00:00:17.770 - 00:00:59.020

Michelle Lanier: Today is Friday, December 5, 2014. This is Michelle Lanier interviewing Mr. Irwin Holmes at his home in Durham, NC. Hello again. Irwin Holmes: Hello. Michelle Lanier: I am so pleased to have the honor to interview you, and I know before we actually started the formal interview we were already starting to make connections and go down memory lane. Um, I would like to potentially work in more of a chronological way. You were born in the late 30s. Do you, can you share some of your earliest remembrances of being a child in Durham? Irwin Holmes: I was born actually in 1939 in Reidsville, NC—a little town, about 15,000 people, about 20 miles from Greensboro. In the fourth grade my family moved back to Durham from Reidsville. Both my mom and father were graduates of North Carolina...the North Carolina School for Negroes, it was called then. It's now North Carolina Central. My dad got a job as director of recreation for blacks in Durham. The City of Durham had a situation where they had a white director of recreation and then that separated into two parts. One part was for blacks. My dad was in charge of that, and that was anything in recreation in Durham for blacks, he was in charge of. And then they hired, had a white person who was in charge of the white recreation for Durham, and they both reported to a director of recreation for Durham. White. Always white.

00:02:10.780 - 00:02:42.060

Michelle Lanier: Do you remember? You would have been around 9 in fourth grade. Irwin Holmes: fourth grade, let's see...yeah, I guess that's about right. Yes, I would have been 9. Normally you're 10, but I skipped the first grade, so I was 9 in the fourth grade. Michelle Lanier: Do you remember that move? How did you feel about it? What was that like? Irwin Holmes:

00:02:43.100 - 00:05:11.470

Well, I was going to school in Reidsville, first grade in Reidsville. My mom was a school teacher, and I was in inquisitive kid so I went to first grade already learned to read, and a lot of math. And it turns out when I went to first grade in Reidsville, they only had one school in Reidsville, handled grades 1-12. When I went to first grade in Reidsville, the first grade had just enough room for like 37 or so kids; no, guess it was about 32 kids. But they had 34 kids, so they didn't have room for two kids. So it turns out a good friend of mine, who had been held back to the first grade, they moved him to the second grade, and they thought I was so advanced they moved me to the second grade. So I spent two weeks in the first grade. Then it turns out, in grades...the second grade...I stayed in second grade until Christmas. At Christmas my dad got a job, in Florida with the Federal Department for Migratory Workers. So we moved to Florida. We moved to such a location that it was difficult for me to go to school, so I did home schooling for the rest of that year. We moved back to Reidsville the next year and they put me in the third grade on an experimental basis, ‘cause at that time I had only had half a year of schooling for the first two years. It turns out I was probably the top student in the third grade, so they let me stay in the third grade. So I spent grades...my third grade year in Reidsville in the third grade. The following year, we moved to Durham. So when I... we got to Durham, I was in the fourth grade, having spent only a year and a half my first three years in school, in regular school. But I had a great mom, who did the job of home education. Michelle Lanier: What was the community that you all moved to? Irwin Holmes: Where in Durham? Michelle Lanier: Yes.

00:05:12.210 - 00:12:38.130

Irwin Holmes: Actually, when we first moved to Durham, you couldn't, there was not a house available for rent in Durham. We weren't buying, just for rent. So we actually move in temporarily with a friend of my dad's, the Baileys, who had a grocery store off of Fayetteville Street. I can't remember the street. And we lived in their house with them temporarily, had a room in their house with them temporarily, until we could find a house. And then we found a house on Alston Avenue, not Alston Avenue, Colfax Street. On the corner of Colfax and Walltown that's not far from our hospital, Lincoln Hospital. And so that's where I spent the rest of that year, and that year I went to Pearson school in the fifth grade and sixth grade. And Pearson was not far away. It was fun because you could walk to school from there. It was fairly close, just about a mile and a half away from where we lived. And I had a favorite friend in those days, a guy by the name of Clemon...no, what was the guy's name, goodness. Clem, can't think of his last name. I'll probably think of it somewhere....Anyway, I would pick him up on the way to school and we'd walk to school together. Pearson school had, it was a real good school, all black school, grades one through six. It's not in use anymore, but it was typical of the Durham School system. It was an elementary school in a great neighborhood. Had a mixed set of kids coming from the lowest socio-economic level to our highest socio-economic level, which was probably, maybe upper middle class is our highest. We had great teachers, great principals. We learned a lot. The funny thing, the thing I remember about that time was every year to go to, at the end of the year, you took a test that measured your achievement that year, and I could remember, and I always was a good student, and one of the better students in my class. I can remember that year at the end of the fifth grade, and they would grade you on a achievement level by school. My overall scores were seventh grade/6. Which was very high in my class, except I had a good friend, remember we used to stay with the Baileys...we stayed that first year in Durham with the Baileys. Their son, Reginald, yeah, Reginald Bailey, was a year behind me in the fourth grade. He scored in the fourth grade ninth grade/2 which sort of made my seventh grade/6 sound awful low, even though it was very high compared to other students. But I can remember he read all the time. He was a great reader, and not only being smart, he read so much that he scored very high on that score on that test. And every year in the elementary school you got, you had to do one of those tests. I don't remember what I scored in the sixth grade. Michelle Lanier: So, can you remember some of the neighbors who lived around you? Irwin Holmes: Not really. I'm getting kind of old, but right below our house on Walton was a family by the name of, by the name of Holmes, same as my family. She was a teacher, I think she taught fifth grade at Pearson Elementary, and I can't remember her first name. I remember it started with an A, but I can't remember her first name. And she was married to a Holmes who was a really big man, and I think he ran a cleaners service, business. He owned his own cleaners. He was interesting because he was a big football player and he played at Central, North Carolina College for Negroes, it was called, remember. He played tackle position on that team. And amazing enough, the guy that played the end directly beside him was my father. And they lived there, that close to each other just by chance. Directly across the street from us on Colfax was one of those neighborhood grocery stores, and I cannot for the life of me remember that family that lived there. But what I can remember about them is, he was a dark skinned, fairly decent man and she was a light skinned lady, attractive and I can remember in their 50s they had no children. And one day she showed up 50 plus years old, pregnant. And the child delivered fine and he did fine. But I lost track of them, because we moved by this time. By the time he was about two or three, we had moved from Colfax over to 1403 S. Alston, which is where parents have built a house...bought a lot, two lots, and built a house there. It was directly across the street from what was then the only black Catholic church that I'd know of in the South. But certainly was in Durham. But let me go back to Colfax. Colfax was an interesting street. Colfax was one block from Alston Avenue. On that block on Walton, between Colfax and Alston Avenue, it was an all black neighborhood—all these neighborhoods were all black, but that neighborhood was interesting because there were about, must have been 60 to 70 kids who lived in that set of maybe, let's see, how many houses were there? Maybe 12 houses on each side of the street. Maybe about 25 houses. There were between 60 and 80 kids lived in there. What a great place to grow up, because there was always somebody to play with in that block. Michelle Lanier: What kind of things would you all do to entertain yourself with that many children around?

