[This text is machine generated and may contain errors.]

Dudley Flood
Narrator
Alston Cobourn
Interviewer
October 25, 2022
Greenville, North Carolina

Alston Cobourn: (00:03)
Okay. Hello, my name is Alston Cobourn, and I'm here today with Dudley Flood at his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. It is October 25, 2022. And we are going to do an oral history interview. So can you please start by telling us your full name and when and where you were born.

Dudley Flood: (00:29)
My full name is Dudley Eargith Flood. I never use a middle name because it's too difficult for people to pronounce. I was born in Winton in northeastern North Carolina, in Hertford County. I was born within a family of nine. I have eight siblings. I was eight among that group, which gave me the advantage of learning from them along with learning from school, so I had a great advantage just in being in that great big family. Among those five were teachers older than I, four older and one younger than I so I had to collaborate without having to leave the house. So that was a great asset for me.

Alston Cobourn: (01:24)
I'm just curious, the sort of what's that total age range for the nine? Have you, were you spread out? Were you spread out pretty far or not really?

Dudley Flood: (01:33)
20 years to the day, okay. My older sister and my youngest brother were each born on the 29th of February 20 years apart. Now, I don't know that that was family planning.

Alston Cobourn: (01:46)
But that's pretty cool, though.

Dudley Flood: (01:48)
Great advantage to me, because they only had a birthday every four years. So I didn't have to a buy present except once every four years.

Alston Cobourn: (01:56)
So what did your family do for a living?

Dudley Flood: (01:59)
My father was a logger. He also worked sometimes on a tugboat named Corinthia, which ran up and down the Chowan River on which we lived. But his full time job was it was a logger. My mother never worked. If you have nine kids and one of them is Dudley you don't get to work and you have a full time job right at home.

Alston Cobourn: (02:22)
Yes.

Dudley Flood: (02:23)
And particularly if you have one like me, who was hyperkinetic and intrusive in other people's business. So she did her teaching that she was equipped to teach, but never taught external to the home.

Alston Cobourn: (02:37)
Did she go to school for teaching? Is that what you mean by the?

Dudley Flood: (02:40)
She attended a Normal School

Alston Cobourn: (02:43)
Yes. Okay.

Dudley Flood: (02:44)
At that time you came out without portfolio necessarily, but equipped to teach

Alston Cobourn: (02:50)
Yeah,

Dudley Flood: (02:50)
She would have done so. But having married at a very young age, and she began having children, and having a flock to care for.

Alston Cobourn: (02:59)
Yeah.

Dudley Flood: (03:00)
And having a husband who was fully fully convinced that it was a man's job to take care of his wife and family. And the mother was to be the mother and all that sort of thing. I never enjoyed a discussion about that with him, because that was already clear to me. That was what he perceived to be a way of living and it worked for me. And I tried to replicate it, and began to feel the same way that a man had responsibility. Although my wife worked, my wife had a master's degree from East Carolina, by the way in music. But I thought it'd be my job to be her caretaker to the degree that it was very helpful that she chipped in.

Alston Cobourn: (03:47)
Right,

Dudley Flood: (03:49)
That wasn't my concept. My narrative coming from dad was man has to be prepared to take care of his family. And I'm thankful for him giving me that narrative. I think I did that.

Alston Cobourn: (04:02)
Good. Where did you go for undergraduate school and what did you study?

Dudley Flood: (04:12)
I went to North Carolina Central for undergraduate school. When I graduated from high school, CS Brown High School in Winton in 1950, there were not that many options that would have given me the kind of education I was looking for and looking forward to then. I could have gone to Howard, I could have gone to Hampton or I could go into North Carolina Central because I wanted a liberal arts education.

Alston Cobourn: (04:39)
Right.

Dudley Flood: (04:40)
No other school that took African Americans in state or in their area offered that. Now to go to Hampton was out of state tuition that was problematic, not mentioned. In fact, I had two sisters who are already in school, both of which had some form of scholarship and Central just seemed a logical place for me to go at that time. Actually, when I went, I had been encouraged to study law and go into law. So I took what they referred to as pre law courses, which is primarily a majoring in political science and psychology. And and we minoring in social studies and having finished the undergraduate program there I realized that there was nothing you could do with that if you didn't go to law school. Because nobody had taught political science in high school, as it were. Nobody taught psychology in high school as it were.

(05:40)
So I became certified in social studies blanket area of social studies, so that I could legitimately teach any of those areas in social studies. But having done that, I went out and I got myself hired at a middle school. Well, it was actually my high school but one through 12. And my principal who recruited me had not designated to what I would be assigned until I got there. And I was assigned the eighth grade for math, science, and English. So here I go back to school, I went down to Elizabeth City, because they teach elementary teachers and that was that, though, so each summer, I would go there and I wanted to get an elementary certification. Not a degree, just the new elementary, they've already had a degree in Elementary certification from there. Then I left that school and went to Riverview school in Murfreesboro.

Alston Cobourn: (06:47)
Okay, I'm not familiar with that school.

Dudley Flood: (06:50)
It's not a well known school, except for one thing, when I went there, they were 40 teachers, 39 females. I made 40. So that was an adventure. And the principal in hiring me was a man named Abner Bowe assured me in coming that he didn't really need a teacher, he really needed somebody to work with his male students. So I knew my job wasn't simply teaching, I knew it was more than that. In addition to teaching I had courses, of course, but there was always some time created for me to do things with the male population. So I created a Boy Scout troop, I created a couple of other things that would give the boys some opportunities to be outside of the scope of rigidity of school. And they could learn real things that you don't talk about at school. So anything that worked well. But then, I was also coaching athletics.

Alston Cobourn: (07:56)
What were you coaching?

Dudley Flood: (07:58)
I was coaching basketball, and football, both

Alston Cobourn: (08:01)
Okay

Dudley Flood: (08:01)
I wasn't head coach at that time. Because I knew I was at one school and team was at another. Well, we began to do pretty well. So the conference passed a regulation saying that you can only coach at the school in which you're teaching. So here I go back to high school. And I stay there for another three years. After which my minister who was Associate Superintendent of Pitt County Schools, his name was John Taylor, began to recruit me. And I had no interest in being recruited because as I said to him, these kids need me because when the small population 698 and every male child here went and came to my house. I was the YMCA, they didn't have one we didn't have a Recreation Center. We had nothing for kids white or black in Winton, tri racial town white black and Native American. But they all came to my house. They all played in my yard. I had what was tantamount to a recreational facility for them. We had, Barbara and I, had no biological kids of our own so it was convenient for us to do so. And we both loved young people.

(09:37)
So I had a basketball goal and tennis court and we had a fairly large back yard, horseshoe pit, badminton courts, and that was the attraction. But once I had them there, they were taught things that I'm not sure every child had access to. I still get Father's Day cards from now 50 years later, it was a blessing for me. Because I grew in ways that I might not have grown had I not had access to a multiplicity of children from different backgrounds, different races, different ages. But when John Taylor asked me to come to Pitt County, he asked me to come to be assistant principal.

(10:27)
He had said to me, that there's a principal who's going to retire next year. And we'd like to have you as his assistant this year. And then when he's retired, you'll take over the school and I asked him, well, why the thrust? You know 100 people want this job. And I don't know why, why me. And then he was just forthcoming with me said, we integrated the school. And we don't have 100 people who knew anything about or have an interest in desegregation. And then he went and did what he should have done in first place. He talked to my wife. She said, we're going.

(11:08)
I learned as a young man that you get along better in your home if you listen to your wife. And by the way, she had also been offered the job as supervisor music for the school district. And so what am I gonna do? I'm gonna go, well I went on July 1 1967. And there was an order a court order for a school system to desegregate. I started July 1, that court order was to be adjudicated August 1. August 11 they made the decision that school must desegregate forthwith. The principal walked in and put his keys on my desk, and said you're principal, I almost dropped my teeth. Because I didn't come there to be principal, I came there to be assistant principal. Alright. They are two different sets of duties. I never thought of myself as a quote boss. I've always thought power could be shared. And I've never wanted anybody to think of me as the source of power.

Alston Cobourn: (12:26)
right

Dudley Flood: (12:26)
I don't mind being the source of power, but I don't like to be seen that way. I like leading from the rear, you have a whole lot less resistance if you do that. So here I am. So I said to myself, so you're now in a new ballgame. And incidentally, had begun my masters at North Carolina Central. And then we're going to move east and transfer that to Hampton. Some do that as part of a master's degree. My wife said, well there's East Carolina right there. You can finish your masters there. And I said, Well, it is a thought because my masters was not going to be in administration. It was going to be in history. I decided to when I fell in love with world history, still am in love with. And I decided to have a masters and I'd accumulated all these credits.

(13:23)
So I went to East Carolina, actually I didn't. My wife went over and signed me up. Registered me and when I came home, she said, "Well, you starting tomorrow." Start what? "You starting East Carolina's administration program". I said "how did you do that?" She said, "Well, they let me do it." So here I go. When I reached East Carolina, I met a man named Ralph Brimley, who was chairman of the department at that time, not School of Education, just chairman of Department of school administration. Dr. Brimley had been superintendent in Winston Salem, Forsyth and one other place before he came.

