Howard Fitts, Jr. interview recording, 1994 June 08

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Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Okay,	0:01
Paul Ortiz	Dr. Fitz, I wonder if you could tell me where you were born, when you were born and a little bit about your family background.	0:03
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Okay. I was born in Greenville, North Carolina in 1921. Actually, my native home is in Wilson. The reason I was born in Greenville, was that I had an uncle who was a physician. Then my mother went there for delivery, and so all my growing years were in Wilson. I left Wilson in 1937, to go to college, and after graduating from college in 1941, I was in Wilson working with public schools for a brief period. And from there until the military service. And I spent three years on the military service. I returned from that and I did graduate study at NC Central. I worked for about three years in public health over in Chapel Hill, and from there I went to graduate school in New York, and came back to Durham and worked at NC Central. And that's where the major portion of my professional career was spent, on the faculty at NC Central.	0:15
Paul Ortiz	What was it like to grow up in Wilson during the 1920s?	1:39
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	The 1920s, growing up in Wilson that's my recollection of things, but I had impressions as a little child, but the major recollections centered around the depression. You see the depression in the 1928, '29 '30s, and those are the years that I do remember. My father was a school teacher. He worked for the rural school system and so was my mother. But even with their teaching, there were some difficult times. And one of the things that I have very clear memories of, was that my father used to assist them at the welfare department, to make baskets of food for people who were very needy. And it was more or less volunteer, but in doing so, they also gave them baskets.	1:44
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And there were a lot of other things I remember about the depression. I remember some people who seemed to have lost everything. Some Blacks who had accumulated property and had built nice homes, and they just lost them and the experience was too much for many of them. And they didn't live long after. There were some who were suicidal. At the time, I didn't know who committed suicide, or who died natural deaths, but I remember a number of people were so affected by the losses and the severity of the depression, that they did not live long.	2:47
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	It was quite an interesting time. My father always rented the house. He always wanted to own one, and he wasn't able to really purchase a home, until I went off to college. And that was when we were really coming out of the depression in 1937, '38, and things were getting better. He was able to buy a car, I guess around 1935 or '36, when he got a—I don't know what they call it then, but it was something like a bonus from the Army. People that served in World War I got some relief with something of a bonus at the time, and that's when he was able to buy used car. But things like that, I recall.	3:34
Paul Ortiz	In Wilson, what side of town did you live in?	4:34
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well, Wilson was a typical, in terms of the railway track, dividing in the community. For the most part, Blacks lived on the eastern side of the railway track, though older populations live on the western side of the railway track. But generally, the White population lived west of the railway track and the Black population lived east of it. And that's where we lived at. Our schools were in that section. There were no schools that we attended on the other side of the track. I guess that was somewhat characteristic of the whole region there, particularly those towns on the Atlantic coastlands, such as Rocky Mountain, Wilmington and some of the other towns like Fayetteville, et cetera.	4:38
Paul Ortiz	Can you tell me something about the Black community on the east side of Wilson? Do you remember Black-owned businesses, institutions?	5:42
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Yeah. Well, I guess that that was another crisis situation. There was a Black bank there in the 20s and many of the Blacks deposited their savings in that bank, and the bank went under. And going under, A number of Blacks suffered great losses. There were other businesses that Blacks had. Nash Street was the main street that ran through Wilson, and on East Nash Street, on the eastern side of the railroad track, was a formidable business area. The two pharmacists that were owned by Blacks and funeral homes in that area, poolrooms, of course, some other taxi businesses, so on.	5:56
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Those were the kinds of businesses that were in that area. One Black owned a theater that had done well, they had a theater ballroom and office facilities. And there were several physicians who had on East Main Street. And so yes, there were Black businesses. I know that there were people who owned property and had what we call rental houses then. But as I think of it, I don't remember any of them having an office that they operated. I don't know what they operated from. But those were the kinds of businesses that existed in the area. I understand that there had been a jewelry store, but I don't recall anything about a jewelry store in that area. I do know in another town that a Black had had a very successful jewel business, but not in Wilson, that I know of.	6:55
Paul Ortiz	Do you remember going into the 20s and 30s, the quality of medical care in the community? Where did people go?	7:55
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Okay. Everyone in those years, depended upon the private practitioner, who made home visits. And so much of the service for people who were really ill, took place in the home and the physician visited the home setting. They had offices and they did treatment and examination and so on, in the offices. We had a hospital. I really would like to know how that hospital was established. I know the name of the persons who established the hospital, but it was a sizable hospital. I presume it must have had 30 to 40 rooms in it, which operated insofar as I recall, from early 30s. I don't know how early really, but it closed down about early forties, maybe '46 or '47. That was the hospital to which Blacks were taken. They did whatever surgery, whatever procedures they were able to do at that time.	8:06
Paul Ortiz	How was it staffed, by Black doctors and nurses?	9:30
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	It was staffed by Black doctors and nurses. It was serviced, of course by White specialists, who were specialists. I don't know. The only specialists I recall in the 30s were—Well, just about everybody did surgery then. I think any doctor did whatever surgery he chose us to do, but there were some who were supposed to be more skilled, but we didn't call them ophthalmologists, then they call them eye, and nose and throat specialists, who would come in to do things. And I don't recall any other Black specialists working in that area, but the hospital was heavily used, a major problem in that area, tuberculosis.	9:36
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Tuberculosis was devastating through those years, and it took families away, or took young people, caused death among young people who had much promise or who had great aspirations for things. And they would be sent away to the sanatoriums. My first recollections of where they would be sent, would be Asheville. I've known of any number of people who were sent to Asheville until they got to be terminal, and then when they were terminal, they'd bring them back to their families. I know some friends whose parents or sisters or brothers died in the ambulance, on the way from Asheville to the area.	10:34
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Beyond that, if there were some highly technical things that people needed medically from Wilson, they would bring them to St. Agnes, which was a Black hospital associated with St. Augustine's College, in Raleigh itself. And then if they were veterans, there were Black VA hospitals that [indistinct 00:12:09]. And I remember, because my father assisted veterans to get into the hospital, he knew how to do the paperwork and the right of pills and so on. But even veterans would have to go that far away for hospitalization. And of course, they got better hospitalization than other people would've gotten in the local hospitals, and so they were segregated hospitals.	11:32
Paul Ortiz	What were some of your earliest childhood memories growing up in Wilson?	12:40
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Memories about growing up, or memories relating to racial relationships, or what?	12:46
Paul Ortiz	How about just growing up?	12:52
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	As I was growing up? Well, some of my early childhood memories were that we attended schools and we always looked forward to schools. And that's where we developed friendships. Church was pretty strong in our lives, and some churches had very good youth programs for Blacks. These were Black churches of course. The Black churches at that time were of course the Baptist, the Methodists, the Holiness, the Free Will Baptist. Then we had a Presbyterian, and there were no Catholic churches in my early years. But those churches, and just about everybody went to Sunday school. It was sort of the routine, as much a part of your life as going to public schools for most of us. Dirt streets, we had dirt streets and excitement came to us when the police would chase bootleggers. And I have very vivid memories of bootleggers being chased around the streets by the police in their fast cars.	12:53
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And there was a lot associated with the making of whiskey and the selling of whiskey. It was nothing of course, ever compared with the drug scene today, but it was quite a business among Blacks and those were prohibition days. And the of course, they made very definite impressions on kids growing up. But we were in a tobacco town, which means that for employment, a large number of people worked on the farms. In fact, the large proportion of Blacks in the county were in the farming areas, and they were tenant farmers. And they experienced some real difficulties in that the largest crop was tobacco. They worked that crop during the spring, summer and late summer months, the growing, the harvesting of it, et cetera.	14:14
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	If the landlord was not a very cautionable person, it was better, and for his benefit to have a family tenant living on his farm, until they got his tobacco crop in, and then find reason for them to move on, or he'd not need them. And so you had a lot of rural people who moved from farm to farm, with the season and with the temperament of the farm owner. If they lived in town, any of them lived in town, but would hire themselves out to farmers, particularly during the harvesting. Just about all of us, as kids worked on a tobacco farm in the fall, to the private school seasons, such as some areas that did with the cotton. But we didn't have that much cotton, or at least I didn't get involved with it. And we worked in the factories in August and heads of households could work in the factories in August and receive formidable income.	15:32
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And January, once they'd gotten the tobacco in and gotten it in the hogs to be shipped to Durham, or wherever the cigarette making plants were, they were out of work after Christmas. And that created considerable hardship when there was no employment for large numbers of people. And that was when they would have to turn to the welfare, or do other things to support their families.	16:57
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And at that point, you had a number of them being put out of rental houses and trying to find some place to live. So the economy related to the tobacco farming and the seasons and what happened with that. In fact, it was very interesting. My father, as I said, was a teacher. The schools were eight months schools, and so if he didn't go to summer school—and generally he did go to summer school, to improve a certification, et cetera, by the end of July, he was back home and going to work in the tobacco fields. He would help to harvest tobacco and then he would work in the tobacco factory, when it opened.	17:34
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	His job was to make the large barrels in which tobacco was stored. It's my understanding that his income was better in the factory, than it was as a teacher, but the period of employment was so short, until it did not benefit him to give up teaching to work in the factories. Though he could increase his income that way. But there are a lot of other things, naturally I can recall about growing up, but I didn't know whether you wanted relate it to some specific focus.	18:30
Paul Ortiz	Yeah. Do you remember during your childhood days, having White playmates?	19:11
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Okay. I lived in a neighborhood where we were not near any Whites, and so I didn't have White playmates. I knew some people who lived in neighborhoods that abutted White neighborhoods and they did play with the White kids. To what extent and how intimate they became, I can't tell, I don't know, during my childhood days. But our neighborhood was so compactly Black, until all of my playmates were Black playmates.	19:22
Paul Ortiz	Was there a time during your childhood or your adolescence, that you remember incidents surrounding race relations happening?	20:07
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Oh, yeah. I have oftentimes tried to see if I could recall any specific, whether it's traumatic or just impressive incident. And I don't recall any one. It was probably a meshing of a number of them. But I think the first one that I do recall, was that my father was with a number of organizations, church organizations and so on. And so, very often he'd have to get his programs printed. And on one occasion, he sent me to the printer's home and the printer must have lived 12 blocks or more away from where we lived. And I took the thing up and went to the door and I asked for the printer. And some of the family and all were on the porch, and they just called back in the back to him, and I think they called, "Daddy, there's a darkie out here to see you." And that was one of the things that I remember that sort of struck me then.	20:18
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Other things I remember. I belonged to the Presbyterian church and we had a minister who took interest in youth. And he had taken some boys out to an area just out on an outskirts of town. And he was a man who did not accept abuse easily, and he resisted things that he considered abusive. And we were told that they were near someone's farm and the people didn't like his response and they kicked him. And that made quite a furor around, that they kicked Reverend Douglas. And that's a thing that I remember, that has stuck with me. I remember at times, going with my dad to the superintendent's office on occasion. Well, my dad was sort of a formal type person. He wore a tie back all the time, and very formal. And in those times, a male who was a school teacher, the Blacks called him, and 'fessor. And most of the people called my dad 'fessor Fitz.	21:33
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	It was amusing. Not Mr. Fitz. But I noticed when we would go to the superintendent's office, the secretary who generally ran things, who was a lady there, and she would call him Howard. And I remember that. That struck me that when he got up there, he was Howard and he was not Mr. Fitz, or 'fessor Fitz or what have you. But the things like that. Naturally, everybody remembers going up into the balcony for theater. And the thing that sort of troubled me as I became older, was that such practices as those were sort of accepted as the way things ought to be.	22:56
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	That was, that's the way it is, and so you fit it into the way it is. Now, there were some people who did not, and my dad was always working for change, but he respected the customs and so on. And he fell right into those customs. I never heard him discuss much about mistreatment and so on, but he always was promoting NAACP. He was very much at risk, in terms of his job and other things, by belonging and collecting memberships and other things. He took great risk as far as getting people to vote, but he was never one who was very vocal and showed anger or anything. My mother showed more anger and frustration of the racial situation than he does.	23:49