00:12:42.780 - 00:14:56.160

Irwin Holmes: All the things kids did then. What did kids do in those days? We'd play hide and seek, that was one of my favorite things, especially if there were some cute girls in it. We'd play marbles; we'd play a lot of basketball. Turns out the house we lived in on Colfax had a fairly sizeable backyard, and my dad put up a basketball net—goal and net, and we had enough space to play basketball with one goal—half court basketball. So that was a favorite place for the kids in the neighborhood to come down and play basketball. So we played a lot of basketball there. And then we'd walk over to Pearson school that wasn't far away and there was a playground there that we played softball on, and of course they had all the slides and things that kids play on there, so we used that for there. But then what we had that was very neat at Pearson, particularly in the school in the summers, my dad had set up a program for all, at each of the elementary schools—in the summers they would hire a teacher who was now off, one or two teachers per playground, and they would be responsible for having arts and crafts and all kinds of things like that, reading programs for the kids who were now out of school. And it was free. And it was run by Durham City Recreation Department, that was managed by my dad. And he would hire all these great teachers who needed jobs for the summer and they would come there every summer and would run those various programs, and they were all over the city. Every elementary school in the city had one of those programs. So that was a great entertainment for a lot of the kids and a great learning thing because there was a lot of learning going on at the time. Michelle Lanier: What was your father's personality like? (phone rings) File ends New file: Holmes_Irwin_DEC 2014_2

00:15:07.190 - 00:22:56.280

Michelle Lanier: OK. You were going to answer what your father's personality was like. Irwin Holmes: Well, it's hard to talk about my father without talking about my mother. So I'm going to talk about both of them together. I was lucky. I had two of the best parents I say in the world, certainly in Durham. In fact, I probably have had the only set of parents—Durham, as a city, every year recognizes a father and mother of the year for the city of Durham and it encompasses both black and whites. One of the few things that did that. And one year or another both my father and mother were elected in the city of Durham, father of the year and mother of the year. Not the same year, but they both were. I bet nobody can say that, probably anywhere. Especially with a town that was, at that time, at least 80,000 people. But now, who was my dad—let me just tell you, let me give you some background about my dad. My dad was born in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, from, to a mother who was a working lady, who passed when he was 16. She raised my dad and my aunt, my dad's sister, until she passed. My dad then had to stop school and work to help my aunt and he survive after that, so he got a couple of years behind in school, but my dad was, was a very smart man. He was an outstanding athlete. But the main thing is he cared about people. To this day, I will see people on the street who grew up around W. D. Hill, which was a community center on Fayetteville Street, next to the Algonquin Club, Tennis Club, which was also next to Skeepie Scarborough or the Scarborough family home. All three of them, which were across the street from Lincoln Hospital on Fayetteville Street. My dad spent half of his life in that community center because that's what he, he worked out of that community center. But guys I would meet would say, “I knew your dad. I grew up around the community center, and I wouldn't be the person that I am today if it hadn't been for what he did for me.” And I've had that happen to me over and over again. He was a special man that reached a lot of lives in life. Then I turn around and say, my mother. My mother was a special lady, too. They met at North Carolina School, North Carolina College for Negroes. My dad was a couple of years ahead of my mom. And when they were in college, my dad was sort of, was, like my…his wife’s-to-be play father. He had another girl, a girlfriend in college, not my mom, but they always liked and knew each other. And later after in life, after my dad and his girlfriend broke up, they ended up marrying, thank goodness. But my mom, well, let me go back to my dad again. I didn't finish, but let me just tell you. My dad played football at North Carolina Central, was an end, played an end position on a single wing position, all single wing formation. He was so good that his senior year he was voted as an All American football player. Now remember back in those days, it...there was black All Americans and white All Americans. They separated the two. My dad was a black All American football player and was good enough that if they had let blacks play in the NFL freely like they do now, would have been an outstanding NFL football player. He was about 180 pounds, quick as lightning – very fast. He was so fast that when he was in high school, he won the Pennsylvania 440 yard dash championship. So besides playing football, he was an outstanding track star. But other than that, would you believe that when my dad graduated from North Carolina Central, North Carolina for Negroes he was valedictorian of his class. He majored in chemistry and math. So how could I not be a halfway decent person with a father like that? But then to make it worse, I had a mother who was just as competent. My mom finished with honors just like my dad from North Carolina College for Negroes. I keep getting that mixed up because it's North Carolina Central now. She majored in English, but as a kid growing up if I had a question about math—my dad was always working—she would help me do my math. So she could have majored in math like my dad. She just happened to major in English because in those days women majored in English; they didn't major in ath. So she ended up in English, but she was a very good math student, just like my dad. But when they came to Durham, and dad took the job at W. D. Hill, my mom needed to work, too, but they had no openings. In those days school teaching positions were very hard to get. They had no openings in English or anything that my mom was, had graduated in. So she took a job in the Durham school system, Durham County school system as an art teacher. ??? She had never taken a course in art, she had never practiced art. She said no problem, I can handle it. And I'll let you know how she could do that. She could do that because her father was a Renaissance kind of man. Her father, my grandfather, could do anything and could do it well. He had four daughters and my dad was the son of the four daughters. So everything he could do, she learned to do. Then, on top of that, my grandmother, her mother, was a professional seamstress. She made her living making clothes for people. So guess who learned how to make clothes as good as her mother—my mother. So there's literally nothing that my mother could not do. Michelle Lanier: Where did she grow up? Irwin Holmes: Reidsville, North Carolina. That's where I was born, was in Reidsville, and that's where she grew up. At that time, Reidsville, like I said, was about 12- or 15,000 population, but what it was was the home of a Lucky Strike tobacco factory. Everybody there either worked for Lucky Strike or some related industry. My grandfather was the right-hand man for the owner of that factory. And so anything that he wanted to be done, my grandfather would do for him. And this man, as I understand, was a very competent business man, but that was it. So all those things he didn't do, my grandfather did. The guy had a great farm, plantation, and my grandfather did all of the farming on this plantation. Had a great flower garden as well as all kinds of fruits and things. So my mom learned how to do that. My mom could have been a professional farmer if she'd wanted to.

