Oral History InterviewGreg Carter, intervieweeDanele' Williams, interviewerNovember 8, 2001Greenville, NCDW: 0:00 [Danele'] Williams, interviewer, interviewing Mr. Greg Carter. This is Thursday, November, 8, 2001 at 4pm we are in his office at Allstate state, Greenville, North Carolina. Alright, ready? So where are you originally from?GC: 0:16 Stedman, which is about eight miles from Fayetteville.DW: 0:21 Oh, well, how was it going up in Stedman?GC: 0:24 Well, Stedman was basically an agrarian community. Agriculture was probably the primary occupation, plenty of people working on farms, tobacco, soybeans, corn, that kind of thing. Fayetteville was the closest city, I guess the closest magnet city, because it drew folk from from Cumberland County, from Harnett County, whatever county, folk, whatever, whatever county, Hoke County, which is, was the Raeford area, and people from Southern Pines, and some people from Sanford, so grew up in tobacco fields, cropping tobacco as a young kid. Grew up on a tractor, driving tractors, started driving tractors probably about nine years old. Main reason why I wanted to out, go to college so I could figure out how to stay off the tractor. [Danele' laughs] [Greg laughs]DW: 1:18 What year were you born? GC: 1:19 I was born in 1952.DW: 1:20 1952, and what did your parents do, they were farmers, or?GC: 1:24 My mother was a school teacher, and my father farmed and was an air conditioner mechanic. DW: 1:29 Oh okay, so how far did they get in education? GC: 1:32 My mother graduated from college she went to school at Fayetteville State, and my father had a fourth grade education, but probably one of the smartest men I knew.DW: 1:43 So was the area segregated, or?GC: 1:45 Yeah, I finished from, finished high school in an integrated school, I think schools were, were supposedly integrated in 1968 and then consolidated in 1970 my last year in high school, so I went to a predominantly Black school through the 10th grade, then went through to an integrated school in the 10th grade, my choice. It was Freedom of Choice deal then and then a consolidated school, where all the schools, about three or four schools from the area where I live all came together to form one new school. DW: 2:17 So what was the differences between the experience you had with all segregated students and the integrated?GC: 2:32 The biggest, I think, the biggest thing, the biggest things, occurred maybe the first two or three months, just a matter of being in a school and everybody didn't know you. I played football, so it didn't take long for folk to find out who I was. And there was probably continued about 10 or 15 guys that transferred to this school that were athletes. So in that sense, we all got, you know, we're known as athletes.DW: 3:01 Well, did you have any influential teachers in? GC: 3:04 Yes, one of my teachers, [phone rings] a chemistry teacher, I can't remember his name, but a chemistry teacher that I had encouraged me to come to East Carolina, and he and he was a white guy, but he was probably one of the most outgoing teachers that I had ever dealt with, very personal and loved to share, with respect to the teaching experience. And then, just like for instance, in general.DW: 3:26 Okay so, how'd your parents feel when you said you were going to ECU?GC: 3:40 Weren't troubled at all, all by it, my mother being in education. Their primary concern was that I knew that I was going to college when I finished high school and get them out of me picking somewhere they could afford to send.DW: 3:50 So why didn't you go [phone rings] to a historically Black college? GC: 3:51 [Phone rings] My primary reason for not going to a historically Black college was probably because I wasn't as familiar Black students, maybe as as as kids should be in the area that I was from, Fayetteville State was the closest school, but it was a school I was doing all I could did not have to go to because it was right at home. [Phone rings]DW: 4:22 Well, what was the atmosphere like when you first came to ECU?GC: 4:28 When I first got here, there were probably 52-53 of us, and in, and it was a close, it was, it was some closeness, but then you could see sense too an air of Black eliteness. You know, people were, the impression that they were, were mighty smart, and they got here some kind of peculiar way, you know, that just said that I'm so intelligent. Now, can't you see me? You know, parting the deep grasses that's all you white folks. And that was strange, because the class that I came in, the freshman class that I came in with, I think we came, we kind of came in as the first wave of the, we were, we were kind of a rowdy bunch. [Greg laughs]DW: 