James Ferguson Interview Transcript

This item is featured in:

James Ferguson Oral History

    Legal Defense Fund Oral History Project 
 

James Ferguson 

Interviewed by Melody Hunter-Pillion 

April 17, 2023 

Charlotte, NC 

Length: 02:02:04 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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 James Ferguson, the Southern Oral History Program, and 

LDF. It has been lightly edited, in consultation with James Ferguson, 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: So, this is Melody Hunter-Pillion from the Southern Oral 

History Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. And I'm here in 

Charlotte, North Carolina, with James Ferguson in the law offices of Ferguson and Sumter 

to conduct an interview for the Legal Defense Fund Oral History Project. And thank you 

again, Mr. Ferguson, for being with us and sharing your story with us and your experience 

with us. Let's start with your background and we're going to go all the way back.  

James Ferguson: All the way back. 

MHP: Yes. 

JF: That’s a long way. 

MHP: Yes, it is. So, you were born, and you correct me if I'm wrong, you were born 

in 1942.  

JF: Yes. October 10th, to be exact.  

MHP: And where did you, where were you born? Where did you grow up? And just 

tell me a little bit about what your childhood was like and what the place you grew up in, 

what it was like. 

JF: I was born in Asheville, North Carolina, and that's where I grew up and lived 

through high school. And, of course, after high school I left and went away to college. So, I 

still had my home place there and my parents were there. So I still considered Asheville my 

home, still do. But we, I think I was born on a street called Grove Street, which was in the 

Black community in Asheville. And I mention the Black community because at the time I 

was born, Asheville, like most places in the South, was completely segregated. So, there was 

a Black section of town. There were streets that Blacks lived on, streets that whites lived on, 



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there were white sections of town. So everything was defined at that time, in one way or 

another, by the segregated racial patterns in Asheville, North Carolina. So I grew up in the 

Black community. I went to a Black elementary school, I went to a Black junior high school, 

I went to Black high school. [00:02:01] Everything was determined and defined and decided 

by race. During the time that I lived in Asheville, things had begun to change. Near the, well 

the middle to the end of my high school years, I got involved in some of the desegregation 

efforts there, even as a high school student. But we can come to that later.  

MHP: I want to talk about that a little bit too. But let's go back to your 

neighborhood. 

JF: Sure. 

MHP: And your parents and your siblings. Tell me a little bit more about the 

neighborhood. You said it was Grove Street. Is that right, you grew up on Grove Street? 

JF: I was born on Grove Street. By the time I was three, we moved to Blanton 

Street, 97 Blanton Street. I remember that very clearly. But it was from one area of a Black 

community to another area of a Black community. But at that time, Blacks could only live in 

Black communities and whites could live in white communities or lived in white 

communities. So, as I reflect on it, everything about Asheville was determined, defined, 

delineated by race in one way or another. And when I say everything, I mean everything: 

neighborhoods, schools, jobs, public transportation, you name it. Race defined it. And it was 

that way virtually all of the time that I spent in Asheville growing up.  

MHP: And I definitely want to ask you about how you felt. And even as a young 

man, a teenager, how you felt about race and the implications for how race really 

determined what sort of education you got, the facilities that you had and all that sort of 



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thing. But first, let me ask you about your mom and your father and your siblings. Tell me, 

did you have a large family?  

JF: [00:04:13] Some call it large. I was the seventh. I was the last of seven children 

that my mother and father had together. And when I say “some call it large,” by comparison 

with my mother's family, for example, it was a relatively small family. My mother was the 

20th child in her family. She was the youngest and the 20th child in her family who survived. 

So, it's all relative. 

MHP: What did your parents do?  

JF: Well, my father was a common laborer. He had several jobs during the time I 

was growing up. He worked at a bakery that was called Wholesome Bakery. I don't, I can't 

tell you exactly what he did there because I never knew. He also worked on the railroad for 

a period of time. He worked in a place where I think they did engine work or repair work on 

the trains, of keeping up the trains as they came and went with the Southern Railway. And 

he did that job for a number of years. He also worked for a company called the Biltmore 

Press, and he was a delivery man for the Biltmore Press. My mother, for many years, was a 

stay-at-home mother. But eventually, as the children got a little older, she worked as a maid 

at a white home. Again, everything I'm telling you is in that pattern of a completely racially 

segregated town in Asheville. So, I was the youngest of seven. All of my brothers and sisters 

attended the segregated public schools in Asheville. [00:06:18] All of them at one time or 

another, went to college. I say at one time or another, because my two oldest brothers both 

went to college, but they went to college after they had gone to the armed service and they 

were able to get some financial assistance with college through, I think, what they called the 

GI Bill, at the time. But my mother and father, neither of whom was college educated, 



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although I think my mother did have one year of college. They wanted to do all they could 

to make sure that we had the opportunity to pursue a college education, and we all did. So, I 

think it says a lot for them that they had that vision for us and were able to see it through. 

Needless to say, we didn't have a lot of money because there weren't many opportunities for 

my parents to have jobs that had significant incomes. So they had to provide for seven 

children with very little money. But they did it, and they managed to do it in a way that I 

never knew I was poor until I was grown. And I look back on it. I realize that we were not 

just poor, very poor, but we had enterprising parents who knew how to make a penny, a 

nickel or a dime or a dollar stretch to get the most out of it. So I'm grateful that I learned 

from them what it meant to live and not have much money to live on. So you made do, as I 

used to say, with what you had, and that's what we did. But the thing I remember most, one 

of the things I remember most about growing up is that there was a lot of love and joy in my 

family. [00:08:20] There was never any real discussion about being poor and having to 

make do. My parents had a way of making us aware of that without preaching it and telling 

us and making us feel like we were deprived as children. We never felt deprived. We felt 

fortunate to be in the family we were in, to be in the neighborhood that we were growing up 

in. There were lots of children in the neighborhood, and we made do for the children's play 

that we did. We played I-Spy. We played stickball, as we call it. We would play ball in the 

street and a car would come, we'd get out of the street. A car would slowly pass and wave 

and go on. And that's what we did. So, we learned to appreciate what we had, although we 

didn't have much. It was only later that we realized how utterly deprived we were, especially 

by comparison to what white children growing up had in their neighborhoods. They had 

football fields and baseball fields and playgrounds with equipment to swing and have fun to 



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do all those things. And we didn't have that in a significant way. Eventually, there was a 

Black park that was woefully inadequate in comparison with the white park. But this was 

the reality we dealt with. But it wasn't like the parents or any of the adults in the community 

spent time telling us what we didn't have. They spent time making sure we found a way to 

enjoy what little we did have and try to have a childhood in many, many ways. I went to the 

public schools, segregated, of course, with books that were sometimes used and sometimes 

passed on to the Black school, from the white school, and all the things that segregation 

meant, racial segregation meant. [00:10:29] But there was no emphasis on that. The 

emphasis was getting the most that you could out of what you had. And that was the attitude 

in my family. That was the attitude in the education — in the community, with adults in the 

community. I later learned that all of that was part of the survival instinct. You didn't focus 

on what you didn't have. You focused on making the most of what little you did have, 

although it didn’t seem like little at the time because whatever you had, though it was little, 

was all that you had. So, it was a lot in that sense. But we now know, looking back on it, 

how utterly deprived we and our entire community was at that time. And we still see 

remnants of it today, but not in the same way.  

MHP: You talked about your parents being so enterprising. Even under this, right, 

this system of segregation and inequality and you noticed yourself as a teenager that there's 

this inequality and you even just talked about it now, the difference between the quality of 

the books, right. They might be used books and that sort of thing. So, I want to know if you 

could talk to me about, you know, protesting against this inequality that you saw in school 

facilities, school supplies. Like you described at one time as “makeshift conditions” at 

Stephens-Lee High School, was that your high school?  



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JF: Yes.  

MHP: Talk to me about what led you to, you know, to begin a protest that really did 

make some changes.  

JF: Well, one never knows exactly what it is that inspires you to do what you do. 

But even though the racial segregation that was characteristic of Asheville and everything 

that we did in Asheville, and even though there was not a lot of discussion about that, 

growing up and seeing these differences, at some point, as a child, you begin to notice that 

there were differences. [00:12:54] You knew that the school the white children went to was 

a better-looking school. Eventually, we learned that the books in the schools were different. 

What the white schools had, better books, they had better facilities, they had better 

everything. And what little exposure we had in the early grades told you that. So, it wasn't 

like you read a book or somebody sat you down and said, “Let me tell you the difference in 

the Black school, in the white school, and how much better off white children are with the 

books they have and the experiences that they have and the extra equipment that they have 

in school.” All of the things that were different, they were differences that you came to see 

and to begin to understand. But it wasn't because somebody lectured to you about it, or 

somebody read to you about it. It just became evident from life. As I think back on it in 

Asheville, the garbage collectors were all white. The postmen, and they were all men, but 

they were all white men in my early years. The buses that we rode, the public transportation, 

the drivers were white. And the reason for that is that they were positions that were reserved 

for white people, and Black people just couldn’t do it, it wasn't allowed. So, at some point 

there appeared to be acceptance of that among Blacks, but there never was acceptance about 

it. [00:14:50] But Black people knew as a matter of survival that you didn't make a cause of 



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the inequality that was everywhere. Because if you did make a cause of it, you make a cause 

of everything. Because when I say everything was defined by race, I mean exactly that. 

