James Ferguson Interview Transcript

    Legal Defense Fund Oral History Project  

 
Harvey Gantt 

Interviewed by Melody Hunter-Pillion 

March 23, 2023 

Charlotte, North Carolina 

Length: 01:50:01 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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 Harvey Gantt, the Southern Oral History Program, and LDF. It 

has been lightly edited, in consultation with Harvey Gantt, 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: Let’s start with your childhood. You grew up in Charleston. Is 

that right? In Charleston, South Carolina?  

Harvey Gantt: I grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. I was actually born on Yonges 

Island, one of the islands surrounding Charleston, and moved to Charleston at a very young age 

because my father was working in the Navy shipyards. This was during World War Two. So, I 

lived there in a public housing project, specifically designed for people who were working in the 

Charleston Naval Shipyard. And so, I tell people jokingly that I grew up in public housing for 

the first six years of my life before my father moved us to a “salt of the earth” working class 

neighborhood. 

MHP: And let me say this before I ask the next question. This is Melody Hunter-Pillion 

from the Southern Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is 

March 23rd, 2023. I’m here in Charlotte, North Carolina, with Harvey Gantt in the Harvey B. 

Gantt Center to conduct an interview for the Legal Defense Fund Oral History Project. So, and 

again, thank you for being here with us. And Mr. Gantt, I am going to start just by having you 

say your name and who you are, very quickly. 

HG: I’m Harvey Gantt. I live here in Charlotte, North Carolina. I used to be the mayor of 

Charlotte some thirty plus years ago.  

MHP: Okay. And so, I want to go back to your beginnings. You talked about growing 

up in South Carolina, in Charleston, talked about your father a bit. But your family has like deep 

roots in South Carolina. Is that right?  

HG: Well, I like to think they were deep roots. But all of my father’s brothers, my 

father’s father — my grandfather — were all South Carolinians. And they lived on those 

islands. [00:02:06] And following the period of slavery my great, great, grandfather bought 

land. And we farmed. We were farmers. I didn’t know much about that era, of course, but I met 



 
 

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many of my relatives over the years growing up in Charleston who were Charlestonians [and 

islanders]. And we had that very deep Gullah accent that came with people who grew rice on the 

plantations during the era of slavery. So, when you say deep roots, yes. You know, we were 

there way back then.  

MHP: For many generations. Moving forward a bit, do you recall, because you grew up 

during the era of segregation, do you recall school desegregation efforts? I'm going to ask a 

couple questions here, but, and have any memories of Brown v. Board being decided, so how 

did your parents talk about that whole thing and what are your memories of that era, of that 

going on? 

HG: Brown v. Board of Education was a very, very big topic in my family. You need to 

know you can’t just answer that question, because to put that in context, my father, who I greatly 

admire for keeping us and my four sisters current with what was going on, he used to drag us to 

civil rights meetings at places like Mother Emanuel Church, [and our] home church, Morris 

Street Baptist. We heard all the great civil rights leaders back of that time, Roy Wilkins, James 

Farmer. All those folks came through on the [NAACP] speaking circuit and he dragged us 

[laughs] to many of those events when we were very young. So, on the date of May 17, 1954, I 

believe it was, there was a huge headline in the paper that said segregation unconstitutional. 

[00:04:20] And we had a great lesson that evening at dinnertime about what all that meant 

because Daddy would recount, you know, the Civil Rights Movement. He was an NAACP 

member from as far as I can remember. And his charge to us was this is not going to benefit him 

so much as it was going to benefit us. And we’ll soon be able to not pass the [white] elementary 

school that we passed every day to go to our elementary school, which was segregated. Not have 

to go x distance to the new high school, not new high school, but the high school that was 

designed for African Americans. He saw a great vision of what was going on. The hero for him, 

and I guess for us at the time, were people like Thurgood Marshall, who argued the case in the 



 
 

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Supreme Court. So, as a very young kid, we learned a lot about it. And I particularly got very 

interested. There was a library about three blocks away from our house called the Dart Hall 

Library, and I would come in that library every day following the Brown decision to read all the 

periodicals I could. And that’s when I began to realize that my daddy’s dream was probably not 

going to be immediate at all. I mean I saw all this opposition to it. And in a certain naïve sense, 

you know, as a boy, I thought that when the Supreme Court spoke, everybody just would fall in 

line. [00:06:12] We would see barriers come down the next day. And it was clear after a while, 

after a lot of reading that with the White Citizens Councils and all this kind of stuff, that there 

was going to be a lot of obfuscation and delay associated with that. But Brown had a big 

decision, Brown made a big decision point in my life and probably for my whole family, as 

would have been the case for a lot of other [Black] families. We thought segregation was over.  

MHP: And I’m going to talk more about legal things that continue to need to happen and 

the fight that has to continue. But I want to go back to those meetings that your father would 

take you and your siblings to, and you name some of the great speakers and civil rights leaders 

who would come through. But is there a particular meeting that you went to that is just most 

memorable to you or really just made an impression?  

HG: You know, I don’t think so. You know, to some extent, you know, remember now, I 

was all of eleven years old when Brown happened and going to meetings with him, I was nine or 

ten. Daddy was excited. My mother, incidentally, was not all that engaged, although her biggest 

concern was, let’s just make sure these kids get a good education and can go to college. And that 

to her meant an HBCU someday. But my father was very interested in that and he would try his 

best to interpret. The person who stood out for me was Roy Wilkins, only because I thought he 

was smart and whatever he said was a little bit engaging about, you know, how we have to 

overcome the indignities of second-class citizenship, which was a term we kicked around quite a 

bit about what it meant to be second class. [00:08:24] That happened at the dinner table, not at 



 
 

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the church when we were listening to those speeches. But we went along and we weren't the 

only children that sat sprinkled through those audiences at Morris Street Baptist, Mother 

Emanuel, and other churches. There was an engaged adult community. The people who were 

least prominent were schoolteachers and people that, well, they were least prominent for 

obvious reasons. They could not be associated with the Civil Rights Movement because many of 

them would be threatened economically with losing their jobs. So, I didn’t come away feeling 

like an intellectual. I came away impressed with how people spoke. Maybe some of the issues 

that they spoke to. But I was young. 

MHP: Those discussions at the dinner table, as much as you can recall and remember 

them, because you said they were discussions, right, that the family had at the dinner table about 

what it meant to be a second-class citizen. Can you tell me about some of those discussions and 

just your impressions of what that meant as you heard your parents talk to you about it, 

particularly your father? 

HG: We were going to be, it meant a lot about giving us a sense of hope. There was a lot 

of pride in my family and they, my parents, mother and father, always said, you guys are going 

to be something. You’re going to get a better education than I did. My daddy was driven by the 

fact that he only got to the eighth grade and living in the rural area of Yonges Island, Adams 

Run, which was the name of the community. [00:10:20] And in Adams Run, there was a high 

school there — Daddy, those that got to go and finished elementary school.1 And he couldn’t go 

any further because to go further meant he’d have to go about twenty-seven, twenty-eight miles 

to Charleston to school. There was nobody to take him there, bring him home every afternoon. 

And so, he went with his father and started farming after finishing eighth grade. And it made an 

impression on him when he started having children, all of us, we got this like we got our 

 
1 During transcript review, Mr. Gantt clarified that “there was no high school that Daddy could attend after he had 
finished elementary school.”  



 
 

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mother’s milk. “You’re all going to get an education, starting with high school and then on. 

You’re going to go further. I don’t know how I’m afford to do it, but you will go.” Because he 

understood back then that that was the key to how we were going to get to this first-class 

citizenship thing. And so, the dinner table discussions were always about, how are we doing in 

school? And then he’d lead a discussion on whatever was going on in the world and civil rights. 

By 1955, we started hearing about a preacher in Alabama by the name of Martin Luther King. 

That was when he was introduced to us as children and King impressed him. It was another 

fight. He said there’s a fight in the courtroom, with people like Thurgood [Marshall]. And 

apparently there’s going to be more mass protests. And for him, Daddy found that to be an 

exciting time. And as kids, we said, well, we’re excited, too, because of what it was going to 

mean. This world was going to open up big time. And we could all show our smarts in a bigger 

environment, in a bigger pool. So. 

MHP: [00:12:26] Mr. Gantt, obviously, you took those conversations to heart. So, here’s 

your father who literally doesn’t go to school past eighth grade, but by ninth grade, from what 

I’ve read, you have made this decision by ninth grade if this is true, and you tell me, that you 

wanted to be an architect. So, when I just think about his life and what your trajectory, right, in 

ninth grade, going, okay, I’m going to be an architect. How did your interest develop over the 

years into going into architecture? How was it nurtured by the people around you, especially 

since it’s such an overwhelmingly white profession even now, but even more so then obviously. 