00:24:03.700 - 00:25:14.060

Michelle Lanier: So how did your parents wind up going to North Carolina College for Negroes? Irwin Holmes: That's a good question. I can't quite tell or say why. There were three sisters, four sisters. Ann Johnson was the oldest. My mom was the second oldest. Ann ended up in North Carolina College for Negroes, and I can't remember how she got there. But since she got there and was successful, all the other three sisters followed her there. But I never, I can't remember why she got, how she got there, because you had A&T closer. Greensboro's closer to Reidsville. Reidsville's only 20 miles from Greensboro. So that would have been the school you'd have thought she would have gone to. For some reason she ended up at North Carolina Central, or North Carolina School, College for Negroes. And all the other sisters ended up there. Michelle Lanier: They all followed the older sister? Irwin Holmes: They all followed the older sister. The older sister ended up teaching for years there. She taught Library Science at North Carolina, at the college. And let's see, Virginia was a home economics—that’s the next oldest, and Edna, the youngest, was physical ed, graduated in physical ed. And Alice, my dad's sister, also went to North Carolina Central. She graduated in physical ed and she is in the Hall of Fame as a basketball player, a lady basketball player, at North Carolina Central. Of course, my dad's in the Hall of Fame, too, at North Carolina Central.

00:26:00.460 - 00:28:20.020

Michelle Lanier: So how did your father end up going, coming all the way down from Pittsburgh? Irwin Holmes: My father finished high school...what was it, what was the name of the school? I can't remember right now. I will think about it. But in Pittsburgh and his best friend....well, we should have had this interview early...can't think of his name...I'll think of it maybe. His best friend was a running back in football. They were both all state, all city in high school, and they went to a Pittsburgh college, not in Pittsburgh, a Pennsylvania college on scholarship, football scholarship. Went there, stayed there about two weeks and didn't like it, and it turns out the college, the coach—went on to coach for North Carolina School for Negroes—was going through there, looking for football players. Talked to them, and they quit school and packed up and just went in the middle of that semester and just came to Durham. I mean, yeah, came to Durham to school there. So that's how they ended up here. Michelle Lanier: And so from your, from your parents going to school at North Carolina College for Negroes, now North Carolina Central University, there were, I mean there were all these things that resulted. You being raised here because of the connections. I know it was from your dad's professional life that brought you all back here. So fast forward to your dad with the recreational center work that he did. As a child growing up with a dad who did that, did you always have access to any kind of recreation that you wanted? I mean I imagine you were almost the poster child for any program that they put together. Irwin Holmes: I spent every year, every day after school at W. D. Hill. Because what happened is my mom was teaching and she was teaching at the county, so school closed at . She probably didn't leave ‘til , and by the time she drove home, it would be after . So, and I got out of school sometimes as early as or so, so I would walk, whatever school I was going to, I would walk to W. D. Hill and spend ‘til my dad went home for dinner at 6 at W. D. Hill. So I spent everyday after school at W. D. Hill with my dad waiting for my mom to come home. And so, what do you do at that time? Well, you didn't do homework ‘til you got home, so I was either playing ping pong, cause they had lots of ping pong available at W. D. Hill. I learned to play cards because the adults played cards there bid whist or Pinochle, mostly bid whist, and sometimes they would need a fourth and I'd be sitting there, even though I was 9 or 10 years old, I had watched the games about well enough that I could play. I would sit in and be the fourth, so I learned to play cards there. And I would sit in and fill there. And then outside there was a basketball goal, so we could go out and shoot goals, and then right besides in the backyard back there there was Algonquin Tennis Club’s tennis courts. So, you're right. I was always active doing something, and on top of that I loved football, to watch it. I never really played formal football. I used to play lots of sandlot football. I never played formal football because my dad talked me out of it because he came out of football with lot of knee trouble and he never wanted me to play. So I never did play formal football. Probably a good thing I guess. So you're right. I was very active. I was, I was at one time I was city marbles champ. Can you believe that? Marble champ? I won a bike riding contest. No, I didn’t win that—my dad wouldn't let me enter that. I swam well because we had city, lots of swimming pools. So I was a lifeguard. I played on a softball team that was city, state, city championship softball team. What else did I do? Oh, we ran track. I won things in track, running mostly. So yeah, I used to do a little bit of everything, because it was always right there. In fact I can remember this one year; I'll never forget this one year. By the time we got to spring of the year, I had won so many different things that my dad barred me from entering any other competitions because he felt like people would start thinking that I was winning all these things because I was his son. My dad always hung up on that thing, me being his son and he being in a place where he could have helped me. He never helped me. He was one of those guys that was strict by the books, when it came to things like that. So, yeah, I was active in sports. I got involved in tennis. That's an interesting story. How did I get involved in tennis? We had this softball team and on the team we had, remember I said we lived on Colfax and on Colfax we had this large number of kids lived together? Well it turns out we had enough kids in that little block that we would go on to Pearson's Elementary School and play, and we had enough kids there to form a whole softball team. And I can remember this one time we were, we were playing our first game ever, all of us, everybody on the team never played a formal game and dad had organized city leagues—all kinds of ages in sports. So we are playing this one game and I can remember I was nine and we were playing in a league for 15 year olds, but we only had nine players, so I was lucky. I got to play even though I was real young. And the guy, I met a guy by the name of Bradshaw, was a teacher that taught at the junior high in the school year, but he worked on the playground at Pearson in the summers. Course my dad hired him, so he made sure I got to play. But we only had nine players anyway. And I was so small he couldn't figure out which position to put me on, so he made me the pitcher. Now why he made me the pitcher, you would think, that's the last place. But it was softball and you pitch underhand. So I could get the ball up to the plate, but barely. And I can remember the first inning of this game, all of us are playing for the first time; it’s the first inning. The first six or seven players, batters, I walked because I couldn't get enough balls at the plate, and they would just stand and watch and ???. And we had this one good friend, who later became an outstanding athlete, a cat by the name of ???, and well known in the City of Durham, a guy by the name of Joe Alston, who ended up playing, was a star at Hillside, a star at North Carolina Central, the coach, the basketball coach at Johnson C. Smith in Charlotte, came back later and worked for Sears, Sears here in Durham. And then ended up his career at Duke in procurement, managed procurement at Duke. He was our first basemen on that team. And I can remember, just to show how much we knew about what we were doing...every time I would walk a guy—and that's a free pass to first, Joe would tell the catcher, who didn't know where, when he would (?) “throw it to me, throw it to me.” He would throw it to Joe and Joe would grab the ball and try to tag the guy out, which he couldn't do and he kept doing that. We didn't know. We were just learning how to play. I forgot to tell Joe about that. Joe still goes to White Rock. He went to White...he grew up in White Rock and still goes there. I have to remind him of that next Sunday. I betcha he doesn't even remember that story. But anyway, how did I get...where was I going?

