Oral history interview with Edwin Phillip Morgan, 1990 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Phillip Morgan
INTERVIEWER: William Link
DATE: April 3, 1990
[Begin Side A]
WL: I‟ll ask you the same question again. Did—what sort of impressions you might have had when you first came to UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro]. Perhaps you might tell me—before you answer that you might talk a little bit about your background, where you came from, where you were educated, and what brought you to Woman‟s College [of the University of North Carolina].
PM: Well, I came from Oklahoma. I was born in Oklahoma; it‟s called the Oklahoma, and then Tulsa—seven years in Tulsa. I graduated from Tulsa University. Then I went to the Eastman School of Music [Rochester, New York] where I got my master‟s and doctorate in piano. And I‟d studied piano with a teacher named Guy Mayer at the Juilliard [School of Music, New York, New York] in the summertime. And then at his summer school he would always come to Asheville [North Carolina] for one week. And he always looked forward to that because it‟s such a nice cool place after hot New York in the summer. And I used to come here with him and continue my study for that one week in Asheville, and I grew to like North Carolina through those experiences in Asheville. So when my wife and I received this notice that there was a vacancy, I said, “Well, this is the place we want to go. North Carolina is a beautiful, beautiful state.” And I‟d always heard of the wonderful reputation of the University of North Carolina, especially Graham, the president.
WL: Frank Porter Graham?
PM: Frank Porter Graham and his liberal stance. I was a great admirer of Frank Porter Graham.
WL: So you applied?
PM: So I applied, and I was in the [United States] Army and I‟d been told by the authorities that I‟d be out by a certain time so that I could apply in full confidence that I would be able to fulfill my obligations. So I applied, got the job and then the Army changed its mind and sent me to California where I stayed a month. So my wife [Inga Morgan] came on to take my place. She also is a very fine pianist, and she came the first—the second semester of ‟46, and I followed about a month later as soon as I got out of the Army. And 2
I remember the campus as being—well, it was much smaller, of course, and there was more space. I remember the Japanese cherry trees; there were so many Japanese cherry trees, especially the space near between the music building and Aycock [Auditorium] where Taylor Building is built now. That was full of cherry trees. And—
WL: What was there? Was there kind of a grove?
PM: Yes, there was a grove and green grass—very, very nice, a pretty place and lots of old buildings that had outgrown their usefulness. The old student union building which no longer exists, of course; it was later demolished. And so we came here at a time when the school was just beginning to experience some growth. They were beginning to build new buildings. The student union, the Home Economics Building, the new gym—the old, old Rosenthal [Gym], of course, was here. The new one after that, Coleman I think it‟s called, which has been added considerably since then, of course. Just recently. Taylor [Building] and the annex to the Music Building and, of course, the growth of the school has been rather phenomenal. Not only students, but the number of the faculty that have come here since we moved here.
WL: You came from—being from Oklahoma, you were sort of used to the South? Did—?
PM: No, not, not—Oklahoma is, always been, a border state.
WL: Were you in sort of the western side of—?
PM: Midwestern.
WL: Yes.
PM: So the South was a fairly new concept to me.
WL: Yes. Did you experience any culture shock coming—?
PM: Not cultural shock. I experienced a change as different—the [unclear]. The kind of culture shock that I think you refer to I felt more when I went to Atlanta or Decatur, Georgia. I really found myself in the Deep South there.
WL: That was in connection with what?
PM: Well, I went—I took a trip down there with the university trio. I played with a violinist and cellist, and we gave a concert down there.
WL: What about the School of Music? What kind of place was—what kind of department or school did you find—?
PM: It was thriving.
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WL: Thriving?
PM: Yes, it was thriving. I discovered I was employed at a School of Music that had a very fine reputation all over the country. I hadn‟t realized it at the time. But they did have a fine reputation; the standards were very high. This was no charm school. There‟s nothing of the charm school about Woman‟s College. It was a part—the girls were expected to work hard. The teachers were highly qualified and dedicated, and everybody went about their business as though they meant what they were doing. But it was southern-oriented, getting back to your other question a while ago. Especially among the students I found—. I had one student come to me who said she said she had been offered a scholarship to the Cincinnati [Ohio] Conservatory but she didn‟t go because it was so north. [laughs] So there was some of that atmosphere of still lingering over—. Most of the girls who graduated here got married, had families. They were not professionally oriented—certainly not in music. They would teach sometimes but that was not a great profession for them.
WL: Most of the girls would be trained for—to teach music in schools? Was that the main—?
PM: Public school music and private piano teaching—private teaching.
WL: So there—was there heavy emphasis on music education at the time?
PM: Yes, there was. It—that was one of the strong departments in the School of Music.
WL: What about the leadership of the School of Music when you first arrived? Who was the dean of—?
PM: Dean Hugh Altvater. He was a fine gentleman. I think I look back on those days as being very special days, very wonderful days. It was a kind of a free democratic feeling among faculty. We all had a say in what was being done. He was—we had the Arts Forum going at that time. You heard about that?
WL: Yes. Tell me a little more about that.
PM: Well, it was especially prominent in music, art, writing and dance. We brought in nationally-known figures to speak to the students, and students submitted their work and these prominent people would criticize. And we had concerts in music, and there‟d be symposiums in writing. Some of the men in music were Howard Hanson [an American composer, conductor, educator, music theorist, and champion of American classical music], Roger Sessions [American composer, critic and teacher of music], Walther Reger[?], Ernest Bacon [American composer, pianist and conductor].
