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It's uh we're at the Hay Heritage Center. This is uh Durham Civil Rights Heritage Project on November the 15th, 2003. Jim Wise is doing the interview and I'm speaking with Mr Nathan Thomas. Well, Mr Thomas, you brought in a, a photograph uh of yourself with uh

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Gene Hampton here at the supporting uh outside of building. And there was a sign in the window that says support the People United for progress like Gene Hamp and Councilman at large D and C. Could you start out by telling me what's, what's going on in

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the picture? What's, what's the uh this all about? Well, first of all, uh Gene Aton, as I indicated that he was relatively new to the area. He came here soon after IBM uh moved into the park because he was an employee of IBM. And I understand

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that he was as a steward at Tennessee State. He had been an activist on campus. So when he came to Durham, he just kind of kept it up and there was certain magnetism about Gene because there were a goodly number of people who came from the

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IBM uh complex who employed out there who supported him in this effort. Uh Some of the names I remember including the late Willie Lovett who was active in politics. You probably remember and also uh Bill Bell who is now the mayor of Durham and they were

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supporters of Hampton. Hampton was kind of uh the uh drum major for that group and he was, it was a near miss for us and it was my first attempt at managing a campaign. I have worked, I was employed at the time in North Carolina. I'm

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self-employed now, but it was my first attempt at managing the campaign. And uh of course, I was uh slightly heartbroken that we lost it. One of the things that happened was that there were three at large seats open and there were three blacks who were going

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to take all three seats. And I think there was some reaction across the community, you know, and uh so we lost all three of them. We, we tried to Hampton filed first and we tried to negotiate with the other three, but uh we couldn't make any

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headway there. So what became of his political career after that? He, I think it changed. Um Let me back up one of the other things that he did, that was a forum at one of the downtown hotels on housing, fair, housing, um quality housing, that kind

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of thing. He, he somehow brought people from mainly from Washington and across the Southeast here and had several sessions on that. But this, this was Gene and his connection and his, his uh activism. And I think he left IBM but he left the area several years

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ago and Bill Bell will possibly know who he is. But offhand, I don't know where he is. Well, how did you get, uh, get yourself involved in, in a political campaign in running a political campaign? Uh What was, tell me about yourself and your own, your

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own life up to that point. Well, I came to Durham in 19, the latter part of 1959 and my first effort in terms of promoting the civil rights, helping to promote the civil rights. Ely. And Durham was working with the CS and I hastened to mention

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that I never sat in per se and I never um went on the picket line. I was, I think, I think I had still had a little bit of the military left in me and I would not pledge nonviolent. So, what I did was I participated

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in a car pool and when we need people to go to certain locations for the picket lines, then I helped to transport those people and uh that I'd be interested, in fact, uh the coordinator of that particular effort was Ben Rougher at the time. Yeah. Uh

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Ben with, as you know, the local activist PD and then later on when IBM came to the area, Gene Hampton and I were members of the same church covered in Presbyterian. So he and his wife and Children came to college. So that's how I met him.

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And I don't know why, but I was asked to manage this campaign. And so, but this, this is how we arrive at this point. Yes. How, um, you said you were, had been in the military. What was, uh, what, where's your hometown? How did you get

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to, to Durham? I was born and reared in South central Alabama, Lowndes County, the same county where Mrs Louise who got shot. And from the time I was about sixth grade, I worked for the, the village printer. Uh I came in, there was a white gentleman

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who came from the government printing office back to Alabama, back to his home to established a small printing facility. And I was the first employee I, my job was to clean up, clean the floor, take out the trash and uh wash, wash up the presses after

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the, uh the white employees that used them. And uh so after a while I started observing some of the exercise training exercises, they had set up for the white employees. And in some instances, I learned a little better what they were supposed to learn than those

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who were being taught. And I remember helping uh the boss over hump one time he was working late and he and I were the only ones there. And he was surprised that I had learned as much as I had learned. I, they are just like they

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had, with the school system, they had black wages and white wages. And after I finished high school, I left and went to work for a PRI in Birmingham. And that's where I was when I got drafted. Uh, so in the army for two years I decided

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that I didn't want to go back to either one of the jobs I had and I didn't want to stay in the military. So I looked around, I did some research, what school had a program that I might be able to handle at the college level.