Let’s talk about that. Like, when did you first think this is what I want to do? What motivated 

that?  

HG: You mentioned the ninth grade. You must have read some article that was done 

some time ago that, the actual grade was tenth. But I have to always go back to Ms. L.A. Hill, 

who was a fifth-grade teacher of mine. You may have seen this story, too. She reprimanded me 

one day for not paying attention to her because I was so busy sketching, just drawing up a storm. 



 
 

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Prettiest girl in the class, I could kind of form her face and draw her. And she recognized my 

sketching abilities, but she would go and make me pay a price for that. And the price was, 

you’re going to have to stay after school until you learn to pay attention. And then when I stayed 

after school, she said, I want you to help me put this bulletin board up since you had these 

“nervous hands,” and I did have nervous hands. I sketched everywhere I went. So I became the 

sort of elementary school artist who could draw. [00:14:22] There was no architecture, I didn’t 

even know what an architect was. I think I read an article in Ebony magazine about an architect 

on the West Coast whose name I can’t quite recall at the moment and saw that he designed 

houses, I remember he designed houses for movie stars.2 And he was African American. But 

beyond that, I didn’t think of architecture until I got to tenth grade. And my English teacher 

pointed out to me, he said, we all know you draw, but you might want to consider becoming an 

architect. And he showed me outside my classroom window, an architect literally working on an 

addition to our high school. And so, that’s when I got introduced to it. And found out what 

architects did. And they designed buildings and they did this, that, and the other. And I got 

curious and I consumed everything I could find about architecture. Unfortunately, I couldn’t go 

visit an architect’s office. You know, this is 1957, [19]58, and it’s just unheard of that architects 

would be walking in or wanting to do an internship or at least observe what architects do. That’s 

just, that was a denial.3 Which is one reason why when I got my own firm, I made sure that 

people had all the access they could. But at any rate, to make that long story short, I pursued it 

with my guidance counselor. [phone makes a sound, Gantt apologizes and silences it] She was 

my guidance counselor. And we started saying, all right, let’s pick out some schools where you 

want to go study this if you’re serious about this. [00:16:25] I said, Ms. Broadnax, I don’t want 

to do anything but be an architect. Can you imagine designing buildings? Tall buildings, houses, 

 
2 During transcript review, Mr. Gantt noted that the architect he had in mind was Paul Williams. 
3 During transcript review, Mr. Gantt clarified that it was “unheard of that a Black kid could go to an architect's office in 
Charleston, or apply for an internship, to observe what architects do.”  



 
 

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you know, and you got to sketch and do all that. Anyway, she said, yeah, but you got to have 

math and physics, so you better take those in high school, too. That will help you go to college. 

That didn’t excite me that much, but I did. So one thing led to another. She challenged me when 

I made applications to all the African American schools. A&T, Tuskegee, Howard. These were 

the HBCUs that had courses in architecture. And one day she just said to me, you’re a smart 

young man. And I dare you to try to get into a predominantly white school. And that’s when 

they started to have a breakdown on what’s happening in that field. Number one, less than two 

percent of all the architects at that time were African Americans. So why not go to the schools 

where ninety-eight percent of them come from? Made sense to me. But it also meant that you 

were going to be going into the environment that you were not accustomed to. All your life, for 

twelve years now, you were going to segregated schools. You’re used to competing with 

African American students. This was a new world and that segregation was declared 

unconstitutional in 1954 indeed did creep along at less than deliberate speed than the Supreme 

Court wanted. But this was a little bit of a new world for me. And so, I accepted her challenge 

and I applied to a bunch of schools in the Midwest, maybe a few in the East, got into two or 

three of them, chose Iowa State. [00:18:28] 

MHP: So, and before we get to the year, I think you went to Ohio State for a year. 

HG: Iowa. 

MHP: Iowa. Iowa State. Did you anticipate sort of any difficulties when you were 

applying to these schools? I mean, beyond just, hey, you have what it takes to get in, but did you 

anticipate there would be any difficulties?  

HG: You know, when I think back on that, Melody, it’s, I’ve often gone over that. Why 

weren’t you concerned that you might not make it there? I mean, that’s what, Ms. Broadnax was 

dangling this thing in front of me that effectively said accept the challenge, it is going to be a 

challenge. I had some other teachers who said, you know, you only got so far in math, but when 



 
 

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these kids [students at white schools] start talking about calculus and having taken it in high 

school, how are you going to feel? Somehow, I don’t remember ever being intimidated by that. 

It was a challenge. What is life but challenges? Here I am, a sixteen, seventeen-year-old saying, 

I want the challenge. You know the biggest concern I had? Leaving the South. My bigger 

concern was not where and who I would be going to school with, but it was leaving the place 

that I understood the soil, the people, the Gullah accent, Charleston. It was a beautiful city. And 

here I was going to a place that I didn’t know anything about. [00:20:19] I wasn’t worried so 

much about whether I could make good grades in class. I guess I should have been. But it was 

leaving, and one of the most memorable moments I had was getting on the Southern railway 

train in Charleston in late August of 1960, telling bye, saying bye to my father and mother and 

my sisters. Some of whom were crying because this was the first time that I left home to go to a 

place that they had never been. My parents had never been there. My daddy told me later, “I just 

prayed that you were going to be all right, boy. Just prayed you were going to be all right.” 

Because they did feel comfortable. Even though Daddy told all that stuff about integration, he 

felt comfortable if I went to A&T, right in Greensboro, North Carolina. He could come see me, 

whenever, you know, and all the great things he wanted to see us do as a race, as a group of 

people, that could come later. But not now with his son going away somewhere that none of 

them had ever been. 

MHP: Talk to me a little bit more about this. This was not one of the questions, but 

when we think about this sense of place. And I’m so not surprised that as an architect you would 

think about space and place, but just, you know, culturally when there’s a very distinct place, 

like how important that is, it’s not just that you’re moving from a region, but a really distinct 

culture and place who made you what you are.  

HG: Not sure I’m going to get this question and this answer right for you. What I knew 

about living in the South was, what I’ve come to recognize is this closeness that comes by being 



 
 

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all together in a segregated society. So, I went to a doctor, occasionally I found myself a lawyer. 

We were taught, preached to, by preachers who were African American males largely. 

[00:22:30] We were nurtured by wonderful teachers of color who understood a lot of what we 

were going through. I call it a nurturing environment that allowed me to minimize my second-

class citizenship. The only time you realized it a lot was when you got on the bus to go 

downtown, when you left your salt of the earth working class neighborhood on the west side of 

Charleston and you got on a bus. Your parents said, straighten up. Be polite. Don’t rock the boat. 

In a sense, don’t get in trouble. And remembering what it was like. And this is this culture, the 

segregated environment we were in, such that my mother couldn’t try on clothes at a department 

store and we were not supposed to be able to drink at the water fountain, and all that business. 

Of course, we did it as kids. We did test the water to see whether the white water tasted like the 

colored water did. Okay. So that kind of nurturing upbringing, even in the second-class 

citizenship status really produced some very proud people. Some very proud people. Then I got 

dumped into a different culture altogether. And I found out that the second-class citizens, first of 

all, they didn’t even know much about, I had people the first day at Iowa walk up to me and 

really stare. [00:24:24] And this is the first time, if you came from Storm Lake, Iowa, or some 

little small town where it was all agriculture and was all planting corn. And you went to all 

white schools and you had no reason, here you are now at a big university. And here is a Black 

guy standing in front of you in line to register. And so, I got lots of stares, probably much more 

so than I would have gotten in the South amongst white people who were used to seeing us close 

up and personal, but even in the second-class status, of course. And so, people asked questions, 

funny questions like, what position do you play on the football team? Because that’s all Iowa 

State was, well, I shouldn’t say that. There were some students there like me, but a lot of it was a 

different world and I found out that the quote, [inaudible] to the N-word, for them was not Black 

people. It was Catholics. It was Jews. Others who were treated in not so kind ways. We were, of 



 
 

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course, a part of that group. But they weren’t that familiar with us, they didn’t know us very 

well. I did find that the teachers were fine. The people who taught me and built my architectural 

career, at the beginning, were very nurturing and very understanding. I did find those calculus 

classes tougher, chemistry classes tougher. But in fairness to them, I never felt that they treated 

me as an “other.” They were fine. What drove me from Iowa and drove me back home, well at 

least a desire to go back home, was the weather.  

MHP: I understand that. [laughs] 

HG: You understand that? [laughs] 

MHP: I know I do. I’m a native North Carolinian, I do. 

