University of North Texas Oral History Collection

Interview with William F. Belcher
Interviewer: Paulette Hasier
Place of Interview: Denton, Texas
Date of Interview: September 27, 1995

Ms. Hasier:
This is Paulette Hasier interviewing Dr. William F. Belcher for the University of North Texas Oral History Program. The interview is taking place on September 27, 1995, in Denton, Texas. I am interviewing Dr. Belcher in order to obtain his recollections concerning the integration of North Texas State College.

What I'd like to do is start with some general background information, if you could tell me some details of where you were born, your education, and your family background.

Dr. Belcher:
I was born in Abilene, Texas, and spent most of my public school years in Sweetwater, Texas. I graduated from high school in Sweetwater in 1937. I worked in a grocery store for a couple of years off and on. I went as a freshman to Seminole Junior College in Oklahoma, where I lived with an aunt and uncle. Then I went to Texas Tech in 1939. I got my degree in three years by going summers.

Hasier:
That was your degree in what?

Belcher:
I had a B.A. in English with a minor in Spanish. Then I worked as a Spanish translator in the Office of Censorship in San Antonio for a year, and then I went into for the Army for three years. From there, I went to graduate school at the University of North Carolina, which I finished in 1950.

Hasier:
When did you come to North Texas?

Belcher:
I came to North Texas in 1950, and I stayed here and taught for thirty-five years. I retired in 1985, the first day of 1985.

Hasier:
When you were growing up in Abilene and Sweetwater, did you get any prevailing attitudes about racial matters in the community?

Belcher:
The truth of the matter is that blacks and Mexicans both went to segregated schools, and they could go only through the eighth grade. They had no high school for them. The schools were integrated for both Mexicans and blacks after I left.

Hasier:
What were your parents' attitudes?

Belcher:
My mother was a Yankee (laughter). She was from Illinois, and she was very sympathetic toward blacks and employed them occasionally, though we couldn't afford it. She was very ill for a while, and she had a black lady do her washing. She would come bringing a child and do the washing in the back yard.

Hasier:
So this was previous to the washing machine days?

Belcher:
Oh, yes. Two or three families in my neighborhood had servant quarters at the backs of their houses. I played with those children in the neighborhood. There were a couple of black girls in one place, and they invited me in to eat with them occasionally. My mother was upset because she said they probably didn't have enough food for themselves, much less having me as a guest. But I was pre-school, and I didn't know any better. The two girls, who were probably ten or twelve, taught me the multiplication tables on the sidewalk. I let them use my skates in return for learning the multiplication tables. This was before I went to school. I lent them the skates, and they said they couldn't skate on the front sidewalk. They had to skate on the driveway, in the back. There was much prejudice at that time.

Hasier:
So you were aware, even when you were a pre-schooler, that there was a definite suffering?

Belcher:
Yes, right.

Hasier:
Were there separate facilities where they ate in the town?

Belcher:
I don't think there were separate facilities. There just wasn't anyplace to eat, period. I don't remember. I didn't go to restaurants much at all as a child. But when I was in junior high, I'd take my lunch money and go downtown, rather than eating at school. I don't remember ever seeing anybody of that sort.

Hasier:
When you were in high school, did you have any contact with blacks?

Belcher:
No, there was no integration. We didn't know anybody. They lived in a separate part of town. They went to separate schools, so we never saw them.

Hasier:
How about when you were in college in Oklahoma?

Belcher:
I don't know whether they were segregated. There weren't any blacks in the junior college, not a one.

Hasier:
So, pretty much, after your pre-school years, you didn't really have a lot of contact with anybody in the black community?

Belcher:
Right. In the Army, I did, but the Army was segregated, too. When I was at Camp Crowder, Missouri, I was in the hospital for a while. Hospital patients helped with the work in the ward. We washed dishes, for example. I became closely acquainted with a black man from New Jersey. We were in the hospital for about a week together and became close friends. I said, "I'll come to see you.” He said, "No, don't. I live in a segregated barrack, and the other young men there would make you uncomfortable. It would make it unpleasant for you.” So I never did see him. I told him that probably the same thing was true in the other barracks, but I would welcome him to come, if he wanted to. But even the Army was segregated then. That was about the only contact I had.

There were none in college. Of course, I went to Texas Tech, and there were not any. The University of North Carolina was segregated, so there were none at Carolina. So I didn't see anybody. It wasn't a matter of my choice. It was just happenstance.

Hasier:
You just said that you didn't have any contact with them at school. Did you have any contact with blacks in business dealings, somebody that owned a store, or some such?

Belcher:
When I was a child, I played with a few blacks who lived in servant houses. There were two servant houses a couple of doors from me, where they lived, and I played with them all the time and felt no discomfort around them at all.

Hasier:
But that subsequently ended when you started going to school?

Belcher:
Yes. They went to the other school, probably. I don't know. I didn't keep track of them. As a matter of fact, they abandoned those servant quarters in the early 1930s. It was only when I was a very small child that I knew them, because they moved out of those servant quarters for some reason. They became unprofitable or for some reason that I don't know. There were several in the neighborhood, and people just moved out of them. They were refurbished and made into apartments for whites to come in.