5:11 So what was, did y'all have any kind of tension between the older students with the eliteness and the, you were [unintelligible]?GC: 5:22 I think so. I think so. I think so, [Phone rings] because we, we as freshmen, did not honor their eliteness, [Phone rings] and we would not follow their path, per se. You know, we were [Phone rings] we were cutting a new course, and I think there was, you know, some, [Phone rings] [Silence] [Phone rings] [Unintelligible]. There was, there were, there were some, some very, very studious, very influential folk that had come earlier than we had, that had paid their dues, that were good influences. There was Ernie Minor and there was Carolyn Holloway, I think she was one of the first judges for the state of North Carolina. Johnny Williams has [Phone rings] a medical practice in Jacksonville, you know, who were not,who were, who were [Phone rings] very intelligent, but not elite, you know, who then kind of guided us a little bit more tenderly than the elite crowd seemed to do, I don't know.DW: 6:43 So what was the average day on ECU's campus for you?GC: 6:45 I guess it was, it was, it was different in the sense that, you know, with any freshman, you're in control of your whole day now there's, there's nobody to, to make you, well, nobody to get you up, nobody to make sure that you're on your way out, and there's nobody preparing your breakfast; you got to take care of that yourself. But then you get into the routine of getting up, doing those things and going to class, and to me, there were really no shocks. The biggest thing that probably, that caused me any problems during my freshman year was an English class that I ended up taking under one of the professors that was supposed to been on probation, or whatever it is that teachers are supposed to be on when they're flunking a whole lot of their students. And basically it had to do with the class, where you get to write your first term paper. And, and I had turned in this paper, and I knew that I had good, good information in it, and she, she hadmarked the paper down to about C- it had all these things on it telling me why she'd done it, but said, you know, it was A, information like, at least she would give me an opportunity to straighten up all the junk that I did, that I wasn't familiar with, you know, or had not taken advantage of and used to have done a better job. But that wasn't the situation, and we had a hard time, the whole, the whole, well at that time, we were on, we were on quarters, whereas you're all on semesters now, we were on a quarter system. A quarter was a whole lot longer than a semester to me, because we had three quarters, and you all have, what, two semesters?DW: 8:39 Two semesters.GC: 8:39 Okay so a quarter can be awful long. We were the last ones out of school all the time. DW: 8:42 Well, speaking on that, how was the faculty towards the African Americans?GC: 8:47 I majored in industrial technology. So the people that you sometimes see in the industrial technology department, are kind of blue collar, blue collar folk, they are not the people that you're likely to see in suits and ties and that kind of thing. So, so immediately you, you kind of, you see some, kind of the picture of the guy hanging out at the, at the gas station or something like that. You kind of look it that way. But, but two, they were, they were, they were friendly people and they were accustomed to doing things with their heads and their hands. So, so, I guess being that type of person, opposed to a person who was elevating themselves completely on the intellect. It was, it was, it was alright. It was, you know, I didn't have any problem. I had a, well, I majored in industrial technology, and I had a history minor, and I minored in history, because it seemed like I just was able to get a good grade in history and I like, I liked that, that part of the school, because it seemed like some I know that I was able to go into a history class and listen to the information that was shared. And then come test time, I was able to regurgitate all that information, and was picking up the concept of whatever would be shared so all in all, of that part of, I didn't, I didn't have that great a problem dealing with that part of school. Now science, that was a different story, but, but if you can imagine going into, you know, accustomed going into small classes of 25 or 30 students, and here you're going into a lecture hall with 150-200 students. And you know, first of all, you're intimidated to the to the point that you hate to raise your hand and ask a question, because there's 200 people in there who probably don't know either, but you don't want to