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OK. Today is Saturday, November the 15th 2003. This is, oh, this is Barbara Lau um at the Hayti Heritage Center and I'm talking with Kristen Herzog. Uh And this is part of the Durham Civil Rights Heritage project. Well, Kristen, I know that you uh your

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family, you and your husband um were involved with um the first integrated church here in Durham. Maybe you could tell me a little bit about that. Uh I wasn't really uh involved except that my husband and I attended it once and we knew about it, but

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we had uh tried very hard to integrate Pilgrim United Church of Christ, which we joined in uh 1960 or 61. Uh And uh it was very hard to get the congregation to accept uh integration, but we worked for that, but we visited with this first integrated

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church. Uh And I just happened to find a little document that reminded me of that. What was the name of the church, the first integrated church? Um I gave you the brochure, I think it was called Covenant Church, something like that. And I know that Floyd

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mckissick was active in it. Um But um I just happened to find this yesterday. My own part in this is uh not very big because I came as a German citizen in 1958 and I'm still a German citizen. And so I didn't go on demonstrations at

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that time. I just didn't even think about that, but I simply did a lot of uh community work with black Children and uh and especially in the setting of church work. But my husband got involved in the sit in, in Pittsburgh WS restaurant. No, with the

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several colleagues from Duke and some students from UN C and they, uh, were attacked with the, uh, hoses and on a very dark cold night in January of, I guess 64. And, uh, the woman of the restaurant and her husband, they were both known to be

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very, uh, cruel to demonstrators. And, uh, anyway, the group was totally non violent, but they were put into prison for a night in Hillsborough and then they were let out, but it was several months then of, uh, terrible court proceedings under judge Mallet, who I brought

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a clipping about him where the ending of this trial was was mentioned. And, uh, we just experienced as visitors in the courtroom, you know, uh, the terrible situation of, uh, a judge, uh, being, uh, vicious really towards, for example, a young man who hadn't, who had

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overdrawn his account. And many people in the audience said Well, we have sometimes overdrawn our account. So why is this boy put into prison and things like that? That is your husband's name? Frederick Herzog. And was he here? I understand he's here to attend Duke Divinity

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School. He was teaching at Duke Divinity School since 1960. Right? Tell me a little bit though about when you said at the very beginning, you said that you were trying to get your own church to integrate. Tell me about what, what did that mean? Trying to

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get them to integrate? Well, uh there were uh meetings in the church uh that tried to decide on this issue because it was of course a large group who wanted to integrate. And then other people said this is our church and we can decide and we

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were brought up never to eat with blacks. Uh This is just our heritage. And we said, of course, this is God's church and not our church. And then I think the decisive factor became a um uh a little later um a, a Duke Divinity student and

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his wife wanted to have their a baby baptized and there was a black couple. Uh the man uh Phil Shannon is his name. He became later on a military chaplain. He's still living, I think in Virginia and uh the baptism of this child became the decisive

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factor because it was finally decided by the church that need not only could blacks attend worship service, but they could be full members. And so we could do a baptism of a black child. And that meant that that several members of the congregation left and went

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to more conservative churches. What was that? Um I guess probably 61. Um I think so. And then my husband fought very hard for establishing a Black studies program in the Divinity School. And the man that was involved in that mostly in the beginning was the father

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of Reverend Phil cousin who is now the pastor of Saint Joseph's. His father became a bishop later on. But he and my husband established finally a black studies program in the Duke Divinity School. And there were struggles for getting the first black secretary in the Divinity

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School who turned out not to be a very good secretary. And then of course, everybody said there you see, but she learned over the years and um then there was the occupation of the Allen building, you know, and uh in relationship to that um the too

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low payment of uh black workers around Duke. And so I just found yesterday a letter of my husband's to uh present Knight at Duke University where he uh uh sent an open letter to the newspaper saying President Knight should not have gotten the uh National Guard.

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And the, yeah, it was a National Guard and the tear gas was used, you know, um it shouldn't be done like that on on a campus of a university. So these were difficult years. And yeah, you know, when I was growing up, um there was a

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lot of discussion in my church. It was much beyond integration, but uh my church ended up giving its building to a black congregation um in, in Cleveland where I grew up and I have really distinct memories of those congregational meetings. Um And so I wonder, as

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you think back and you think about those, as you say, there were a series of meetings, you know, how did that really? What was the tenor of those kind of discussions? How did people, what, what were the arguments people were using, kind of, I mean, I

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know there's the heritage argument, but then, like you say, there was this notion of uh our ideas about religion and our ideas about other human beings. Tell me a little bit more about the ways that those kinds of it was very emotional. People were in tears

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and said, uh uh we don't hate blacks, but we were brought up like this and this leads to race mixing and I don't think they had biblical arguments um that I can remember. But um it was simply a matter of uh instinct that rebelled. Uh Another

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thing that was very helpful for our church was meeting with people from Covenant Presbyterian Church tomorrow. They will in um have the celebration for their new church on Weaver Street and they were members of that church. And of other churches that met regularly at Pilgrim at

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uh their church covenant at the Quaker House uh in order to discuss not church matters but city matters. Um And uh for example, how it fits uh who is with me still on the board of the United Christian Campus Ministry of North Carolina Central um was

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very active in that group. And uh they, they found each other across the national lines just to talk about uh integrating the city. Really? So they were talking about activism. Right. Right. Whatever demonstration was, was going on. Do you remember that? Did religious leaders here play

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in a really important role in the civil rights movement in Durham? I, I don't remember any big names of religious leaders now. Yeah, there were very few that stood out. Um So these meetings you're talking about. That's right. It was late. It was lay people. Yeah.