Hasier:
I'd like to move a little forward. You were talking about coming to North Texas in 1950. I'd like to ask you if you remember when Joe Atkins filed suit against North Texas State College?

Belcher:
No, I don't.

Hasier:
This was back in 1955.

Belcher:
I was aware of it, but it was nothing that I had anything to do with. As sympathetic as I was, I had no voice in it, so I had nothing to say.

Hasier:
Do you remember the first black student that you had in the classroom?

Belcher:
No. I had a good many over the years, but I don't remember the first one.

Hasier:
Back in 1954, Tennyson Miller was the first graduate student. He was going for his doctorate in education. Do you remember when he began attending here?

Belcher:
No, I don't. The only thing I remember was when [President J. C.] Matthews met the faculty -- the first faculty meeting in the fall. I guess it was 1956. I don't know the year. All I remember was his saying that we were integrated; we would be accepting black students. It was a very brief comment. He talked about other things. He said, "Be careful about giving sympathetic grades." That's all I remember about it. I had no intention of giving sympathetic or unsympathetic grades. I was grading them like anybody else. I wasn't prejudiced because my mother was never prejudiced, and I grew up under her influence. In fact, she was reared by a black woman.

Hasier:
Since you brought up President Matthews, I have a few questions regarding his leadership style. How would you say he ran the institution at the time he was the president?

Belcher:
Sotto voce [softly, in an undertone, privately], that is under the table, quietly. He did things -- how can I phrase it -- not by making pronouncements, but by telephone calls and by having people come to his office and talking to them privately. He rarely made any public pronouncements about anything. He went to the person who was giving trouble and talked to that person, if there were any trouble. I don't know that there was. I was not aware of any.

Hasier:
I had read somewhere that President Matthews was described as a "benevolent despot" in his actions.

Belcher:
Yes.

Hasier:
Any dealings that you had with Matthews were through faculty meetings? Did you have any personal contact with him?

Belcher:
Oh, yes, I had personal contacts with him. As a matter of fact, Imogene Dickey was the dean of women. They both went to [George] Peabody [College for Teachers] in [Nashville] Tennessee, and they both did their work in English with the same man, A. L. Crabb. He was the father of a close friend of mine in graduate school. When I got the job here, A. L. Crabb, Jr., my friend, my friend wrote a letter to Matthews and Imogene, telling them what a wonderful person I was. So my way was paved. I didn't know about the letter until later.

Matthews was always friendly to me and was kind in many ways, though I didn't agree with all of his policies, by any means. As far as integration was concerned, I had no problem at all with anything that he did. I was the chairman of freshman English for about fifteen or eighteen years. Of course, if there had been any racial problem with students, I would have heard about it, but I didn't. There just weren't any.

Hasier:
You had mentioned before that Matthews did not make a lot of public announcements. He took people privately into his office. That sort of goes along with some research that I had done, that shows that he kept press coverage of the integration of North Texas down to a minimum.

Belcher:
Yes, he avoided that. He didn't want any publicity at all. In fact, he was successful, I think, in great part because he didn't encourage press coverage. To give you an idea of how he operated -- it has nothing to do with integration -- I taught the president of the student body, a young man who later went to seminary and became a teacher in a seminary. When he was president, I talked to him about having an honor system here, as they had at North Carolina, in which students in an examination answered the exam questions and then pledged that they neither gave nor received help on this quiz. It worked at Carolina, and I suggested to him that, since he was president of the student body, he might attempt to get an honor system here. Matthews told him to tell me that this school was not an appropriate one for an honor system, and that if we didn't leave it alone, we'd both be out of a job. I got it through the student, not through Matthews. He didn't call me in and tell me. So we dropped the honor system matter.

Hasier:
So basically he would be like to be the one who made the suggestions and implemented them?

Belcher:
Yes, and he thought that it wouldn't work here. I don't know whether it would have or not. I thought it might.

Hasier:
Going back to some of these people that were integrating during those times, 1954 to 1956, two of them were athletes, Abner Haynes and Leon King. Do you remember either one?

Belcher:
Oh, yes. I remember Abner Haynes. He was a marvelous player. I've heard many faculty members say that he would do more for integration than anybody else.

Hasier:
From what I understand, from the Matthews interviews, he would actually meet with Matthews when he was having a problem.

Belcher:
I don't know about that.

Hasier:
When you did get black students in your classroom, did you notice any difference in their preparation levels? Were they less prepared than white students?

Belcher:
No. I had some very good ones, and I had some very poor ones. In fact, I don't think that I had any that were very bad. Most of the ones that I had were pretty good students, and I had some very good ones. There's one, Cecil Johnson, who is an editorial writer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He's an example of an excellent student.

Hasier:
You've also mentioned that Matthews had stated in a faculty meeting that you weren't supposed to give blacks any preferential treatment.

Belcher:
Yes.

Hasier:
So you did not change your grading scale?

Belcher:
No, I saw no reason to. I had no intention to, to begin with.

Hasier:
Did you have any dealings with Arthur Sampley, the vice- president of academic affairs?

Belcher:
Oh, yes, he was a close friend.

Hasier:
Did he mention at all any problems with segregation or desegregation?