HG: [00:26:28] So, as I told you in the beginning, what intimidated me more was going 

so far away to a distant land. And while there are nice things to say about the Iowa landscape. 

Nice to say things to say about people who I didn’t blame as much because they weren’t 

exposed to Black folks. The thing that really was negative for me was the harsh winters, the cold 

weather. The fact that I just wasn’t accustomed to that, I yearned to go home. 

MHP: Before we get to Clemson, we’ll be coming to that very quickly. But I want to 

just step back a bit. You talked about those nurturing teachers, those teachers who challenged 

you to think beyond, right, anything that you could think before. And so, just thinking of this 

context of you learning, being pushed beyond. But then you’re being, you know, an activist also. 

So, I’m going to talk about your involvement in a sit-in, and I want you to tell me a bit about 

that before we move.  

HG: I thought you’d go to that. [laughs] 

MHP: What I have here is April 1960, that you helped lead a sit-in at a lunch counter in 

Charleston. And I just want to ask about that. The planning for it, who was involved, and what 

you anticipated the reaction to be.  



 
 

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HG: Okay. Well, first of all, we got involved in that process because of Greensboro, the 

Greensboro Four. I had been, of course, you wouldn’t be surprised by this. I had become a 

member of the NAACP Youth Council, and a lot of my buddies in high school also became 

members of that. So, the youth council that used to sit around and we’d be following the news 

and the NAACP meetings were all about what was going on in the rest of the country, really, 

and how we were really making progress toward accomplishing integration with all deliberate 

speed. [00:28:28] And it was coming clear, being admirers of Martin Luther King and what he 

was doing and Rosa Parks and all that stuff. We’d talk about that. And when the Greensboro 

Four did these sit-ins with students and literally, we were high school students, but they did 

what they were doing. And we saw that spreading across the South and Nashville and other 

places where HBCUs were and we said, “We finally found something to do. Maybe we ought to 

do this.” And so, we kept talking about it, and the meetings got to be much more interesting 

because now we weren’t just talking about what was happening in other places. We were talking 

about the possibility of ending segregation at lunch counters in our own hometown and now not 

having to pass that water fountain, and not getting a Coke and a hot dog. And we’re going to do 

something. This was worthwhile. So, we decided we had to be secretive about it. We couldn’t 

dare tell our parents, think about it. This was 1960 and this was February of 1960. I think the sit-

ins occurred in Greensboro on the first of February. So, the first rule was no telling our parents, 

because first thing they’re going to say is, “They’re going to arrest you.” It’s going to, in fact, I 

know my mother would’ve said that because she talked about other places this was happening, 

and “These poor kids are not going to finish school because they are going to end up going to 

jail.” And by implication [she would argue], “Harvey Gantt, don’t you ever dare ever think 

about that because you’re going to be graduating in May of 1960.” February of 1960 was when 

we were making those decisions. So, we couldn’t tell, I couldn’t even tell my daddy, who might 

have said, “Yeah, go ahead and do it, but your mama’s not going to like it.” [00:30:29] So, we 



 
 

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did, and we trained for it. We got some NAACP people to come in and say, “Look, if you’re 

going to do this, these are things you need to understand. Can you take the needling that’s going 

to occur? The harsh treatment you’re going to get from white patrons who may not want you 

there?” And there was a big story in the paper that happened in one of those Southern cities 

where they were pouring ketchup over the sit-ins, the kids who were demonstrating. So, we 

actually did some playacting to see how well some of us could stand being insulted, being called 

the N-word. You know, just because it, as you got closer to maybe having to do this, it was no 

longer an exciting drama that sixteen and seventeen-year-old kids felt like they were doing. This 

is getting serious. Staying in jail. So, we started off with thirty some students. We ended up with 

about twenty-seven. And to make it a secret, we did lots of interesting things that we thought we 

were so tactically great. We weren’t going to have a [noticeable] march to this five and dime, S. 

H. Kress. What we were going to do was divide ourselves up into nine kids and approach the 

place from different directions. And we did that so that we didn’t create a stir. And then all of a 

sudden, we showed up at the counter, sat down. We made an agreement that no one would be 

identified as the leader. We would just all be students from Burke High School. [00:32:33] 

That’s what we did. Sat there for about six, seven hours, [inaudible]. Got arrested. But you see, 

things are never as bad as they may look all the time. We did get the insults from some people 

who came, but the police were wonderful. They kind of kept the crowd away. And by the time 

we were arrested, it’s a big crowd on the streets waiting for us to come out. We were put into 

police cars. I don’t even remember where it was we went, but we weren’t taken to jail. We were 

actually taken to a courtroom, a vacant courtroom. I applaud the chief, even to this day, Chief 

Kelly, I believe his name was, he just wasn’t going to have this turn into [a big newspaper 

story]. And I guess they found a lot of these kids were nice kids in high school, they checked us. 

We finally had to give them our names. We sat in the courtroom for a few hours and then at the 

door were our parents. They’d worked out getting us out of jail. So, we called ourselves having 



 
 

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a soft, nonviolent sit-in. But we were proud of ourselves. And a year later, a couple of years 

later, Charleston had the real big demonstrations that really got rid of [public accommodations] 

segregation. But we were the first to do it.  

MHP: Did that experience, especially going, you know, to jail, not being in jail, right, 

but just being taken into the legal system. 

HG: Being arrested. 

MHP: Being arrested. 

HG: Exactly. 

MHP: Yeah. 

HG: Because that’s how we ended up meeting Matthew Perry. 

MHP: Yeah. Did it shape how you thought about the role of the legal system in the Civil 

Rights Movement?  

HG: Well, first of all, I was glad that there’s something called the NAACP Legal 

Defense Fund [laughs] and that [our] parents didn’t have to pay the legal fees to get us out. 

[00:34:30] We were actually happy to be identified with being rescued, shall we say, from the 

legal system that was unfair from a public policy standpoint. But we had advocates like the 

NAACP who we, we were already impressed they were smart, smart lawyers, people who had 

turned the Supreme Court around. So, there was never a moment of, I can’t remember at least 

some of the guys who talked about this years later, never a moment of gloom and doom that 

people might have anticipated would have happened to us, that we’d end up in jail and get a 

record. Nothing would happen. Those lunch counters would go on being segregated. So, what 

was the point? You just wanted to do some grandstanding before you graduated from high 

school? An interesting story for me was when we were picked up by our parents. Some of them, 

including my father, almost couldn’t suppress the smile and the — it’s like he stood a little taller. 

When we got in the car, of course, my mother laid it on, about “You’re doing such a crazy thing, 



 
 

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but I love you anyway Harvey.” And it was like you say, you don’t know about that record. 

Daddy was just, “You all right, boy?” You know, it was for him something that he was proud of. 

I think mom, I think she was proud too, she just couldn’t express it.  

MHP: Well, your safety, I’m sure was her [laughs], and his too, but, right? Perfect segue 

to LDF and Clemson, right, because again, here comes LDF, but let’s talk about Clemson, right? 

[00:36:35] So, you had gone to Iowa State one year, too cold. You decided to leave and, let’s 

talk about your selecting Clemson. When you say, okay, Iowa State is not going to be it. When 

you were growing up in South Carolina, how did you think about Clemson? What was, what did 

Clemson sort of mean to you? What were your sort of impressions?  

HG: It was football. It was football. It was football back then and, but it was a place that 

I didn’t really think I’d ever get to, never thought about going. I didn’t even know they had an 

architecture school. Ms. Broadnax, my guidance counselor who I’ve mentioned quite a bit in 

this thing, you know, she never thought about Clemson, even though she knew that I was a 

member of the NAACP Youth Council. She never equated me turning that around or taking 

some legal action to go to a school like Clemson. All deliberate speed was working in that very 

few of us were activating the effort to integrate schools. So, here’s how Clemson comes into 

play. I’m, on a cold day in Iowa, I almost, well, I’ve said this a thousand times, it’s not the first 

time I’ve said this. I’m standing in the lobby of the architecture building, reading a list of the 

twenty top schools of architecture in the country. And that list was up there because Iowa State 

was on that list, but Clemson was even above Iowa State. I said, “Clemson! That’s in South 

Carolina. Boy, if I went back to South Carolina, I’d be closer to some of my girlfriends, go to 

some of the dances at the HBCUs. [00:38:37] Even if I study. I don’t like this weather. This is a 

good place to go.” This was 1961, winter. And as I recall, there were noises being made at the 

University of Georgia by Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton [Holmes], I can’t remember his first 

name. And so I said, you know what? These other places, other schools in the South were 



 
 

17 
 

quietly integrating [like] here in North Carolina. I said, I bet nobody has ever applied to 

Clemson. We might actually be shocked. This is how naïve I was, we might be shocked if we 

just sent a nice, innocent application. So that’s exactly what I did, went to the library, got a 

college application for Clemson, sent that thing off, said, let’s see what happens. And I got a 

letter back and they were very nice, and they said things like, "Send us your high school 

transcripts and a transcript of your first [quarter] grades in Iowa State.” I mean, the semester, I 

mean, the quarter, they meant, the quarterly half. Two quarters I attended Iowa State. They were 

very, very polite. So, I told the guys I played bridge with in the club room of the dorm, “Told 

you that nobody [Black] ever applied to Clemson before. They’re going to let me in.” I was 

naïve. [00:40:42] They sent a second letter once they got all the data in. My high school 

transcript, Iowa State sent my first two quarter grades. I was proud of those grades and they sent 

me back a letter and said, “We noticed that you’re doing very well at Iowa State, please stay 

there.” In effect, that’s what it said, very nicely. And that really did tick me off. That really made 

me mad. [laughs] And then along the way people said, “I told you so. They’re not going to let 

you in. You’re not going to get in.” Five applications later, well, the third application time, that’s 

when I was, I was told, “You might want to get some help. You might want LDF to help you. 

