Floyd McKissick Jr. Interview transcript

This item is featured in:

Floyd McKissick Jr. Oral History

    Legal Defense Fund Oral History Project  

  

 

 

Floyd McKissick Jr. 

Interviewed by Melody Hunter-Pillion 

May 2, 2024 

Durham, North Carolina 

Length: 01:41:03 

 

  

  

 

  

Conducted in collaboration with the Southern Oral History Program at University of North 

Carolina at Chapel Hill 

LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute, NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. 



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This transcript has been reviewed by Floyd McKissick, Jr., the Southern Oral History Program, 

and LDF. It has been lightly edited, in consultation with Floyd McKissick, Jr., for readability and 

clarity. Additions and corrections appear in both brackets and footnotes. If viewing 

corresponding video footage, please refer to this transcript for corrected information. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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[START OF INTERVIEW] 

Melody Hunter-Pillion: This is Melody Hunter-Pillion from the Southern Oral 

History Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is May 2nd, 2024. I'm 

here in Durham, North Carolina, with Floyd McKissick and should I say, Floyd McKissick 

Junior? 

Floyd McKissick Jr.: Yeah, it's always best. Yeah, I always use the Junior so no one 

will think I’m parading as my father.  

MHP: Exactly. Do you mind if I start over, Jesse? We’ll just do it again.  

Jesse Paddock: Not at all. 

MHP: This is Melody Hunter-Pillion from the Southern Oral History Program at the 

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is May 2nd, 2024. I'm here in Durham, North 

Carolina with Floyd McKissick, Jr. in the law offices of McKissick & McKissick to conduct 

an interview for the NAACP LDF Oral History Project. And we want to thank you so much 

for being here and allowing us to come in and for you telling your story. Let me start with 

having you just introduce yourself, just tell us your name and your profession now. 

FMJ: Alright. I am Floyd B. McKissick, Jr. I reside here in Durham, North Carolina. 

I was born here in Durham, North Carolina, and lived here until I was in about eighth grade 

when we moved to New York City and later moved back to North Carolina. In terms of my 

position, I am an attorney. There's a law practice here that was initially started with my dad, 

but now my son and I have that practice, and he's continuing that work at this time. I serve 

as a Commissioner with the North Carolina Utilities Commission, appointed there by 

Governor Cooper and I was confirmed by the North Carolina Senate and the North Carolina 



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House. And, of course, prior to then, I'd also been a State Senator here in North Carolina for 

about 13 plus years. 

MHP: A lot of leadership.  

FMJ: Thank you.  

MHP: Let’s go back to the beginning. You were born in Durham, as you said, in 

1952. 

FMJ: That is correct. 

MHP: Tell us about your childhood, about what Durham was like in the 1950s and 

1960s. 

FMJ: Sure. I mean, Durham in the 1950s and 1960s was like many cities in the 

South. [00:02:00] It was racially segregated, if you were to go to businesses, you'd see 

separate entrances for Black customers. Back then, they just used the word colored and ones 

for whites. Separate water fountains in department stores. It was a true southern city where 

segregation was government sanctioned and the law of the land. Now, did that change? Yes, 

it began to change. The first change occurred with Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. 

Supreme Court case where basically separate but equal was no longer the law of the land. 

So, public schools began to integrate, but they were slow in doing so, even though they said 

it should be done with all deliberate speed. So, I grew up in a situation where I attended 

schools that were segregated in the early years of my life. I attended W.G. Pearson School 

here in Durham, a good public school [that was Black]. A very fine, exceptional public 

school. But then when desegregation occurred, as a result of my father filing a lawsuit 

known as McKissick v. [Durham City] Board of Education, Durham city schools became 



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racially integrated, ultimately. And my two older sisters began their studies at Durham High 

School and at Carr Junior High School in the fall of 1959. 

MHP: Tell me about when you were going to W.G. Pearson. What was the cultural 

climate like? What was that like? And then talk to us about that transition of going into an 

integrated school. Can you tell us about that experience? 

FMJ: Sure. W.G. Pearson School was an excellent school. You had first class 

teachers there and they were all African American teachers. [00:04:04] They were concerned 

with the welfare of their students. And they came in and prepared you as thoroughly as 

possible for the future. Now, since it was an African American school, in the time of 

segregation, we did not have the latest textbooks. So, the textbooks that were distributed by 

the Durham City Board of Education were the ones that might have had a student's name in 

there five times before it got to you. So, the textbooks were typically old. They were worn. 

They were not the latest. Every once in a while, you might get a new textbook, but that was 

the exception more than the norm. Now, my parents always believed firmly in the need for a 

good education. So, they let us, enrolled us in summer enrichment programs at NCCU, back 

then it was known as North Carolina College. So over six weeks during the summer, we 

would learn everything that we were going to be exposed to the first six weeks of the new 

year, of this next school year. So, in terms of the W.G. Pearson experience, it was an 

excellent experience. It was an enriching experience. At the same time, there were 

challenges because you typically had more students in a classroom and the facilities were 

not on par with what there were at white schools. And if it wasn't for my parents having 

leadership in making sure that me and my sisters got the best education, it would have been 

more challenging. But my parents were proactive. As I said, they sent us to summer reading 



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programs. My mother was involved with a group of mothers called the Junior Mothers Club, 

where they brought in special reading programs every Saturday morning that we'd go to 

during the school year, where we learned to accelerate our reading skills. Our parents were 

committed to making sure that we got the best education possible. [00:06:05] 

MHP: So definitely, there was a sense of separate and unequal, right, with the hand-

me-down books, the facilities not as good as the others, but your parents, definitely having 

avenues, to making sure that you were still getting enrichment and also having great 

educators and these African American teachers. 

FMJ: Excellent educators, and a thing to remember, that at that point in time, if you 

were an African American teacher, it was a, I'll call, a noble profession. There were not 

going to be opportunities for them to work in the traditional white schools. And you had 

your best and your brightest in those classrooms, and they did the very best that they could. 

And I think they did an excellent job for the most part, notwithstanding the separate but 

unequal facilities that they were provided. 

MHP: Tell us about the transition then, when you're going into schools now and 

you're integrating the school. Did you face any racism? And what can you tell us about that? 

FMJ: Sure. I integrated at the sixth-grade level, and my sisters entered in the fall of 

1959. I'm thinking that for me, it would have been about 1963 when I entered the [I 

integrated a] school at that time. But I had been prepared for what to expect because I saw 

the experience with my sisters. My sisters, my mother would drive them to school every 

morning and would let them out. But you could expect a group of students to be holding the 

door of the schoolhouse so they could not get in until my mother got out of the car and went 

over there, and then they ran away, and there was no principal or assistant principal to stop 



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them. And they would do that every day. I knew of an instance where my oldest sister was in 

a girls’ bathroom at Durham High School. [00:08:03] And when she went in there to use the 

facilities, the girls took her and tried to put her head in a commode, in a toilet. Now, the 

thing to remember is that restroom facilities in the South did not integrate until 1964, after 

the passage of the Civil Rights Act. But you're integrating schools in 1959, where you still 

go out into the community and these restrooms are segregated. So, [white] students had 

deeply held views about the right for Black students to use those restrooms that they use, it 

was almost as if they thought there was something sacrosanct about them. When there's 

nothing more communal in society than a toilet. But that didn't stop them from holding these 

views that were shown in the way that they reacted. Now, for me, going into sixth grade, 

you were going in there and, at the time, I was the only African American student in the 

sixth grade at North Durham Elementary School. And in my classroom, the teacher had 

never taught a Black student. The other students there had never been in a classroom with 

Black students. What you ran into were situations where if you were on a stairway, 

somebody might try to trip you so you would fall. Somebody might take little paper spitballs 

and blow them toward you or spit them toward you with a straw. You know what I mean? If 

you went into a boys’ bathroom and there were kind of a common urinal type area, 

somebody might think it was cute to turn toward you while they were urinating to, you 

know, thought it was humorous to try to pee on you. Okay. I mean, they held open 

hostilities, many of those students. You’d go into a classroom, and they'd have a copy of 

World Book Encyclopedia, and they would open it up and they would pull out a little film in 

the inside pages that would show an evolutionary chart that would show men evolving from 

apes. [00:10:13] And at the end, of course, it showed a white man that was there. And they 



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would point to that and say, “This is where white men are, and the Blacks were somewhere 

along that evolutionary chain.” You were thought of as being inherently unequal and you 

had to create impressions not just of who you were, but you were creating impressions for 

your entire race so that they would understand that you had the same capacity to learn, the 

same capacity to contribute. They did not believe that. They did not understand that. They 

thought if you were an African American male, the best you could do is excel on a 

basketball court, on a baseball diamond, on a football field. And if you were really lucky in 

life, you might become a short order cook in a restaurant. The idea of being able to go into 

professions such as being an attorney, or being a doctor, or being an engineer, or being a 

host of other things was absolutely, totally inconceivable. So, you were breaking those false 

conceptions. You were establishing new opportunities for them to learn through your 

behaviors, through the way that you participated in the classroom, through your ability to 

write a paper, through your ability to actually speak in a way that was coherent without 

using broken words or English because they thought you were incapable. You had to show 

them not only were you capable, but you were equal to them in every respect. [00:12:05] 

MHP: Did your parents have conversations with you before you entered the sixth 

grade and you're going into the classroom and even throughout? That time, that first year, of 

going into an integrated classroom, the only Black person there, how did they teach you to 

or instruct you to respond to some of the indignities? And also, this discipline of the 

scholastic abilities and scholastic demonstration, both those things. Because those are two 

different things, right? Responding to the indignities and then scholastic performance? 