Belcher:
No, not to me. He wasn't really a close friend until he came back to the English Department. Well, he was a close friend all along, but as long as he was an administrator, as long as he was vice-president for academic affairs, I didn't have daily contact with him. I had later, but I never heard him refer to any problems of any kind that we had.

Hasier:
Are you aware of the relationship between President Matthews and Ben Wooten, who was the chairman of the Board of Regents?

Belcher:
No.

Hasier:
I'd also like to ask you if you remember a Professor Jesse Ritter?

Belcher:
Oh, yes, very well.

Hasier:
Could you expound on any of your contacts with Professor Ritter?

Belcher:
It was normal. I didn't have any problems. His wife typed theses for some of my graduate students. I've been in their house. He taught a creative writing course. Since I was not a specialist in creative writing, we shared the students, and we exchanged classes. He would teach one class for three or four weeks, and then we exchanged classes and taught each other's class for three or four weeks. We got along very well. I had no difficulties with him whatsoever. I knew him very well.

Hasier:
I'd like to focus a little bit more on the problem that he had after the stand-in in the Campus Theatre in 1961.

Belcher:
Oh, yes. I'd forgotten the date. I remember that very well. I was chairman of freshman English. Dr. E. S. Clifton, who was chairman of the English Department, was called to Matthews's office the next morning. He came back and said that Jesse was in trouble. He was fired, as a matter of fact, and Matthews insisted he wasn't fired because of his demonstration at a theater, but for many other reasons. Jesse brought suit against the school, I believe. I don't know who sponsored it.

Hasier:
Yes.

Belcher:
The secretary at that time in the English Department was named Judy Purcell. Her husband was a graduate student in English, and they were later separated or divorced. "Cliff," the chairman of the English Department, met with Matthews and his attorneys, several times. They would usually get meet in a motel in Dallas, called the Tower Courts, I think, and plan their strategy for the suit against the university, for firing him for the wrong reasons, I suppose.

The trial was in Sherman, Texas. I heard this from Dr. Clifton. He took a lunch break from the trial, and he noticed Judy Purcell, his former secretary, in a restaurant having lunch. He realized that she would be brought to testify against him. She would probably have said that he said something about Jesse's being fired because of his activities at the theater, when he came back to the office. She was sitting there, as the secretary, and he said something to her. But she never gave testimony -- she may have given testimony; I wasn't at the trial -- because she had pilfered money from the coffee fund in the faculty lounge. They brought that charge against her, so the court disregarded her testimony because she had lied about taking ... or she had taken money, I suppose. I don't know the legal aspect of it. They certainly colored her testimony by showing that she had been guilty of taking money out of the faculty coffee contributions.

Hasier:
So you think this was to dismiss that she actually knew that he was fired because of his theater activities?

Belcher:
Yes. She would probably testify that Dr. Clifton said something, whatever it was -- I don't have any idea -- when he came back to the office. He talked to me later that morning, and I don't have any idea what he said.

Hasier:
Professor Ritter or Dr. Clifton?

Belcher:
Dr. Clifton. I never did see Jesse after that. What was ironical about it was that just a few months before "Cliff," who was an avid fisherman, had gone to Arkansas with Jesse Ritter, and they had fished for several days together. They were close friends. They were closer friends than I and Jesse, really, because Jesse's interests were different from mine in that he was sort of an outdoors-type, and I wasn't.

I will say one thing about Jesse that night be illuminating. We all worked at registration in those days. He came to registration one day very tired, with his eyes at half-mast [half-closed). He stayed up until 4:00 in the morning, finishing Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, which is probably the classic black novel in this century. So he was interested in social problems in that way.

Hasier:
So you actually do believe that it was his bringing on the stand-in at the Campus Theatre, not the official reasons?

Belcher:
I'm sure that triggered it, but Matthews had other reasons. I don't even know what they are at this time, but he had other reasons for dismissing him. Of course, to protect himself, I'm sure that he insisted that there were other reasons. But I think that triggered it. I don't think there is much doubt about it.

Hasier:
Did Matthews have any meetings with the English faculty, stating that his contract wasn't being renewed or that you were getting new faculty in his place?

Belcher:
No.

Hasier:
So this was all pretty much taken care of in court?

Belcher:
Yes, that was taken care of in court. Some faculty members in the English Department were very much upset by it, but nobody did anything.

Hasier:
Is this once again an example of the iron fist that Matthews used to rule the school, or do you just think that they didn't want to get involved?

Belcher:
I don't know. It's hard to say. It's very difficult to say. Even Jesse's friends thought he was foolish to do what he did. I'm not speaking for myself, but I'm speaking for some people who went to school with him in Arkansas, with whom I was very close. They said he was silly for doing that; I mean, he was asking for it. He just couldn't read the signs as well as people who had grown up in this part of the country, I suppose. Well, he'd grown up in Arkansas, so he should have known.

Hasier:
I'd like to bring it back to the Denton community. As desegregation was going on at North Texas, the Denton community itself was not desegregating. There were still separate facilities for blacks and whites at restaurants and, obviously, at the theater we mentioned. Do you remember any evidence of that? Did you live in Denton at the time?