The writers were even more prominent I think. Robert Penn Warren [American poet, novelist, literary critic; won two Pulitzer Prizes, one in poetry, one in fiction] [pause] See Randall Jarrell [American poet, literary critic, children's author, essayist, novelist, and the 11th Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position that now bears the title Poet Laureate] was here—he was on the faculty, and Alan Tate 4
[American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1944] was on the faculty for a while.
And then the best dance people in the country were here. Martha Graham [American modern dancer and choreographer], Charles Wiedman [choreographer, modern dancer, teacher], and we‟d get together on joint projects like drama for instance. We would have Greek drama, which employed music, dance, as well as drama. So it was really quite a festive time. I think it really got to the place where we ran out of people to invite anymore. We had everybody [laughs] here that was prominent in their field. I can‟t think of anybody in music who was prominent at all at that time here who had not come here at one time or another.
WL: So that there was a lot of this kind of interplay between dance and music and literature?
PM: Yes, there was. And we had—that‟s when we first had the master‟s degree which embraced that, those three fields, those several fields.
WL: That‟s MFA, a master of fine arts?
PM: MFA, yes.
WL: In order to get an MFA, did you have to do all three? Or would you—do you remember how it worked? Was it—?
PM: You could specialize. If you were interested in music, why that was your specialty. But you got it in all the fields.
WL: But the degree embraced all three—
PM: Yes.
WL: —components?
PM: Yes.
WL: I suppose having Aycock Auditorium was a great asset, wasn‟t it?
PM: That was the center of the whole works. And the Virginia Dare Room, that was a very prominent place for the symposiums—the writers would gather there and talk. It was very exciting to hear them argue. It became very heated sometimes. [laughs]
WL: Tell me a little bit more about the student body. You said some things already about them, but what kind of students came here aside from music students—including music students, but also including general, the general undergraduate population? Most of them were from North Carolina.
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PM: Yes. They were family-oriented. Their parents, their mothers had come here in many cases or relatives or friends. And they were—they wanted an education. And they worked hard. They seemed rather docile, but they were willing to work. And they did good work. I don‟t remember having problems with any students. They were very perceptive of— ideas, disciplines. It was very different from the ‟60s, for example, when things sort of fell apart. Well, they didn‟t fall apart, they changed; attitudes changed so much.
WL: They were less docile in the ‟60s?
PM: Oh yes, they were more independent. They didn‟t always accept what you said. [chuckles] You had to give them sales talks a lot of times. I admire the ‟60s; I think those were very lively times. I think that it‟s one of the best parts of American history. But it was difficult for teachers.
WL: Difficult time to teach?
PM: Yes, it was.
WL: Students and faculty in the Woman‟s College days got along fairly well? Was there a close cooperation between students and faculty?
PM: Yes. There was a good feeling among faculty and between the faculty and students. We didn‟t socialize a lot, not—faculty and students didn‟t socialize. But I think it‟s different now. There‟s quite a bit of camaraderie among the faculty and students.
WL: But there wasn‟t much social contact between fac—?
PM: I wouldn‟t say so. I don‟t mean it was unfriendly; it‟s just that it wasn‟t done.
WL: Tell me more about the faculty in Woman‟s College days. The faculty here was composed of both men and women, perhaps more women, obviously more women than you would have in a men‟s college or in a public, a normal male public—
PM: Yes. One of the great things about the Woman‟s College is it gave women a chance to have a—hold down an important job. Women were very important on this campus. Not that men weren‟t, but the women were quite able to speak out and become prominent. There was no thought of male chauvinism around this place. [chuckles]
WL: Some strong women here?
PM: Yes. Strong, oh, they‟re very strong. Harriet Elliott [history and political science faculty, dean of women] for example—very, very robust, rather daring, outspoken person. Very attractive, very out—the kind of person you were attracted to—speak to. I used to; I didn‟t know who she was when I came here. I just kept seeing this woman on the campus when I walked around campus, and we always spoke. I always sort of wondered, “Well, who is that attractive lady?” And I met her at a party later, and she said, “Well, yes, Mr. 6
Morgan, I‟ve been speaking—we‟ve been saying “hey” to each other,” she said. And I found out that she was a really important woman. She was also rather daring in some of the things she said. I sat down one time in the cafeteria; she was alone and I hadn‟t shaved that day. And she said, “Mr. Morgan, I had a young girl come to me once and say, „Do I have to wear panties?‟” And I told her “Yes, you have to wear panties.” And Mr. Morgan, I think men will have to shave too.” [laughs]
WL: How did you react to that?
PM: Well, I was very embarrassed. I shaved after that.
WL: You made sure you shaved?
PM: Yes.
WL: Did faculty gather at the—you said—when you say cafeteria, you meant the home economics cafeteria?
PM: We had a cafeteria in the Home Economics Building.
WL: And that was the gathering place?
PM: It was a very popular place to eat lunch and talk. And you saw a lot of friends there. You met a lot of people you might not have met otherwise. They had very good food. The whole—faculty families would eat; they would bring their children there for lunch. And every Thanksgiving they would have a special Thanksgiving dinner for the faculty families. It was really nice. I don‟t know why they discontinued it. I guess they ran out of money; it wasn‟t paying for itself.
WL: It was only discontinued recently, eight, nine, years ago. Did faculty see a lot of each other? Was there a lot of social interaction between faculty?