There is a lawyer that you’ve already met.” And that’s true. I had met Matthew Perry, who came 

and spoke to us about what was going to happen in the sit-in case. He spoke to all the 

demonstrators at Mother Emanuel Church and in that basement he was telling us all of the 

possibilities out there. And people, the tale goes that I met him there, and that’s when he made 

the thing, that “One of you is going to go to Clemson one day.” And that really never happened. 

That’s a tale that got told. But I get to meet him again by letter because I did tell them what I’d 

done, there were two applications that had gone Clemson already, and they turned me down and 

what do I do now? [00:42:31] And they [Perry and his associates] said, keep applying. And so, 

three more applications later is when we got — but I got introduced. Matthew Perry helped me 



 
 

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in terms of framing the letters that I wrote. And, of course, they had all kinds of reasons why 

they wouldn’t accept me. The transcript didn’t arrive on time, we’ve got some new requirements. 

I can’t even remember all the different, and it seemed like I was beating my head against a stone 

wall. So, the summer of 1962, we filed a lawsuit. Matthew Perry, Connie Motley, that whole 

brain trust. Willie Smith out of Greenville, Donald Sampson out of Columbia. They all got 

excited about this case. And we were checked out to see whether or not we were willing to do it. 

And a little-known fact is that there was another student who had come to Iowa State with me 

[from Charleston]. After me, I’m sorry. And he enrolled a couple of quarters after I did. And I 

told him I was going to go to Clemson, and he says, “Well, I want to go too. I want to go too.” 

But he dropped out of that really quickly because his parents felt that there might be some 

economic sanctions if he pursued, something like that. So here I was, going alone. And I’ll never 

forget my sisters looking at me. And saying, “You’re really going to do this? Really?” And I 

said, “I really am.” And then the next day’s paper had headlines: “Charleston Student Sues 

Clemson.” [inaudible] And then they started believing. “You are really serious. And you are 

crazy.” [laughs] 

MHP: [00:44:49] Why was their reaction that? What were their concerns? Did they 

have, I mean —  

HG: They were concerned about my safety. I had sisters who listened to their mother 

who thought, this is not a great idea. Good student. Why don’t you stay there, get your degree? 

Come out, earn a living that way. Maybe you come back to the South one day when things have 

changed. I think my mother thought “one day” would always be great. But you don’t have to be 

the one that brings about “one day.” Go do your thing, you’re smart, blah blah blah. I had 

friends in high school who were [mostly] very encouraging. The courtroom scenes in the fall of 

1962 were just an eye opener for me. I never saw such smart lawyers in my life because I never 

saw Black lawyers operate. And, you know, I go to the lawyers doing things like clearing up a 



 
 

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deed or my daddy was trying to get some sort of certification. But that’s how these guys operate. 

And they were better than Perry Mason [laughs] on the scene of what they were doing. 

Constance Motley was, she was a revelation. I mean, I never thought of women lawyers in that 

sense. You know, I mean, today, I don’t think nothing of it. But back then, she was something 

and there’s this classic picture taken in Jet magazine with me standing behind her in a break in 

the cases in the courtroom action. [00:46:43] And we’re just having a lot of good times. Part of 

what I think they were saying to me was, “Morally, this case is on your side and legally it is. 

And we know we’re going to win.” They were the most confident people I’d ever seen. They 

knew that they were going to win this case, not necessarily with the federal judge who was 

hearing it, but most certainly once we appealed it to a [higher court]. And they were absolutely 

correct. Absolutely right. And one little tidbit here was in the breaks in the courtroom in 

Anderson, they had these times when there was a recess and we’d all go behind the curtain, so to 

speak. And Matthew Perry and Constance Motley were having such a good time talking with the 

lawyers who were their adversaries. And I could never figure that out. I mean, why are you all 

so friendly? I think I remember a comment coming from Donald Sampson, one of the lawyers 

from Columbia who had been with LDF there. And they said, “What’s happening, Harvey, is 

those lawyers who are being paid a lot of money by the state of South Carolina are simply going 

through an act of exerting every administrative remedy and legal remedy available so that they 

can present the posture that they tried everything to keep the schools from being integrated.” 

How cynical that was to me. I mean, come on, now. [00:48:43] And then we get in front of the 

curtain and back into the courtroom, they were at loggerheads with each other, you know, but 

they all knew what the result was going to be. 

MHP: You just talked about how brilliant Matthew Perry, Constance Baker Motley, the 

other attorneys were, and well-prepared. They had this strategy going. Can you talk to me about 



 
 

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like that? Like their strategies as much as you can? Did you have a role in the strategy at all? 

What was your role in all this? 

HG: Well, I had brief time on the witness stand, I had to answer some basic ABC 

questions like, “Are you interested in architecture?” or some crazy thing like that. I wasn’t a part 

of the head-to-head stuff that was going on. I don’t even know if I would have understood all of 

what they were trying to do, establishing the presence of the registrar at the school when I tried 

to go and do a personal interview and why they needed this. Frankly, I wasn’t that interested. 

You know, I was there at times, but other times I was reading the papers and seeing how they 

were covering the story. And getting used to, remember now I was almost twenty years old. Still 

a kid, in a sense. Still a little bit naïve. But recognizing that this was going to happen. But no, 

when Constance Baker Motley would dip her head over and they were getting together with this 

next witness. What they were trying to get out of the next witness, or what they needed to have 

that witness say, that didn’t interest me that much. It really didn’t. 

MHP: Can you tell me any more about Constance Motley, as you describe what she’s 

like and the confidence that she had, that Perry had too, but anything else that you just 

remember about her? 

HG: [00:50:53] Well. At first, she did not impress me as the kind of person you wanted 

to kibitz around with because she seemed to be so serious. And her stature, her commanding 

presence, I would say, is kind of awe-inspiring in a way, you know. You know, she was this 

important New York lawyer who had done terrific things. She was the lawyer for James 

Meredith. She was the one that carried that case. And so, the case in Georgia and ultimately the 

case in Alabama. She was looked up to by the other lawyers in South Carolina, even though 

Matthew Perry carried a lot of the load of questioning and cross-examination, it was, I always 

got the impression she was the lead team lawyer in this case. And, you know, we didn’t, even 

though that picture in Jet shows us laughing and going on, I never probed her to find out, you 



 
 

21 
 

know, who Mr. Motley was or, but that just didn’t come across. The moment was just too big to 

get too personal with her. You know. Small talk was not my thing. 

MHP: Right. Was there ever a point going through all this, the guardian of the answer, 

going through all this, was there ever a point where you thought, this is not worth all this to get 

into Clemson? 

HG: Not a moment. Not a moment. I was already seeing myself on that campus. 

[00:52:43] I had started to take their newspaper to gauge the fervor of the student opposition, to 

gauge the general student comments. And somebody had started to send me The Tiger, which is 

still to this day, their newspaper. So, I got a copy of The Tiger every day. It was a daily paper. 

And I got to know the editor of The Tiger before it was over. And then we both moved to 

Charlotte, and he started working at Bank of America, I was running the architectural firm. But 

my point is, never did I ever think I was not going to get there because in gleaning through the 

newspapers, most of the students were going to be indifferent to it. That’s usually the way that it 

is. There is that big old middle that doesn’t give a damn. Doesn’t care. Yeah, you might have the 

right-leaning. There were a group of students who I believe, reading those papers. There were 

huge numbers of letters to the editor that came from the students. And of course, topic A was, 

“What’s going to happen when the school gets integrated?” There was the sense that this crowd, 

this student body knew it was going to happen. Maybe they understood the charade that was 

going on better than the general public did. So all of that was encouraging to me. That once I got 

there, there was a crowd that said, “We’re going to ostracize him. Don’t talk to him. Don’t speak 

to him.” And I thought I could survive that. I could survive that. 