Belcher:
Oh, yes, I lived in Denton. It was so much like the West Texas I grew up in, and even when I went to Texas Tech, so I was aware of that. Even in Carolina, I knew about it, and there wasn't anything an individual could do about it, except when he had an opportunity to say good things about the possibility of integration. I was scarcely conscious of it. I wasn't terribly upset about it, except that when integration started, I was very much offended by [negative] opinions that I heard on the street and that sort of thing.

Hasier:
What were some of the opinions that you were hearing from the community itself?

Belcher:
Oh, just ridicule of blacks generally. I remember having an argument with a man at a bus stop once, and walking off and walking home because I wouldn't ride on the bus with him.

Hasier:
So it was basically negative opinions toward integration?

Belcher:
Yes.

Hasier:
Was there any fear that the population would change in Denton if the blacks were allowed to come to school here?

Belcher:
No, no. Most of them talked, but they didn't really do anything.

Hasier:
You also mentioned you were the freshman advisor for the English Department.

Belcher:
I was chairman of freshmen English.

Hasier:
Did you have any ideas of what the students thought of going to school with blacks?

Belcher:
No, never. I'll give you one illustration of something. I had two very fine black students in a sophomore class in the 1960s. We were reading All the King's Men. They sat on one corner of the front row, and all the rest of the students were white. My technique in an English class was to ask questions about what they read the evening before. There was a mention in the book of a rumble seat. I said, "How many of you know what a rumble seat is?" Every hand in the class went up, except the two blacks in front. I realized that was a social class matter. They didn't have cars. They didn't know about rumble seats. The funny thing was that the class realized it, too. We dropped the subject. Nobody said one word. Nobody smiled or giggled or anything else. We just went on with the assignment.

Hasier:
So you're saying that the class pretty much accepted that they didn't have the opportunity to know?

Belcher:
They were as shocked as I was that these two hands didn't go up, because they were hands that were always in the air. I called one of the students, to myself, my “skyrocket," because he always had his hand in the air when I asked a question. But he didn't know that. The class realized the difference in income levels of the blacks and the whites. They didn't know about rumble seats because their parents didn't have cars, much less cars with rumble seats. So the students were sympathetic. I don't think I ever heard a student say anything derogatory about blacks. They just didn't do it.

Hasier:
How about the prevailing attitudes of the faculty, or just the English faculty? Did you get any feelings on that?

Belcher:
There was only one man in the English faculty who was prejudiced, and I don't know whether he was basically so or not. But we once threatened to fill his classes at registration. We could control registration pretty well. We were going to put all white students named "Black" and black students named White" in his classes, but we didn't get very far because we couldn't find enough of them.

Hasier:
So overall, the attitude was pretty much positive?

Belcher:
About 99 9/10 percent of the faculty in English were liberal and were sympathetic. They wanted integration, so there was no problem in the English Department.

Hasier:
Do you think the English Department was representative of what was going on in the rest of the campus?

Belcher:
I couldn't say. I think it was pretty general. In arts and sciences, I'd say, yes, undoubtedly.

Hasier:
Do you think that's from their educational background or their geographical or regional background?

Belcher:
I don't know. I think that if one is in the humanities, it rubs off. You probably wouldn't be in the humanities if you weren't liberal.

Hasier:
We mentioned earlier about President Matthews and the way he handled the press and kept sort of low-key on that. We were also talking about Abner Haynes and Leon King. When they first came out to campus, they weren't allowed to stay in the dormitories.

Belcher:
I didn't know about that.

Hasier:
Also, there is evidence that it was about two years after the first undergraduate started going to school that females were allowed to live in the dormitories, prior to the male dorms going integrated.

Belcher:
I didn't know that. That was something that I had nothing to do with, so there would be no reason for me to know that.

Hasier:
Going back to some of the conflicts that were going on, although there doesn't seem to big evidence, I have read in the Denton Record-Chronicle that there was evidence of cross burnings during 1956, during the time that the first graduate student enrolled.

Belcher:
I suppose that's a part of Matthews keeping control over those things, because I didn't know about that. What I did know about was when the students burned an effigy of Elvis Presley. But I never heard of the cross burning.

Hasier:
Obviously, there was no racial connection in that.

Belcher:
No, no. I mean, that is something I just happened to see the remains of, when I was coming over here one day.

Hasier:
Do you recall if there was any boycotts for the fact that there was going to be black students?

Belcher:
No.

Hasier:
The other thing that I wanted to ask you was, when you did have blacks in your class, did you have any dropouts from your class role because you had blacks in the class?

Belcher:
Not that I'm aware of. I never heard of anything like that. That would be the last thing I would have thought of. I might have imagined that a black might drop a course because he didn't like the teacher. But as far as the other students doing it, I can't even conceive of it. As a matter of fact, we had blacks in freshmen and sophomore classes, but we had almost none majoring in English, so in advanced classes and graduate classes, we had no blacks. I had one or two, and I remember some of them pretty well. They were nice. There was one very nice lady. But there weren't many in the advanced classes. I think, during the time that I taught, there was only one black student that got an M.A. in English. He wasn't in a class of mine. I'm not sure that I even had a black student in a graduate class. I did have a few in the undergraduate classes, but there weren't many of them.

