Oral history interview with Peter Holmes, April 18, 1991
Subtitle: interview L-0168, 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; Government policy; Affirmative action programs in education; Higher education and state; University of North Carolina (System); United States. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Office for Civil Rights; United States
Other titles: Interview L-0168, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007); Interview with Peter Holmes, April 18, 1991; Oral histories of the American South.
Description: Peter Holmes became the Director of the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in 1973 and held the position until 1975. Holmes's appointment coincided directly with Judge John H. Pratt's ruling in the Adams v. Richardson case that ten southern states needed to implement more rigorous policies of desegregation. After a brief discussion of how he became director of the OCR, Holmes delves into a description of the various challenges the OCR faced leading up to the Pratt decision in 1973. According to Holmes, the OCR had been primarily concerned with implementing desegregation in elementary and secondary schools, although they had begun to investigate the level of desegregation in higher institutions of education, as well. The Pratt decision, however, necessitated a shifting of the OCR's focus towards developing guidelines for desegregation in southern universities and colleges. The remainder of the interview is devoted to a discussion of the various factors that guided the policy-making process and the various challenges and obstacles the OCR faced in implementing those policies. Because the interview was conducted for a research project on desegregation in North Carolina, Holmes tends to focus on his interactions with North Carolina universities and colleges. In particular, he describes his interactions with and perceptions of William Friday, president of the University of North Carolina system, and he addresses tensions between UNC and the OCR both during and after his own administration. Holmes also devotes considerable attention to interactions between the OCR, the federal court system, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF), and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW). Other points of interest include Holmes's response to charges that the OCR was ineffective in implementing and enforcing desegregation and his emphasis on the dual system of higher education in the South as a unique challenge in determining desegregation policies.
Notes: Title from menu page (viewed on Dec. 8, 2008).

Interview participants: Peter Holmes, interviewee; William Link, interviewer.

Duration: 01:08:23.

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. 136 kilobytes, 125 megabytes.

Original version: Southern Oral History Program Collection, (#4007), Series L, University of North Carolina, interview L-0168, Manuscripts Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Transcribed by Karen Brady-Hill. Original transcript: 20 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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