00:35:21.230 - 00:37:44.500

Michelle Lanier: You were thinking back about how you got started on tennis. Irwin Holmes: Oh, ok, yeah. So we were this softball team—thanks, softball group. We played that one year and then we got good after years because we stayed together and kept playing. This one day after practice, we had gone to practice at Pearson School and we went up to W. D. Hill like we frequently would do sometimes, and we were standing around not doing anything and we walked by to Algonquin and there were these two little kids. Of course, everybody was black in that neighborhood, that were out there trying to play tennis, and they had this one ball and these little rackets. And we said, could we try this, because none of us had ever played this. And of course, they didn't let us play, so we just took the racket from them and the ball, throwed them off the court and we started taking turns hitting the ball. And I said, “Boy, that's fun.” And so I go back home and I remember two Christmases before, my dad had given me a tennis racket for tennis, I mean for Christmas, and I had taken that tennis racket and put it in a closet and never hit it once. So it's in this closet. So I go home: Whatever happened to that tennis racket I got for Christmas? Found that tennis racket, and then went back up there not that day, but started playing tennis, just from that. That process. So it really wasn't a formal kind of thing. And it turns out, W. D. Hill had a cement...was brick, was a brick building, and it had a cement structure that at one time, I'm not sure what it was, but it had the cement floor in it, against this brick wall and you stand there and hit the ball against the wall and would hit on the cement floor and you could practice that way. So I took this racket and got me a ball, and started learning to hit by myself against this brick wall. And that's how I started playing tennis. No lessons, unfortunately, because you definitely need lessons at that time. No lessons, but that's how I started playing tennis. Michelle Lanier: When did you start playing folks in competitive ways? Irwin Holmes: Well, that's a good question. Ninth grade, I went to Hillside. Hillside was in the old Whitted, where Whitted Elementary School…no, it had moved. Because I went to Whitted where Whitted was, I went to Hillside over where on ???. And ninth grade, I went out for the basketball team because that's what all our friends did. They played basketball. So ninth grade I go out for basketball team. In ninth grade, I am 12 years old because, remember, I skipped all those grades and stuff; well, that was good in some ways, it was bad in others. As an athlete it was not too good. I'm 12 years old going out there playing, trying to make the basketball team. And there were kids who'd been to the service and come back, cause they had special rules during that time, that if you were in the service, and missed part of your school year, you could come back and still be eligible for sports, where normally you would't be. So there were kids like 17 and 18 years old on, out there on the floor, and I'm 12 years old trying to compete with them. Well, needless to see, needless to say, I did not make that team. But I made the JV, so I played with the JVs. Later during, during the basketball season, for some reason, I guess the tennis coach at that time was also the basketball coach, decided he needed more tennis players, so what he did was he formed a schedule at lunch time—a tennis tournament for kids that were not on the tennis team, non-tennis team members. So I went out there, and I got...I missed something that you should know. Back up. Remember at W. D. Hill I said that I played ping pong. Ping pong is nothing but table tennis, and from when I was 9 years old I was playing ping pong. This is now 12, so for three years I have played ping pong. And I played it well enough to actually, at my age, I won the state championship at ping pong. So I was at this time, a good ping pong player, ok, and I had this tennis racket I'd been hitting balls against the wall. So I wasn't really that much of a tennis player, but I had real fun playing against the wall. But I was a lot better than any of these kids that were in this tournament here, so I won the tournament with ease. So then the coach invites me out for the tennis team that spring. So I went out for the tennis team in the spring, and of course, made the team and, of course, all of the people on the team were ???, most of them were seasoned players at that time, including this Joe Alston I was telling you about. But I made the team, played on the team. That was 11^(th) grade I played on it, was the first year I played on it. And so my senior year, those other guys were now gone. My senior year I played on the team and won the state championship. And lost in the finals of the national championship, high school championship. Now, how did that happen? I was, first off I was a good athlete. Remember, my father was an All American football player. So I'm, naturally, I'm a pretty good athlete. And my mom, I didn't tell you. My mom's little baby sister Edna was a star player at the college, when she was in college, in basketball. So there was athletic ability in the family. Mom had played high school basketball, too. Not, I don't think she was as good as her sister, but she had played. But I did one smart thing. (coughs) I looked around me, and I looked at my age and I said, I'm going to concentrate on tennis because at that time you had all these athletes, especially over age athletes. My dad didn't want me to play football. Basketball, I was not that tall, and I was too young to be the best ball player, although I did play on the varsity my senior year. So I'm going to concentrate on tennis. And all, and black society, people didn't play tennis that much. There was less competition. (coughs) That's where, I think that decision was...had a lot to do with my success in tennis throughout my life. Because...(break to drink water.)

00:42:30.040 - 00:44:49.300

Michelle Lanier: So we were talking about your time with tennis at Hillside and some of the advancements, and why you decided, you were talking about why you decided that tennis was the sport for you, because you had figured out there was less competition because of the demographics you were swimming in. That's where we were. Irwin Holmes: The one thing that being black is that you...that we have lots of good athletes. I mean, I could tell you some stories about athletes that we had, and probably the best athletes we had are ones you never hear of. I mean, ‘cause, for instance, I can remember a kid that I knew, when I was in eighth grade, there was a kid, born on the wrong side of the tracks, which most of the kids in Durham are. We didn't have that many of us on the right side of the tracks, especially athletes. The kid was such a good athlete that it was unreal. Quick as lighting, a great football player, and by the time we were in 10^(th) grade, I don't even know what it was, he just sort of disappeared. Got in trouble somewhere or something and just disappeared out of sight. He would have been a world class athlete. Just gone. And that's what happens with us. That's the sad thing about us, is the neighborhoods we grew up in and the lack of support from the community. Like when I was growing up there was lots of community support, but it's disappearing now, because the communities are so bad, an adult don't even want to see someone else's child, much less help raise 'em. That we just lose so many good people...kids, who have either, they're bright, or they're good athletes or they have some unique skill like art. It's really sad. Michelle Lanier: Sounds like you grew up at a time and in a place in Durham where that whole “It takes a village to raise a child” approach was in full effect with you. Irwin Holmes: No, a city. The whole city raised you. I mean, it was not only the people in your neighborhood. When you went to school and you weren't doing well, you'd be in big trouble. If you did something really bad, it would be at your house before you got home that day. That teacher would call, “Do you know what your son did today?” You couldn't...if you weren’t doing what you could do, everybody got on you. That's what we lost with integration. We lost that. Integration was not a good thing for the generation that first got integrated. I hope it’s a good thing down the road, but we've lost so much as a race with integration. Because, first of all, not only did we have teachers that just knew you could do; we have teachers that don't think you can do. And then most of them, our school, I mean, when I went to Hillside, every teacher there expected you to do. Now those kids going to those schools, there may not be anyone that cares about you. And even at Hillside, that still has most of the black teachers, different attitude with the teachers. First thing, it's divided. Second thing is different skill level. When I was at Hillside, I would say, 75% of the teachers there had master's degrees. Why? Because they didn't have any place else to teach. The options were so shallow, that they ended up finding a great job at Hillside and staying there their whole career. They didn't move up. I mean, they had no choice. So education, at least at the larger city schools, was outstanding. I think it was probably very in the the small cities, too. So we really lost, we lost a lot.