Everything. Not some things. Not a few things. Everything. Now, over time, some of that 

began to change. I think my full, I think I was aware of it as a child. But I think my full, or 

fuller awareness of it started when I was in junior high school. And in junior high school I 

became a part of a group called the Greater Asheville Intergroup. I think it was Intergroup 

Youth Organization or something like that, but it was a group of young people. Early teens 

or maybe some early teens, I’m not sure, but there would be occasions that we would meet 

with some students from the white schools to talk a little bit about race, but it wasn't a whole 

lot about that. But it was different to have any contact and communication with white 

students because before that I was aware that the school I was going to was all Black, 

students were all Black, principal was Black, teachers all Black. So, we just knew that as 

part of what we did, and we knew that there were some activities that white students got to 

participate in that we didn't. You know, I'm thinking that it seemed like at some point once a 

year, we would go to the auditorium uptown to listen to the symphony orchestra. [00:17:05] 

Asheville had an orchestra, but all the members of the orchestra were white. And the times 

we went, we either went on a day set aside for Black students to go, or we would have sat in 

the back of the auditorium on the balcony, if we went at the time when white students go. It 

all kind of gets a little vague right now, so I don't remember. But what I do know is that 

whatever we did, it was defined by race. If you were Black, you got whatever could be 

carved out as the inferior part of it. If you were white, you were treated as though you 

owned the event, and that this event was for you. And that just became a way of life. But 

everything we did reminded us of the racial apartheid that characterized southern America. 



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If you rode a bus or if you took public transportation, then Blacks sat in the back. Whites sat 

in the front. Unless there was some white person who couldn't find a seat in the front, and 

you had to get up, somebody in the Black part of the bus had to get up and give their seat to 

a white person. That's what was expected. And for the most part, Black people did what they 

could to have as much peace in their life as they could and not to wind up going against the 

establishment in one way or another and having to answer in court or in some other way, 

because there were reprisals all around for those who did not conform to the racial code that 

dominated everything that we did. But we survived. And to come back to where I was, we 

started meeting a little bit with some of the white students, a few white and a few Blacks, 

and we began to talk very mildly, very gingerly, about the racial segregated environment in 

which we all lived. [00:19:24] But that was this very, very meager effort to bring together 

students of one race to meet with the other race. And so, I think that's when the awareness 

became more keen than it had been. Not to mention that every time I went downtown, I had 

to drink from a water fountain that was designated for Black people. If I had to use the 

bathroom, I had to go to the bathroom that was designated for Black people, and which was 

always in a much poorer condition than the white bathroom. But that was the way of life. 

Everything was segregated. The neighborhood, the schools, the churches, transportation, the 

stores uptown were all stores where white people could work. There were no Black clerks in 

any of the stores uptown unless it was one of the few Black owned stores on the Black side 

of town, then you would see Black people and no white people there. So, it was both blatant 

and subtle. And in one way or another, we learned our place. By that I mean as a Black 

young person growing up, it was communicated to us that there were certain things that we 

were prohibited from doing because we were Black and that only whites did. And this was 



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communicated in ways that you knew it. But nobody taught you a class on what you could 

do or not do. You picked it up and you knew that this became the custom, and that custom 

was every bit as clear as law, because that's the way the whole community operates. 

[00:21:34] So it was like that growing up. I remember though, when I was in the eighth 

grade at the junior high school, my teacher, a woman whom I shall never forget. Annabelle 

Logan. And I don't like to admit this, but I was sort of a teacher's pet for one reason or 

another. [laughter]  

MHP: And say her name again, if you will.  

JF: Annabelle Logan. She was a great teacher, she was a great person, but she didn't 

smile a lot, didn't laugh a lot so you knew she meant business in whatever she did. But I 

remember, she always used to listen to a news program, and the news program was called 

Pauline Fredericks and The News. And I still remember today as clearly as I did then, and 

Ms. Logan would always listen on her car radio to Pauline Fredericks and The News, and 

she encouraged us as students to listen to that. And, you know, everybody said, “Okay, Ms. 

Logan, we'll listen,” but nobody did. But on this particular day, I can’t, it had to be 

somewhere near the decision on Brown. It flashed on the radio. And I was riding with Ms. 

Logan to wherever she got her car maintenance done. And we were riding in the car, and we 

heard this. And I remember saying at the time, “Well, Ms. Logan, that means I can go to Lee 

Edwards High School next year.” I was in the eighth grade, high school started in the ninth 

grade, and she nodded in assent of what I was saying. But I know now that within herself 

she knew that was not likely to happen. [00:23:34] But I knew that this, that the Supreme 

Court of the United States had said children can now no longer be segregated in school. So I 

thought that meant me, and I was all excited about going to Lee Edwards High School, 



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which was this big high school. It looked like a college campus with a rolling green, good 

looking building, and I had never been inside of it, but I had seen it passing by, thinking 

what a grand school it was and how great it would be to go there. I wasn't at the time 

thinking about going there, although later on, I did. But in any event, I thought I would be 

going to Lee Edwards the next year, the next school year, and I didn't go. I said, “Well, it’s 

all right, I’ll get there.” So, I thought the next school year when I got into 10th grade that I'd 

be able to go there, in 11th grade and 12th grade. And it so happened that nothing changed 

in Asheville. Nothing changed. Not a single school changed from the eighth grade until I 

finished high school. Although during the interim, somewhere around the ninth or 10th 

grade, the Asheville City School Board had met and decided that they would make some 

change, some improvements, they called, in the schools and they were going to make some 

minor improvements in the high school I attended. There was no fundamental change. And 

they were, they had a program, I think, of school improvement, at Lee Edwards, the white 

high school, at the same time, which were vastly better than the ones they talked about. 

[00:25:35] So, some of my high school classmates and I recognized that there's something 

wrong with this. So, to make a long story short, we got actively engaged in trying to make 

more equal changes to our school and the white high school. So much so that we requested 

and achieved a meeting with the superintendent of schools, and I think the chair of the 

school board. I’m not sure of all of that, but I was kind of active with them. And so, my 

classmates and I agreed that they would have me meeting with the school superintendent 

and whoever who these white people were that we needed to talk to them about change. So, 

I wound up at that early age, meeting with school officials to request changes, only to be 

disappointed to find that there were not going to be any real changes. So, my classmates and 



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I met among ourselves and decided that we would engage in a walkout from Stephens-Lee 

down to Lee Edwards, and we communicated that to some school authorities, including our 

principal, who, of course, told us that we ought not to be doing that sort of thing. We said 

that we would, and we threatened to do a walkout and go down to the high school if we 

couldn’t get it. And then they changed and promised more for the schools, the Black high 

school that we were protesting about. [00:27:43] And eventually, to avoid trouble, they said, 

“Well, we'll just build a new Black high school.” So they agreed to build a new Black high 

school, which, you know, and looking back, I realized they were willing to do anything 

except desegregate the schools. So anyway, they agreed to build a new Black high school, 

which they ultimately did. So instead of desegregating the schools as the Brown decision 

required them to do, they did more to maintain segregation in schools by agreeing to build a 

new Black high school for Blacks to go to, with the understanding that whites would 

continue going to the white high school, and the Black high school they were going to build 

was not going to be anywhere close to comparable to the school. But these were just the 

lessons that we learned growing up. And during that period of time, as time passed, and as I 

got to the 12th grade, I think it was in February of 1960, the sit-in movement started in 

Greensboro, North Carolina, and we had become more racially conscious by that time. 

When I say we, my classmates and I. We wanted to be involved in that. But Asheville didn't 

have a college so we couldn’t get with the college students and go have sit-ins. So we 

organized a group of our classmates in high school to desegregate the lunch counters in 

Asheville, was our goal. But we were aware enough to realize that we couldn't just or 

shouldn't just go desegregate or attempt to desegregate the lunch counters. We consulted 

with some of the adults in the community, and the adults advised us that we should talk with 



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a lawyer or some lawyers to find out what we could about the legal implications of that. 

[00:30:01] So, we did. We met with, I think at that time there were only two Black lawyers 

in Asheville, and they both agreed to meet with us. Ruben Dailey and Harold Epps were the 

two Black lawyers in town. So, they met with us, and we thought we were going to get this 

long legal lecture from them about what the law permitted and what we could do and what 

we couldn't do and be careful about this and don’t do that and whatnot. So, we expected to 

get the lowdown on what you did if you were going to try to desegregate the lunch counters 

in Asheville. But as it turned out, when they showed up at the meeting and we let them 

know what we were trying to do and what we wanted to do, they gave us the following 

advice: “You all do what you’re going to do, and if you get into legal trouble, you can call 

on us and we'll be there for you and we'll help you. And we're not going to charge you 

anything.” But that's basically what they told us to do. So, we were a little puzzled by that 

because we expected a different kind of presentation from them but didn't get it. But in any 

event, we met with the adults, our adult advisors. We were savvy enough to realize that the 

adults could help, and we had adults who were willing to do that. In any event to make it a 

long story short. After meeting with the adults, it turned out that in Asheville, we were able 

to make contact with some other, some of the students that we knew and some white adults 

in the community. And then we contacted either the store owners or the lunch counter 

managers at several stores in Asheville. [00:32:02] As a result of our study of the nonviolent 

movement, and that is, you don't just go create a sit-in or whatever, confrontation. You first 

identify the problem. Then you meet with those who might be able to resolve the problem. 

