the full period of the war was act as a campus guard. Faculty members were call on to stand guard on that campus day and night. Now many a time I taught all day and stood guard on the campus until one o'clock at night.
I don't—I never saw anything happen that was too untoward. I made up my mind if anything happened I could skip, I would. I'd seen those girls sometimes take those boys' breath away, but I said that's the last time they’ll have a chance to do that. But I did have a lot of experience along that line. We were short—
[End Tape 1, Side B—Begin Tape 2, Side A]
WL: Okay, you were telling me about the ORD [Overseas Replacement Depot].
KB: Yeah, but I was also—did I start to mention that we had very short-handed on the campus and I had to cut my own stencils and do all of that. 26
WL: That's right, yes.
KB: And I also had to grade all my papers and what not. It was a lot of work but I did it. And I'm glad of it now. I also participated in the ORD—was that what they called it—?
WL: Yes.
KB: —programs over there in the city of Raleigh—Greensboro. Spent many hours in conferences, as in giving lectures and talks to the soldiers and to their friends. We had some few come to be entertained at our house.
One little episode that I thought was quite telling. There was a young soldier at one time walking up and down the street on McIver Street where I lived, at 109 McIver Street, where that, those apartment houses are now? I used to own that lot and big house there.
And I saw a street—a boy walking down the street on the other side from my house, and I saw he looked downcast. I said, "Hello soldier, come over and sit and talk with me a while." We had a swing on the front porch, and he came sat in the swing and we talked. It was Sunday afternoon. [coughs]
He was terribly—I don't know what to say—downcast. He was a farm boy from a dairy farm in northern Vermont, I think. He had never been away from home. He was only about eighteen years old or something like that. He was scared to death and lonesome and deprived like a child.
After a while I said, "Could I get you a drink or something?" He said, "Yeah." He said he really would like to have a glass of milk. So I went to my kitchen, I got a glass and filled it up with milk and put ice in it, took it out to him. And you know what he did? He cried. He cried because you see, he'd been accustomed to having milk back on the dairy farm where he worked, so he sat there and cried.
I also remember one time seeing a soldier walking along the street. He was covered with red dust so he was caked with that stuff. And I spoke to him, I said to him something like, "How are you, soldier, how are you getting along," what not.
And I said, "What's happening?" He said, "Well, I'm the general's chauffeur, and we have brought a bunch of, several thousand soldiers to Greensboro for the weekend," or some such time, "and I'm just killing time while I'm waiting to drive the general's car." And I said, "Well, come on down to my house and let's talk a while." And he said, "Well,"—and I said, "Is there anything we can do for you?" And he said, "Yes, if you will, I'd like to have a bath."
Well, that fellow was as caked with that red dirt until you could scarcely see him. But he went in and I bet he took two hours [laughs] bathing in my house, but I'm glad I did it. He came out looking like a different person. And it was very touching to see how really, almost like a little child, appreciated it, you see. So he got cleaned up in my house.
We never had any of them stay overnight at the home, and we had only a few incidental ones who came to our house for a meal or something like that. In one case, there was a young man who was a recruiter of officer training candidates throughout the United States.
We were—I was running a big house, seventeen rooms and four baths then, and I had the second floor, second and third floors turned into rooming places for girls from the 27
Woman's College who couldn't get in a dorm, but they could stay in private homes outside but not in ordinary places out in the city of Raleigh—city of Greensboro.
Well, we had one girl who was a young teacher in art there who lived in one of the—on the third floor of our house who had a boyfriend somewhere around over in the country who was in the business of being an officer training candidate's recruiter. He would call her by telephone. We had only one telephone in the house down by near my bedroom. He'd call at one o'clock at night, in the middle of the morning, or anytime, and I would take her to get the message.
Then she said to me one day, "If he ever comes down here, I'm going to marry him before he gets out of this town." Well, he did come. They had no arrangements to get married or anything of that sort. So my wife and I said "Well, we'll put on a wedding reception for you and see to it that you get married."
Well, we did that, and we put on this wedding reception for that soldier and his bride. The first one such wedding reception held in that new Alumni House there at Woman's College. We put that on for him.
Well, he came and married the girl, then left. He was a navigator on a big bomber over Germany. He was shot down on his first flight over Germany but he was not killed. He was captured. After the war, he came back and he and his wife went to live in Chicago. I went up there to visit them and so far as I know, they lived happily ever after.
WL: That's great.
KB: Let's see now. Where were we? I also would say that the war had another effect so far as I was concerned personally, that I just did not have the strength nor the time to do anything professionally aside from my class work. I couldn't do any research work during all that time.