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And they were about five schools that had programs where they combined the majors in business administration and printing technology. And I say that Rochester Tech, Car Tech, West Virginia Tech, I think maybe one school on the, on the west coast and maybe Florida area. I went

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to West Virginia Tech. And at, after graduation, I naturally looking for work and North Carolina Mutual be an insurance company. They used the paper for the product is paper. The record is the paper even more so than, than it is now because of, you know, all

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of the electronics. But I wrote to the late Joseph Goodlow, who was the vice president and Secretary of North Carolina Mutual and told him that I was looking for employment and I had seen him, they had been featured in Ebony magazine. And they had a printing

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facility. So that's how I learned about it. And then, uh he invited me down and eventually I came to Durham as an employee of North Carolina Mutual. What kind of a floater for, I guess, about, probably about six months and then two years in the advertising

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relations department, four years in the planning department. And then I left Mutual before retirement and became self-employed. And at that time I was uh assistant vice president and Director General Services. I said, what uh what kind of work are you doing? Now? What's your business? We

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have a family business, a small family business that we, we design and distribute business forms, uh labels, tags, advertising, promotional specialties. In fact, I share one of my cards with you. Thank you. I think I have one here. Yes. Mhm. Quality Impressions Incorporated there. Very good.

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Thank you. Thank you. Mhm. Ok. Now, of course, how did you become a uh aware or interested in the uh the civil rights movement? The desegregation, of course, Lowndes County Alabama, you were intimately familiar with segregation. But I suppose there's the uh the Little Rock high

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school integration and the Montgomery bus boycott. This would have been going on when you were a young man was after the time you were in service. Or in fact, I was getting out of the military when the bus boycott in Montgomery was at his peak. Uh

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and um we were about 30 or 40 our hometown for deposit in Lowndes County, the only incorporated community in the county at that time, I don't know whether you incorporated now or not, but we were about 30 or 40 minutes from Montgomery. So being in the

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low, low, low here area, we used to do some work in Montgomery. So I came home that summer and I worked for my employer, even though I don't plan to go back to school. I worked for them that summer and I make deliveries into Montgomery. And

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I was using his, my boss's old sedan that was uh, the one that let me buy to make those deliveries. So the trunk of the car in the area in the back seat to make, make, uh deliveries of uh printed supplies. And I think the man

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probably went to the grave never knowing that I, I on my route, I would pick up black people who were boycotting bus and they say on the way back out of town, I'd have any up there. Ok. Ok. But, um, well, you know, there's a lot

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we can talk about, uh, incidentally, let me, let me digress for a moment. I'm a member of Conor Presbyterian Church. We have a sister church over in Chapel Hill called Church of Reconciliation, which is also Presbyterian. We have a dialogue group that meets the once a

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month to talk about some of these uh civil rights issues. And in, you know, personal relationships and that kind of thing. And, uh, I've been always kind of like history and I was to World War One. World War 21, this one, this is something we've talked

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about in our, our group. Ok. World War One. World War Two, Korea, the black soldiers or treated as munitions. Ok? You, you help us win the war and when it's over, you're not a person, you're not a citizen, we'll warehouse you in the ghetto until we

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need you again. And, uh, you know that I mentioned earlier the dual pay system, right? For the teachers and for, I worked that kind of thing and, you know, 11 hand you read the constitution and on the other hand, uh, you see what's happening. Yeah, and

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I'll share something else with the, uh, more recent observation. I, I'm sure, how long have you been in Durham? 37 years? Excuse me? No, you're a Durham. Um, you remember when the city of Durham tried to set aside 20% for contractors? Ok. A lot of fewer

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about it and eventually they got it thrown out at District Court in Richmond. Ok. Now, I see that as a new jerk kind of response to that particular mandate when I say that the people who were protesting were the ones who had, had 100% from day

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one, of course, it wasn't called the South aside. It was called, I don't know what they call it. I call it breath. Right. So, I, you know, I've seen this from, from the time I started observing things and, uh, then I don't think it was right.