MHP: [00:54:41] Definitely a different reception than say what happened in Mississippi 

with James Meredith. 

HG: Well, that’s because, I told James Meredith well before he passed on, we would 

meet occasionally in New York, some of it was LDF stuff, that I’m thankful that he made my 



 
 

22 
 

integration a peaceful one. He didn’t quite understand what I was saying but I said, what 

happened in Mississippi was not likely to happen again in the South. And Meredith went in, in 

the fall of [19]62. I went in in the winter of [19]63. And the Mississippi incident was so similar 

a moment in this whole struggle to integrate schools, National Guard, people being killed, all 

kinds of necessarily bad, bad publicity, that the president of Clemson, R.C. Edwards, and the 

Governor of South Carolina, Ernest Hollings, at that point when the trials were going on and 

then the new governor, Russell, when he came in, had all agreed, even the General Assembly, 

that we were not going to have what happened in Mississippi. And Edwards put out a few days 

before my actual entrance, [a directive that] any student, any student that got out of line was 

going to be sent home, no questions asked. Any student who confronted me or did anything, 

they were going to be sent home. And he was serious and the students were serious. I often tell 

people that the only epithets I ever heard in that whole ordeal was the ones hollered from the top 

of a high rise dormitory down to me if I was walking across the campus alone. They would 

simply say something like, “N, go home. [00:56:50] You know, go home. You don’t belong 

here.” But other than that. Nothing, in fact, we played a game. I got to know the students in the 

architecture school well. And we would walk back and forth to our dorms. Nice straight line 

shot, where I was living and where the architecture school was. And we said, let’s play a prank. 

One day we decided to play this prank. Let’s have you confronted by a bunch of angry white 

students and try to pick a fight with you and let’s see what happens. We’re trying to figure out 

how much protection I had because people suspected that there were folks around who looked 

like students that really weren’t. And they were right. We faked this fight and out of nowhere all 

these people showed up and said [laughs], “Anything we can help you with?” And we all 

laughed about it. 



 
 

23 
 

MHP: Did you ever have a conversation with the university president, Edwards, because 

obviously he had said, oh, no, it’s not about race. But then calms the waters when you are, you 

know, admitted and you’re there. Did you ever speak one-on-one to him? 

HG: Yes, we did. Yes. We spoke almost immediately after I got there. And then we 

spoke again a couple of weeks later when he was very concerned for my safety. I was going to 

this dance. One of the things I discovered was that as segregated as that institution had been, 

Brook Benton, an R&B star back then, was coming to the campus for a dance, which was 

shockingly a surprise to me. I said, Brook Benton on a formally segregated institution, a Black 

R&B star? [00:58:50] I was learning something about the culture of southern schools is that they 

didn’t let the students come in, but the entertainers were very popular. But this was going to be a 

dance. And word got out that I was going to this dance. Up to that point, I had pretty much gone 

to class, gone to the dining hall, back to my room. Got to know a few of the students in the hall 

with me. That was basically my social circle. But I said, I’m going to do that. The other thing I 

was going to do was to go to a football game whenever one occurred. And the reason was, hey, 

if I’m a student here, I got to become a real student. The president then called me and we had 

this nice heart-to-heart talk. And he suggested that I not go because there’d be some opportunity 

for some crazy devil to approach me. If you got up and danced with a co-ed, that could be a 

trigger for something bad. And I don’t know where I got it from, but the gumption was, “Mr. 

President, I really respect all you’ve done, but I think I’m going to go to the dance.” 

MHP: You went to the dance? 

HG: Yes. 

MHP: Did you dance? 

HG: Not really. [laughs] 

MHP: But you went. 



 
 

24 
 

HG: I got called backstage by Brook Benton, and people thought that was terrific. He 

wanted to talk to me, but no, I basically just went and observed. Maybe that was the kind of 

deferential way of maybe listening to the president but the notion of saying, no I couldn’t do 

that, and we’d never had any trouble before, except when the March on Washington occurred in 

the summer of 1963. [01:00:46] We had another discussion, and he basically wanted to, because 

when I got to Clemson in January, I went to school year-round, every session. I wanted to make 

sure I graduated in [19]65. So, I took three years in two years. I just went to school, never quit 

going. And so that summer I was there in school, he said, “Are you taking time off to go to 

Washington, D.C., like I hear all these people are?” And I said, “Sir, I can’t do that. I’m going to 

have to watch that on television.” So I didn’t go. 

MHP: Well, you are soon joined by your wife. Well, the young lady who would become 

your wife, was the second Black student to enroll at Clemson. So, just can you talk about 

meeting her? Just sort of also about, I think you both were LDF scholarship recipients? Talk 

about that scholarship, what it enabled both of you to do, what it meant to you, but yeah. 

HG: Well, first of all, the LDF scholarship, I didn’t find out about the scholarship until I 

actually was enrolled. For some reason, we just assumed we would have to pay the normal fees. 

And what I didn’t share with you was one of the things that happened at Iowa State was that I 

got a grant from the state of South Carolina every semester that made up the difference between 

what an in-state student had to pay if Iowa State was charging out-of-state fees, I got those out 

of state fees paid by the state of South Carolina, which was one of the reasons they gave for not 

accepting me at Clemson. “We noticed that you’re getting scholarship money from the state of 

South Carolina, so stay where you are.” [01:02:47] When I went to Clemson, we said, well, now 

we’re in-state students. We will have to pay the normal fees, and I’m not sure, Melody, how I 

got the notice that, or what happened, because I got mine before Cindy got hers. But they said 

LDF, I think it was the Herbert Lehman Scholarship, that your costs to go to Clemson are 



 
 

25 
 

covered. You know who I was happiest for? My father and mother. It seemed like a kind of 

reward that they were going to get, their kid went to Clemson, and they didn’t have to pay a 

dime, because of some generous people in New York that had paid the legal fees for the firm, 

for the suit. And also paid the scholarship. And then Cindy got the same thing to happen to her. 

But back to meeting her. Or. I heard about her. I had, the story is, and she says she went to that 

meeting. She never remembered shaking my hand or doing any of that, so that could be true. I 

was traveling the state as this famous college student who had integrated Clemson in the spring 

of 1963. Met lots of high school students who were introduced to me and I was saying, of course 

they wanted to know what it was like being the only student there with all those students, other 

[white] students. And so, I was telling that story and the South Carolina Human Relations 

Council was sponsoring these things. Cindy came to one of the Columbia meetings. I didn’t 

know her from Adam [inaudible], I really didn’t, and we didn’t shake hands. [01:04:50] In the 

middle of one of my summer school sessions, a guy came over to me and showed me a little tiny 

article that said, “Clemson accepts second African American student”, a Negro student this is, 

that they called us back then. I didn’t pay too much attention, because I, in a way, I told her 

later, I was a little disappointed. I thought maybe there’d be ten, eleven, or twelve students, you 

know, that were going to come. One single student. So, bottom line. And [later] there was a kid 

from Columbia, Larry Nazry, who was another male student, so she was the first [woman] to 

come. And so, one of my architectural buddies said, well, at least this is a woman. A strange 

comment. Anyway, when she got there, I tried to be her friend, in fact, I was doing rehearsing. 

How am I going to show her this campus when I’ve only been here one semester and two 

summer sessions? But I’ll show her around and try to make her comfortable. And that’s what I 

did. For about two months. [laughs] She was cute. [laughs] She was very nice. And I guess the 

rest is history. 



 
 

26 
 

MHP: Was it also just some comfort knowing there was someone else there who was 

like you in some ways, like can you just talk to me about what that meant, or maybe it didn’t 

mean anything? 

HG: Well, outside of the architecture students, I always ate lunch alone. When Cindy 

got there, it was very comforting to have arranged to go to dinner together. Maybe not always 

breakfast because our classes, conflicts occurred. [01:06:52] And we got to know some of the 

people who took care of us, the janitors, and they would invite us to the church in the Clemson 

Black community. And by that time, three of us would all go, but we stuck it out and continued 

to do it. There was a comfort level and people in Seneca, South Carolina, who absolutely loved 

her. And they, you know, I was the history maker so for some reason. I guess that’s what a 

woman does. She softened the edges of whatever was happening. So, she was wonderful. I 

married her. We dated. We went fishing together. We did lots of crazy things. 