WL: Because of the added teaching load?
KB: Oh yeah, I was run just plumb ragged. But I'm glad I did it. Let's see now, what else?
WL: Did most of the faculty live on McIver Street or—? Was McIver Street sort of a faculty ghetto there?
KB: Yeah, there were quite a number of houses there. You see, there were three houses right on—four houses right on a row there where the faculty practice—the practice house is on, facing McIver Street there. I guess it's still there?
WL: Yeah.
KB: Home economics practice house. And there were four houses there and down the other on West Market Street there were two houses there. So there was a whole lot of houses of faculty members on both sides of McIver Street there. But also there were people who lived over there—couldn’t remember the street, just sort of, you know where Grace Methodist Church. Not the Grace Methodist Church, but that church right across from the auditorium there? 28
WL: College Park—I've forgotten the name of it. I know there's a Methodist church right there though across from—
KB: Yeah, yeah. Back in that region behind there, there were a great many faculty people who lived up there. Mr. W. R. Taylor, who was the director of the Playlikers, lived in there. Ritchie lived in there. And then on Tate Street and on that little street that runs up and down from the corner down there at the bottom of the hill—I’ve forgotten the name of that street—[coughs] a great many of them lived right in there.
But there was also a concentration of faculty members who lived over on Aycock Street back behind the golf course, back over there. And then on Elam Street—isn't one of them called Elam Street back in there? In that region. And some of the better-heeled faculty members lived along the extension of West Market Street west toward Guilford College. And quite a large number lived on Friendly Road [sic] going out to Guilford College. So they lived everywhere around.
And, by the way, there's another place where so many of them lived. You know where you go down to, from the end of McIver Street you go down the hill, and there's a stream down there—down under—I don't know what they call that street. A lot of them lived right around in that area there. I remember that Dr. Hook [?] who was a French professor lived in there and quite a number of others.
And Dr.—little girl—woman who was in the math department whose name I've forgotten now. Miss [Cornelia] Strong was her name. She lived right down there on the other side of West Market. Lots of them lived in there. McIver Street, yes, was pretty well a housing place, but Tate Street also there were a number of people who lived over there. Many of them lived over there on Tate Street.
WL: I gather that from what you’ve said that Woman's College was a fairly hierarchical kind of place in terms of faculty. Were there faculty people that were used to running things there?
KB: Yes, well, that's one of the things I had on my list here. I advocated we put in a student on the faculty government over there.
WL: Didn't have that before?
KB: No, there was [coughs]—the administration had what was called a cabinet, as I remember it. And they—that was composed of the dean, the dean of women, the registrar, the business manager, the dean of the schools, the dean of the AB school and the dean of the school of education, and then probably one or two people who were asked by the administration to be serving there.
For example, the lady who was the professor of Latin served as a secretary for that group for a long time. It was hierarchical in that sense. But it was almost entirely a closed group. They did what they wanted to do the way they wanted to do it, and the faculty had very little to say about the general administration of the institution.
But I must say that we had regular faculty meetings and people could have their say and make presentations there. And after we got the advisory committee, in a course of time—that was after the consolidation of the university—there was a great deal of faculty 29
input and I think maybe more satisfaction.
But that advisory committee was a group that was elected by the faculty to offer our counsel to the administration. And they were really decent about it, I thought.
WL: And that came after consolidation?
KB: Excuse me?
WL: Did that come as a result of consolidation, the creation of that committee?
KB: Yes, yes. [President] Frank Graham was responsible for setting up a sort of faculty representation system and particularly through what was called advisory committee.
WL: I see.
KB: Incidentally, when I came here [to Raleigh] I got one set up here at State.
WL: Oh really?
KB: They nearly dropped dead when somebody suggested something like that at State. But I got it set up in no time.
WL: After you left in 1948, a few years after that the Woman's College got a new chancellor, Edward Graham.
KB: Yes.
WL: And there was a terrible fight that erupted after that. And I'm wondering if there might have been a—some reasons why that happened.
KB: Yes, I think—his name was Edward Kidder?
WL: That's right, yes, Edward Kidder Graham [Jr.].
KB: I knew him since the day he's born. Yes. Well, Edward Kidder Graham was a good fellow, a smart educator. But he had never been free to do as he damn well pleased in any situation in which he'd ever existed. And when he got to Greensboro he formed an affiliation with the then dean of women. What was her name?
WL: Katherine Taylor?
KB: What?
WL: Was that Katherine Taylor?