Paul Ortiz	Interesting. So your dad was involved in the Wilson NAACP?	24:49
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Yeah.	24:53
Paul Ortiz	Did he have any contact with G.K. Butterfield?	24:54
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Yeah, they worked together.	24:59
Paul Ortiz	They worked together?	25:01
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Mm-hmm. In fact, I guess dad was there before Dr. Butterfield came. See, that's an interesting thing too. Dr. Butterfield could do more, because he was an independent dental practitioner. Most of the other people who were in, had certain kinds of obligations with the White power structure, or just Whites in general. And they could do things to a point, and if Mr. Herring or somebody else called them down on what they were doing, they either had to run the risk of losing jobs, or not being able to get a loan at the bank, or having no mortgage called in, or whatever else happened to them, if they didn't discontinue what made them unhappy.	25:03
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And sure, that was the case with my father. He was a public school teacher and at any moment, the superintendent—but not necessarily the superintendent, the secretary could call him in and let him know what he had to do, and did not do. And so, Dr. Butterfield could be more of a spokesman than others, because he didn't depend on 'em. He was certainly subject to pressures that could be brought by the White community, by being a dentist.	25:55
Paul Ortiz	Dr. Butterfield started with NAACP in the mid to late forties?	26:31
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	I would think earlier than that.	26:36
Paul Ortiz	Earlier than that?	26:38
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well, I sold the Crisis Magazine, and that's how I learned to count money a little bit, as about a nine-year-old. And you see, I was born in 1921, so that means in 1930 the NAACP was having inroads in the community and my dad had me out selling the Crisis for Black—	26:40
Paul Ortiz	So there was a chapter by that time you think?	27:06
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Now whether it was a chapter, there was a chapter before the forties, yes. I remember there was a chapter before the forties, whether they were very active or not, I don't know. But I do know they raised funds for the suits and those kinds of things in the 30s, yes.	27:13
Paul Ortiz	Interesting. I have another question relating to that. I talked to Dr. Butterfield's son a couple of weeks ago. He told me a very interesting story about a situation that happened in one of the schools in the Black community. And his guess was the 1930s. And this situation involved a Black school teacher who was slapped by—	27:37
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	I'd say that was the 20s.	28:00
Paul Ortiz	It was the 20s?	28:00
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	I would think it was the late 20s or very early 30s, as young GK said, he had to guess about it. But I too, have heard the story and if it had happened while I was growing up in the 30s, I perhaps would've known about it. Now, let me give you a sort of tie to it. I said that there was a Black bank there. The bank was operated by Mr. Reed, and I don't know who else's name was—What was Reed's name? Nevertheless, he headed the bank at the time of this incident, about which I was told, or which GK was told, Mr. Reed was a school principal. And I remember the bank in the early 30s, which means Mr. Reed had discontinued being a school teacher and now was devoting his full-time to the bank. And I think the bank went broke in '32 or '33, I would guess, or something. So I would suspect that that incident happened about 1928, '29. I could find out. I'd be interested in finding out myself.	28:00
Paul Ortiz	But Mr. Reed was the Black teacher?	29:22
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Mr. Reed was the Black school person, I'm told, who reported, I think, related to the superintendents. I don't know what the situation was. I'm fearful of getting into it, because I don't know the facts. The upshot of it was, that Mr. Reed was seen as someone not standing up for what Blacks needed and someone who got the lady in trouble, got her into the difficulty. So that when the man slapped her, and now what Mr. Reid did after that, whether he took a stance or tried to smooth things over, I don't know. But the man, the superintendent, to the extent I understand it, did slap her. And they had some incident happen in the Baptist church and a man I knew, beat Mr. Reed up. And Mr. Lucas beat him up there at the church and I think threatened to kill him or something. But all of us was—	29:24
Paul Ortiz	Now who is Mr. Lucas?	30:41
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Mr. Lucas was a Black person, who was, I guess like many others, very unhappy about whatever Mr. Reed did in the situation. And it may have been that they were having discussion in a meeting or something in the church. And it's my understanding that Mr. Lucas attacked Mr. Reed and I believe threatened to kill him, or may have gone to get a gun, or something or so. But I'm going on stories that I've heard as well. My father never talked much about it and it may have happened before he even got to Wilson, so I'm saying it was beyond the 30s. If so, it was very early 30s. I can get someone who can give you more accurate information on that.	30:44
Paul Ortiz	That would be interesting, because I know Judge Butterfield mentioned that there was just a lot of interesting things that happened. And he said that the Black community, from what he was told, actually after the Black teacher was slapped, the students—there was a student stride and they actually set up for a time at a different school.	31:33
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	There may be, I don't know. I cannot say that that happened or didn't happen. From what I gather, it was more of the adults into it. I don't even know that there were students involved. When Butterfield came along, that was when students really got involved. He himself did. That's the judge you're talking about, himself. But from what I suspect, this was mostly an adult issue and that they felt that Mr. Reed had done things he should not have done in that situation. But there are persons who are close enough to that situation to tell what happened.	32:00
Paul Ortiz	Interesting. Maybe I could get—	32:54
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	I was thinking of giving you a phone number to call.	32:58
Paul Ortiz	Oh, we can do it after the interview. How about if we could talk about your family life a bit, do you remember your grandparents?	33:01
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	During my lifetime, I had a grandfather who was my maternal grandfather and a grandmother who was paternal grandmother. They did not live near us. We lived in Wilson. My grandfather lived in Warrenton. That's the famous Warrenton. My grandmother, who was my father's mother, lived out from Warrenton, in Littleton, in Warren County. And so, my contacts with them were on visits to them, or their visits to our home. Most of my intimate relationships with family, of course were with my mother and father and my sister. There were four of us, the aunt whose husband was a physician in Greenville, where I told you my mother went for me to be born, we maintained very close family ties. In fact, they have one daughter and because they thought that the school system and some other factors were better, that daughter lived with us, to go to public school and went home on weekends. But from perhaps the seventh grade on, she went to school with us. Prior to that, she went to live with an aunt in Baltimore and went to school in Baltimore.	33:21
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And so even in those days, there was a concern about quality of schools and people did lots of things. I had an uncle in Raleigh, who moved his wife and children to Washington to go, so that they could go to school there, though they lived in Raleigh.	35:00
Paul Ortiz	Did you see your grandparents often, or do you remember any interactions, any stories they might have told you?	35:24
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	No. My grandfather, I saw him so seldom, and he died when maybe I was 13 or 14. But for him, I was just another grandchild and played on his knee a little bit, but that's all. I wasn't in Warrenton that much. My grandmother used to visit us in the summers, and while my parents were in summer school, I would go to live with my grandmother in the summer. So I had much more time with her, and she never really talked about slavery, but I think she was a very small child when emancipation came along. But she didn't talk about it at all.	35:37
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	She was very much attached to a White family then on the farm, next to her farm, and they would call her Aunt Jane to imply intimacy and affection, et cetera. And she would spend a lot of time there. Sometimes they would come over to her house, but for the bit of time that I was with them in the summer, I don't remember them being there very much. Her son who operated the family farm, didn't like the head of the household. The Wilson, that was the White Farm, he didn't like him at all. They had lots of disputes about property lines and who was crossing and they had lots of disputes on those things.	36:33
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	There was one story about the Wilson's. My dad, that was before he was married. He went to school in Elizabeth City, in Elizabeth city state. I would guess that this must have been post World War I times, 1919, 1920. I'm told that the train, that was how they got around—They rode the train, my family didn't have any car. He'd gotten off his train up in Norlina, which meant that he had maybe six miles to go, to get to his house and he would walk that. Some Black had thought to have committed some crime. I don't know what it was, a Black male. And when my father got off the train, I was in the neighborhood, there was a mob and they were taking him in, and I guess he was under suspect, as well as someone else.	37:32
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And it happened that this Mr. Wilson, who owned the farm next to my grandmother's farm, was there and rescued him. And I remember that kind of story about the relationship, that he did rescue my father from possible harm with the mob.	38:51
Paul Ortiz	Well, what kind of education did your parents have? You mentioned your father went to school.	39:15
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Yeah. Both of them had what was called a normal education, which was teacher training, two years, teacher training. I guess my mother had more. She went to school at Shell and I don't think she ever had a bachelor degree. But she was prepared for elementary education. And that's what she did. I've never even seen an diploma or anything. I guess I should look to see if there's anything like that around. My father had gotten a two-year teaching degree, normal training at Elizabeth City. And thereafter, he did summer schools and he went a number of places to summer school, but he never got a baccalaureate degree. He missed being—moving up. He was a rural principal, maybe six, seven-teacher school. And he'd been in that size school, and then the school was being transformed into sort of a union school. And because he didn't have his degree, he was not given the principalship. I think that was a real blow to him. And he became a principal of another rural school and eventually, a teacher in a union school	39:25
Paul Ortiz	Who was responsible for the discipline and the child raising in the family?	40:58
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well, both my parents were. Naturally, we were with our mother more. My sister, now, my sister's two years younger than myself. We were with our mother, more than we were with our father, because my father, in addition to his teaching, he did carpentry work. And I told you he worked for the factories, so he was gone a bit of the day, so most of the discipline was left to my mother. And there were rare occasions when she reported my misdeeds to him and he did a whipping, so did she. They used switches. And so, I had as much respect in terms of being obedient and all of that, with one as much as the other. Both of them were responsible for disciplining us. I guess, my dad tried to put on a more severe act than my mother, but I don't know that he was any more severe. He attempted to be stern.	41:09
Paul Ortiz	Now, you have two sisters?	42:22
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	One sister.	42:25
Paul Ortiz	one sister?	42:26
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Mm-hmm.	42:26
Paul Ortiz	Were you born close to each other?	42:29
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Two years apart. She was two years younger than I am.	42:33
Paul Ortiz	What kind of relationship did you have with her?	42:39
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well, being that close, two years apart, we just grew up together as playmates. And being a male, of course, with a little sister, I didn't want to be bothered with her. And as we got older and I was in the groups of boys, I didn't want her tagging along with me, with my peers. And even when I went to college, I was unhappy that they ended up sending her to the same college that I was in. I just didn't want to be bothered with a little sister, so to speak. We had our disagreements and all, but my mother had really taught me never to strike a girl. And so, I never got into real fights with her, although she took advantage of that sometimes. She took advantage of it, but I never got into any real fights with her.	42:43
Paul Ortiz	Who was responsible for things like the budgeting, household decisions in your house?	43:50
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	My current house, or then?	44:01
Paul Ortiz	No, when you were growing up.	44:03
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	When we were growing up? That's a point of interest. I think my father would like to have been, "Head of the household." But I think my mother, as far as clothing for the children, selecting furniture for the house and other things, gave much more thought and attention to those things, and therefore planned and worked those out. I don't know of anything where he turned over his money to her, nor where she turned over hers to him. I think each of them had their independent bank account. But I think that there were occasions in which say a refrigerator was bought, and it was billed to my father and he paid for it. On the other hand, there were times when a washing machine, or something was bought and the mother had it in her name and she paid for it. Not giving a lot of attention to how they managed things, that's what I recall, that they sort of together, but yet independently did things together.	44:06
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	I think my father planned for how to pay for the house, and so on. And I think as far as what expenditures they did on my education, my sister's education, I think my mother did most of that. My father did the household things, and I think that was always the case, that he felt that he was responsible for the household. So the utility bills and others, and so far as I know, and the rent, because they paid rent for years. I think he took the major responsibility and accepted what my mother would contribute, but had no set requirement of her. And she wasn't all that independent, but she and her sister were a little more independent than most women, at that time. Yeah, they had a greater degree of independence than other women, at that time.	45:39
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	As far as relationship with males goes, for example, one of the best examples, which I always find it interesting to reflect on, was when they were married my father was a Baptist and he'd always grown up in his rural Baptist church. My mother belonged to the A.M.E. church, which is the same church as St. Joseph's here. When they came to Wilson, and that was before I was born, I'm very sure that my father moved directly into his Baptist church and in that Baptist church, he assumed a lot of responsibilities being a deacon, other things, and the superintendent of the Sunday school. I gather that my mother did some affiliation with the not so active AME, and not so strong AME church in Wilson, when we were born, and—	46:42

