Lisbon Berry (primary interviewee) and Shirley Berry interview recording, 1993 July 20

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Lisbon Berry	That my grandfather and grandmother on my mother's side were one of two of the founders of that church back in the 1800s. And then my grandfather and his family were run out of town by the racial riots here in Wilmington in the 1800s, at least that's the story my mother tells me. And they went to a little place called Laurinburg, North Carolina, where he continued to be a entrepreneur and set up a general store on the main streets of Laurinburg. He also became, I think the postmaster back in those years. The exact dates I'd have to get for you, I don't remember them offhand, but that was quite a story behind that because he wanted to be the postmaster.	0:01
Lisbon Berry	But back in those days, the Ku Klux Klan and others did not particularly want to see a Black man having that much authority or power, but he was determined man. And so he determined that he was going to sit in the postmaster seat if he didn't do it but for one day. And he did understand, for one day, sat as a postmaster for Laurinburg, postmaster in Laurinburg, North Carolina. There was another interesting story about him in the store and the Ku Klux Klan wanted to get him out of town and run him out of business. And he was determined he was not going to be run out of business. And so he got my father who was working at the store at the time, and two of his sons, Walter and Allen Evans, to stand guard at on the gates of the store at the front door. And he had been warned by a White friend of his, that they were coming to his store with the intentions of blowing it up or doing whatever.	1:08
Lisbon Berry	So he decided he'd be ready for them when they came. And when one man walked in and asked him, he asked him could he help him? And the man looked around, he said, "Well, I want you to know that I'm well-prepared for any action." And he pointed around the store and saw these people stationed at certain areas in the store with guns in their hands, he decided to turn around and leave. And mother tells me that's a true story, that actually happened. And this was back in the 1800s, 1880s.	2:29
Kara Miles	Your mother's father?	3:13
Lisbon Berry	Yeah, my mother's father and grandfather. She lost her mother in a fire at the store on Christmas Eve, I think it was. Yeah, the downstairs of the store was mostly for farm work and farm goods and groceries and that kind of thing. And upstairs, my grandmother operated a seamstress business and apparently the fire started in the downstairs part of the store, and she was just refused to come down or to jump. They had prepared some kind of net for her to jump out in, but she was afraid to jump and was overcome by smoke and died in a fire. So I never knew my grandmother. That happened long before my mother was married.	3:13
Lisbon Berry	And let's see, my mother married a fellow named Lisbon Berry from where I get my name, Lisbon Jr. who had been in the service in the segregated army. And so when dad came back from the service, he worked for a while in the grocery store, the department store really, of my grandfather's for a while and then decided he needed to take his family and get out on his own. And came to Wilmington, and at that time he was a district manager for North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. Interesting stories about that. Before we came to Wilmington, or maybe it was on the same trip to Wilmington, I had my first taste of discrimination.	4:17
Lisbon Berry	Things that we usually take for granted nowadays, you can go down to the corner and get a sandwich or a meal. In those days, if you had a long trip to take, and it was a long trip from Laurinburg, North Carolina to Wilmington, it was hours, days almost. So we stopped to get gas in one place and I wanted to get a sandwich and the man said, "I'm sorry, you have to go around to the back of the station to get waited on for a sandwich." And I said, "I don't need to go to the back. I see what I want right here." I was about 10 or 12 years old at the time. And he said, "Well, you're not going to get it here." So I went back to the car mad, angry, and told my mother about what happened and she gave me some advice I think that I've kept all my life and that is that, "Lisbon, that's the way things are in this country now, but it will change. Just swallow your pride but don't digest it."	5:20
Lisbon Berry	But I think that made me determine from that point on that I wanted to be a lawyer. And I later in life found out that my father was a lawyer, had gone to law school. As a matter of fact, that's how I was born, how we were, my sister and I were born in Washington. My father was in law school. And when we happen alone after about two years, he moved back to North Carolina. I tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn't listen to me at two years old because he wouldn't listen. Anyway, we came back to North Carolina, back to Laurinburg, and that's where he started working with my grandfather.	6:34
Lisbon Berry	But he did finish law school, but I think because of discrimination and racism, even in that day, he was not able to pass the bar so he never did practice law. But I just found that out in recent years, he really, I didn't find out until after he died for sure. I didn't know he went to Howard because I had seen a picture of him in his class hanging in the halls of the law school at Howard. And I think he has a picture of his classmates of Howard. So I do know he did go to law school and I do know he did not practice law and I do know that. Yeah, I found it out earlier. I found it out when I came back to Wilmington to practice law.	7:23
Lisbon Berry	But I practiced law in, when I finished Howard in '57, I came back to North Carolina and was preparing to take the bar and live with a friend of the families. My sisters and Evelyn McKissick were classmates at Central and Evelyn McKissick was the wife or was the wife of Floyd B. McKissick, who made quite a name for himself as a civil rights man. So I lived with them and took the bar and after I took the bar, Floyd and I decided we'd start a law firm, so I started practicing law with him in '57. But again, I ran into a problem with civil rights.	8:18
Lisbon Berry	There were about eight of us, eight Black law school graduates who had finished that summer of '57 and we took the bar, but the secretary of the bar at that time had gone to Europe, over to Britain for a bar exam. Not a bar, bar convention. American Bar was having its convention in London. So he went over there and seven of the eight lawyers, six or seven of the eight lawyers that took the bar that year passed. And when he came back and found that that many had passed the bar, he had a fit. And he came up with all kinds of reasons of why we should not be admitted to the bar.	9:18