(14:12)
So he knew a lot about public education from the ground level. But he gathered that I knew a fair amount about it as well, having worked at every grade, except kindergarten and taught students from grades one through 12. And we hit it off. I mean, we really really became close. Dr. Brimley did some consulting about and he began taking me with him when we would go somewhere to consult and then it reached the point that we'd walk in a room and he would say take over so now I'm the consultant without portfolio I hadn't come here to consult, I came here to learn under Ralph Brimley who had been doing it. But I fell in love with that.

Alston Cobourn: (15:02)
He was grooming you.

Dudley Flood: (15:04)
He was without saying that to me. And then I went to a meeting. And I met Craig Phillips, Craig Phillips was at that time running for state superintendent. I was not a political aspirant, still not, never wanted to hold office. But I did meet him. And we talked and he came by my school. And about two weeks later, I got a call from him saying that we wanted to have you serve on the state textbook commission. The State Textbook Commission had never had an African American who served in 1968. And never been.

Alston Cobourn: (15:59)
That doesn't surprise me.

Dudley Flood: (16:01)
Yeah, it was it. I don't know that I was surprised because I wasn't even aware of the state textbook.

Alston Cobourn: (16:06)
Right, right.

Dudley Flood: (16:07)
That's not what I knew. But he said the governor's appointee will appoint this and I will recommend who he appoints. Would you let your name go on as well? Go right ahead. I have no idea what it was about. But then when I got there and learned that state textbook commission decides what materials that will be sanctified under the state for you. So I've said yeah, this is a pretty good place to be. Because I got through the curriculum, not just in my field, but every curriculum that was adopted.

(16:47)
We served. I served on that for a year and a half. And then Craig Phillips, organized the division of technical assistance for school desegregation. And there I was serving on textbook commission while being principal. And he asked me if I could take on that role. Become a part of a team that he he was forming. Again, I said, Craig, I'm just learning to be a principal, takes couple of years, you know. He said that he would descend but being the wise man that he was, he called my wife.So when I got home my things were packed, we were going to Raleigh. Not literally, but virtually.

(17:39)
So we came to Raleigh in late 1969. We didn't physically get into Raleigh to live until 1970. Because while I was working with the department, I had not given up my principalship. And I didn't do dual employment. I just said that they're entitled to 45 days notice before I leave here, and so I'm going to work through that 45 day. So while I was working with the department, but not on the payroll. But during that period that there happened to be a boycott in Hyde county, a school boycott, which was nationally known about and the reason it was nationally known about was that it was the first such boycotts that anybody was aware of, that students had initiated. And it prevailed for a full year, students stayed out of school, African American students stayed out of school.

(18:51)
So here I'm cutting my teeth on how do you deal with dissidents, which was my first assignment. Along with my colleague, the late Eugene Causby, the two of us were given the assignment to try to rectify the situation and work through it. And that took a year. But I learned enough in that year that you can't put me in a situation now where I feel uncomfortable, just can't do it. Because I experienced everything ugly that you can possibly experience. And you had to develop coping skills as you went along and worked because there was no paradigm from which to work. No one had done that.

(19:37)
So we realized that we had to determine how did this, how do you make this work? We were fortunate that it worked well. And after that year, the kids went back to school. I was honored to be the graduation speaker. After that year originally they hadn't chased me out of town, so, I was welcome there. So then for the next I would say four years, we were in a constant state of serving as Technical Assistance Specialist for the state of North Carolina through the Department of Public Instruction in aiding school districts, with issues having to do with the desegregation in public schools.

(20:30)
Sometimes that technical assistance meant going in working with the Board of Education and helping them to develop a plan. Sometimes it was being liaisoned with federal government, who through its Office of Civil Rights would be the adjudicator of some of the plans, if not all, sometimes we'll be working with the court because 1/3 of the school districts in North Carolina wanted a court order from a suit, private suit being one of those. And we served as liaison as best we could in those circumstances. But more importantly, try to help them bring the community to a point of understanding processes and values of those processes,

Alston Cobourn: (21:15)
you had to do a lot of outreach, to the community?

Dudley Flood: (21:19)
A lot of outreach. And rightly so because people don't look for something just because it's different. It has to be different and better. And I'm not able to help you internalize, in what way is better, then I have no right to ask you to do something different. And so we had to generate, how you manifest to a person who's lived in a monolithic structure, all their life. All of a sudden, you're saying we won't bring other people in here with whom you're not comfortable. So it was a challenge. But it was an interesting challenge, because in every one, we had 157 school districts, initially, it came down to 152, because of some merges, everyone was different. There were no two alike. So I don't remember having a dull day knowing any of that particular time. But that was just the manner in which my career got started.

Alston Cobourn: (22:22)
Where did you all do like community forums? Or what kind of I'm just curious, what kind of ways did you try to do your outreach, because I'm guessing some of it might have been more formal, but some of it probably wasn't right. Some of it was maybe informal,

Dudley Flood: (22:39)
A lot of it was informal, but that which was formal, if it were to be official, it had to be formal, because keep in mind, we work for the Department of Public Instruction. And there are certain constraints that we were under. We would liaison with the federal government, there are certain constraint. For the most part, there's not much surveillance on our work. So we were able to do things that we thought were the right thing to do. We didn't cross boundaries, like church and state. Although I did work with a lot of churches still do, what most of my time is spent and a lot of, and working with churches, because judges have begun to realize that this most segregated place in America has nothing near as segregated as a church as an institution, and so but what we did primarily what if by invitation, we were asked to come and work with students. And they would have to have some formation through which we would work. And we would describe what would be a better formation, not mandatory. But the formation would be, we would say that say to them, give us a formation in which there's no student in the school who doesn't feel there's somebody in that discussion group who understands him or her.

(24:00)
So we don't want you to pick all your A student's, diversify as much as you can. And if we weren't given that, then we already knew that we've got to come to a conclusion, which is not a vote. It has to be that we've come to consensus, that takes longer than getting a vote. And we would say to the system, this is not, it's not gonna be a 30 minute thing. If we want to do this and do it well, we need to have time to do so. So that was one avenue. Then when we worked with communities, we had what we call discussion cells. That was when you walk in, you need to know you're not here to hear a speech. You're here to enter into a discussion. And the discussion is going to be facilitated by us but it's not us talking about you. It's, we're trying to we're in conversation out of you.

(25:01)
So we would set some guidelines there that were not here. But I taught English at one time, we're not here to check English, that's not what we're here for. We're here to communicate in a reciprocity fashion. If if you're saying something that another person can't understand, that's my job to interpret it for them. But I also include, understand what might have been a more effective way to say that. So that kept down shouting and the name calling and punctuation when we don't need an explanation, one. But then, when we worked with boards of education, they were always, almost always in a closed session. Why? Because if this works, you need the credit. You don't need to take this credit back to Raleigh with us.

(25:51)
So nobody needs to come away thinking though snapcraft parts from Raleigh came down and fixed our school board, you gotta be here. And you need the credit. Right? Now, if it goes poorly, you blame us but but if you give us the time, it's not gonna go poorly, it's gonna go well. And in truth, I don't remember one episode in which something good didn't come from it. Not all the time, just what we would have desired. But it was better than when we came. And so they were able to, they were able to take full credit. And that is one of the reasons we didn't publish much of anything.

(26:32)
We'd be on the news, but it would be glib, you know, news. Flash, somewhere where there was a riot that was most of the time that we were on the news. We just been present or something like that, that doesn't make the news pretty good. But nobody knew what we were doing internal to the structure, except the people for whom and with whom we were doing it. And that was the way it had to be. I mean, it literally had to be there were some other so confidential, that you couldn't for example, if, if you've got a lawsuit against you, you don't want me out talking about your lawsuit, and the lawyer didn't want me talking with you at all. Typical lawyer thinks I might know something that might be contrary to what that person is advising you.

(27:20)
So it was a delicate balance of how do you do this without being so brash, you're so on the scene. And for about five years, that was what we did. Thing people know most was that if there's a riot Gene and I will be there. And the interesting thing about that is when there is a riot, a real riot, right? Half the people there don't know why they have it. Yeah, don't know what the fuss is.

(27:54)
So, so we weren't calming the riot, we were educators. That's what we both were. And we were helping people understand a way to address your issues without truculence. And that would almost always give them what they needed. And that was relief, because each would be tired of fighting the other, you know, but, but nobody was going to give up. So when you find a way that you can dispose of the issue, and each of you can compromise to the point of saying this might not be 100% what I want, but I can live with it, then we've reached this thing.

(28:33)
So we did a lot of that with communities as well. And every now and then you would have that on campus. Parent versus school, why they didn't refer to it in that way. But if you're the principal, and you have some policies that result in something that people don't like that, no matter how good it is, if they don't like it, they don't like it. It's not gonna fly to and help reconcile to them, the value of whatever element there is that you are descending a bit, we have to recognize, reconcile with him or her, you're gonna have to give the this right here. You know, you want to restore your whole trust, but you're gonna have to modify that to a degree that there's some agreement and some compatibility among those about it. So it was that kind of situation most often that was very plentiful.

Alston Cobourn: (29:29)
It seems like, it seems like you feel like you had a pretty positive overall experience overall through that work.

Dudley Flood: (29:39)
100%.

Alston Cobourn: (29:41)
Yeah, that's good.

Dudley Flood: (29:42)
I can't give you one negative. If I had been thinking about me, I probably would have found some negatives. I wasn't thinking about me. I was thinking about just as you do, what is the result I'm trying to get here. And I'm just an instrument toward getting that result. So I got called a few names. That didn't bother me because I already know who I was.