And then ultimately, if you weren't successful in getting the problem addressed, you would 

do direct action with sit-ins or demonstrations or whatever you needed to do. But as it turned 



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out, when we identified the problem and sought to negotiate with those who, the white store 

owners or lunch counter managers or whoever, it turned out that they agreed or after some 

negotiation that they agreed to serve us. When I say us, the Black students and Black people, 

but we worked it out that some white parents, I believe it was, or white adults, agreed to join 

with us and the store manager agreed that we would be served. So, we showed up at the 

appointed time with the understanding that we would actually be served, although they had 

never previously served Blacks at the lunch counters. And I think there was three or four 

stores. There was Kress’s, there was Newberry’s, Woolworth, and the managers and owners 

had agreed that to avoid the arrests and the spectacles that lots of people had had in different 

places around the South, they would voluntarily serve us at the time. And that's how the 

lunch counters got desegregated in Asheville, we negotiated the service that we would get, 

and we got it. [00:34:05] I later learned, well, not too long after that, I learned that a lot of 

what that was about was that Asheville, being really a tourist town at that time, did not want 

to have sit-in disturbances and arrests and all the things that were happening in other places 

in the South. And they wanted to preserve the apparent peace of Asheville by not having 

confrontations with the lunch counter. So, it was to serve the business needs in the town, but 

it also served the need of making a peaceful transition at a critical time. And so, we did that. 

And from that, our group, and we eventually called our group the Asheville Student 

Committee on Racial Equality. I think we did that because CORE, the Committee on Racial 

Equality was a national Black organization, which was well known at the time. So, we kind 

of adopted into our organization the name of CORE, but we called it ASCORE because the 

core part of it was preceded by Asheville Student. So, we were the Asheville Student 

Committee on Racial Equality, and I was the first president of that group and, you know, the 



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group carried on after that. There were other students who became a part of that movement. 

And over time, we not only desegregated the lunch counters and other public facilities, but 

we negotiated jobs at the local grocery stores. At that time, it was Winn-Dixie and A&P, and 

we as students met with the managers and owners of those stores and other white-owned 

stores in Asheville to begin to desegregate employment. [00:36:20] At that time, if you were 

Black, you couldn’t get a job as a bag boy, as they called it. But we negotiated to get the 

stores to hire Black bag boys, and some of the department stores in downtown Asheville 

agreed to hire Black clerks to work in the store. So, we eventually desegregated the city, and 

we did it all by negotiating with the powers that be, the owners of the stores. And although 

at the time we first did the lunch counters, I and many of my classmates were seniors, we 

wanted to make sure the movement continued after we left. So, we recruited underclassmen, 

as we call them, to join ASCORE. And ASCORE continued for a number of years after that 

and basically desegregated all of the public facilities in Asheville, a lot of jobs that were 

heretofore prohibited to Blacks. We did that and it was an ongoing organization, so much so 

that 20 years after we got out of school, we had a reunion of ASCORE and all of the 

students who participated in ASCORE came back and we had a reunion. And then we had, I 

think we had one or two of those. So, it was a big deal in Asheville. But Asheville 

desegregated differently from many other places, primarily, I think, because we had no 

Black college in the town, so we didn't have sit-ins. And also because of the tourism of 

Asheville and the powers that be at the time did not want Asheville to be disrupted by sit-ins 

and other civil rights related activities. So that was my experience in participating in the 

desegregation of Asheville. [00:38:28] 



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MHP: And I have two follow-up questions on that. One, ASCORE, right, one of the 

important, one of the reasons you guys were successful was because of recruitment. How 

did you go about recruiting people? What was that strategy?  

JF: Oh, well, much tougher than it seemed. Those of us who were initially the 

leaders of ASCORE, and I say those of us that we, it was mainly our class, which basically 

was a senior, the senior class. As we were moving forward in school, we realized that we 

would all be leaving to do whatever seniors do when they leave high school, go to college or 

get a job or go up North as we used to do, all of those things, that unless we had someone to 

carry on what we were doing, then what we started might die out. And none of us wanted to 

see that. And we knew of underclassmen that were interested in what we were doing. So, we 

identified people or people came to us who wanted to carry on what we had started, and we 

invited them in, and they came, wanted to come in. So, they joined with the understanding 

that they would be carrying on the work that we started and that although many of us who 

were seniors wanted to stay involved and would stay involved, we couldn't do it on an 

ongoing basis because we'd be away in school, or away doing whatever we were doing, so 

we recruited a number of young people. And I’ll mention as an aside, one of the young 

people we recruited became the third president of ASCORE, and I remember that very 

clearly because she also eventually became my wife. [laughter] So, I met my wife through 

ASCORE, and we dated, you know, in high school and then through college and even law 

school. [00:40:38] And then we eventually got married. And we had a wonderful 

relationship and we spent 55 years in marriage together. And she passed on in August of last 

year. But we had a great time together, we have three great children who are all here now 

and still doing good things. So, you never know what an experience is going to take you to.  



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MHP: Here's a — and congratulations. I mean, 55 years, that's a long marriage. 

JF: That’s a long time, but it didn't seem long, just seemed natural.  

MHP: Exactly. My other follow up question is, here you are growing up in this town 

that you clearly see has a certain way of, right, how things are divided, in every sector: 

education, jobs, everything. And teenagers come in and start changing it. You are leading it, 

and it happens through the art of negotiation, it seems like to me, right. So, it’s very peaceful 

and that sort of thing. But you don't know that's going to be the outcome as you're going into 

it. So, did you ever have, as you were going into this and sort of in a way, making waves 

and rocking the boat, did you ever have any personal concerns about the consequences and 

that sort of thing, or personal harm to you or your family?  

JF: Well, you know, one of the great things about being young is you don’t think 

about that. [laughter] You do what what’s in front of you. You do what seems to be the right 

thing to do and, you don’t spend a lot of time in fear. You don’t spend a lot of time worrying 

about what the ultimate consequences might be and that you might not be able to do this or 

you or somebody else might get hurt. You really don't think about that. You think about 

what needs to take place at that time. It's not a recklessness, but it’s just a focus that there’s a 

certain feeling of invincibility that you have. You don't recognize it as being that at the time, 

but you look back on it and you say, “Wow, now that I look back on it, that was all a little 

crazy. This could have happened, that could have happened,” but none of it did. [00:42:47] 

Fortunately. It worked out. And that's one of the great things about youth is that there's a 

certain freshness that youth brings to whatever they're doing, and they don't have a lot of 

concern about negative consequences, until later. And then they realize perhaps they could 

have, should have, had that concern, but there’s no need to have it later on because time has 



19 
 

passed from when things like that happened. So, it's a good thing in many ways. But 

sometimes you reflect on it and think, “That was pretty crazy.” 

MHP: Oh, okay. Here's another group, though, that you were also a member of, 

sponsored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews. Can you talk about that group 

and what you learned from that involvement, how it might have impacted your work later 

that you would do when you became an attorney and you were in Charlotte, in an integrated 

law firm?  

JF: Well, you know, as I look back on that experience and the ASCORE experience, 

which I've already described to you, this was, I mean, they were all life experiences in that I 

was being introduced to a different life than what I had seen growing up, because, you 

know, I said I grew up in a completely segregated Asheville. I can't even look at anything 

and say everything except this was segregated. Everything was segregated. But somewhere 

around the same period of time that I was describing in junior high school or early high 

school, we became part of a group called the Greater Asheville Intergroup Youth 

Association, I think is what we called it, and that was a group of students, Black and white, 

that began to meet to talk about and, you know, I talked about it a little bit already. 

[00:44:46] But as a part of that, we got involved with, I think of the acronym NCCJ, I guess 

that’s National Conference of Christians and Jews, and all of this sort of comes together. 

And it was all part of our growing into circumstances where we began to see and 

communicate with people beyond our racial group. We reached out to others and others 

reached out to us. So, as a result of our participation with NCCJ, we met more than we 

otherwise would have with white students of goodwill who also wanted to see something 

change and who wanted to have the experience themselves of interacting with Black 



20 
 

students, whether they never had the opportunity to do that. And I remember we used to 

have NCCJ, Greater Asheville Intergroup Youth Association meetings at different places. I 

remember that we had a meeting out at a place called, I think it was In the Oaks. It was a 

conference center on the outskirts of Asheville. I think it was out in Swannanoa, or Black 

Mountain, a town, probably 10 or 15 miles away. But we met there because there were no 

places in Asheville that you could have an integrated, racially integrated group meeting. So, 

we wound up engaging there. So, we did it. And all of the details I can’t remember, many of 

them escape me, but I do remember that it was a very positive feeling of goodwill. It was an 

experience beyond the experiences, the segregated experiences we had before. And we were 

beginning to see that there were people of goodwill who wanted to see change. [00:46:46] 

They had a different perspective on it because they had never experienced the sting and the 

bite of racial segregation in the way that my Black colleagues and I had, but they were 

people who wanted to see change and were willing to make sacrifices to bring about that 

change. And that was a good, a good experience for all of us because it promoted feelings of 

goodwill outside of our own racial groups both ways. And I think that's something that we 

learned in life and that we've carried with us. At least I know I carry it with me now. I don't 

look at white people, even those whites who still reflect the white racism that affects us all 

too much. But it's not because they are people who are by nature of bad will or they’re bad 

people or anything like that. They are all the result of their experiences. People deal with 

that experience in different ways, but we learn that there are ways to reach people in 

different ways. And we do that, and we continue to have this belief that there are those who 

want to rise above the racial restrictions that they and I and others experienced growing up.  



