University of North Texas Oral History Collection

Interview with Hiram Friedsam
Interviewer: Sharon Perry
Place of Interview: Denton, Texas
Date of Interview: April 28, 1995

Ms. Perry:
This is Sharon Perry interviewing Dr. Hiram Friedsam for the University of North Texas Oral History Program. The interview is taking place on April 28, 1995, in Denton, Texas. I am interviewing Dr. Friedsam in order to obtain his recollections concerning desegregation at North Texas State College.

Dr. Friedsam, I'd like to start out by asking about your background. Can you tell me about where you grew up, your family, and your education?

Dr. Friedsam:
I grew up in Waco, Texas, and attended Waco High School, to which two weeks ago I went to my sixtieth high school reunion. I then went to Baylor , got my bachelor s degree from Baylor, went to graduate school at the University of Texas and have both a master's and doctor's degree in sociology from the University of Texas. I came to North Texas as an "ABD" [all but dissertation], but went back to Austin the following summer and completed my dissertation. You asked about family. I have a wife and now two adult children.

Perry:
What did you do your dissertation on?

Friedsam:
Aging, older people in the United States, which is why subsequently I was able to teach gerontology here at North Texas and to be one of founders of the Center for Studies in Aging.

Perry:
What can you tell me about racial attitudes when you were growing up within your own family and around Waco?

Friedsam:
Well, I would think that racial attitudes in Waco were not too different than other relatively small cities in Texas, which is to say that they were essentially negative. I have no recollection if that was true in my own family. On the contrary, my family operated a grocery store on the fringes of Waco, really serving farmers, and a large number of those farmers were black farmers, and they traded at the grocery store; and, indeed, in the usual fashion then, a lot of them were carried through [on credit] until the cotton season. They sold their cotton and then paid their bills and that kind of thing.

So I guess, in one sense, I was around black people when I was growing up. I can very definitely recall that on at least one occasion, maybe other occasions, I went to Baylor to see a basketball game late at night, and there was a black family that we knew, who lived really in the slums but just very near the Baylor campus. It was arranged that I would spend the night with them so that I wouldn't have to walk home in the dark.

Perry:
Was that unique or unusual for the time?

Friedsam:
I would think so (chuckle). I would think there were not many young white boys who spent the night with black families. I would venture to say yes. Certainly, by the time I got to college, I had developed "liberal" attitudes in race relations. By the time I got down to the University of Texas, I was with a very liberal group concerning race relations who even passed a resolution at one time -- I was in cooperative housing -- in which we passed a resolution inviting Herman Marion Sweatt to come live at the house. Of course, I think he was married. I'm sure you know who he is.

Perry:
Yes, sir: Sweatt v. Painter [399 U.S. 629]

Friedsam:
At least it is illustrative of the attitudes of the people I was involved with, and I think that's important , incidentally, not just in my individual case, but with reference to desegregation at North Texas. A lot of people had come through somewhat similar experiences.

Perry:
Would you say that your group that you were involved in, which issued the resolution in college, was that an overall feeling or a majority of the feeling at the University of Texas?

Friedsam:
I would not dare to speak for the Greeks [fraternity] and sorority members] at the University of Texas at that time. I was in sociology, and the faculty there and the faculty in economics was a quite liberal faculty . And I think students from the social sciences, at least, tended to be pretty liberal. Like I said, there were always the Greeks (chuckle).

Perry:
What was your reaction in 1954 when you knew Tennyson Miller, the first black graduate student, was coming to North Texas?

Friedsam:
Well, it's hard to say, except I assumed it was inevitable that North Texas was going to desegregate. I guess, if anything, I had a positive reaction to it.

Perry:
What you can you tell me about the feeling, just from your observation, of the faculty in general?

Friedsam:
Well, this is where I think my experience at the University of Texas and how I came out of that is relevant to this. Let me go back to the 1930s for just a moment.

Perry:
Yes, sir.

Friedsam:
The people who came to North Texas -- and I am talking about faculty members -- in the 1930s ... maybe some of them had come earlier, but those who had become the professors and administrators and whatnot, a very large number of them tended to come out of sort of New Deal political attitudes. I can cite you a lot of names, but that was true certainly in the social sciences, and it was true in the College of Education. Well, it was just generally a large congregation of essentially liberal faculty. What may have been even more important, as I said, is that they were in important administrative positions in many cases.

Then immediately after the War, when I came, in the next few years you had a bunch of younger faculty who were coming into -- here again, I'd have to say, of course, these are the ones I knew best -- the social science departments and coming into the College of Education. I don't know that the people in the School of Music cared very much about it one way or the other. There were even some extremely liberal faculty members in the School of Business, all of whom were very much attuned to desegregation. You know, there weren't any faculty marches or anything like that, but I think what it did is that the whole situation was an ambience in which desegregation was probably much easier here than in many institutions.