PM: Yes, it was a very social time. In music we had our recital; it was a small department, small school. So we had our faculty recitals on Sundays in the afternoon which meant that we could have a party after the recital. And there were several people on the faculty who loved to give parties. And they cultivated—they made a point of cultivating members of the faculty that were not in music, people in history, science, and also the downtown people. You might see some of the Cone family [owners of Cone Mills, Greensboro] there, and the heads of the department from various faculty. So they made a lot of friends outside of the field.
WL: Did the music department have—the School of Music—have considerable support from the community? Did it have patronage?
PM: Yes, more than it does now probably. When I say that, I realize we have a Musical Arts Guild, which has several hundred members whose purpose is to support the School of 7
Music. But I‟m thinking of it in terms of attending recitals. There was a lot of social contact. It was a little different. Perhaps I should say that. I hate to say it that way, but it was different. We didn‟t have scholarships. There wasn‟t a lot of money that traded hands in those days. One of things that the Musical Arts Guild has done now that we never had before was establish scholarships, give equipment to the school.
WL: Faculty would perform fairly regularly?
PM: Well, I remember the faculty was expected to get up there once a year.
WL: I see.
PM: Performing faculty. Some of them didn‟t play. They didn‟t pretend to be performers.
WL: What kind of relations do you think Woman‟s College had with the, with Greensboro, with the city of Greensboro? In the case of the School of Music, there was a good deal of support, I suppose. Was this true in general?
PM: Well, I think that Woman‟s College was always very conscious of the city of Greensboro. This was a part of their mind, their thinking. They always had that in their minds when they were planning for the development of this school. And they actively, I think, sought out the downtown people in making decisions. I guess it wasn‟t as highly organized then as it is now. I think it was more on an informal basis in many cases. But they were very aware of it. This was part of the philosophy of their education was to include Greensboro as a city in their thinking. I think it‟s spelled out in the—not the yearbook, but the handbook, isn‟t it?
WL: Yes.
PM: Philosophy of education in this school? It‟s very different from [University of North Carolina at] Chapel Hill, for instance, or some schools located in small villages where the school is predominant.
WL: This is a school in which the city is larger than the school.
PM: The city is a part of it.
WL: What attitude did the school have towards its students? It was a different situation—the school was in a different situation because it was a women‟s college. And it presumably had to assume a certain attitude or did assume a certain attitude toward its students. Protective of women students and had presumably a series of rules that—
PM: Well, there was an honor policy, of course, which assumed that the students would govern themselves—they could be trusted to govern themselves. This was Harriet Elliott‟s idea. And I think it was very successful. You could walk out of a room where 8
you were giving a test and assume students would be honest and take the test without cheating.
WL: That worked well.
PM: It worked well.
WL: Then this extended to curfew regulations and—
PM: Yes. [laughs] They were very strict about that—had to sign out and in. Of course, you hear stories [laughs]; you hear stories from men in Greensboro telling how they managed to get the girls in and out. But I think they managed to make it work very well. We didn‟t have lots of scandals.
WL: Students would periodically get together in assemblies as well, would they not? I mean—
PM: Yes.
WL: Was it on a weekly basis that students would gather in Aycock Auditorium?
PM: Yes. Let me think now. Let‟s see, was it every week? I know that had the Sunday sermon, the university sermon—that was just once a month.
WL: That was on Sunday?
PM: That was on a Sunday. They would invite a guest speaker; they‟d have special music.
WL: Was that a church?
PM: And those were held in Aycock.
WL: It had a church orientation or was it a—?
PM: It was a church type of service, religious service.
WL: It was a religious service?
PM: Yes. And I think there were assemblies once a week also. All the girls were expected to attend those.
WL: The Sunday sermon would actually be a sermon? It would be a religious thing?
PM: Yes, it would. Yes.
WL: Did faculty attend these things too?
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PM: Anybody who wanted to attend was free to.
WL: It was optional?
PM: Yes.
WL: Did the weekly assemblies—? Did faculty usually attend those?
PM: No.
WL: No. Just the students?
PM: They weren‟t required.
WL: What about faculty meetings? Tell me a little bit about those. I‟ve heard from other people that one of the big differences between faculty meetings now and faculty meetings then, let‟s say in the late 1940s, early 1950s, was that faculty went to faculty meetings. [both laugh]
PM: Well, some of them were so interesting you didn‟t want to stay away. You wondered what the heck was going on.
WL: There was more incentive to go?
PM: Well, I thought so. They were held in the Virginia Dare Room, and it was a democratic process. People spoke and said exactly what they wanted to say.
WL: How were they run? Did the chancellor—?
PM: Chancellor was in charge, and he had his committees. And the committees were pretty sovereign too. They not only were supposed to be in charge of their various areas, such as curriculum, but they—if anybody got off the track [laughs] and took over their territory, they worked hard to get it back again.
WL: They were very conscious of their territory?
PM: Yes. They wanted it that way. This is part of the faculty democracy that they liked. They liked it that way.
WL: How would you get on one of these committees? How would one get—was it by election?
PM: They were [unclear] by appointment. Seems to me they were more by appointment than they are, were, by the time I retired. When I retired, seems to me they were being elected.
WL: Most of them are elected nowadays. 10
PM: I thought so. I get these sheets of paper that come out—
WL: Right.
PM: —with little envelopes on them. They send them here, quite a bit of them. They‟re all elected. It was quite an honor to be on them, to be asked to be on a committee.