Lisbon Berry	One reasoning he gave for me not being able to be licensed in North Carolina, but he was not sure that I was a citizen in North Carolina and I couldn't understand why that was. So he said, "Well, you've been living in Washington for about seven years." I said, "Yes," but in those days you did not give up your citizenship in any other state in order to live in Washington, DC you maintained it because you couldn't vote in DC at that time, that was back in the '50s. So that didn't hold up too well. So he eventually decided it, well, he held it up for a couple of months anyway.	10:14
Lisbon Berry	There was another lawyer in that same group, Pearson, W. D. Pearson, I think his name is, William Pearson. Anyhow, in Durham, he was a lawyer and became a judge in Durham incidentally, who was also in that group that did not, that passed the bar but had not yet been licensed. The reason they gave for Bill not being able to be licensed in North Carolina was that his stepfather had hosted Henry Wallace, who at that time was a presidential candidate from, and a senator from the state of Washington, and was assumed to be a communist. And so he felt like that Bill Pearson had some communist trends and so he could not be admitted.	10:59
Lisbon Berry	It got to the point that we decided that either they give us our license or we were going to sue him, and we start and we let them know that we sent a letter over to him and told me they had no real reason for upholding our license. And that if we did not have them by a certain time, we would seek legal advice and counsel. And I think they knew that we were not only capable of bringing a lawsuit, but we would were willing to do so and would do so. And at that time I was a office boy for McKissick. I was doing his legal services, paralegal work in the office, and we got everything we could except me going to the courtroom to argue cases and track it and track cases. So that was another experience with the segregation. If I'm talking and going in riddles, please stop, and.	12:00
Kara Miles	You're doing wonderful. Keep going.	13:09
Lisbon Berry	And something I'm not saying you'd like to hear me saying, tell me. After we got our license, I did join with McKissick in, as I said, we started a law firm and most of our cases were civil rights cases for the most part, but we had to do other kinds of cases in order to put bread on the table and to pay our bills. So we did some of everything, general practice along. But most of the cases, I think the ones that were most time-consuming were discrimination cases, segregation cases, and later the sit-in demonstrations in the '60s. But you said you wanted to know about what happened before the '60s.	13:09
Kara Miles	Yeah.	14:11
Lisbon Berry	I'm not so sure I can.	14:15
Kara Miles	Were there civil rights cases that you had before? Before the '60s?	14:19
Lisbon Berry	Well, most of, we started, I didn't start practicing law until '57, so it was late in the '50s that I started handling cases. But there were cases at McKissick and several of Harvey Beach and Kenneth Lee, and others brought in the state. For example, I think those who later became lawyers brought a suit against University of North Carolina Law School because they had refused to admit Blacks into the law school, so they sued the law school and got that open. And that was my first meeting of Thurgood Marshall, he came down to try that case. There was a fellow named Conrad Pearson who was Mr. Civil Rights lawyer back in the early '30s and '40s and '50s. He's not deceased, but I think he started a first school segregation case in North Carolina back in the '30s, and I had the privilege of meeting and working with him in the '50s. Let's see.	14:23
Kara Miles	Before the '60s, well, was there activity, was there organizing and things going on in Wilmington?	15:49
Lisbon Berry	In Wilmington, in the '50, no, this was in the '60s. They did have the sit-in demonstrations here with the youth. But that was in the early '60s, in '60 and '61, '62, they had started some activity with the NAACP here in the late '50s, but they didn't actually start a sitting demonstration until them in the early '60s. And matter of fact, that's how I got back to Wilmington. One of the youth had been in a sit-in demonstration, had been charged with obstruction of property, and he had charged the druggist with assault and assault and battery. He had pushed the proprietor of the drugstore at Second in lunch, drugstore counter at Second and Princess Street. The kids were sitting in at the counter lunch counter and he pushed one of the boys off the stool into the display case behind it, and broke a lot of things.	15:59
Lisbon Berry	And so he charged the boy with destruction of property and the boy charged him with assault and battery. Before the trial came up, when the trial was being called the boy and the solicitor general here, the then district attorney, said he wanted to talk to the boy in the conference room, and his Uncle, David Robinson said, "He's a minor so you can't talk to him by himself. I'd have to be in there with you when you talk to him." So he and the then solicitor, Johnny Walker said, "No, you not going to get in here." And they started a fight. He and the boy's uncle started a fight right there in the courtroom. So they took out a warrant. David Robinson did, took out a warrant against the solicitor and charged him with assault and battery.	17:18
Lisbon Berry	And they hired me to come down and to be the private prosecutor to try the case, try the prosecutor. And so I did. I came down from Durham and we went to court with it and tried the solicitor, and I think everybody said he was guilty but the judge. When we finished the case, it was clear even the conservative paper here had said that Johnny Walker was guilty, but he did not find him guilty. As a result, there were about 200 kids here, but again, this is in the early '60s that sat in at various restaurants and cafes and other places, a public accommodation and were arrested.	18:20
Lisbon Berry	And we had good, I think relationships with the local police department, the chief of police here. And we let them know that when we were going to demonstrate and when we were going to have a sit in, and we told him we expected the police to protect us just as much as he protected anybody else. And I think by having told him, letting him know that we were going to demonstrate, he liked that and made sure that there was no incidents that happened with any of the demonstrators. And I think the kids just enjoyed, they just really enjoyed being arrested and put in jail. And there were so many of them, they couldn't put them all in jail so they had them all down in the basement of the police station, and would try to book them and get them out of there as fast as they could.	19:14
Kara Miles	I want to go way back, from the beginning.	20:10
Lisbon Berry	Okay.	20:22
Kara Miles	Your grandparents were involved in Chestnut Street founding, right?	20:24