00:46:57.470 - 00:50:38.860

Michelle Lanier: Before we started recording, you and I had moment of connection around my Aunt Grace and her role in your education at Hillside, and I was wondering if you would share that for the purposes of this interview? Irwin Holmes: She was the math teacher at Hillside. She taught most of the, most of the advanced...anything over...from algebra 1 up, I think she was...no, there was one other math teacher there. But she taught algebra 1, algebra 2, um, calc...no we didn't have calculus. We had an advanced math, but I don't remember what it was. And math was my favorite subject. And so I was probably one of her favorite students. And, a funny thing happened, all through school. In fact, I can remember in the ninth grade we had a local...the Hornet was our newspaper. I can remember being student of the month one year in the ninth grade, and they interviewed me and they talked about my plan to be a doctor, MD, ninth grade. And I had that plan from maybe two or three years earlier. I went all the way up to eleventh grade still wanting to be an MD. Senior year, Mrs. Thompson came around, said she had decided to put together an engineering club. Now what got in her mind to do it I do not know. So she went around and got all her potential engineering students, in particular anyone who did well in math, and invited them to join this club. We didn't know what this club was, but if Mrs. Thompson said you should come, we went. We go in there and we started with what's an engineer? We spent the whole year learning what an engineer was and what they did. And by the time she finished that, I had already been accepted to college and already picked my college based on that it had an engineering program—that I had never heard of a year earlier. So if she had not, I would have ended up being an MD, dying at 55 like half of them do, mad with the world for giving me a skill that wasn't nearly as good as they told me it was. Instead I ended up doing engineering, which was really where I should have been, because the thing I liked to do is solve problems. That's basically what engineering is all about, solving problems. Turns out that if you go to engineering school, you learn how to solve problems and you probably could do any job. Because all the real hard jobs are solving problems. So, so if she had not done that, I would probably have been a totally different person. Definitely wouldn't have married the same person. I would have never ended up at RCA as an engineer. And that's where I met my wife. So the whole rest of my life was defined by that one little thing that God got her to do at Hillside. Michelle Lanier: We were talking about Grace Lanier Thompson and she was a math teacher at Hillside and also a spouse of a lawyer, Tommy Thompson. Irwin Holmes: My dad's lawyer. Well- respected lawyer.

00:50:44.480 - 00:57:38.190

Michelle Lanier: And you all called him “lawyer,” and he lived on Pekoe Avenue. Tell me, I want to talk...you mentioned White Rock just briefly. Tell me about your remembrances of being a youth in White Rock. Irwin Holmes: White Rock...let me tell you about White Rock. White Rock Baptist Church, I don't know who founded it, but when I got there it had a pastor by the name of Mark Fisher. Mark Fisher, during his time, was probably recognized in America as one of the top pastors, certainly black pastors in America. He wrote books and things. He taught, he taught for a while at Virginia Union, he taught at Shaw for years. But the biggest thing he did was he was pastor at White Rock. In those days that was not a trivial job because White Rock was a church of the most successful blacks in the city. So, now what does that mean? That means he was a pastor of the smartest, most intelligent, most creative blacks in the city. And you would never know that because he was such a successful man himself, that nobody questioned Reverend Fisher in anyway. And not only was he successful, but he did things like...the city of Durham, I didn't mention this before, but the city of Durham, and in particular black Durham, had one of the most impressive recreational programs in America. And part of it was because the city encouraged it, but it was also because the city was lucky enough to have a man who was intelligent enough that he should have never been in such a trivial job, in the recreational department. My dad should have been somewhere in nuclear science or someplace. That's where he should have been. But he was in that job, but that didn't bother him. I mean he recognized, I don't know if he realized it as much. But he had all that energy and, and aptitude to create and do things, frequently without any assets or resources. So we had a recreational program that was outstanding. But despite that, Reverend Fisher had his own, had put together that church, they had beside the church, they had a recreation building called the clubhouse. They had their own ping pong table and pool tables in there and that catered to the neighborhood kids, many of whom didn't even go to White Rock. He started a school, I mean a church, a church-based softball program around the city. Now, the city also had a softball program. They almost competed. But he started that just for the churches. And here's this intellectual author who's putting together this kind of, and he's a pastor on top of that. So that's the church I went to. We had things like, I played in the band at Hillside, that's another long story, but we had an orchestra in our Sunday School at White Rock. Every Sunday, we would play, we would come together, after our class met, we would come together and sing songs, and the orchestra would play while, to support that singing. Every Sunday. So we had a total orchestra there. We, of course we had children’s choirs and all that kind of stuff. All the stuff, the right things you'd have in a church, we had in that church. And this was a church, I mean anyone that did anything in Durham, literally, was an active member of the church, that supported the things that Rev. Fisher wanted done. I mean, the Spauldings, the Kennedys, you know, the people in church. And I don't mean to down St. Joseph; it was almost as good, but not quite. But it had a lot of the other people, similar kind of people also. But those were the two churches that captured most of the, most successful, and our definition of successful black families in Durham. So there, what did I do there? I participated in everything. I was in the, the after church programs we had in the evening. On Sundays, I played in the band, the Sunday school band. Went to Sunday school every Sunday. Stayed for church most of the time, but they didn't encourage children to stay for church that much in those days. Maybe, not sure whether that's good or bad, but anyway. It was a good church. Michelle Lanier: In terms, as you are telling these stories, I can't help but imagine, even though I never met your mother, I just feel like her energy is just probably all over all of that. Getting you ready, encouraging you, taking...Please tell me more about this phenomenal woman Althea Holmes, and her life here in Durham. Irwin Holmes: Mom came from a, a family that was very successful. Well I explained, I talked to you a little bit about my mom, my grandparents. But they weren't, but in Reidsville they didn't have...Reidsville wasn't like Durham. Reidsville didn't have a heirarchy that Durham had. So mom, when she came here, grew up in a family that was very successful, had a lot of skills, but didn't get the sense that they were coming, that they were an elite family. Whereas Durham created a whole strata of families who taught their children and felt that they were elite. You gotta understand, among black people in America, we didn't really have no elite anybody. We were all struggling. None of those families, if they, if the people who, the adults in the families missed two days of work, would have been in trouble. So we didn't really have elite. There was very little difference between our supposed elite families and the poor families. We were all struggling. We even lived in the same neighborhoods. We didn't have elite neighborhoods; we were all mixed up all together. But out of that, we created among ourselves, a group of families who supposedly were elite families. Now, if I took my family and the success and skill levels of my parents, and talk about them in Durham, there's hardly any family that would equal it, among the black families. And there were some, I'm not saying that to down anyone. I just had two special people. But you would never know it, and my mom spent her whole time worrying about this crazy elitism among a lot of our families. For instance, we had, we had an organization called, what was that organization called...gosh, slipped out of my mind. Boys and Girls Club, what is it called?