Paul Ortiz	Okay.	0:00
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Okay. As I was saying, when my sister and I got to be amazed that we should be involved in Sunday school, my mother, I am certain, made the decision that we would go to the Presbyterian church, because they had a very strong youth movement and they had a very progressive, well trained minister and his wife, and they had good Sunday school and other programs for youth. Now, I am sure that there must have been some very serious moments in our household. I was too young to know, from my dad, strong Baptist, lifetime Baptist, superintendent of Sunday School, but his children going down the block to the Presbyterian church. I don't know how my mother pulled that off, but that's something that, after I got older and I looked at it, I did go to his son to school from time to time, but I was a guest there, I was not an member.	0:05
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	But I think that shows you some of the kind of independence and stance that my mother would be inclined to take. It was true that the Baptist Church was one where there were generally always problems with factions. One faction supporting the minister and another faction anti and all of that. And so I think she was able to argue from that position that their factions were not good in the church. But to me, that was a significant thing in our family life. You were about to ask another question or something?	1:15
Paul Ortiz	Oh, yeah. I was just thinking about the neighborhood life. I'm kind of interested in relationships. Do you remember relationships that you, your family had with neighbors? Did you have an active community? Was it close?	1:57
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well, I think I told you my father was community oriented. And not only had he been involved with and stayed involved with the NAACP, but he was very much involved with getting people registered to vote, which was a definite no-no for a school teacher. He was with the various church groups, but he also provided leadership for what was then, the American Legion. And the American Legion at that time was needed for Blacks, because Blacks were not getting the benefits and whatever benefits that should have come to veterans. Many of them just lacked the knowledge to know what they were entitled to. And so our house was one that I could remember veterans coming in and out as though my dad had had a law office, but what he was doing was helping them get pensions when they were entitled to them, getting into the hospital and other things.	2:20
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	He was very early on, helping with labor unions, which was a no-no. And he helped with that, so he was pretty well known in the community because of his interest and involvement. My mother certainly was with the PTA, she was a teacher with the school. She was with the PTA, but she worked at the church groups. And then later in life, was a very strong member of the Garden Club, which was sort of a social group that did other things. So there was considerable community involvement and there were lots of family friends. My father was a scout leader and did a lot to get boys involved with scouting programs and so on.	3:33
Paul Ortiz	Now the American Legion, was there a separate American Legion for Black people?	4:28
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Oh yeah, everything was separate. There was nothing that both Whites and Blacks belonged to at that time together. You were either a subordinate group, I forget. In fact, there's some kind of title that the American Legion had at that time, which was really the Black unit. It was sort of like unit B of the American Legion or something like that. But no, they were not together. Each community had a paid service person, sort of like a social worker or whatever to service veterans, and he was available to them. But he was very glad that dad took a lot of the things that needed to be done. And this was, I think Dr. Butterfield was active with that, too. But if you ask about community life there, there were a lot of things mostly done through the churches for youth and for socialization of people. And I guess the church was the main means for socialization of people in our community.	4:34
Paul Ortiz	Interesting. You mentioned your dad was active in labor unions. Do you remember the type of labor organizing that—	6:01
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Yeah, I guess it was some offshoot of AFL-CIO, but it was tobacco workers. And most of the organizers came out of this area, Durham. But they would get into a community and would need to be able to reach the workers. And people like my dad who knew most of the people around town, were able to help them make the contacts and keep from being run out of town because they would run them out of town, too. They factory people didn't want the unions organized and didn't want them to belong to the unions.	6:10
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Now, much of this came about in the '40s, the union work. In '38, '39, there was a female professor at Central who did much in terms of going out in the community. She wasn't a sociologist person, she was a biology teacher, a Dr. Young. I don't know, you may want to seek some information on a Dr. Young. Can't remember her first name, but there would be records of her. In addition to her work as a teacher, she did a lot to go in Eastern North Carolina to try to get the tobacco workers organized so that they could benefit from what the unions do.	6:55
Paul Ortiz	Do you recall, and I'm thinking here about entertainers, people like Marian Anderson, Paul Roberson. Do you recall any of those figures?	7:58
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Yeah, all of us knew them. We knew them from the radio like the kids today know everybody from TV. But we knew them if they got national attention like that, we knew them from the radio. And there were occasions when they would get them down to a city like Raleigh or somewhere else and then the people would come from distances to hear them. Now, in the college days for the Lycium programs, you got them, the colleges got people of that statue to come for Lycium programs and that was beneficial.	8:12
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Even the orators, we got all of those. And someone mentioned to me just recently when Sam Proctor spoke at the installation of Chambers as Chancellor NC Central, and he looked around and he didn't see many students there and he said, "This is regrettable, because Sam Proctor is perhaps one of the last noted Black orators as such." Mordecai Johnson, Howard Thurman, of that order. But we were exposed to them and from time to time, the small towns would somehow arrange to get them to make appearances in their communities. But they were our heroes.	8:54
Paul Ortiz	And I mentioned because there were two interesting events that happened in the late '30s in Marian Anderson's concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Robeson becoming the first person to do an entire public performance of Black spirituals. Very interested in—	9:49
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well, we'd go even further back than that. I was trying to remember, I guess one of the first to really get attention on Broadway, who, I can't think of his name, did the dramatization of the creation. Do you know that?	10:12
Paul Ortiz	Yeah.	10:37
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	It doesn't come to me now, maybe it will in the course of a conversation, but that was one of the things that the Black teachers did try to make us aware of, people who were achieving. And some of my colleagues at Central and around didn't believe that I had a course in Negro history in 1934 in a public school. And it was the initiative of this teacher who had the interest and the principal who approved it. And we had a course in Negro history, but most homes had books about the Carter G. Woodson's Negro history. They had Paul Laurence Dunbar's poems and some cultural things that they attempted to provide.	10:37
Paul Ortiz	There was a visit by Walter White.	11:39
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Walter White, yeah.	11:45
Paul Ortiz	Did you remember that?	11:45
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well, I remember him visiting Wilson and the whole region. Yeah, I don't remember exactly when, but was it the matter of investigating an incident? Is that what you're referring to, or coming as a speaker or as a promoter?	11:48
Paul Ortiz	I think more coming as a speaker, maybe, I know he was looking into school conditions at that time.	12:09
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	I guess he was coming as a speaker and promoting the NAACP and promoting community organizations for the cause. You see, by the time Walter White had been on the scene, I think it was even after that, that we were beginning to get suits for school equalizations. They were not school suits for integration or anything, they were suits to improve Negro schools.	12:19
Paul Ortiz	And there was a suit filed in Wilson, or was it—	12:54
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	There may have been, by that time I was away. I'm pretty sure that they must have filed a suit in Wilson because they filed them all over in '48, '49, '50. That was the thing to do, to file those equalization suits, because the court was enforcing the requirement that schools should be equal. So you had to get on the scene and you filed suits. That was '48, '49. My growing up days did not have to do with equalization schools, but getting schools, getting the county to provide schools for public education. And the things of great interest were that, of getting equalization of teachers pay. That was a big issue in '36, '35 and further, to get equalization of pay for teachers. Because the paid discrepancies were clear, there was nothing to be ashamed of insofar as the powers to be were concerned.	12:59
Paul Ortiz	And were your parents involved in that?	14:17
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Yeah.	14:23
Paul Ortiz	Now, you mentioned the selling crisis. What other types of information—Well, in other words, were there any other types of newspapers that was particular to that community.	14:25
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Oh yeah. The paper that was most popular in our community was the Norfolk Journal & Guide. That was a paper out of Norfolk, as the title implies. It was the Norfolk Journal & Guide. Then there was the Pittsburgh Courier, which was a relatively popular paper. The Afro American, is that the name of the paper out of Baltimore? Yeah, those were the papers that were pretty well subscribed to and lots of my friends saw those papers. And those were the means to keep up with what was happening to the Negro population.	14:38
Paul Ortiz	A lot of things were happening in the late 1930s. I know going through some of the Pittsburgh Courier articles, a lot of really exciting things that were happening in Chicago. Did any of that reading those papers, did that affect the community in Wilson?	15:38
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	No doubt, it must had some positive influence on the aspirations of people there and may have been incentives for actions on the part of people in the community. I don't know of any one incident, but you see, those were lynching times and we were pushing to get anti-lynching legislation, to get other Federal things. We couldn't get them statewide. They were also pushing for elimination of poll tax. As I recall, those were big issues during my teen and early years. And just the right to vote and the elimination of required quoting the Constitution, all of those kinds of problems. And there again, is where my dad took chances because he would take people to get them registered. That was something that was frowned upon.	16:00
Paul Ortiz	Were there Black people that voted before then?	17:22
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Yeah, they permitted a few Black people who asserted themselves and who did show some degree of literacy, a high level of literacy for that matter, because they required all kinds of things. But there had to be the effort to get others who were not literate to want to register and vote. And sometimes it was a fearful thing to go before a registrar who probably, you lived on—who had some power or influence over your existence. Those were problems that I was able to get some notion of not experiencing it myself.	17:27
Paul Ortiz	One of the things that Judge Butterfield mentioned was that when his father came to town, he was actually asked by some of the White citizens he wanted to register vote, but it was more of a kind of, I don't know the term, maybe co-opting. In other words, if he agreed to vote for the right candidates, then he could register. Do you remember that?	18:26
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	No. I find it believable and all, because the matter of Blacks being registered was decisions that Whites held. It was not a right that you could demand, though you may have attempted to demand.	18:54
Paul Ortiz	So you leave Wilson. You graduate, and then you leave in 1937?	19:23
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	'37.	19:30
Paul Ortiz	'37. And then where do you go from there?	19:33
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Where did I go to school or what?	19:37
Paul Ortiz	Yeah.	19:38
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Okay, when I graduated from high school, I guess I was 15 and about to become 16. We had 11 grades then and I'd gotten off to an early starting school. I wasn't that adept a student, but I'd gotten an early start and continued. And so my hopes were to go to a Presbyterian College, Smith. That's where all of friends from my high school were going. And I guess my mother, rightfully so, recognized that I was quite an immature kid and perhaps going right into a college was not the thing for me, so she sent me to a junior college. And I guess you've heard of the name Charlotte Hawkins Brown in terms of study. She established a preparatory school up at Sedalia. It was a high school and eventually she added the two year college part. And I went there, sort of as a buffer to go to college where I would have more freedom and exposure to all kinds of people.	19:40
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And it was a very interesting experience and we could talk a long time about that. You may want to talk to someone about Palmer Memorial Institute, Sedalia. A lot of the people from here, who live here, sent their children to Palmer Memorial Institute. And her effort was to develop students culturally. We had to learn which knife, which eating instrument to use at what time, how to sit, hold chairs for the ladies and do all of the kinds of nice things that I didn't think was overdoing it, but I think were important in terms of culture development and being able to function in a variety of settings.	20:54
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	But it's for this history that you're doing, I do think that some attention should be given to what that school was like. There are a number of people here who can tell you, if you want to take Margaret Goodwin, that's Bill Kennedy's sister. And Bill Kennedy went there himself, the recent retired president of North Carolina Mutual. Dr. Watson's wife, Constance Watts. Mickey Mashaw, those are some people who could tell you about Sedalia. And I think my mother wanted some of that for me, as well as recognizing that I was not really ready for a four year institution where people were a bit older than myself. So I went there the first year and it was a very beneficial experience. And then the next three years I went to school at NC Central, so those were the college days.	21:51
Paul Ortiz	What was NC Central like back in—	23:02
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	1938?	23:04
Paul Ortiz	1938.	23:04
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	NC Central was in 1938, Jim Shepherd's School. Jim Shepherd was a founder, president and really the board of trustees, if you wish, whatever. It was his school. And at that time, there must have been 400 or so students. I'm told that his thought was that he'd like to keep it at about 500. Well, I can understand that in the sense that he wanted to manage everything. There were good teachers, people who had been well prepared in universities all over, including some European universities. Most of the people there were there for teacher education. If they weren't there for teacher education, they were there for medicine or something. When I came out of high school, if you talked to a male in the South in this region in terms of our exposure, a Black male in terms of our exposure, you had only two careers. One was teaching, the other was medicine and those were the careers.	23:10