21 
 

MHP: [00:48:15] Okay. So, Mr. Ferguson, we were talking about how early on, 

even as a teenager, you said, you know, you really wanted to be part of a helping profession. 

You choose law, of all things. So, tell us how law became something that really attracted 

you and you felt like that's where your calling was.  

JF: Well, as I look back on it, I realize that there were a couple of salient 

experiences that I had during my high school years that inclined me towards law. One 

happened when I was a teenager, I think in the 10th grade. Some friends of mine were 

charged with rape. These were Black friends of mine, and they were charged with raping a 

white woman. They were charged with raping a white woman in a place called Aston Park. 

Aston Park was a white-only park at the time. But that whole incident strikes me because I 

don't know what happened that night. I know that the nine young Blacks who were 

eventually charged and who eventually entered a plea of guilty, and I need to talk about that 

when I come to it, were friends of mine that I saw every day, grew up with. And I had, they 

had actually invited me to join with them that night, it wasn’t to join with them in a rape. 

But at that time, there were some young Black guys who had this notion or had been told or 

whatever, that they could go down to Aston Park at night and that they could engage with 

white women who hung out there. [00:50:22] And so, on this particular night, I was at a 

high school dance, and some of them invited me to join with them, not to go to Aston Park, 

but to just hang out with them that night. I didn't go, because I had a young lady I had my 

eyes on at the sock hop, they called it, that night, so I didn't go with them. And then I think 

the next day or so, the headline news said, nine young Black men charged with rape. And I 

realized then that I could have easily been one of them. Well, I mean, they've all denied 

engaging in any rape that night, but I could have easily been one of them. And it wasn't 



22 
 

because I was any different from any one of them. These were people I knew. They were 

good friends of mine, and they were people I enjoyed spending some time with, you know, 

some or all of them. I did. And I later learned, well, eventually they all pleaded guilty. And 

of course, you know, I and others wondered why they were pleading guilty. But later in life, 

I got to know the lawyer who represented them, really one of the lawyers who eventually 

met with us to talk about the legal implications of sitting in. But he explained that at that 

time in Asheville, which had a very small, relatively small percentage of African Americans 

in the population, that these young men were likely to have a jury that was all white and 

with an all-white jury in Asheville or any other southern town of that day, they were likely 

to be convicted and were likely to be given the death penalty. [00:52:30] At that time, rape 

carried death. But you could avoid the prospect of a death penalty by pleading guilty and 

you would automatically get life, life imprisonment at that time, then 40 years. If you had a 

40 year sentence, you'd be eligible for parole in 20 years. So, all of that went into it. And 

rather than risk death, as they all would have been doing, they entered pleas of not guilty 

and I've talked with some of them, you know, afterwards. 

MHP: Oh, I’m sorry, pleas of guilty? They entered pleas of guilty? 

JF: They had pleas of guilty to avoid the death penalty. And I've known that there 

were, two things I learned, many things, but two things in particular stand out. One is I 

learned that everybody who pleads guilty doesn't do so because they're guilty. Sometimes 

they do so for other reasons. Like in this case, they pleaded guilty to preserve their life or to 

escape death. So, one of the lessons that I learned that stayed with me and really helped me 

in my work as a lawyer is that everybody who's in prison, number one, is not necessarily 

guilty. And number two, that they are human beings just like myself. I could have easily 



23 
 

been one of them. So, I always thought about that in the criminal work that I've done over 

my lifetime, that whoever the person is, the charge is not some lawbreaker or some evil bad 

person who deserved to be in prison, but they were people who had unfortunate turns of 

events, whatever they might happen to be. And it's all different. But they were not inherently 

or inevitably bad people. [00:54:36] They were good people that bad things happened to for 

lots of different reasons. But it always helped me to understand that we have to be careful 

and reserved in our judgment of people because, you know, there’s this saying, “There but 

for the grace of God, go I.” For me, that was real. Because, you know, when I look at each 

one of those friends of mine who wound up with these long prison sentences, there but for 

the grace of God, could have gone I, except I happened to be in a different circumstance that 

night. Whatever happened at the park, I don't know. But it’s always tempered my judgment 

of people, too. You can't judge people just by what you see in the moment, but you have to 

understand who they are, how they got to where they were. So, that experience happened. I 

think I was in the 10th grade, and they were all represented by the same lawyer at the time. 

And, you know, that had all kinds of implications for conflicts of interest, et cetera., et 

cetera. But this was a lawyer who represented these young men who did not have funds to 

pay the lawyer. I know that. I don't know what their arrangement was, but they were doing 

this because they recognized that in this community in 1958 or [19]59 or whenever it was, 

that five young Black men, nine young Black men charged with the rape of a white woman 

were likely to get the death sentence if they went to trial. So, the lawyer, Mr. Dailey, 

stepped in, helped them, and later explained to me as I got to know him when I became a 

lawyer, some of the thought processes he had to go through to get to where he did at that 

point. [00:56:36] So, I want to fast forward two years, when Mr. Dailey and Harold Epps, 



24 
 

Mr. Epps were the two lawyers who met with us when we were considering doing sit-ins in 

Asheville, and they didn't give us a lecture on law. They said, “Do what you need to do, and 

if you need our help, let us know and we'll be there for you.” Not one word about “Our fee 

is going to be this. Our fee is going to be that.” Or this complication and that complication. 

They were there. They recognized and supported what we were doing. They wanted to help. 

And their help was encouraging us to go ahead and do what we were going to do and that 

whatever they needed to do, they would help us out. I thought about that. I said, “That's a 

fantastic position to be in, to be able to help people by telling them they can call on you 

when you need them, and you'd be able to offer something that they might not be able to get 

otherwise.” None of us had any money. So, we couldn't have paid. They didn’t charge us 

anything. They didn’t talk to us about fees or anything else. They wanted to be helpful. They 

wanted to be supportive and said call us when you need us. And I often thought, “That's a 

wonderful position to be in, to help people, to say, let me know what you need. I'll be there 

to help you.” So, that was a big factor in my decision to pursue law as a career. And I've 

always wanted to view law as a helping profession, not just as a way to earn a living, but as 

a way to be helpful to individuals, to be helpful to a community. And I've always felt that it 

was important to find ways to be helpful to others and to our community, particularly the 

Black community that we lived in, which needed and still needs lots of help. [00:58:44] So, 

and fortunately, I came into a law practice with my partner, ultimately, Julius Chambers, 

who was doing exactly the same thing at the time, and we came together by chance. But it’s 

the best thing that ever happened to me in many, many ways. And if we get a chance, I'll 

talk a little bit about it. 



25 
 

MHP: Oh, definitely. I want to ask you about that. Real quickly, let me ask you, 

before we get to that part, just very briefly, if you could talk about were there, because 

before you went to law school at Columbia, you did your undergraduate work at North 

Carolina Central University. At that time, it might have been NC College. Or was it NC 

Central? 

JF: What was it? North Carolina College at Durham was the name of it. Yes.  

MHP: Were there any particular classes you took that, as an undergraduate, that also 

sort of, you know, even further encouraged your desire to become an attorney?  

JF: Well, fortunately for me, or unfortunately for me, I knew at the time I went to 

college that I wanted to get into law. So I took a double major. History and English were my 

majors. And in the history department, I met a professor who became a great mentor to me, 

and he was also a great mentor to other people, Caulbert Jones, was one of my history 

professors, and he was also my advisor when I became president of the Student Government 

Association. He was the advisor for that. So he was someone who mentored me in ways that 

I didn’t even know I was being mentored. But he was always there and could, you know, he 

was easy to talk to. So he was a great influence in my life. And he also assisted me in 

identifying where I would go to law school and helping me find ways to get into law school, 

because I had a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of desire, but no money. [01:00:58] And he 

helped me navigate that. He and some other teachers. But he was one of my main college 

mentors, in the history department, but also in the student government work that I did, really 

from the time I was a sophomore until I graduated. So, I'm grateful that I had the 

opportunity to meet him and others as well. But he stands out because of the particular 

relationship we had with the history department and the Student Government Association.  



26 
 

MHP: So, you graduate from Central, you go to Columbia Law, and you earn your 

J.D. in [19]67. At least that's what we have here. 

JF: That's correct. 

MHP: And once you were at Columbia, you're getting out there. I mean, was there a 

particular, did you already know the type of law that you wanted to practice when you were 

at — yes? 

JF: I did. 

MHP: And tell us about that.  

JF: I went to law school because I wanted to be able to do something to help my 

community. I wanted to be able to carry on the work that I had started in high school when 

we desegregated the lunch counters and when we worked to desegregate the schools. 

Although it didn't happen while I was in high school, I did have the pleasure of handling the 

Asheville school desegregation case and seeing the Asheville schools actually become 

desegregated years after the Brown decision came out in 195[4]. But there was some 

gratification I got from being involved in the Asheville school case, as well as other school 

cases, but particularly in Asheville, because I thought Asheville should have been 

desegregated when I was a junior in high school and it wasn't. So, whatever I could do later 

to bring that about, I was glad to do that. [01:02:59] 

MHP: So, that came full circle. So, full circle for you. 