KB: Yeah, Katherine Taylor. And they formed a pretty powerful duo. Well, now, I didn't know 30
what was going on, of course, but I got a lot of flack from people one way or another. But what had occurred to me to be was that Graham, without reasonable consultation or consideration maybe, of the interests and viewpoints and feelings of the faculty, would go ahead like in a sort of slap-dash fashion and do something. And then there’d be a backlash. Well, now, interestingly enough he left there and went to Boston University, didn't he?
WL: That's right.
KB: Dean of the faculty of Boston University. He did all right up there. And do you know the reason why?
WL: Why's that?
KB: He wasn't the chief rooster on the roost. He was under guidance. The thing that happened to Graham over there in my estimation was that he had the freedom to do what he thought was right and best, and he just had not learned how to do that—well, may I say pleasantly, considerately. And I believe his biggest mistake was to go slap-dash ahead without counsel and guidance and exchange of information and viewpoints of the faculty. I think they were glad to have him go.
WL: Okay. Well, what—do you have other things on your list that you'd like to talk about? What else do you—?
KB: Oh, well, one or two things, maybe.
WL: Okay.
KB: One of the things I'd like to mention just for my own standpoint. You know they have the Playlikers there. You know, the Playlikers. Isn't that what you call them? Put on the plays over in the auditorium.
WL: Yeah.
KB: We called them the Playlikers. Well, now, they lacked a supply of men who would be willing to participate in their plays as players, but I had had a little bit of a background in that connection. So from the day I hit the campus almost, I got involved with that group and enjoyed wonderfully playing in some of the plays there on the campus.
And I thought that that Playliker group was a—had a rare, great impact on the student group as a whole, and certainly many people profited by and enjoyed the Playliker work. I played in "Our Town," "The Barretts of Wimpole Street," "We, the Women," and I can't remember all them. But that was, so far as I was concerned personally, was a very nice experience. And I thought that they, the —Playlikers, made a fine contribution to the campus.
Another thing I'd like to mention from the standpoint of my own appreciation was the music school. Now they had students who would put on recitals one way or another. I liked to go to them. My then wife—this lady here is my second wife—my then wife was 31
hard of hearing and didn't like to go to such things, so I often went by myself. And after a while, people thought I was a member of the faculty—on the staff at the music school. But I appreciated it a very great deal, the business of enjoying the music of the music school.
Let's see now, that's one thing. Another thing, I tried to enter into the life of the campus as fully as I could and in a sensible sort of way. And they had an athletic program there on the campus in which they would have contests between groups. They had societies or something else, I forget what it was.
But ultimately they developed what they called leagues. They had the Elliott League, let's see, Elliott League—well, I've gotten—four of them they had. The Elliott League, the Alexander maybe it was, the Alexander. Oh, that fellow, now, who was he, what was his name? Well, there was another man for whom one of the leagues was named. Mr.—now what was his name? He was a young fellow there on the campus.
But anyway, they named four leagues. One of them was the Elliott League, one for that man, one was for me, and one for some or another woman. And they had the, had plaques put up in the gymnasium with our names on, his and the league. We'd have baseball games, hockey games, all sorts of participating games, contests among the students.
And then we would have a big blowout at the end of the year in the gymnasium when the different leagues would compete with each other in little games there one way or another. That was—I enjoyed that part from my standpoint.
Another thing that I think is very, very interesting in some respects. You know—or do they still have them, do they have tea dances over there?
WL: Not any more, no.
KB: Well, at the time that I was there, beginning early, very first of my beginning there, they had a room under the Mary Foust dormitory—not Mary Foust dormitory. What's the big dormitory that goes right on down the street there? The long one, you know, where the dining hall is? Where that dormitory was, I've forgotten the name of it now [Spencer Hall].
But anyway they had a big room down underneath there where the girls would go and have tea dances in—after supper for an hour before they had to go home and go study and so on. Well, in the course of time—I also loved to dance—I got invited to come to some of those tea dances, and went too, enjoyed it. But then we had the men come there that year, do you remember?
I went to the dean of women and I said, "Now that these men here are on the, are students of the college, why not let's have them come to enjoy these tea dances." And she took it up with President Foust—yeah, President Foust,—and came back to me, and she said, "Well, President Foust said we could do it under one condition." And I said, "What's that?" And she said, "That you will chaperon those dances."
Whew, what a burden it turned out to be. But anyway, we would have them, we moved from the little room to the gymnasium and we'd have those tea dances. And these boys who were students, they'd be invited. We then made up a list of characterful [sic] young men in the neighborhood whom we'd admit to come to those dances, and we'd put on very delightful tea dances for years and years and years there.