Lisbon Berry	Mm-hmm.	20:28
Kara Miles	Do you know why? What the background behind that was? Why they decided to start this church?	20:29
Lisbon Berry	No, I'm not sure, but it may be some history over at the church on what it was. I do know that they bought the building itself from the First Presbyterian Church, which is the White church here. And when you say why did they build, I think they wanted to establish a Presbyterian church. And during those days there was no such thing as an integrated Presbyterian church or any church for that matter. So they wanted to do their own, do their own church.	20:38
Kara Miles	When was the church founded?	21:21
Lisbon Berry	It was, celebrated 128th birthday in October. [indistinct 00:21:30], so it was 18-something.	21:23
Kara Miles	Had your grandparents been slaves?	21:41
Lisbon Berry	You do know that I don't know. I really don't know. For some reason, I want to say they weren't because my grandfather, he was here in Wilmington, lived here in Wilmington. And I have seen records at the courthouse where he was the deputy clerk in the 1800s, early 1800s. So whether or not he was, that much, I don't know about my family or not very much to know. On my mother's side and on my father's side, I don't know what if they were in fact slaves.	21:43
Lisbon Berry	I know that on my father's side, my grandfather on my father's side was half Indian and half Black. And for some reason, I wanted, I think that he was a slave, or at least came from slave background. And my grandmother on my father's side was a teacher back in those days, used to teach. But there again, my cousins and I have been trying to find out where we can get, dig up the history on our parents back and we can just have not been able to come across anything.	22:20
Lisbon Berry	Everybody's asked me about my name, Lisbon, where'd I get my name Lisbon from? I got my name from my father, I was named after my father, but he was named after an uncle of his who had the same name, Lisbon. And apparently that Lisbon was living in Chattanooga, Tennessee for a while. And so we had an aunt that was living in Chattanooga, and we asked her about him and we've not been able to find out too much from him. I don't know why our families didn't talk. They all gone now, but we had not been able to get too much information about them.	22:57
Kara Miles	Did you personally know your grandparents?	23:36
Lisbon Berry	Very little. I had met my grandfather, and I remember him putting me on a horse in years. And I remember him vaguely because he died when I was about 10 or 12. My grandfather and on my father's side and grandmother, I remember the building that they lived in Hillsborough, North Carolina. And I remember him smoking a pipe and sitting on the front porch and they had a nice long, all across the front porch and my grandmother coming out and sitting in a chair, rocking chair. I can see that just as vivid as if it were yesterday. But I don't remember the conversations we had with them. I do remember them from that point of view.	23:42
Kara Miles	Do you remember anything else that, I mean, you told me wonderful things that your mother told you about her parents. Do you remember anything else that your parents might have told you about your grandparents, about their parents?	24:35
Lisbon Berry	No, I don't. And for reasons unknown to me, I don't know why we never talked about our grandparents. I do remember one, I don't know where my grandfather came from. I mean, I don't know whether he was a slave or not, but I do know he became a very successful business person and owned a lot of land. And I don't think he owned slaves, but he owned what was once called an Evans quarters, which was we'd house and had made homes available to his Black hands who he worked on his farm and I can see that very vividly, the shacks.	24:48
Kara Miles	Oh, go ahead.	25:40
Lisbon Berry	The shacks in the Evans quarters that they were called where they would, they lived and then they'd go to work on the farm.	25:41
Kara Miles	This is your grandfather?	25:52
Lisbon Berry	Mm-hmm.	25:53
Kara Miles	And so this is his land. People live on the shacks and they work. They work his land.	25:54
Lisbon Berry	Work his land.	25:59
Kara Miles	Does your family still own that land?	26:02
Lisbon Berry	No. Unfortunately in the Depression of the '30s, 1930s, he lost it. Lost it in the Depression. And there again, I think there is a story, but I don't know the story I've been seeing one of these days I'm going to sit down and write a book and maybe go to Laurinburg and do some checking in Laurinburg newspapers and that kind of thing, because I do remember a long news article that they had of my grandparents, my grandmother, when she died, they wrote it up in the paper. And there was another one on my grandfather that I don't have.	26:04
Lisbon Berry	My grandfather remarried in '30s I guess. And he has two children by the second marriage. One is in Greensboro, incidentally, Walter P. Evans Jr. No, Walter Taylor Evans. Walter Taylor Evans. And he's not a junior. Walter P. Evans is, he did have a son that's named after him, but he's lived in New Orleans. Out of the second marriage, there was a son and a daughter, Walter Taylor Evans, who lives and taught in Greensboro for years. And he may be able to give some, I don't know how you are working in program, but he may be able to give you some information about his grandfather. He has a sister and a grandfather's daughter and lives in Washington, DC. Charity Evans Singletary she is, in Silver Springs, Maryland, right outside of Washington. And she may be able to fill in some more about grandfather, grandpa.	26:46
Kara Miles	Do you remember anything about DC? You said you were born there, how long did you live there?	28:03
Lisbon Berry	Every chance I got, I went back to Washington. In the summers during school, when I was in school, I would run up to Washington, DC because my father's sister was living there. He had two sisters living there and a brother living in Washington. So I would go back up every chance I got. And as I said, I finished law school. I went back to Howard Law School and stayed in Washington for, what, seven years? I think I finished Central in 1950 and then finished law school in 1957. That's where I next met. Oh, that's where I first met Thurgood Marshall, really.	28:09
Lisbon Berry	I was second, he was arguing the case, the School Board of Education, the school desegregation case. And they used to use the Howard Law School as a moot courtroom so that they practiced their argument before the Supreme Court. And it was there that we first met Thurgood because they used to use the faculty and the outstanding lawyers in DC to play the role of Judge Supreme Court justices. And Thurgood and, what's his name? Jim Nabrit, who was the other lawyer who handled the case for the District of Columbia and Bob Carter and the others would go and argue the cases before. And the students were allowed to sit in the courtroom and hear these arguments, and we were very pleased to be in the part of that kind of history.	29:00