MHP: Did you stay in touch over the, while you were at Clemson matriculating, and 

then afterwards, did you stay in touch with those LDF, those Legal Defense Fund attorneys?  

HG: Well, Matthew Perry, I certainly stayed in touch with all the way through. We 

appeared many times around South Carolina together. He sometimes complained that he had 

done a lot of other things, but the only thing that they always mentioned was he was the lead 

attorney for Harvey Gantt going to Clemson. Yes, we did stay in touch. And I got to know his 

family very well. Hallie Perry and their son. Got to know Willie Smith. Used to eat dinner with 

him all the time. That’s in Greenville because he was near to Clemson. Donald Sampson’s 

probably the one I didn’t get to know as well. But yes, we stayed in touch. Connie Motley, not 

so much, because she was in New York, and then I just read of all the wonderful things that 

were happening to her, all the awards she was getting, and she was very respected and became a 

judge. [01:08:58] And later on, after my career in politics, I met her son and he became a good 

friend of ours and friend of my campaign manager, but yeah, I did stay in touch, and we went to 



 
 

27 
 

LDF dinners in New York. And some of the pioneers, we’d all get to meet. That’s how I met 

James Meredith and Vivian Malone and a few of those others. 

MHP: You had a chance to get to know former LDF President and Director-Counsel 

Julius Chambers. Can you just talk about, you know, what he was like? Your impressions of 

him, how you knew him? Tell us a little bit about that. 

HG: Julius Chambers was a good friend of mine. And I think we actually met while he 

was interning. We never could clear that up. Someone asked us, when did we first meet? It is, 

really, the real first meeting was in his office. In Charlotte, right about where the Hornets have 

their big coliseum now. He had a little second story office, about three or four rooms, very 

unbefitting of the distinguished attorney that he became, just tiny cramped little space. I went to 

see him because he was the attorney that was filing these lawsuits in Charlotte when I first got 

there. [01:11:01] And that’s when he reminded me that we met at an LDF function prior to me 

getting to meet him as a practicing attorney. He was a great lawyer. He was a brilliant man. I 

had the benefit, I really, when I think about, I had the benefit of developing a very positive 

impression of the legal profession. And that actually came, Melody, from the attorneys that I 

encountered, I used to hear people talk about dishonest lawyers and shysters. That was not my 

impression. There were some serious people out there changing the nature of this country, and 

they were determined and hardworking people. And here was Chambers, a few years older than 

me. I don’t know if you know him or knew him. Short in stature, understated, spoke in a very 

low-key manner. You never would have gotten the impression that he was as brilliant as he was. 

And as we, when we met, I was an intern in an architectural firm here in Charlotte. And we 

lived in the same neighborhood. Right around the corner from each other. So, we’d play bid 

whist together. And he’d tell me about these wonderful — not wonderful, scary — cases in 

eastern North Carolina and central North Carolina, where he was going before judges who were 

hostile. This little guy was just stirring up the legal profession in North Carolina. [01:13:03] 



 
 

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And I kept saying, “You’re the Matthew Perry of North Carolina”, and we’d joke and kid about 

that kind of thing. He was a good friend and to watch him in the courtroom. I sat in on one 

session one day at lunchtime when he was arguing the Swann case, because that was, everybody 

was looking at that case. Quite frankly, I came away bored [laughs] because it wasn’t quite as 

exciting as my case in Anderson, South Carolina, years earlier. But he was getting into some 

details and that judge was listening and you know the judge listened because he ruled in Julius’s 

favor. But he was a wonderful guy. Just a wonderful guy, as I said, all those LDF guys were. 

And I’m not saying this because I’m talking to you about LDF. I mean, that is the real 

impression that I got out of the legal profession from the wonderful attorneys that I met who 

took their profession seriously and took the Constitution seriously. There are still people today 

that are fighting that way that I admire. 

MHP: The two of you, though, never worked, had a chance to work together in any 

capacity though? No? 

HG: I was an architect. We did work with him when we designed some buildings on the 

campus at NCCU when he, his career went, you know, Legal Defense, General Counsel and 

leader, and then surprisingly, back to North Carolina as the Chancellor of North Carolina 

Central. [01:15:03] And so, we had a couple of occasions to work together on some buildings on 

that campus. But what was interesting is when we started to do that, he recalled, when we first 

were much younger men and I added on to his house [laughs] and designed his brother 

Kenneth’s house in River Hills in the Charlotte area. So, Julius and I, we laughed about that 

because these are million-dollar buildings now, and we were laughing about keeping within the 

budget of a few thousand dollars for a family room that we designed and ultimately had a lot of 

fun in. 

MHP: I’m going to wrap up with the last two questions. If we have more time, I’ll put in 

a bit more. But I definitely want to get to these. And one will be definitely about your career in 



 
 

29 
 

architecture and just sort of how you see architecture as a way to do your own work, right, in the 

public realm as far as making spaces more accessible to everybody. Inviting everybody in some 

ways. But I want to ask you about the, oh yes, thank you. Yeah, yeah, when you ran for Senate 

against Jesse Helms. So that was [19]90 and [19]96, if I have this right. The races, of course, 

drew a lot of national attention, in particular because of Senator Helms’s behavior. I just 

wonder, can you talk about what led you to consider running for Senate and what it was like 

being part of a race or a campaign, a race that was so contentious? And where, in particular, 

where Mr. Helms definitely made a lot of race-based appeals to North Carolina voters. 

HG: I can’t talk about the Senate race without being a little bit more expansive about 

how I got into politics in the first place. [01:17:20] And I know you want to end up in 

architecture. But it was architecture and city planning that got me involved in politics. 

Remember I graduated from M.I.T., came back and did a thing in city planning and worked with 

Floyd McKissick on something called Soul City. And I’m not going to get into that, you can 

look that up. We were trying to develop this idealized new town. And then I moved from there 

to forming an architectural firm with Jeff Huberman in 1971. And as a result of that, spent some 

time getting to know city leaders who often would come to me about some advice on how to 

plan something, or where do you place these kinds of things, and what can we do to make this 

area better? You know, “You’re a trained planner” and blah, blah, blah. And as a result of that, 

working with the council and doing some city design projects, we designed [a prototype] 

neighborhood center. Which was a new strategy for improving these neighborhoods of color that 

were the second tier of neighborhoods. [coughs and pauses to drink some water] And [I] got 

asked to fill an unexpired term on the city council and I filled that one-year term and took to it, 

took to politics like a duck takes to water. 

MHP: [01:19:18] I have to say, I’m not surprised. [laughs] Are you surprised that I’m 

not surprised? 



 
 

30 
 

HG: Yeah, a lot of people in Charlotte were surprised because I had not involved myself 

in elective politics. I was spending time talking to people who were in politics. And the only 

reason I got consideration was because I was apolitical. The seat was a coveted seat on the city 

council, which at that time was made up of seven at-large elected council members, no districts 

or anything, had to win the whole city, the top seven vote getters. And it required people who 

understood politics and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But in order to avoid a conflict, the city 

council gets to appoint the additional [vacant] seat. Well, not additional seat, but gets to appoint 

a person to that vacant seat.4 And there were so many people in the African American 

community clamoring for that seat until they decided, “We can’t give any of those people a head 

start. So, let’s pick someone who’s apolitical.” I keep bringing my mother up, because she 

thought I had lost my mind. “Here you were beginning a great career in architecture, building a 

firm. And now you want to wallow in the mud with politicians?” She had very traditional views. 

For some reason I said yes, and I enjoyed it. And through the years, you know, kept getting 

elected, finally losing the mayor’s race for a third term in the late [19]80s. [01:21:24] And 

maybe sitting around the house and not doing anything, and watching Jim Hunt lose a race for 

the Senate. And watching a guy who I thought was a demagogue continue to win and to mislead 

a lot of North Carolinians as to what their future could be like. He was using the hate message 

way back. His entire career was that, but he managed to get elected over and over, using fear as 

a tactic. And so, my campaign manager and I were playing tennis in our backyard [in the spring 

of 1989] and we said, nobody is going to — because Jim [Hunt] had decided he’d had enough of 

it. He was not going to run against Jesse Helms a second time, which meant that Helms was 

going to go unchallenged. And so, we said, well, we’ll run, if for no other reason than to present 

an alternative platform to the citizens of North Carolina. Let us talk about health care. Let us 

 
4 During transcript review, Mr. Gantt noted that the seat had been occupied by a prominent African American, Fred 
Alexander. 