look like the ass who knows less than anyone else and you keep your hand down and you kind of fake it.DW: 9:56 What was your impression of Leo Jenkins at that time?GC: 10:02 Really, he didn't even. He didn't even bother my life. Not, you can answer this, now, but what's your impression of the president of the university, now? DW: 8:55 Not much.GC: 10:33 Yeah, you know, you're trying to get out.DW: 10:33 Oh okay, we'll let's go back to, so where did you live, like what dorm?GC: 11:07 Okay, every one of them. My freshman year, that's what you asked me, specifically?DW: 11:07 Yeah, any year.GC: 11:07 My freshman year in Jones.DW: 11:07 Yeah okay so did you know the difference between the Hill and did you live ever on main campus?GC: 11:16 When I was in, when I was in school, they didn't have coed homes or anything like that, and most of the men were on the Hill and the women were on the other side of campus. It was not until my very, my senior year that, what's the high rise on the Hill?DW: 11:39 Tyler.GC: 11:40 That they opened Tyler for women.DW: 11:43 So you stayed on campus all four years?GC: 11:47 Part of all four years. Two years, two years, one year, I was on and off.DW: 11:53 So what did the campus look like during that time?GC: 12:00 I'm trying to think of the name of what buildings, the library, the library and the new student union that you all have was not there. Everything was basically down on the circle, Wright auditorium, and then the union, student union was just through Wright auditorium, the new, the new business education building wasn't there, the two science buildings and social studies, political science, social studies, history building were there, the music building was there, then this, you know, the new building they're building now was not there.DW: 12:01 I forgot to ask you, what year did you come to ECU?GC: 12:23 1970.DW: 12:27 And so what did you do during your spare time?GC: 12:38 Um. [Danele' laughs] [Greg laughs]DW: 12:45 Play cards, playing!GC: 12:54 Cards, cards and pool developed, developed a keen interest. No, not so keen interest, a keen like for, for Mae West, and who was the other guy, I can't think of his name, he was an old actor doing that period with a big nose.DW: 13:14 You didn't think I was going to know who you're talking about [Danele' laughs]GC: 13:14 Okay, and you know, that was, that was Sunday activities. I'm still talking about because my time is a freshman.DW: 13:19 Well your whole experience, anything is fine.GC: 13:28 Okay, okay, my sophomore year and junior year, I became a party hound. "Ask Jay," well, my nickname when I was in school was Jay, and it was like, "ask Jay where's the party." [Danele' laughs] My freshman year, the start of a new quarter, everybody's got a little money. Everybody's got work study money, everybody's got money from mom and dad. Oh shoot, you would beg up $100-$200 for a party in a little bit of no time. And we used to party in the bottom of Belk dorm Saturdays, well, primarily Fridays and Saturdays, like you'd see us coming in there with time to [unintelligible] because it was about time for the party. And we fire up about 8:30 and we stay down there until the police or one of the dorm managers tell us it's time to end. And you know, we bring our, bring our stereos, everybody bring their stereo and their own music, and everybody seemed to have a good time.DW: 14:34 Alright, so did you know about the card room? Tell me about it.GC: 14:34 Yeah, the card room used to be on the second, on the second floor of the Wright building, I don't know what, I guess that's what they call the Wright building. And I spent plenty, plenty of time up there playing cards. You know, there was, there was a section downstairs where they had the pool table, and then they had the snack bar close to where the old bookstore used to be, or maybe still is, I don't know. But we didn't hang out much downstairs. We were, we were, we were an upstairs crowd. [Greg laughs] [Phone rings]DW: 15:23 Did you join any organizations?GC: 15:24 I was on the, I was a charter member of Alpha Phi Alpha. We were the first fraternity sorority on campus, on the charter line, we probably were the first folk from, the first Black folk at East Carolina not to appear on television for something bad. We had our little going over party, and one of the television stations came out to film there we participated in the homecoming activities, we had, I think one year we were playing Richmond Spiders, and we had a funeral to bury the spider, and we had a big turnout for that, so. And shortly after that, the, I think the Deltas was the next organization, and then the AKAs, and then the Omegas, they