Hasier:
Do you think the undergraduates were taking the English courses just for the core curriculum?

Belcher:
They had to take them. Yes, they were required.

Hasier:
They weren't taking them to pursue it to a higher level. There's no evidence that they were taking the higher level.

Belcher:
The one boy -- Cecil Johnson -- writes an editorial for the Fort Worth paper every Thursday. I often read him. He was in my sophomore class, and he wanted to go away and do graduate study in Romanian. But he couldn't find a program in the country that had a Romanian Ph.D. I don't know what he later did. I guess he got a degree in journalism, because he's been working for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram for many years.

Jim Rogers did an evaluation for the university. As editorial advisor for the committee, he wrote the whole thing.

Hasier:
He was also in charge of press coverage at the university at the time.

Belcher:
Yes.

Hasier:
He has also stated that Matthews had spoken to him personally and said, "We don't want a lot of coverage about the integration, be it positive or negative, because we don't want to stir up any trouble.”

Belcher:
That sounds like Matthews, though I didn't hear him say that.

Hasier:
With your dealings with Rogers, did you have any discussion about integration?

Belcher:
He talked about integration, but I don't know where. In fact, the self-study we did was college-wide, undergraduate and graduate. I don't think that was even a matter of discussion, People were assigned to different sections, to make reports, and we put it all together and edited it. But I don't remember that there is anything in there. I still have a copy of the report. Jim Rogers, of course, wrote a history of North Texas. I don't know whether he treated integration or not. He probably did, but I don't know. I read it years ago. It's pretty good.

Hasier:
Good reading. On peaceful integration, it's been stated that it's very possible that Denton had a more peaceful desegregation than somewhere like Alabama because there was a small population of blacks in the community.

Belcher:
It was peaceful enough. I don't know whether you can attribute it to blacks in the community or not. That probably helped.

One thing that I noticed -- and you'll probably want to ask me about this -- was that I was of the opinion that this would be a fine thing for the university, that students would relate to one another and associate with one another, and it would be a wonderful thing. But I went to basketball games, and the students segregated themselves. I went to fine arts programs, and the students segregated themselves. The blacks would sit together, and the whites would sit together. I don't know why they did that. I guess it was just habit, as much as anything else. They still do, in great part. In class, if you had several black students, they'd sit together. I was surprised by that. I thought it would be nicer if they spread themselves out and didn't segregate themselves, although the whites probably had as much to do with it as they did. It's hard to say.

Hasier:
You mentioned going to basketball games. Had you attended any of the football games while Abner Haynes was playing?

Belcher:
Oh, yes, I went to several.

Hasier:
Was there also evidence that the black people sat in one section?

Belcher:
The stadium is so much bigger that it's hard to tell. At the basketball games, we had the old gym, and it was easy enough to see. The black people would sit in the end zone, for some reason, and they'd all sit together, in a group, with one or two whites among them, maybe some young man who was dating a girl or something, but otherwise there was very little mix of that sort at events. At football games, they probably did, but I wasn't as conscious of it, as I was at basketball games.

Hasier:
It has also been documented that at the football games certain colleges refused to play North Texas State because they did have blacks on their teams. Were you aware of that?

Belcher:
No, I didn't know that.

Hasier:
In fact, "Ole Miss" [the University of Mississippi] definitely refused to play a game against us.

Belcher:
I didn't know that. That's news to me. I'm not surprised, but I didn't know it.

Hasier:
I'd like to go back to President Matthews just a little bit more. We were talking about his personality and the way he “ruled" the school. Do you think that there was something in the fact that he went to school here, that he was a teacher here prior to becoming president, that made it easier when it came to the desegregation of the college?

Belcher:
I don't know. I really don't know. I think he probably was basically a very shy man, but he took responsibility. I don't know. I really don't. I couldn't say. I'll give you an example of his techniques. There was one teacher here who was taking some sort of mind-altering drug, and he said that he took it. He came to class one time hung over, not shaved, no socks or shoes on. He put his bare feet up on the desk and mumbled to his students. Matthews had him in, and he said, "Well, I take this drug because it's part of my religion. That's my religion." Matthews said, "Are you an Indian?" He said, “No." Matthews replied, "Well, that's not your religion. You're fired." That was his technique.

Hasier:
Meet the problem head on and take care of it.

Belcher:
Yes.

Hasier:
You didn't have a lot of meetings with Matthews then?

Belcher:
I've had a few meetings with Matthews. He talked to the faculty in the fall, when we had our faculty meeting in the beginning of the fall school semester. That's the only time that I know that he talked to the whole faculty. He never talked to the whole Department of English -- ever. He had been trained in English at Peabody.

Hasier:
There's evidence that after the initial desegregation, more and more black students applied to North Texas State College. Do you see a correlation there? Do you see a reason why they were applying?

Belcher:
No. If I were aware of it, I would assume that it was because we were the first that integrated. They were accepted. Many of them graduated. I'm not aware of any mistreatment by faculty or students. I'm sure there was some, but I just didn't know about it. We never had any trouble that I remember in the English Department, except for the time of the Jesse Ritter problem, and that wasn't over a black student.

Hasier:
So you probably feel that maybe more blacks were attracted to North Texas State College because there wasn't a lot of trouble.