Perry:
You jumped the gun on one of my questions, and we'll get back to it later. From my research I've seen here at North Texas, desegregation went very smoothly, much
more so than any other place. That was one thing, so thank you for explaining that.

Dr. Matthews has been cited as handling it very smoothly. Can you give a reaction to that and specifically Dr. Matthews's handling of desegregation?

Friedsam:
Well, I would agree that he handled it very smoothly. When I talk about the people who were in administrative positions here. I rode back from Dallas with the fellow who was then head of the Department of Economics and Sociology, which I was in at the time. I rode back with him from Dallas from some convention or something. The Board of Regents' announcement that Matthews had been selected to be president had occurred either that day or the day before, and he was just very enthusiastic about it. I think it was because Matthews was in that group from the 1930s that I was just talking about. I think Matthews was oriented toward it, personally, down deep. If somebody had face-to- face said, "Are you in favor of desegregation?", he would have hemmed and hawed in some way as president of the institution, but down deep I think he was [in favor ] . But I think, also, he was absolutely determined that North Texas would not be put in a position of defying the court system, that it would not be seen unfavorably. He was very sensitive to public relations.

Perry:
Was he?

Friedsam:
I think so. For North Texas -- he never told me this -- I'm assuming that he was just determined that it'd not be splashed in a headlines that North Texas was defying the federal court in Sherman that made the ruling that opened the way in this.

Perry:
That was Joe Atkins involved in the first court case allowing the first black undergraduate student to enroll. Do you remember what the feeling or what the reaction on campus was when that ruling came down and was announced?

Friedsam:
I don't really remember any reaction (chuckle). We'd just take it as, "Well, okay."

Perry:
Tell me about the circumstances under which the faculty or the student body, for that matter, were let known that this would happen?

Friedsam:
I don't really, again, recall anything specific. My vague, vague recollection is that I read about it in the newspaper, the Denton Record-Chronicle. I don't recall there being any memoranda of any kind from anybody that said, "Well, we're now going to have black students on the campus," or "Now we're going to desegregate, and they'll be registering, so please be nice." Nothing like that.

In fact, talking about Tennyson Miller -- I'd forgotten his name -- 1 think the first time I saw him was when I was sitting in registration. You know, we used to register with all the faculty at the various tables, and students came up to get their class permits signed and all that kind of stuff. The first time I ever saw him, I was sitting at registration. I don't know whether somebody was with him or if he was going along the line alone, but, all of sudden, what had been an all-white registration had a black person in it. Sure, people stared a little bit because it was a little bit unusual, but I don't recall any comments of any sort.

Perry:
All through my research it has stated that Dr. Matthews and the Board of Regents had put together a plan for gradual desegregation. Of course, that got sped up by the Joe Atkins court case. Can you tell me anything about that?

Friedsam:
I would say -- this is not specific to your question at all -- that when you talk about Matthews's handling the situation smoothly, that had to involve the Board of Regents. He had to have the Board of Regents along with him. I know nothing about any specific plan, but he was in very close contact with the Board of Regents on many, many issues. I got to know this about the same time -- 1954. That's when I became chairman of Economics and Sociology.

Perry:
Tennyson Miller came in 1954, and the first undergraduate came in 1956.

Friedsam:
All I was going to say is that once I became chairman of the department, I also in a vague way became aware of how closely Matthews worked with the Board of Regents and particularly with the chairman, Ben Wooten. It seemed to me that on numerous occasions he would say something about having talked with Mr. Wooten about this, that, or the other thing. Although I know of no particular plan, I would not be surprised to learn that we were moving in that direction. The consequences help to make it clear that they were talking, anyway.

Perry:
Can you tell me about the first time you had an African-American student in your class?

Friedsam:
Yes. I think the first time there were two women who were teachers from Fort Worth who were enrolled in a summer class. I think that's the case. At least I can remember two women from Fort Worth around that time, and I think they were graduate students.

Perry:
How did the rest of the class react or interact with them?

Friedsam:
There again, I have no recollection of anything special in the class. They went to their next class or went back to Fort Worth, whichever the case may be. They were not put off in a corner like ... where was it? A law school at Oklahoma or Arkansas where they built a little special room? There was none of that here. They were just in class.

Perry:
Can you tell me about when the African-American students came, how well they were prepared for college work?