 
 

31 
 

talk about education. Let us talk, even way back then, about the environment. Let’s just build a 

campaign around those themes and see if we can, first of all, get nominated. [laughs] Forget 

about Jesse Helms. Let’s see if he can get nominated amongst the Democrats. No one had done 

that before. And it was one of the most inspiring campaigns that I’d ever been a part of. We won 

the Democratic nomination. Other than the night that I won my first campaign, my first mayor’s 

race, is probably one of the highlights of my life just winning that nomination. Then after having 

won it, we said, oh, boy. It’s like the dog catching up with [the auto], it was like, now we got it, 

what are we going to do? [01:23:28] How are we going to run against this guy, who was just 

such a negative person? So we decided to run a campaign that was ignoring him and spending 

time defining ourselves and making it clear that Helms didn’t spend time worrying about those 

[important “kitchen table”] issues. So, we showed some of them, the climate and the 

environment, the bad water and the bad air. We talked about education from pre-K all the way 

up and how much good that would do for white and Black citizens in this state. We talked about 

health care and how that would help so many people in rural areas and in [inner] cities. This was 

way before Obamacare was even uttered by anybody, way before we knew Obama or anybody 

else did. Bottom line is we were doing a good job. Almost kind of daring Jesse to bring up the 

race issue. Not giving him a real excuse. They tried to do lots of things like use the television 

[ads] to bring up things that they thought were negative in my past. Not a lot of that to 

[inaudible]. And then there was a poll that came out about a month before the end of the 

campaign, and it’s called the White Hands — the poll, first of all, came out, showing us leading 

Jesse by about nine points. [01:25:27] Charlotte Observer ran it. Everybody in our campaign 

was ecstatic. Boy, that strategy worked. We neutralized it [race as an issue]. Didn’t give him an 

excuse to deal with it. And then we gave him an excuse. The excuse we gave him was there was 

a bill in the Senate that dealt with quotas. And at a press conference at UNC Charlotte, they 

were asking me a question about whether I supported quotas or not. I said, not in the sharpest 



 
 

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sense in the way you’re using that. Anyway, it was a political answer that we were prepared to 

answer that said we thought, we did feel as if there were to be efforts made to move people into 

jobs and universities, and affirmative action was in fact a good thing. So [inaudible] somewhat 

denied, but Jesse Helms, to his credit, had very, very sharp folks to support his campaign and 

know how to promote it.5 So, one night, my campaign manager [Mel Watt] awakened me and 

said, you got to see this. I know it’s crazy, but just this thing just came in. This ad that Jesse is 

running, and he said it, he said it was [later called] the White Hands ad. Go look it up. I’m sure 

you’ve already seen it. Saying this [white] person is balling up an application, saying, you 

needed this job, but Harvey Gantt gave it to a [Black] person. Very skillful way of dealing with 

that portion of it. [01:27:30] So, it was the introduction of race at the campaign. Introduction of 

affirmative action into the campaign. And they literally ran that ad morning to night, and it 

started to move the numbers. 

MHP: What was your, when you first saw the ad, your first time you saw it, what did 

you think when you saw it? 

HG: I actually thought, and I gave a press conference a couple of blocks away from here 

that said, “North Carolinians deserve better than that. We’ve gotten almost to the end of this 

campaign, a month within the end of it. And I personally thought that I got a chance to say what 

I needed to say, and [Helms] got a chance to say how good he was. And the citizens of North 

Carolina were going to decide this election. I’m shocked that he would introduce such a racially 

motivated ad designed to appeal to fears rather than the hopes and aspirations of ours.” And that 

was unfair. And I actually believed that most North Carolinians would see it for what it was. I 

actually believed that. There were smarter people in my campaign who didn’t believe that. And 

they then explained to me what had happened, that Helms, we had inoculated him in a sense [on 

 
5 During transcript review, Mr. Gantt clarified, “My response was twisted by the Helms team to mean that I supported 
quotas, and they used that theme to develop a devastating T.V. ad.”  



 
 

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the race issue]. Didn’t give him anything to bite down on where he could use the race ad. But 

that innocent question at a press conference at UNC Charlotte gave them what they needed, 

which was a way to attack the race issues through the affirmative action thing. Now whether 

they would run an ad like that, no politician in the country would try doing that. But Jesse 

Helms would. And it made all the difference. That lead that we had was wiped out. And we 

struggled in the waning days of the campaign to try to overcome that. [01:29:29] And we’d still 

be leading sometimes, forty-nine percent, forty-eight percent, but not eight or nine points. And 

[our side knew that if] if you don’t get fifty percent in the polls, you're not going to win the 

election. 

MHP: This is one of those additional questions that I have that, you know, before I get 

to this, let me just ask you, when you saw what Helms did, your experience of enrolling and 

getting into Clemson, working with LDF, did that somehow prepare you for sort of these barbs 

that Helms threw at you? 

HG: Oh, yeah. I was the one chomping at a debate and he absolutely refused three times. 

He just, he was not going to debate me. And we actually were a little bit surprised about that 

because we thought Helms would have loved to have been on a platform with a Black man, a 

clearly Black man, and really sort of send his signals to a statewide audience. And that would be 

enough. But he absolutely shunned sitting down and talking about issues. And we were prepared 

to talk about race. What I think the experience of my earlier life said, to me, was I need not be 

intimidated by what he represented. As a matter of fact, I was saying he was doing it so poorly 

that I thought I could do it better. That in itself could have been intimidating to him, could have 

been intimidating to him, that he might not want to sit on stage and have to debate the question. 

So, it was best for him. And the message was sent very clearly, best for him not to be seen in the 

same room, not to even campaign in the same town if I’m there. [01:31:33] They used to have a 

game finding out where I was, simply because that would give me too much relevance. And the 



 
 

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word was he was not going to dignify Harvey Gantt. Not even being in the same room with him. 

We actually thought that would backfire, but it didn’t. 

MHP: This was one of the additional questions I sent to you, and I know definitely we 

want to ask this. You’ve held political office, run for national office. What are your thoughts 

then on ballot security programs related to recent people that LDF has opposed as judicial 

nominees? And I gave, for instance, Thomas Farr, was nominated 2017, 2018. He worked with 

Jesse Helms as a lead legal counsel on his Senate campaigns. So, just what’s your, kind of when 

you think about this, and LDF’s continued work, right, they’re continuing this work. When you 

think about as they come out to oppose some of these nominees who clearly are, what some 

would say, trying to intimidate voters and to restrict voters’ rights. 

HG: Let me just put it this way. And I thought about this when John Lewis died. And I 

actually said it with my friend Julius Chambers before he died. It is amazing to me that we’re 

still fighting the same battles. That this thing doesn’t go away simply by believing that the legal 

structure can change and then change people’s behavior. The Voting Rights Act of [19]65, the 

Public Accommodations Act of [19]64, all those things, Housing Act of [19]68, were designed 

to change the behavior of people and it didn’t. [01:33:41] These folks are still fighting this same 

battle, but they’re doing it in different ways. When I ran against Jesse Helms, they sent out 

postcards to African American voters telling them lies about if you moved or you did certain 

kinds of things, you could be arrested by voting. And we don’t know how many votes that 

suppressed. I.D., voter I.D. requirements now that are heavily against those more from our 

community than theirs, you know, the middle class community, a lot of my [African American] 

buddies said, you know, why are we arguing about that, Harvey? I mean, all of us have driver’s 

licenses, all of us. I said, yeah, that’s the problem with that is that you’re identifying a good 

segment of the middle-class Black community, but we really don’t know how many people don’t 

have picture IDs and whatever that exist in rural areas, [and] the depths of the ghetto in urban 



 
 

35 
 

centers. But why do they need that? There are other ways to verify whether this person has 

voted. The other kinds of measures that are designed to keep — you’re not encouraging people 

to vote. All of a sudden, you’re concerned about whether that ballot is secure enough. So, mail-

in ballots and other kinds of things have come under scrutiny. But we sum it all up to say it’s 

still the same game that we fought in 1965, [19]55. Keep Black people from voting. I’m being 

very blunt here. Black people from voting. That’s been the charge since the end of 

Reconstruction. Keep them from voting. The tactics may have changed, but the overall design is 

to minimize that vote. [01:35:44] And sometimes we get so caught up in it ourselves that any 

little thing that seems to interfere with our ability to send and get people to the polls, we object 

to. I mean, we don’t understand why Republicans react to taking people to the polls on Sunday 

or cutting down early voting. In fact, if we had early voting when I ran against Helms in 1990 

and 1996, we might have won the election, we actually might have won the election. They want 

to restrict the time, restrict the places. All of that is designed for one thing. And so, Chambers 

and I would talk about it. It’s not over. It’s still a battle. It’s going to be a battle for my 

grandchild. And that’s unfortunate, but, it’s just unfortunate. That’s the cynicism I come away 

with. Did we fight all these years to really be not far from the same place? I take that back to 

architecture. We were saying two percent of the architects in this country back then, when I 

went to Iowa State, were Black. Guess how many architects there are today that are Black as a 

percentage. 