I therefore claim to be the founder of informal dancing on the campus of Woman's College. They—when I went there, the only ones they had were the society dances and the junior-senior. I think maybe five dances a year. Man, we had them every week. [laughs] 32
And it was a good thing, I think.
Another thing which I did—I'm talking about myself now, I guess that's what you want me to say.
WL: Yeah.
KB: We had football at Chapel Hill, you remember, of course, back in those days, as well as now. Well, after consolidation, I wrote to the administration of athletics down at Chapel Hill and I said, "Well, we're now a part of the [Consolidated] University, and you give students at Chapel Hill the privilege of attending football games under exceptional circumstances. How about arranging some way so that the girls can come down to attend those football games?"
I wrote to Frank Graham. Well, he didn't do a thing but turn that over to a fellow—I can't remember what his name was now—who was sort of coordinator of the activities of the athletic department. And they sent back a letter to me saying, "We'll welcome the girls to come down." And I think that what the tickets were going to cost was fifty cents apiece, something like that.
Well, I said, "I'm just going to take this up with these girls here and see how many would like to go." So I put out the word that we could go to Chapel Hill and see a football game if they were interested for fifty cents a piece. And so they says [sic]—I believe as many as 300 of those girls would come to go.
WL: How would you get over there?
KB: Well, I was going to say, but then the question came up about transportation. So what I did was to arrange to hire buses big enough to carry all the girls over to Chapel Hill. I sold the tickets, collected the money and sent it over there to Chapel Hill. Then that got to be so big. I did all this as extracurricular. Then I couldn't keep it up, so I turned it over to the bookstore and they did that.
One other thing I think I ought to mention, this is from my standpoint. When I went to the Woman's College there was not one single person on that campus to whom a girl could go and discuss some matter of private significance and sometimes life-and-death significance, literally, and feel that they could do it in the safety, with respect of not being turned in to disciplinary officers.
Well, I’ve served out my life here in North Carolina and most of the time I have been a certified practicing psychologist. In Illinois and before I was graduated from my PhD degree, I had a private practice in psychotherapy. And when I came to Woman's College there was, as I say, not one single person there to whom they could go and be in—secure in that their confidence would be held. Oh well, I didn't intend to do it at all. I believe every girl on that campus had a problem.
Well, I don't remember how it started, but it turned out some little girl had some problem and she’d come—approached me. I worked it out with her. And it grew and grew and grew and grew until after a while, it was just overwhelming again. So I had to put on a campaign to get somebody, to get the college to put in a person whose job was to do that.
They hired a psychiatrist to come and do that work there. That, I think, was most significant. I thought that was a good thing and I'm proud to have had, to have made a 33
contribution in that connection. Not because I knew so much or I had special power, but because I understood people and could figure out ways and means of doing it. We achieved really some miracles to save those girls from themselves.
One other thing that I think is significant here. By reason of that counseling, the dean of women and some of the rest of them—I think it was the dean of women—got the feeling that I should not be allowed to counsel those girls. So they tried to prohibit me from doing it.
They—I foolishly was sent one time to talk to the dean of women—the only time I ever went to her office, I think, about other matters—when she wanted to know of me what kind of problems these girls came to talk to me about. Well, I said to them, "They talk about whether or not they ought to answer a boyfriend, send a signal before they answer their formal one, they wanted to ask about how they ought to marry this man or that, or whether they ought to take this line of work or something else. Just little old practical things. And sometimes they have very severe personal problems, like enuresis or abnormal fears and things like that."
And they've come to me very carefully, I thought. And I said, "And they talk to me about problems of homosexuality." And when I said that to the dean of women, she threw up her hands like that, she fell back over her chair and she said, "Oh, my God." [laughs] I touched a raw nerve.
But anyway, then she cited me to the chancellor. And he called me in there, that confounded skutter [sic]. He tried every way in the world to browbeat me into saying I would no longer counsel those girls. And he just shouted at me and did everything at all. Then finally he said, now—and I guess the dean had told him about that matter of homosexuality. He said, "Why, young girls ought not to be talking to young men about this sort of thing."
And I said, "Young men? Chancellor Jackson? I'm forty years old." And then I just turned around and I—he just burned me up. I got so mad with him I didn't know what to do. And so I turned around, finally I turned around and said to him, pounding on his desk, and I said [pounds], "Dean Jackson, so long as I am a member of this staff and these girls come to me for counsel in something which is in my area of expertise, I'm going to offer it to them."