Belcher:
They felt comfortable here, I suppose. I assume that. If they didn't feel comfortable, they wouldn't come.

Hasier:
Do you have any comments on why there was no problem with desegregation at North Texas State College?

Belcher:
I would propose that there wouldn't have been a problem with integration in any Texas school, as far as the faculty was concerned. It was the administration that had to give, in order to admit them. But I don't think they had trouble with the faculties anywhere. Faculties are generally more liberal than the general public. I think it's just a good place for them to start. There wasn't any prejudice in the English Department, except one or two people, and theirs wasn't strong. They didn't shout or wave their arms about or anything of that sort. They kept it very quiet, because they knew they were in the minority. There was just one or two. I'm aware actually of only one. He did nothing overt. He didn't make speeches. He didn't write articles for the paper or anything of that sort. In asides, he would say derogatory things.

Hasier:
Do you feel also that the community helped?

Belcher:
It probably did. It didn't object strongly enough to cause any-trouble. I attribute part of that to Matthews. He was active in community affairs.

Hasier:
Would you expound on that?

Belcher:
Yes. A few years after integration, there was a proposal to establish a state school in this area, which is for mentally deficient children. The merchants here wanted it because it would be profitable to them. Matthews got behind it and urged all faculty to contribute to a fund to buy land to offer to the state. If they gave them the land to build the state school on, the state would take it, and they did. Matthews got behind the merchants in town, the chamber of commerce. He urged faculty members to join the chamber of commerce. I joined for several years, I never did go to a meeting, but I was a member of the chamber of commerce for two years, because he urged the faculty to do this. In supporting the attempt to get the state school here, and encouraging faculty members to contribute money to buy land to get the state school here, he was benefiting merchants. It was no benefit to us. I wanted a state school. I didn't care where they built it. They needed provisions for mentally handicapped children, but it really had little to do with the college. But he went out of his way to help the chamber of commerce get that state school here, and it is here. I suspect that some of the people would benefit. The students work there occasionally, and maybe the Psychology Department or some of the other departments may have done experimental work with those children, but that was just a by-product of its being here. They weren't actively involved in getting it here. So the state school really had nothing to do with the university much, but it was a community thing. That's an example, and his urging of everybody to be a member of the chamber of commerce. He wanted the faculty to be involved in the community. That was probably a good thing, because it would make both groups more sympathetic to the other group, although, as I say, I didn't go to the chamber of commerce meetings.

Hasier:
So there was a close bond between the community and the faculty, with the fact that they were living in the community?

Belcher:
Yes, right.

Hasier:
If we sort of expounded on that, it's possible that it was easier for Matthews to do some of things he did because he felt he had support.

Belcher:
He knew the business leaders in the community, and he had their trust. I was trying to think of something else he said. We wanted faculty governance here in the early 1960s. I was on the committee of AAUP [American Association of University Professors] and the Texas Association of College Teachers. We had organizations on the campus, and we urged him to set up a Faculty Senate to help govern the university. He said, "We're not ready for that at this time," and just crushed it. That was the end of it.

Hasier:
That's just another example. The idea was presented to him. If he didn't go along with it, or if it wasn't what he thought was right for the school, there was no more discussion about it.

Belcher:
That's right, another example. There was still another example. We wanted to offer courses in Dallas and eventually to have a North Texas State College in Dallas, a campus. He said, "No." I don't know what his reasons were at that time.

Hasier:
So there were not a lot of reasons.

Belcher:
“It's not time for that." He met with the committee. I was there, on both those matters that I mentioned. He met with the committee and sat there and talked to us very rationally and said, “It's not time for that.” We didn't think he was right, but we had no choice. He wouldn't go along with it, and we couldn't push it by ourselves, not without his help. So we dropped it. It would have been nice if we had had a campus in Dallas. It would have provided employment for more faculty members, and the school would have enlarged, but I'm not sure that would have been good. I don't know. We wanted it at the time.

Hasier:
So, pretty much, the leadership rested in his hands?

Belcher:
Yes.

Hasier:
You could make your suggestions.

Belcher:
He'd listen to your suggestions.

Hasier:
But when it came down to the final decision, that was his?

Belcher:
That was his.

Hasier:
Do you remember anything that you did present to Matthews that went through?

Belcher:
Yes. We proposed a journal called Studies in the Novel. I can't tell you the date when it started, but a committee went to Matthews to propose that the English Department sponsor this scholarly journal. It's a quarterly. He listened to them very carefully and said, "Yes, we'll do that." He provided the money to subsidize the periodical. It's still going. We have a special office for it over here, and it gets a subsidy from the university regularly. He thought it was a good idea. It was good for the school; it was good for the department. It cost a little money, but the reputation of the school was enhanced by the publication of such a journal. I'm sure he did the same thing for journals in other departments. I don't know all of them, but other departments have journals, too.

Hasier:
Do you think that his close ties to -- you don't know about his relationship with Wooten -- the chairman of the Board of Regents made it easier for him to get things done?

Belcher:
I'm sure it did, and I'm sure that his relationship with the Board of Regents made him a little less experimental than he might have been otherwise. I'm sure Wooten was kind of a conservative drag on him. That would be one reason he wouldn't do anything extravagant, although he and Wooten probably saw eye-to-eye on lots of things, I don't know. I didn't know anything about Wooten's attitudes or views.

