Oral history interview with Martin Gerry, August 28, 1991
Subtitle: interview L-0157, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Contributors: Link, William A., 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: 2007
Place of publication: [Chapel Hill, N.C.]
Language: eng
Subjects: Interviews; Officials and employees; College integration; Higher education and state; Affirmative action programs in education; United States. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Office for Civil Rights; United States
Other titles: Interview L-0157, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007); Interview with Martin Gerry, August 28, 1991; Oral histories of the American South.
Description: After building a resume advocating for desegregation and other racial justice issues, Martin Gerry became director of the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in 1975, immediately and aggressively moving to force southern states to integrate and to begin reversing the effects of segregation. He made North Carolina an area of focus in part because he felt that the state had the will and the means to successfully integrate. The results disappointed Gerry, and he recounts one example of such disappointing progress: the debate over locating a veterinary school at a historically black institution. Such a decision would have sent a strong signal that North Carolina was ready to offer its black schools a slice of its educational reputation. But by placing the veterinary school at North Carolina State University, the state suggested that it was ready to fight to maintain the supremacy of traditionally white institutions. This interview offers a glimpse of one individual's struggle with dismantling segregation in the South from the top down.
Notes: Title from menu page (viewed on Dec. 4, 2008).

Interview participants: Martin Gerry, interviewee; William Link, interviewer.

Duration: 01:02:42.

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 Jennifer Joyner.  Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers.

Text (HTML and XML/TEI source file) and audio (MP3); 2 files: ca. 152 kilobytes, 114 megabytes.

Original version: Southern Oral History Program Collection, (#4007), Series L, University of North Carolina, interview L-0157, Manuscripts Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Transcribed by Karen Brady-Hill. Original transcript: 24 p.

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

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

System requirements:  Web browser with Javascript enabled and multimedia player.