WL: Who would—? You say the structure was democratic, but were the committees representative of the faculty or did the same people tend to be on the committees that were always on committees? Maybe that‟s a loaded question? Tell me—
PM: Well, of course it depends on how they were—if they were elected; I‟d say there were certain people who could get elected and others who couldn‟t. Just a matter of popularity and promise, and some people are just more dynamic. They‟re noticed for their ability to speak and their confidence, so their friends would run them for office.
WL: At any rate, these faculty—the faculty committee structure was fairly strong?
PM: Yes, it was.
WL: In the early 1950s there was considerable conflict between faculty and the chancellor.
PM: You heard about that?
WL: Yes. Edward [Kidder] Graham [Jr.] and I guess the—some of the problems that Graham encountered were—reflected the strength of—
PM: Yes, it did. They were matters of democracy. For instance, the curriculum committee had been infringed upon. He had appointed an ad hoc committee to do the business of the curriculum committee, and the curriculum committee decided they weren‟t going to allow that.
WL: I see.
PM: So they introduced a resolution which said in effect that the curriculum committee was the only committee appointed to do business. And this became the point around which the whole fracas really began.
WL: I see.
PM: And spread in all different areas, lots of different areas.
WL: This was on the issue of general education which Graham wanted to bring in.
PM: Yes, it was. There were a lot of people that felt strongly opposed to that.
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WL: Why, do you suppose?
PM: Well, the argument was, as I recall, that the general education, the coursework, would be watered down. You‟d be given several courses to take instead of one, and even there, of course—
WL: I see.
PM: —actually. But I think we‟ve had it since then. This is a residential honors—
WL: Residential College [living-learning dormitory community] does something like that, I suppose.
PM: Something like that—I don‟t know.
[telephone rings]
WL: The curriculum has certainly been changed dramatically since that period. I mean the very structured set curriculum of the ‟20s, ‟30s and ‟40s is, was, replaced in the early ‟70s with something that was very loose and amorphous. I guess we‟re going back the other way now.
PM: Going back to the deep and narrow?
WL: Yes. Maybe. I don‟t know. [both chuckle] That‟s what—we haven‟t gotten there yet. That‟s what some people want. There were other issues, I suppose, as well with Graham. The curriculum issue was tied in with other conflicts? Personnel conflicts?
PM: Well, there were others—you know personalities. There were—I think one of the—it seems silly now to even mention it, but I think it was indicative of his thinking. The art department had had a modeling program whereby they‟d bring in models and to—for the sort of the students to paint. And one of these was a naked man, and one of the girls had drawn a picture of a naked man, which was rather explicit which horrified a lot of people, including Dr. Graham. And he came down hard on this artist and on the art department for that. And there were those who felt then as do now that that was not a free university to allow that to prohibit something of that kind. I noticed with great relief that Dr. [William] Moran [chancellor] picked up on that right away when we had a similar problem happen in the art department. It‟s been a couple of years ago, I guess. In which he came out publicly in the newspaper, and said, “This is a free university. Our faculty is free to do anything they want to do.” And he said, “Furthermore, I‟m in charge.” [laughs] This, these kinds of decisions are not made by a member of the art department; they‟re being made by me. I think the art department member had become nervous and took his paintings down. So I was pleased about that. [coughs] Actually, it was pretty good art, I thought. And I knew the artist. 12
WL: Back in the ‟50s, you mean?
PM: Yes.
WL: Was this artist in—? This was a faculty member?
PM: A student.
WL: A student. What other issues were there when the Graham—this was a long—lasted a long time, didn‟t it?
PM: There were so many things I hardly know how to get into them. When they presented all the complaints to him finally, they got it all assembled. Some kind of—the form, on paper—he said, “Well, this is—it‟ll take a doctoral dissertation to answer all these complaints.” So that gives you an idea. Dr. Graham said that.
WL: This was presented as a bill of complaints—
PM: Yes.
WL: —by a group of faculty?
PM: Yes.
WL: Sign their names to—?
PM: Yes. And they had a trial. It was almost like a criminal trial. Had lawyers there representing both sides. Trial was held in the Church of the Covenant. I was out of town. I was at—working on my doctorate that year. But it was very embarrassing and—but I think as a whole it cleaned—cleared the air off a lot around the school. We came out of it—at the time I think we came out of it wondering whether it had done anybody any good whatsoever. But I think it did a lot of good. I think it showed some strength in the faculty, that they were willing to stand up and be counted. We came out of the—I‟ll always believe that President [of the Consolidated University System, William C.] Friday, was a product of that affair because he actively took part and he was on—he was sort of opposed to the chancellor.
WL: He was opposed to it? You think he wanted to get Graham out?
PM: Well, I think—I wouldn‟t say he was aggressive about it. I wouldn‟t say he was seeking to do anything about it. I think friends of his found out how he thought and sought him out, and he was supportive. And the president of the university at that time, Consolidated University [of North Carolina], was Gordon Gray, who was doing nothing at all, surprisingly.
WL: So this was while Friday, before Friday became president? 13
PM: Before he became president.
WL: While he was—
PM: He was, I think, secretary,
WL: Secretary, that‟s right. And friends—you say friends—that would mean friends here—
PM: Yes.
WL: —on this campus communicated with Friday.
PM: And we had friends—there were friends in Chapel Hill who knew him too, you know, and understood the situation and were intermediates [sic intermediaries].
WL: I see. Who were able to communicate.
PM: Yes.
WL: Of course, Graham had a lot of Chapel Hill contacts.