(30:06)
So your perception of, you need to give me another name go right ahead. That wasn't often, but it did happen. I had some people presume I shouldn't. Gene was white, we'd go in some places, and the whites would think Gene shouldn't be on their side. And blacks would think I should be on their side. And we've quickly made a move, we didn't come to decide who is right, we are trying to figure out what is right. So if we stay the course on what is right. Don't worry about who's on who's side, because we're not anybody side. We're on side of right. And the only person who has a right to be here were those children. And everyone else is here by privilege. And that was what we stuck with, I mean, children first, we will always generate a paradigm that says that the end result of whatever we're going to agree on.

(31:03)
First, it has to be legal, we're not going to endorse something that's breaking the law. Second, it has to be in keeping with the best we know about what is good for children in in educational and social and every other way. And third has to be mutual acceptance doesn't mean that you want all of it or you like all of it means it has to be acceptability. Because if not, you will have us right back here next month, doing the same thing.

Alston Cobourn: (31:31)
Yeah.

Dudley Flood: (31:32)
So we were able to communicate in that fashion and generally, and working through it. We didn't know what that result.

Alston Cobourn: (31:42)
You. You mentioned your wife several times. So when did you get married? And what is your wife? What was your wife's full name?

Dudley Flood: (31:52)
My wife's name was Barbara Thomas, Barbara Gwendolyn Thomas, when I met her, I was a junior in college. I never had a quote girlfriend in the sense that people have girlfriends. Because when I was in high school, I was everybody's play brother, you know that. They wanted to be around. But we never had a serious relationship. Because I didn't have a car. If you live in the country, you can't date less you have a car i ain't have a car. And in truth, I wouldn't put that on somebody else I was an athlete. And I want to see a basketball or football or baseball, much more than I want to see a girl.

(32:33)
So I didn't have a defined girlfriend. And when I went to college, I didn't have a defined girlfriend. And to my junior year, Barb and I met by happenstance. We were we used to have something there which was called Dawn dance and dance started 12 midnight, and I'd never been to it. I'd been there two years and haven't been to it. Because A didn't want it to B because I had nobody to go with. Barbara's roommate had bet her that she couldn't get me to go to dance with. My best friend had bet me I couldn't get her to dance with me. Neither of us knew that.

(33:13)
So she came up to me at a water fountain and asked me who you're taking to dance. I said, I'm not going to dance. She said you don't have a date, do you? I said, Well, now that you mentioned that I don't she said well, would you like a date? Who did you have in mind? She said you could take me. She was fairly popular girl. I assume she had, you know, plenty of offers. And since I had been asked barely that, that I could take her just in rapping? I said yeah. I went back to tell him, he said she's just pulling your leg. She's not gonna show up. Because as I was seeing it, I was thinking this guy's just not going to have a date. I'm not going to have a ongoing relationship with anybody.

(33:57)
So we went to that dance together. Her friend went with us. My friend went with us. It was on campus. And we enjoyed ourselves. And we said, well, maybe we could meet at the cafeteria for a sandwich or something. And so I had a quarter bought a cherry pepsi and two straws. We there and engaged and next thing I knew we were talking regular. And after about six months, six months of that began to be what we would term courtship. But neither of us started out thinking, alright, we dated for four years. Because my ethos I told you about my dad is that you're getting married when you can afford to take care of a family.

(34:50)
So I had to be two years working before I thought I could take care of never mind that she's working, taking care of herself perfectly well. Somethings running around in my head saying until you can take care of family you have no business with a wife. And if your teaching takes about two years for you to get where you think you can take care of a family's from here.

(35:12)
So we married four years after we began dating. She was teaching in Gastonia, I was teaching in Murfreesboro. Six hour drive from one to the other. So after a year of marriage, I said, let's make a decision either I'm going there or you can come here, which one is it? She said, Well, you, you're more comfortable there because that's home. And so I'll just be most got a job or get job pretty easily if you if you're a music teacher. And everybody needs one. And she also had a degree in library science. So when you're more marketable, yeah,

Alston Cobourn: (35:52)
from where?

Dudley Flood: (35:53)
From East Carolina.

Alston Cobourn: (35:55)
Okay. Okay.

Dudley Flood: (35:56)
Well, she had she had an undergraduate from North Carolina Central in library science, then she, she got her master's from East Carolina in music and furthered a master's in library science from East Carolina. So we spent a lot of time and she's got a lot of time. But but then we were married for 55 years and seven months. She passed away 10 years ago. But it was, for me a perfect marriage. Yeah, I don't know if anybody else was determined to be perfect. But it was for me perfect marriage, because our relationship was that I was by that time traveling all over the United States, probably all over the world. And my credo was that if she wanted to go, you want me you want her. She can't go, you don't want me.

(36:51)
So she chose when she went with me. And that was places like Germany and you know, the islands and all that. If I was going back to Pembroke, she said, Oh, you wouldn't be available for this. Isn't that going to Murfreesboro? She said that would not happen. And that were times when I needed her to be there. And sometimes I did. She would go even when she was teaching, but she retired much, much younger than I as soon as she got what it was 30 years, I think. So she was free to travel with me.

Alston Cobourn: (37:37)
So you were traveling for work?

Dudley Flood: (37:39)
Once I had finished and retired from State Department, even while I was at State Department, I found myself in two roles that spread me across the state. The first was when I became associate state superintendent. That was in effect, the deputy position right under the State Superintendent.

(37:58)
I served on a committee which was called the study commission, under the chief state school superintendents, and it was We Who determined what the priorities would be for education in the United States of America. We didn't get credit for it, because you give it to the state superintendent who is your boss, right. And they were the ones who published it. But we were the ones who did the research to study and in that I was president of that for two years. And in that role, I got to know every state superintendent in the United States, and many times their boards of education. And I was recruited to the state superintendent to the state of New York, it took me a good five minutes to turn that down. Maybe less.

(38:45)
I knew I wasn't, hadn't had any business in New York as a visitor leave alone as a state superintendent. But that is, that's what the visibility of that role did. But on the basis of that most of the states invited me to come in and work with them on inclusiveness, because that's still the most difficult thing for most of the people who are in those positions to generate and maintain.

(39:13)
So I worked in all the states except Wyoming and South Dakota. All the rest of them have done some work with them. On that same issue that we dealt with in North Carolina. Most people don't realize that North Carolina was the most successful state in its desegregation process in the country. Most they don't they don't agree. And there's no way for them to know that because they don't know what's going on in other places

Alston Cobourn: (39:39)
right? Like I didn't know that. I didn't know you would say that

Dudley Flood: (39:44)
That was in the 70s. That would not be true now. But it was just by the definition, the most successful in this process. And it was inadvertent that it was, because some of the things that worked really well, we've done really in defiance of the law. The freedom of choice thing, for example, that was a stalling technique. But it worked because if you want to take a great, big airplane off, doesn't go straight up, like a helicopter. It has to have a runway. And during that process, those of us who have goodwill and intent, were able to use that process to create an environment in which some of the resistance would diminish. And that was it was heavy duty. I mean, that was, I was really, really in-depth teaching. And how do you bring people together? And how do you not have people persist in something that they know little about?

(40:51)
I've always thought if you knew better, you do better. And so our purpose was to help people to know better. And then to work with the stereotypes they had gotten in their minds, and the rumors and classification of somebody who you know nothing about and the generalizations and all those things. That's pretty delicate stuff to work with. But somebody had to be identified to do that. There are people who could have done it, but they didn't want to be identified with it.

(41:25)
I don't want to be identified any other way than that? That's, you know, I didn't ask anybody, what was your race when you decided to come here? I don't care what your race was. I just want to know what this is. And how can I enhance it? Well, we don't have a lot of people like that. I wish we did. And I wish I could tell you that I met a million people like that. We don't even now, have a lot of people like that we have way more than we did then.

(41:51)
So we had to be in a position to let you know, I'm not your enemy, I don't come here as your enemy, I come here to share some information with you. And it's selective if you choose to use it, it's yours. I haven't signed off on any of this in a way that you cannot use. You don't have to quote me, I'm doing that. Now, of course, if I write something, obviously, you're good.

(42:21)
You, but but you've read him take that out though, you can only run off five pages at a time, run off those five and go back run five more. You know, even though I may be violating the printer's notion but what I'm writing is not a thing to get rich off or real rich so that you would have some opinions that might be useful to you. So this is the way we worked. And I can take no credit for anything except I've never met anybody that I hated to this minute.

(42:52)
Now, I may not like some of your behavior. But hating you as a human being I'm not capable of doing that. And I think in modeling that you do more than you can than teaching and I think they watch. Particularly since Gene and I were different races, they watched us to see how we and you would you wouldn't have be around for long to know that we had the best relationship of anybody I know of, that you wasn't married to had ever had. And so and sometimes they would, they would say well, I don't know, you guys never do.

(43:26)
So I'm going to have to see before you know this can be done. I mean, if you got to see more than one, go ask yourself some questions. You know, it's possible for black guy and a white guy to get together, work together and have the same perspective about what we're doing. If you need to see more than me, then how many do you have to see before you know this is possible. Because the greatest motivator's possibility. And as long as you can think in your head, this can't work, then as a self fulfilling prophecy, it can't work for you if you feel that way.