Friedsam:
Well, my recollection is of these two students who were graduate students, and I would have to say, frankly, that they were not as well prepared as some of the other graduate students we had. It may be a biased thing on my part because they were teachers who were working on advanced degrees in education -- master's degrees, I think. Later on, we had some very successful students.

One other thing that I would mention about that situation is that from around 1958-1960, somewhere in there -- well, even in 1954 -- I became chairman of the department, my teaching load went down, and I organized the Center for Studies in Aging, which was a special kind of program, and I directed it. My situation was totally different, so I didn't have much contact with undergraduate black students. We did have some black students in Aging who've done very, very well.

Perry:
Was there much communication among faculty, considering you were chairman of the department, about how to handle the grading of the African American students because they weren't very well prepared? Did you just grade them according to how you graded everyone else?

Friedsam:
As far I know, I did. There was no discussion about it.

Perry:
Can you tell me about the shift toward grading them? My research shows that later, toward the 1960s, there was a shift in treating them slightly different in the grading process. Can you tell me anything about that?

Friedsam:
I can't tell you because there has been the view that grade inflation has been a characteristic of higher education for a long, long time. But I haven't seen that specifically charged to the presence of black students. It's just people who generally don't like higher education, anyway, as it exists. I think it is a criticism for what goes on. Again, there may have been those who changed their system of grading, but I'm not aware of anyone who did.

Perry:
Can you tell about when Abner Haynes and Leon King came? Do you remember anything about when they came?

Friedsam:
I remember Abner Haynes, but not Leon King. We had a student who came either in the same year as Abner or the year after, named James Bowdre. Have you ever run into that name? The last time I heard, he was an executive with a major company. He was an economics major. Where Abner was a great star on the football team, Bowdre was one who, like a lot of others, sat on the bench and watched during most of his athletic career. But he was a football player. I'm trying to remember the company.

Perry:
An African American football player?

Friedsam:
Yes. He's become a very, very successful executive in a major company, but I can't remember which one it is. It's an electronics company. The Advancement Office might know something on him.

But going back to Haynes for just a moment, I think that undoubtedly, there's a sense -- I'm sure you've picked up -- that Haynes contributed to the ease and success of desegregation at North Texas, particularly among undergraduates, who seemed to go to football games so much more than they seem to go now. I can't place King at all, but a couple of years later, Joe Greene [later a star player for the Pittsburgh Steelers in the NFL] came, and North Texas was more successful in football than they'd ever been. Given the role of football in higher education, that can't do anything but help.

Perry:
I did not ask you earlier specifically about Mrs. Sephas. She was the first undergraduate African American student -- Irma Sephas.

Friedsam:
The name doesn't ring any bells at all.

Perry: She was the first that came. Her coming was treated with very low publicity by Dr. Matthews. We talked about that earlier, so maybe it's not a surprise that her name doesn't the name doesn't ring a bell to you.

Friedsam:
Who was King?

Perry:
He and Abner Haynes came as partners. They'd gone to high school together, and they'd played football together, and they came as partners. Leon King -- I'd have to check -- didn't stay in school as long as Abner Haynes, but then he did come back eventually.

Friedsam:
I don't remember him. Of course, I remember Bowdre because he was an economics major. I guess this goes to the matter of your asking about academic backgrounds. As far as I can recall, James was our first black economics major, and his background seemed pretty good. He's done very, very well since.

We also had in the department a faculty member who had worked with athletes much of the time. I guess, to be honest, he was one of those people you find on the faculty when the coaches make sure they're going to get a pretty good grade for an athlete. Regardless of color, he makes sure he takes his course. But the other side of that was that he had a tremendously good rapport with athletes, regardless of whether they were black or white. He had a very good rapport with black students who weren't athletes. You may not have run into his name. His name was Bullock Hyder.

Perry:
Bullock Hyder?

Friedsam:
He's now deceased, has been for a number of years. He was, I think, a very helpful figure to the black students.

Perry:
In what ways?

Friedsam:
Well, he just could relate in some sense to them and counsel them. He'd been a state legislator and had kicked around in Austin and knew all the politicians in the state, and in many cases he knew the black students' background. He literally knew the families of some of them, although I don't think certainly, in all of the cases.

Perry:
That leads me up into the 1960s and another professor. Can you tell me about Jesse Ritter and the Campus Theatre incident? The students were trying to integrate the Campus Theatre. Jesse Ritter was an English professor who was involved in that with the students. He was quietly "not renewed" shortly after that. I just didn't know if you knew anything about that.

Friedsam:
No. If I was even aware of it at the time, it's something that has disappeared.

Perry:
Can you tell me about any incidents where resentment of the black students being here showed? I've heard about graffiti on the sidewalks and crosses being burned in front of the library.