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Now, true enough, there was preparation in agriculture at A&T and rural kids knew about that, that you could go there and learn, become an agricultural extension agent or a home agent or something. The relatively new was the Library of Science offering at NC Central, and so that was new. And then the business department, that was something that Black kids in high schools had not been exposed to very much in terms of what was business. And they were just beginning to add typing courses to the high school curriculum and things like that. But before that time when I came out, there was not a typing course offered anywhere or anything related to that. So the options were limited. We had a goodly number who did get out and get into medical school and others who got other exposures once they got out of college.	24:31
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	But one of the noteworthy things about NC Central was that the state supported it as a liberal arts institution and they were willing to support teacher training institutions. And then A&T was land grant, that's Federal for agricultural extension. But the state supporting a liberal arts college was something within itself. All the students for the most part lived on the campus and dormitories. They had very strict requirements about what time you were in the dormitory for the females and you ate as a family group in the dining room, they didn't have cafeterias. There were intercollegiate athletics, which was the strong aspect of the program. There were efforts to provide cultural experiences and I mentioned about the speakers we had. There had to be a Vespa program every Sunday, which had its religious focus. Those are some of the things that I recall about.	25:41
Paul Ortiz	What was it like moving from Wilson to Durham? Did you find yourself doing different things, learning different things in terms of it being a new town?	27:06
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well, when I came to Durham to go to college, most of college life was campus focused. I would suspect that of the students who were in my generation, coming to Durham, where the largest, which they'd studied about and which had been told about all over the country, the largest Negro owned business in the world was here, North Carolina Mutual. I'd be willing to gamble that out of our students at that time, that 60% of them didn't know where the North Carolina Mutual's headquarters was located, that there was just that much. They knew Mr. Spaulding because Dr. Shepherd would have C.C. Spaulding down to speak at our programs, maybe some of the other officials. They didn't do any banking. The kids, they didn't have any bank. We had no bank accounts, so they didn't know anything about the Black banks. They understood that there was some Black banks somewhere around.	27:19
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	But to know about Durham, there wasn't a lot that the students learned unless some of them worked at Duke Hospital, as they did as orderlies. And those were males, no females. Females didn't do anything off campus. So I guess the exposure to the big town for Black students, and most of us were from rural North Carolina, rural eastern North Carolina, was when we would come down here, main street to shop. That was our exposure, to ride the bus down the main street and go to the Carolina Theater or the Center Theater and sit up in the balcony.	28:32
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	That was about the exposure. Again, 60% of them probably never set foot on Duke's campus during their four years here. And they may have heard some noted Professor at Duke speak on the campus, or someone from the school of Theology. They knew how to get to the bus station and to the train station. Where you saw the contrast in the towns was when you went to the shopping center or the other things like that. I doubt if they knew—Well, I know I didn't know much of anything about the political activities in Durham at that time and very little about what social life was like among Blacks.	29:17
Paul Ortiz	You received your degree in 1940—	30:28
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	One.	30:30
Paul Ortiz	'41.	30:30
Paul Ortiz	And where do you go from there?	30:30
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Okay, in 1941, you see, the war in Europe had begun '38, '39. Things were very bad. But when I came in 1941, the draft was in place. They were already drafting people for military service. And I had a teaching certificate, but I knew that I was going into the Army and I didn't particularly have much enthusiasm for teaching. Nevertheless, my father got me a job teaching right away. That summer when I got out, I went to work in Fayetteville at USO. Fort Bragg was growing and growing and growing then. So I worked at the USO that summer. And by the end of the summer, my father called me. He said that I had a job and they made me principal of a four teacher school, which meant I taught and kept the records.	30:40
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And I was very high on the draft list. Well, I made it through to the fall of 1942, and that's when I was drafted into the Army and I did three years of military service. North Africa, Europe and Philippines was my first exposure of early traveling anywhere. I guess the extent of my travel through those years have been to Washington and Baltimore. And I don't think I'd even been to Atlanta at that time. I traveled in North Carolina, but I got an opportunity to travel. I went directly to the West coast for military training and I got to see North Africa and Europe.	31:54
Paul Ortiz	What was that like, traveling and going to North Africa?	32:54
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well, one of the things that you would know was that this was my first experience of not being in a segregated society, going into California and being able to go on a pass and not having to worry about—Well, not being as conscious of whether or not this was a place that Blacks could go or couldn't go. Whereas all the years here, I knew where I couldn't go and knew what I couldn't do and where I could sit on the bus and all of that. Well, that was quite a very impressionable experience, to be able to sit where I wanted to sit on a bus and to not have anybody look at me strangely if I got into what might have been an out of place possession or activity or something.	32:58
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And so it was an enlightenment experience to be in California. To go to a lunch counter in Los Angeles and order my lunch or sandwich or something. The waiter would tell me that the gentleman down on that end of the counter paid for it. Well, I don't know whether he was doing it just because I was Black or because that was what they were doing for soldiers then. So it was part of it, but that's something, the experience I would not have had here. That's part of what you're asking, I guess, in the response to what you asked me. We were still in segregated units and we had White officers, but all Black soldiers.	34:01
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	That was my first time to really be exposed in terms of being intermingled with a very large group of illiterate persons. I'd come up in the neighborhood where I grew up in Wilson, you just went to school, it was automatic. Poor or what, you went to school and the truant officer didn't have to do very much to keep you in school. And so most of the people I knew, knew how to read and write and do all those things. But when I was drafted and taken to Fort Bragg and then put on a troop chain to California, I was with 500, 600 men or more. And out of that number, I doubt that there were more than 40 who could really read the sheet of paper that you had there. They'd come off the farms, rural places in South Carolina, Alabama, et cetera.	34:57
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And that was a traumatic experience for me, to be on the troop train where you're very closely tied in. The fellow I shared the bunk with had gonorrhea and I didn't really know what gonorrhea was, but he sort of let me knew that he was having this problem and that they're saying it was gonorrhea. All up and down the line in our car, they were shooting dice, so that was a new exposure to me. Fellows in college gambled, but the little gambling they did, they played poker or something. I don't ever remember seeing them gamble rolling dice. And they were knives, they would threaten each other with knives. They were looking for opportunities to buy alcohol and it was quite an experience.	36:06
Paul Ortiz	Did some of it revolve around race relations?	37:11
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	These were all Blacks now, this is all Black, a Black group. But a Black group sort of handicapped in the sense of not having just pure literacy. My first job in the Army was to teach fellows how to sign the payroll. They had to sign the payroll to be paid and the Army wasn't supposed to be taking in people who did X's, but that was all most of them had done before that time, was put an X and the person took care. But now, my first job was to teach them how to sign the payroll. And that was a real exposure to disastrous effects of rural Black, White relationships, in that there was no effort to see that most of these kids had received education. Most of them were strong and muscular because they worked on farms, they worked in the lumber mills, they worked everywhere. That was what they were brought up to do and that was about the height of the aspiration.	37:14
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	But after exposure to fellows who were threatening to cut each other every moment and who were finding the joy in getting a drink or being able to get to a prostitute and so on, I got to know them a little better. And it was admirable that some of the values and attitudes that many of those fellows had, irrespective of their upbringing and their exposure. And I found some gratification in things. For example, there's one fellow whom I still remember. His name was Suber, he was from somewhere in South Carolina. Suber couldn't read a bit, but he learned to sign his name. But when we would go, we were in French speaking countries, we were in Italy where they spoke Italian. And so we didn't have that much doing in Germany, but Frank Suber learned to communicate with people in the settings where we would camp, faster than the officers did. Yeah, he just somehow had a knack for learning to communicate. And it was amazing what some of those fellows could do with such limitations.	38:32
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	They also had a kind of attitude toward Whites, Whites were boss. They looked at them as boss men, that's what they had been. They'd owned the farms where they worked, they'd owned the lumber mills where they worked and the sheriff had been on them and so on. They saw Whites as boss men. And if at the point where they were willing to disagree or rebel, it meant tunnel rebellion. It wasn't a matter of arguing for a point or getting a position on a point. It meant, as best I perceived it, when they got to be anti what the White man said, that meant they were ready to go all the way. They were ready to kill if need be.	40:10
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And I guess this is what some of their experiences have been in those areas, that when they bucked, so to speak, the White man, that they knew that they were possibly going to be lynched or going to be put in jail and beaten to death or what have you. So when you make your move, you're making an all out effort. But that kind of exposure, I had not known in Wilson and in Durham and so on. And that kind of mindset, it was really something. I guess I should have made notes on some of the kinds of amazing things that I learned with these groups of fellows. Many of them were very religious and could [indistinct 00:42:05] out that way. Okay, well, you asked me about my leaving this area, going to other areas and those are thoughts that came along as I traveled. For example, the commander of our unit was a White man who was a Major from over here in Mebane and he came from a family that does furniture, White furniture company.	41:04
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	He told all of his officers and all of his offices were at that time, White officers, that they had to keep the Negroes, and that's what he called them, the Negroes, that they had to keep the Negroes busy and that the Negro would do anything a White man told him to do if he told them forcefully. And to some extent, for some of those fellows, that was right. He knew what he was talking about. And it very much bothered a young officer, young Captain Williams, I remember, very much. It very much bothered him. He'd come through VMI or some military school and he had all the principles about how you discipline and how you train. And here his superior was telling him just to order people around, don't try to do anything. And in fact, I guess this gives you an idea. I was a corporal and then a sergeant, and he wanted me to become a platoon leader, non-commissioned platoon leader.	42:38
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And I told him that I couldn't be a platoon leader because I was not forceful enough. The fellow who preceded me was very forceful and they respected what Sergeant Rollins told him to do it so on and he just commanded everything. And so here, Captain Williams was asking me to move into that position. And I told him I had no aspirations to do that, that I would want to get some other things that were available to us at that time, but not that. And different from what the major, the commanding officer was, he was saying that that's not leadership, being able to command and use forcefulness. The leadership is when people will do things because they have a particular attitude with respect to your leadership, to your commands and to your requests and so on.	43:48
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	I had not at that time, had any community or courses or any courses on that, but it impressed me that this young officer was trying to use things that he'd really learned in theory and so on, in contrast to what the southern White Colonel, that as he'd begun, was telling him to do. But that shows you something of White-Black relationships. We went to California, we were out at San Bernardino. The first thing that this colonel from the South, from Mebane, North Carolina, said to us as a troop.	44:52
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	He gathered troops, he gathered his whole battalion together and he, in so many words, said, "Now, you Black fellows, you can do certain things here in San Bedu," as it was called. "That there are things here, places you can go and so on, but you know your place." In so many words, that's what he said, "You know your place. Don't get out of place, don't get out of line." It was quite something, he took all the whole battalion together and say, "Even though you're in California, you can remember where you came from and what you did or had to do, where you came from." And that was a difference.	45:34
Paul Ortiz	You think he was trying to recreate order of the South?	46:22
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Yeah, order of the South, that was what he was trying to do. It is my understanding he went so far as to try to get the officials of San Bernardino to try to establish such procedures.	46:28
Paul Ortiz	Jim Crow?	46:45
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Right, for his troops. There weren't that many Blacks in San Bernardino anyway, as residents. And here we got a whole host of them that are coming in.	46:48
Paul Ortiz	Interesting. What kind of unit was it?	47:01
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	It was a labor company, it was a quartermaster of labor. In other words, these were the persons who were to load the trucks, move things, do labor, physical labor. It was a quartermaster labor company.	47:05