Lisbon Berry	As a matter of fact, one of the students there, a fellow named Johnson, asked a question, that the students were permitted to ask questions and it would go to as if the members of the Supreme of the bench was asking the question, and Thurgood would try to respond to those questions. And one question that Earl asked was, I don't remember the exact wording of the question, but it was something that Thurgood just got crazy about. "Oh, come on. Nobody's that stupid on the Supreme Court. Ain't nobody going to ask that question.	30:10
Lisbon Berry	That's just a stupid ass question that he had asked about." So he didn't answer it. And the next day they went to the Supreme Court to argue the case. And that question came up almost verbatim. Almost verbatim. And Thurgood came back to the school the next day and said, "Never again in life will I ever say that the question is too stupid to answer, because I now realize you got some Supreme Court justices just as stupid as you students." But that was fun though.	30:46
Lisbon Berry	Anyway, we finished law school, and you asking about me going back to Washington. I went back to Washington every chance I got after law school practice. And then in 1967, I decided that my work here was becoming too costly for me. I was doing more civil rights cases than I was making money for to raise my family. So I said, "Well, since I'm doing civil rights cases, maybe by just go join the law firm that's doing a lot of civil rights matters." And Derek Bell, who was at that time a lawyer with the Department of Education in DC and I knew each other. We were not tight friends, but we did know each other. So I sent him my resume and I called him and talked to him first, and then I sent him a resume and told I'd like to get a job in the government somewhere.	31:23
Lisbon Berry	And I was thinking with him, working with him over at HEW, he was then Health, Education, and Welfare department. And he said, "Listen, I don't have anything over here, but I'd like to have your permission to circulate this, your application with some of the other agencies. What about the Justice Department?" So I said, "Fine, go ahead." And he took it over to the then Assistant Attorney General John Doar, D-O-A-R. John Doar was the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. And Doar liked the application and say, "Let's get him." So in 1967, May of '67, I started working with the Department of Justice in the Civil Rights Division. I worked there for 15 years, stayed there from 1967 to June of 1982. So I was in Washington a long time. To answer your question, that's the long way to answer your question.	32:28
Lisbon Berry	Well, I guess I should say that I was in and out of Washington because working with the Civil Rights Division, I went all over the country and went mostly in the South. They divided the Civil Rights Division into sections to begin with. And each section was responsible for enforcing all of the Civil Rights Acts all over the country. And the section were divided to Southeastern section and the Midwest section, Western section and the North and the Northeast section. So if you got into one of those sections, you worked with all phases of the Civil Rights Act, but later on they divided it up into subject matter and public accommodation was one subject area. They segregated restaurants and hotels and places, bus stations and all the places of public accommodation. And then the school desegregation was another area.	33:33
Lisbon Berry	And then the Voting Rights Act was another area in which you, a subject matter now. So you were divided then into separate subject matter area, divisions as they call them. So I was placed in the, first of all in Western Division. I said, great, this is give me a chance to go out to California, see the movie stars and get all that good stuff. And then about six months later, they assigned reassignment to the Southeast section. And the Southeast section included Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi, Georgia. Uh-uh, I said Alabama. And that was one section, one part of the southeast, North Carolina, South Carolina, and I think Tennessee and parts of Kentucky were in this, considered a part of the Southeastern division or section.	34:44
Lisbon Berry	So they sent me there. I had a fit when they told me they going to assign me to dance, "No way. I'm not going to Mississippi." No, I heard too much about Mississippi. I said, "I'm going to stay right where I am." They said, "Well Lisbon, just try it for six months. If you try it for six months and you don't like it, we'll reassign you." So I said, "Well, okay, I'll try it." And I went, the first place I went was Greenwood, Mississippi, in the western section of the state, and one of the harder segregated areas in the country. And I was working with on cases of school desegregation. And I was surprised and shocked, I was the only Black lawyer there. And there were two other lawyers from the division, Civil Rights Division and the US attorney from the Mississippi.	35:45
Lisbon Berry	And of course all of the school board lawyers were White. And so we went into argue this case, and it was not my case then, it was another named Moore's case. And I didn't have anything to say in the trial of it. So the court was having a hearing and he said, and he was start talking about the plans for desegregating the schools in that area. And I just sat over on the one side of the bench, and as they argued the case before Judge Katie, and I was just twisting and turned every time, every time I got, trying to cross my leg and uncross it. And so Judge Katie kept looking at me and then he'd look away, and then I'd twist and turn some more. And so after a while he said, "Mr. Berry, you look like you ought to say something." I said, "Well, your Honor, I'm just wondering if not," and I went on to explain, I don't remember what the details of the case now, I guess we could get it to the public information, Freedom of Information case.	36:52
Lisbon Berry	But I said, "It just seems to me that the court would consider doing such and such a thing to implement the school desegregation case." And he looked at me and he nod his head and he looked over the other lawyers and he looked back at me and he looked at the other lawyers, "Anybody want to comment about that?" And the lawyers on my side said no. I said, so he said, "I think I'll adopt that and if the government will prepare the motion, prepare the order with that in mind, with that included, I will sign it." And the people were like, "Wow, what'd you do to that man, what you do?" I said, "I just—This look simple to me." And I went out, we all left in the judge's chambers and went out into the other room. And then all of a sudden the Marshall came up and tapped me on the still shoulder.	38:08
