- Collection:
- Oral Histories of the American South: The Civil Rights Movement
- Title:
- Oral history interview with Conrad Odell Pearson, April 18, 1979
- Creator:
- Pearson, Conrad Odell, b. 1902
- Contributor to Resource:
- Weare, Walter B.
Southern Oral History Program - Date of Original:
- 1979-04-18
- Subject:
- School integration--North Carolina
African American lawyers--North Carolina
African American civil rights workers--North Carolina
African American civil rights workers--North Carolina--Durham
African American lawyers--North Carolina--Durham
Durham (N.C.)--Race relations
African American civic leaders--North Carolina--Durham
Durham Committee on Negro Affairs
Civil rights movements--North Carolina
African Americans--Civil rights--North Carolina
Segregation in higher education--North Carolina - People:
- Pearson, Conrad Odell, 1902-
Spaulding, C. C. (Charles Clinton), 1874-1952
Shepard, James E. - Location:
- United States, North Carolina, Durham County, Durham, 35.99403, -78.89862
- Medium:
- transcripts
sound recordings
oral histories (literary works) - Type:
- Text
Sound - Format:
- text/html
text/xml
audio/mpeg - Description:
- Conrad Odell Pearson grew up in Durham, North Carolina. In 1932, immediately following his graduation from Howard School of Law, Pearson became involved in legally challenging segregation in higher education. The first part of the interview is dedicated to a detailed discussion of his work with fellow attorney Cecil McCoy on a case that challenged the decision of the University of North Carolina to deny admission to Thomas Hocutt, an African American, to the school of pharmacy. After the case failed in the state legal system, Pearson helped to reintroduce it at the federal level as a challenge to the Fourteenth Amendment, where it was ultimately thrown out on a technicality. Pearson continued to litigate against institutional segregation from the 1930s on, and in 1935 he helped to found the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs. In addition to describing his legal and political work for civil rights, Pearson offers an insider's perspective on race relations in Durham, primarily from the 1920s through the 1940s. Pearson devotes considerable attention to describing the ways in which James Shepard, president of the North Carolina College for Negroes (later North Carolina Central University), and C. C. Spaulding, president of North Carolina Mutual, were leading members within the African American community. In so doing, Pearson offers numerous examples of Shepard's and Spaulding's leadership qualities and their ability to work closely with white politicians for the benefit of African Americans. Throughout the interview, Pearson expresses admiration for the leadership capabilities of these men while simultaneously drawing distinctions between their moderate politics and his more radical politics regarding race relations. In addition, Pearson emphasizes that he saw Durham as more progressive in terms of race relations than many other southern communities, citing a general lack of racial discord as evidence. Whereas Pearson devotes considerable attention to describing the role of African American leaders in shaping race relations in Durham, he also offers commentary on the ways in which industrial leaders, like the Duke family and Julian Shakespeare Carr, also shaped the social and racial landscape of Durham. Finally, Pearson discusses the organization of tobacco workers as it affected African Americans in Durham. This interview offers a lively and complicated portrait of race relations in Durham, North Carolina, and the struggle for socioeconomic equality in that city.
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/H-0218/menu.html
- Language:
- eng
- Extent:
- Title from menu page (viewed on Nov. 10, 2008).
Interview participants: Conrad Odell Pearson, interviewee; Walter Weare, interviewer.
Duration: 03:18:40.
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:
-
