TAPE INDEX. "We needed those players, and he wanted to play and we wanted him to play."

Transcription

1 K-JHI TAPE INDEX [Cassette 1 of 1, Side A] Question about growing up "We used to have a pickup baseball team when I was in high school. This was back in the Depression. And there were times when we didn't have but seven players on our team. And there were two or three Afro-Americans who were quite good. A young man named Lawrence -1 can see him now, and it was sixty-five years ago. He was the best - he could throw harder than anybody I played with. And no one raised any question, we just used him as a player. But the walls and lines were of course, in those days, back in the 1930s, pretty rigid. But Lawrence and I played on a team several Saturdays (laughing). But that was about the extent of it. "We needed those players, and he wanted to play and we wanted him to play." "We all worked Saturday morning. We worked fifty-six hours a week in those days. And we used that interval of time, the daylight from one- o'clock to sunset on Saturday was our baseball world. And we tried our best to crowd every bit we could into it." Recalled that the schools weren't far apart, the community was small, so everyone of the same age knew each other, black and white. "It was just one of those things you let happen." Notes that it stuck with him as a memory. Playing ball was all he and the black player did. He knew the family "distantly," but didn't interact with them. Says didn't have interaction in basketball. There wasn't much football in the community. Description of baseball as an outlet, when all the mills had teams. Recalls American Legion teams as well. Integration, though, only in pickup ball. "The structure would not tolerate it in those days. So we did it on our own." Talks about in college sport being "the integrating force." Remembers Dixie Classic, and time that Oscar Robertson came, along with Johnny Greene of Michigan State. Then Charlie Scott. He says generally in the South, sport has been the vehicle of integration. Question of whether his early experiences affected him. Talks in general about memories of the difficulties of the Depression. "These are the things that stick with you. And I guess what you learn out of that is you learn to appreciate talent, wherever it is. People who really can do things. And you want to see them grow and develop and play. And you always had a sensitivity to that. Adversity is a great teacher. And especially when it comes to deprivation that applies to everybody." Recalls mills closing, banks closing, importance of working together. Speaks of his generation, Depression, World War II, and the difficulty of the experiences. Mentions military and integration. Truman's desegregation order. "You knew society had to work its way through."

2 Back to sports, talks about the ones that have large fan bases. Jackie Robinson, Charlie Scott, Tiger Woods. "There was where the average citizen could identify." Question about Jackie Robinson, says depended "on whether you were a Dodgers fan or not, in some ways. You can change your mores if it's something you are really interested in." Says what happened to Robinson was unfair, but he made a major contribution. Mentions Rickey as well, who, "really did an exemplary thing in forcing the country to look at this this way, just on the ability of a person to perform." Says again that he knew at the University that change was going to happen. Talks about all the people who've never been to the school, but who identified with the teams. "It's a place where you can communicate." Says he looks for things like that, where the people can think of it as the people's institutions. "Now you had some people, very few, who were really soreheads that would make life hard for you. I got all the nasty letters every other college president got. And you knew that here was a man struggling. He just couldn't give up what he'd been bred to believe, you know." Says answer lies in improved education. Repeats sports as principal force helping move things along. Says that are at a stage where there isn't much to litigate. "What we're talking about now is the hearts of people." Talks about the importance of time as "the force that heals it." Thinks about dramatic changes over past quarter-century. "Anything that moved integration along, there was a little nucleus that was going to harass you about that." Says that the letters dropped off, and "the more you saw achievement, the less that kind of thing happened." Question about Charlie Scott and whether was change in attitude. Talks about several of the basketball players he got to know. Talks about the successes of Phil Ford. "It was just something working in the culture." Question about whether made deliberate attempts to use sports as an integrating force. Talks about the problems with the Dixie Classic, just as integration was beginning to happen. Gambling scandal led to abolition of the tournament. Says that he did try to encourage it. "Any questions raised, you'd just say 'Well, that's not an issue.'" Says coaches never asked for permission to recruit, that they knew it was allowed. Discussion of affirmative action and "long, patient assignment" of trying to improve education in all the schools. Oscar Robertson. "Everything that you would expect happened. He had to live in a segregated place -1 read somewhere last week, some piece that came across my desk, that he was not happy with what happened to him. But the place was full the day he played. Everybody knew that here was one of the great athletes of all time. And they couldn't wait to get into the

