Oral history interview with Mack Pearsall, May 25, 1988
Subtitle: interview C-0057, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Contributors: Campbell, Walter E., interviewer; Southern Oral History Program; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project); University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library
Edition: Electronic ed.
Publisher: University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
Published: 2008
Place of publication: [Chapel Hill, N.C.]
Language: eng
Subjects: Interviews; Businesspeople; Landowners; School integration; Law and legislation; Education and state; Race relations; Economic development; Schools; Centralization
Other titles: Interview C-0057, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007); Interview with Mack Pearsall, May 25, 1988; Oral histories of the American South.
Description: Mack Pearsall is the son of Thomas J. Pearsall, chair of the North Carolina Advisory Committee on Education that created what came to be known as the Pearsall Plan. Ratified by the General Assembly in 1956, the Pearsall Plan allowed parents to move their children to non-integrated schools or granted them vouchers so that they could send their children to private schools. The younger Pearsall laments that this policy--created in the aftermath of the Brown ruling--cast him and his father as anti-black. He argues that unlike his father's rival, I. Beverly Lake, Thomas Pearsall had a diverse approach to race. Mack Pearsall recalls his father's anguish over this public perception, and insists that the Pearsall Plan served a practical purpose at the time by preventing public school closings. Mack Pearsall goes on to discuss the racial conflicts that arose from the debate over the merger of the Rocky Mount and Nash County school systems. Pearsall argues that Rocky Mount residents largely ceased their resistance to the school merger in order to attract industries to the area. As North Carolina's economic footing has changed from an agricultural to a global economic market, Pearsall points to the necessity of higher education for the state's residents. Better job training and a more knowledgeable populace, he argues, will place North Carolinians ahead of competing nations, and will ultimately produce greater racial integration.
Notes: Title from menu page (viewed on Dec. 2, 2008).

Interview participants: Mack Pearsall, interviewee; Walter E. Campbell, interviewer.

Duration: 01:03:09.

This electronic edition is part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South.  It is a part of the collection Oral histories of the American South.

Text encoded by Kristin Shaffer.  Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers.

Text (HTML and XML/TEI source file) and audio (MP3); 2 files: ca. 120 kilobytes, 115 megabytes.

Original version: Southern Oral History Program Collection, (#4007), Series C, Notable North Carolinians, interview C-0057, Manuscripts Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Original transcript: 40 p.

Funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services supported the electronic publication of this interview.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

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