(43:58)
So, to begin with, if you're able to find the right setting in which people really want to change or want to know whether they want to change, it's not that difficult. The difficult thing is finding the right setting. You don't always find a mass of people and it's not enough to have one or two or three, a mass of people who are willing to open their mind.

(44:26)
Think through some of those stereotypes they've lived under. And some of the things that they were exposed through through inculcation and even now, what I find is that people take people off the defensive and to do that, you have to stop being argumentative and and aggressive. And you have to be accepting and, and I generally find that most people, when they become comfortable with the subject matter are ready to reexamine some of their predispositions. But they have to become comfortable and what I try to do now to get as many people to be comfortable with subject matter as I can, through whatever avenue I have to work in. Once they've done that, say you go and do what we just did here. You take it and do that somewhere else. Don't quote me, it's yours. And that was how we worked throughout those years that were that.

Alston Cobourn: (45:29)
You mentioned, circling back, you mentioned. Right, so where was your wife from? One thing I wondered...

Dudley Flood: (45:39)
She was from Burlington

Alston Cobourn: (45:41)
Okay. Burlington, North Carolina

Dudley Flood: (45:42)
It's amazing that she would want to be with the country boy from Winton. But, again, we both understood that good marriage means that each of us had modified some of what we had always perceived to be the way to live. She lived 10 years in Winton. I lived with her, she had a dog that lives in the house and in Winton dogs don't live in the house, dogs live outdoors.

Alston Cobourn: (46:13)
Right.

Dudley Flood: (46:13)
So we had to reconcile the fact that your culture is different than mine. But the two of us have way more in common than we have different. And I'm going to acquiesce to all those meaningful differences as to you. I when I lived alone, which I did for two years before marrying her, my boom box, I didn't think of it as a boom box. I like jazz music. I'd come in at 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock night play jazz to two o'clock in the morning. Well, it couldn't carry that into marriage. And I didn't think it was something right or wrong about that. I thought this just didn't work in a household where there's another person.

(46:54)
So when we understood we talked about it, we used to have what we call a family chat every single week. We set aside for about an hour just just talk about us. And, and we'd laugh about those things that we had overcome. And grooming that dog I got I began to love the dog better than she did but normally, I love dogs outdoors. I know dogs. Still don't by the way. But I had Prince 16 years ago. I asked her why she named him Prince. You know my name is not King. So what does that tell me. He had been elevated higher than me in my own house. But we had each had a sense of, of compatibility to the other. And we're deeply in love each with the other and that was very helpful to us.

Alston Cobourn: (47:48)
Did she teach school and so she taught high school or she taught school in Raleigh.

Dudley Flood: (47:54)
Well, yeah, eventually she did when we moved to Raleigh.

Alston Cobourn: (47:56)
Where did she teach in Raleigh?

Dudley Flood: (47:58)
She taught almost-you see music teachers don't stay in one school.

Alston Cobourn: (48:02)
They they were rotating out

Dudley Flood: (48:04)
She taught in at least a dozen schools over 20 years

Alston Cobourn: (48:08)
Okay. That's what I was wondering. Yeah.

Dudley Flood: (48:11)
And I went to every one of 'em, because when she'd have her musical program, I'd be moving chairs and tables so I knew what they were but it was so many of them. Because she came here I guess 20 years before she retired, she was here. When she came to this system, when we merged it was in Raleigh.

Alston Cobourn: (48:35)
Wake County. Yeah.

Dudley Flood: (48:37)
And so she taught in the Raleigh schools, but then when they merged, she continued. But she taught it all in schools elementary

Alston Cobourn: (48:48)
I assume she played a musical instrument.

Dudley Flood: (48:50)
She played Piano

Alston Cobourn: (48:52)
She was a pianist. Okay. Yeah, that's what I was wondering that too.

Dudley Flood: (48:56)
She she tried her best to teach me. I wanted to play I didn't want to be taught I just wanted to play. Now I wish I had been taught because I love music.

Alston Cobourn: (49:10)
When you were at East Carolina as a student, were you involved in any other activities on campus? You very well may not have been because you were busy otherwise, but I was curious, or was she involved in any other groups

Dudley Flood: (49:27)
She was involved much more than I had because of the music component. In fact, most of what I was involved in was through her because they would do the Messiah every year for example, and I'd sing a little you know, and go and be a part of the Messiah.

Alston Cobourn: (49:43)
Oh, yeah. And what part did you sing?

Dudley Flood: (49:45)
Bass

Alston Cobourn: (49:46)
Okay

Dudley Flood: (49:47)
But only then, you know, I didn't go out around.

Alston Cobourn: (49:53)
Did you ever sing in church?

Dudley Flood: (49:54)
Oh, I sang in church, still do. But besides different from what you're singing, Give me hymnbook I can sing anything in a hymnbook. Because if you're a bass, you aint gonna have but three notes but not any beside, because you got that whole responsibility for that and the director would tell you-it would be 100 people up there and he will tell you who was off key, anyone that he might not call your name and you knew he was talking to you. I also was part of the organization that administrators attended. And we I was in honor society for educators and that sort of thing. But in terms of the activities, per se, of course, I went to ball games. And

Alston Cobourn: (50:44)
The football games?

Dudley Flood: (50:45)
Yeah.

Alston Cobourn: (50:46)
Because you said you played football when you were young. Right?

Dudley Flood: (50:48)
Yeah.

Alston Cobourn: (50:49)
And you taught Yeah. And you coached

Dudley Flood: (50:51)
Yeah. But I liked sports.

Alston Cobourn: (50:53)
Right.

Dudley Flood: (50:54)
But the Campus Activities, the graduates didn't see themselves upon what students do.

Alston Cobourn: (50:59)
Yeah, it was different.

Dudley Flood: (51:02)
I went to more after having graduated than I did while a student, because there would be times when they would have lectures. Go back for those even after I moved to Raleigh, go back to lectures. Three of my professors called me every year to come and speak to their class, Dr. Brimley, Dr. Sandy Sanderson would do that. And he was another person that I modeled a lot of my core after. William Sanderson. We call him Sandy.

(51:39)
He died a couple of years ago. But we remained friends up until his death. Because it's because his personhood was such that I gravitated to. And the two and a half years that I was in the program, I had one other African American in one class the whole time, there were other classes, and in Sandy's I was the only person of color in it. But that never seemed to matter to anybody. I never heard anybody make even note of it. You might notice that had a lot due with the leadership. Because the way in which Dr. Brimley carried himself and the way in which Dr. Sanderson carried himself, you wouldn't have dared make a distinction. You're in that classes. And I don't know that that was true of every professor.

Alston Cobourn: (52:30)
Right.

Dudley Flood: (52:31)
Because I didn't have that minimal relationship with the professors. But these, these guys were just they would come to my school, I would invite them, you know, because it was my first principalship and I knew I didn't know all I needed to know and If I'd ask Dr. Sanderson to come by, come over and sit with me, he'd do so. Dr. Brimley was in a wheelchair but when he drove he had his thing that he could he would come my school, he would ask me to come to his house and all that sort of thing.

(53:03)
So East Carolina extended itself in the community in a way that I had been to several schools and I hadn't been in any other one that did that. Even Central my original school. I didn't see them reaching. And they may do some of that now, but not when I was there, less per se they didn't do it. UNC Chapel Hill, I went there a while they didn't do it. I didn't see them doing. Hampton didn't do it. Keep in mind, this is the 60s and 70s.

Alston Cobourn: (53:35)
Right, right.

Dudley Flood: (53:36)
So um, I don't know what they do now, and what they don't do. But I do know that they were not reaching into the black community when I was coming along. And I'd like to think that that along with those people are named we have paved the way for that and it is happening. I'd like to thank them. And it was reciprocity, because we we reached into the white community equally well. And I would like to think that now you hear very little on the campus about this community or that community as opposed to general community.

(54:13)
Even the med school creates an avenue through which doctirs can go into these rural areas. They weren't going in when I was coming up. They were lucky to find a doctor and he was going to be white. And it was going to be he wasn't going to be a woman. So that being in East Carolina has been a marvelous thing.

Alston Cobourn: (54:32)
How about I know you've been involved with East Carolina, you know, since you graduated from there. How else have you been involved?

Dudley Flood: (54:45)
Well, East Carolina been kind enough to put me in education Hall of Fame.

Alston Cobourn: (54:53)
Yes.

Dudley Flood: (54:54)
I'm very honored by that. It was kind enough to name me as one of the honored alumnus. Given that award back in 75, or six somewhere and of course, had been, I've never not been a member of the alumnus association. I'm not always being at something that it did. But I've always paid my dues. And I've always read my mail. And every time they come up with a bright idea I support that way, but the older you get the lesser that you do. I don't travel the way I used to travel. I used to come to most at home games when I was more of a traveler than I am now. I've gotten into gaming the last several years. A game or two.

Alston Cobourn: (55:53)
Yeah.

Dudley Flood: (55:54)
But now, nobody will know you in there. but when I was there 1200, 1500 people before you sit down you know everyone else's name.

Alston Cobourn: (56:03)
Yeah.

Dudley Flood: (56:04)
Now you'd be lucky to get a seat now.

Alston Cobourn: (56:07)
Right, Because it was Ficklen Stadium, you remember Ficklen Stadium and when it was, Yeah, yeah. You were on the board of trustees. Right.

Dudley Flood: (56:17)
Well, I was on the Board of Trustees for North Carolina Central

Alston Cobourn: (56:21)
for Central. Okay.