Paul Ortiz	So Dr. Fitz, you were talking about your experiences on the troop train going to California and coming in contact with African American people who came from rural areas.	0:06
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Yeah. Well, I don't know that this was necessarily typical of rural areas. It was just a collection of people that had been thrown together through the draft, and evidently they sorted out this group of maybe 600 or more men out of which a very few were literate. I don't know how they decided to group, well, I do know how they decided to group that together too, because these men, in the opinion of the Army I would think, were more useful for physical labor than anything else. And so they were organized and placed in so that they could be trained for what is known as the Quartermaster Corps, where they would be doing labor things, physical labor, and would not have to be involved in technical things such as artillery or other kinds of things like that.	0:22
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And so it was quite a shock for me to be with such a large gathering of men who had had such limited education and such limited experience outside of their rural settings. And I perhaps was telling you about some of the things they did on the troop train, such as shoot crap as they call it, and some fights and other kinds of things like that. I guess that was where we were.	1:28
Paul Ortiz	Yes.	1:59
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And this kind of traveling, getting to the West was altogether new for them. And there were interesting things to observe, though many of them were illiterate, they learned very rapidly. And I may have mentioned that, and this is skipping well ahead, when we got overseas in Europe and in North Africa, when we were in Algiers and Tunisia, those parts of North Africa where the language was French, that many of these fellows learned to communicate in that way with the populist faster than officers did. They were just that capable. And it is amazing to think that with what education they had and what opportunities they had, that they could still acquire things in such a short time such as this. And so I guess that was how we were into this conversation. I've forgotten just what led us to it.	2:00
Paul Ortiz	Now you disembarked from the troop train in California. Where was the post?	3:20
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Post was not far from Oakland, California. It was Pittsburg, Pittsburg, California. This was a training area.	3:26
Paul Ortiz	And now what were you specifically being trained for at this time?	3:37
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	This was a quartermaster unit, and for the most part they were taught how to drill, how to handle a rifle, shoot rifles, and to do things of labor for the most part. Just discipline, that was primarily the purpose of the basic training to get discipline. I think I may have mentioned that there were so many of them who did not know how to sign their names for a payroll that one of my first assignments was to help them learn to read and write, and particularly to help them write their own names.	3:43
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And again, as I said, some learned very fast, for others it was quite difficult. And for the most part I could teach them how to print and that was sufficient for the payroll. But that was the shape of things with them.	4:31
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	They didn't have a lot of social graces in anything. And so when the people from the USO would come out, they functioned pretty well. But it was sort of crude relating to these young ladies that mothers had gotten together to come out to entertain the troops. And there were some interesting encounters.	4:54
Paul Ortiz	Like what kind of [indistinct 00:05:20]?	5:18
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well, I think some of the fellows were pretty fast in approaching the young ladies for intimacy, much further than the USO groups had planned for them.	5:22
Paul Ortiz	Now, the people in the USO, coming out, were they White or Black?	5:33
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Mixtures.	5:41
Paul Ortiz	A mixture.	5:42
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Primarily, Black groups though, for our group, because at that time the Army was segregated. Yeah, we were all Black units. And so for the most part that came to our section of the camp, came from some of the Black churches or USOs that were in Black neighborhoods designed to work with Black troops. And there were some Whites in the groups, of course, because out there at that time, they were in the same schools and had their social relationships. So they were there.	5:44
Paul Ortiz	Was that unusual for you, I mean, coming from [indistinct 00:06:23]?	6:20
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Yeah, that was unusual for any of us coming from Southeastern US.	6:22
Paul Ortiz	Do you remember what kind of impression that made on you?	6:29
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well, upon me?	6:34
Paul Ortiz	Mm-hmm.	6:38
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	I guess I was impressed with the freedom of movement, not having to select what restaurant I went to or having to be sure that I didn't get into a place of business or whatever as I roamed. The city where I was was San Bernardino, and we'd get passes and go to San Bernardino, that was Riverside, Los Angeles area. And I guess that was one of the things that I really appreciated. Not having to worry about getting on a bus or what cab I call or what have you, that I could move with the kind of freedom that I didn't have here or I didn't have, even in the Northeast, when I would go in Baltimore area, et cetera, New York, that you had to be somewhat cautious of where you were wanted and accepted.	6:40
Paul Ortiz	Was that freedom of movement something you sensed right away? Or was it [indistinct 00:07:42]—	7:38
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Indeed, right away. And, in fact, I can remember a very depth of impression. I was in something like a soda fountain shop somewhere in Los Angeles. I don't know whether it was South Central or I've forgotten where it was in Los Angeles. And I was in my uniform eating whatever I had. And when I found out the waiter told me that the gentleman somewhere else had paid for it. And I didn't see the gentleman or anything. He just saw me as a soldier. And I don't know whether he saw me as a Black soldier or not, but as a soldier. And he paid for it and disappeared, and that kind of thing gave you some satisfaction to appreciate it. And incidents like that gave me a good feeling about Los Angeles. In fact, I considered possibility of moving back out that way when I got out from Army. I was in the San Francisco area as well.	7:42
Paul Ortiz	Okay. Now was this early, was this around 1941 or—	9:10
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Yeah, '42.	9:15
Paul Ortiz	'42.	9:16
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	This was '42. I went into the military service in '42, and went directly out there.	9:17
Paul Ortiz	Do you remember the kind of rhetoric that was used by the US government to fight the war, as a war to defend democracy—	9:23
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Mm-hmm.	9:38
Paul Ortiz	—against the Nazis?	9:38
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Do you remember that having any kind of effect or what you thought about that kind of—	9:39
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	I really didn't. Black newspapers would pick it up and all that, and it was disgust and all. But I don't recall that I had any deep feeling. I guess I was been led to believe that things were just better here, and that this was the way it should be. And that in spite of the deficiencies and et cetera, this was still a better situation. And certainly we wanted to prevent any kind of change, such as, you see, the stress was on dictatorships and prosecution of people, those things we wanted to prevent that.	9:45
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And all the talk about freedom, well, in the sense we had freedom. Nobody told us, for example, that I had to stay in Wilson all my life. We could move anywhere I wanted all over the country. Well, much of the news that we got about other places during wartime were that people were pretty much regimented in terms of what the dictator or the powers that be thought. So when you look back on it, you wonder if the irony of it was such that it would affect you. But I don't recall having such feelings.	10:30
Paul Ortiz	But it was almost as if the way the rhetoric was framed, it was around issues of dictatorship rather than issues of race per se.	11:17
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Mm-hmm. Dictatorship, of denial of freedom, so on.	11:29
Paul Ortiz	Interesting. Now you're trained to be part of a quartermaster unit.	11:41
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Right.	11:48
Paul Ortiz	And you went to Algiers and Tunisia. What was that experience like?	11:49
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well—	11:56
Paul Ortiz	That would've been in '42?	11:58
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	'43 by then, I guess, '43. That was really a new culture, very interesting thing. When we arrived in Oran, which was a place where we arrived, here, we saw people dressed altogether different from the way we had seen people dressed. Mostly the Arabic people had on the pantalones and loose hanging clothes. And now certainly there were the French who were there with the European type dress and so on. But seeing most of the Arabic people with different forms of dress, hairstyle, and modes of living, it was just an interesting setting to see.	11:58
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And then as Black troops, we were accepted anywhere where we wanted to go. Going back to Black troops, I think I told you about, I may have on that tape about how the commander of our unit gave us a speech when we arrived in California, not long after we were in San Francisco saying to us in a sense that, "You're going to have more things that you can do and places to go here, but remember who you are and remember—" Well, I think I mentioned all of that before.	13:07
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well, here we were in North Africa and there was not that kind of concern. And we could go to any of the restaurants or any of the nightclub like things that we had. Some places were off limits, because there was prostitution and then places like the kasbahs were off limits. And I've never been in the kasbah, so I can imagine why they were off limit, prostitution, gambling, crime, black market, all other such things.	13:47
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Much of our fun things were provided by the USO. There were USO clubs all around. And in USO clubs they would have the orchestras or combos and sometimes local groups, but for the most part, Army bands, et cetera. I guess the other part too, I'll tell you this, was as you walked the streets hearing a different language, that of course took some adjustment too. But now you were not in a familiar setting, you were hearing languages that you didn't understand, and you recognized that you were in a foreign setting.	14:30
Paul Ortiz	Now, you said you really had a expanded freedom of movement, but did the Black troops mix with White troops in this new environment? Or was it kind of separate—	15:22
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	No, because they were still separate units such as you have Duke here and NC Central there, you had whatever our outfit was and whatever the White outfits. They may have been in nearby areas and all, but they were all together separate troops. Now, when they were off on passes, sometimes they'd get together, but then they'd get into fights. And I never experienced it, but some of the fellows, it were said, that the White troops had tried to get the females not to have socialization with Black troops. And that they had all kinds of descriptions of what Black troops were like and so on. I never really discovered that that happened, but I can well imagine that it did.	15:38
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	We'd go to the same USO, so where the ping pong was played and other things like that. I didn't frequent bars too much myself, so I don't know what happened in the bars and nightclubs, but I know that there were fights. And—	16:41
Paul Ortiz	Were the USOs in Algiers segregated? Or—	17:03
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	No, all USOs were open to whomever came. Now, let's see, I've been to USOs in Africa, Italy, France, I'll never forget the one in Germany. Sometimes, because of their location, I think USOs were frequented more by Black troops in contrast to White troops, depending upon where the USO was located and where the troops were located. But then in the cities, like in Marseille or some of the other cities, you ended up in the same USOs. As best I recall, it's getting to be pretty distant for me now. As best I recall, you ended up in the same—	17:09
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	There were some Black USO workers, very few at that time, Black females. And so it was a treat to see a Black female, American Black female. Now in Europe and then North Africa, occasionally, you'd see females of some of the French colonists, and then the Algerians were all shades and colors and what have you, and Tunisians, likewise.	18:06
Paul Ortiz	Now, you said that you went to Italy and then later France and Germany. Was your unit assigned to the, I don't know—	18:46
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Let me explain. As I said, the quartermaster, which did mostly labor as related to equipment supplies and so on, some quartermaster units were trained and worked as, what would you call them? Anyway, the people who unload ships, what do you call them here in this—	18:56
Paul Ortiz	Longshoremen. [indistinct 00:19:21]—	19:20
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Longshoremen. They were trained that way to handle primarily ships. And others were trained, as my outfit for the most part, was trained to handle what we call ration dumps. These were areas where food, canned foods, what have you, were shipped in from the ships as they were brought to wherever the sites were, and then distributed to the various troops, wherever they were. We did that kind of thing, for the most part. We handled the distribution of foods and things like tents, some medical supplies, some other things. Then there were special units which handle ammunition. But see, most of this was labor and you didn't need to have a lot of skills to do this. And so that was what my outfit did, for the most part. Some were truck drivers, and transported food, people, what have you.	19:21
Paul Ortiz	Now, I mean, I would assume that relatively speaking, you were very highly educated compared with most of the—	20:33
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Compared with the other troops, my education did exceed those. I had gotten out of college, and so I was given jobs like—Well, I was, first of all, what was called a staff sergeant, which was responsible for a number of men. And my job with them was to see that they were assigned responsibilities to do other things. Now, other people who had as much or just above high school education, were assigned as company clerks to keep records, et cetera.	20:44
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Then if in the matter of distribution of supplies, there were people who had to handle the supplies and keep up with the quantities and the filing of information. So there were responsibilities like that. Some of the people worked in the offices, et cetera. But I was always with troops, and I liked that. I was given the opportunity to be what was called the first sergeant, which would be the non-commissioned officer in charge of all of the troops in my outfit. And I did prefer that.	21:28
Paul Ortiz	How would you describe your leadership style?	22:11
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well, interestingly enough, I was small, as you can see, at that time, I probably weighed 130 to 140 pounds. Many of the fellows that I was with, as I may have told you, here, were accustomed to people using force and you spoke harshly and you commanded and told them what to do, et cetera. They were accustomed to being forced. And the superior non-commissioned officer just above me, he was known to carry a knife, and it was known that if things got out of line, he was going to cut somebody. And so they feared Sergeant Rollins and they did things for him, much out of fear, and he was very forceful with them. And I was next in command to him.	22:17
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And then for disciplinary reasons, he was transferred, so the officer in charge wanted me to take his position, and I told him, I couldn't take it, "because these men were accustomed to doing things out of being forced to do, out of real authority." And I said, "I don't have authority like that, and couldn't command it. And if it came to just a physical matter of who's going to do what, indeed, I couldn't manage that." And he talked to me and he said, "People will follow you because of their regard for you, not because you were powerful and authority, but because of what regard they have for you. And that you have to deal with them in that way out of respect," et cetera.	23:07