JF: Full circle. Yes. 

MHP: While you're at Columbia, I guess during your last year there in law school, 

you were approached by the LDF offices from what we've read, and Susie did all the great 

research here.  



27 
 

JF: Well. 

MHP: You approached them, or they approached you? 

JF: I was about to say, I approached them. 

MHP: You approached them, sorry. About their internship program. So, can you 

talk to us a little bit about that, your impressions of LDF, of the office, the people who 

worked in the organization, the type of work they were doing?  

JF: Oh, absolutely. When I was at Columbia, even in 1964 when I went there and 

[19]67 when I graduated, that was a very small Black student population. I think in my class 

there was somewhere between, I think, nine and 11 Blacks out of a class of 300. And 

likewise with the other classes at the time. So, it's not as though there was a core of Black 

students at Columbia. So, fortunately the few of us Blacks who were there bonded together 

in one way or another, probably because we were Black in a predominantly white 

environment. So, you gravitate towards folk that you think have things in common with you. 

So, I knew certainly all of the Blacks in my class, but most of the Blacks who were in the 

law school at the time, which was just a handful, we came into contact with each other in 

one way or another because we were Blacks in a predominantly white environment, trying 

to make a life for ourselves. And that was just a common experience wherever we were 

from that led to some gravitation towards each other in that environment. 

MHP: [01:05:12] And so, LDF, you approached them, and what type of, you did the 

internship. What, can you tell me a little bit about working with them, what type of work 

you did, what, how they were to interact with? 

JF: Well, I will, but I have to give you a little bit of background on that. I knew 

when I went to law school that I wanted to return to the South to do something to help the 



28 
 

Black community. That’s why I went to law school. And I knew that in undergraduate 

school. And I suppose it's all a part of the experience that I've already described to you. So 

the interesting thing, one of the interesting things about going to Columbia for me was that 

Columbia being the Ivy League school that it is, it had this wonderful reputation. And a lot 

of folks went there because it had that reputation and because they felt that Columbia would 

give them opportunities that they might not find at other places. Well, I wasn't going there 

so much for any opportunities that Columbia, in and of itself offered, but I wanted to get a 

good education, because I wanted to be the best lawyer that I could to go back and help my 

people in the South. So, I never went to law school for the purpose of getting a plum job 

with some big white law firm and advancing in the law, that was never my interest in law 

school. So consequently, in my senior year, when many of my colleagues, Black and white, 

were signing up for interviews with all these firms that came to Columbia and offered high 

paying jobs and this and that, and students, my friends, were nervous and biting their nails 

about whether they would get this job and whether they would just get the interview with 

this firm, you know, all of that, I never experienced all of that. I knew from the beginning, 

from the day I walked in, applied to that law school, that my purpose was to go back South. 

[01:07:11] And I actually went with the idea of going back to Asheville to practice, my 

hometown, Asheville. But it turned out another way. And it is interesting the way that 

happened. I found out, somehow, about the Legal Defense Fund program, which was 

designed to help Black lawyers, in particular, from the South, return to the South to practice 

law. So, one day in my senior year, it was in the spring of the year, I went down to the Legal 

Defense Fund. I had no appointment. I just knew about the Legal Defense Fund, and 

Thurgood Marshall had been a part of it. And yeah, I knew something about Jack Greenberg 



29 
 

who headed it at the time. So, I just, I wandered down there one day with no appointment 

and I went down to the Legal Defense Fund to get more information about their program, 

helping Black lawyers set up civil rights practices in the South. It just so happened that on 

the day I went to the Legal Defense Fund to talk to Mr. Greenberg or whoever I could about 

their program, one of the interns who was practicing in the South showed up. It was an 

intern that I knew about but did not know. His name was Julius Chambers. It just so 

happened that Chambers happened to be at the Legal Defense Fund the day I happened to go 

down there. I had heard about Chambers because when I was in, I told you about Professor 

Jones, I told you about Caulbert Jones, my professor, when I was in his class, he used to talk 

to me sometimes. When I was in class, he’d look at me and he would call students so you’d 

get nervous. [01:09:11] “Ferguson, you’re sitting right in the same chair that a great lawyer 

sat in. His name was Julius Chambers. He sat right there.” And I shuddered and went, “Oh 

my God, what comes next?” So, I knew Chambers’s name, but I didn't know Chambers. 

And so, when I realized that Chambers was at the Legal Defense Fund that same day I was 

there, I was flabbergasted. And Jack Greenberg said, “I’ve got somebody I want you to 

meet,” and he introduced me to Julius Chambers. And you know, when he said Julius 

Chambers, I thought there was just this great lawyer who was bigger than life himself. Oh, 

how fortunate I was to even be in the same city he was in at the same time and in the same 

place and have a chance to meet him. I mean it was like the gates of heaven opening up. So, 

Jack Greenberg introduced us, and Chambers, instead of meeting this image of, you know, 

one of the brightest, greatest young lawyers that was in the world, he said, “How you doing? 

What’s your name? What are you going to do when you get out of law school?” [laughter] I 

mean, that's basically how the conversation went. And I said, “Well, I want to go back to 



30 
 

Asheville, North Carolina, and practice law.” And I'll never forget, he said at the moment I 

told him that, this was right after we had met. He knew nothing about me. He said, “Well, if 

you’re coming back to North Carolina, and you want to do civil rights law, you might as 

well join me. I'm doing it. And I need more help than I got. So, you ought to think about 

that.” So, you know, we had a conversation, and before the conversation ended, and it wasn't 

a long conversation, he invited me to come to North Carolina during spring break, this was 

just before spring break, and spend some time seeing what he did to see if I had some 

interest in joining him. And of course, I said, “Yeah, I'll be there.” [01:11:11] So, at that 

time, he knew nothing about me. He knew nothing about my grades, he knew nothing about 

any of that other than I was a young Black person who wanted to come back South and 

practice law. And he invited me to come join, not just to visit with him, but to stay at his 

house. I stayed at his house, a total stranger to him and his wife, Vivian. So, that's how I 

spent my spring break my senior year in law school. And at the time I was here, which was a 

few days, I don't know, I just kind of followed Chambers around with whatever he was 

doing, and he was here and there, doing whatever he was doing. And I just followed him 

around and, you know, we’d chat and we'd go here, sit there in the evening at his house or 

whatever, and at the end of that time, Chambers asked me to join him in his practice. He 

knew nothing about a single grade I had earned in law school. There was no reference. It 

was just his feeling that he needed some help. And here I was looking to come this way. 

And he said, “Well, why don't you come join me?” And I said, the only thing I could say, 

“Are you serious? Of course.” [laughter] So, it was just that incidental that I met Chambers 

and accepted his invitation to come join him in his practice. Now, as it turned out, Chambers 

had no office for me to work in, nor did he have an office for Adam Stein, who had worked 



31 
 

with him the summer before and maybe the summer before that. But he had invited Stein to 

come in. [01:13:12] So, I showed up, I think, in September after I'd taken the bar and done 

this and that, and Adam showed up. And Chambers, or Ella Hand, who was with him at the 

time, showed us where we would be working, which was this table in a room that they 

called the library that had two chairs in it. And Adam sat in one chair, and I sat in the other 

chair, and for months we occupied the same table as a desk in the old office, at I think it was 

405 and a half  East Trade Street, which is where the Panthers stadium is now, not the 

Panthers stadium, but where the Hornets basketball arena is now. And Adam and I hit it off, 

well we had to because we sat across from each other every day. And from September until 

the spring of the year, that's where we were. And in the spring, Chambers, Adam, and I, and 

an additional lawyer named Jim Lanning, who was a young lawyer, who had just come to 

town with the legal services program, but he was interested in doing some of the same kind 

of work that we were interested in doing. So, we met and talked about forming a law firm 

with Chambers as the, of course, the senior partner who had been in practice two or three 

years, not more than four, I think, at the time. None of us had any idea of what it meant to be 

in a law firm, and that included Chambers, who had never worked at a law firm. He’d spent 

some time in the Legal Defense Fund as an intern in the internship program that I thought I 

was going to work in. But I never actually worked at the office in New York. Chambers by 

that time had developed a kind of relationship with Jack Greenberg, the head of the Legal 

Defense Fund, that they arranged for me to come directly to Charlotte and not have to spend 

the usual year that an intern would spend learning whatever interns learn in that first year of 

practice. [01:15:27] 

MHP: So, in that first year, normally they would be in New York. 