PM: Yes.
WL: He‟s from Chapel Hill and—
PM: Yes, his father is very well known. Well, actually Dr. Graham, he wasn‟t so bad. It‟s just that he got off to a bad start. I remember going into his office. I was getting ready to go ask—I went in to say goodbye. I was going for my—to Rochester [New York] for my doctorate. And he had a sign on there that said, “Too late smart.” And I think he had begun to straighten out a lot of things that people had complained about. But it was really too late. By that time the ball was rolling and far away, and he couldn‟t stop it from rolling. Can we get some coffee or something? My mouth is getting dry.
WL: Sure.
[recording paused]
WL: We were talking about Edward Graham. Do you remember the exact chronology of the investigating committees that investigated this conflict? Weren‟t there two or three committees that came? Do you remember? You mentioned at the beginning there was a bill of complaints that was presented to Graham. This must have then been followed by—
PM: That was sort of late in the day.
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WL: Oh, it was? At some point, Gray has to get involved. The consolidated university—
PM: Gordon Gray?
WL: Gordon Gray.
PM: That was early in the game.
WL: Oh, that was earlier? I see.
PM: Let‟s see if I can remember.
WL: One of the committees [William D.] Billy Carmichael [controller, vice president and finance officer, twice acting president of the Consolidated University of North Carolina System] was involved in.
PM: Yes, Billy Carmichael. Let‟s see, it seems to me as though Gray stepped out of the picture right in the middle of this whole thing, and Bill Friday came in.
WL: I see. Gray didn‟t get directly involved.
PM: I don‟t think so. He didn‟t want to be, as it seemed. They had him over here to speak to the faculty, and they wanted to complain to him then. That was very early. And he spoke to them, and they were incensed with what he said to them. That—they complained that he talked to them like he was speaking to some of the workers at the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco factory. “Get back to work,” he said, in effect. And that insulted them. They didn‟t like it at all. And I think he really was aloof to the whole thing. He didn‟t quite get the picture at all. But Bill Friday did from the very beginning. But I‟m a bit vague as to where Gray stepped out of the picture and Friday stepped in.
WL: But Friday was involved even before he became president?
PM: I think so. I think so.
WL: Then he had a pretty good feel for what was going on?
PM: Absolutely.
WL: Through people that he knew here?
PM: Yes.
WL: One person whose role I‟ve been trying to sort out in all of these in Mereb Mossman [Department of Sociology and Anthropology faculty, dean of instruction, dean of the College, dean of faculty, vice chancellor for academic affairs]. She was brought in by Graham to be the dean of administration—whatever it was called at that point—and she 15
was, in other words, a close associate of Graham‟s. But when Graham goes out, she‟s still in. [PM chuckles] What‟s your perception of that? Do you have any reading on what—?
PM: Oh, my. Well, she was, she had—Mereb had a lot of power. She had a tremendous amount of power. And that really started I think with the School of Music in relation to a voice teacher we had. He was losing his students. We hired a new voice teacher to fill another position, and the new teacher was one of the best voice teachers we‟ve ever had on the music faculty. She was so good, and the students were just flocking to her. She could change that voice overnight into a fine singing apparatus. And Bill [?] wasn‟t getting—wasn‟t holding his students. It was like an avalanche. So Bill introduced a resolution to the music faculty, the details of which I don‟t remember, but in effect it would stop that changing of students from one teacher to another.
WL: I see.
PM: Well, the faculty was sympathetic to Bill, but on the other hand, here we had this good voice teacher. We didn‟t want to cut her out of the picture because we don‟t—you don‟t get teachers like that very often. At least we didn‟t then. So we voted against him. And Bill took it to Mereb, and Mereb voted against the faculty and voted for Bill. Well, this was like a shockwave over the whole campus because everybody realized, I think, if not for the first time, certainly among the first times, that Mereb had an awful lot of power, that she could do things like that.
WL: Was this after Graham had left or—?
PM: No, this was a long—the very beginning.
WL: Very beginning.
PM: This was one of the first things that happened.
WL: And you said Bill—?
PM: We were just beginning to sort out things then, to realize what was happening, and realize that Mereb had all this power.
WL: And this was a relatively new position? This—
PM: She hadn‟t been in there very long.
WL: Yes. There wasn‟t anybody really, like, in a similar position before she came here?
PM: No. I don‟t think so.
WL: Yes. I don‟t think there was.
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PM: She had great charm. Mereb‟s always had a great charm and had a long list of devoted followers.
WL: Yes.
PM: People like her very much.
WL: Right. People who don‟t like her also.
PM: Yes.
WL: So it appears. I mean, I‟ve heard both sides of the story.
PM: I sort of—I feel both ways. I see the good and the bad in her life. I had no complaint ever personally against her. She always treated me very nicely because she was rather partial to men. For instance, Anne Lewis was a faculty member in mathematics who had done all of the things that the criteria requests, and she could never get a promotion. And we always decided the reason Anne couldn‟t get a promotion was because Mereb didn‟t like her. [laughs] Whereas some young man would come along, and he‟d be promoted all the time over Anne or somebody else.
WL: Was that a generally acknowledged—
PM: I think that was generally acknowledged, yes.
WL: —among faculty? I‟ve heard that a lot.
PM: Have you?
WL: Particularly from women faculty. The Graham episode, affair, also caused deep divisions in the faculty, didn‟t it?
PM: Oh yes. It was horrible.
WL: Those who were for Graham and those who were against him.