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And that's what happened, that I was able to—It was rather amusing, I don't know whether this came up or not, but they called me Sergeant Trouble, the fellows in the outfit called me Sergeant Trouble because I did persist. If there was something to be done, I persisted in saying that, "We must do it and go ahead and do it." And when they were lagging and so on, I called their attention to their lagging. And it was more of saying that, "This must be done, this is what we have to do," et cetera. So I was troublesome and not powerful sergeant that I was. And I guess that was it, that they had a regard for me which respected the fact that I was the sergeant, that I was in charge, and that they had to, were expected to do whatever was required for them.	24:01
Paul Ortiz	Now, did your position of leadership mean that you had to put a distance between yourself and the troops that were under you?	25:04
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	See, I was non-commissioned, the commission officers were required to do that kind of thing, that this is their, and I guess it still is, that you have to make the distinction, you got to salute the commissioned officer. As a non-commissioned officer, no. You weren't supposed to fraternize in a number of ways with them. A staff sergeant or first sergeant when they went out on passes, weren't supposed to be going with a private so on. But that was disregarded, to that extent, they weren't supposed to have that kind of fraternization.	25:14
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	But beyond that, there weren't that kind of restrictions. If we wanted to, and not necessarily wanted to, for the most part, the sergeants, corporals, and non-commissioned officers slept in a tent separate and apart from the regular troops, the non-commissioned people. But in most occasions, I was with regular troops in tents and housing where we were. But there was supposed to be that kind of distinction, since you asked.	25:55
Paul Ortiz	But would you say that outside of your leadership role that you have a good relationship with rank and file troops? Or—	26:34
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	That my relationship with the rank and file was what?	26:46
Paul Ortiz	Good—	26:52
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Oh, yes. I think it was good. Mm-hmm. I enjoyed it.	26:53
Paul Ortiz	Okay. Now, as you moved along, obviously, in to European campaign, did you see changes in—I mean, the Army was still segregated [indistinct 00:27:18]—	27:06
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Army was still segregated, right?	27:18
Paul Ortiz	But did you see any changes that were occurring as the war progressed in terms of race relations? In other words, were things as far as race relations static? Or did they—	27:20
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Okay, all right, in my opinion, for what I saw during the war in my just about two years in North Africa, Italy, and southern France, the race distinction was there because the troops were separated, so on. However, the encounters for the most part were with fellow Americans. I think Whites and Blacks sort of felt that we were fellow Americans in a foreign setting. And I think that there was that kind of identification with each other.	27:38
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	As I said, that there were times when they'd get into brawls, usually at some nightclub and Blacks were with White women, or some drinking place that there'd be some brawl, some encounters like that, or somebody bumped someone on the [indistinct 00:28:52] or something else, someplace they might bump at each other. But for the most part, there was a kind of identity, I think, of fellow Americans here to fight a war, et cetera. But I think that that was that.	28:27
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	The only movements in the direction was that I think they recognized with all these Blacks not on the front, but elsewhere, and the Blacks did seek to be a part of the infantry and a part of the fighting forces. And so they began to open up opportunities for those who wanted to go to the front, so to speak, to join outfits that we're fighting with the infantry and calvary and so on, outfits. And some fellows from our outfit who were sort of impatient with the kinds of roles we played did join fighting units.	29:09
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	There were some all Black fighting units. There was the 93rd division and so on, which were in areas near us, but most of the Black fighting units, as I understand it, went to the Pacific. I ran into some of my friends who were in the Air Force, the 99th Pursuit Squadron and so on in North Africa and in Italy. And they were fighting units, but that was all Black. But there was the opening up of Black troops to go with the infantry near the end of the war. Well, during the time that Germany was during its second confrontation, with some degree of success.	30:04
Paul Ortiz	The Battle of the Bulge.	31:04
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Bulge and all of that, yeah, they were taking troops from us then during that period.	31:04
Paul Ortiz	Were you in France during that time?	31:07
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	I was in France during that time.	31:12
Paul Ortiz	When that battle commenced, I understand it causes quite a stir in—	31:14
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	It did. Except, see, I was in southern France just near the Alps, in a place called Verzieux. Most of the Bulge went toward Belgium and toward, what would that be? East, going toward England and that way, in that direction. So we got some of the overflow from it, but really were not seriously affected by the Battle of the Bulge. My outfit's exposure to most hazard was on invasions, when they were bombing of the invading troops. And I don't remember any of us being hurt by a mine or anything, but there was a possibility.	31:19
Paul Ortiz	One more question from those warriors. Now, you mentioned that some of the other troops would do things for entertainment that you would kind of shy away from or you would—	32:18
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Now there were, our troops, for example, this place, Verzieux, which was, where would that be? Northeastern France, if I'm getting the directions all caught up, near the Swiss border, near Lyon, you probably know Grenoble. No, it wasn't near Grenoble, Lyon and some other places. It was in a very, very quaint mountain town. And we were stationed there for quite a while. And we would have socials at, and we didn't really have a USO there, but some kind of place there. We'd have socials there. And if we were serving food and chocolates, the people would come.	32:32
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	So I had some social life, I was dating young lady, and I'd visit her home, and was received well in our home. And in that way we had social life. Now, there were opportunities to go to the houses of prostitution and to cities where it was much more wide open than in Verzieux. But there were contacts with residents of the places not always that we were moving so often that we never in a place long enough to develop any kind of relationships like that.	33:26
Paul Ortiz	Now, that's interesting, because I mean, there have been some documentation suggesting that at one point the US Army was in—Well, I might be mixing World War II with World War I—	34:08
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	All right.	34:23
Paul Ortiz	—but suggesting to the French citizenry that Black troops were—	34:24
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Risky and—	34:32
Paul Ortiz	Right.	34:32
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Mm-hmm. Okay. I think I said earlier that in some places that they were told that soldiers had discouraged people from socializing with Black troops. And I'm pretty sure that was true in some of the places we went. But now in say in this city, Verzieux, our unit was the unit there. There was not another White unit. We kept prisoners and we did other kinds of things in that area. And there was no effort to discourage that. In fact, the officers did what they could to promote socialization by enabling us to have these events, et cetera.	34:36
Paul Ortiz	So was there a lot of interracial relationships and socialization in France?	35:31
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Okay. And mind you, now, I speak from the experience that I have, but I'm not sure what happened in large areas such as Paris and some of the largest cities. But, yes, if it was not—Well, say, if a French man worked somehow in connection with our unit, say, that he was there as an interpreter, or if he were used to do some other things that he might have had skills, he might take some of the soldiers to visit his home. That kind of thing happened. He would invite them to visit his home.	35:41
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Or if there were other encounters that enable a kind of contact between families and troops, and some of them visited the home. Otherwise, most of the contacts were like in the nightclubs and houses of prostitutions. And now, what were they called? They weren't call houses of prostitution. They were called something else, but that's what they were. So most of the socialization was like that.	36:42
Paul Ortiz	Where were you stationed by the time the war was ending?	37:13
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	By the time the war was ending, I was in Marseille. We had come in on the invasion of Southern France, and we were in the Marseille area. And when the war ended, I was shipped from there to Philippines. Most of the soldiers with me, except some who were married and had dependents, or for other reasons had accumulated sufficient points, they used the point system, a scoring as to whether you went back to the US or you remained in Europe or were transferred to the Pacific.	37:19
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	The war in Pacific was of course going on at that time. And here I was single, no dependents, anything and no age factor. So I didn't have sufficient points to give me the opportunity to go back to the US. And I was shipped from there with other troops to the Pacific. We went down through the Panama Canal. And we were really out not far beyond the Panama Canal when they had begun to do the bombing of our Hiroshima. And by the time we got to the Philippines, the war was over.	38:04
Paul Ortiz	Do you remember having any impressions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?	38:46
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well, I was glad something was ending the war. I was concerned about what this bomb was all about. See, all that we knew was what we read in the military papers, the newspaper Stars and Stripes. We weren't receiving other papers. And what we heard on radio was what we heard through the military radio. And so I was mystified by it. But like other troops, I was glad that something was ending the war. And I didn't know how many people were killed or permanently injured, and so on.	38:55
Paul Ortiz	It's 1945 and the war in the Pacific has ended. Do you remember what your plans and aspirations were at that point?	39:43
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	To get home.	39:55
Paul Ortiz	To get home.	39:55
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	To get home. My plans were to get home. When I got out of the Army, and as I said, I had a college degree, I had a teaching certificate, I had taught public schools, and I didn't think I wanted to continue public school teaching, I didn't know. And in fact, I was offered a job in December. That was in December that I got out, was offered a job, which was considered a decent job as a teacher in a high school in my area. And my father was a teacher before me. And he loved education and teaching.	39:55
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And it surprised me that he sort of discouraged me from taking the job that I could have very well used. And so I came back here to North Carolina Central with the idea that I would take chemistry and see what my chances were for getting into medical school, or at least what they call a refresher course to look to see what the opportunities were then. I had no fixed idea for a occupation. And when I got into school here that spring, I was exposed to the new program in public health that was being established there. And it interested me. And I had an appropriate background for admission. And that's how I got into public health education. They had established a program in public health education. And I got into that that year, and that's how I've gotten into this career.	40:41
Paul Ortiz	Who was directing that program?	41:54
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Who directed it? A lady, a Dr. Lucy Morgan. It had come about through the work of Dr. Shepard, who was the president of North Carolina College for Negros. And through his work, and I think the Dean of the School of Public Health, it was Dr. Rosenau, and some other people in the southern region who felt that they needed Black workers in public health. And Dr. Shepard was one who believed in expansion and so on for his school. So they established the program, which was conducted by the staff of the School of Public Health. And there was also a certification in public health nursing at the same time. And that's how I got into it. I was in the second class of that group.	41:57
Paul Ortiz	And then what were you planning to do with your [indistinct 00:43:02]—	42:59
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well, that degree prepared you to work as a public health educator with a health agency. Whether it was official health agency like the Health Department or whether it was a volunteer agency, such as at that time we had Tuberculosis Association, Cancer Society, Heart Association wasn't all that strong then, but there were those kinds of associations that you could be employed with. And if you had teaching certificates, you could also be employed as a teacher of health in schools, and with the master's degree you could be employed as a teacher of health in college level. I was glad that I got the experiences with the health department when I worked in health department in Chapel Hill for three years there.	43:03
Paul Ortiz	And then that's after you received your certificate?	43:57
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well, now it was a master's degree. See, the health education unit was a master's degree. The nursing was a certification. They already had to have their nursing preparation, which was generally the registered nurse preparation. And then they became certified as public health nurses.	44:00
Paul Ortiz	And what were your primary responsibilities at Chapel Hill [indistinct 00:44:26]—	44:21
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	All right. I was a part of the local public health department. My responsibilities were to work with community groups in that time, Black community groups, because that was what it was expected, that I would work with Blacks. Work with Black community groups to discover what kinds of health problems they had and to try to deal with those problems. Now, health problems that they had then would be like environmental things, standing water places, improper means of disposing of sewage. Those are the kinds of health problem, traffic lights, things that related to better living.	44:26
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	In addition to trying to get them as groups to deal with their health problems, there was the effort to get them to do routine things that we know needed to be done, such as having the children immunized, such as taking advantage of the prenatal clinics, such as at that time we promoted x-rays and that was a great offer, tuberculosis was a problem. So you tried to get everybody x-rayed at least twice a year.	45:11
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	The immunizations I've mentioned. Now to try to get them to do those kinds of things, then I was to work with the schools to help them improve their instruction about health or to at least do health instruction, to help them establish lunchroom programs and to do environmental things in the school. So it was quite a full job. It was an interesting experience, because we worked in the health department where there were doctors who were examining people and who were making certain prescriptions, et cetera, that people should follow. And there were nurses who were assisting doctors.	45:42
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	There was environmental specialist who was going out inspecting wells and describing how septic tanks should be laid. And here we were, people who didn't render a service and we weren't very well accepted by health departments right off because we didn't render any service such as they did. We didn't do anything directly to the—And now it, I've lived to see the health education hailed as the major thing that health department should be doing. It's been a gratifying experience to see that acceptance.	46:26
Paul Ortiz	That's interesting. And this was in the late '40s?	47:04
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	This is in the late '40s.	47:06
Paul Ortiz	'40s.	47:06
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Correct. Mm-hmm.	47:09
Paul Ortiz	So you were in a really unique position to really see the environmental and material conditions in African American communities. [indistinct 00:47:20]—	47:10
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Right. And things were in pretty bad state of affairs.	47:22
Paul Ortiz	Pretty bad state.	47:24
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Mm-hmm.	47:26
Paul Ortiz	What were some of the things that really stuck out in your mind at that time, and were any of those conditions new to you, that you had no prior knowledge—	47:26

Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Okay. Having grown up in Wilson, which is a rural eastern county, I've been exposed to all kinds of things. For example, there, the big thing was that many of the people were sharecroppers who lived on farms where tobacco was the major industry. And when the time came to harvest the tobacco and they'd gotten tobacco in and the tobacco sold. And when the factories in that area closed, there were people in the months of January and February that had no employment and their incomes hadn't been enough to enable them to save to carry them through the difficult cold months.	0:04
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And so people really suffered. And you had people moving from farm to farm. And those in town moving from one rental house to another because they just couldn't pay the rent and the landlords would put them out. And there were even times when they would tear up houses they were living in to heat them to keep themselves warm. But at that time most of the heating was with wood and coal, and we didn't have the oil.	0:47
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And so I'd seen all of us, and I'd seen families where one person got tuberculosis and then another member, and then another member, and you had them dying off. I'd known my peers who had had hooping cough and ended up with pneumonia or something and dying. And even some who died of diptheria, I don't remember a lot who died of diptheria, but there was some with those problems.	1:14
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	So when I began to work and to go right into the neighborhoods and into the homes, I saw these kinds of things in real situations. And there were people who couldn't get medical care, who had no family doctor, and there were not clinics to the extent that they are today. Most of them who got to some kind of clinics, if they had no family doctor, and these would come over to Lincoln Hospital, to whatever clinic they had. Or to Duke, to whatever clinic they had, which was primarily for the training of the students then. And so they would get into those kinds of clinics.	1:46
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And getting medical care was quite something. Chapel Hill was hardly able to support a Black doctor and we ended up getting one there. One of the programs that one of my predecessors worked with, and I don't know that we got into this, one of my predecessors with the health department worked with, was that a group of people over in Person County, I mean Chatham County, that's Pittsboro and the area. And her work with them trying to help them discover what their community problems were, when they say community problems affecting the largest group.	2:41
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	They said that they thought they needed a farm agent who could help them with their farm. And they were just a rural county. Well, the county commissioners who should be involved in supplying them with one, they wanted a Black farm agent, said to them that they would help pay their portion. A and T State University, which was the land grant college, which also was involved in providing extension education, said that they had some money to pay for the support of a farm agent. But the county commission said they had nowhere to house them and no office anywhere to house them, so they couldn't have one.	3:30
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	So this group got together and they're working on other things, road improvement. They worked on a lot of things. They built a place to house a farm agent, nice little brick building. But in building it to house a farming agent and a female home agent, they also made space for a doctor. And they were able to get arrangements with a Black physician who eventually came to Chapel Hill to put in hours of time at the paid place in Pittsboro.	4:14
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And so that was some of the kinds of work that health educators did, you asked me about health educators. Now, this was a White health educator who did this, and they were very receptive to this White health educator. And of course she was one that had no racial difficulties or anything, and was able to develop leadership within the group to do these things.	4:53
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And there was very interesting encounters, et cetera, with Whites and Blacks during that period. At that period, we were beginning to have some resurgence of the Klan in the area. And my landlady used to worry about whether I was, with my work with NAACP, was creating too much problem. And if I stayed out too late at night, she'd wonder if I'd been accosted by some group.	5:19
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And here's a real joke of those days, as I said, my landlady was worried about whether I was making some people unhappy, et cetera. My fraternity over here at North Carolina Central, and during an initiation, this was not long after I had been on campus, I had become affiliated with the graduate chapter. But not long after I'd been on campus for a period.	5:58
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	In their initiation of a group, they required that the inductees marched to Chapel Hill to get my signature. There must have been about five or more. What those fellas did, they rented themselves a truck and stopped the truck there at the low end of Franklin Street and got out with their lanterns and started marching up the street.	6:27
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And the policeman, I think at first found out what they were. So they had sort of a police escort. I don't know how many, but it was a sizeable number. And here my poor landlady wakes up at 2:00 in the morning with these people out in front of the house with lanterns. They almost had me moved out of that house because I wasn't there. I was away that weekend. And here she had to come to the door with these lanterns at 2:00 in the morning and the Klan was acting up and she knew. So she says, "Sure." It upset her. So she threatened to have me moved. But that was the times and the kinds of things that were going on. I was even amused.	7:07
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	We would have visitors from Yale, Harvard, all the schools of public health, come into Chapel Hill. And European, other visitors as well, to observe the work we were doing. And most of the meetings with rural people had to be at night because they were working or either they were working over here in the Veterans Hospital or some other places. And we'd go to the PTAs or the community meetings at nights and sometimes the visitors, I'd take them with me.	7:58
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	It wasn't advisable for me and a White female to be roaming around the woods in the rural areas of Orange or Chatham Person County at night. But the lady I worked with, she and I would go together and I think they got to know people who might be observant, know us. But the most amusing thing was we had a young lady from the Philippines who was over and she was supposed to go out with me.	8:35
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	So one of her friends, the White persons asked if it was risky for me to take her with me. And I was real amused at that because she was about as dark as I was to go out. But people were cautious about these kinds of things.	9:07
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And there were places, some of those places I went, I couldn't eat because they had enough Black restaurants in small towns. And if I wanted to eat, I'd have to go in the back door and ask for sandwiches and so on to be sent. And I guess I should have had enough pride not to do that. But I did it. And some other people who work with us wouldn't do it. They had too much pride to be treated that way.	9:29
Paul Ortiz	So what would they do?	10:03
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	They'd go hungry until they got home. This was like at lunchtime. Like you and I talking, and if it's lunchtime, we want to go out to get something. You could go in, I would have to go to the back door. Either you go in and bring something out for me and we'd eat here in the office. Those kinds of things were problems with race relations then.	10:05
Paul Ortiz	And you mentioned there was a resurgence in Klan activity. You also mentioned your activity in the NAACP. I wonder if you could talk about that and—	10:32
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	At that time, there was the effort to bring about equalization of schools, and this is equalization. All the suits were for equalizing schools. This was before 1954. And the NAACP chapter in Chapel Hill had lots of support from students and some faculty were a part. And there was real problems in the sense that communists were frowned upon. And so there were communist people in the NAACP.	10:46
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	I can remember one very famous person, if I could recall the name, who was from a distinguished family, Haynes family or something in Winston Salem. But he was flaming red, so to speak. And he created disturbances all around, and I can remember him in our meetings. And most of the things that he—One of the persons I can remember very well in our NAACP meetings when we were trying to make approaches such as trying to get Frank Graham, who was President of the University of North Carolina, to do things and to make peaceful, persuasive kinds of approaches.	11:32
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	These persons were advocating that we do some very disruptive kinds of things. He says, "When a baby is born, that it comes into the world yelling and screeching, and that's the way he gets attention." And this is what he was advocating. So there was quite the advocacy for some more militant things than were being done then.	12:23
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	But I was a member of the NAACP at that time. My boss, who was the health director, was concerned about it too. And he cautioned that with my involvement, not to use the name of the health department, not to use my role as an employee of the health department in my work with NAACP. School teachers couldn't belong. But if they belonged, they kept it with some secrecy. And other people couldn't because their employers, or the people who owned their houses they were living in, could deal with them harshly and they would deal with them harshly in some sense.	12:53
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	So my job was a little independent and then I was a single person and I was able to do more in that way. While with these efforts for equalization, equal pay for Blacks, and all the kinds of things in the schools at that time here in Durham, Durham High was the model school. Hillside was supposed to be a model school for Blacks. But the discrepancy was so great.	13:42
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And the fight then was to provide all the kinds of labs and equipments in Hillside that you have in Durham High. The effort in Chapel Hill where I was, was to at least make it a high school. You had a high school in Chapel Hill, then you had for the Blacks, you had grades from the fifth grade on all the way through the 12th grade in one small building. So we were trying to get changes in those.	14:15
Paul Ortiz	What kind of tactics did the NAACP use to do it?	14:51
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	If it was a matter of going to court, threatening to go to court. Then that was about the major thing, to try to get it into court.	14:57
Paul Ortiz	What did you think of people who advocated more militant strategies at that time?	15:07
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	What did I think of them?	15:18
Paul Ortiz	Yeah.	15:18
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	At that time I was for pacifist type things, but I'm sure that that was needed and had its impact. That the more militant things had some impact. But I was not one who was for more militant things in '48 and '49 and '50.	15:19
Paul Ortiz	Would it be correct to say that you saw kind of this, well, it's called the Civil Rights Movement at that time, as being able to accommodate different strategies?	15:48
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Mostly what?	16:00
Paul Ortiz	Being able to accommodate different strategies, was there room for maneuver in that way or?	16:02
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well, you had the leadership at the National Office of NAACP. And such spokesman then at that time, that was Walter White had just gone in. The man, Roy Wilkins was the executive. And they could make the speeches, they could appeal to the president and to others, and get national news about how wrong things were and how they needed to be changed. And we fought this war to make democracy real and using all those kinds of things.	16:13
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And people in local governments, and some were more inclined to be a little more liberal because that was true. But here we'd had the war and all the things that we'd advocated and we'd gotten better treatment for minorities in Europe and foreign countries than they were getting here. And so there was some leeway and some effort to make adjustments and the acceptance on the part of many who just thought that Blacks were second class humans. And so let them be second class humans. Let them feed them and treat them nice, but that's all.	16:43
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And so at the national level, you were getting quite a lot of publicity and many court suits and so on for change and beginning to get some militant types of things. At the local level, people were less afraid to be identified as a part of NAACP. And so you were getting more activity and more movement, and there was a stir to bring about changes.	17:26
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Truman had integrated the Army and these things were cited and were used. And so there was the appearance before county commissioners, Black groups coming and asking, demanding that paved streets be placed here, that recreation centers, those kinds of things didn't exist. And so what we were for getting recreation center, better housing, better streets, improved schools. There was so much in deficiency until the integration thing was something over here that you—	18:03
Paul Ortiz	You were just trying to get some services.	18:53
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Trying to get services and to be accepted as real citizens who had rights. And police brutality, Black policemen in, Black firemen. There was a fight for so many things like that. And until the fight for opening up and integrating things was a little later to come.	18:55
Paul Ortiz	So we're still in the late '40s, really early '50s. How did the county commissioners respond to these delegations?	19:21
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	They might sometimes treat them with courtesy, and then at other times act like they weren't there. It was sort of like being benevolent to you. At that point they didn't depend that heavily on the vote of the Blacks. Now we were beginning to get some Blacks on school board in about '49. I don't remember any Black elected official in the governmental thing.	19:34
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Yeah, we were beginning to get one or two council people on city councils. But the county commissioners had rural populations, and that was much harder to break than where the city councils and city alderman for elections, et cetera. This is a recollection thing, that may be off on it. Did I answer your question?	20:11
Paul Ortiz	Yeah. One other question I'm particularly curious about, is you mentioned that there were communist members of NAACP. And then this was obviously a time of some sense that Black people were pushing for change. And it was also a time that the Cold War was really, really firming up. And people read about Mary [indistinct 00:21:09] McCoy, who's called before.	20:39
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Yeah, this is McCarthy. This is McCarthy era. When, well, just before the war and right after, being a communist was considered a very criminal and something that was very anti-American. And so to be labeled a communist was enough to put you into a very, very untenable kinds of possession.	21:12
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And the idea that McCarthy and others spread was that this was a part of the Russian effort to gain control of the US. And that everything must be done to stifle and to destroy the cells such as the communist cells. And that it made it so that you see, here a group for change. Here are Blacks, a group for change. Certainly there was some alliance there in terms of the kinds of change that were needed, changes that were advocated and needed.	21:46
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	But if a Black group could be identified as being led by communists or being communists, they would say it's the communists. That Blacks are satisfied. They're not all that disturbed about it. It's the communists that are creating this kind of thing.	22:29
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And Paul Robeson, other Blacks who had been identified with social revolution like this, they were just about ruined. And so for some people, and many people, well most of the NAACP people, the effort was to be sure in local communities that the NAACP was acting on its own, and that the changes that were being sought were changes that Negroes, as we were then, wanted and sought. And that we were not being pushed up to revolutionize things because we were a part of a world conspiracy, as a lot of the politicians wanted to make it appear and used it very well to gain votes and support for their causes.	22:45
Paul Ortiz	So would you say that in a sense, anti-communism could be used as a tool against—	23:47
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	It was very much used. Yeah. They wanted to label you red. They wanted to label Roy Wilkins, anybody who advocated those changes, they wanted to say was red or it had some influenced by red. So he was being paid for and supported by reds as they called them, by the communists.	23:53
Paul Ortiz	I mean in the local NAACP chapter here or in Chapel Hill.	24:14
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Oh, here or wherever.	24:20
Paul Ortiz	Oh, here.	24:21
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	But Chapel Hill was more exposed because indeed there were young students who had no reluctance to be identified as communist.	24:22
Paul Ortiz	Black students.	24:34
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	No, there weren't any Black students in Chapel Hill.	24:34
Paul Ortiz	Black students at Chapel Hill.	24:35
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Yeah. There weren't any Black students. But they had to be reluctant to the extent that they could be brought, criminal charges could be brought against them as being, what's the term? Anti, what's the term when you want to—Sedition?	24:37
Paul Ortiz	Sedition, anti-American.	24:53
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	All right. Those kinds of things. All those kinds of things could be brought against them. And they could be just about disenfranchised as well as imprisoned. But for the most part, there were any numbers of students here, and some at Duke, and so on, but they had their units and the FBI and others knew them and could identify them. And they were brought to court for various things.	24:58
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	I regret, I can't recall the name of the man who was really the leader in the state and really one who worked very hard too. The other part, which I've not mentioned, or just but was a part of the North Carolina context of things, was employees in the textile, furniture, and other industries here in North Carolina, the effort, these groups were not just communist groups, but what other such groups were trying to organize them into unions.	25:30
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And that was quite something. And they had great union fights here during that period over in Henderson. Henderson was almost ruined as a town by the fights between the efforts to unionize. I can't even recall the name of the industry there. But it was quite something.	26:18
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And in the Piedmont and going west, even pre-war days, they had had great disturbances with the efforts to unionize labor. So there was that tie in too with the Black causes and the whole milieu of change coming about post-war change. And there were some great disturbances.	26:43
Paul Ortiz	So you had to really operate within more of a, it sounds like a constrained—	27:21
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Constrained in terms of not, of making sure that what we as NAACP people, members, and Black leadership was after was pure democracy. Democratic things that we were entitled to and not things that were growing out of the communist efforts and not as though we were being led by the communists. And otherwise, if the communists weren't there staring us up, then we would be pleased with our lot. See that's—	27:28
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And oh, the times were pretty bad in the sense that here, Dr. Frank Graham, who was a scholar of scholars, and indeed a strong advocate for democracy and so on, he was assigned to the Senate. You may know of this, but he was assigned to the US Senate in somebody's seat who had died. I believe [indistinct 00:28:38] to someone who had died. And Kerr Scott was the governor and he assigned him to the Senate. And he, Graham did very well because he knew government, he knew how to function in the legislator so on.	28:09
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And he was defeated when it came time for election, by a man in Raleigh, an attorney, his name was Willie Smith. And what Willie Smith did was have a picture of Frank Graham sitting at a table, I think if was that much, with a Black person. And that defeated him. Said, "Here's somebody we're trying to elect for Senate. He's socializing with Blacks." And they put little anti, a little red on him, put the communist part into it too.	28:59
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And to me, that was just, I guess, embarrassing that our state, which was supposed to be a progressive southern state, it had the label of progressive southern state at that time, would put somebody like Smith in the Senate purely on the basis of that he socialized with Blacks. That gives you something of the setting of the times too.	29:33
Paul Ortiz	Right. It seems that I've read that there is always that. That the struggles that the NAACP were involved in the different chapters there. It was a struggle. And many of them actually in the deeper south would be banned. I know the NAACP in Alabama was banned. It was banned. And it was that the state's excuse was that it was a communist-run organization.	29:59
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Correct. I'm trying to think of the name, the term that you use when you are trying to unseat the government and have no regard for the Constitution. I don't know.	30:32
Paul Ortiz	Now there was, I'm kind of hazy on this, but there was a major convention, it seems to me was an NAACP convention in Durham around 1945. It was some major gathering of African-American people who were considered leaders, who made a proclamation that called on the authorities and used the—	30:48
Paul Ortiz	You talked earlier about the feeling that we had fought this war to defend democracy and Black people fought alongside White people. There should be some kind of equalization services and so on and so forth. I was wondering if you had any knowledge of that.	31:20
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	I don't. You see, I came out of the Army in December of 1945.	31:41
Paul Ortiz	Okay.	31:45
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	That was the end of '45. And at that time I was in the Pacific. And I don't recall, other than I think it was about that time that—No, they hadn't. I started to say they had begun to bring suits against the school board to equalize schools, but I don't think they'd done it that early. So I don't know what that event was.	31:45
Paul Ortiz	Okay. So I think it was something called the Durham Manifesto or something, I just wrote—	32:08
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Could have been.	32:12
Paul Ortiz	A reference to it.	32:12
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	I can't help with that.	32:15
Paul Ortiz	Okay.	32:16
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	As you know, Durham was a place where there were more independent Blacks, and could do much more of that kind of thing than in other cities, even Charlotte or some of the other cities. Where the Blacks were either dependent upon their jobs as school teachers or their jobs as working for some very wealthy family or other things. Whereas there were more Blacks here that didn't depend upon, and could not be sanctioned by a White power structure person and so on. And so things like that could happen in Durham where they may not be able to happen even in Raleigh and some other places.	32:18
Paul Ortiz	And moving in into the '50s, what were you doing in terms of occupation?	33:09
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Okay. I was with, as I said, this district health department in these various counties. From 1948 to 1951. In '51, I left the job so that I could go to work on a terminal degree. I decided that that's what I could do.	33:16
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	So I can't get the timing right. But somewhere in the period, I was here at NC Central for a semester, a quarter, they had quarters then. I was here in school for a quarter. During that period, I became ill. I had some problem with my eyes. And for about the next four months, I was in the Veterans Hospital, mostly in Richmond, Virginia.	33:45
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	From '52 until the spring of '54, I was in—Well, from the latter part of '52 really, well, late in '52. I spent at least two years in New York in school. And came here to work in the spring of '54, the summer of '54. And that's when I worked at NC Central and was there until retirement.	34:30
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	So in the early, I was working in Chapel Hill through '51. And then '51 until the end of '52, I was here in Durham and then hospitalized, et cetera. And late '52 to spring of '54. Well, not until the winter of '53 I was in school.	35:05
Paul Ortiz	So now did you come back to Central to teach in public health?	35:38
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Yep.	35:42
Paul Ortiz	What was the—	35:47
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Can we take this up some other time? Just, I would like to stop now.	35:49
Paul Ortiz	Okay. Certainly.	35:55
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And if you want to, I don't mind continuing at another time. Is that all right with you?	35:57
Paul Ortiz	Okay. I mean if your schedule—	36:06
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Yeah, I do need to stop now.	36:07
Paul Ortiz	Okay.	36:09