Hasier:
Is there anything in closing that you might want to add to what we've been discussing about the desegregation at North Texas State College?

Belcher:
I can't think of anything. Most of the black students I had were very good ones. I didn't have many of them, but the ones I had were very good. I don't know of anything I could add. As I said, there weren't many in advanced or graduate English courses. They just didn't major in English. It wasn't because the English Department wouldn't embrace them, if they'd wanted to do it, but there weren't many of them.

Hasier:
Well, I'd like to thank you for your time and for your recollections on what happened.

Belcher:
I didn't realize I knew as much as I did.

Hasier:
Thank you very much. Is there any other thing you'd like to discuss?

Belcher:
My granddaughter is half-black. The father of my granddaughter is Haitian. My daughter is certainly not prejudiced. He wanted her to marry him, and she said, "I don't want to be a housewife," and she isn't.

Hasier:
What do you think this stems from?

Belcher:
My mother and my wife. My wife was from Missouri, and she doesn't have a prejudiced bone in her body.

Hasier:
So you were influenced by people with northern attitudes?

Belcher:
Yes. My mother was proud of being a Yankee, and she was reared by a black woman. Her mother was an invalid. A black woman, named Ida, lived in their house and cared for the children. My mother was the oldest child, so she helped Ida take care of the children.

Hasier:
I notice you said your mother was from the North. Was your father from Texas?

Belcher:
He was from Alabama. His father was a missionary to the Indians in Oklahoma, but he had many southern views. His views toward blacks were totally different from my mother's.

Hasier:
Were your mother's the prevailing views in the house?

Belcher:
Yes. My father traveled, so she had us seven days a week, and he had one day a week.

Hasier:
The more time she spent with you canceled out his opinions.

Belcher:
Her relatives lived close by, too, so I was exposed to them, and my father didn't have any close relatives in West Texas, where I grew up.

Hasier:
So your father's attitude was a typical southern one?

Belcher:
Yes, a typical southern attitude.

Hasier:
Did you have brothers and sisters?

Belcher:
I had a brother.

Hasier:
His attitude was similar to yours?

Belcher:
Yes. In fact, I remember that he worked in a grocery store in Lubbock. A black woman saw my mother one day, and she said, "I love that son of yours. He's kind."

There was one episode. When I was a young man in Sweetwater, I worked in a grocery store, a big supermarket. It was owned locally. Safeway was the only chain in town. A black man was going through the store, putting groceries in a tow sack he had in his hand. I learned later that his family was starving, and he was just doing what he could. There was a sadistic motorcycle cop in town, the only motorcycle cop in town. He was called by the manager of the store, who saw this man taking food. The cop came in. Before he asked him a question, he knocked him [the black man] down. He was standing just a few feet away. I didn't know why he was knocking him down. He had knee-high boots and swaggered, the cop did. I wanted to kill him, but I was just a kid. He was a crude, rough cop, and there wasn't anything I could do. The black man was soaking wet in perspiration. He was scared to death. There were lots of things like that when I grew up that affected me one way or another.

Hasier:
So there was some evidence of some negative attitudes, not just a passive "They're there" attitude, more of a resentment, sort of a friction between the races?

Belcher:
Oh, yes. Another childhood experience I didn't tell you about involved a boy in one of the servant quarters that I told you about, when I was growing up. A neighbor of mine called him an insulting name -- I didn't hear it -- and the boy came out with a pistol pointed at the guy and was going to shoot him. We were pre-school. There was a big flap about that. The white boy's father called the police, and the police came out. They called the black father of the boy. He said, "I had the pistol under the bed springs. I didn't know he knew where it was.” But if they hadn't intervened, he might have shot the boy. I wasn't involved. I was just standing there. But he could have shot everybody, for that matter. I don't think he would have. In fact, I'm not sure he would have shot the white boy, anyway. It was frightening. I never did have anything to do with the young man that insulted him -- ever. I didn't like him in the first place. Little episodes like that when I was growing up made me quite aware of the problem.

Hasier:
So that shaped your attitudes later on, even when you were in high school?

Belcher:
I'm sure it did, although I had no contact with blacks anymore, and there weren't any in college. They just weren't there.

Hasier:
It was just very isolated?

Belcher:
Yes. You don't realize until after it's over. It's just that way. The truth of the fact is that those Mexicans were treated in the same way. They were just as much strangers to me, although I had a very fine high school Spanish teacher who had Spanish ranchers in the area come in and talk to us. They weren't allowed to go to the theater. They came down to go to the movies in Sweetwater once from a little town north, and they wouldn't let them in. She thought it was horrible and told us. That shaped our opinion. That's why I minored in Spanish, I suppose.

Hasier:
Do you feel your opinions are unique, compared to others who grew up in the same town?