MHP: What is the percentage? 

HG: Two percent. 

MHP: Two percent. 

HG: Isn’t that amazing? All the progress that I made, all the things that I did, all the 

buildings I designed, all the young people that we’ve encouraged to study architecture. It’s still 



 
 

36 
 

two percent. And in a way, it’s like Chambers and I were saying, sometimes that change is so 

hard to come by.  

MHP: And to maintain, right? And so, people who are still in the battle, LDF is still 

there. What do you imagine it would be like if LDF were not still doing this work? 

HG: [01:37:44] I hadn’t ever thought about that. I assumed they were still there. That’s 

why — I assumed there were people. I mean, I have, you didn’t bring this up, but I have given 

to that organization. It’s one of the ones that I’ve given to for the last sixty years, maybe. Easily. 

And I assume there are a lot of other people still doing that, because that’s the only way they can 

exist. They are always going to be needed, I don’t think there’s ever going to — I used to be 

naïve one time and say in speeches I made across the Carolinas, “One day, there won’t even be a 

need for civil rights organizations. They will have nothing to do. Why should they have 

anything to do? You know, the American people are going to obey the law and we will try to get 

along with each other. What will be the role of an NAACP then? Go in the courtroom and fight 

for what?” But they’re still fighting. 

MHP: So, NAACP, LDF, as critical as ever? 

HG: Yes. Yes. I’m not trying to do a commercial for them, but let me just put it this 

way. They are still needed. I’m not going to give my money to a lost cause. They’re still needed.  

MHP: Let me just make sure I got —  

HG: I hope I answered your questions. 

MHP: Oh, my gosh. You’re a wonderful interviewee, again because you know how to 

do interviews very well. And I think I had three times as many questions. But you’re great at 

anticipating and answering, like so I might have four questions down here. But the one question 

I ask you, you take care of four and this is great. [laughs] You make this very easy for me, but 

also this is very interesting to me. [01:39:45] This is a question we didn’t have on here. But I 

find this is very interesting because I think from the way you describe your father, you very 



 
 

37 
 

much are your father’s son. It makes you just the perfect person to have done all these things. It 

seems to me, because it’s like he gave you those messages, right? That confidence. I think 

working with LDF kind of furthered that whole thing. It just seems like you’re the right person 

at the right time. And so, when you ran for mayor and you said what your mother’s reaction was, 

was your father still living at that time? 

HG: Yes. 

MHP: What was his reaction? 

HG: Well, they ultimately ended up both of them being very happy and right there with 

the inauguration and everything else that occurred. Mom’s reaction was when I got on the city 

council and she just thought that that was just, she had a general, she knew nothing about 

Charlotte politics, but she knew about politics and she just thought that, my God, after all the 

sacrifice and energy and time you spent going to Iowa and Clemson. Why would you choose to 

go away from what you do, the God-given ability to do, which is to design buildings? We would 

have to argue about the fact that I want to design buildings in a community that I believe in. 

MHP: Your dad’s reaction to the city council appointment? 

HG: You guess that. [laughs] 

MHP: Was it that same look he had when he picked you up from jail? 

HG: Of course. Let me tell you something. My dad. I love my mother to death because 

she gave me a lot of confidence in a lot of ways, how to deal with people. My dad always 

carried a chip on his shoulder, he only got an eighth-grade education. We often said, my 

goodness, how much further he would have gone. He was such a smart man. [01:41:48] The 

chip on his shoulder was, you didn’t give me a chance. So, my son is going to get you back. He’s 

going to get you back. He never said that. But my sisters and I just read that in him every time 

there was a step towards something. So, you become a city councilman in the largest city in 

North Carolina and South Carolina. Then you become mayor. Then this boy has got the audacity 



 
 

38 
 

to run for Senate? So, he went to his grave. I think he saw it from the years he spent some time 

with me prior to his death. We talked a lot about that. But he was at peace. 

MHP: This then is the final question, I believe. Unless, actually, here’s my final 

question. I wasn’t going to ask this, but let me ask you, I want to open this up to, is there 

anything that my questions didn’t address that you would just like to say about the experience 

with Clemson and that whole legal battle there and LDF or just, you know, your experience in 

life as an architect and what you’ve been able to contribute to your community? Anything else 

you just want to add that my questions didn’t address? 

HG: Give me a minute. I really think, you, we, I think we covered just about everything 

that I would probably want to say. It was a great experience for me. I mean, I lived a very rich 

life. It is, what I try to do now — I don’t give speeches. [01:43:55] I quit doing that about four 

years ago because I found that the most fruitful thing that someone like myself can do is to offer 

some wisdom and perspective to younger people. So, I spend a lot of time with my grandkids. I 

have [nine] grandchildren and when I go out like I will do next week and speak to a group of 

about seventy or eighty college students who are in their first or second year of college. I like 

panel discussions and interaction with people, not boring them to death with a long speech, but 

hearing what they’re thinking and compare that to what I was thinking at their age, living in a 

similar time. See, the college students in their first and second years are Harvey Gantt when he 

was twenty, going to Clemson. I like to hear what they’re thinking about the world. And it’s 

actually something, you didn’t ask this question. But what is it that we pioneers, or those who’ve 

broken barriers, thanks to support from organizations like LDF, what is it that we can do in the 

golden years of our lives? What is it? One of the things I don’t want us to do is to be eighty 

years old and running for public office. And that’s not a knock against Joe Biden, okay? But 

what I really am saying is we need to allow younger people to step to the front and lead. What I 

loved about my life, I did it when I had all the vigor in the world, when youth allowed you some 



 
 

39 
 

naïveté in a way that was actually good, that allowed you to move forward. [01:46:07] 

Somehow, I want to keep conveying that to my grandchildren. I want them to be proud and I 

want to let them know I’m proud of them. Like my dad winked at me and said, “Keep going, 

boy.” More of us, more people my age, we don’t have to have gone to Clemson or been mayor 

of Charlotte. That’s not the point. The question is, what can we do to influence a whole 

generation of people who will be stepping into leadership roles? We don’t talk enough about 

that. We don’t talk enough about how to use the wisdom that might have been gained, to spread 

it. Deeply, not just a casual conversation or a twenty-minute speech, but listen to what people 

have to say. 

MHP: I love that. We would have buttoned it there. The moving forward thing, which is 

a perfect message. But I do want to ask you one more thing. When you think back about 

testifying, right, during the Clemson, the whole Clemson thing and you’re sitting there, the 

questions are coming to you. What was that like for you as you were going through that 

experience?   

HG: Oh, the questions that I got from the press, from the public? 

MHP: Right, and just the whole going through the legal process. 

HG: You know, I’m a curiosity for a lot of people. They want to know who is this kid 

from Charleston that wants to get into Clemson? Some of those questions I used to answer, if 

you went back and look at the clips. I liked their football team. They weren’t as good as they are 

now. But I liked their football team. I like old man, Frank Howard. I’m being facetious a little 

bit, but what I wanted to convey to them more than anything else was I’m here to get an 

education. I want to be an architect. I’m a child of the South. [01:48:07] I want to be an 

architect, I want to practice here. I want to be a citizen here. And that’s the theme you heard, just 

about, if you found those old press conferences, that’s what you heard. I came here for an 

education. People said, leave him alone and he’ll flunk out. That was a joke. That was a joke. I 



 
 

40 
 

said, I never for one moment thought I was going to flunk out. But I did want them to 

understand, because a lot of people didn’t believe it, that I was a plant. You were sent here by 

LDF and the NAACP. You trained at Iowa State so you could get along in an environment with 

white kids, but you really are here just to get the schooling and the degree. You probably aren’t 

going to succeed in architecture. You know, you aren’t going to finish. You’ll fade away in a 

few years, but you’ll have done your job. You’ll have gotten the school technically integrated. 

And I kept saying, I want an education so I can practice designing beautiful buildings in the 

South that I knew. I’m proudest of that. Now, you can’t have any more questions. [laughs]  

MHP: [laughs] I don’t. That was perfect and thank you. We spent all the time. What a 

joy to interview you and hear about life. I did, actually. You know, the fact that you’re from a 

farming family. I’m actually doing oral histories with African American farmers and also 

watermen from eastern North Carolina to talk about the importance of oral history through the 

generations. The stories that we tell each other as a culture to help the next generation, right, to 

adapt, to be resilient. So, thank you. You’re a great example. 

HG: You’re welcome. You're welcome. 

[END OF INTERVIEW]