PM: Yes, it was very sharply divided.
WL: Who were some of Graham‟s most prominent supporters and opponents?
PM: Well, he had his department heads of course. Gregory Ivy [art department head], this lady who was in charge of home economics, can‟t think of her name now. This is the first time I‟ve gone off and [laughs] [unclear] this morning, but I don‟t remember. What was her name? Well, anyway, the head of home economics. [clears throat] Graham had appointed her. Marc Friedlaender [English faculty].
17
WL: In English?
PM: Yes. Those were where I started, I suppose, and the head of the music department. Let me see who? Welton G. Marquis.
WL: Was he appointed by Graham as well?
PM: Ah, yes.
WL: So he tended to have department heads behind him or some department heads?
PM: Not all of them. English was not behind him. [Dr. Leonard B.] Hurley was not with him. But maybe I—I guess he did have most of them. Some of them were sort of on the edge. Martus [head of physical education] probably was halfway there and halfway out.
WL: Ethel Martus?
PM: Ethel Martus, yes.
WL: I guess there was a category—suggests a whole other category of people who sat on the fence. Sort of test out the winds. See which way the winds, the wind was blowing?
PM: That‟s sort of the way I was. I was never very outspoken. I was a very quiet type. I knew where I stood, but I wasn‟t going to get up and talk about it. I wouldn‟t get up in the faculty meeting because some of these people would get up in the faculty meeting and, Randall Jarrell [American poet, literary critic, children's author, essayist, novelist, and the 11th Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position that now bears the title Poet Laureate] for instance. Oh, he read out a scathing account to Marc Friedlaender one time.
WL: Did the faculty—?
PM: It was a masterpiece of speechmaking, beautifully worded, with the syntax perfect. He was an artist, of course.
WL: Was it written out?
PM: It was written at the faculty meetings minutes.
WL: He read it into the minutes?
PM: Yes indeed. Faculty minutes, yes.
WL: What the basis of Jarrell‟s objection? Did he object to the curriculum?
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PM: Well, he just—I think he was annoyed with some of the people who he thought were not first, not first-class people. He saw their defects in character. He criticized Friedlaender, for instance, for saying he was a scholar. And actually Friedlaender had been omitted from the—what do you call it, the American University Professors—because he hadn‟t contributed anything of scholarly research for several years. And he stood up in front of the whole faculty, and said, “I am a scholar.” People took offense at that, and Randall Jarrell was, I think, really annoyed at him. So he tended to go along with personality a little bit.
WL: Was it possible for someone like you to be neutral? Was the faculty—?
PM: Not very. I didn‟t know any people who were neutral.
WL: How did you pull it off? You were gone one year so you were able to stay out of it, I guess.
PM: Yes. That was good. [laughs] My wife was here; she had to sit through it. She testified at the trial and everything.
WL: She did?
PM: Yes. I knew a few that were neutral, but there weren‟t very many.
WL: The committee held—took testimony from lots of faculty, didn‟t it?
PM: Yes.
WL: I discovered recently that a hundred thirty-two faculty testified.
PM: You‟ve been looking into all of this stuff. [laughs]
WL: Yes. [laughs]
PM: I had no idea if I came over here we would even talk about this. I told [unclear] I said, “I hope we don‟t get into that matter. I hope he asks me the questions because I‟m not going to bring up that.”
WL: You‟re not going to volunteer?
PM: [laughs] [coughs]
WL: Once Graham goes out—
PM: Excuse me.
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WL: What do you think was the aftermath of all this? Did it have much of an aftermath? Did the, for example, the music—?
PM: Well, things were much better. Oh, it was much better. [laughs] Yes. Well, the running, acting chancellor, I think his name was Pierson—
WL: W[illiam] W[hatley] Pierson?
PM: He was an excellent man, excellent man. And he said after he‟d been here for a little while, he said, “I had no idea that Woman‟s College was such a good school.” [laughs]
WL: What really—?
PM: “You know they don‟t think much of us at Chapel Hill,” he said, even then. We were just a girls‟ school out there, and I think some of them were in for a surprise when they came up here and actually looked around and investigated what we were doing. Pierson was one of them, and he admitted it to George Dickieson [founder of School of Music instrumental music program].
WL: That he didn‟t realize how good the place was?
PM: Yes, yes. He admired the people; he admired the teachers. And then we had a little interval there when we had in the School of Music an acting—well, she was not appointed, she was not officially called acting dean, but she—in effect that‟s what she did. Her name was Alliene Minor, and she was head of the piano department. And things went so well while she was there.
WL: Did people on the—? How did the Graham affair affect the music department?
PM: That‟s a mistake. I‟m wrong. She came here—Alleine was acting head of the department before Marquis came. After Marquis left and after the chancellor left, we had a committee running the school.
WL: How did the school survive the Graham affair? What was it—were there divisions within the School of Music?
PM: Well, of course, some of the people left who were—like for instance the head of the home economics left town. Friedlaender left, Ivy left, Marquis and then all his friends left. [unclear] left. There were others who had been sort of on Graham‟s side who became friendly again. I remember some of the people wouldn‟t speak. They‟d find out you believed differently from them, and they wouldn‟t speak to you anymore. And that changed. They started speaking again. [laughs] Social life went on. Parties helped a lot.
WL: So the air was cleared, and generally the old divisions were healed.
PM: I think it was cleared. Very clear. Clean clear. 20
WL: The late 1950s and 1960s, early 1960s were a period of great change for Woman‟s College. Woman‟s College becomes UNCG in 1963.