Dudley Flood: (56:22)
Yeah. And then I was on the Board of Governors for the whole university system.

Alston Cobourn: (56:25)
Okay. And that's when you worked with Phil Dixon?

Dudley Flood: (56:29)
Yeah, that's where I met Phil, we were on the Board of Governors three times. Service three, four year terms.

Alston Cobourn: (56:38)
Well, do you want to share anything about your time as the board on the Board of Governors? I bet that was an interesting. When was that? I guess I should say, first of what, decade?

Dudley Flood: (56:48)
10 years ago.

Alston Cobourn: (56:50)
Okay. Okay.

Dudley Flood: (56:53)
But during the time that I was there, I can tell you. I did not know who was Republican who was Democrat. We just weren't into that back then. I knew that there was somebody registered somehow or another but there was there wasn't that kind of polarization on the board back then.

Alston Cobourn: (57:15)
And you think it seems like that's a little bit different nowadays?

Dudley Flood: (57:19)
It's all I see. Now. I don't see decisions being made on any other way. Except which organization you're a member of, which party you're a member to . And and I'm saddened by that. Because I don't join cliques. And I don't think it's in the best interest of any organization. That you dismiss what you think feel and why you were there to make a decision and say that what we're trying to do is to curtail somebody else's decision, rather than making one ourselves and I think that goes all the way to the Congress. I think there's maybe more of that now than there was there. But we were very deliberate about the students interest. When I was on the board. I was on the board under three different presidents.

Alston Cobourn: (58:18)
Okay,

Dudley Flood: (58:19)
I was on there with Molly Broad. I was on there with Erskine Bowles. I was on there with the last one before and of course Peter Hans, who is now chair was on the board with me.

Alston Cobourn: (58:33)
Right.

Dudley Flood: (58:34)
And, and at no time can I recall us trying to usurp his authority trying to use a Chancellor's authority. We did our job. My job was policymaking not administration. We didn't mandate anything having to do with anything that was around their job to do. And that's why I have such great admiration for Phil and others with whom I shared that space because the first Republican that I was aware of being a Republican, I nominated him as Vice President of Board. And when time came around and publicly make the nomination, I was looking at my notes and somebody said now, who is going to second the nomination. I was looking at my notes and they asked me twice, and it scared him to death because he said this Democrats changed his mind.

(59:32)
We joked about that even if I see him now but I think that's the only refernce I ever heard and made to a political party, and eight years that I was there. Later on, I began to realize it. Whatever party was in power tended to point enough people to fill the board to appoint they thought their their thinking would permeate. That they might been wrong about that? Because the decisions were not made them along political lines. I can attest to that.

(1:00:06)
Since I don't know, for sure, I can't say that they are. And now I'm just telling you what it appears to me that that plays more substantial role in the best interest of the establishment. But many others on on the board who I'll never forget, many of us still interact on a regular basis, because we had that kind of fraternity that we're here, you don't get paid, you know, boy, and, you don't get bonuses.

(1:00:42)
You can, again, be reimbursed for travel. But if you live in Raleigh or Chapel Hill, it's not worth the paperwork so I never drew a nickel from the board in eight years. 12 years, it was a cause. And I always felt honored to have been in position, you know, to serve in that way. And I think most of the board members if not all felt the same way.

Alston Cobourn: (1:01:11)
Were there any particular policies that during during your time that you all enacted that you felt like were really meaningful, important and are still mattering today? I don't know. Any, anything in particular, that stands out to you, I guess,

Dudley Flood: (1:01:28)
We began to be more aware of HBCUs. And while I don't take personal credit for it, I will tell you that they listened, when everyone makes a suggestion, because they knew I was talking from experience, wasn't hearsay, I went to three sp poor HBCUs. So I knew what they did and didn't do and knew how they needed to do what they did. And I don't remember any retribution, as a result of having brought that up because it never went "Oh, here goes Dudley again." It went "Listen, listen to him, because he's got something to say." It's very gratifying.

(1:02:04)
The result of that was that we now have some things that we never would have had had not we had that avenue through which to reconsider. Give you an example, Elizabeth City was always under pressure to expand. When I was on the board this facility could only take 18% of its population from out of state. Well, geographically, this facility sits right on the edge of Virginia.

Alston Cobourn: (1:02:33)
Yeah.

Dudley Flood: (1:02:35)
And it had programs that people in Virginia would have wanted quite badly but they couldn't take but 18% of their population. Now they've expanded that after having yapped about that for about 10 years. Somebody has decided that was a good idea. Now, it didn't happen while I was there, but two things did happen while I was there, one was they had a pharmacy unit be created while I was there. I don't think that is flourishing now because I don't know that anybody has been watching over that since then. And they had partnered with the Coast Guard. Boy, and they had a maritime unit program that was growing.

(1:03:26)
I haven't kept up with it. But those were things that would have brought people from Tidewater, Virginia down. Each of those would have brought people from and pharmaceutical thing would have brought them from all over. And the maritime program would have brought people from Tidewater, Virginia because that's what they are. They live on a shipyard, they live on a naval base and all that stuff. We couldn't attract them. Now that that is open, that facility is growing faster than any other institution percentage wise in the system. Same thing is true at Pembroke. Pembroke sits right on the edge of South Carolina. They were not attracting people, because they couldn't reach out where the population would conveniently come because a lot of people commute to some of those smaller universities. They don't all come and become residents.

Alston Cobourn: (1:04:25)
Right.

Dudley Flood: (1:04:25)
So that is changed. That changed for Western Carolina. Here they are, Tennessee sitting right on their border. So I can see things that go out of my advocacy. And obviously there are many other things going on during the time. More equity for Chancellor salaries came during the time when I was there. That was a time when you had major research universities. That'd be a North Carolina state and UNC Chapel Hill. Got the cream of the crop and they still get good people but not all the good people. That's much better.

(1:05:05)
So a lot of things in equity that unspoken, publicly, but we were able to get them done quietly. That's why you get stuff done quietly, start banging your chest, it backfires on you. But yeah, I do have experience on that board. Each of the 12 years that I served I tried not to get back on it. And you know, General Assembly appoints us on the board and my legislator would come and say, I just need you four more years.

Alston Cobourn: (1:05:39)
Right. just four more years.

Dudley Flood: (1:05:42)
That four years because by then I got a different legislator because they keep redistricting. He has a different way you serve, you serve for her, you serve for me too. And well, just put my name. I didn't not want to be on it. But I didn't want to feel like I was the only person who could do it because of the people who could

Alston Cobourn: (1:06:03)
Right,

Dudley Flood: (1:06:04)
but I've certainly heard of those times. And I'd like to think I made a contribution in each of those.

Alston Cobourn: (1:06:13)
I guess I should say before we get too far from it. Was there. Is there anything else really from your your time as an educator in Pitt County that, you know, really stands out to you that you want to mention.

Dudley Flood: (1:06:33)
Other than the fact that being made critical overnight.

Alston Cobourn: (1:06:39)
Yeah,

Dudley Flood: (1:06:40)
That stands out. What stands out beyond that. Among the things that stand out beyond that is when I went there, the court order, there were 21 schools in Pitt County that had a graduating class. You could classify them as high schools, all of them. 5 black schools had graduating classes, and then you had 11 white schools had graduating classes. Some of them are 1 through 12, some are 4 through 12. So you can't categorize them all as high school.

(1:07:16)
But we had a study group, which I was appointed to served on and we advocated that we combine the high schools and then we have four. And that was part of the plan toward toward the desegregated school system, because then everybody would go to their regional school. So we came up with North Pitt, and Ayden and Ayden, Grifton, I believe it was called and Farmville High somewhere else. That happened during my, during my tenure there. And I thought it was a great advancement in several ways. Because having had school, consolidate and having, for example, my school, my school was Bethel Union, which was in Bethel. The white school in Bethel only had 11 teachers. And I don't know how you can give all that you need to give with 11 teachers.

(1:08:18)
So when it was combined, I had 38 teachers, not including that kind of supplementary people like teachers aides and Title One folk. When you combined all that you had a whole lot better chance of educating all the children. And I thought that'd be a way to sell the idea of consolidation. I don't know that everybody thought that to be the way, it wasn't the way but it was a way of having people understand. And I kept saying to them, unless you can demonstrate how that adds value to all the people to whomever you're trying to, to get to understand what you're doing and why you're doing it.

(1:09:00)
We have to keep on educating people on the value there are. It's not just a social experiment. It's value driven. And the only thing that education fully agrees on is that resources determine how educated you become. Of course, human resources are one of those resources but you're only one, and I went all over the county with Mr. Alford who was superintendent speaking to that matter. And we were able to talk in the language of people who you know. It's the pickle factory was working right down the street from me. And I would say to them, You know when I walk into pickle factory. Everything I see here looks like a pickle factory.

(1:09:47)
You know, you got all the machines that you need. Barrels to put your pickles in and all that. When you walk in to my place, you might not see all the things that will look like a school to you. If we consolidate the school where we can put all the artifacts of school in it and create an atmosphere school is much easier to have people see themselves as learners when they're working in that climate. When I go down to the salt mill, I see all the big silos and sharp saws and planers. And everybody that walks in, he feels like I'm a sawmill person. When you walk into my school, somebody might have a bulletin board.