32 
 

JF: In New York, working out of the Legal Defense Fund office. You know, they 

would do some work in the South but not have an office in the South. But I wound up in the 

South, and Chambers needed help. He had more cases than any one lawyer, any one super 

lawyer, could handle. And that's how we wound up in Charlotte, how I wound up in 

Charlotte instead of Asheville, where I was planning to go, because Chambers said he 

needed help. And even though he didn't know who this lawyer was, he was hiring and he 

hired me. And that's the best decision I ever made, was to not to persist to go to Asheville, 

my hometown, but to recognize the opportunity I had to work with one of the greatest 

lawyers in the world and who turned out not only to be one of the greatest lawyers in the 

world, but the greatest friend I could have possibly met at that time. And all of the years we 

worked together were among the best years of my life. Just having the opportunity to work 

with such a brilliant lawyer and to be befriended by such a great, gifted friend. So, I think 

about that all the time and how fortunate I was. It wasn't fortune. It was just luck because if I 

hadn't gone that day, at that time, I may never, I would not have been offered a job by 

Chambers under that same circumstance. So sometimes you go with the flow of what's 

going on at the time. I didn’t spend one second saying, “Oh, but I’m planning to go to 

Asheville.” He said, “I need help.” I said, "Well, I'll be there.” And that's how we formed 

the law firm, which was the first racially integrated law firm in North Carolina. There had 

been some Black lawyers who worked in white firms, but not a racially integrated law firm 

up until 1967, when we just by chance again decided that we would have this law firm and 

that we would do civil rights work in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1967. 

MHP: [01:17:52] So, at that time, so it’s Mr. Chambers, and he brings you in. He's 

brought in Adam Stein also. 



33 
 

JF: And Jim Lanning. Jim Lanning was a lawyer we met here. The four of us 

formed [inaudible]. 

MHP: Okay. And then Ella Hand was here. 

JF: Ella was here. Ella was the star of the law firm then. She and Chambers were 

classmates at North Carolina Central, and Ella was a major in, whatever it was.  

MHP: Education, I think. 

JF: Yeah, well, I think she majored in business.  

MHP: Business, yes, that’s it, business. 

JF: And she set up the law firm with Chambers when they both got out of law 

school. I mean, when Chambers got out of law school. He knew Ella from school and 

brought her in to set up to practice with him.  

MHP: And let me ask you before we get, because this seems like a good time to 

bring her in, but I just want to ask you one more question. As you're here, you're starting out 

working. What was that like, those first experiences or those first cases of what you were 

working on? What kind of work was it that you were doing? Like in that first year?  

JF: The kind of work that I was doing was whatever work came into the office, to be 

honest with you. It wasn't like Chambers sat us down and taught us how to be civil rights 

lawyers. Civil rights work was here, but the practice at that time was what I later came to 

formulate in my mind as Black people’s law because Chambers was here, but people came 

to Chambers with every issue that they had. It might be landlord-tenant, it might be 

something dealing with consumer practices, it might be anything that people had a problem 

with. They came to see Mr. Chambers. I'll never forget, one lady traveled here, and they 

would come bringing these big bags of papers of this and that and whatever, but they were 



34 
 

coming to see Mr. Chambers because Mr. Chambers was going to help them in one way or 

another. [01:20:00] So, it wasn't like a civil rights law practice. I mean, it was that, but it 

was a practice. It was a people's law practice. And whatever problem you had, we would 

find a way to do it. Chambers as, you've heard the story before about how his father was 

cheated by some white man who worked on his car. No, Chambers’s dad had done some 

work on a white man's car, man never paid him. Then Chambers’s daddy couldn’t find a 

lawyer to help him, all the white lawyers in Mount Gilead, whatever the county was at that 

time. So, there was this man who cheated his daddy, his daddy couldn’t get anybody to 

represent him. So, I think Chambers always saw every client who came in as being his 

father. A person, mostly Black people came, who needed some help, and they needed to find 

a lawyer who was willing to help them, not lawyers who, I mean, not people who had 

money to come in and hire a lawyer to do whatever they wanted. They were people in need. 

And Chambers saw himself, and we all picked up on that as being there, to help people who 

needed help and whatever help we could provide, that’s what we did. Some of that helped 

that needed was helped with civil rights cases and we did them. But it's not like we had this 

specialty, and if you didn't fit the specialty, we couldn't help you. If you had a problem, our 

job was to find a way to help you. And we tried to do that. And that was really the result of 

joining with Chambers to try to help people who needed help.  

MHP: And who before maybe didn't have a place where they could go or turn for 

that help, especially if they didn't have money. 

JF: Especially if they didn't have money. And especially if they had a civil rights 

problem. It's not like there were all these white lawyers in town who wanted to help folks 

with the civil rights problem. There were very few Black lawyers, period, and very few who 



35 
 

set up their practice to be civil rights lawyers at that time in Charlotte. [01:22:10] I think I 

remember that at the time I came to Charlotte to join Chambers, I was the seventh Black 

lawyer in Charlotte. And I got to know all the Black lawyers who were here at that time and 

others, you know, who came, many others who came after that. But we went from seven 

Black lawyers in Charlotte in 1967 to probably 500 or 600 now. So, I don't know all who 

they are, but whoever they are, they owe a debt to Chambers in some way because he started 

with the civil rights practice. And the other lawyers who were here at the time were Black, 

other Black lawyers who were here, they were lawyers who would lend a hand to help in 

whatever ways they could. And at that time, everybody knew each other, and we worked 

together in whatever ways we could. And if they had a particular problem they thought we 

could help with, they felt free to come, knowing that we would help. If we had problems, we 

thought they could help with, whatever it might be, we knew we could reach out to them and 

that they would respond. So, it was a different world that we came into. But a good world 

and a world where we were all trying to succeed with helping a community that sorely 

needed help.  

MHP: Let's start, you know what? Why don't we start with Asheville before we go 

to Swann v. Mecklenburg? I’m going to. 

JF: Sure. They were around the same time; I just can't remember the exact. 

MHP: But I'd like to start with Asheville, because in many ways, it's where you as a 

person who wasn't a professional yet, who is just still a child. It's kind of where you started 

with, you know, with activism and in being a champion for civil rights. So, talk to me about 

the Asheville school case. How do you come about being involved in that? Tell me about 

the case and the work on it, and was LDF involved in it?  



36 
 

JF: [01:24:12] Oh, yeah. It was a LDF case. Yes. 

MHP: Let’s talk about it. 

JF: Okay. Well, all of the school desegregation cases are close to my heart because I 

think, you know, that has made such a tremendous difference in providing opportunities that 

many of us who grew up before the schools were desegregated never had. And the 

desegregation of schools in many ways fueled and led to the desegregation of America. And 

I think about the Clarendon school case and the experiments with the Black dolls there, 

which tells the story of just how much segregation affected the children who grew up with 

the segregated education. That’s a whole story in and of itself. But it just, when they showed 

Black children these dolls and all of the Black children chose white dolls, begins to tell you 

just how powerful this whole system of apartheid in America has been on myself and other 

youth who were subjected to that. But the Asheville school case has particular significance 

to me because I view it as the culmination of the desegregation process that I and my 

classmates started when we were in high school. And I've already talked about how the the 

Brown decision came down when I was an eighth grader in the Asheville public schools, 

going through the completely segregated public school system there. And one of the things I 

dreamed about, I think, was having a racially desegregated education when I was a youth. 

[01:26:16] And that never happened for all the reasons that it didn't, well I guess it wasn't 

supposed to. But there was the gratification I got later when I handled the Asheville school 

desegregation case and Chambers, being one of the most humble people I've ever met in my 

life, actually basically turned that case over to me, and I wasn't experienced enough to know 

what I was doing, but I was willing to take it because it was important. And I got to work 

with Ruben Dailey, who was the lawyer that we had consulted when I was in high school, 



37 
 

and we were doing ASCORE. So it just had all of the significance in the world to me. And 

then I had the honor of being able to participate in the litigation in that case. So it was one of 

the high points and remains one of the high points of my life. So I was the principal lawyer 

in that case, believe it or not. And it was only a few years after I'd gotten out of law school 

that that case came up and we litigated that case and we were successful in bringing about 

the legal decisions that led to the desegregation of the Asheville city schools. And I use that 

term advisedly because we call it the desegregation of the schools. But anyone who 

followed the desegregation movement in the South knew that it was called the desegregation 

of the schools. But it really wasn't the desegregation of the schools. It was the legal remedies 

that were imposed to try to bring about the desegregation of the schools. [01:28:18] But 

what we had in Asheville, Charlotte, and throughout the South, was a series of legal 

decisions or legal agreements that were supposed to desegregate the schools, but never 

really did. And we can highlight that now by looking at the schools in Charlotte, which are 

largely segregated today. Many, many years, decades after Brown. So, when I say 

desegregation of the schools, I'm using that term advisedly as a term of convenience, but not 

necessarily a term of reality. But in any event, one of the greatest gratifications I have had as 

a lawyer practicing law here in Charlotte doing desegregation cases and other cases 

designed to liberate the Black community, which has been unliberated for so long. Then I do 

that with the idea in mind that we did what we could under the circumstances at the time. 

