Charles Daye looks back on his
30 years at Carolina

There was no way Charles Daye could have known it at the time, but his connection to Carolina began way back in 1958 -- 14 years before he joined the faculty of the University's law school.

He was only 14 years old -- and an eighth grader in a still-segregated junior high school on the outskirts of Durham -- that night in 1958 when a man by the name of Floyd B. McKissick showed up to talk before the PTA.

Daye, now Henry Brandis professor at the law school, does not remember all the words McKissick spoke that night, but he will never forget the passion and the power and the eloquence of the man who spoke them.

What Daye remembers was that here was this black man practicing law in Durham at the cusp of the Civil Rights Movement. And those facts spoke to him in ways that he did not have to put into words. If McKissick could do it, Daye resolved at that moment, then he could, too.

"I decided then and there what I was going to be," Daye said. "After that day, I never considered another profession."

There was no way he could have known it then, but with his decision, Daye had connected with a part of Carolina's past and future.

In 1951, McKissick became the first black person to attend the University's law school. In 1972, Daye became the first black person to hold a tenure-track faculty position teaching there.

Much has changed on the campus over the half century since McKissick first arrived as a student and in the 30 years Daye has taught here. Many of those changes will be included in a video Daye will narrate during a gala Nov. 1 dinner, "A Celebration of African-Americans at the University of North Carolina: Our History, Our Heritage, Our Future." (Details follow this story.)

Being black, either as a student or a faculty member, has not always been easy here, Daye knows, and the atmosphere hasn't always been welcoming.

One of his friends, the late Sonya Haynes Stone for whom the black cultural center is named, went through a great deal in the 1970s as she tried to establish an African studies program at Carolina.

But this knowledge contrasts with his own experience here over the past 30 years, he said.

While in high school in Durham, and later as a student at N.C. Central University, Daye joined various civil rights demonstrations and was arrested during a few of them. After earning his law degree at Columbia University, Daye served as a clerk in federal circuit court in Tennessee, then joined a law firm in Washington, D.C., that specialized in litigation dealing with discrimination in the areas of housing and government contracts.

Daye said he didn't seek the job at Carolina but, rather, the job came to him when someone from the law school contacted him in 1970. By December of 1971, they had come to terms and he joined the faculty the next fall.

He found out later that the law school had heard of him indirectly through Violet Wurfel, a professor of his at N.C. Central, who happened to be married to Seymour Wurfel, a member of Carolina's law school faculty.

From the first day he arrived, Daye said, he was not just tolerated, but welcomed.

"I'm so thrilled and delighted to say I didn't have any of those horror stories to tell," Daye said.

Why did he have such an easy time of it? Daye gives much of the credit to former UNC President Frank Porter Graham for the progressive culture on this campus that Graham both embodied and embraced more than a half century ago. But the biggest reason may have been that the law school wanted him here and made that clear to him from the start.

"I came into an environment where the law school had already made this commitment to diversity," Daye said. "I was nurtured, helped and accepted in every conceivable way and that has made all the difference."

Daye said he kept up with a handful of black friends working at law schools at other universities around the nation, including universities in the North where racism wasn't supposed to run as deep as in the South.

"My friends at other schools were catching all kinds of hell," Daye said. When Daye told them about his own experience, they would tell him, "`Yeah, they love you down there, Daye, but we are not having that same experience.'"

Daye said another dimension to his comfort level here was that Chapel Hill was so close to where he grew up. "I didn't feel isolated because I was returning to an area that was familiar to me," Daye said. "I had family and friends here. In a sense, it was a transition back to home for me."

When Daye first arrived, he made a deliberate decision to teach a large class so he would be exposed to a cross section of students from around the state -- and they would be exposed to him.

He expected, anticipated, even prepared for what he would say and what he would do when he encountered that first white student who made it known he didn't much like a black man standing in front of him teaching him anything.

"I spent my first four or five years braced for something awful to happen and, to tell you the truth, I figured it would come out of my classes," Daye said. "I waited and waited and waited, and it just never happened.

It may happen Monday but it hasn't happened yet."

All of this is not to say that Daye is completely satisfied with Carolina's record in regard to race. The University could do better, Daye said, in attracting both black students and faculty into certain departments that may still not be as welcoming to blacks as the law school was 30 years ago.

Blacks make up a disproportionate number of the low-paying jobs on campus, from groundskeepers to housekeepers. One question that should be asked is whether a University as affluent and progressive as Carolina should pay any of its employees a salary that is below a living wage.

Within the law school, there are now five black professors. Four of them have tenure, and the fifth is on the tenure track. For a faculty its size, Carolina's law school is one of the national leaders in the number of blacks on its faculty, Daye said.

There are countless other visiting professors within the law school, including Julius Chambers, the former chancellor of N.C. Central University, Daye's alma mater.

But Daye said his approach to teaching has not changed much since the first day he stood in front of his first class. "My notion was quite simple," Daye said. "I don't have to tell them anything about race. The fact that I am there, and doing a relatively competent job, is all I need to say."

Video of blacks' milestones, awards,
will highlight alumni reunion

More than 1,000 alumni are expected to attend activities as part of the Black Alumni Reunion on homecoming weekend, Nov. 1-2, but this year something new has been added. A gala dinner will be held Nov. 1 in the State Dining Room of Morehead Planetarium, titled "A Celebration of African-Americans at the University of North Carolina: Our History, Our Heritage, Our Future." During the evening a video will trace milestones in the progress of African-Americans at Carolina.

The Black Alumni Reunion Committee of the General Alumni Association, which plans and executes the other reunion events, will present awards at the gala.

Those receiving the Harvey E. Beech Outstanding Alumni Award will be:

Bryan Elliot Beatty of Raleigh;
Stephen Burnley Forston of Dayton, Ohio;
Joy Edith Paige of Charlotte;
Stuart Orlando Scott of Farmington, Conn.; and
Kenneth Smith of Atlanta.

The Outstanding Black Faculty/Staff Award for leadership, dedication, innovation and academic excellence will go to Archie Wilson Ervin, director of minority affairs and assistant to the chancellor at Carolina.

The Harvey E. Beech Outstanding Senior Award will go to Constance Jones of Durham.

For more information about the reunion, contact Anita Walton at 962-3582 or bar@unc.edu, or see alumni.unc.edu/reunions/bar/default.asp.