FMJ: Yeah, oh yeah. And of course, my parents, they always said, “Don't get upset 

when people start calling you names.” Because I would hear people tell these kids, you 



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know, tell me what their daddies were going to do to my Daddy. You know what I mean? 

And their daddy was part of the Klan or whatever. They said, “Don't get into some type of 

fight. Don't get pulled into any controversy.” They would say that the Bible said to turn the 

other cheek if that were to happen, because inevitably, if I'm not being contained in my 

behaviors, if I let it get under my skin, if I had struck back in some respect, it was I who was 

going to get penalized. It was I who was going to get expelled. It was I that was going to be 

held accountable. You knew there was a dual standard. You knew you were operating in a 

prejudiced society where racism was the norm. So, you learn to contain behaviors in a way 

so that you did not get into trouble. And at the same time, in my home, I lived in a very 

multiracial environment in the segregated South because of my dad's involvement in the 

Civil Rights Movement. [00:14:09] He was in charge of the youth division of the NAACP 

for the state of North Carolina. He was involved in organizing youth for rallies and 

demonstrations for picketing. He was active with the Congress of Racial Equality as well, 

CORE, so NAACP and CORE, in that time frame. So, we had people who would come to 

live with us, who were from outside of North Carolina, who covered the spectrum in terms 

of their backgrounds. And when I say that: there was a gentleman who was Chinese by the 

name of Moon Ing, who shared my bunk bed with me for a better part of about a year and a 

half, who was like a brother to me. A person, by the name of Sheila Long, who was white, 

who was from a family in the Northeast, who was relatively affluent, who was here working 

in the Civil Rights Movement to organize the protest, to help get the picket signs made up, 

to help organize demonstrations and rallies, was like a sister to me. You know, or Carol Ruth 

Silver, who had gotten her law degree at Stanford University, who worked in my father's law 

office. Who was, again, like a sister to me. And you learn to treat people and to respect 



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people based upon the way they treated you, not based upon their race and who they were. 

And I guess that’s an illustrative example [of what I mean]. I mean, people like Ike 

Reynolds, who came from a State down in the Deep South, [who was a] Field Secretary for 

CORE, who's African American, like a brother to me. We were all like one big family and 

we all lived there in that house together. And they might have been there anywhere from as 

little as six weeks or six months, up to a year and a half, two years or more, living and 

breathing and functioning with the idealistic views and opinions of what the Civil Rights 

Movement epitomized, which is treating people of all races with respect, with dignity, as if 

they were your sisters and brothers. [00:16:26] 

MHP: I am just imagining being in this home and all these influences of activism 

and advocacy that you're hearing. And do you, as a small child. 

FMJ: Yeah. 

MHP: What did you think of, could you make something out of those 

conversations? What did you make of these conversations, if you would hear some of these? 

FMJ: Well, I was very much aware of all the conversations. I had three sisters, two 

older, one younger. I tended to travel with my father a lot and in the home, we knew what 

demonstrations or rallies were taking place. We knew what picket signs needed to be written 

up and drawn up. I would help in participating to the extent that I could contribute. In fact, I 

had picket signs that were just my size that I could use for picketing. And my youngest 

sister, I have a picture of myself picketing when I was, before I was in sixth grade. In fact, 

ironically enough, my sixth-grade teacher, her father was a brother, in a business here in 

Durham known as Royal Ice Cream [laughs], which was right in the heart of kind of a cross-

section between the Black community and white community, which I picketed as a child, 



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not realizing that one day I would be in the classroom [laughs]. Miss Porcelli, whose father 

owned an interest in that business, who was not very happy to see me there. [laughs] Yes, I 

was very much aware of it all. [00:18:04] The civil rights leaders that would come in from 

out of town, Roy Wilkins, who was the leader of the NAACP, was coming in town all the 

time for the NAACP, attending demonstrations and rallies that my father was instrumental in 

organizing frequently. He would stay in our home. There was a bedroom there that was for 

guests, Roy Wilkins spent who knows how many nights with the family and overhearing the 

conversations, discussions, and attending the speeches and rallies, you knew what it was 

about. In fact, it wasn't uncommon for me to go to those rallies whether they were at St 

Joseph’s Church, White Rock Church. And I was young, so I would frequently sit on the 

podium back there in one of the chairs, which I thought was kind of cool, but I was very 

much aware of what was going on. Or James Farmer, from [the leader of] CORE would be 

there. There were times when Malcolm X was in town, and you had a chance to meet him. 

And he and my dad were engaged in a debate. So was I aware, I was not only aware, I was 

very much a part of what was going on. And actually, one of the things that I did, I was 

always a bit entrepreneurial as a child. So, I would sell newspapers all the time. So, I would 

sell the Afro-American newspaper that came from out of Baltimore which was the Black 

paper or the Carolina Times here out of Durham. And at one point I had a newspaper route 

for the Durham Sun, which was afternoon paper, and I would deliver papers to about 160-

175 people a day. So, the thing that I did was to read those papers. I was aware of their 

contents and was aware of some of the people who were sometimes in those articles who I 

met and who I knew. 

MHP: Let's go back to Royal Ice Cream. 



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FMJ: Yes. 

MHP: Because you brought it up. 

FMJ: Yes. 

MHP: You were participating. You're young. 

FMJ: Yeah. 

MHP: So, you were involved in picketing segregated businesses in Durham, 

including Royal Ice Cream Parlor at the age of about nine. [00:20:00] Eight or nine, at the 

time? 

FMJ: Oh, yeah. Yeah, about nine years old.  

MHP: Talk about that, as a young person how you decided to participate in civil 

rights demonstrations and what it meant to you.  

FMJ: I wanted to be a part of the movement, just like I saw the other people around 

me that were a part of the movement. I didn't want to just sit back somewhere, watch people 

picket. I wanted to be a part of that picket line, and I was. I participated in that picketing. I 

got out there, there were times when I'd picket there at Royal Ice Cream. There were times 

I'd picket at an A&P supermarket in downtown Durham. You say, “Well, why were you 

picketing in a supermarket?” Well, back then, they didn't hire Blacks as cashiers. They didn't 

hire Blacks as butchers. The only thing that an African American could do at an A&P 

supermarket, and it was a big chain back in that time frame, was to take groceries from the 

checkout line to your car. And that was it. So, you were fighting for the same jobs, the same 

rights, the same privileges, that type of thing. So yeah, I wanted to be a part of those picket 

lines. I wanted to fight for equal rights. I wanted to be a part of that battle that was fighting 



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for the desegregation of the South. And in fact, Durham did desegregate before the passage 

of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

MHP: So, and you talked about having picket signs that were just for your size.  

FMJ: Yeah. 

MHP: Can you recall what any of them said? 

FMJ: Would you like to see a picture of one of them? 

MHP: I would. 

FMJ: All right. [looks for picture].  

MHP: Watch out for the mic. 

FMJ: It’s in my pocket. 

MHP: Oh, it’s in your pocket. 

FMJ: Yeah, the mic is in my pocket. I’m going to see. I do a lot of things during 

Black History Month. So, during Black History Month, I go around and talk about things. 

[00:21:58] And among those things, you see this picture here? That would be me picketing 

at Royal Ice Cream in Durham, North Carolina. And my youngest sister, Charmaine, would 

have been there in that same picture. 

MHP: Wow. She's standing in front. Is she in front of you? 

FMJ: Charmaine is right here. 

MHP: That’s her in front of you. 

FMJ: And then that’s me right here. You can see Royal Ice Cream in the background 

and my sign says, “Open all doors to all people” and it says “NAACP CORE” at the bottom 

of the sign. And that's what we were fighting for. There was a separate entrance for Blacks. 

And with that separate entrance for Blacks, they could go in and get takeout food. Whites 



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could go in and sit down and place their orders. So, it was about having the same 

opportunities to go in and sit down and eat what you were ordering, as opposed to just 

getting food at a takeout window and leaving. So yeah, that's what I was doing. 

MHP: Did you make this sign? 