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No, I don't think it. Right. The, I have a father. Ok. My daddy's youngest brother, Uncle Henry, late Uncle Henry now married into a family. The man, his wife, father was the village blacksmith and he depended about 75% on the white trade because they were the

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ones who own virtually everything, especially down in Lowndes County. And I have um I saw it last time I visited Uncle Henry's house where an is still living. His wife. Um There was a photograph of her father John Hunter, she's Arthurine Hunter Thomas and a photograph

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of him with Stoker Carmichael. When Stoker came down to, to speak to help promote, to push uh the voter registration. Mr John Hunter was the first black person in the city to register to vote. Wow. Ok. But once he registered to vote, the white boycotted his

00:16:27.840 - 00:16:52.729

business, right? And to back up on Mr John, he was by V. He, he was a landowner. He had a small two small tracts of land which also was uncommon down in the South Tip County. He was by virtue, evidently they got his name from the

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list of landowners to, to go to go to another county on a grand jury. This would, this would be before the registration drive and he raise the question with the judge as whether or not he was supposed to be on the grand jury if he was

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not a full fledged citizen and one thing led to another and eventually they fit, excuse me, they sent federal registrars down there to set up in the post office so that black people could register to vote. Wow. Ok. Um, I have personally had the opportunity to

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give people one by one and I still try to do that. I had a boyhood friend who was white down in Alabama. We didn't have, we had the railroad track, but that wasn't the literal divided line. That was just oh about maybe four or five acres

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of land that's in um many family and the three sisters owned and our house was right here and, and the blacks that way and John's house was right here and the whites that way and we came out here, this is where we played and nobody ever

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met you in the integration of segregation. This is the only place we had played. And, but one of the things you noticed was that when they got to be a certain age, they didn't come in. So, but some of them didn't come anymore. The girls will

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leave first and then the boys will leave. And, but John and I remained friends and we used to go fishing together and we share jigsaw puzzles and other comic books, that kind of thing because my dad is o of the probably didn't trust that. And he

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said one of the days with that boy is with the pro that he would turn on you, which was a legitimate and he, he might have seen that. Uh, John and I remained friends to this day. Really? Yes. Wow. And I, uh, the back home was

00:19:28.880 - 00:19:47.410

full of blood was poor. It must have been about two or three or five years ago. Well, John and I used to indirectly, we would keep up one if he, he went in the military. Uh when he would come home, he inquired about me and through

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my parents, I do the same thing and I lost track of John for a while. It was over two decades ago. So I wrote to the mayor of what both and he told me where Dion's younger brother was, contact. The younger brother John was living in

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Hampton working in Newport, New. So we started writing a couple of phone call. So remember when the Holiday Inn was up there on the Job Hill Street? Well, they, his wife, John's wife was from Florida. So they were on their way to Florida. So they stopped

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over the Holiday Inn and he said, he called my house. He said, hey, partner. He said, uh you never, he guess who this is? I said, no, I don't catch the voice. Well, how about you fishing butter down in Alabama? So John, ok. So uh my

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wife and I went over and so we had uh had dinner at the s and we and his wife and two kids and later on my wife and I went up to Hampton visit with them for the weekend. And so I was telling my dad his

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oldest brother about it many years later. And uh, but you know, I, yeah, and I went up to Hampton and spent the weekend with, uh, with John Stokes and his family. He said, why John Stokes? Yeah, why, why John Stokes? But backing up, you know, you,

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you, you see these inequities all along and um you, you want, you want to right the wrong, right? So you was the uh was driving the, the demonstrators, your first direct involvement in the movement. What uh what about after that? Did you stay, stay an activist

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or you got into politics? So, in one sense, at least you were with them. And then what I wanted to learn the office is I supported a number of other persons. I helped um Josephine Clement launch her campaign. Um The lady JJ Henderson was her campaign

