- Collection:
- Oral Histories of the American South: The Civil Rights Movement
- Title:
- Oral history interview with Elizabeth Pearsall, May 25, 1988
- Creator:
- Pearsall, Elizabeth Braswell, 1906-
- Contributor to Resource:
- Campbell, Walter E.
Southern Oral History Program - Date of Original:
- 1988-05-25
- Subject:
- School integration--North Carolina
North Carolina--Politics and government
North Carolina--Biography
Women--North Carolina
Education and state--North Carolina
North Carolina--Race relations - People:
- Pearsall, Thomas J. (Thomas Jenkins), 1903-1981
Pearsall, Elizabeth Braswell, 1906-2001 - Location:
- United States, North Carolina, 35.50069, -80.00032
- Medium:
- transcripts
sound recordings
oral histories (literary works) - Type:
- Text
Sound - Format:
- text/html
text/xml
audio/mpeg - Description:
- Elizabeth Pearsall fondly recalls the work of her husband, Thomas Pearsall. Pearsall explains that Governor Umstead appointed her husband to the North Carolina school planning commission because of his easygoing personality and leadership abilities. After the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, North Carolina politicians sought a way to evade the order to integrate without closing the schools. Thomas Pearsall crafted the Pearsall Plan, adopted by the North Carolina General Assembly in 1956. Elizabeth Pearsall explains that the Plan's goal was to calm whites' racial fears, preserve the public schools, and obey the Supreme Court ruling. Pearsall discusses her husband's self-assessment on the eve of his death. She reveals that Thomas worried that blacks blamed him for not doing enough to improve their condition. Thomas genuinely cared about blacks by attempting to keep the public schools open, she says. Immediate integration of the schools, she implies, would have resulted in the closing of public schools to blacks and whites. Pearsall describes her own involvement in public affairs. Her work in the peace movement and her religious affiliation ultimately led to her own attempts at fostering racial cooperation. She describes her increased awareness of racial disparities at an interracial meeting she attended in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Pearsall recalls realizing that effective interracial relations rely on an atmosphere of trust and honesty. She argues that adequate pay and educational parity between blacks and whites would level the playing field.
The Civil Rights Digital Library received support from a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for the aggregation and enhancement of partner metadata. - Metadata URL:
- http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/C-0056/menu.html
- Language:
- eng
- Extent:
- Title from menu page (viewed on Nov. 14, 2008).
Interview participants: Elizabeth Pearsall, interviewee; Walter E. Campbell, interviewer.
Duration: 01:15:39.
This electronic edition is part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South. It is a part of the collection Oral histories of the American South.
Text encoded by Jennifer Joyner. Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers. - Contributing Institution:
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project)
- Rights:
-