01:00:01.940 - 01:03:07.340

Michelle Lanier: Jack and Jill. Irwin Holmes: Jack and Jill, thanks. We had the Jack and Jills. Well, if you weren't a certain family, you didn't get in the Jack and Jills because that's the elite family. And our Jack and Jills here, basically was, we were made up of the Kennedys, very successful business people, the college professors, the college presidents, of course, doctors and lawyers, that's it. If you weren't one of those, you weren't going to have your child in Jack and Jill. I was never in the Jack and Jill. My family was never in the Jack and Jill. My family never tried to be in the Jack and Jill. But I think they would have really had to work at it to get in it, if they had tried. But there was another group called “The Mother's Club,” and these were the people, most of the school teachers, most of them, but even some non-school teachers belonged. They were in the Mother's Club. My mom went out of her way to get into the Mother's Club. She was not going to get in the other clubs. Felt sorry for the people who needed, had a need to be in that club. But if you looked at my mom's skills and who my mom was, there was nobody in those clubs that could compete. And I'm not just saying that to say it. But my mom, from my mom's point of view, that was the one that was important. The important thing was who you are, and who, and how successful and happy did you make the people around you. And that's what my mom spent her life doing. She enjoyed her job. She taught art for years. And the way it was set up, the school couldn't afford an art teacher. So what they would have is a lay person, they called ‘em art supervisor, but she would go around and spend one hour in each of the schools, in each of the elementary classes per month. And when she was there, she would take care of that class, take over the class and teach art and try to teach the teacher enough about art that she could teach ‘em some additional art when she wasn't there. That's what she did. That was her main job for years. Now remember, my mom didn't have any training in art. But my mom still went back home and got books and things and all the skills and things she did growing up with her mother, who did do a lot of that stuff. She was very good at that stuff. Did you see some of the ???...when you go out you'll see some kit, some dolls sitting on the chairs there. My mom made those dolls from scratch. Conceived, designed them, and made them from scratch. Michelle Lanier: What school did your mother...where did she teach? Irwin Holmes: All of the county schools. You know there was a Durham and city and county school systems. Did you know that? Durham County, Durham County put together the two school systems about 10 to 12 years ago. Until then, you had a...your school system was divided into schools inside of the city and schools in Durham County, but outside the city limits. There were two different school systems. And mom taught in the outside of the school. So she taught...now the schools, the black schools that existed were Little River, Merrick-Moore, Fayetteville Street. Those schools were outside. And then I think there was one other, but I can't remember. They were outside, they were in the county, they were the black schools. And she would go around to each of those schools each day and, and run...have a class, an art class. And that's what she did for 20 plus years. Then they integrated the schools. When they integrated the schools, what the white folks did is they went around and found all the, what they thought were the best black teachers and they put as many as they could into white schools. If you were in a white school, you were one of the better black teachers. Now remember, we didn't have rinky-dink black teachers in those days. So mom ended up in one of the black schools. I'm not sure whether...I think she was teaching, some, similar to the same thing. And the blacks, in the schools that were previously black.

01:04:55.850 - 01:05:38.590

Michelle Lanier: With integration, she ended up... Irwin Holmes: teaching...with integration most of the black teachers stayed at the black schools that they were at. That was it. They didn't teach white people. But some of the...when they integrated, they were trying to integrate the faculty a little bit, not much, a little bit. So mom got picked to be one of the faculty members that left the black school system and went into the white school system. And I think, I'm not sure exactly what that job was. I'm not sure it was the same art job. Michelle Lanier: Would you have been in college around that time? Irwin Holmes: I would have been out of college. I finished college in 1960. They did trivial integration. They started probably about ‘58 or ‘59 and that was very token. It wasn't until the ‘60s that they really started doing some integration. Because they spent four or five years faking it. Not even faking it, fighting it.

01:06:01.530 - 01:09:30.210

Michelle Lanier: I want to talk about your journey, kind of the bridge, that took you from Hillside to getting you to making history at North Carolina State. But before we go, I cannot ignore the fact that you said you were in the Hillside band and that is a renowned band, historically important band. What instrument did you play and how did all that come to be? Irwin Holmes: Philmore Hall was the band director. Philmore Hall was a very interesting person. One of the things he did was he decided he would not only direct the band and teach music at Hillside, which is what his main job was. He started a program where he started teaching kids to play music in elementary school. So what he would do was sort of like mom did with art. He would go around to certain elementary schools and have band classes. I got into one of those classes. Now how did I get into one of those classes? One of my neighborhood kids was at Hillside, played the trumpet and I used to go over his house and I enjoyed it. And so I said, I think I want to do that. And I found out that Mr. Hall was going to come around to Pearson School, and teach band, teach, teach the instruments. I think there were about four of us in the class. And so in fifth grade I started taking trumpet. And I took it fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth, and then I went to high school. By that time I was an accomplished trumpeter. So I went, so I played, not only did I take it in high school, but I played in the high school band all through high school. Not only did he…and he was also, and on top of that, he also had a, a performing band that went out and played in the streets. You know, at a dance...did they call it a dance? What did they call it? Jazz band, that he also had. So he taught at school every day, had a performing band, taught at the elementary schools, and then had a band made up of students from the school that went out and made money performing. And he, and he himself could have worked in, in music at New York. He was that good. He was a top, he was again, another example of how you can have an outstanding guy. He could have made his living performing. He was a trumpet player, too, by the way it happened, just happened to be. Michelle Lanier: Ok, so by the time you're a senior, you're about to graduate third in your class. You've been introduced to engineering, playing tennis—nationally ranked. You're on the basketball team—varsity. Irwin Holmes: Captain of the team.

01:09:30.210 - 01:09:53.360

Michelle Lanier: Captain of the team. Irwin Holmes: Captain of the team. Let's see. I was captain of the tennis team, the basketball team. I was president of the debating club. That was one of my favorite things, debating club. I was editor of the school paper. That's all. That's all. Michelle Lanier: When did it occur to you, tell the story of how you ended up at NC State University. How did that happen? How did that come to be with all this going on in your life? It surprises me. I'm glad that of course it happened, because of the trail that you blazed, but with two parents who met at North Carolina College for Negroes.