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manager when she first came out and he gave me the advertising and public relations segment and there was some other folks I helped uh Willie Lovett get elected, but I'm not sure, never was sure I wanna try to be everything to everybody uh personally. So that's

00:22:43.199 - 00:23:08.099

how I did that. What uh what did you what was going through your head when you were driving the driving the demonstrators and being, being involved in that, that phase of the, of the movement. Well, you, I think around scared uh mad you none of the

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above all of the, but maybe all of the above. I remember one situation when the there was incidentally all of the demonstrators, people on who the who sat in or people who on the picket lines were asked to pledge nonviolent. Ok. I remember one situation when

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s of that Forest Hills, we, I hope it was a coincidence but we ended up with an all female people with all females on the pit line and there was some white TFS who came over there to challenge them. And uh so one of the monitors

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came back and of course, being rough and local guy, so he knew all these guys who would been athletes who little River and Mivo and hillsides, you know, and you were, they were hanging out. So we went over to pool room and got the, the biggest

00:24:16.170 - 00:24:37.719

broom in York that we could find and, and made the switch. And of course, after that, everything got quite over that. But the thing that I I thought about was now these jokers, I'm not going to adhere to any Nonviolence and I think whoever might have

00:24:37.729 - 00:25:06.140

had a notion about harassing them. Uh You had to come on. Yeah, I think the, the, the meaning would not have escaped anybody in that situation. So, what, how did the, actually the, the, uh, in the early sixties the demonstrations went along peacefully and, uh, and

00:25:06.150 - 00:25:44.800

some progress was made. How, how come, how come, how come it never did break out into violence here? It did, it did in so many other places? Mm. I think that in Durham you may have had enough thick and white who we're willing to put at

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least 1 ft forward to kind of put a damp on some things. And there were instances where people were dragged off, off the picket line by law enforcement people. You know, people went to jail in New York. But they compared to Birmingham, for example, I think

00:26:06.369 - 00:26:42.890

you had and if they do them unique in that by the time I got here, you had blacks who had established himself in social and political, even economic arenas and there there was a kind of mutual respect back and forth across the track. So, so for

00:26:42.900 - 00:27:09.099

example, back in Alabama, people who, the white people who disagreed with some of the atrocities kind of stuck their heads in the sand. But I'm not sure that all the white people in Durham did, did that. Uh I remember back in Alabama, there was a gentleman

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who came to the, to the Church of Christ there as a pastor didn't take very long. He had told some people that if we all thinking about going to the same heaven. It's not a good time to get used to one another. Oh, no, not knocked

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out. Um What about uh what went on in Durham as the sixties went along? And then in the seventies for the, with, with regard to the movement, a certain amount of integration was achieved in the early sixties. But there was still, there were demonstrations later on,

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it was still work going on. Uh So especially, I think, especially uh with regard to housing, at least what I've read that seems to have been a pretty high issue, but the, the movement certainly wasn't over in 1963 when Howard Johnson's integrated. No. Well, I think

00:28:17.900 - 00:28:51.560

that, well, e even with all that, sometimes you change, change comes as the little of the law rather than attitudes. And for example, I mentioned the uh the attempt at the 20%. OK. Um I do believe that a thinking people would have, would have uh accepted

00:28:51.569 - 00:29:10.180

and even possibly promoted that based on the history, you know, but, but that didn't happen, they, they took it to school at that time, you know. And so I think one of the things that has happened is that the law enforcement people and the courts have

00:29:10.189 - 00:29:35.869

been shamed into sometimes enforcement. It is just an example of what I'm talking about, shamed into sometimes supporting uh enforcing the law. But you see instances where that represents the, it's mechanical and I'm not sure. I think some of the attitudes that existed, you know, from

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emancipation. I'm still out there and you see it once in a while in the newspaper where somebody just make, somebody gets juiced up inside. They want to go out and, uh, beat up. Or at least somebody who's black. Yeah, it still happens and still, but Durham