3 Coliseum to see him play. The question came up, like crowning the queen of the tournament, and who's going to do that. It was a day by day thing, the first time. From then on, it was never questioned." "I said 'take it one day at a time.' Because you simply cannot change what you do. Because you then make yourself vulnerable to suits on another ground. I said 'if we're going to play this thing, we play it exactly the way we did it before. And we'll treat everybody the same way, this way. As far as the institution could do it. It was not an easy thing, because there were people who didn't like it, of course. But it was done." Question about security, he says know. "People, once you get out on the playing floor, it's a different thing. It's ability. It's grace. It's competence. It's all those things. And I'm sure there are people right now, who say 'I was there the day that Oscar Robertson played.' 'I saw him play.' I've had that said to me. Well, it began to turn right there. And he knew that, he knew what he was doing. A very able person." Repeats, showing ability was possible in a lot of areas, but "it was easier through sport than anything else." "It brought real talent here, and in the end everybody gained." Question about Frank Porter Graham sending team to play an integrated New York team in the 1930s. Says was minor affair. "It got written up but it was forgotten as quickly as it was written." Again, talks about a small nucleus of people who opposed anything: "redneck, hardheaded people." Question about how he could tell people were struggling. Says that he learned to look for signs. "The intensity of hate in some of these experiences told me how hard it was for that individual to accept anything. Sometimes they don't even understand what they're transmitting. It's a blind thing with them, a rageful kind of thing. These are very rare cases, but you run into them at a public institution. And you back away and just know that person is desperately trying to reconcile something. Because you could almost sense that also there was another voice saying to him: 'But this is the law.' But sometimes people were so stubborn about it they didn't want to hear that. They'd just go on." Doesn't see it today. Question about whether he saw sports changing people's minds. "What you saw was the movement from nobody should play to when they do play, my how good they are. It moved from a segregation line to an involvement that then became a judgment on performance. Now that didn't extend itself then to social contact. It does today." Celebrity nature of athletics has drawn people to them. Brief discussion of NASCAR, and how he thinks it will eventually integrate. Recalls intolerant, unnamed alumnus who eventually came around. "Give them credit. People can grow. That's what this tells you. Emotionally and a sense of equity and fairness. And I think this is what it's taught lots of people." Discuss importance of excelling and winning - that's how sports makes that possible. Describes Virginia-North Carolina fight over recruiting a present-day black quarterback.

4 Question whether he as administrator had to take any kinds of action related to sports and integration, he says no. Doesn't recall Scott's treatment at other universities becoming a major question. He brings up issue of women's sports, Marion Jones and the women's basketball team. Question about his reaction to Title IX - he talks about issue of finance. General discussion of women's sports. Question about Charlie Scott's personality. "He had a lot of personal grace. I had no impression of him that said that because he was a great star that he was haughty or arrogant or - none of that I saw." Notes that none of Dean Smith's players were like that, cautions not to underestimate the role of Dean Smith. Credit not only for bringing Charlie to the school, but also managing the situation. Speaks of sincerity and earnestness. Says that no one criticized Dean Smith to him. Gives him credit, says it took a lot of nerve, even though he was supported throughout the university. Of Scott: "He was the kind of person that presented himself well. There was always a smile on his face." Of Scott and Smith: "They were a happy combination. That's the way I'd put it- Question about Scott and a racially charged strike by University foodworkers, tied to black student politics. Whether Scott's becoming more visible in the conflict would have affected his broader support. He says no. "I think the role he was playing was so dominant in the news that that would have been a secondary issue. It was the fact that he was the great All-American who was here. And we're going to see great things happen now. So the old pride factor entered into it." Talks about Howard Fuller saving the university from confrontation related to the foodworkers. Then continues about Scott: "It's a debatable point, whether Charlie, if he'd gotten out in the streets and done this or that, what would that have done. It probably would have brought some hostility upon him. Because those were exceedingly tense times, you know. We lived day by day. But it was his judgment." He didn't worry about what Scott would do. "I really don't know what impact it would have made." Discussion of the book the interviewer is writing. Segue to the problem of big-time college sports in general. Question of private vs. public university presidents. Mentions Graham Plan [controversial athletic deemphasis plan promoted by Frank Porter Graham in the 1930s], his own efforts to deemphasize athletics, difficulties of succeeding. Brief mention of the Knight Commission, a major study of college athletics that he headed several years ago. Says that now the pressure has shifted to being money. Says now is a dangerous time in college sports for that reason. Schools aren't in charge; television networks are in charge. "You're dealing with the American conception of time and recreation and identity." And with all the television promotion "it's a force." Then asks if new generation of college presidents will be able to get hold of it. Discusses his disappointment in the NCAA, which didn't respond very effectively to the Knight Commission report.

5 Says of the problem in his time: "It was just the fact that they wanted more, and more and more." Talking about sports fans. Says that was fine, as long as it took care of itself, but when led to gambling, or manipulation, or divided loyalties, as with shoe companies, that became a problem. Discussion of money in golf, Ryder Cup controversy. Athletes leaving school early. Talks about manipulations that you don't hear about. Refers to the gambling scandal that led him to end the Dixie Classic. Anger at gamblers. [Cassette 1 of 1, Side B] Question about athletics and academic missions. Discussion about connections with community. Doesn't see winning as related to alumni giving. Remembers Chancellor Aycock standing up to the Educational Foundation [a well-heeled alumni booster group]. Says that U.N.C. fans wouldn't tolerate visible corruption. Repeats that problem is things you never see. Interesting connection between pressures to be on television and need for money for women's sports. Notes that public universities bear much of the burden. "You can't absorb something with all of its negatives and then expect it to be pretty and bright up here the next morning. It won't happen that way." End of interview