Lisbon Berry	He said, "Lawyer, the judge wants to see you." And everybody got still, I said, "Uh oh, here it comes." So I went back in there and Judge Katie was judge that had this arm amputated, the right arm amputated. And so when I walked back into his chambers, he stood up still in his robe and extended his left hand as if to shake hands with me. And he said, "Mr. Berry, I just wanted to let you know that how much I appreciate having you in my court today. And I think you need to know that. And I wanted to let you know." I said, "Well, I want to thank you, judge, because it's changed my mind quite a little bit about my coming to Mississippi." And I told him about how I had been assigned to another section and was determined I wasn't coming to Mississippi.	39:04
Lisbon Berry	He said, "Well, I hope I did change your mind." And I walked out. But it was an experience with me and him, I guess, as a White judge in segregated Mississippi that made me feel that maybe it ain't so bad down here after all, and that we can probably get some things accomplished. And we did get quite a few school cases and voting rights cases and public accommodation cases tried in Mississippi, Louisiana. Voting rights case in Louisiana I think was one of the good ones that I thought they used to buy your votes in Louisiana. Every time a Black person would come to the polls, they'd give him $5 and you vote for this man here, you vote this ticket. And they got to the point where we just had to start filing lawsuits against the people who were worked the polls, because they were the ones that were doing most of it.	39:57
Lisbon Berry	In Mississippi, Frank Sweb was one of the lawyers who was working in the voting rights section of Mississippi. Had written a book about a registrar, I think it was in either Mississippi or Alabama, who had Black people coming into his polling place. Once they finally agreed they were going to let him vote and they couldn't vote, they didn't know how to vote. So he said, "Don't worry about it, I'll vote for you. You just go on and come on in." And he was so dumb that he would vote and [indistinct 00:41:34] every ballot that a Black person came into his courtroom and came into his voting booth with and he'd vote them. And so it was called the [indistinct 00:41:45] Case. And we did. This man, he just voted all of the Black people in this district. So of course we put an end to that in the voting rights suit. But I could go on for years talking about the case in the Civil Rights Division.	40:57
Kara Miles	During this whole time that you were a civil rights lawyer, were there times that you felt in danger? I mean, that you were being threatened because of what the work you were doing?	42:05
Lisbon Berry	I never faced that danger. I got frightened once, because I was always afraid something's going to happen to me in Mississippi, but I never did. And can I take a break for just a minute?	42:16
Kara Miles	Oh, sure.	42:30
Lisbon Berry	Can't face much danger. Or least if I did, I didn't recognize it as such and did not let it bother me except that we used to hear about the Mississippi Police and Highway, how mean the highway patrol was. So I remember one time I was driving, we always rented cars in the state when we got down there, and I was on one of the highways, the super highways going from Memphis, Tennessee to I believe Clarksdale. And I must confess, I was going quite fast. And while I saw this light come on, policeman, the car patrol was right behind me. So I pulled over, I said, "Uh oh, this is it."	42:32
Lisbon Berry	But it was in the middle of the day, so I wasn't too afraid. I was shaky a little bit, this policeman stopping me and the first thing he said was, "Let me see your license boy." And we have the Department of Justice had this identification card, picture of you and your division and written on that, the Department of Justice, the outside of the cover. And I always learned long time ago, another friend of mine told me, "Put your driver's license in that. So when they ask for it, the first thing they see is United States Department of Justice."	43:29
Lisbon Berry	So I did, I showed him that and I showed him a license and everything. And he saw that I was, and I said, maybe this is the wrong figure. He see some civil rights lawyer, wait a minute, he should take me out and do something. But anyway, he took it up and looked at it and said, "Berry," not Mr. Berry, "Berry, you were going over the speed limit down here. And we don't like people on our highways to be going over to the speed limit. So you slow that thing down," and got on back in this car and left. And that's to wipe the perspiration away and went about my business.	44:10
Lisbon Berry	But a friend of mine did have some fear. He was in Louisiana and he was also with the Department of Justice and a Black lawyer. And he had been trying some voting rights cases in Louisiana. And he tells us that he was run off the road by, he didn't know who he was, but they left him out in the ditch to die. And thought he had had an accident, and so immediately he played dead and they drove on off and left him there. And he called the FBI and we got out, but he was scared to death and they did run him off the road.	44:51
Lisbon Berry	I never had that kind of experience in any of the states, in any of the Southern states. I think my closest call was in Chicago over there or not in the, I don't know if you familiar with the Black Panthers. And when Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers were, I say murdered in Chicago, I was in Chicago at the time setting up a Civil Rights Division in the US attorney's office. And I called Washington and told them that I think we need to do an investigation because I think this was a violation of the civil rights of the Black Panthers. And they said, "Yeah, go ahead and let."	45:32

Lisbon Berry	I started preparing a memorandum to send to the FBI, and I got a call back from Washington, said, "Lisbon, we're going to take care of it from here." So I said, "Well, I think we need to do something and do it quick." And that was the last thing I heard about it for a while. And then I kept calling back to Washington. I didn't get any—"We're working on it. We're working on the memo for an FBI investigation."	0:00
Lisbon Berry	And lo and behold, I find out later that they did start an investigation from Washington with the FBI, but it turned out that the FBI was a part of the problem. And of course, I don't think that case has been settled yet. They're still trying to determine a lot of things, but I knew then it was a set up and tried to get somebody else. They established a team of lawyers, or staff, really, of lawyers, paralegals, secretaries, and they had two Blacks on it. Two Black lawyers were a part of it, and one Black paralegal to set up the investigation in Washington, what they call was a grand jury investigation for the shooting of the Black Panthers.	0:32