(1:10:55)
[Phone Interruption] So when that phone rings, I noticed. You didn't know me. I own that phone so that when I'm driving, I will have access to get into it. Yeah, fewer than 10 people on Earth who have that number by my predilection. So anybody else who's calling they're calling because they want to sell me something. So I'm sorry. I know. That's fine. I hope you can eradicate. But then the other thing about Pitt County was that the the general environment since Greenville city schools were a separate school district. Yeah. But the general environment, I thought was improved through some other things we were able to do, that people might have thought had nothing to do with school, but they did. I was on a Good Neighbor Council.

(1:11:56)
The President of the Good Neighbor Council was a white minister. I was a black Baptist. And the fact that a black basptist and a white methodist could get along was phenomenal in Pitt county in 1970. Phenomenal. And we were in everybody's church, everybody's organization that they've adopted come and speak to. And I like to think that I would not have been able to do that had I not been there as principal because they want to know, [unintelligible] so the visibility of the principalship. And the flexibility of not being too determined about what your faith was or any of that was always brought up in Baptist religion, but I always thought aside from whatever the Baptist did, there was, there was one heaven, and to think there was a Methodist Heaven, and a Presbyterian heaven, and a Catholic heaven. And I thought, if you're serious about what you're talking about what you're gonna do when you get there. you gonna have your little component. It's just never occurred to me that separation of people made much sense. And I'd argue that, that I didn't see reasons that people felt that way. Adults any of us do.

(1:13:23)
So Bill, Bill being the Methodist minister, went everywhere, and we were invited a week ahead, joint invitations, but they would not have invited me, I don't think had I not been Principal of the school. And you got a little bit of notoriety, just being Principal of the school. Because it was thought that the board has screened current screening and all that. So you probably weren't dangerous.

Alston Cobourn: (1:13:56)
So and So what was this group again? Can you say

Dudley Flood: (1:13:59)
The Good Neighbor Counsel.

Alston Cobourn: (1:14:01)
Okay.

Dudley Flood: (1:14:02)
It was really under the governor's office, but there were ancillary local committees Memos and points of local programs, extended from the Governor's Good Neighbor Counsel.

Alston Cobourn: (1:14:14)
Okay, And its goal was?

Dudley Flood: (1:14:17)
it was the amalgamation of some concepts that would make people better able to live together.

Alston Cobourn: (1:14:23)
Okay. Okay.

Dudley Flood: (1:14:24)
That's why it was named Good Neighbor Counsel. If you had been using the word integration, you're gonna get chased that room. Integration was not a formidable word at that time no matter when it became my job to do, I didn't use that term. Never did, still don't, unless I'm talking in general terms like this. Why? Because when the civil rights movement was started, you didn't hear equity. You heard equality. Equality is an impossible thing to achieve. You can't achieve equality, you can achieve equity if you're willing to do so. I play basketball, I tell you, I can't be equal to Michael Jordan playing basketball.

(1:15:12)
So when I start talking about equality, that means if he thinks I'm gonna cut his legs off six inches, you know, theoretically, it's not a good concept from which to work with human beings. Equity on the other hand most people can be made to understand that there's some value in equity that accrues to myself itself. And I often use personal examples, why equity? You are working right now. Within Social Security. I wanted to double your salary, because I want a lot of money being put into social security, because third of the month they're gonna bring somebody [unintelligible] to my house.

(1:15:56)
It's not as though we're in actual the sound problem. It depends on me getting everybody educated enough. So it's all am I able to put the kind of money in that will keep it alive. If we don't, we will run out of funds now, before you get your they can understand those kinds of relevances. Those who are involved in services and equity of services is that equity concept that it's not built for me alone. It's built for the good of people. When I moved on that road that you came in on that road wasn't paved. When I moved down here, they were paving it just began to serve this area.

Alston Cobourn: (1:16:38)
Rock Quarry rd? oh Sanderson.

Dudley Flood: (1:16:45)
It wasn't paved until 1966. It was paved up to here, but you know I can go all the way through Creech Road and get to Garner quicker than I can get anywhere in Raleigh. Well, the pavement of that road was not just for my advantage. Right now, when you get out there and try and turn left, you will find out whatever time of day you gotta look both ways. I used to wish for a car, you know, I'd wish just like to hear a car coming down here.

(1:17:09)
So, so that highway was not built for me. That highway was built for the good of the whole. And the equity fact is when they pick up trash every week, I don't need him to pick up my trash every week. If you go two or three blocks down there, they're a group of people who 20 people who put in trash into a garbage can. I mean, I wish they'd pick that up every day. Cause a cockroach can walk from there to down here.

(1:17:37)
So equity factor is not that I'm telling you to favor somebody, I'm telling you it'd be all better off when equitable distribution of the resources are made, because it raises the level of, of living for all of us. We're all better off. I try never to use examples that make you give up something to give it to me, no, no, no, we are having a distribution and effects that raises the quality of living for all of us. And schools, the best example I know of that. Because you lose a lot of capability when you deny presence of one another, to be participatory, in your, in your society, you're losing a lot of stuff. And you're losing stuff that would probably lead you to do that. And most people can grasp that it takes a little while for him to get to a point "am I'm gonna try to do differently," but you got to start somewhere. And you start with the concept of equity and help people to understand what that is all about. And that is how we do this kind of work.

(1:18:46)
We don't get into things that would be intimidating to you frightful. People who have the most difficult time coming into this passage are people who only have one or two things they view as an asset. They are not gonna let those go. So if the only thing you have right now as an asset is you're white then you are going to hold on to that for dear life. And anything that tends to threaten that comes you in turns out you got another set of assets that will make you have to think about being white. You can do some you can think you can read and write you can you know I'm not criticizing anybody. I'm just telling you that is the ethic from which I have to work. I have to understand that and I can't start out by blaming people okay start out by ridiculing people. We have to understand that we are all a result of our environment and the environment in which you inculcated until you move beyond then. And most of the time, you have to have help in doing that. You still have some of that residual effect of that element.

(1:20:10)
So it's, it's less difficult if you have a belief system that gives you a posture to say, humans are humans, they differ in various ways, but different does not mean deficient. If you just accept that one posture, this world becomes very easy. All right.

(1:20:34)
You mentioned, we talked, you mentioned about being inducted into the Educators Hall of Fame. What, what other achievements of your lifetime are you most proud of?

(1:20:49)
That would certainly be among them. But as opposed to achievements, that are noted by recognition, yeah. I'm pleased that three different governors have given me the Order of the Longleaf Pine recognition that time was thought to be the highest honor the state gave, but it's no longer the highest honor. The Governor's Award is now the highest honor. And Governor Roy Cooper has been good enough to give me that honor as well. But if I had to tell you one thing, which I'm most proud, something that you will be the only person who's ever heard me say.

(1:21:29)
In 1969, no later maybe '72. There was an organization formed by the Chief State School Officers of United States that came together to plot a methodology for desegregating public schools for the whole nation. We were called the Chief State School Officers Desegregation Foundation and we developed the schematic for the dismantling of dual school system for the whole United States of America.

(1:22:14)
Now, a person who chaired that was a former Secretary of Education. Other persons on it were superintendents, some lay people, some attorneys, and we drew up a plan to distribute it to the whole country. That is why I got invitations to other places. But I'm more proud of that as a personal achievement than anything I've ever done because it opened doors in places that people thought were already open you know, there has been this thought that only the South needed to desegregate.

(1:23:00)
The easiest place to desegregate was the South. Didn't say integrate, I said desegregated, there's a distinction. Desegregation is the removal of the physical barriers and there are legal barriers. Why because you had two elements of law .De facto segregation was never addressed under the law. On the legal segregation when you had barriers that presented it legally like we had we did 17 states had that you go up and try to desegregate Chicago. Good luck with that. Try to desegregate Detroit. Good luck with that. Try to desegregate Harlem in New York. Good luck with it.

(1:23:45)
So when you'd be brought, when you when you are being brought into places like that don't try to use the concepts that you learn and use down here as they're not applicable. Why because you don't have a mindset that says this is a problem. They declare to themselves that I'm living here because I chose to live here. That's true. Why did you choose live here? Where would you live other than here? You would be because this is the only place you can afford to live, the only place that you accepted. But you don't know that because you're in the North.

(1:24:25)
So anytime I thought work down here was hard. I gotta think about well, it's not as hard as where I was last week. Working in Philadelphia, working. Even out west you had an interesting conglomeration of thought there that said that LA is so diverse, Los Angeles is so diverse. And while they're so diverse, there's a pocket here, there's a pocket there, there's a pocket there. And then I went to Beverly Hills once to talk with their teachers. And everyone of them had the atmosphere in their mind that what in Beverly Hills was he doing here.

(1:25:20)
I said to myself this is interesting. Because what you have to do now is reprogram their whole thinking to the fact that children are children. The fact that you were born in Beverly Hills, is not a manifestation of what you become as a human being. What happens to you after you get born? In fact, you born in a slum is not a manifestation of what happens to the human being its what happens after you were born.

(1:25:55)
So we start with the same principles that is that children are not what you think they are. They're not what they think they are, but they tend to become what they think you think they are. That is true wherever you go. People generally become what they think you think they are. If you didn't think I thought you were capable of doing what you're doing, you wouldn't be nearly as comfortable doing it. But I verified to start with you. This is what you do. I don't know how to interview people. I don't care how many degrees I have. I don't know how to interview people. I know how to have conversations, lateral conversations.