01:10:14.040 - 01:18:08.120

Irwin Holmes: It was a freak. Again Grace got me into engineering. North Carolina Central doesn't have engineering. Otherwise, I would have been at North Carolina Central. Instead I ended up in North Carolina State, ‘cause she started that engineering club. As I said, she messed up my whole life (laughs). She redirected my whole life with that one little decision. But let's...here's an interesting story in itself. In fact this is one of the stories I've been telling in interviews lately, with this stuff about State, so it is sort of fresh in my memory. First of all, I did not got to State to integrate it. That's the first thing. When I finished, when I finished...in my senior year in high school, I applied to several colleges; all had engineering programs. One college I did not apply to that had an engineering program was North Carolina A&T. I did not apply there for the specific reason, my father played at North Carolina Central– football. When he finished, one of the stories he always said, one of the most proudest moments of his life, that he could say that he played at North Carolina Central for four years, and they beat North Carolina A&T every year that he played. So I grew up as an Aggie hater. So there's no way. I don't care if they gave me a free scholarship to A&T, I was not going to A&T. So that eliminated A&T. I applied at Howard University. I applied at Tennessee A&M, I applied at Tennessee Southern and NC State. Tennessee and Southern were just as backups; if I'd had a choice, I would have gone to Howard. But I didn't go to Howard because Howard was too expensive and so I needed a scholarship to go to Howard. That was my decision. Not my parents saying this, but I decided that. So I applied for a scholarship at Howard. Howard at that time had a national exam that they gave all around the country. If you take that exam and scored high enough, you got a scholarship. I don't know if they still have that or not, but they used to have it then. I took the exam. Got feedback saying, “Congratulations, you were in the first, the highest 1% of people taking the exam, but we ran out of money and we can't give you a scholarship.” Ok, that was about in the spring. Then I get... and I applied at State and then I get accepted at State. Well, when I get accepted at State, I didn't just get a letter that I've been accepted to State; that was released to the newspapers. So my acceptance at State, ‘cause remember that was a big time, because nobody had ever been there before, none of us. All over the state it was in the papers. So I get these congratulations from people I hadn't even ever heard of, about how they were so glad I was going to State and I was, as far as they were to understand, I was the right person to be integrating. I didn't decide to go to State. I wanted to go to Howard. But Howard didn't give me enough money. Any money. About the first of August, I got a letter from Howard saying, we found the money you can come. We've got a scholarship for you. But by the time I got this letter, I had accepted at State and it had come out all around the state that I had accepted to go to State. And there's no way I was gonna to go to Howard at that point. And going to school in state, at that time was really cheap. I mean, I think one year including tuition, fees, books, living on campus, food on campus was less than $1000 a year. I think it was, it only went over $1000 my senior year. Before that it was like 7 or 800 dollars. So even my parents could afford that. And they weren't making a lot of money, but they could afford that. So I ended up at State. I knew it was a good engineering school. But I would have gone to Howard, because Howard was a good school, too. I don't think it was recognized as good as NC State, and I don't think it was, because it didn't have the same resources, but it was good enough. Michelle Lanier: When you went down the road to Raleigh, it must have felt like a whole different universe being on that campus, compared to the oasis of love and support you had in Durham, the whole city of Durham embracing you and all. Irwin Holmes: Yes and no. I was only 21 miles from Durham, from home. I spent 90% of the weekend when I was in college in Durham. Many people think I went to North Carolina Central. I was on that campus almost as much as the rest of the faculty, the rest of the student body. So yes and no. And I was only less than an hour from my dad, and my dad would have been in his car if I had needed him in a half hour. And my dad was not only a good athlete, he could box. So whoever was going to do some damage to me, you better be ready. So I didn't feel...I felt the support, even thought I was there. And then, it turns out, once I got on campus, there was some exceptions, but I got lots of support from people there. And one of my best friends was my roommate. I went...the guy who finished fourth in my high school class went to State with me. And his name was Walter Holmes, but I didn’t know ???. So it was different, not like going to Howard would have been, but it was ok. And plus I had, now Althea comes into play again. Althea prepared me to do anything. ??? and I certainly knew by the time I got there that whatever they had, I could handle. Michelle Lanier: So at what point, I don't know, you've been telling this story over and over again, as well. I guess I want to think more philosophically and retrospectively. How does it feel and what do you think about being the first African American athlete in the ACC?

01:18:30.240 - 01:23:25.000

Irwin Holmes: Let me see how I can answer that. Most of this stuff I feel is just by chance, I, it just...just happened at that time. I wasn't the best athlete there. I wasn't the best black athlete that could have gone there. It was just by chance. And so, I didn't feel, I didn't feel that it was a great achievement on my part. I was just a victim of circumstances. And it turned out to work out good for me, in the sense that I had a great time doing it. You know, it was a good school. I had a great, which I always keep forgetting, but I had a great white tennis coach. I mean, it could have been a mess if I had had somebody else. But he was a super man. His father had been tennis coach at Carolina over the years, and he had played over there and then ended up at State. And he was really a great guy. I mean things like, I'm a freshman. I'm playing as a freshman to this team. I'm playing number one on the team. We play our first match. We were playing against a high school, because a lot of the times the junior, the freshman teams played a lot of the really good high school teams. The high school coach shows up there, he doesn't know I'm on the team. He's shocked. So he would have loved for me not to play. The coach said, Irwin is number one on the team, he plays number one. So you should be prepared to play him. If you're not prepared to play him, you can just default. So the coach from this high school, since he didn't know what we would be told when he got home, all the matches I played in both my singles and my double matches, he defaulted. So I didn't play at that match. At, South Carolina had a unwritten rule in those days that said, no South Carolina white athlete can play against a black athlete in the state of South Carolina. Now, notice what I said, “In the state of South Carolina.” Why do you think? Can you guess what they...you can't guess. I'll tell you. It turns out if you look in America, ‘cause this is still characteristic of America, if you look at America, the white man is adamant about doing what he wants to do, if it didn't cost him too much. And it still today. You want to get a white man to do something that he claims is something that he would never do, give him enough money, change his mind in a minute. South Carolina, if they didn't allow the team to play against black athletes, they couldn't go to a bowl game. If you don't go to a bowl game, you're gonna lose a whole bunch of money for your school athletic program. And there were no bowl games played in the state of South Carolina. They all played in Florida, California, and Louisiana. So if they had gotten one invitation to a bowl game to play the University of Pittsburgh in those days that did have black players, they would have gone and played. But me, Irwin Holmes, the tennis player in South Carolina, they wouldn't play. So our coach said, well then you're going to have to do something. So they decided that anytime we would play in South Carolina, their team would come to Raleigh and play us on our home court. And for four years that's what we did. Michelle Lanier: Did your people, since it's so close, did people from Durham come and watch you play? Irwin Holmes: My mom never missed a tennis match I played. My dad had work those days so he seldom went. Plus my dad was very nervous. He couldn't handle his emotion, so mostly he just had my mom come. My mom never missed a match. She was always there. But no, tennis is not that big a sport. We didn't, I didn't get any friends or anybody else to come. Even on campus when we played a match, there would be maybe 50 people at the match, typically. Michelle Lanier: I want to make sure that we don't end this interview without getting a little bit more detail about, I know your mom keeps coming up, and I did hear that she had some community things that she was...you said the Mother's Club. Do you mind mentioning a few other things that your mother did, as a citizen of Durham, kind of civic engagement?