Lisbon Berry	And they started conducting an investigation. When they started selecting them, I told them I wanted to be on that committee, that investigating committee, but for some reason they would not let me do it. And they said, "No, we already got our team." And they picked another fellow, Jesse Queen, a US attorney from out in South Dakota somewhere who was Black. And the other was the staff from the Civil Rights Division. But it took them almost a year or more.	1:36
Lisbon Berry	I had the report in there somewhere, that they went to the grand jury with it. And then after the completing of the investigation, the then Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights got the team together and said, "What do you think we ought to do?" And from what I could hear, because they would not put me on that team, what I could hear, everybody on the team was saying, "Let's indict." And as the Assistant Attorney General said, "No, we're not going to indict." And he went back to the grand jury and told them what to say almost, in essence, and then there—	2:15
Lisbon Berry	And that almost caused me to leave the department. But I said, "Well, if I leave, look what else might happen. And at least I'm there and I can do a little just to have my presence there." But that was the one thing I think that hurt me more than anything that policeman could do in Mississippi was to have my own department whitewash a outright murder like that was.	2:55
Kara Miles	What did you think of the Black Panthers, given that you were a civil rights lawyer and they had their own tactics and own agenda and things? What did you as a civil rights lawyer think of the Black Panthers?	3:24
Lisbon Berry	I think I had a different impression in what was being posted in the press. Like what they said about Malcolm X, if you remember, the press had him all—And I just could not go along with everything they were saying about the Panthers, because I noticed that the Panthers were doing things that would be contrary of people that they were describing. For example, they would fix breakfast for the poor kid in the south side of Chicago, and fix breakfast every morning for them. And they would go to the stores and get these foods, buy these foods, buy the foods, even though people kept saying that they were robbing stores and getting money.	3:39
Lisbon Berry	And they may have done some of that, I don't know. But I think the overall good that I saw them doing led me to believe that they aren't as bad as the people or press painting them to be. I never knew Fred Hampton personally. I did see his coffin and saw the wound in his head, and it came out of the back. And that kind of things that led me to think that, well, confirmed my belief that they were really murdered.	4:22
Lisbon Berry	And I just could not believe that they were as bad as the—I think what happened was they were able to have as much gun power, firepower if you please, as the oppressors. And because of that, they figured that, "We got to do something to discredit this group." So I did not have the same opinion of the Black Panthers as some of my coworkers, really, because we used to argue about it over lunch.	4:59
Kara Miles	You and Black coworkers? Or—	5:33
Lisbon Berry	No, White coworkers.	5:36
Kara Miles	—White coworkers?	5:36
Lisbon Berry	They were only about four—Well, when I first went to the department, they were only three Blacks there. A fellow named Jerry Jones, who is now a Deputy Assistant Attorney General. A fellow named Maceo Hubbard, who actually set up the Civil Rights Division for the Department of Justice, and me. Now, there was one more. There was a fellow named Johnson. He became a judge in Baltimore. Kenneth Johnson, who became a judge in Baltimore, left the Civil Rights Division. So we were it. And after I got there, several more came on. So when we went to lunch, we didn't go to lunch with each other that much. We went to lunch with them, with the White attorneys and staff people.	5:38
Kara Miles	I'm going to take you back again.	6:35
Lisbon Berry	Okay.	6:36
Kara Miles	I think you might have told me this already. What did your father do for a living?	6:41
Lisbon Berry	He worked with the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. He was the district manager for the Southeastern District of North Carolina. From here to Laurinburg and North to Jacksonville, I believe, and south to the South Carolina line, this whole area.	6:44
Kara Miles	So your family was pretty well off, I would guess.	7:10
Lisbon Berry	I think they were considered by many to be middle class. Middle class as compared to some of the others. And I guess with my grandfather's side of the family, he was considered even more of a middle class, I guess, than—Well, he was a property owner and he owned grocery stores and was, in fact, well-to-do, I think, in his day.	7:10
Kara Miles	How old were you when you moved to Wilmington?	7:39
Lisbon Berry	I was in the sixth or seventh grade.	7:42
Kara Miles	What neighborhood did you live in? Where did you live?	7:51
Lisbon Berry	At 10th and Red Cross, on 10th Street between Red Cross and Walnut, which is the north side. Not in the heart of the ghetto, but I think it was—As a matter of fact, if it was right across the street from the then hospital, it was called the James Walker Memorial Hospital. And then it was all White. Excuse me. And they had a Black wing, excuse me, for the Black members of the community. Black doctors could not practice there. So the neighborhood was not really the worst neighborhood in the city.	7:56
Kara Miles	What would you say was the worst neighborhood in the city when you were growing up?	8:47
Lisbon Berry	What I think they still considered the bad area, Brooklyn. The Brooklyn area over by—Well, and Red Cross Street was considered one of the bad neighborhoods, but it was the business neighborhood for the Blacks. My father, even though he was in insurance back in that period of time, just before we got to Wilmington, I think, or maybe it was after we got here, the only Black druggist we had in town, Mason, was murdered in his drugstore in a robbery. So since then we have never had a drug store owned and operated by Blacks on the north side of town, anywhere in town, as a matter of fact.	8:54
Lisbon Berry	So years later, my father opened the store as a soda fountain and lot of people can still remember the soda fountain who did not remember the drugstore. But Carlyle Mason is one of the children, and his wife, the widow, still lives over on Walnut Street, in the 600 block of Walnut. I don't know if she's here now, but that would be an interesting person to talk to, because she could give you some history about that neighborhood, all of that in there, and about her husband and how he tried to do some things. That was just too young for me to know, I didn't remember it. But my father did do that. He started the soda shop.	9:51
Kara Miles	When was this?	10:47