PM: Let‟s see now, who was the chancellor then? Was it [James] Ferguson?
WL: Singletary.
PM: Singletary. Oh, yes. He was—
WL: Otis Singletary.
PM: He was Ferguson‟s protégée, I think.
WL: That‟s right.
PM: And then when he left, Ferguson took over—
WL: Yes.
PM: —as chancellor. Those were golden years I thought. Both Singletary and Ferguson were wonderful people. Singletary was very young and lively and had good ideas. He didn‟t stay long unfortunately.
WL: Was he popular among faculty?
PM: I thought so. But Ferguson I think was very—he‟d sort of begun to settle down. Ferguson, he was very comfortable when he was there. He had, he was moderately—he was a moderate kind of person. And I think it‟s borne out that he was—made good decisions by the way he handled the students. They were going through this upsetting time during the ‟60s. They just persuaded them to calm down a little bit and to—and they listened to him. Wonderful chancellor.
WL: How did the ‟60s affect—and you‟ve alluded to this before—how did the ‟60s affect UNCG? You‟d mentioned before that students became more assertive in class.
PM: Yes. That was the main thing. They dressed differently. And some of the faculty for that matter; the faculty starting wearing blue jeans these days.
WL: That was a big change.
PM: Big change. Men always wore suits.
WL: This kind of dress code that had existed before broke down.
[End Side A—Begin Side B] 21
PM: It ceased to exist.
WL: Among both faculty and students?
PM: Yes.
WL: Was there student activism here?
PM: Yes, there was. This was one of the things that Dr. Ferguson had to deal with—
WL: Yes.
PM: —was that activism. And it was a quite a bit in the music school.
WL: Yes.
PM: The music school decided to solve their—to make a statement about that by getting together and doing the War Requiem by Benjamin Britten. And in one weeks‟ time they pulled that thing together and presented it. They suspended all classes, and all they did was practice to get that thing together. It was quite a success.
WL: You remember when this was?
PM: No.
WL: At some point during the Vietnam War [occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1956 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975 by the United States and other anti-Communist countries against North Vietnam]?
PM: The performance has been recorded. I have a record of it home.
WL: This was done as a way to object to the Vietnam War?
PM: Yes, this was supposed to be a statement.
WL: Throughout this period, this is still predominantly women‟s, a women‟s college even though it‟s UNCG, isn‟t it?
PM: Yes. It was hard, a little hard on the boys when they first came here.
WL: Yes.
PM: One of them said, I said, I—I hold the door open, said I hold it—said I just stand there so long [laughs], and I have to go. And I think the top men we‟re getting now are very different from those first men that were on this campus.
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WL: What were they like? The first men that arrived here?
PM: Well, I think they were sort of bewildered and bewitched [laughs], and they didn‟t know what to think of where they were. All these women around. It must have taken a lot of courage to walk on campus, being the only boy in a thousand or whatever it was.
WL: There were only just a few, just a handful.
PM: Just a handful, yes. They finally got their own dormitory. [door closes]
WL: Did the way that you and other people taught, was that affected by coeducation?
PM: Well, you know, I didn‟t have many men because when I retired in ‟75 they hadn‟t infiltrated the music school in piano enough for me to have come into contact with them. I had two or three, and they were very good students. They were not majoring in piano. [telephone rings] At least I didn‟t have any piano majors among the men like the girls were.
WL: Was this true for music as a whole?
PM: Well, it depends on the field. If you were in music education, yes, you—a man could, would major in that as opposed to piano. I always felt that as long as this was a girls‟ school that I didn‟t mind recommending a girl majoring in music because they weren‟t going to do much with it anyway. [laughs] That sounds rather sardonic, I know, but most of them got married, had families, and they weren‟t going to make a career out of it. But for a young man to major in music, that was an entirely different thing. And I had a hard time with that one. And music education was a little bit better that the piano majors. They could get a job at a school. And there seemed to be a demand. There‟s always been a demand for them. But pianists, what do they do with it? They teach piano. There‟s not much of a living there; it‟s part time at best. We don‟t turn out concert pianists here. They go to Juilliard [School, New York, New York].
WL: They get conservatory training here.
PM: Right, it‟s not a conservatory.
WL: Other aspects of student life obviously changed with coeducation. For example, the rules and regulations, the—
PM: Well, yes. The girls did leave the dormitories then, check in and out when they wanted to. They stopped serving meals with tablecloths in the dining halls.
WL: Which is the way it was—
PM: Used to be with tablecloths and a senior person would sit there and was the hostess or host. 23
WL: How did faculty governance or faculty—relations between faculty and administration change? Maybe they didn‟t change at all during this period, let‟s say 1960s and 1970s up until your retirement in 1975.
PM: Well, to tell you the truth, I didn‟t go to faculty meetings much after these fracas years as I did before. I don‟t know if I can answer that too well. There were a lot of young people coming in who were speaking up in faculty who were becoming very prominent. People like Richard Cox [music professor], for instance, who really was a talker right away.
WL: Did this tradition of faculty autonomy, faculty democracy, carry forward do you think?
PM: I‟ve always had the impression that was very strong. I certainly hope so. What do you think? Do you think it is?
WL: I think so, yes.
PM: I‟m glad to hear that.
WL: Although I want—I mean, faculty democracy was strong enough to force the chancellor out in the ‟50s—I don‟t know. I mean, one wonders if faculty has that same coherence nowadays that it had—
PM: Well, I wonder about that too.