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was not Birmingham. Yeah, we didn't have a blue collar. No. Right. Did you, um, involve yourself in activism? Uh after that, after the demonstrations in the early sixties? No, I would work to, to help people who, who dared to run through the gloves. In fact, I

00:30:33.540 - 00:30:51.839

also helped to like Bill Bell. Did you and, and we do most of his, his promotional work now because Bill is very loyal. And uh but I was an employee at, at North Carolina. You still an employee. This is later than Hampton. I was still an

00:30:51.849 - 00:31:10.800

employee at North Carolina. Unusual. But uh if I was volunteering then now we do it, you know, for as part of our business, but I uh helped launch a number of people. So that was, that was what IE all to uh have you, have you found

00:31:10.810 - 00:31:30.270

that something that you uh is that something you found satisfying, working in politics? Something you like that you like to do? Well, you know, somebody, see, I, I didn't stick my head in the, in the political fire. So I think maybe the least I can do

00:31:30.280 - 00:32:06.160

is help somebody. Well, well, yeah, I mean, most of politics isn't the, the candidates. It's everybody working with the, see, in order the person that I can remember. Hampton Bill Bell. Josephine Clever will love it. Mhm. Perfect. And that might be it. I probably think of

00:32:06.170 - 00:32:24.020

somebody else by the time I get home. But that was the way I evolved. There been black participation in politics in Durham has certainly, uh I has mushroomed since the beginning. You know, it, it goes back before the, goes back to the early. Well, not to

00:32:24.030 - 00:32:44.949

the thirties actually, but as far as candidates coming out, uh I know there were a couple of black candidates or black members of the city council in the sixties, at least at some point. The first person of the black culture, you, you probably remember, um, Richard

00:32:44.969 - 00:33:12.979

Harris. Oh, ok. And, uh, you turn it off a map. All right. That's, and Richard was followed by Shaq Stewart. And then that was, um, that would be, yeah. But, but now the, uh, with most of the, a lot of the city council and the county

00:33:12.989 - 00:33:33.869

commission, sometimes it's black majority, sometimes it's not. But it's, there's been an awful lot of uh black participation in the elected offices in the room for quite a while. Now, let me say this. I have a friend who, but most of my relatives are still back

00:33:33.880 - 00:33:52.579

in Alabama. My parents, both of my parents are deceased over the last five years. My dad, five years ago, my mom, maybe three years ago, but most of my siblings and cousins are still in Alabama. So the, the question was raised by one of my local

00:33:52.589 - 00:34:23.319

friends as well. How has Alabama changed? How has uh now it's kind of changed and I share with him the opinion that is about the same as across the country and you have voting rights, but not necessarily what you need is an integration of uh politics

00:34:23.329 - 00:34:55.340

and economics to, to make progress. And so so there in Lowndes County in Alabama, black people have the ballot but OK, so you, so here's uh Jim Wise, who is the CEO and uh well, we say chairman of uh big Collo Conglomerate, he only took one

00:34:55.439 - 00:35:18.100

to stop. So, so we don't, we don't want Jim Wise to be the mayor of our town. So we vote him out. The reality is that Jim Wise takes the resources with him. Yeah, so he, he, he, he takes the land, the factories, the banks, the

00:35:18.110 - 00:35:47.229

utilities, the transportation. So yeah, so you have a mallet which had done enough but you why is still in your toe even though you vote them out, right? And that's, you know, that's the reality all over the country, the people who to whole of the land

00:35:49.929 - 00:36:15.320

when this country was first established passed it over. Uh let's face it. One white male to the next. Mhm. So how do you address that giving, you know, past the you've got, you got the balance. But how do you address going about creating the that integrated

00:36:16.739 - 00:36:58.070

society that you, you were speaking of what, what's been missing so far? Well, one thing is that black people have as a group haven't been exposed to the business and technology when the chairman was the CEO of the Jim Weiser company. Looked for a protege,

00:37:00.229 - 00:37:36.449

somebody who looks very much like himself. Ok. So how many black people do you know who would know how to run it, establish and run um international construction company? Oh, you might find somebody who could put together a national bank that maybe. No. Yeah. And Johnny