Lisbon Berry	This was back in the late 30s, really, late 30s and early forties.	10:48
Kara Miles	When he—	10:55
Lisbon Berry	Well, I left in-	10:55
Kara Miles	—started his soda shop.	10:55
Lisbon Berry	Soda shop, yeah. And all along Red Cross Street between 5th and Red Cross, where St. Stephen's Church is all the way down to 9th and Red Cross were Black businesses, businesses that were run, owned, operated by the Blacks in the community. Except in the block between 8th and 9th or McRae and 9th, there was one of the first Black doctors, Dr. Frank Avon, who had his office in his home right there on Red Cross Street. But there was no Black pharmacist in town after Mason to administer medicine.	10:57
Lisbon Berry	The church, Chestnut Street Presbyterian Church owns that track of land incidentally, between 5th and Red Cross and 6th and Red Cross, on the Red Cross street side. You can document this somewhere else, but my understanding is there was some rich person in town who wanted to divide his monies up between four Black churches, and the Presbyterian church got the Red Cross Street property. St. Stephen got another corner where they are. And the Baptist Church got the other corner, and the other corner was reserved for the school and Peabody School was there. So that's how the churches got that property. Now, from greater detail, you'd have to go to somebody else. I'm not sure what it is, I'm not positive, I meant.	11:55
Kara Miles	So the neighborhood you grew up in here in Wilmington, was all Black?	13:00
Lisbon Berry	Mm-hmm. And we had to walk to school every morning to Williston, across Market Street. And it was not directly past New Hanover High School, but it was about two blocks from New Hanover High School. We could much easier going to New Hanover and then going to Williston, had it not been for the segregated school system.	13:02
Kara Miles	What did you think about that when you were in school, going past the White school every day? What did you think about the fact that you had to—	13:35
Lisbon Berry	Who I was going to beat up that day.	13:43
Kara Miles	Oh, yeah.	13:47
Lisbon Berry	Each day that, I won't say each day, but quite often the White kids and the Black kids would cross at 10th and Market Street, and invariably you're going to have a fight. But I guess we never thought about, "I want to go to that school." We grew up knowing that Williston was the school that we were going to, and that was it. That was the order of the day. And nobody, I don't think, even thought about not going to Williston and going to New Hanover back in those days. We talking about '39s and—Well, I finished high school in '41, so during that period of time.	13:47
Kara Miles	Did you go to World War II?	14:37
Lisbon Berry	No, I didn't. That's another story, I thought I was going. I working with the—As I told you, one of the trips, I'd always go back to Washington as often as I could. I had gone back to DC after finishing high school and was working with the then War Department with the federal government. It's now called the Department of Defense. And I left my registration for the Army here in North Carolina, because in those days, all of the people who were registered in the South were being shipped north to do their boot book training and then to be assigned to services. And I didn't want to have my registration in Washington be sent further South then Washington. So I decided to leave it here, and I went to Washington work.	14:43
Lisbon Berry	And when they called me in the 40s, I think it was 45, they called me to be—Because the war was getting worse and they needed more men. So they called me and I came back to Wilmington and went to Fort Bragg for the induction examination, and went through it, I thought, with flying colors. And then all of a sudden I got to the end of the line and the man picked up a stamp and stamped on there, rejected. I said, "What do you mean rejected? What does that mean? What's wrong with me? What's wrong? I can see. I can run." He said, "What kind of work do you do?" And I told him, "I was working for the Department of Defense," then it was the War Department, "working at the Pentagon," it just opened.	15:36
Lisbon Berry	And he said, "Well, you going back and make sure I get my mail." So I came back to Wilmington on the business. And first person I went to was Dr. Overman. Said, "Doctor just rejected me. I don't know why, what's wrong with me?" And he took me through the same exam that I had just left at the Fort Bragg. And he said, "Lisbon, I don't know. The only thing I can find wrong with you is you have a potential hernia." I said, "What's that a potential hernia?" And he said, "It just means that you have the possibility of having a hernia."	16:30
Lisbon Berry	And he said, "Well, you doing any heavy work?" I said, "No, heaviest thing I pick up is my paycheck maybe, and a stamp now and then. I may pick up a bag of mail." He said, "Well, make sure that the bag of mail is light and forget it." So I went back to the work with a 4-F in my hand, and was never called to be in service. They were about to call us just when the war was ending. They were going to call us back, but then the war ended, so they didn't bother to call us.	17:12
Kara Miles	What's a 4-F?	17:45
Lisbon Berry	That was a physical disability status, a draft status that I had some kind of physical disability. There were 4-Fs and I think it were 4-C, which was a college student that would be exempt or would be placed in another category back in those days. And there were other categories that I don't remember now.	17:45
Kara Miles	Were you happy or sad that you couldn't go?	18:21
Lisbon Berry	I think I was scared, first of all, when I found out that I was rejected, because I had no idea I was going to be rejected. Then I guess, after I found out what it was wrong, I was kind of glad that I had it, because I didn't have to worry about that fear of combat. But then after the war was over and so many fellows were able to pay their way through school with the GI Bill of Rights, I was kind of sad again that I didn't go, and be qualified to get that experience. Instead, I had to wait tables in restaurants during the summers, at the summer resorts for White folks down in Virginia Beach, here at Wrightsville Beach and other places in order to pay my way through school. So that was my feelings about the war.	18:24
Kara Miles	What were you doing at the War Department? What was your job there?	19:23
Lisbon Berry	I was a clerk, excuse me, in the mail department, in the mail room they called it. And we would assort mails for the different departments of the Pentagon. All of the defense people were in the one building at that time. The Navy, the Army, Marines, the then Air Force, what little had, were all housed in this one building. First, it was over on Constitution Avenue, and they built this Pentagon building, and I think we were one of the first to move in to establish a mail room.	19:26
Kara Miles	Did only Black people work in the mail room? Or was it an integrated—	20:12