And he sort of looked and he said, "Well, I guess as I've been counseling all these years without training, you ought to be allowed to counsel them with training."
WL: Was homosexuality much of a phenomenon?
KB: Oh well, yes, it was a phenomenon all right. But I'd like to expound on that a little bit because I had a reason to make special studies of that over there. You know, women were—you had three or four thousand women shut up over there in a coop. They were sexual as the dickens, at a time when probably they were probably burning as highly as they'd ever burn in their lifetimes.
And there they were, highly sexual people with no normal sexual outlets. So there grew up a practice on that campus, as well as many other places, on allowing women a great deal of leeway with respect to homosexual expression with respect to each other—hug each other, kiss each other, caress each other, and so on. Innocent as you please.
So they raised that question with me about this matter of homosexuality. So I told them in my estimation that these girls here are not extensively homosexual in nature, 34
although I had quite a number of episodes involving such. I said, "These girls here are not homosexual. They’re just simply sexual with no heterosexual opportunity for expression. "So I says, "I believe that if they just get a chance for them to have heterosexual expression, in most cases their homosexuality will go ‘poof.’" And I still believe that was so.
Well, I never had any particular thing arise out of that except that the dean and even the chairman of my department threatened to fire me for that and one other thing I tried out in my career. But then there was another thing. You're going to have to quit pretty soon, right?
WL: Pretty soon, yeah.
KB: Well, I'll tell you this and then I'll let you go. The—what's the one they call, it’s the college paper over there?
WL: The Carolinian?
KB: Carolinian. They sent a student to interview me one time, and they knew of my editorial experience in the past and so on. So they said to me, "Won't you tell us"—and they apparently interviewed some other people about the same thing—"what is the function and role of a student newspaper on the campus?" Well, I said to them several things, like keeping students informed, and opportunity for expression and so on and so no, and freedom to [coughs] express their views and findings and problems openly without restraint, or something like that. freedom of the press, in other words.
But then—you know, you were too young to know some of these things—but there was a great furor in Texas one time about how some professors in economics did something and the administration tried to fire them because they didn't like some of the views they expressed. Did you ever hear that?
WL: No.
KB: Well, that was—they made it awfully tough on the faculty members down there because they denied them the freedom of press expression. That's really what it amounted to. Same thing happened at [College of] William and Mary over there at Virginia. And you probably never heard of the fact that the, one of the magazines at Chapel Hill was one time suppressed completely and denied freedom of publication because they published an article that didn't fit in with the mores of the administration's opinion.
And so when I said that the students ought to have an organ by which they can offer their expressions one way or another freely, and then I said, "Take into account the Texas episode, Chapel Hill episode and the William and Mary episode." I said, "It appears as if we may be losing our freedom of the press."
Well, they published that. The dean of women read it. The first thing I knew I was summoned to go to Chapel Hill for a censoring interview with Frank Graham, the only person I ever heard of in the university.
And he—and I went down there on his call, early in the morning. We had the conference in the morning till noon. We went to lunch, and we came back and we spent the afternoon in conference. He asked me ten thousand questions. I don’t know, that’s an 35
exaggeration, but many, many questions about matters of the Woman's College one way or another.
And I gave him straight answers about all kinds of things they had accused me, especially on this business of freedom of the press, you see. But all sorts of other things he had—he took it up with me then. He just gave me an awful raking over the coals.
Well anyway, I went back home that evening and the next day I swore I got a letter from—oh, he said to me as I left, said, "You have told me enough stuff there to blow North Carolina wide open from one end of the state to the other." And he said, "I want you to go home and keep it quiet," or something like that.
Well, the next day or two I got a letter from him saying that, "You have lodged severe accusations," or something like that, "charges against a lot of people. And I think you ought to take that into account and know it," something to that effect.
I wrote back immediately and I said, "Now President Graham, I did not lay any charges against anybody. You invited me to come down there. You asked me straight-faced questions, and I gave you straight answers. But I didn't offer charges against anybody." Well, I never heard from him again about that.
But he must have done something to the administration at Woman's College because I never had any flack from them after that. But that was a real, a real significant difficulty. That kind of thing, I thought, cowed the faculty at Woman's College.
WL: That wasn't unusual?
KB: What?
WL: That was not unusual that kind of—getting that kind of harassment?
KB: Yeah. I don't think it's like that over there anymore.
WL: No.
KB: Well, I'd like to say that I—you can cut it off if you like.
[End of Interview]