WL: —thirty or forty years ago.
PM: Sometimes I think the young faculty doesn‟t have the sense of dedication—no, that‟s not quite—I don‟t know how to say it. Well you‟ve said it better than I have, I had, I can. Would they, could they get together—
WL: Right.
PM: —their thinking and their and figure out what‟s happening— [laughs]
WL: Yes.
PM: —to the point that they rebel and kick out a chancellor or not? That‟s quite something.
WL: Yes.
PM: Well, now George Dickieson, you know, was the great leader in that thing. He was like a, an animal. [laughs] There was nothing—he just absolutely was fearless in this whole thing, and there weren‟t many on the faculty who were fearless. There were many who were almost; they felt as strong as George but who came down to do all this dirty work like compiling all this information and investigating it and putting it on paper—they weren‟t up to that. 24
WL: And he was.
PM: He was, yes. He went right in there and did it.
WL: He wrote a lot of letters?
PM: Oh yes. There were letters to the editor of the newspaper, the Greensboro Record; it was all over the newspaper. He had contacts with lawyers—Tom Turner was one of the big lawyers, he was on this, our side.
WL: Right.
PM: Wonderful man. And all these people were pretty nice people, wonderful people, even the ones you didn‟t like. Some of my favorite people were people like Gregory Ivy, Marc Friedlaender. I always regretted that it worked— it didn‟t work out the way it did. Or it did work out the way it did.
WL: That‟s too bad when you have good people on both sides disagreeing on something.
PM: Yes. Oh yes. Yes, Ivy was one of the—you might call him one of the great American artists and Friedlaender was a very sensitive, well read, highly educated, polished person—joy to be around.
WL: Do you think—what do you think have been the biggest changes that—what were the biggest changes at this institution in the thirty years or so that you were here—almost thirty years that you were here? Just looking back on it, what do you think, how do you think the institution changed? [telephone rings] Did it change for the better? Did it change for the worse?
PM: Well, that‟s a good question.
WL: Hard question to answer.
PM: Yes. I probably ought to think about that more. You know there are some things that we used to do when we were Woman‟s College that I thought were most admirable. For example, in the get—in the matter of giving piano credit, I have to talk in terms of my field. An hour‟s credit in piano represents a certain amount of practice and preparation. Well, it does in any course, doesn‟t it? You get three hours credit in history, it represents three hours of study, theoretically, isn‟t it?
WL: Right.
PM: Well, the same thing is true of piano. Now if you go to summer school and study piano for six weeks, the question is—should you get an hour‟s credit? Is that one hour‟s credit the same for six weeks in summer school as it is for fifteen weeks during the school year? Well, it might be in history because I think the—I don‟t mean to contradict your field or 25
anything. But I feel that maybe you could conceivably cram history a little bit if you had the energy and the hours. You could get those that time in there and get the work done in less time if you had to. In other words, in six weeks you might be able to get fifteen hours‟, fifteen weeks‟ work done in history. But I don‟t think you can in piano because there‟s a physical thing involved—muscles and that sort of thing. They have to develop at their own pace. So when it comes to giving credit, we always held to the supposition when it was a women‟s college that you couldn‟t do that. That one hour‟s credit in piano is one hour‟s credit, and it represented fifteen hours of work, fifteen weeks‟ work.
WL: Right.
PM: Now that‟s all changed. They‟ve thrown that out. You can get more than one hour‟s credit in the summer, I think, for six weeks‟ working in piano. In fact you can, [laughs] you don‟t even have to take what we call a legitimate piano course; you can take something called, “What I Always Wanted to Learn about Piano before I Learned.” [laughs] I‟ve forgotten what they called certain things. And you get credit for that thing. When you take piano class, you sit at these electronic instruments and struggle along. You later learn the scale if you learn that. That‟s what I hear. So I think the values have changed. And also I think the grading has changed. I remember when Dean [Lee] Rigsby was here, we were grading very carefully. We always graded very carefully. A “C” was a real average grade, but you gave a lot of “Cs.”
WL: Most people got “Cs?”
PM: Yes. And very few really got “As.” But Rigsby said, “Now what about our students who go on to graduate school and compete with people, places like, say East Carolina [University, Greenville, North Carolina], or other schools.” And he just named [unclear]. He said, “They‟ll be getting their „As.‟” And he said they, it‟s a competitive thing. Our students won‟t get in because they can‟t compete with those higher grade levels because we grade so carefully. He wanted us to grade higher. [laughs] So we started chan—we started changing our grades under that, under his—
WL: So there was a policy of grade inflation?
PM: I think so.
WL: In response?
PM: And I think in a way we‟ve become like a lot of other institutions. It‟s not unusual. Just name any school in the country now; I think it‟s the same thing. I think we were one of the few holdouts in the country when it came to the credits and grades. I‟m amazed that we held on as long as we did. My wife came here from teaching at the University of Texas [Austin, Texas], and she said they just threw “As” all around the place. And she liked this place so much better because it seemed to be a truer way to grade—but not anymore. We‟re like Texas. [laughs]
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WL: So there‟s been some erosion of standards?
PM: I think so. That‟s a terrible thing to say, and I shouldn‟t probably say that because it—in order to make a real statement of that kind I ought to do more research on the subject. I don‟t know what, how people grade.
WL: But that‟s your own perception based on—
PM: That‟s my perception.
WL: —your own teaching experience.
[End of Interview]