01:23:49.780 - 01:25:44.180

Irwin Holmes: Well, the things that come to mind. My dad ran W. D. Hill Community Center, so there were a lot of activities that involved her. For instance, she went with my dad, they started a program that was unique in America, a program called Golden Agers. And one was a program, was a program for arts and activities for people who were retired. And my mom basically ran it, and planned the arts and crafts and activities for that program. And, I guess, eventually, that spread around the whole country. That program. That's one thing. And of course that Mother's Club, she was the force in that club, that basically made that club in a lot of ways superior to the Jack and Jills. Because she was determined that she was not going to let the people in that club feel like blighted, not blighted, slighted by the Jack and Jills. So she went out of her way to do that. What else? What else did she do? She was always doing stuff. I wish she could tell you. Michelle Lanier: I'm just wanting to make sure we don't leave out folks. Irwin Holmes: You really want to find it out, go to the Durham Morning Herald and ask them to find those articles. I mean that program, that Mother’s Day, Father’s Day stuff was run by the newspapers. They could probably find ???. Michelle Lanier: The mother of the year, father of the year? But back to you and this will be my last question because we've spent a lot of time together, and I sure appreciate your generosity. We spent a lot of time talking about your youth in Durham.

01:25:44.180 - 01:33:12.600

Break Michelle Lanier: Ok, the last question I'm going to ask you, and we don't have to go into a lot of detail, but we spent some time talking about your youth in Durham; I wanted to hear some reflections on being an adult, a professional, a family person in Durham, some of your thoughts about that. Irwin Holmes: Being a professional person in Durham...Ok, Durham was a special place, particularly for entrepreneurs. But back when we were segregated, we developed the largest black businesses in America here. We did develop an outstanding bank, Mechanics and Farmers, North Carolina Mutual, the big business; Mutual Savings and Loan, was another bank. We have an outstanding college; our schools were good. We used to be able to be almost totally self sufficient. I mean, you could stay in the black neighborhood and get everything you needed to live on. So we had a whole community of entrepreneurs that I grew up in. Left here in 1960, stayed away for 20 years, working in the Northeast for various engineering companies, came back home in 1979. Found the city I had left, there were about 80,000 people, there were still 80,000 people. It did not grow. When I left, Raleigh was about 55,000 people; when I came back, Raleigh was about 130,000 people, and growing. Cary did not exist—there were about 5000 people; it was 25,000. So Durham had successfully let the rest of the county, the Triangle area grow while it sat there and stagnated. And the answer is why...and the main reason, as I see it, is that the white business establishment were frightened by the Research Triangle Park and their response to that was to make Durham so uninviting that the Triangle would grow without coming or even sensing Durham was there. That's mostly the white community, white leadership that did that. But the black leadership, we didn't do such a good job either. And that was because I think, the people, first of all, it's very hard to go from one generation of successful entrepreneurs and businesses to a second generation within the family, just in general difficult, and by the time you go to the third generation, it's almost impossible. That's with all the help you can get. But the problem we had is, our first generation was not particularly interested in helping the second generation and so as a result—and you need all the help you can get—the second generation's got a tough way to go. They might not be as smart as their parents, they may not have the incentives as their parents, but, in particular, they didn't have the environment of their parents. When we were segregated, for instance, North Carolina Mutual and Mutual Savings and Loan, they got no competition from companies and businesses that were bigger than they are. When we integrated, all of a sudden, North Carolina Mutual's got to compete with Providence Life and Mutual Savings and Loan’s got to compete with all of the major white banks for our resources. And so the second generation had a harder way to go to succeed than the first generation in a lot of ways. And they didn't have anymore resources. When we first integrated, white banks weren't giving us capital. If you don't have capital, you're in trouble establishing a business or even keeping a business alive, in particular, trying to grow the business. So they it tougher to go, and they weren't even getting support from their own families, because the father's are more worried about their sons outperforming them, sad to say. And so, when I came back in '79 and looked at Durham, I saw a lot of the black businesses that were here when I was growing up, gone. And I found very few new ones; there are a couple of exceptions, but just a couple, and that was really sad. And it hasn't gotten much better. And one of the real things that we, and the thing is, in America, in the end, if black people aren't producing and generating businesses and income and gross national products, contributions, we are never going to be all we can be as a race. And, and the other thing that’s hurt us is, when I was a kid, our churches, you know I was saying before, how a lot of people, we had a lot of great people because they didn't have any choices. Well we don't have such great people in our churches anymore. We had great people. Reverend Fisher was an outstanding, could have been an outstanding man in almost any field. Pastors we got are not at that skill level. They can pretty much quote the Bible, but can they quote the bible and tell a person in his church what it really means to them when they get up every day and go to work and compete and raise a family? They don't do a very good job of that. And they certainly don't do a good job of telling us as a group of people how to meet, and, all the challenges that are out there as a group, which the other pastors did. Other pastors, I mean, civil rights wouldn't have happened if it hadn't have been for the black pastors. Michelle Lanier: I want to maybe end by talking about or just noting an institution that seems really important to you. When I came to your door, I saw you all had a doormat that said, “home for exceptional grandchildren.” And, how many generations of your family have lived in Durham?

01:33:34.640 - 01:33:45.720

Irwin Holmes: Oh, just my mom and dad, and me, and my grandchildren. My children and my grandchildren. Michelle Lanier: So that's four. Irwin Holmes: Yeah. Michelle Lanier: Your parents, you, your children, and your grandchildren. So you now have a fourth generation here.

01:33:45.720 - 01:35:28.920

Irwin Holmes: Yes. Michelle Lanier: And I’m sure you've seen a lot of changes through their eyes, too. Irwin Holmes: Sure, the interesting thing is, it's not necessarily good. They don't really have...I'm not really happy with the world as they see it. ‘Cause they don't know what trouble they're in. They don't know that their life is more in danger in a lot of ways than mine was. ‘Cause see, we had found our place. The white man was happy with us sitting over there by ourselves, leaving them alone. Now all of a sudden, he doesn't know where we should be. And he really wants to put us back where we were, and we don't want to go there, and he's got the upper hand. He controls the courts, he controls the legislature making the laws, he controls the administration and enforcement of the laws by and large. Even though we got a black president, there are no black folks around him helping him out. So, and they're in the process of changing where we are to someplace that we don't know where we're going. So, and we don't know, and we don't know it. We don't know the war that we're in. We think things are ok. My son, I try to tell my son what they're doing to him, and he wants to call me a racist. So. Michelle Lanier: So that's where we are.

01:35:28.920 - 01:35:58.260

Irwin Holmes: That's where we are. Michelle Lanier: Is there anything that you would like to close with in terms of your reflections on this place called Durham? Irwin Holmes: America is the greatest country in the world. America is far from what it could be. Durham is one of the, for black people, it's one of the greatest cities in the world to live in, and it's a long ways from what it could be. Michelle Lanier: Thank you so much for your time, Mr. Holmes. It's been an amazing pleasure. I don't think I have words to thank you for this time.

01:36:07.160 - 01:36:08.700

Irwin Holmes: Sure. Enjoyed it. Michelle Lanier: Me, too. End of interview.