Belcher:
They were. One of the reasons I came back here to teach, from North Carolina-I went to North Carolina to get a degree out of state, because I thought I would be able to teach in this area -- was that I understand the people here. I got along with all of them. I remember my mother stopping on the street and talking to blacks when I was growing up. She helped deliver a black woman's baby one night, who was in a little one-room house behind the apartment house we lived in. They lived in the back. She delivered the baby that night. She came in exhilarated. She was just as happy as she could be. This was when I was maybe four years old, but I remember that because she was so excited about it. There were all kinds of episodes of that sort.

When I worked in a grocery store, I delivered groceries. We had one delivery van, and I would deliver groceries when there was an overload of groceries to be delivered. Women called in orders before lunch, and we took them out in baskets. A Mexican man came in. He had a relief check. This was during the Depression. He had a relief check, and he came in and bought a lot of basic items: some sugar, some dried pinto beans, some flour, and some shortening. I took him and the groceries over on the other side of town, to his house. He lived in a one-room shack with his family, several children. There was snow on the ground that day. It doesn't snow down there much, but there was snow on the ground. All the front door they had was a tow sack hanging down. They had one bed. It was neat. It was neat as a whistle. The floor was dirt. I was shocked. I didn't know that in that community there were houses like that, because I lived in one of the better sections of town. I wasn't aware of that. That was part of my comeuppance.

Hasier:
Did this store deliver any groceries to the black community, or did they shop somewhere else?

Belcher:
They shopped there because it was the cheapest store in town. I don't know what they did. People still came to the store in wagons in those days. They came and they would buy a lot of groceries at one time. They'd either haul them out and carry them back home by themselves, if they were able-bodied, or maybe they had a truck. I don't know. I know that where we'd throw vegetables away, when they starting rotting, there were always black and Mexican children digging through those to get fruit and vegetables that were edible.

There was one redneck fool that worked in the store. He would collect rotten Irish potatoes or something to throw at them. He thought that was great sport. I could have killed him, but he was bigger than I was, so I didn't do it (chuckle).

Hasier:
This is all laying a background, so when the blacks did come here, you were not upset about it?

Belcher:
No, I was sympathetic, very much so. As a matter of fact, when I worked in the grocery store, there were black employees, but they worked in the back. The owner of the store bought and had butchered at a local plant his own beef. He had a locker in which there were beef halves hanging. The butchers cut all this stuff and put it in the meat cabinet. There was a black man in the back who would scrape the remains off the bones and make hamburger and that sort of thing out of it. He was a good friend. I knew him very well. But he didn't work out in the front. In fact, we didn't have any blacks in the front part of the store. I'm not sure that many of them were very much prejudiced. Most of them were pretty nice fellows. I could get along with both groups.

Hasier:
When you came to Denton, were there any blacks working in stores anywhere that you shopped?

Belcher:
I don't think so. There could have been, but I wasn't aware of it. I hadn't thought about it one way or the other. I don't think there were. I would guess there weren't. They had some of their own places. I don't know if this was later or not, but there was one black man who had a barbecue grill. I know my wife got to know him when she went down there. I don't know. Of course, this was after integration. After the public schools integrated, the boys started working in the grocery stores and that sort of thing. That was only natural.

Hasier:
At the time, this was a big step for the community, to have the college integrated?

Belcher:
I think so. It's a liberating influence anywhere it exists. I'm sure that in communities where this didn't exist, there wasn't any change. There's a place named Bowie out here. They don't let blacks live in the county, or didn't until maybe the 1970s, or something like that. They got rid of them. They couldn't live in that county. I think Bowie is the center of it. In fact, I think one of Jesse Ritter's friends was the person who told me about that. I can't remember his name.

Hasier:
Professor Ritter never did win the case and get reinstated here?

Belcher:
Oh, no. I don't know who sponsored the case. It may have been the AAUP, American Association of University Professors. I'm not sure who did it. I had nothing to do with it, one way or the other, except that I vas chairman of freshman English, and my office was right next to the English office. That's how I heard what I did hear. I cannot, to this day, tell you what "Cliff” said when he came back, except maybe, “Jesse has really fixed himself now.” Cliff heard about it from Matthews. Matthews called him over to his office that morning. When he came back, all he told me was that Jesse was done. I think somebody else told me what Jesse did at the theater. I don't think "Cliff” told me. He was just shaking his head. He was upset. Things like that just wrecked him. He didn't like problems of that sort.

Hasier:
Other than the Ritter case, it seems to me you are telling me there really weren't a lot of problems that you remember, especially in your department.

Belcher:
Not just in integration, but in other ways. If anybody wanted to make an issue of anything, they were told, "Just cool it. It will take care of itself. Don't worry about it." In fact, one boy told me...he was a teaching fellow, and they brought their problems to me. He would talk to students and listen to them patiently. He came to me and said, “This is the third student this semester who's threatened to commit suicide. Should I tell somebody?” I said, “No. Quit encouraging them to talk about those things. Somebody will think there's something wrong with you, if all the students come to you and say they want to commit suicide.” Of course, I never heard of anyone else ever talking to a teacher about that sort of thing. It was almost as if he encouraged them. He said, “Should I talk to the dean?" I said, “No. Forget it.”

Hasier:
I think we're about ready to wrap up, unless you have anything else.

Belcher:
I don't have anything else to say. . It's been a pleasure to talk to you.

Hasier:
It's been a pleasure talking to you. I do appreciate it.

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