FMJ: Yeah, I made that sign. Yes, absolutely. In fact, there was another sign, I don’t 

remember what it said, that I used at the A&P supermarket. And it wasn't uncommon back 

then while you were picketing to have people come by and, I’ll put that down [sets down 

photo]. And when they came by, they’d throw out fliers that would basically say, “You've 

been visited by the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.” Yeah. So that wasn't unusual, we would 

have people do that at our home on Roxboro Street. They'd come by and throw the fliers out 

the window. You've been visited by the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, they were purposely 

and intentionally trying to intimidate you into stopping, to do what they wanted to do. We 

would get letters in the mail on stationery from the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and what 

my mother did routinely back in those time frame, they used to make these gloves called 

Playtex gloves. Playtex gloves were basically used to put on your hand when you were 

washing the dishes. [00:24:00] So, your hands didn't become, I guess, whatever happened to 

them, if you washed your hands without having them, [laughs] but she would put on those 

Playtex gloves. And when you saw that letter coming from the Ku Klux Klan, you were 

instructed to hold it by its corners and open it with a letter opener, and you didn't want to put 

fingerprints on them because it would be sent to the FBI or whoever was responsible for 

analyzing it to see if they could trace it back to who had sent it, because the letters always 

contained threats. And we had threats all the time over the phone. You go to the phone, over 

50 percent of our calls we would call crank calls. I go answer the phone. “Who is it?” “It’s 



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just another crank call, another threat.” Someone threatened to bomb your house, and 

frequently for about two and a half years, we had people sit in our front porch at night 

between dusk, dark until the break of dawn with shotguns and rifles to protect us because of 

the level of threats that were occurring on a regular basis. 

MHP: Did you have a sense of how much fear, if any, your parents had? I mean, 

obviously they took it seriously enough where you had protection, but what kind of 

atmosphere was it in the house for you and your siblings and as far as you can tell, your 

parents, the level of fear? 

FMJ: There wasn't fear. It really wasn't fear at all. It was just the norm. And they 

didn't go out and solicit these people to come sit on the porch. They volunteered. They 

wanted to be there. They wanted to protect one of their champions in civil rights here in 

Durham and in the state of North Carolina. They were volunteers. And some nights you look 

at that front porch, there were four people out there. Some nights there were just two, 

weekends it might be six people out there, and they'd sit there, and they’d talk, and they 

would do whatever they needed to do. [00:26:00] They might even play cards or something. 

But, at the end of the day, they were there for protection. You just knew, it was the norm. It 

wasn't something exceptional. It was just the reality of the way we lived in that day. And in 

that time and in that era, with the threat level as it was, you say, oh, it was just threats. Well, 

no, there were people actually bombing people's homes. There were actually people getting 

shot. So, those threats were real.  

MHP: And in the midst of those threats, the real threats. You as a child continued to 

do what you were doing. Your father continued to do his work in pressing forward. Let me 

ask you, can you recall? I know you talked about some of the protests you did. But if you 



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can recall any other specific demonstrations or sit-ins, and especially thinking about Howard 

Johnson’s sit-in in what, 1962, 1963.  

FMJ: Oh, yeah. The Howard Johnson’s sit-ins. They were famous sit-ins in this 

area. You could have, I'm going to say, 500 to 600 to 800 people that were out there on a 

Sunday afternoon because after sermons that were given and rallies that were held, you 

know, at local churches, it might be St Joseph’s Church, it might be White Rock. They 

would frequently converge at Howard Johnson's, I remember James Farmer of CORE was 

frequently a speaker as well as Roy Wilkins of the NAACP and my father. And they’d point 

to that sign, this big marquee sign of Howard Johnson's. It had said they had 28 flavors of 

ice cream. And they said, well, it has 28 flavors of ice cream. We want to make sure that 

everybody has a chance to enjoy those 28 flavors, but more importantly, that those flavors of 

ice cream represented the colors and hues of people or races around the world, and that 

everybody of every race ought to be able to go in there and enjoy that ice cream and sit 

down in that restaurant and you found that places like Howard Johnson's were racially 

integrated in the Northeast. [00:28:15] It's just in the South, segregation was kind of the law 

of the land. So, they were segregated. You go up there, and you are driving in New Jersey, in 

New York, you'd see Howard Johnson's all along the Jersey Turnpike. But in North Carolina 

if there was a Howard Johnson's, it was segregated. And that's what it was all about. I 

remember those demonstrations or rallies. I remember those ones that took place in Durham 

whenever. I mean, it was back in May. My gosh, what year was that? Civil Rights Act was 

in 1964. Maybe May of 1963 or so. You probably had 800 to 1,000 people converging on 

downtown businesses in Durham literally at one time. Okay, and they were going there for 

the purpose of being arrested, for the purpose of being taken to jail. And they took them and 



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booked them down at the jail. Now, they would frequently release them. But there was one 

time where, you had a big mob develop in a parking lot next to the jail, at that time in 

Durham. And there were folks that were white, that were jeering, they were Klansmen. All 

of these folks would get upset about Blacks going down there and demonstrating at these 

segregated businesses and being arrested. They thought they were agitators and all this type 

of thing. There was a car, my father's, parked in that parking lot near the jail, [that my father 

had owned]. And some of the people who were part of that mob took the car and flipped it, 

turned it upside down on its roof. [00:30:08] And interestingly enough, my father had sold 

that car to somebody else in the Civil Rights Movement about a month earlier. So, they 

thought they got his car [laughs]. I think the lady who had bought it, who was named 

Rosemary, is the one who suffered the hit from it. But the car got replaced. So, it wasn’t a 

problem. 

MHP: How did these experiences, these activities, your involvement in them also 

contribute to the development of your political consciousness?  

FMJ: Well, I think my [political] consciousness was embedded in me almost as a 

result of those experiences. The thing that you saw that the protest rallies could make a 

difference. You saw Durham desegregate before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 

as a result of those demonstrations and those rallies. Okay? You saw the amount of change 

that could occur as a result of social activism, as a result of protests, as a result of 

commitment. And you knew that change was possible. You wanted to be a part of it all, and 

it gave you hope. It gave you aspirations. But more importantly, you understood that you 

wanted to be a part of it. I can remember how challenging it was for people to vote back in 

1964. Yeah, I remember that, because that was the year Lyndon Johnson ran for president. 



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At that point, I think I was in eighth grade. I'm thinking back now, I pegged things to events 

that were going on at the time, but I can remember having my paper route at that time and 

getting about 25-odd people registered to vote that were people on my paper route, and 

encouraging them to do so and walking with them down there, where you could only 

register to vote on like Saturdays between like eight-thirty or nine in the morning and about 

one o’clock in the afternoon. [00:32:11] And it was challenging then to get registered to 

vote. It wasn't like it is today where you just sign up like you do to get a library card or get 

your driver's license. But what I did see, and I went back to those people after they got 

registered to vote, to make sure that they voted in that presidential election between Johnson 

and Goldwater, because that was a pivotal race. And I would go in with many of them as if I 

was their child when they voted, and they would pull the lever on the voting machine and a 

curtain would close, and they weren't even familiar with the little gears that you'd have to 

switch and pull down. So, I went to them and showed them what they needed to do. But the 

thing that was most striking was to see the pride in their faces when they voted for the very 

first time in their lives. I never saw so much exuberance in a person's face. And you knew 

that even as a child, you could participate in making that happen, and maybe even in a small 

way, help contribute by those people voting to [who could change] the outcome of the 

election. 

MHP: I can't help but ask you to describe for me, because when I think of pillars of 

democracy, when we think about journalism being a pillar, voting being a pillar, and here 

you're uniting both of these things as a child on a paper route. And can you describe for me 

your paper route a little bit, some of the streets and you talking to your neighbors and why 

they trusted you so much? 



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FMJ: They trusted me because I was their paper boy, and they knew me. I was a 

familiar face. Someone would look at me and say, “That's lawyer McKissick’s son,” and 

others didn't know whose son I was, but they knew that I was someone familiar that they 

could trust. Some of them were not always people that were really literate. They might 

subscribe to the paper, but they'd ask me to come into their house. [00:34:17] And if there 

were sometimes legal documents or papers they needed to sign, they’d say, “Paper boy,” and 

they usually just referred to me as paper boy, “Can you read this to me?” And I would read it 

out loud to them so they knew what it was, and then when they understood it, for those that 

really were not very literate at all, they would sign with an X, because that was the way they 

signed their name. And you found that many of them were taking the paper because they 

liked the coupons that came out on Wednesdays, you know what I mean? They could see the 

pictures in the ads. Now, granted, probably 75-80 percent read the paper, but another 20-25 

percent who would subscribe to that paper, they couldn't read. It was a paper route in what I 

would call North Central Durham that was bounded by Alston Avenue on one side, Glendale 

Avenue on the other side, going down, Dowd Street, going down Mangum Street where I am 

today, back in some of these areas where the Black neighborhoods and white neighborhoods 

were very close together. But some of these Black neighborhoods, some of the housing was 

as poor and shoddy as you can possibly imagine. You know what I mean? They would heat 

them with coal, and a man would come through selling bags of coal for 50 cents a bag. He 

would chant “Coal man, coal man,” and people would come out and buy the coal, they'd 

have one heater in the middle of the house where they would heat the entire house. It might 

be three or four rooms and there could be six people, eight people living in that house. 