were the first, but the main four when I was in school.DW: 16:18 Yeah, were you ever involved in S.O.U.L.S.? GC: 16:20 Yep, S.O.U.L.S. and there was one other, other group, but S.O.U.L.S. was, was probably one of the first activist groups, you know, for Blacks at East Carolina. And, I think lots of times when you have a fledgling group, you something, you sometimes need an adult counselor or an adult advisor, and I think that's what S.O.U.L.S. lacked more than anything. It's somebody to keep, somebody to keep us, keep us on track or keep, keep our aims and intense within sight, because sometimes we can really lose hope.DW: 17:06 Would they, you know, participate in a protest or anything that was on campus?GC: 17:10 Yeah, matter, well, not necessarily just an outbound protest on campus, but I would say a resistance, I would say a resistance or an acknowledgement of the fact that we're Black and going nowhere, [unintelligible]. We were in school during the time when, you know, when the white folks like to come out and wave their Confederate flags, we'd make them disappear. [Greg laughs]DW: 17:43 There was never any altercations, or anything?GC: 17:44 Yeah, on occasion, on occasion, I can't remember, remember the guy's name but Karen Holloway's boyfriend at the time, we were, it's like a homecoming football game, and, and I think it's a city attorney now, a student at East Carolina, and he was one of those waving the flag, and he took his dagone flag [unintelligible], and they had a scuffle. And a guy at the time was the president of the SGA, and Karen's former, he was a small guy. I bet he didn't weigh 130-140 pounds, and this guy probably was 200 pounds, but he jumped his tail. He took the damn flag the whole you know, they were trying, they were going to try to throw him out of school, but, but cooler heads prevailed, and he might have had to sit a week out, but he didn't get thrown in the street. More and more the Confederate flags became, but they began to show up less and less, you know, at football games and basketball games. [Phone rings]Speaker 1 18:54 So what was the, you talking about partying and stuff, did you go to the clubs downtown, or not really?GC: 19:05 On occasion, most of the time, well, we would go, it would be the Buccaneer, some of the same stuff that they have had now, just just the fact that they didn't, they didn't, they didn't play a whole lot of our music. "Joy to the World," "Jeremiah was a Bullfrog" and all that kind of stuff. That's good to listen to, but that's not good to groove and move to.DW: 19:34 What about the community? The Black community around there, did you spend any time around them?GC: 19:40 We participated lots of times in voter registration drives, we'd would attend church, you know, in the community, and, you know, in any, any kind of way that that, that lots of times the Black community, the Black community leaders would have to make an appeal or bring some issues before us, but then we readily respond to help any kind of way we can. We could, but two you know, we were freshmen and sophomores. We didn't always have transportation, and to walk from here to the other side of town, 30-45 minute walk. And then you got to make a trip back and clock is ticking, you got to study, so you know. DW: 20:24 Well you ain't going to the clubs over there.GC: 20:25 Well sometimes, but not much, not much. DW: 20:25 Yeah I heard about that.GC: 20:26 You know how things can become territorial. You know, you need to stay your ground and we'll stay ours.DW: 20:33 You didn't have any tension between local people versus "Naz" people?GC: 20:43 Not really, not really, you know, sure, but you know. But like any, any tension between anyone it was, it was based in ignorance. [Knock on the door]DW: 20:54 So with only 50 students, how did you get dates?GC: 20:57 That was, that was probably, that was probably the hardest thing to get, especially if you were a freshman. But oftentimes the, the freshman girls gravitated to the older guys, the guys that were sophomores and juniors and seniors and the like and but sometimes they would have sisters and cousins, and they would invite them. So, so usually when they would invite them, they would be, you know, 11th or 12th graders. They wouldn't always be experienced college girls, I'd say. [Danele' laughs] [Greg laughs]DW: 21:36 So where would you go on a date if you got one?GC: 21:38 Somewhere on campus, you know, sometimes it would be a campus movie, a movie on campus, or you could go downtown to the movies, you know, or you're visiting the dorms. DW: 21:49 So how do you feel about ECU's general treatment of the African Americans, like?GC: 21:58 During that time? DW: 