But we have yet to see a society that is fully and meaningfully desegregated. Maybe one day 

we will. But there's also this question of whether we will or not, because what we see is we 

make some progress and then we have some regression and then we come back and make 

progress, all of that. There's nothing new about that, it’s just real. And we have to face up to 



38 
 

where we are. And all of this has been to try to create that society where people, every 

citizen of that, every person in that society has the opportunity to realize all of his or her 

potential. [01:30:21] And we still maintain the hope that that will happen. But we have the 

realization that it hasn't happened yet. And we've been working on this for centuries. So, it 

may not happen, at least not in the way that we think. But now back to the Asheville school 

case. It was the greatest gratification for me, that I was able and fortunate enough to be one 

of the lawyers in the Asheville school desegregation case. And that case resulted not so 

much in a decree that desegregated the schools, but it was like what we went through. And 

some of the other activities that I spoke to you about desegregating Asheville itself. We 

were able to come up with a plan that was designed to and expected to bring about real, 

lasting desegregation. But in Asheville, like in most places in the South, desegregation didn't 

last long. It lasted as long as the white power structure and the white community allowed it 

to last. But it came to an end in the way that things come to an end without having an end 

declared. It just sort of segues back into what we hoped to change and what we had hoped to 

accomplish, and never did, was the full desegregation of it, where at some point the 

desegregated education and when I talk about a desegregated education, I'm simply talking 

about an equal education where all of the students could feel that they in fact got the same 

education as every other student got and that they were not limited and affected in any way 

by the desegregated school system that we started from. [01:32:33] We're still working on 

that and maybe one day we'll get that. So, in any event, I had the gratification of having tried 

to desegregate schools when the schools were fully segregated, but we never completed it. 

And although I went from the eighth grade to graduation in the Asheville city school system 

thinking that I would one day experience the desegregation of Asheville students, I never 



39 
 

did. But I did have the gratification of trying to bring about that desegregation for those who 

came after me, Black and white, who both had the promise of a desegregated education. 

And the sad reality is that in Asheville, as in Charlotte and most other places, that reality 

never really came to fruition because no longer, no sooner than we had entered into a 

desegregation plan for Asheville, we saw eventually the schools basically resegregate and 

never fully achieve the desegregated school system that we had hoped for. Likewise, in 

Charlotte, which went through even greater lengths to try to bring about the desegregation of 

the schools. And by that, I mean Charlotte in 1970, [19]71, whenever it was that Judge 

McMillan ended his order calling for desegregation of every school in Charlotte along the 

lines of the numbers in the population as a whole, that every school is supposed to be 60:40, 

white to Black, teachers 60:40, or something similar. [01:34:36] And the desegregation of 

teachers only lasted for a second or two. No sooner than it went into place, the schools had 

already begun to desegregate. So that now when you look at the Charlotte school system, 

where my godchild is a student at West Charlotte today, West Charlotte is almost a 

completely Black high school. And you look at all the other schools and likewise you find 

out that the desegregation that started in 1970 never really came to fruition and still isn't 

there today. And I cannot mention the Charlotte, the Swann v. Mecklenburg school case 

without also talking about the Capacchione case where a white child and, somewhere 

around in the 1990s, I think maybe around 1999, filed a lawsuit claiming that she, this white 

child, was not getting the education she was supposed to get because she wanted to go to a 

school, I can't remember all the details of it, but in any event, that was the beginning, the 

official beginning of the resegregation of schools in Charlotte. And now that process sadly 

and unfortunately has almost been completed, so that if you're a Black child or a white child 



40 
 

in Charlotte, you may get a desegregated education, but you're just as likely not to because 

we've experienced the fullness of resegregation of the schools in Charlotte, Mecklenburg, 

but not just Charlotte-Mecklenburg, but all over the South. We see desegregation orders 

being lifted under the guise of the schools being segregated and no longer, under the guise 

of schools being desegregated and no longer segregated. And we find out that's actually not 

the reality. 

MHP: [01:36:48] Tell me a little bit more, because you smoothly segue from the 

Asheville case, right, into the Swann case, the Charlotte case, because we're talking about 

this happening all over North Carolina and the South. 

JF: All over the South. 

MHP: But more specifics now about Swann v. Mecklenburg when we, tell me about 

the firm’s and your involvement in that case. And first, though, let me ask you this. When 

we talk about the firm being involved in the Asheville schools case, in the Swann case, 

when we talk about LDF also involved in —  

JF: Yes. 

MHP: What’s the role of LDF when you guys are going into these cases, like these 

school desegregation cases. I just want maybe a little clearer picture of what's LDF doing? 

What's the role of LDF? 

JF: Well, and this is my own definition or insight into it, but I think really LDF, 

which was organized before the school campaign in the South, but LDF, I think had as a 

goal of creating the integrated, desegregated society that the Constitution at one time said 

we were going to have. So, it wasn't any one segment of society, it wasn't just schools, it 

wasn't just employment, it wasn't just health care. It was the society that all of us live in that 



41 
 

was supposed to be a society which guaranteed to every citizen equality under the law. And 

I think that was the case with schools. All those schools as a litigation tool probably affected 

more people in the sense that all of the children in previously segregated schools were 

affected by that and schools led to desegregation in other aspects of society. [01:38:50] But 

we've never seen that society come to reality, even today, decades after the end of slavery, 

decades after the end of Jim Crow, decades after the end of official segregation. We still live 

in a society that in many, many ways, perhaps in every way, is still segregated and it's still 

segregated in much the same way. When we look at who is at the top and who’s at the 

bottom, we find whites still at the top. Blacks still at the bottom. And that's true in housing. 

That's true in health care. That's true in virtually any aspect of society. We still see these 

disparities and people say, “Oh, no, that's not as a result of segregation or anything. That's 

just the way it is.” Well, it's not just the way it is. It's the way it was ordered and the way it 

was organized and the way it was carried out. And the fact that it's never been carried out 

fully in any segment of the society we live in. So, we still have a ways to go. And I hope one 

day we'll get there. But I, like many others, have to question whether we get there or not in 

the system that we operate in. So, we don't know, but we know that we're not there. But we 

know the work still has to be done to get us there. And we hope that one day we will get 

there. But nothing guarantees that. 

MHP: Some of the work was definitely Swann v. Mecklenburg. Tell me about that, 

now with the Asheville case, you led that case. 

JF: Yeah, I was the principal lawyer, but people contributed to it. 



42 
 

MHP: You were the principal lawyer. Who was the principal lawyer on the Swann 

case? And just kind of tell me, describe the Swann case in the elements of that case a little 

bit for us. 

JF: Well, the principal lawyer in Swann case, unquestionably, and I think any 

lawyer who’d been involved in that case will tell you was Chambers. Absolutely, 

unequivocally. And he was dedicated to that case. [01:40:55] He did a brilliant job with it, 

and he accomplished more in that single case, as much in that single case as in any other 

single case. Fortunately, the circumstances were ripe for him to be able to do that. He had a 

good judge. He had a judge who understood that there would be continued resistance to full 

desegregation of the system. And it was that understanding that led Judge McMillan, who 

himself had to grow into understanding about it, that if that was ever going to be meaningful 

and full desegregation in Charlotte, in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system, you had to 

organize that in a way that there was nowhere for those who did not want to see full 

desegregation, that there was nowhere for them to go, nowhere for them to run. And that's 

what led to his decision somewhere around the early [19]70s, I can't give you the exact date 

where he ordered that all of the schools should reflect the school population ratio of Blacks 

to white, and that was essentially 60:40. So, every school was to reflect that 60:40 ratio or as 

close to it as they could come. And likewise, with the assignment of teachers, you would 

have, I think, a 70:30 Black to white, somewhere close to 60:40, whatever the ratio of Black 

teachers to white teachers was in the system was to be reflected in the school system. And 

McMillan understood that if that were to happen, that the only way to bring full 

desegregation was to require it in every school, to require it in every aspect of every school 

and require it in every aspect of the school system. And so, he set out to do that. And the 



43 
 

reality is that he had the best intentions to bring that about. [01:43:00] But the sad reality is 

it never happened. And to the extent that it did happen, and it was reflected at one point in 

the school system, it never lasted. So, that right now I have a godchild in the Charlotte-

Mecklenburg school system who is attending an all Black school. And an all Black school, 

which at one time during this process was one of the most desegregated schools in the whole 

system, West Charlotte High School, has now become virtually, if not completely, all Black 

and all of the litigation in the world has not changed that, so here we are today. 

MHP: Even in the process of litigating and waiting for a decision, you know, in the 

most extreme corners and, you know, and volatile, there was this resistance that happened 

where the office I guess it was the second office of the law firm. Second office is 

firebombed during this whole thing. Do you remember all of that and what it's like? 

JF: Oh, I remember very vividly. It was, and excuse the expression, emblazoned in 

my mind. And it was, it really was not the second office of the firm. It was the first office of 

the firm. Now, Chambers started in a flat single office space over on East Trade Street at the 

time, and it was a one story walk up, and that was the office that Adam and I came into 

when we joined with Chambers and Lanning to form the firm. But by the time we formed 

the firm, we were in an office on 10th Street, which was a two-story house that we 

converted into a suite of offices in the firm. [01:45:07] I say we, but I mean it was largely 

Chambers’s doing and some connections that he had with a man named Malachi Green who 

owned the house and arranged with Chambers to turn it into a suite of offices. It was a very 

nice suite of offices, very comfortable, located very close to Uptown in Charlotte, that we 

occupied, I think it was in 1969 by the time we got into it. Well, we'd been into it a couple 

of years. I think maybe the same year that we did the first full program of school 



44 
 

desegregation in Charlotte around 1971. I got a call in the wee hours of the morning, and it 

was Chambers’s wife at the time, Vivian Chambers, called me and she was excited at the 

time, or upset at the time as well. But she said, “Fergie, Fergie, the office is on fire.” And 

she told me that. And I said, well, “Vivian, I'll be right there.” So, I got up in the wee hours 

of the morning, whatever time it was, drove down to the office on 10th Street to see it in 

flames, just burning, burning, burning in flames. And I remember one fire attacks division 

officer who was there who said, “Don't worry, Mr. Ferguson. We'll find out who caused this 

fire.” By that time, they had determined that it was a deliberately set fire. So, it was, I think 

it was in February of 1971 when he told me not to worry, they would find out who it was 

that burned the office down. And being the optimist that I am, I'm still waiting for them to 

do that. But to watch this, this office burning in the wee hours of the morning with flames 

just shooting out, windows and doors throughout the office was heartrending. I mean, it was 

just unimaginable.  