[00:36:01] So, you saw people, some who were living in devastating poverty, some who 



20 
 

were middle class, all living in pretty close proximity to each other. And you got to know all 

of them. You knew who they were, you learned who they were, and you learned that [a lot 

about them]. Back then to collect my money, I had to collect. You can imagine this? It was 

[30] cents a week for the paper. That's what the rate was. And you’d go out on Saturday 

mornings and collect. And I was always told by the man who gave me the route, “Collect 

your money starting at seven a.m. Make sure you make the routes [money] by nine o’clock, 

because if you don't collect, then you might not get paid.” [laughs] and he said, “And for 

these eight families or ten families that are on welfare, they get the check on the 15th of the 

month. So, you get there on the 15th of the month, and you get paid for the entire month. 

And over here that family is Seventh-day Adventist. You got to get there before six o’clock 

on Friday, if you want to get paid.” So, I listened, and I learned, and I had almost an 88 

percent collection rate. They were wonderful people. They knew me and I knew them. They 

trusted me. I would talk to them about all kinds of things. And I can remember, every once 

in a while, I’d have somebody from a paper route who would say, perhaps an older person. 

“Come here, listen to this little boy talk,” and they’d say, “Say something.” [laughs] “Paper 

boy, say something.” I don't know, I was just talking the way I normally would [laughs]. But 

that was the reality of growing up as a paper boy in north central Durham back in that day, 

time, and era. 

MHP: Do you, and you've already alluded to some of this, some of the people who 

would come through the house, people that your father would work with?  

FMJ: Yes. 



21 
 

MHP: Because he was a well-known civil rights activist and the former head of 

CORE. [00:38:04] Tell me a little bit more about how your parents, your family, and their 

close friends really shaped your thinking as you were growing up. 

FMJ: Well, I think one of the things they got me to understand is that one of the 

things in life you should seek to attain is getting a good education because it will open up 

doorways and pathways to opportunities. And it's something that no one can ever take away 

from you. It was one of those things that was instilled in me and my sisters at a very early 

age, the importance of treating everybody with respect, saying, “Yes, sir,” “Yes, ma'am,” to 

everybody. You know, so often when you went into businesses for African Americans back 

then, they just wanted to call you by your first name. They didn't give you the respect of 

saying, “Yes, sir”, “Yes, ma'am”, or “Mrs. McKissick”, or whatever it may be. So, we were 

taught to provide that respect to people and to understand that the civil rights that we were 

fighting for was an important thing for our race and that we all needed to be playing a role in 

doing it. And we were all playing a role in our own ways. And I think they instilled those 

intrinsic values in us at an early age, a work ethic to say, don't be afraid of hard work, don't 

be afraid of sacrifice, don't be afraid. And more importantly, to help people who were less 

fortunate. I know my mother was a part of this group called Junior Mothers Club. They were 

always adopting families that were less fortunate where they would take them food, take 

them clothes, try to make sure that on holidays, that they had toys for their kids at Christmas 

or on birthdays. [00:40:10] You know what I mean? To make sure they had a balanced diet, 

and my mother opened up a daycare center. She helped underprivileged kids; she opened 

about four different ones. In some instances, they served as kind of a demonstration project 

for later what became known as Head Start, where the centers might have only about 



22 
 

somewhere between 30 to 40 to 50 kids. I think one of the first ones was at Fisher Memorial 

Church here in Durham, down in the basement. But she taught the teachers who worked 

there. She made sure that the kids came there, that they got breakfast, they got two snacks a 

day. They got lunch and they got equivalent of a dinner before they left. The importance of 

nutrition, the importance of hygiene, because they may not have had good hygiene at home. 

So, even bathing, to be honest with you, and providing them with clothes, you know what I 

mean? And going into their homes and making certain that the kids that were coming to 

daycare center not only had clothes, but other kids in those homes had clothes as well, 

teaching them their shapes and their colors and how to read. So, they were reading before 

they went to first grade, and those kids performed just as well as any other kids when they 

got to school, they were getting their As and their Bs, which they perhaps never would have 

had if they had not gone to these daycare centers and enrichment programs that were 

specifically designed and targeted to help, at that point, the term was underprivileged kids, 

and she'd help some of the adults or parents learn to read at an adult literacy program that 

she would run to help them learn to read. [00:42:04] So, we were taught the importance of 

giving back and helping people that were less fortunate through whatever way you could, 

that you had a duty and responsibility to do so. 

MHP: Commissioner McKissick, I know we talk a lot about your father, his 

leadership, his activism. Obviously, your mother was a huge influence as well. 

FMJ: Absolutely. 

MHP: Tell us your mother's name, was she a teacher by trade or tell us a little bit 

more. 



23 
 

FMJ: Her name was Evelyn Williams McKissick. She grew up in Asheville, North 

Carolina. I think her family moved there when she was a young child. My father also grew 

up in Asheville. They lived on the same block. Now it was interesting, because her father 

worked at a country club up in Asheville, and he was well-known and well-regarded. I guess 

he was responsible for maintaining the grounds and doing whatever it was that somebody, a 

golf pro did back in those days. So, he was well-regarded. And her family, for an African 

American family in that time frame, was rather affluent. And when I say that, during the 

depression back in the 1930s, her father had built a beautiful brick home, never had a 

mortgage on it. They paid 10,000 dollars cash. I think they own about 11 other homes. She 

grew up in a unique environment for an African American female in that day, time, and era. 

And she attended a school up there in Asheville known as, what was the name of that 

school? Allen Home. Allen Home was basically an African American boarding school where 

a lot of African American families sent their kids to get the best education that they could, 

that she was a day student there. [00:44:03] And when she graduated from there, she went to 

Howard University in Washington, DC, which was preeminent as perhaps one of the best 

and finest African American universities in the country at that time. While she was there, she 

and my father got married. He was a soldier at the time, enlisted in the military and, of 

course, she did not graduate from Howard. She did go to a school of design up in New York. 

Okay. She was very interested in design. I think she was at that school of design when they 

decided to get married, and then they later started a family. But she was very much one who 

studied preschool education. So that was her background, preschool education. And she took 

a great interest in preschool education and was a preschool education teacher here in 

Durham initially [at a preschool located at the W.D. Hill Recreation Center], or another 



24 
 

daycare center until she established four separate centers of her own. But, because of the 

education she received growing up, she always wanted a good education for her kids. 

MHP: Speaking of which, you attended Clark University? 

FMJ: Yes. 

MHP: And you studied geography. I was a little surprised to hear that. What drew 

you to Clark and tell us about the Clark you went to and more specifically, the study of 

geography? How does that work in with the work you’ve done over your career in civil 

rights? 

FMJ: Well, Clark was a fascinating school. I graduated from a small high school in 

New York City. So, I was interested in still having a small, intimate learning environment. 

[00:46:01] Clark had an excellent program in psychology. Only place where Sigmund Freud 

ever spoke and studied in the United States, Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. 

So that's what initially caused me to have interest in Clark. I knew they had also established 

the first graduate school of geography in the United States. Now, when I got to Clark, I 

ended up taking as many courses in geography as I did in psychology and decided I would 

major in geography. In fact, I was planning to do a dual major with psychology and 

geography. It was very easy to have done so. It was a professor there who I really had a 

wonderful connection with, a guy by the name of Dr. Richard Peet, who was absolutely 

fascinating, intriguing, had a British background, but he understood geography in all of its 

forms, from not just the spatial distribution of things in society. You know what I mean, how 

cities grew and developed as well as cultural geography, economic geography, even, of 

course, dealing with the geography of American poverty and how that functioned and 

operated. My interest in geography grew and thrived, as a result of my attending Clark and 



25 
 

the wealth of resources they had in geography. As well as physical geography, understanding 

the landscape, the topography of the land, kind of earth sciences, almost. There’s so much to 

geography that people don't really understand. And of course, I took psychology too, and I 

had enough credits to become a double major, but I didn't get around to taking a psychology 

lab in my final semester, and there was really no reason not to because I only needed six 

semester hours to graduate. But I was interested in spending time that last semester down at 

Soul City with my father, who was involved in developing [the project] at that time. 

[00:48:10] And it was a fascinating project and a lot that I enjoyed about working there. I 

became an Assistant Planner there. And then later, after graduating from the School of City 

and Regional Planning at Carolina, I became their [Director of Planning]. 

MHP: So, you received your master's in regional planning from UNC, is that 

correct? 

FMJ: Yes.  

MHP: And a master's in public administration from Harvard. 

FMJ: That is correct. 

MHP: So, tell us about what led you to pursue those degrees. And then we can talk 

about Soul City some more. 

FMJ: Sure. Well, I suspect the city and regional planning degree was a result of my 

interest in land development and new towns. And my father had announced the idea of 

building a new town, Soul City in North Carolina. It was one of 14 new communities started 

underneath a program with the United States government, there was a division of New 

Communities within the Department of Housing and Urban Development, they had a New 

Communities Administration. So, there were 14 new communities started in that time frame. 