21:59 Yes.GC: 21:59 Okay. Well, I think, I think it's life is lots of times, what you make, you know, if you, if you slink away from, if you slink away from someone trying to hit you upside the head, then every time you pass, you see some of, somebody raise their hand you think they're hitting you upside the head. But if you show that, you know, if you swing him, he'll swing back at you, if you show that you believe that you're somebody and you aren't going to be oppressed, depressed or regressed by anything that's going on, that you're going to go ahead, in most any kind of situation, I think you can usually overcome and come out ahead. In the group that I was in, the group that I was in school with we pretty we were fairly supportive of one another, in the sense that even as even as freshmen, we knew who we were. We knew that we were a new, a new wave of people that were benefiting from the struggles of Martin Luther King and all the other Black civil rights leaders of that time, and we pretty much had a mission to succeed, not to fail. So no matter what we came up against, you know, we were going to be successful, and we weren't going to back up, we weren't going to be intimidated by anyone or anything. We were going to go ahead and reap the benefit of there later.DW: 23:24 Well, how do you see the differences between campus when you were [unintelligible] like, when you see the changes when it comes to African Americans?GC: 23:35 Well, maybe I don't spend as much time, well, I know I don't spend as much time there now as when I was there in school. But when I was in school, I could see Black people together, you know, walking to classes and that kind of thing, sometimes even in groups. We had a, we had, we had at Thanksgiving with their close about, or even close to to Christmas, we'd always have a turkey bowl or Christmas bowl where we all get together and have a football game, and we turn out in masses and bruise one another and knock one another around. And you'd see us all enmeshed; you'd see us all together in there. But as I drive through the campus now, I don't see them milling, milling together too much, everybody's pretty much doing their own thing, which may be good, I don't know, but I'm kind of of the impression that that you still need to real, but they still need to realize that they're in the minority, and they still need to recognize that even though we moved from, we moved from in, from a segregated environment when I leave, when we leave our home to go to school or to go to work or wherever, we still need to know where we come from, and we know how much that that origin supports us in all that we do going forward, and we need to realize that we need that support beyond the house. We need to, we need that when we step up.DW: 25:07 Okay, well, you had mentioned that you were in Alpha, so how do you feel that organization added to? GC: 25:13 Well it added a whole lot, because we were truly, I think, one of the main social outlets for, for the kids, when we were in school, because watch something our group would be doing, our group examples would be doing the ones that would do parties and socials and events and that kind of thing where kids got a chance to come out and click their heels and stomp their feet in, in kind of a less than informal setting. You gotta catch, put on your nice clothes when we had little balls and dances, and oftentimes we would, it would be off campus. So that would even add a little bit more to the flavor of us doing things as grown up sophisticated Black people. [Greg laughs] [Danele' laughs]Speaker 1 26:01 So did you, you played football in high school, you never played in college.GC: 26:04 No, not at East Carolina.DW: 26:06 So how was the whole sports mixed up?GC: 26:08 Well, there was, there was a good, good mix of the guys that were sports oriented or guys that were on sports teams that made up the student body to the point that they did not separate themselves. Probably the most separated, separated, segregated athlete was probably Carl Lester. I don't know why. I don't, maybe it was because he was married when he got to school, everybody else was pretty much single. Carl Lester married a freshman, so.DW: 26:42 I'm not familiar with him so you gotta explain, Carl Lester.GC: 26:44 Carl Lester. He does the play by play, or the voice of the pirate. He's the Black voice of the pirate on the radio. Okay, and he was probably the, he was probably one of the most, probably the highest sought, sought after athletes coming out of the state of North Carolina in the late '60s, early '70s. And when he got, when he graduated from high school, he came, he must have been [unintelligible] once