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And uh like my husband Bob Osborne from Duke uh uh some Duke professors participating. Where did the pastor of your church when that was all? He was? Uh I guess it was Bill Smith at the time. Uh um I forgot now we had some, you know,

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it was maybe uh Scott was his name. We had so many different pastors, but they were always on the liberal side. So the pastor was in favor of integration. I'm sure, I'm sure. Right. So did, did this come up in sermons as well? Oh, definitely. Yeah.

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Right. And we had members who came, for example, from Duke and Royal Church and joined our church because they felt that they were not um in the right place where blacks were not accepted. You were also talking about some work in the African American community. What

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kind of can you describe that for me? Well, uh there was a Professor Rie in the Divinity School mcmurray Richie, um who is long retired now and his wife worked uh in kindergarten and she got me involved in uh working with black Children. We went into

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the area near Kent Street and gathered Children maybe twice a week or so and taught them knitting and crafts and took him on little trips. I remember we visit some milk factory or something like that, right? Uh How was that for you? I mean, you, this

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was just a couple of years after you came over here from Germany. Yeah, it was hard because um uh the one incident, for example, I remember that uh we worked with the group and I forgot it was not operation breakthrough. It was some other group that

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tried to establish a playground where now is Liberty Street uh near the public library that there is now the public library. And uh it was a time of Black power. And at a certain point, there were some black power leaders who said we want to do

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this on our own. We don't want white people to be involved in this. So this playground never came about. And I, as a German felt even more marginal among the whites who were rejected like that. But it was very, very understandable under the circumstances that black

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said this is finally our hour and we don't want to do that on our own. Yeah. But there were some difficult moments like that. Had you met black people before you came to the United States? No, I don't think so. Uh I don't think so. Did

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you come from? No, we uh my husband was teaching in Wisconsin at a small Seminary of the United Church of Christ, which at that time was still called uh uh evangelical and Reformed Church. Anyway, um I came over in 58 and we went to Duke in,

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in 60 he refused to come to Duke first because it wasn't integrated. And then a few uh professors of the Divinity school said, look, we are working so hard and uh the problem lies with the trustees. They are afraid that people wouldn't get, give money anymore

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to Duke if we integrate and so on. So if you come, please help us. And so it didn't take very long uh after he finally decided to come, that uh Duke was integrated. Was your husband also a German national. He was a double heritage and double

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citizenship. His parents were German. He was born in North Dakota but was brought up partly in Germany. Partly in the United States. So did you notice um uh you were talking about that women were involved in doing some of the community kind of work. Were women

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involved in any of the other? Uh Did you find any women leaders in this, in this process or? I'm sure there were many in the black community. I mean, we, we knew Anne Wa and uh that whole story was uh brought out again when recently we

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had a group of our church, 10 Germans visiting our church and we took the civil rights tour of the historical preservation society. And um this young man who gave the tour uh told us ni nice an um story and she is United Church of Christ, you

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know, so they were very brave women like that. And I'm sure there were some white women like that, but I can't recall any name right now. Um But like this Mrs Ritchie, uh wife of the two professor who took me to these black Children. Um I'm

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sure there were many who did a lot. Is there any other? And we're just about at the time, we talked about 15 minutes. So um is there any other stories that you think you have in an interview that is in the library? How have you? Well,

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how have you noticed Durham? How do you think the civil rights movement has affected Durham? I mean, how has it changed since then? It has changed tremendously? It is like on the civil rights tour, we were told that school Children now cannot even imagine what it

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meant to go up on the Carolina Theater and sit there on top when there was no air conditioning and you couldn't even see the white people. And, uh, and I remember the demonstrations at the Howard Johnson's restaurant where it was chanted that, uh we will eat

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those 26 flavors of ice cream someday. But I don't know whether it was 26 or how many, there were huge demonstrations. Uh It is uh is unbelievably changed. But what struck me at this historical preservation society? Two of us that the whole story is now repeated

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in the Hispanic community. I mean, there is the first Hispanic Bank and the Black Bank did a tremendous amount of uh good for the black community. And it's the same. Uh Right now my church is teaching his English to Hispanics and between my house and my

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church, there are hundreds and hundreds of uh Hispanic workers and every Wednesday night we have classes for them. Uh So uh the civil rights um the atmosphere has changed tremendously but these people have still big problems, you know. Uh Yeah, it is completely going on. It's

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repeating itself really. That's a great observation. Thank you so much.