(1:26:44)
So I can see at the start that this is what you do. You are the authority on it. That should make you comfortable in doing it. Well, when you got a kid sitting in there and he already started with the attitude that since he's from such a place, he doesn't have this and that and the other. Do it to him long enough, you'll be right. You'll be right about it.

(1:27:07)
So that's the first element that I found. You have to inculcate in in a certain way, you try to help teachers become better teachers. If they can't see this kid as somebody who can't. And whenever kids tell me, "I can't," hold on to them "yets". I understand you haven't done it yet. We don't know that you can't. We just know you haven't done it yet. So we'll talk about this again tomorrow, see where we are.

(1:27:32)
Now, if you actually can't, that manifests itself, but it'd be way down the road. I'm convinced most people can do whatever they've seen somebody else do and put their mind to want to do it. Most people.

(1:27:47)
So if we get that premise, embedded, then you don't have to worry about little things like race and gender and all that stuff that we like get in the way of being able to. To validate other human beings. That's harder to do in places where they don't know that these distractions are so predominant. Because it's a you know, I got a white friend, I got a black friend here.

(1:28:20)
Hell, the definition a friend might not be what we're here to talk about. We're talking about equal status relations that's what we're talking about. I have a lot of friends. Do you have equal status relationship with these friends? Is this word, this person over here? His word means twice as much to you as this one over here. They're saying the same thing.

(1:28:43)
So that's the Tejas aspect of this kind of thinking. And I'm joyous and able to tell you that will follow along now and people think there is a cluster of people who are not likely to change their paradigm. But there's always been such a cluster. They've just been under different guises. But that's far fewer than we think, far fewer and it's far fewer now than they were last year and few last year than it was when the election was held.

(1:29:28)
So we're making gradual progress back. But the pendulum swings this, it's the way it works, pendulum swings and you will have to see it level off again. I may not but you will. Because people like you have what will make it do so.

Alston Cobourn: (1:29:58)
Could you share some about the Dudley Flood: Center and its mission?

Dudley Flood: (1:30:05)
Dudley Flood: Center was created for two purposes. It's part of the public school forum. And it's created under the Public School Forum. But the reason it was specifically created was to established there to be a place where you could be comfortable in talking about equity. And it's also established to be a resource that you could have access to when when you needed some help with generating something toward inherited equity. It does it through research, it does it through seminars, it does it through its newsletter, does it through contacts, helping you to contact if you were looking for somebody to contact could help you through a situation. But the most important thing it does is exists. Because we didn't have a place until that was created where everybody could freely go without any kind of credential. And raise any kind of question having to do with inclusiveness and equity, hope to get an answer.

(1:31:19)
If you need to do that anonymously, good. If you want to be public about it, you can, but you needed a place. And when we were at DPI, Department of Public Instruction, the advantage I had was the weight of the state was behind my work, I knew I was doing that. Because then you had the security of knowing I can't go but so far, because the state structure there are certain provisions that make it safe. And when we when that was eliminated.

(1:31:54)
There were a lot of consultants still are who went about making a living, talking about desegregation and inclusivity and all that. But they don't have a structure around it. We are systemic society, if there's not a system around you. People don't believe in what you're doing. They have no protection from you, you could be exploiting them anything

So they'll listen to you but don't do anything you say. So we needed to have a concept that was in place where people could feel secure, they could feel that you have to mean what you're saying you have to follow up. There'll be some accountability, because we don't have in state money We're funded by donations. If you don't like what we're doing, you stop donating, we'd be out of business.

Alston Cobourn: (1:32:43)
Is it a a 501 C three nonprofit?

Dudley Flood: (1:32:47)
We are a non profit, but we can't reach in your pocket.

Alston Cobourn: (1:32:51)
Right, right. Yeah, I was just curious. Yeah.

Dudley Flood: (1:32:53)
That's why we exist. But our sponsors give really big money. Because we have a staff of three people full time. We have a board and the board they are for the most part inexpensive to us right now because most of what we do is virtual. They are from all over the state so we'd just have to bring them Raleigh for a meeting.

Alston Cobourn: (1:33:23)
Because you're located the center is located in Raleigh

Dudley Flood: (1:33:26)
Yeah, it's headquartered in Raleigh.

Alston Cobourn: (1:33:27)
Yeah.

Dudley Flood: (1:33:29)
So that was the concept point of which it was generated. And I don't work. Im an advisory member to the board, they tried to make me a voting member, I declined to be a voting member. Because I don't want my word to be any stronger than anybody else's.

(1:33:46)
When the board meets I meet, and if they asked me something, I answered it, but other than that, I get out of their way and let other people run it and if they need something from me, which seems to be pretty often, the staff knows, call me they can schedule me to go and do something on their behalf. And that sometimes happens three or four times a week. But I don't ever want it to be about me. Because I tell you, I'm 90 years old, I want that to still be here when I would have been 150 that still be here. I wanted it to be a safe place for people to share ideas and practices. And, and, and they they're doing that now. They you know, they're moving ahead on their own. They're bright people and trying. And a lot of people are gravitating to it for a resource, to be their resource. So I'm very proud of it.

Alston Cobourn: (1:34:51)
When was the center founded?

Dudley Flood: (1:34:53)
Three years ago

Alston Cobourn: (1:34:55)
okay.

Dudley Flood: (1:34:56)
Three years ago, but it had to walk before it crawled, crawl before it walked and told the guy to walk before you run, you run before you fly. We'll fly. It's in the running stage now. It took us a year to get a Director. Because we had a criterion so high as to what we wanted from the director. And we, we advertised and we had to readvertise.

(1:35:21)
Finally, we got the right person. And then she had to gather staff. And through the same process so a lot of elements that had to be taken care of before we were able to be put in business. But now we just had the Color of Education. That was terribly successful. I mean, it was really impactful. About 600 people present, and then another 1000 online. So it's gathering, gathering steam.

Alston Cobourn: (1:35:58)
well, what else are you involved in these days?

Dudley Flood: (1:36:02)
Thats what time I just got through telling you about. But beyond that i'm doing my work in churches.

Alston Cobourn: (1:36:07)
Yeah. You mentioned that.

Dudley Flood: (1:36:11)
By their, by their design. I'll give them some notion about what might work well, but they found I have to work within the constraints, whatever their capabilities are and I knew that. This past Saturday, I spent three hours with a church that was all white. And they wanted to know how they could infuse the notion of diversity into the congregation but they had to start with a small committed group. And then we talked about our strategies for doing that. How do you do outreach, How do reciprocity and How do you do partnerships and then after having done that, you might be able to do somewhat bigger bang. I work with about four different churches.

Alston Cobourn: (1:37:04)
In Raleigh?

Dudley Flood: (1:37:06)
Hayes Barton. White Memorial, White Presbyterian. I can't think of the name of the church I just was at but but but they're moving. They're moving in that direction. But they're a great big organization. So gotta start with a little group of committed people, give them the comfort level and the skills to move in that direction and be a resource to them where you can when you can. So that takes a takes a fair amount of my time. And the rest is that there's, I'm still in various organizations. I'm on the board of the YMCA. I just got off the board of UNC publishers.

Alston Cobourn: (1:37:55)
Okay.

Dudley Flood: (1:37:57)
And while you're physically off the board, they don't let you off the board, you're never off the board. So I still function in that. and I teach sunday school at my church.

Alston Cobourn: (1:38:09)
Yeah, what is your church?

Dudley Flood: (1:38:11)
My church is Martin Street Baptist Church. 10 minutes from here. I've done that for 45 years. I sing on the choir. I'm a part of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity. That takes an amazing amount of time.

Alston Cobourn: (1:38:28)
Yeah, what are you what uh, what do you do with that group? Usually?

Dudley Flood: (1:38:34)
Well, see that plaque hanging up there. That's the highest honor that that group gives. My perception is once you get that honor you have to be a model. You can't just be running around uncommitted.

Alston Cobourn: (1:38:53)
So you help on planning events and different things.

Dudley Flood: (1:38:56)
Well, I do that but that aint really what I meant. I want, I want young people to see the possibilities. That's what I think a responsible person does who has been elevated to that height. I want them to see possibilities.

(1:39:10)
So I work with the young people. We have a young group which high school students and then we have some younger members coming into the I'm the oldest person in the chapter as in my chapter, and I will let them see the possibilities. I want them to understand what I just said you crawl and then you walk and then you run. But your sight has to be on making tomorrow better than day. If your sight's not on that then you come to a deadend. And I spend an inordinate amount of time with that group. We just had a major gathering. Oh, and by the way, we also have a scholarship foundation that was named in my honor.

(1:40:00)
That sounds good, but it means I gotta raise money for it, which I did. We just had something this past Sunday. It turned out extremely well, very well participated in, very well contributed to that every penny of that will go to students and we don't wanna take any overhead. I eat overhead, whatever that is. And it's simple, you know, it's like a little travel here. Write some letters, send out about 100 letters a year or something like that.

(1:40:32)
But other than that, it's within my capability because there was not like, it's not like I'm giving a scholarship. Scholarship comes from the funds raised. People been very generous, very generous in doing so. And I do have family live here. Nieces and nephews and I'm accepting you a member of the family so they can pick up something. They ask me they do. They're good enough to come here there. They don't expect me to come back because I drive very little.

Alston Cobourn: (1:41:12)
Do a lot of them live in Winton?

Dudley Flood: (1:41:13)
No, none of them live in Winton

Alston Cobourn: (1:41:14)
Okay. Are they in North Carolina?