Friedsam:
Again, maybe I was doing something else. I don't think this was too far back... what's the fraternity that's always waving the Stars and Bars [Confederate States of
America battle flag]?

Perry:
I don't know.

Friedsam:
Well, there's a fraternity [Kappa Alpha Order] ... in fact, I think it may have gotten suspended recently for a while. Anyway, there is a fraternity that prides itself on its southern background and displays the Stars and Bars more frequently than they do the Stars and Stripes. I think there was something a few years ago about their doing some kind of stereotyped impersonations of blacks and that sort of thing. Somebody's bound to be able to remember that.

Perry:
Sounds like I need to do some research and look into that.

Friedsam:
I don't even remember when we first got fraternities on campus.

Perry:
Fraternities in general or black fraternities?

Friedsam:
Fraternities in general. In fact, I have very vague recollections that there were some faculty members who were much more opposed to the coming of fraternities than they were the coming of the black students (chuckle).

Perry:
Can you tell me anything about community reaction -- Denton community -- to integration?

Friedsam:
Not really. I guess, given that incident that you mentioned, the theaters must not have come along very rapidly, and I don't recall much about hotel and restaurant facilities. Here again, my guess is that so many of the hotels and motels are chain operations that whatever they were doing is really a reflection of what their corporate headquarters wanted them to do.

Perry:
I found an article in the Dallas Morning News from the early 1960s calling North Texas an "Island of Integration," indicating that while the university was integrated, the community wasn't. That's why I asked.

Friedsam:
I would suspect that would be true, and I couldn't cite you chapter and verse. But I would suspect that the community came along much more slowly than the university did, and for the reasons I was talking about earlier. The university was not only an "Island..." What did you call it? An "Island of Integration?"

Perry:
Yes, sir.

Friedsam:
It was also an "Island of Liberalism" in Denton, and the two things went together.

Perry:
Yes, sir.

Friedsam:
There were a lot of us who were involved in Democratic Party politics in the sense of going to precinct conventions and so forth. I can recall numerous occasions which the split was sort of down the middle between North Texas faculty members who were there and other people who were there (chuckle).

Perry:
Truman supporters in 1948, I would venture a guess.

Friedsam:
Yes.

Perry:
Over all, how would you assess both integration at North Texas and Dr. Matthews's handling of it?

Friedsam:
I would have to say positively. I think it was obviously handled successfully. If there were people opposed, they were very, very quietly opposed, and there were no incidents as far as I can recall. A few years later, my recollection is that North Texas had a higher proportion of black students in the student body than any other school in the state.

Perry:
There's been a survey in the Dallas Morning News that indicates that, yes, sir.

Friedsam:
That would indicate, you know, that it was very successful, that it was not only a question of how it was received on campus by the faculty and the students, but that it was being pretty well received in the black communities themselves and by black students in high school. I would just have to attribute a great deal of that to Matthews. I think he was determined, as I said, that North Texas would "obey the law," and it would avoid negative headlines and so forth. He was in the position that had to implement that, so give him credit for it.

Perry:
Does his handling of desegregation mirror his handling of other major transitions of the university in general?

Friedsam:
Yes, in this sense. In some respects, Matthews was sort of a benevolent despot. It varied in the sense that he kept a firm hand on what was going on in the university. Nowadays to get to talk to the chancellor, you'd probably have to go through four of five doors to get to him. When Matthews was president, that was the only door there was -- you either got in or you didn't get in. As I said, in that sense, I think it reflects the way he operated, but it so happens that in that situation it was a very positive outcome.

Perry:
So his administrative style, in other words, doesn't make it odd that there was no formal communication or meeting or anything to let the faculty know that desegregation was going to happen?

Friedsam:
His administrative style was, "I make the decisions."

Perry:
Is there anything else you would like to add about desegregation here?

Friedsam:
I think, really, I've said it. I think it did go smoothly, and it was successful. I think North Texas was a kind of different institution from a lot of the places from around the state.

Perry:
Different in what way?

Friedsam:
Well, like I said, in terms of the liberal background and this kind of thing. But, also, one of the things that's not unimportant is the issue that we're at least 225 miles from Austin. Probably the University of Texas at that time was sitting right under the Texas Legislature, and they fought desegregation, as you know, legally all of the way. If you're way up here where the legislature doesn't see you very much, you may be in a better position.

Perry:
I appreciate your time and all of your wonderful recollections.

Friedsam:
Okay. Well, some I could recollect, and others I couldn't recollect.

Perry:
I appreciate it very much. Thank you.

Copyright © 1995 The Board of Regents of the University of North Texas in the City of Denton

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Director of the Oral History Program or the University Archivist, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas 76203.