he got married. So because he was married, he was, he had a different lifestyle. He was an athlete and a married athlete. So not only did he have sports in school, but he had a family to take care of it with, but most of all, the other athletes blended in with all the other students. And we had athletes that were not only, not only on the football team, but on the basketball team and on the track and field team and, and using those athletes that, that, that were not so much consumed by their, their sport, as football is a very consuming sport, we got a lot of interaction with the guys that were on the track team and guys that were on the basketball team, but the football players, they had so much of their life dominated by the sport that you, you had very little interaction with them, and sports was good at the time.DW: 28:00 So what did you do on weekends? GC: 28:12 On weekends, a lot of times we would, until we, until we developed a social [unintelligible] or social group here, we'd take off and go to the predominately Black schools.DW: 28:28 So which ones did you go to?GC: 28:30 Well we'd go, we go to Central, we go to, what's the school in Raleigh? We go to, DW: 28:37 Shaw. DW: 28:38 Shaw and [Both: "St. Aug," St. Augustine].GC: 28:39 We were cavaliers. [Greg laughs]DW: 28:40 So did you notice just being on that campus, that atmosphere versus ECU's, like? GC: 28:46 Well, yes, I mean, there were, there was some, there was some, there was some differences, sure, because the, well, the culture, you know, culture was different, um, but then too, not a whole lot, a lot different either. You know, being young, young Black, we're young, veral Black men, [Danele' laughs] we were looking for girls, girls. [Greg laughs]DW: 29:22 [Unintelligible] [Both laugh] So was this, went off my questions, we're coming off the top, now. Is there anything you wish was different about your experience?GC: 29:35 Not really, really, I don't. I have, my wife went to a predominantly Black school, and she had shared her experience, experiences with me at a predominantly Black school. And to me, hers have not over matched mine in East Carolina. I guess it's a matter of both finding your niche, finding where you're where you're comfortable, finding a way to keep yourself happy, finding a way to to relate to your circumstances and the people that are in the, that make up your circumstances, I guess, if that be the case, and then making the best out of that. I had, I had maybe 15 or 20 people that I've not just counted as people that are, they were true, true friends that helped, that helped make my time at East Carolina as enjoyable as it was, and as an, as an enriching as it was in, and something that really helped me grow as an individual. If you come, if you go anywhere, hanging on to your regrets, you know then your experience is gonna be regretful. But if you go places anticipating things to be rewarding, to be beneficial. For you, you get benefits and, and I think I met some people, did some things that were really fulfilling, as for me as a student at East Carolina.DW: 29:36 So you keep in touch with the people?GC: 30:00 Pretty much I got a purple book around here somewhere. If get real lonely or want to call somebody and laugh. I'll grab it and call one or two of them every now and then and see some on occasion, at homecoming, some that were real close, some that were not so close, but we still were friends, you know, I'd be glad to see them.DW: 30:59 So how often do you go back to [unintelligible] to events?GC: 30:57 Well I probably go three or four times a year anyway, and but more, you know, sporting events than any academic things, and so.GC: 32:08 Are you in any alumni chapters?GC: 32:09 Not any alumni chapters, but I support the industrial arts school. I usually give, give a donation at least once or twice a year. DW: 32:09 So how did you use that degree to what you're doing now? [Danele' laughs]GC: 32:09 That is, that's, that's, mighty peculiar, I did not, not at al,l when I graduated from school, the the economy itself was in a depression or suppression or depression, and there weren't that many jobs available in industry when I got out of school. But I found a job doing something else where they're looking for minority folk, and that was working with Ford Motor Credit Company as credit adjuster in Richmond, Virginia. I did that for six years, and I've been back here in North Carolina since 1981 and I've been trying to help people as best I could, as I can as an insurance agent,a little better than 20 years.DW: 33:04 Well, alright think that's all the questions I can have right now, thank you for your interview. [END OF TAPE]