Dudley Flood: (1:41:17)
I've got one nephew who lives in Cary. I got one niece who lives in the Ahoskie

Alston Cobourn: (1:41:24)
Okay

Dudley Flood: (1:41:24)
One nephew in Atlanta. One niece in Chicago, one niece in Cleveland, so none of them are walking distance. One in Cary I see pretty often because he handles me. Tell me what I can and can't do. He thinks. But the others they come holidays and times like that.

Alston Cobourn: (1:41:53)
Yeah,

Dudley Flood: (1:41:54)
We have good visits. But it's, it's, it takes you back to how things were to have family because they still remember we were having this discussion Sunday. When my niece was here she remembered a wash pot we had when she was a little thing. I was telling them about that functionary pot my mom when we didn't have a washing machine that she would boil clothes in that washing pot we called it. Take it out and put it in a tub and scrub it ,scrub it and I didn't know that my kids were, well they're not kids now, she's 60 years old. I didn't know she remember that you know yeah, I remember that.

(1:42:45)
So I get to revisit Winton through him though they didn't live in Winton but they heard the story. So that that keeps you fresh in knowing where you're from. For me it's good to know where you're from. I listened to an old Neil Diamond song. You know, New York mine but it ain't home. LA's home but it ain't mine. Well Winton's mine but it ain't home. Raleigh's home but it ain't mine no more. And I understand that feeling. So I'm I got get what I gotta get from both of them. I gotta have my roots deep in Raleigh, lived here for 52 years. Winton is home. I keep it that way. By the way, we have an organization there as well that I'm on.

Alston Cobourn: (1:43:42)
I was gonna say to you. So do you have reasons you would go back there occasionally?

Dudley Flood: (1:43:46)
Historical society's there

Alston Cobourn: (1:43:49)
wonderful.

Dudley Flood: (1:43:50)
And if I don't go, I hear from them monthly, at least monthly. But every time they're having something that I can be useful to, I go, I've spoken several times where I'm on one topic or another. [unintelligible] on money. And I go to what they're doing if I don't have a conflict because I can drive there in two hours and 10 minutes.

Alston Cobourn: (1:44:19)
How is how have you seen Winton change? How is it? Is it different? Or the same? Or? I mean, everything's different, right?

Dudley Flood: (1:44:29)
Well, it's different. It's different. In some ways. It's the same in some. It's the same, in the fact, that they still see themselves as a small town. Although they are the county seat. And they see Ahoskie as the large town, and Murfreesboro as the middle sized town and Winton as the a small town, and Harrellsville they don't even think about I mean you know there's 100 people in Cofield.

(1:44:54)
So Winton's always been the center of Hertford County. The cultural center. The school in Winton was prized, it was, it preexisted the state having required schools for black people and it was an academically oriented school and so its reputation it produced people who did fairly well outside the community and it carries that, although it doesn't qualify in those aspects now so much but but it's it caries that as its legacy.

(1:45:29)
Whatever someone still living can do to enhance that legacy we do it. I don't do anything I don't go anywhere that I don't refer to Winton as home. Given that because it's a little old town that you'd never hear of if somebody didn't claim it. And half the people who grew up there don't claim it. You ask them where they're from they tell you Ahoskie. They're not from, I'm not from Ahoskie. I'm from Winton. I respect Ahoskie my sister lives in Ahoskie, my niece lives there. I'm from Winton, always shall be because Winton provided the opportunity for me to become whatever it is that I might've become and I'm grateful for that component of Winton.

(1:46:20)
So it's changed it's been the new people moved in the old people have died. Ethos is nowhere near where it was when I grew up. I can remember the person across the street might run out of flour. She'd come over to our house and mom would give her a cup of flour.

(1:46:40)
I remember when I didn't have a lock on the door on my house. Didn't matter if you had one because everybody had a skeleton key. That's the only kind of locks we had. But if you would ride up and down the man across the street would ask "Can I help you?" It don't happen here. This neighbor here I know him really really well. The neighbor there I've been his neighbor for 50 years. But we don't we don't interact [unintelligible]. The neighbors across the street are Hispanic. I talk to them through their children. They don't speak English. I don't speak enough Spanish to have an ongoing communication and the children are bilingual.

(1:47:31)
So if I had to have a real conversation I talked to their children. Three houses down there I know people just we wave. That would not work in Winton. In Winton you would be in conversation with your neighbors every day, one way or another. If the day you go out of town and stay three days, they you know, you would have told them before you left. This is where I'm going this is when I'll be back.

(1:48:04)
So Winton's changed in that regard, but it's changed back to what everybody else is doing anyway. It's no different than Raleigh in that regard. Because I don't know my neighbors here, either, I know of them. And, in Winton would not have been that case, I knew everybody there of whatever race he was I was known by everybody there, I felt I did.

Alston Cobourn: (1:48:24)
Yeah.

Dudley Flood: (1:48:25)
And that's not coming back. And I know it's not. But do I miss it? Yeah, I do. Really miss it. I'd like to see, I'd like to live in a world that was that way. Everybody was everybody's neighbor.

Alston Cobourn: (1:48:42)
What about the industry in Winton? Well, you mentioned logging and then you mentioned coal with the other town and

Dudley Flood: (1:48:53)
That industry now is not in winton-

Alston Cobourn: (1:48:56)
Yea that area

Dudley Flood: (1:48:58)
Where I was born and reared on the river is now a mill down there and a aluminum factory. Sits right on the dead end right right where my house was. And it employs some people. But more people they're working in Newport News, Shipbuilding and Drydock companies than work anywhere else. They drive every day to Newport News. They'll pool in a van and ride to Newport News and back. No industry there. The farming used to be some farming around and ain't no farming anymore it's agribusiness now. Some two three people bought up all the land.

(1:49:38)
So there's no job there for anybody except if you can drive a tractor or a harvesting machine. The river is no longer productive. When I grew up, I could go down to the river and dip herring fish with a bow net we called it, 18 inch net. I could catch more fish than my whole family needed in in one day. Now that there's a moratorium you can't even fish in that river anymore.

(1:50:04)
So those changes have been subtle. And you would have to have been an old resident to understand how impactful they have been. But they've been impactful. And they've changed not just the economy, but they've changed attitudes to it. Because if you're working in Virginia, you, your heart is in Virginia. Your heart is not in Winton and you only come back to live there because it's cheaper.

(1:50:30)
So when you are living there and working there your heart is there, I really cared about Winton I really cared about, and still do for that matter, but I mean, really cared for culture, but I don't know that that caring is rampant. Some of it is there, but not as much as was pretty much 100%. So that's changed. I'd have a difficult time. Because I would be out of place, a place that I would still be looking for neighbors to be neighbors.

(1:51:10)
For me to stop your kid in the street, people don't want you to chastize their kids. I've had parents come to me and say, I want you to talk to my child. You think that's gonna happen? You're talking somebody else's kid now they tell you to mind your own business. That's generalizing of course, but that's that's the distinction between where we were, and where we are in so many of the issues we're dealing with now, the outgrowth of having lost community. I don't know how to get that back.

Alston Cobourn: (1:51:51)
Is there anything we haven't talked about? That you want to want to add?

Dudley Flood: (1:51:58)
I think we've covered everything that has anything to do with me and more. I would only say that one thing that I'm grateful for now is that we have social media. And because we have social media, there are more of us that know about more things than we knew about before.

(1:52:23)
So it has broadened our perspectives, but it's also broadened our determinations. Because where we get that media determines how we think. I don't look at a whole lot of television. But when I do it's generally news, and I can hear what I want to hear by tuning into a channel that I knew was gonna say what I wanted to say, I could hear one thing on CNN, I hear something very different on Fox. If I decide which one of those I'm going to align myself with, I lose my individuality. I become part of a mass, it's called groupthink.

(1:53:09)
And but what's disturbing to me about that and dangerous about that, is that I'll juggle from one to the other. I want to know what you think and what he thinks, what she thinks, if you only know what one person thinks, one group thinks. But I've been talking to you about what won't work can't work, has no chance of working. Because you have to lock yourself into that way of thinking to be successful. And any invasion of that way of thinking that invader becomes your enemy.

(1:53:42)
So if there was some way to rectify that, and unfold that, that would be what I spend the next 50 or 60 years of my life. I told you, I'm 90 but to do this just have to wait around, I'm still planning on being here

Alston Cobourn: (1:54:03)
you're a very busy man still

Dudley Flood: (1:54:05)
If there's one more day, I don't care, I will be doing what I believe in. What I believe in is all humans deserve dignity, and respect. And I don't think you simply get you have to have skills in delivering that to people and I do know how to teach those skills. I'm thankful for that. But that's not braggadocious. I'm the best I know at teaching those skills. I should do it as long as I'm able. Yeah.

Alston Cobourn: (1:54:36)
Well, thank you so much.

Dudley Flood: (1:54:38)
Thank you

Alston Cobourn: (1:54:39)
For doing this. If you think of something else later, you let me know.

Dudley Flood: (1:54:44)
If you think of something new, let me know.

Alston Cobourn: (1:54:48)
Thank you

Dudley Flood: (1:54:49)
You've been most generous with your time and now I see why Raleigh was easy for you because you knew Raleigh.

Alston Cobourn: (1:54:55)
I do.

Dudley Flood: (1:54:56)
That's rare.