MHP: [01:47:24] Did that not deter, obviously it didn't deter you from your work, 

though. 

JF: It made me more determined, because it was clearly a deliberately set fire. But 

there was no way that I or Chambers or any of us could look at this office being consumed 

and say, “Oh, there it is. Too bad.” I think we all redoubled the work that we were doing and 

redoubled our determination to continue to see this work through at that time. So, not a 

single one of us ever for a second entertained the thought that this was it, that “Okay, well, 

we tried, we did all we could, but they burned us out. So, let's go home, figure out where we 

go next. Let’s find out some other work to do. And let's let the fire bombers prevail.” That 

never occurred to any of us. Not for a second. Not even a thought. I think we all knew that 



45 
 

no matter what the outcome of that fire was going to be, the fire within us could not be 

extinguished and we would continue to follow that fire until we had done all that we could 

possibly do to bring about the society that we wanted to see at that time.  

MHP: I'm going to ask you about one more case and then I have just a closing 

question, unless John or Susie have one. But I’m just going to ask you about, which one of 

those cases was it. Here it is. You worked on, this is desegregation in the workforce or 

employment. The North State Law Enforcement Officers Association v. the City of 

Charlotte. So, Black officers challenging the City Police Department's discriminatory 

employment practices. Talk a little bit about that case, if you don't mind. 

JF: [01:49:27] That was one of the the most inspiring cases that I worked on. At the 

time I started practicing law here in Charlotte in 1967, the police department was completely 

segregated. I'm trying to remember whether at that time Black police officers, they may 

have evolved to the point where they could arrest somebody white at that time. But it all 

emanated from a time when Black officers could not even arrest white people. The police 

department was completely segregated racially. Black officers, for the most, the what few 

Black officers that were, for the most part, were assigned to Black communities, to work in 

Black communities so that they wouldn't come in contact with white people and be placed in 

a position where they could, even if they were in power too at that time, arrest white people. 

I think the highest officer at that time was, there may have been one sergeant in the police 

department at that time. So, the North State Law Enforcement Officers Association was a 

statewide Black law enforcement organization where the Black officers had banded together 

to try to improve the lot of the Black police officer. And as bad as Charlotte was at that time, 

it wasn't the worst. You could move out of Charlotte into eastern North Carolina and find 



46 
 

even more segregation and white racism reflected in the police department. So, these 

officers organized themselves and their goal was to get their due as Black police officers, be 

able to exercise the full range of being an officer that white officers could that they could 

move up in the ranks that they couldn't in Charlotte and most other places in North Carolina. 

[01:51:55] And I'll never forget the Black officer who was then head of the North State Law 

Enforcement Officers. His name was Rudy Torrance. And I remember Rudy because Rudy 

was as bright and as sharp and committed as any officer, Black or white, could be in a police 

force at that time. And if there was anybody who should have specifically and personally 

benefited from the desegregation that we brought about as part of that lawsuit, it would have 

been Rudy Torrance. He was bright, he was sharp, he was committed. And he should have 

been the first Black officer elevated in that system. And he never was. Rudy never moved 

from being an officer to being a sergeant or corporal or captain or anything other than a 

basic police officer. But notwithstanding that, he remained committed to seeing Black 

officers be treated as full officers of not only the Charlotte Police Department, but in police 

departments throughout North Carolina. And I will always remember how committed Rudy 

was and how he remained committed, even though he never personally benefited from the 

hard work that he and others with him did to bring about the desegregation of the Charlotte 

Police Department. In fact, if the truth be known, and I remember this, because I personally 

represented North State at the time, the Chief of Police at the time, North State, brought this 

action, who was Chief Goodman, did all he could to make sure that Rudy and some of the 

other veteran officers who had been active in bringing that whole movement about to 

improve the lot of Black officers, that they never personally benefited from that. [01:54:18] 

So, he was the man who was at least, probably more responsible, if not more responsible, at 



47 
 

least as responsible for any officer to bring about the change in Black officers being able to 

be treated as full officers by the Charlotte Police Department. Never got to benefit 

personally from that, but they remained committed to making sure that Black officers got 

their due in being treated as full officers with all of the powers and whatnot that police 

officers have. And we see how important that was today when we look at what Black people 

are going through right now today at the hands of often usually white officers. Think about 

how much worse that was years ago before Black officers were even allowed to exercise the 

full range of what Black officers could do. And you imagine what would have happened if a 

Black officer at that time had been charged with injuring or killing a white person. Even if 

you say that the white person deserved it, that Black officer would have been an outcast 

among not just the Black officer corps, but in the communities in which we all had to live 

during that period of time. So, we’ve seen a full shift in what law enforcement was about 

then to what it has become now. And I look at some of the cities, their law enforcement 

organizations today, where there are Black police chiefs. And at that time that thought 

would have never entered the mind of anybody who was looking at law enforcement in 

America. So, we've seen a sea change in law enforcement in that regard. 

MHP: [01:56:26] Mr. Ferguson, you have definitely given us some details on the 

wins that you guys had won and some cases that were so important that have changed the 

very nature of the state and of the country. So, when you think back on, just this is my last 

question, by the way, and my two colleagues may have some questions, but when you think 

back on wins and losses, how did you process that? Right? These major wins, but also 

sometimes these losses. What was that like? Just sort of — 



48 
 

JF: Well, I mean, the truth of the matter is, and I hadn't really reflected on until you 

asked me that question just now, we of course, we were always happy when we won a case, 

but we were happiest when we saw the results of the win, you know, where we've been 

declared victors. But we needed to see that, and we needed to see change in a way that went 

beyond whatever lawsuit at that particular time and that particular instance, mandated. But I 

guess one obvious example would be to look at Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s school system. 

And even though many of the schools have resegregated for lots of reasons, you look at a 

school board and I think now that there's a Black school board chair and has been 

periodically for decades now. You’re as likely to see a Black chair, as you would a white 

chair. And at the time that Swann was brought, there was one, as I recall, there was one 

member of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board and that was Reverend Colemon 

Kerry, I think, was the first Black member. But we've seen others. We've seen Sarah 

Stevenson become members. We've seen Arthur Griffin, one of my great friends, become 

chair and we've seen others become chairs. [01:58:26] We have chairs now and we've seen 

that happen in a lot of agencies. You know, you look at Charlotte and you have a Black 

police chief and you've had a Black police chief for a while. You've had a Black chair of the 

county commission, Black chair of the school board and Black police chief. So, you look at 

all of the institutions that have been the support of our society over time and how these 

institutions were once all white with no Blacks participating at all. We've seen a change 

where now a Black can be and is likely to be as much, as a white person, a chair of these 

organizations which run our city. And that's the mayor's position, school board’s position, 

the county commissioner’s position, all of these things have opened up in a way that at the 

time we started this campaign of having Blacks be recognized as equal, offered little 



49 
 

promise that would ever happen. Over time, we’ve seen it happen. But yet we see, in all the 

indices by which the participation in and enjoyment of what society has to offer still as these 

indices show you that Blacks are still at the bottom in health care, in housing, in all of the 

things that we look at, by which we measure the value of life and the participation in the 

community, we still see Blacks in grossly disproportionate numbers at the bottom and trying 

to move up. But at the same time, efforts are still underway to bring about that society that 

we've been working on for centuries, where a person is not assigned a place in that society 

based on her or his color. But every citizen can look forward to being able to be all that he 

or she can be without regard to race and color and sex and all the things that society so 

blithely incorporates into full citizenship, that none of that will be present and obvious in the 

society in which we live. [02:00:44] So, some of us still think that that society can take place 

and will. And we like to believe in spite of some things we see today that we're still moving 

in that direction to bring about what the Legal Defense Fund has been about for decades. 

And we see progress and then we see retrogression in whatever that progress has been. But 

we still come back and find ourselves pushing towards that society, which is going to come 

one day, where every citizen is judged by the content of his or her character and not by the 

content of his or her color. 

MHP: Well said. Excellent. It’s the long game. 

JF: It’s the long game. 

MHP: It’s the long game. 

JF: It takes a long view. We'll get there. 

MHP: Do you guys have any questions? Susie, did you want to look through and see 

if there’s anything left in here? 



50 
 

SP: I think we’ve got it, and I think we’ve taken up enough of your time. [laughter] 

JF: Well, I figure I’ve taken up your time, and I appreciate the time you spent on 

this. 

MHP: Well, that's what we're here for. And it was our pleasure. This has been a 

delight. And I want to thank you so much. 

JF: Well, thank you so much. 

MHP: And I know you have an appointment. 

JF: I do have an appointment. 

MHP: Thank you so much. 

JF: I’ll go let my appointment curse me out and we'll do something progressive. 

MHP: We will send you a transcript so you can read through everything just to 

make sure everything is accurate and then let us know.  

[END OF INTERVIEW]