26 
 

Soul City was one of them and we acquired 3,600 acres of land in Warren County to build 

that project. But I learned a lot about new towns and new communities as a result of being 

with my father. I had also and worked in Columbia, Maryland, for the Rouse Company as a 

summer intern one year and saw what they did in developing Columbia, Maryland, the new 

town outside of Washington, DC. They had about 13,000-14,000 acres at the time. And the 

way the Rouse Company approached it and [I also studied and understood] what they were 

doing over in Reston, Virginia, which Bob Simon was developing at the time. In fact, I still 

have a home up in Reston today that I bought back in the 1980s. That's right. [00:50:01] I 

was intrigued with the idea of new communities, intrigued with the concept of city planning, 

of how you plan the roads, the streets, the underground utilities, the infrastructure, provide 

water supply, understanding industrial geography and what it means to create a job and 

employment base. What's the logic behind the city making a plan, of how businesses locate, 

where they locate? So, my interest in geography and, likewise, city regional planning was 

sparked by my interest and grew out of my exposure to all of the vast wealth of people that I 

met while Soul City was in basically its infancy at that time. 

MHP: Soul City then presents this great opportunity, especially for someone with all 

of your interests. It puts it all together and you, as you said, were the Director of Planning 

for Soul City. Can you talk about that experience and about the dream that Soul City was for 

you and your father? 

FMJ: Sure. I mean, Soul City, was something that my father announced, as I recall, I 

think it was initially in 1969, during the days of the Johnson Administration, President 

Johnson’s Administration. In fact, it was announced with the Secretary of Agriculture at that 

time, I think it was [Orville Lothrop] Freeman. So, he announced this idea of building a new 



27 
 

town and he was intrigued by it. Understanding that he had been National Chairman and 

National Director of CORE, Congress of Racial Equality, one of the 10 civil rights speakers 

that spoke at the historic March on Washington and met with President Kennedy that day, 

and one of the ones that advocated for Black power in that day, time, and era that was, 

forthcoming. And, of course, he thought that Soul City would be a way of effectuating some 

of what it meant to create a city that would offer opportunity for all. Why did he locate it in 

Warren County? [00:52:03] Well, Warren County historically had been one of the places in 

the state of North Carolina where it had the highest outward migrations rate, where people 

were leaving to go to the great urban areas, like New York and Harlem. It [they] might have 

been going to Detroit, wherever it might have been. But when they got there, they didn't find 

the opportunities they were looking for. Frequently, they faced despair. It would be [they 

would find themselves] in urban ghettos. It was about providing jobs and opportunities in a 

place where they had migrated from. And I think that what occurred during the days of the 

Civil Rights Movement, you had the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that passed that desegregated 

the South and all the public accommodations and all that type of thing. You had the Voting 

Rights Act of 1965 that passed where you now had equal opportunities to vote. You had the 

Fair Housing [Act] of 1968 that passed, that tore down barriers to discrimination in housing, 

so that it was no longer lawful to discriminate [against people when they] rented or bought a 

house. But what you found is that even with that trilogy of bills that passed, African 

Americans were still living in despair and didn't have opportunity, even in places that had 

not had segregation legalized and government sanctioned in the Northeast. So, you had to 

confront it, perhaps in a new way, in a creative way. The Urban Growth and New 

Communities Act of 1968 that was passed by Congress allowed for these new towns. There 



28 
 

were 14 established in that period. This was the only one established by an African 

American development company that was a freestanding new town. Most of them were 

outside of a major urban area, or built on what they call urban renewal land in the heart of 

an inner city where they had gone in and kind of demolished areas that were considered to 

be blighted. So, what did that mean about being freestanding? You had to establish your own 

employment base. You had to bring in your own infrastructure. There were not necessarily 

roads there. There wasn't necessarily a water system there or sewer systems. You had to 

build it. You had to construct it, so it was an astronomical undertaking to do so. Under the 

HUD program, to get a loan guarantee commitment, they did not give you the money per se, 

to build a new town. [00:54:13] What you had to do was to go out and sell bonds on Wall 

Street that were federally guaranteed bonds. If you did not repay that debt [or bonds], then 

the government would come in and repay it. We sold our first bonds in March of 1974, 

about five million. Then we sold another five million, I believe it was December 1976 or 

1977. We were given a 14-million-dollar loan guarantee commitment. We were only able to 

sell 10 million of those bonds before the government withdrew its support. But, in the 

process, we also received grants and aid that we were eligible for. We ended up building the 

largest regional water system in the state of North Carolina. It still exists to this day. That 

brings in water from Kerr Lake. Kerr Lake is a lake on the border of North Carolina and 

Virginia, that has over 800 shoreline miles, operated by the Army Corps of Engineers. So 

that water system brought in water not only to Soul City, but to Henderson in Vance County, 

as well as Oxford over in Granville County and Soul City and Warren County. About 70-75 

percent of that money that went in that water system was money that came through the 

auspices of Soul City. We also built a county-wide high school over near [in] Warren 



29 
 

County, I think that high school cost about 1.6 million to build in that time frame. A million 

dollars of that money came from Soul City [through the New Communities Administration]. 

We built the first recreational facilities in Warren County. They were open to people of all 

races that were situated right there in Soul City. We built a health clinic in Soul City that saw 

people based upon their need for services without regard to their ability to pay. [00:56:06] 

So those people that went there didn't pay anything for the services they received. They saw 

a general practitioner, they saw a dentist or whoever they saw, and they were provided 

[with] free transportation to get people there. They had a van service that ran, which picked 

up people in Vance County, Warren County, Granville County brought them there, and 

they'd see anywhere between 80 to 100 people a day, minimally. They were providing health 

care services. You say, what happened? Well, a couple of things happened. The most 

important one was there was a person elected to the U.S. Senate by the name of Jesse 

Helms, a Republican who considered my father an arch foe and an enemy. And he said he 

was going to do all that he could to stop the development of that project. So, he asked for an 

audit, an investigation of the project, alleging wrongdoing, financial improprieties, and it 

kind of brought development of the project to a standstill for about a year, year and a half. 

At the end, the General Accounting Office that conducted the investigation gave Soul City a 

clean bill of health. No financial fraud, no improprieties. Money was spent for what it was 

supposed to have been spent for. But nevertheless, it had created a very negative impression 

of Soul City in the minds of many in the business community. People who were interested in 

Soul City and would likely have perhaps invested there and brought businesses there, pretty 

much got cold feet because of what was going on. And then because of not knowing what 

the government would continue to help with the funding of the project through the federal 



30 
 

loan guarantees or selling the bonds or through additional grants and aid, the government 

initially granted the initial approval of the idea of selling bonds for Soul City, June 28th of 

1972. [00:58:06] We sold the bonds in March of 1974; however, they withdrew their support 

June 28th of 1979. So, both occurred on June 28th ironically enough. And within probably a 

year, year and a half of that, the Soul City project was essentially folded and most of the 

land was sold off. I still have some land there today, and there's still an ongoing community 

there today. And the people who bought homes there that continue to live there, in fact, in 

recent years, new homes have been built. There has been a resurgence of interest in Soul 

City. So that gives some kind of, what I call a thumbnail sketch of Soul City. If you invited 

me to a campus, I could probably give you the two-hour overview. And spend two hours on 

Soul City alone. 

MHP: And I think we should do that. But definitely there were some successes for 

the people who lived in these rural counties, not just Warren County, but some of these rural 

counties. 

FMJ: Absolutely. Successes that continue to this day in terms of the water that they 

drink, the schools that they attend, the recreational facilities that they use, the fire trucks that 

help put out their fires and the homes that they live in that otherwise they might not have ever 

been able to afford. So yeah, it transformed the lives of many and continues to benefit many 

as a result of projects and initiatives that we undertook as part of the Soul City project.  

MHP: But let me ask you then, after, in addition to the two M.A.’s. 

FMJ: Yes.  

MHP: You went on to get your J.D. from Duke Law School. 

FMJ: That's right. 



31 
 

MHP: What made you want to pursue law at this point? 

FMJ: Well, I’d been interested in becoming a lawyer from the time that I was a 

child. I think if you'd ask me in seventh or eighth grade what I planned to do, I would have 

told you I plan to become a lawyer. I think I had an eighth-grade teacher who asked me that. 

I told him that, I think he was a little bit dumbfounded, because he was one of those people 

that wasn't quite aware of the potential for African American students, [laughs] that a student 

could dream of becoming a lawyer. [01:00:10] You know, that was way off the aspirational 

charts, what I should have been thinking, I'm sure. But yes, I had an interest in law growing 

up. I met people like Thurgood Marshall, who later became a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. 

