Hocutt

On 13 March 1933, Conrad 0. Pearson and Cecil A. McCoy, attorneys in Durham, and Louis E. Austin, publisher of the Carolina Times in that city, accompanied Thomas R. Hocutt to the University of North Carolina. They sought his enrollment in the School of Pharmacy and his assignment to a dormitory room. In doing so, they placed themselves at odds with prestigious local Blacks. Those leaders argued that Hocutt was an unqualified applicant. They said that, given time, they would identify other applicants who would be qualified for the role of pioneer. However, that identification never was made.1 It was not that such prominent Blacks as C. C. Spaulding, president of North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association, opposed racial progress. It was that they feared racial violence. In 1933, many black North Carolinians were afraid, for lynching was an everpresent danger. Their state ranked fourteenth among the forty-four jurisdictions (including Alaska and Places Unknown) in which lynchers murdered 4,951 persons (1,438 whites and 3,513 Blacks) during 1822-1927. In North Carolina, eight of every ten of the 100 victims were Negroes.2 Fear of nightriders was one of Spaulding's motives for having discouraged Pearson and McCoy when they requested his support. Neither of them professed to know all of his motives, for just as it was he who castigated their initiative in taking Hocutt to the University, so it was he who commended them to Walter White, sec

Art · Race, History, and American Society