00:37:36.459 - 00:38:06.719

Johnson established Johnson publishing by the seat of his pants. He didn't have a mentor per se. So we as a group, we need to expose people. And so, so, you know, it, it's been quite only and even though you took the sign down, you know, and

00:38:09.250 - 00:38:31.770

that's you too. You too. What uh what moved you to come in today to bring the picture? Well, I actually, I saw the, the uh notice in the newspaper and my wife said I hadn't even thought about it in the light. And my wife said, well,

00:38:31.780 - 00:38:52.560

maybe you take that down there and maybe a story behind it. Well, there is a story, there is a story about the story but what uh I had it on the wall of faith that you've lived, you lived through, you were part of the movement in

00:38:52.570 - 00:39:23.280

the sixties. You've lived through the these five decades since the movement really visibly and publicly began. How do you think that that history is received by Children nowadays by uh by kid uh kids save uh middle or high school age? You know that this is, this

00:39:23.290 - 00:39:48.820

is a long time ago and when you're, yeah, you'll find, uh, ok, make sure you help me get back to the point. Uh, there was, let me digress that. That's, that was, uh, once a professor down at MC CU A doctor Dawson who stayed here not

00:39:48.830 - 00:40:13.449

very long, he went to, went to work for the US Information Bureau. They, their home was a, was a French lab and they spoke English in the home. Once their, once their kid became, the kid became school age, they spoke English in the home only when

00:40:13.459 - 00:40:53.620

they had company. No conceivably that same family would do the same thing with their Children in history. But I on a mass scale, I don't think the Children are getting the message when I was still a mutual, we sh we showed some film of the demonstrations

00:40:54.139 - 00:41:24.090

and 11 major clip was from Birmingham and the fire hoses and the golf and this kind of thing. And these are do people who left that for him crying. I've also had contact with white people here and you, you have those liberals or pseudo liberals who

00:41:24.100 - 00:41:54.100

want to know where black people are coming from. And I said, ok, for proof, let's look at why don't you go see nothing but a man go see black like me read um Low Tree and people came back and say, well, that's not realistic. They say

00:41:54.110 - 00:42:14.929

it's not real, right? And I think to a lesser extent the these are young black youngsters you see you talk about are not getting, um, don't you have any more perception than that? They, they take things for granted. You know. So you, I remember when you

00:42:14.939 - 00:42:38.120

could, couldn't go into a department store, a black person couldn't, you could buy a garment but you couldn't try it on. Yeah. All right. But kids don't know that, um, that Rosa Parks lost her job because she, she wouldn't, uh, get up and give her feet

00:42:38.129 - 00:42:58.530

to white men because they, they, in a way that's a great measure of progress. But in another way, what do you think of that? Do you think it's important that the, that the story, the story of the movement in the fifties and sixties? But I think

00:42:58.540 - 00:43:30.750

history is little twice a, hm. Well, you know, there's one premise, uh, well, I remind you, I'm not telling you anything. There's one premise that if you dope, get a gra have a grasp on history, you previous mistakes and that's one ovation. But there's a, there's

00:43:30.770 - 00:43:56.399

a heritage and a culture here that I uh, I, I think the people in Lowndes County, for example, the black people in Lowndes County and in a way they liberate some white folks, Mr John Hunter, I mentioned the village of Blacksmith and um, I don't think

00:43:56.409 - 00:44:28.169

it would get, I hope we don't lose that. Uh, John Hunt and Rosen Parks and me evers. Yeah. Uh the, the privileges uh the conveniences that we enjoy today. I didn't just happen. Right. Right. Um, the, if, if the constitution, my feeling about the constitution of

00:44:28.179 - 00:44:56.310

the USA, it was written by the, it was written for the people who wrote it and if that had not been so we never would have coined turned like women's suffrage. We never would have heard of mast patient, uh, black coats. What is public accommodations, law

00:44:56.760 - 00:45:07.580

voting rights. But the male people got together and, uh, vote themselves a constitution.