At the time, he was just an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and he had 

represented my dad in his lawsuit to desegregate the UNC public university system and the 

law school at UNC. Jean and Edgar Cahn, who were attorneys as well, that established a law 

school for Antioch University in Washington, DC. But I met so many attorneys. I just found 

it a fascinating profession. So, when I was at UNC and working on my [city and regional 

planning] degree, I took some courses that were law school courses. [Narrator corrected that 

he took a law school course while working on his city and regional planning degree.] When 

I was at Harvard working on my degree in public administration at Kennedy School of 

Government, I took three courses over at Harvard Law School for credit, as well as one 

which I audited because of my interest in law. Now, the interesting thing about Harvard Law 

is that you could go over there, they say, “well, there's a fixed curriculum for first-year 

students. You can’t take those courses; you can take second- and third-year courses.” Most 

people would have been too intimidated to go into Harvard Law [and take] second- or third-

year courses with second- and third-year law students when they never had a first-year of 



32 
 

law school. I wasn’t worried about it. I went into those courses, and I was among the top 20 

percent of the students in those courses in terms of participation and accomplishment, and 

those credits I got at Harvard and those law school courses, I later got credit for when I 

applied to law school at Duke University. I applied for law school there. I was admitted; 

they offered me a nice scholarship. [01:02:01] That was for five semesters, law school is 

normally six semesters. But with my nine credits from Harvard plus overloads I took, I got 

out in two and a half years and there was no reason to delay my studies. I always believe in 

trying to accelerate them. I was over at Carolina. I got out of that program in a year and a 

half. It was great to have that opportunity. It was great to have that exposure, was great to 

learn from the minds at UNC and it was among the top three schools of city and regional 

planning in the country at that time. At Harvard, the public administration program [there] 

was among the very top in America at that time. You had access to the brilliant minds and 

resources that [the] university had to offer is unparalleled. You can meet with, in the course 

of a year’s time, you might have half the president's cabinet come through that you can meet 

with groups as small as 12, probably no larger than 36. And they spent time with you, and 

they answered your questions. And when Michael Dukakis, the Governor of Massachusetts, 

left the governorship and joined the Kennedy School of Government. I took his course. I 

think there were only 12 students. It's remarkable to have that access to a governor who's 

just left a governorship, who later ran for President of the United States, and to have access 

to those resources. Resources you can have access to if you just work at it, if you just study 

it, and if you're somewhat deliberate and not be afraid to fail, because it would have been 

easy not to ever apply to those schools because I was afraid of failure. I'm not getting in. 

And people would have said, “you may not get in,” but I never really cared or to be afraid of 



33 
 

competing. If you work hard, it may take you more hours. It may take you a longer time to 

go through those materials. [01:04:01] But if you dedicate yourself to doing so, I learned 

early on in life there was nothing or few things you couldn't overcome, or few courses that 

you couldn't tackle and challenge and succeed. 

MHP: When you applied to Duke, when you were going to Duke, was there a 

particular law that you were interested in practicing? 

FMJ: Not necessarily. I was interested in law school and wanted to get through law 

school and then see what doors and opportunities opened up. And I was fortunate, I had 

doors and opportunities open up to me. Meanwhile, as a student in law school one summer I 

spent down at a law firm in Winston-Salem with the third largest law firm down there at the 

time, House, Blanco & Osborn. [I had a] great opportunity to function and operate there. 

And the interesting thing is the guy who was a partner in that firm, lead partner, he was from 

Monroe, North Carolina. He had a connection. His father knew Jesse Helms. I think [his 

father was] the principal of the high school he attended. I didn't care and we still got along 

fine. I didn't worry about the way he might have been enamored with Jesse Helms. You 

know what I mean? Because when you related to him on a human level, he saw you for who 

you were, your accomplishments and your legal research and your writing skills. And he 

would give you a reference that was as good as any reference you were ever going to get 

anywhere. After second year of law school, [I] spent time with King & Spalding, a firm 

down in Atlanta at the time, Andy Young was mayor of Atlanta. It was a very prestigious 

law firm in Atlanta, one of the most prestigious. They represented Coca-Cola and Georgia-

Pacific, but at the time, they had only one African American attorney in that firm out of 

about 150 or so. Going in there, you could meet people like Griffin Bell, the former 



34 
 

Attorney General of the United States, or Governor Busbee, former Governor of Georgia. 

[01:06:06] They had excellent relationships with those people and established those ties. But 

at the same time, you could spend the whole summer there and never see another Black 

person at firm events or houses you were invited to unless they were serving you drinks or 

beverages. You know what I mean? So, you could go out to an Atlanta Braves game, where 

you had six or eight partners and they'd been drinking beer, as well as associates. And during 

a game, they’d see some guy come to play and swing and say, “He's the best damn n----r in 

the major leagues. I mean, the best damn n----r in the major leagues.” The only thing 

somebody would say is, “I reckon you're right.” Until they realized that I was Black and I 

was sitting there with them, and they weren’t used to having Black folks sitting there with 

them, and they’d turn red-faced and one or two of them would walk out and not be able to 

look you in the eye. So, to me, this is a time where, and I guess they thought they were 

giving a compliment [to the player]. But words like n----r just rolled off their tongue, 

because when people like me weren’t around, it was what they were used to saying. I can 

remember interviewing for a firm called Vinson & Elkins down in Houston, Texas, 330 

attorneys in one office. With my background, they thought I would be an excellent addition, 

but I remember going out to meet with about, I don’t know, a number of partners [and 

associates], probably about 12 people, before a dinner one evening. And they spent the first 

45 minutes telling wetback jokes about Latinos. And I said, “this is not a place I want to be.” 

So, you asked me about where I planned to be, where I planned to practice. I was not going 

to practice with firms where I saw people like that and cultures like that. So, I ended up 

joining a firm out of Duke called Dickstein, Shapiro, & Morin which was an inviting 

environment. [01:08:12] They didn't have a whole lot of any, I think myself and two other 



35 
 

African Americans, I think it was actually only one when I joined that were among the 

group of associates in the firm. But it was a welcoming environment, an inclusive 

environment, a supportive environment. I did corporate transactional law. I did anti-trust 

litigation. You traveled 60,000 to 80,000 air miles a year. You learned an enormous amount 

in the time I was with them, and I spent about four years with them before I came back to 

North Carolina, and joined a medium-sized firm here, and then later established a firm with 

my father. 

MHP: On this issue of race, though, very different when you applied for admission 

to Duke Law. 

FMJ: Yeah. 

MHP: Than when your father applied to UNC School of Law. So, he was initially 

denied admission to UNC School of Law because he was Black but he started studying law 

at North Carolina Central. In the meantime, though, NAACP Legal Defense Fund took up 

his case, McKissick v. Carmichael, 1951. 

FMJ: That's right. 

MHP: Thurgood Marshall led that defense. Can you lay out that case for us and tell 

us what happened? 

FMJ: Sure, it was all predicated upon separate not being equal. If you read the 

decision related to that particular case, they would compare the law school at North Carolina 

College to what they had at UNC Chapel Hill, and the vast disparity in the resources 

between the volumes of books in the library to the staffing to everything else. And they 

concluded separate was not equal. And yes, he was admitted, it it [the case] had to go all the 

way up to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Thurgood Marshall was his attorney, and he 



36 
 

was admitted and there were several other African American students that were admitted 

concurrently with him as part of that litigation. [01:10:07] And most people think he got his 

law degree from UNC. He actually got it from North Carolina College or North Carolina 

Central, as it's known today, because folks over there at UNC were not going to accept 

credits from North Carolina College towards his law degree. So, he was going to have to 

basically begin his legal studies again. At that point in his life, he didn't want to repeat 

taking all of his courses to get his degree from UNC. But he opened up that door and then 

later, he was an attorney in the case that desegregated the undergraduate school at UNC. 

MHP: I want to talk about that too. If possible, can you recall how your father, 

either to you or publicly, how he talked about that experience? And also, if he talked about 

his interactions with Thurgood Marshall and other LDF attorneys. 

FMJ: Well, he and Thurgood Marshall were close associates. He became close to 

him, respected him enormously, relied upon him for resources as an attorney when he was 

involved in desegregation cases here in North Carolina. So, he became a tremendous 

resource, somebody who I would say, even though my father never used the word, almost 

mentored him to a certain extent, you know what I mean? But a tremendous resource to him 

in whatever he was doing here in North Carolina, when involved in litigation, in the 

courtroom, when it involved civil rights or desegregation matters. In terms of the experience 

there, I remember him talking about how oppressive it was, how they were all together when 

they were the Black students who did get in, to work together. They would huddle together, 

how poorly they were treated, how they were basically shunned by everybody else. 

[01:12:10] I don't think anybody understands the extent to what that's like when you're 

shunned. I had experienced that shunning with people at the elementary school level, they 



37 
 

didn't want to be near you, they didn't want to touch you. They thought you were inferior. 

That whole process only magnified because you know what it represented at that graduate 

school level at this jewel of an institution, UNC. I remember him referring to that quite 

often, and it was an oppressive, difficult, challenging environment, but one that he endured. 

And it just made his character stronger. 

MHP: As you grew older, how did your understanding of that case, and its impact, 

how did your understanding of it evolve, the case itself, with your father and Thurgood 

Marshall? 

FMJ: Sure, sure. Well, it was interesting because I knew of the case, growing up. 