Paul Ortiz	Okay, Dr. Fitts, I wonder if we could start again with a question I had from our—actually our prior interview, and that is what were the main motivations for you to go into the field of public health?	0:11
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well, it was a matter of exposure really. I had come out of the army having completed college before I went into the army without really knowing what I wanted to do as a career. I was certified to teach and I had taught in public school some. So when I came out of the army, I came back to NC Central and just took some general courses which I call refresher courses.	0:36
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And at that time, I learned about a program that had just begun, which was attempting to prepare Blacks to work in public health in the southern region. And having exposure to that and being impressed with what it was about, I got admitted to the health education program graduate unit there, and that's how I got into it. I was naturally interested in social service kinds of things anyway and [indistinct 00:01:46], park having a problem.	1:06
Paul Ortiz	Is there a connection between the work you're doing in the field and your getting to get involved with the NAACP and the medical community?	1:56
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well, I'd gotten involved with NAACP long before that I could tell. My father was a public school teacher and ran great risk in the rural in North Carolina, a rural community with being an NAACP promoter. And one of the first kinds of experiences I'd had at doing something that brought in money was selling the Chryslers. I sold Chryslers when I was maybe nine years of age. The Chrysler's magazine went around distributing and selling. I think they sold them for 50 cents or less than that. And that's how I got to know about the NAACP through my father's involvement and then my own exposure to it. So I was an NAACP member before I got into my own career.	2:07
Paul Ortiz	So it was a natural sort of progression?	3:01
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Right, but the kind of work gave me opportunities for working within NAACP and other social reform kinds of activities being in the public health. In fact, I remember my director who was, I worked for a public health department, and I got involved with some of the school suits. At that time, they were suits to equalize school, not desegregation. And Dr. Godlan called me aside one day and he told me that he knew about my work in school desegregation and so on and that for some people was creating problems.	3:04
Paul Ortiz	Which county were you in?	3:54
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	I was in Orange County. I was working in Chapel Hill. And he said that as long as I did it as though it were not part of my job, he had nothing to comment about or nothing to say. But to try to see if I could keep it separate from what was seen as the natural work.	3:55
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	In community health education, the whole effort was to involve people in bringing about change, primarily in their environment and in their practices on the basis of what they saw as problems. That wasn't all that easy to keep those two things separated.	4:16
Paul Ortiz	Was it a frustrating job for you? It must have been very challenging.	4:33
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	To work with NAACP or to work with community health?	4:43
Paul Ortiz	To work with community health.	4:46
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	It was challenging indeed. I had to learn a lot about working with people and I had to learn a lot about community. I really didn't know much about community dynamics, having graduated from high school at just 15 and into college. And from the college to army almost, I hadn't gotten to know what communities were like and nothing about community dynamics. So I had a lot of learning to do.	4:50
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	But it was indeed challenging to try to get people together and to get them to focus on things that would make changes in their lives. Most of them saw me as somebody who was out trying to get them to get blood tests for venereal diseases or someone who was out to get them to get x-rays. At that time we were promoting x-rays as a means of early detection of tuberculosis. But to get across to them that we were concerned about their employment, housing conditions, and how they kept their house in conditions and those things were difficult for. It was easier for them to understand if there were a special thing we were promoting, like getting the children in for immunizations, or getting their animals vaccinated for rabies and so on.	5:17
Paul Ortiz	So do you feel at times people were suspicious [indistinct 00:06:23]?	6:17
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	No, no, I had no problem. No, no. They weren't suspicious of me at all. This was real community organizations to promote wellbeing and I was well received. Now, surely some of the power structure people would wonder about somebody who's in the health department getting groups organized to come before the county commissioners making a petition.	6:25
Paul Ortiz	[indistinct 00:06:56].	6:53
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Now you can see where that kind of problem would arise if we were working with people in that way. They had a little problem seeing that as clearly a health problem. So we were going for them to get them to do something about extending the water lines or to do other things like helping them to organize and to know these were things they could do. That was questionable by some of the officials, yes.	6:56
Paul Ortiz	Do you remember any of that? I mean roughly the years of this petition?	7:31
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Yeah, I began working in public health in Chapel Hill in 1948. And this was, I worked there 'till '51, about three years.	7:36
Paul Ortiz	So you began petitioning for [indistinct 00:07:49]?	7:45
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well, petitioning was just a small part of it, but there were many other things people who'd worked before me had done that. But actually reaching people and getting people to feel that they could make some changes in their status—life status, et cetera, was the real problem.	7:49
Paul Ortiz	How did you feel about the outcome [indistinct 00:08:20]? Did you feel like the time that you were able to run a successful program?	8:15
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well, there were some things that were successes and then there were other things that just didn't work, and it depended upon how well what you did with people related to their own interest, related to what they wanted and needed. I was fortunate to have followed in public health a lady who was the health educator prior to me and who was my boss, really, who was very effective in working with rural groups. And she had worked with this rural group in Chatham County over in Pittsboro and so on.	8:31
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And they've done a number of things. The biggest thing of course is that they had gotten themselves a building in which they could house a Black farm agent. That was what they wanted. And they had gotten, the county commissioners, I may have gone over this before. The county commissioners had indicated that they couldn't hire a Black farm agent because they had no place for them to put make his office. So they constructed the building themselves and got them, and therefore were given the farm agent and working with the state agricultural institution, which was A&T at that time.	9:11
Paul Ortiz	The money came from the state?	9:52
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Part of the money for the paying of the salary, but the construction of the building was something that the local people did. And then in addition to that, they were able to build a space for a medical doctor, and they were able to get a doctor to come in certain days of the week, so many hours a day.	9:54
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well, I followed working with the same group of people. And at that time we were promoting the use of DDT and other things for insect control in the building of sanitary pit critters. And there were measurable things that we did in that effect which we could say we'd made accomplishments.	10:20
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Likewise with that group, which was already had its own style and independence by then, decided they wanted to have a county fair and they put on county fairs. And I was able to work with them, and I think that fair still goes on. They bought property, did everything for having a county fair where the farmers could come and bring their exhibits and the schoolchildren could participate. It was a very, very satisfying experience.	10:42
Paul Ortiz	[indistinct 00:11:20].	11:17
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Now so that's an example of, you said satisfying experiences.	11:20
Paul Ortiz	During those years, how much contact did you have with your [indistinct 00:11:36]? Can you go back more?	11:28
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Yeah, always. My parents were there during those years and so naturally I went home. I didn't stay for any length of time but was home for a visit or if I was on vacation, two weeks or something like that. But it's so near proximity that sites that I could go home overnight or any weekend.	11:43
Paul Ortiz	Could you see changes in Wilson during those years in the community after that [indistinct 00:12:15]?	12:06
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well, I'm trying to see how to put this. Wilson had been fortunate in many regards and in others, very unfortunate. But during my childhood years, we were always able to have Black physicians. I naturally look at the health aspect, and we were always able to have Black physicians that we'd had a Black hospital. And that was dwindling, and that was something that was fading out and maybe it was appropriate that it did.	12:21
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	But then they got other community service kinds of personnel that render services in the community. The agricultural extension agent had built more schools and they got a bit of more and diversification of employment. You see being a tobacco town, the employment was around the growing, harvesting, and redrawing of tobacco. And I think I told you in previous discussions that by January, many of the laboring people were in serious difficulties in that they had no employment.	13:04
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And the rental houses they were in, they had to move from them, continue to move because they couldn't pay the rent and getting social services that they needed. It's a problem. And so with the early '50s and there on they were able to attract some different industries. And there was the hospital for treating people with tuberculosis. That was employment. There was a—Can't think of the name, a popular animal feed stuff plant, Purina I think. And some other kinds of things that were coming in that gave more year round kinds of employment, best that made for improvement.	13:55
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And people were making requests and demands for elimination of segregation. And Wilson's pretty well organized for that. And then through the years, they brought about a number of changes including getting more Blacks elected to public office and even state office. So in fact they had to file a suit to assure that Blacks got elected to certain offices and the suit relates to what we're into now in terms of developing political districts is better.	14:53
Paul Ortiz	[indistinct 00:15:40]. I wonder if we maybe move a little bit towards and talking about personal questions. Could you talk a little bit about your courtship with your wife?	15:44
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Maybe she needs to be here to hear.	16:00
Paul Ortiz	Maybe not.	16:01
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	I met my wife when both of us were in school in New York. She was there working on her master's and I was there pursuing a doctoral degree, and that's how we met. And she was from Louisiana and I was from North Carolina. And I think after a year and a half or so on the courtship we were married. And that's it. I was quite mature. I was 30 some years of age.	16:08
Paul Ortiz	So there's a bit of an age difference?	16:47
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	No, just five years.	16:53
Paul Ortiz	Just five years.	16:53
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Which is supposedly pretty good run.	16:55
Paul Ortiz	So I guess that's the question I had to ask is, you received your doctoral or your Ph.D. in public health?	17:00
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	No, I received my doctor degree in education, health education is the area of emphasis. There certain schools that provided degrees in health and health education, which is different from physical education. Most of the schools with education departments, if you were interested in health, you ended up going into health and physical education.	17:09
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	I went into health education, which is separate and apart from health and phys. I had already gotten a master's in public health through the program here. And so my doctoral degree was health education, a doctorate of education with health education concentration.	17:39
Paul Ortiz	After you married, where did you settle [indistinct 00:18:09]?	18:03
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	That's an interesting one. The person who had established the program here in public health education who was chairman of the Department of Health Education in the School of Public Health in Chapel Hill. That time the schools were separated. And she had established the department over here, and we used the same professors from the School of Public Health.	18:08
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	They would commute to teach us and we'd commute over there for some things. She was trying to get more of us. I was in the second class that had come through the master's program there. And so she was trying to get more of us involved in staffing, so-on a program here. And she tried to follow my progress when I was always studying. And when I had completed my coursework and I was offered a position here in the department at NCC. It was amusing since we talked about matrimony.	18:39
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	My wife was already teaching at Southern University, she's a School of Business. She was with machines, et cetera. And apparently, they appreciated her very much, so they were trying to find a means to offer me a position there so that they could keep her.	19:23
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And we chose not to do that. And even later on there were some efforts to get us to come back to New Orleans. The school where she worked was Baton Rouge, but they had a branch in New Orleans. I remember [indistinct 00:20:04] us coming back there. But North Carolina was so far ahead of most states in terms of public health, in terms of health education. It was an ideal arrangement for anybody who's in health ed because we had a separate department of health education.	19:43
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	We were not double made to being in the physical ed department or in the School of Education. And that was ideal. And it was the envy of most people across the nation that we had an independent department. And so I knew that that was what I would've preferred and if that's kind of situation.	20:24
Paul Ortiz	This was in the mid '50s?	20:52
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	This was in the mid '50s. It was begun in '46. Was begun in '46. I came from a second class, thought it was begun in '45 'cause I came to a second class and got the master's degree in '47.	20:53
Paul Ortiz	What was North Carolina Central like at that time?	21:08
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	North Carolina Central at that time was considered the preferable of the publicly supported Black institutions that seemed to have had advantages over most of the other public supported Black institutions. I guess much of it had to do with the vision of the president, who was the founder, James Shepherd. I should think some of it had to do with its proximity to Carolina and Duke.	21:16
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And again, to the effectiveness of the president with the state legislature. He was considered an effective politician and he was able to get facilities and so on that some of the other schools couldn't get. He's also noted as being one who could use the leverage of separate institutions to get allocations to NC Central that others seemed not to be able to utilize as well as he did because of considerable leverage. There was at that time that the man about separate but equal opportunities and equal facilities, and there was some effort to bring about equalization.	21:47
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	What had happened all up 'till that time was that any time Black students got interested in a program or something, they'd almost tried to establish that program at a Black institution. That's how we got the law school here. They rather than commit Blacks in law school in Carolina, built the law school here, Library of Science, some of the other special schools. They built them here or at A&T or somewhere so that they would not have to admit Blacks to the White institutions. And some of them were provided for rather well, none comparable to what existed elsewhere.	22:38
Paul Ortiz	What were your initial experiences as a teacher at North Carolina Central? Because it seems to be quite a professional transition of being out in the field in public health and then going to an institution.	23:29
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	It was. That was something that I had to adjust to because freedom of being out in the field and working with people in their own settings and not being restricted to four walls was something that I appreciated. But then you could get involved in the lives of students and seeing student growth and working with them to developing their aspirations and so on.	23:48
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	That brought about some satisfying experiences as well. And then there were some, indeed, scholars at Central. I was not among the scholars, but there were scholars. And to have opportunities to join the sessions with them and to see them in action and so on was rewarding also, and to be a part of a growing institution had its rewards.	24:16
Paul Ortiz	Do you sense in the late '50s at North Carolina Central that there were [indistinct 00:25:04] perhaps happening [indistinct 00:25:09] that perhaps were [indistinct 00:25:17] something new in Black colleges?	24:46
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	I don't know about anything new, but Paul [indistinct 00:25:26] civil rights and son was involving kind of activity. It built on what had been achieved. And you go in whatever directions indicated. I think in Durham there was the leadership available who could effectively use the court systems and to relate to national activities that progress was being made.	25:21
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And at one point, for example, I talked about the fact that President Shepherd capitalized on the segregated system by getting things and allocations that were needed. Well, there was criticism of him for that in the sense that our goal should be that of breaking down the walls.	26:07
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And the editor of the local paper, Lewis Austin, was one who advocated breaking down the walls. Don't accept second rate education or a substitute for the real thing. And a lot of that was occurring, then how do our best to use this? And I remember the first students, they set up a doctoral program at Central, a doctoral in education. And by many, the first students were scorn because they were pawns, seen as pawns in the practice of the White power structure.	26:46
Paul Ortiz	Where did you stand on this? What was your—	27:33
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	I was opposed to it, too, because it was very clearly that the doctoral program was set up to keep Blacks out of the university. And so I was opposed to that.	27:37
Paul Ortiz	Was there a change in your attitude over the years? Do you think that maybe earlier in your life you would've supported that kind of move?	27:55
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	I'm not sure I've got the question or let me see if I can say in my case. In my case I coming up with the NAACP and all the other things, and having been one who've had to go to the back of the bus or couldn't use the regular restroom or couldn't use the regular cafeteria.	28:11
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	And the school system was so different from what we had. I was one for eliminating segregation altogether. And that was the goal as far as I was concerned: elimination of segregation.	28:37
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	There came a time in the movement that some of the people were saying, "Let's do our thing. Let's have our own thing and forget about desegregation." And that created real turmoil for me. I know that whatever we had, we wanted to strengthen, indeed. And that's my position now, that if they're going to be something that's called a Black institution, then let it be a Black private institution. No public funds established to promote however great a Black and separate institution.	28:54
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	But they are some now of course, as obviously they would still like to see that kind of thing done. But I have not changed from the original. And that's to eliminate segregated practices together.	29:43
Paul Ortiz	So do you maintain your involvement in NAACP?	30:04
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Yep. But here in Durham, I don't know how much you've gotten this here in Durham, the organization that has done more to have an impact on issues relating to Black, White, to denial discriminations has been the Durham Committee on Affairs of Black People.	30:08
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	The NAACP has maintained, and I have been perhaps one of the major persons who have secured memberships, promoting memberships in it. But from the 1950, say around 1956 or '57 on through, my focus has been for Durham on getting memberships to support the national office and to support what NAACP does nationally, not what it does locally. It's an image. It's seen and it's publicized locally. But the greatest impact in my opinion has been what's done with the Durham Committee on Affairs of Black People. And most of my energies have gone and worked with that group.	30:38
Paul Ortiz	In your experience, what was the relationships between the Durham Committee on Affairs of Black people and [indistinct 00:31:38]?	31:29
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	The relationship has been good except as with any other organization, some individuals have gotten some notion of a turf kind of deal, mostly NAACP side. And so the leaders of the Durham Committee on Affairs of Black People have learned to work with those individuals in being a part of whatever goes on. The strength of NAACP and locally in no way compares to the resources of the Durham Committee on Affairs of Black People.	31:40
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Strength, the knowhow and so on, in no way. Now, then NAACP has to protect its nonpartisan status and that creates some problems on how it works with the Durham Committee. It has to be a nonpartisan organization. And Durham Committee at various times can't give the appearance of being quite partisan, although we say we aren't. And so the Durham Committee is needed when there are issues that relate to getting over into what the Democrats, first, the Republicans so on do, and the matter of getting people out to vote better.	32:22
Paul Ortiz	Well, I know you have a busy schedule. So I guess what we should wrap up. If you had to make an autobiographical statement about your very rich experiences living through—and living through the Jim Crow period, being one of the key people who would help—	33:20
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	I wouldn't say one of the key, but a very involved person.	33:49
Paul Ortiz	Very involved person.	33:52
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Right.	33:52
Paul Ortiz	What kind statement would you like for the record? [indistinct 00:34:03] for your involvement?	33:55
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Well, now I haven't thought of that. I have thought of the fact that Cheryl, I have lived through some very exciting times and have had the opportunity to see some changes come about that surely weren't anticipated. Some things came faster than I thought and others came much slower than I thought. But it's been a very exciting time and a time for anyone who wants to be involved to have the opportunity to be involved. I guess that's it.	34:03
Paul Ortiz	Okay. Well, thanks a lot.	34:38
Howard Monroe Fitts Jr.	Thank you [indistinct 00:34:45].	34:39

Item Info

Title:

Howard Fitts, Jr. interview recording, 1994 June 08

Date:

June 8, 1994

Creator:

Fitts, Howard Monroe, Jr.

Contributor:

Ortiz, Paul

Description:

Name: Howard Monroe Fitts, Jr.; Date of birth: 1921-06-08; Place of birth: Greenville, NC; Occupation(s): educator; health services; Residence: Durham, NC
Informant ID: 370; Interviewed by: Paul Ortiz.

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Behind the Veil

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Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South interviews, photographs, and project records, circa 1864-2011, bulk 1990-1999

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The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired the Records of the Behind the Veil Oral History Project from the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies in 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2002.

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Interview number: 317
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Howard Fitts, Jr. interview recording, 1994 June 08

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1. Howard Fitts, Jr. administrative file, 1994

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Howard Fitts, Jr. interview recording, 1994 June 08

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