But I would say that as someone who was, I would say 14 to 15 to 16 to 17 to 18 years old, I 

was more aware of my father's engagement in the Civil Rights Movement. And his 

leadership in defining what Black power was, political power, economic power, trying to 

open up doors for African Americans to have opportunities for entrepreneurship and Black 

businesses, what he was doing in terms of desegregating public schools here in Durham. So, 

while I knew that he was a part of that experience, I was much more aware of what he was 

doing in the Civil Rights Movement as the leader of CORE, what he was talking about when 

he went into the conference with President Johnson, [for civil rights leaders at the White 

House, I think it was referred to as the conference “To Fulfill These Rights”] brought people 

together for a civil rights session [meetings] on [how the government should fulfill] to fulfill 

these rights [its commitment that were the result of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and 

other legislation] [01:14:12] He thought it was shallow in terms of what [the conference was 

intended to discuss so] he walked out of the conference. So, I was aware of everything he 

was doing in that time frame because of what was in the forefront of the news in that time 



38 
 

frame and era. You know what I mean? It was later in life that, as the days of the Civil 

Rights Movement faded in terms of memory, that his contributions in terms of desegregating 

UNC’s law school and his leadership in doing so, and in terms of representing those at the 

undergraduate school and other desegregation cases became more of a highlight of his 

career, and a highlight in terms of his accomplishment, an important milestone in terms of 

what it represented. And I knew that his doing so opened up the pathway of opportunities for 

me and for others that followed, to go out there and get the educations that we were able to 

obtain. 

MHP: Any particular memories of, or anything he said about, it was 1955 when he 

brought a suit against UNC to integrate its undergraduate school. Do you remember him 

discussing it very much or any particular cases? 

FMJ: Yeah, I remember him discussing it, but more in the context of what he was 

doing with school desegregation here in Durham. Finally, in the case of McKissick v. 

Durham City Board of Education to desegregate our public schools here, understanding that 

this school desegregation mission was an important mission to pursue, that it was imperative 

that Black students have equal access to these facilities to get the best education possible. 

[01:16:09] And that I heard him discuss it more within the context of the broader goals of 

desegregating not just UNC's undergraduate program, but also desegregating the schools 

here locally in Durham, but more importantly, all across North Carolina at that time frame, 

because they came with all kinds of programs that they said were going to, I mean, the 

Supreme Court said “do it with all deliberate speed,” but if you talked to a whole lot of 

folks, that was 1954. A lot of schools weren't desegregated. Durham got ahead of the game 



39 
 

in 1959. But a lot of places in North Carolina and across the South weren't desegregating 

until 1969 and 1970 and 1971, so there were a lot of battles that still had to be fought. 

MHP: Your father’s firm focused on civil rights issues, as you just discussed. Can 

you talk about how as a child, you came to understand its work, its importance, and you’ve 

talked about some of this already and what it meant to Durham residents, particularly you 

even talked about Malcolm X visiting Durham in 1963. Very much, your father's a part of 

that. 

FMJ: Yeah. My father was an integral part of everything going on in Durham and in 

this central part of North Carolina in that time frame. He was a preeminent leader. And in 

addition to attending all the rallies, can remember when Malcolm X was coming to Durham. 

It became very controversial because he was supposed to have spoken over at North 

Carolina Central. And back then it was North Carolina College, but they thought that he was 

too provocative, and they said no. After scheduling the event there, he wasn't going to be 

allowed to speak there, and then it was going to move to a place in Durham, known as W.D. 

Hill Community Center, which was a community center in the African American 

neighborhood. [01:18:06] But they said, no, he's too controversial to speak there. So, he 

ended up speaking at a place called the Pine Street Taxi Stand, which is located over on 

South Roxboro Street today. Back then, it was known as Pine Street, over near what was 

then known as Whitted Junior High School, and up above the taxi stand, there was an 

auditorium type room that could probably hold about 100 people or so. A lot of the Black 

Muslims held events there and things like that. So that's where they held that particular, so-

called debate. And it's interesting because, as I was telling you and showing you pictures 

earlier, earlier that afternoon, I was down at my dad’s law office visiting. That's a picture of 



40 
 

my dad there with Malcolm X, from that period. That was taken at a news conference held 

down at my dad's law office at 213 1/2 West Main Street here in Durham. I went there after 

school as I did many afternoons to just see what was going on. I knew Malcolm X was 

coming to town, but I did not know all the controversy that was going to occur about where 

he would speak. And there was an impromptu news conference there with local reporters 

asking about what was going on. And he said, you’ve met people like Malcolm X, you knew 

what he was about. And they got there and what it really became more about in terms of a 

so-called debate, it was really a debate about my father's belief in racial integration and 

basically opening up barriers for African Americans to attend the schools and universities, to 

have equal access in terms of establishing businesses and entrepreneurship. [01:20:07] And 

Malcolm X’s philosophy at the time was that integration was not the right route, that it 

should be separatism, and that through integration, Blacks would lose their identity and 

would be assimilated into the white world, into the white community. And my father's 

argument was, we could still be Black without becoming assimilated. We don't have to 

become white and acquire white values. That was the difference in their philosophies. In 

terms of entrepreneurship in the Black community, they were both paralleled in their views. 

In terms of what Blacks could do, in terms of to lift themselves up by their bootstraps, they 

both had the same type of opinions. You know what I mean? Malcolm X was talking about 

self-reliance. My father was talking about self-reliance. Black businesses, Black 

entrepreneurship, Blacks owning them, operating them, and offering people the jobs they 

needed to be self-reliant. So, while it was billed as a debate, they probably had 80 percent 

common ground as opposed to being diametrically opposite to some extent. It was 

interesting. I attended it, I listened to it, and thought back about it over the years. Somehow 



41 
 

or another, I think I mentioned it one day and somebody said, “it was a debate, when was 

it?” And then they went back, and they found some information in reference to it and this 

picture came up in the process, as so many of these other old pictures did over the years 

[laughs]. 

MHP: That's a great photo. [01:22:03] 

FMJ: Yeah. Yeah. 

MHP: Let's talk about housing because you talked about that too. This is one of the 

things when we think about inequalities, soldiers come back from World War II, there's the 

GI Bill, there's housing, but African American soldiers don't sort of get those same rights. 

FMJ: That's exactly right 

MHP: The same sort of rights that other soldiers get. But LDF was involved in a 

housing discrimination case in Durham in 1968, Thorpe v. Housing Authority of the City of 

Durham. You were about 16 when this happened, but do you recall that case at all? 

FMJ: I do not recall that case to be candid with you. There was great emphasis to 

open up, you have to understand, as I'm recalling fair housing laws were passed by the 

Congress in 1966. And so before then, it was lawful to discriminate in selling homes. You 

could say, “I do not want to sell to a Black person,” and there was nothing a Black person 

could do. Or “I don't want a Black person to rent from me,” and there was nothing a Black 

person could do. There were racial covenants put into deeds, saying only Black people could 

live or white people could live in a neighborhood, that was lawful, so it was nothing that 

Black people could do. I'm sure that it was in the aftermath of what perhaps the fair housing 

laws brought about in terms of change in America that that litigation was filed. But I'm not 

familiar with the details of it. At that point in time, we were living in New York City, so I 



42 
 

was more aware of the battles that were going on there in the heart of New York at that time. 

When it came to issues related to civil rights and in that time, there were issues in New York 

back then, police civilian review boards and African Americans being poorly treated by 

police officers. Something that is not new. George Floyd came along, we're still talking 

about it today. Our teachers going on strike for equal rights and equal benefits in the heart of 

New York. You know what I mean? [01:24:14] Entrepreneurship in Harlem and what it 

would mean. I became more aware of the battles in New York and in the Northeast than that 

particular litigation. 

MHP: Give me a sense of when you and the family were in New York and then 

when you returned to North Carolina. 

FMJ: Sure. Beginning in about 1966, we were in New York, 1966, 1967. So, 1966, 

1967, 1968, 1969, 1970. In that time frame, we were in New York. During that time frame, 

my father was integrally involved in CORE. That's where their headquarters were. Now, my 

father announced Soul City in 1969, and they acquired the first 2,100 acres or so. But as I 

said, it wasn't until 1972 that we got our loan guarantee commitment August 28th [correct 

date is June 28th], and it wasn’t until in 1974 that we could sell bonds. And my parents 

moved back to North Carolina around 1972, in terms of living here day in and day out. But 

they did not really sell their home in New York until about 1975. And since I was in school 

up in the Northeast, I was still spending time at the home in New York and quite a bit of 

time there, even though they might have been in North Carolina. If that gives you some idea. 

MHP: It does. 

FMJ: And I didn't return to Durham. I returned to Durham for law school in, I think, 

the fall of 1981. [01:26:08] 



43 
 

MHP: So, as a practicing attorney yourself as well as a politician, we know you 

served as a North Carolina state senator, a member of Durham City Council. You talked to 

us about your current appointment from Governor Cooper on the Utilities Commission. Can 

you talk about the impact of civil rights litigation on your work now, in law as well as 

politically, how has that impacted you? This civil rights litigation with your dad went 

through the LDF attorneys, including Thurgood Marshall being a part of his case. 

FMJ: Sure. I'd say that certainly in my years in the State Senate, I was fighting 

battles on a regular basis, dealing with voting rights related issues, redistricting related 

issues, things that were in the forefront of what's going on today. Gerrymandering, during 

the time I was there, you had the Supreme Court of the United States basically take Section 

Five of the Voting Rights Act and strike it down, and Congress didn't do anything to salvage 

it, even to this day. So, immediately after that Supreme Court decision occurred, here in 

North Carolina, the General Assembly passed legislation that basically went in there and 

redid voting rights in so many respects to fundamentally undermine the rights of African 

Americans. Everything from doing redistricting in a way that was later determined to be 

racially discriminatory by packing African American residents in certain districts where they 

basically in certain districts where they basically[into certain racially gerrymandered 

districts that] did not allow them have a meaningful opportunity to vote in other nearby 

districts that were likewise being drawn [in other districts where their vote could have been 

influential in deciding an election]. [01:28:13] So, if you see that gerrymandering taking 

place, if you see bills passing that are changing the opportunities to vote early, changing the 

ability of people who were 16 to 17 to preregister to vote. Legislation says that after all this 

gerrymandering that occurs, if you go in and you vote in the wrong precinct, that they would 



44 
 

permit you to [vote] do so, but that your vote wouldn't be counted. And what kind of sense 

does that make to you? You’re allowed to vote, but we won't count the vote. Things that are 

literally inconceivable, but legislation that you were there in the forefront of fighting and 

when I say there in the forefront of fighting, I was personally in the forefront of fighting 

during my time in the State Senate, being involved. During the time I was there, I served as 

chair of the N.C. Legislative Black Caucus, which meant that I was the chair of the 

organization representing members of the Senate and the House, [at one time] I got 50,000 

dollars that I could spend bringing in people who could help draw redistricting maps 

effectively. So, you became uniquely involved in understanding the intricacies of drawing 

these districts, understanding the intricacies of programs like Maptitude that are used to 

draw these districts, the science of redistricting and how you can predict with uncanny 

accuracy the voting patterns and trends of districts based upon the way you draw them and 

how they will perform, and how it's done based upon racially biased thinking. [01:30:00] To 

do it in a racially biased way or how it is done in a partisan way, and I say a partisan way, 

it's understood that partisanship can be involved in drawing districts. But what the North 

Carolina Supreme Court did a few years back, our state Supreme Court was say, “you can be 

partisan in drawing the districts, but when you draw them with extreme partisanship, that's 

unconstitutional.” So, understanding those nuances, fighting those battles, fighting battles 

dealing with the redrawing of judicial districts in our state. So, voting rights, redistricting, 

voting rights litigation in our state, going with voter ID [laws that were passed] for the first 

time, and what impact that can have on people, you say, “well, it’s just an ID.” Understand 

that in North Carolina, first of all, that voting is a right. It's not a privilege. That there could 

be up to 300,000 people [in North Carolina] that do not have appropriate IDs to enable them 



45 
 

to vote when that time may come along based upon standards that might be in that 

legislation. So, you're fighting those battles, understanding the significance of it. When 

Obama won our state in 2008, it was by a mere 13,000 votes. When he lost in 2012, it was 

by 100,000 or so. When Roy Cooper won the governorship in 2016, it was by a mere 10,000 

votes. What happens if you impact the rights of up to 300,000 people through a mere voter 

ID bill? But yet it becomes part of our state constitution. What are those implications? 

Understanding that people would not have advocated for it to become part of the state 

constitution that were in the Republican majority, if they did not think that that it was in 

their advantage. If they thought it would hurt them, do you think they would have done it? I 

think the answer is profoundly answered no, they wouldn’t have done it if they thought it 

wasn’t in their advantage or to their disadvantage, I should say. [01:32:08] So, nevertheless, 

do you fight those battles? Yes. For voting rights, for civil rights, for redistricting rights, all 

of those vast, broad areas of human rights that need to be protected on a regular, ongoing 

basis. For land use decisions when they're made by public bodies in our state, not to go in 

there and based upon the income of the people in the housing that may be coming in as a 

result of that land use decision, pass a bill that makes that illegal in North Carolina. Can you 

do it? The answer is yes. Can you have a bill that once they struck out the last Saturday of 

early voting that reinstated it [as the primary co-sponsor of a Bill that reinstated voting on 

the last Sunday of the early voting period], could that have been done without being in the 

Senate? No. To extend the time for early voting so the precincts are closing at seven-thirty in 

the evening because people don't have time to vote in the morning [during the early voting 

period]. Could that have done so without me being in the State Senate? The answer is no. 

Was that legislation that I sponsored? The answer is yes. Legislation that impacted the way 



46 
 

capital punishment is imposed in our state, that is important. The Racial Justice Act passed. 

It basically said that if race is a factor in the way that either a jury decides to impose the 

death penalty, in the way jury selection might be done [was conducted by a prosecutor to 

stop blacks from serving on juries] in the way a prosecutor is motivated to bring a death 

penalty case, that there's an opportunity to challenge all of that. The answer is, yeah, got that 

legislation passed. And yeah, there were people who received the benefits of that because 

they found that qualified Blacks were being stricken from serving on juries at a rate that was 

two and a half times greater than whites. [01:34:13] And yes, that went all the way up to the 

state Supreme Court. And, in fact, the Republican majority effectively came back to a case 

and tried to repeal that legislation and was successful in doing so [and repeated that 

legislation]. But those who filed claims while that legislation was active were found to have 

their rights preserved, at least as of this time. But it saved people that were on death row 

from dying. Could I have done that without being part of that process, part of that battle, 

part of that ongoing fight for human rights and dignity, for everybody to be treated fairly and 

equally? I couldn’t have done this without being a member of the Senate. Did it impact the 

way I was motivated? I'm sure that it did. But I think that my engagement, my involvement, 

my commitment to fighting those battles, which is directly influenced by the legacy of those 

that preceded me, like my father, like Thurgood Marshall, like Doctor Martin Luther King or 

Stokely Carmichael and James Farmer, all of those who were fighting these intense battles 

in a very powerful and significant way that transformed America. 

MHP: I was going to ask this, but I think you've already answered it, but I'll let you 

be the judge of that. What do you think is the most important area of civil rights legislation 



47 
 

today? And how can LDF and civil rights attorneys in general, in your opinion, continue to 

do meaningful work in this century? 

FMJ: That's an excellent question. And I hadn't really thought about what the most 

important thing is. I think that we continue to fight these issues dealing with voting rights, 

which I think that we cannot allow it to go to the wayside. [01:36:06] Voting rights, voting 

mechanisms, voting procedures that are specifically targeted sometimes with “surgical 

precision,” as Judge Wynn once said in a decision that he rendered with the Fourth Circuit 

Court of Appeals in recent years to repress African American voting rights. I think we must 

be vigilant when it comes to voting rights litigation and doing all that we can. We must 

remain vigilant in fighting to make certain that the hands of time do not turn back further in 

terms of what's going on with affirmative action. They've already gone out now and 

undermined it, the litigation from the past. But can we remain vigilant and committed to 

make sure it doesn't become further eroded? I think the answer is yes. We have to continue 

fighting the battles to make sure it's not further eroded [in areas outside of education] where 

it is today. So, voting rights, civil rights, affirmative action, those are all things that have to 

continue. Have we experienced setbacks? The answer is yes. Does that mean those setbacks 

have to be permanent? In my mind, the answer is no. Have we seen times in our history 

where the circumstances have placed us in a very disadvantaged position, and we've seen the 

erosion of rights? Yeah. After the Civil War in 1864, here in North Carolina, we saw four 

Blacks elected to Congress from North Carolina. In 1901, the last one left. And we saw, 

Plessy v. Ferguson, legalized segregation take hold in America. [01:38:08] And we saw an 

erosion of civil rights that had occurred. But we also saw a rebound that occurred in 1954, 

1964, 1965, 1966. Can we see a resurgence occur again? I think the answer is profoundly 



48 
 

yes. Can we educate people to understand the rights they still have a chance of losing? The 

answer is profoundly yes, and we must. Can we be involved in civic engagement to cause 

people to understand that they cannot be complacent, that they cannot sit back, that they 

cannot sit on the sidelines, that they have a duty and an obligation to vote, not just in 

national elections every four years, but in every local election every year and in every time 

they elect members to the General Assembly in North Carolina? Because yes, you can now 

break the [super] majority, as we did in North Carolina, in terms of Republican [super] 

majority, when Governor Cooper was elected [which Governor Cooper was successful in 

doing]. They now have a supermajority again. But at some point, you can take the majority, 

so you break the majority. You can take the majority. And understanding that, yes, there is a 

browning of America, there's a browning of that rainbow coalition. But we have to build that 

coalition. We have to refortify our efforts to stand forthright in fighting for the battles that 

were fought for in the past, and do it in the court room, do it in our neighborhoods, in our 

communities, do it at the General Assembly so that, when legislation comes up relating to a 

woman's right to choose, that we make those decisions on the basis of codifying [that can 

codify] Roe v. Wade, or even going further, that we protect the rights of privacy, that we 

would protect civil rights and voting rights and understand that there's still battles to be 

fought, still issues that we must be forthright in defending and understanding that we must 

pass that proverbial torch on to the next generation and inspire them and motivate them to 

continue the efforts that the Legal Defense Fund has been so strong in advocating for in the 

past. 



49 
 

MHP: I wouldn’t know of a more perfect way of buttoning it up. I’ll ask if Jesse has 

any questions or if you want to add something else you didn't say, but I think that's a perfect 

way to end it. 

FMJ: That's fine with me, you know, I just talk [laughter]. [01:41:03] 

 

[END OF INTERVIEW]