Lisbon Berry	It was a majority Black. They had some Whites that came in, but it was a majority Black staff, including supervisors and managers.	20:17
Kara Miles	Really?	20:29
Lisbon Berry	Yeah. And we had one supervisor that looked like he was White, Mr. Jones, but most of them were Black, the foremans and the other clerks in there, until it got to the postmaster or whatever, higher up than we were.	20:30
Kara Miles	You said you worked in the resorts at Virginia Beach and Wrightsville Beach.	20:50
Lisbon Berry	Mm-hmm.	20:53
Kara Miles	What was that like?	20:55
Lisbon Berry	Well, realizing it was not going to be a livelihood for me, it was fun. Except, I remember, when I worked at Virginia Beach, I was a college boy. I went there one summer after school to work with the group, and I went to this hotel, it'll come to me, on Virginia Beach and we would wait tables, morning, noon for lunch and dinner. And then afterwards, between meals, we'd go downstairs and most of the guys would play poker or bid whist and gamble their money away. Except I wouldn't gamble, every time I picked up a tip, I was putting it away for this coming winter, until they started teasing me and calling me the school boy.	20:58
Lisbon Berry	And so I had to play poker every now and then, just let them know that I'm just more than a school boy. Believe it or not though, because it was difficult for us, some of the students, I mean, some of the people who were trying to use that as a stepping stone to get to something else. Because they used to have teams that would work up and down the East Coast. In the summer they would be in Maine, maybe. No, in the winter they would be in Florida. And then they worked their way up to when it was summer, they would be in New York, Martha's Vineyard or one of the other places. And they stayed as a team and would travel as a waiting team.	21:55
Lisbon Berry	And it was sort of hard to get in there. You had to almost beg them and pay them to get to be a part of that team. And it was really an experience, a learning experience for me to realize how these people, many of them who could not read or write, made a living just serving others. But you couldn't—They were experts at their field. They could serve a person and they would enjoy the meal or the service.	22:55
Lisbon Berry	But between meals, they were on their own, but they always had their own quarters. They could not go out on the beach and walk up and down the beach during the day with the White folks. They had their own quarters that they would do and certain times they would go out on the beach and be able to go. But it was usually at a time when the White folks had already gone home or gone back into the building.	23:31
Kara Miles	So in the evenings, maybe go out to [indistinct 00:24:04]—	24:02
Lisbon Berry	Late in the evening, yeah, early night or sometimes late night, they might go in.	24:06
Kara Miles	Were there sections of either of those beaches, Virginia Beach or Wrightsville, that were for Blacks, specifically for Blacks to go?	24:12
Lisbon Berry	I think I remember at one time that—No, there wasn't, there was no—No. No, they were not allowed on the beach, period. They had no beach, except for here in Wilmington we had what we call Sea Breeze. I think you may have read the story not too long ago in the paper. We had Sea Breeze as our beach. And Sea Breeze is on the inland waterway, but we could always go across the inland waterway to a little beach on the other side, on Carolina Beach. But that was set aside for Blacks.	24:24
Lisbon Berry	But as I understand it, Blacks really owned it, Indians owned it, and they sold it for a cigar. And one family, the Hill family, has been trying to get it back ever since. They have been fighting for years. Because when I was practicing here in the '60s, they had filed a lawsuit to try to get a section of Carolina Beach declared belonging to the Hills. So no, they did not have any allocated place on Wrightsville Beach for them. And I don't remember any section of Virginia Beach that was set aside for Blacks.	25:02
Kara Miles	Did this team that traveled from place to place, did they have a name or were they known as a certain group?	25:50
Lisbon Berry	They were known as a certain group. And don't ask me what their name was because I can't remember it, but they did—Most people would go into the name of the head waiter, it would be called like Barry's team or Barry's group. And Barry would have 10 or 15 waiters that he could rely on to go from one motel or one restaurant to another. And they usually used the hotels. I waited tables here at what's now called Blockade Runner. It was then called—That slipped me. I remember the lady's name was Mrs. Snyder who owned it. But I'll be darn, it was the Lumina. I can't remember it. I can't remember it.	25:55
Lisbon Berry	But anyway, they had a fellow named Dan Ladder who was the head waiter and was in charge of all of the Black employees. And he had a relationship with the management of the hotel, and they gave him, at Wrightsville Beach, the basement, and he could have parties down there and do whatever he wanted. That part of the hotel belonged to him, and he did what he wanted to with that. And it made it easier for the fellows. They could come down, especially those college kids who would come in. They'd been going to college and they were having a ball.	27:06
Lisbon Berry	So when they came to the beach, they wanted to still have their summer vacation. And so Dan would sort of provide for, and that's how I got down there, because Dan Ladder and my father both came from Hillsborough and they knew each other and they were buddies of a sort. And so dad told Dan, "My boy needs a job." And well, my boys, because my brother also worked down there and he got us on.	27:42
Kara Miles	Tell me about Central, well, North Carolina College, I guess.	28:18
Lisbon Berry	Carolina College for Colored. Well, first of all, it was owned and operated by James E. Shepard, who was—Been there ever since they said, "Let's have an educational institution." It was first called National Training School of Chautauqua. And that was when my father went there. And then it later became North Carolina College for Colored, and then it became North Carolina College for Negroes. And then it became North Carolina College at Durham, and now it's called North Carolina Central.	28:21
Lisbon Berry	But James Shepard grew with an iron fist. He knew that he had to provide a place for Blacks to get a decent education, liberal arts education. And he provided it for many, many years. As I said, my father went there back in the teens, I guess, because he finished and went to Howard and didn't finish Howard Law School until the 20s. But Dr. Shepard I think was one who wanted to see his students excel in whatever they came in to do. And he would do everything he could to make it possible for them to go to school and to get a first class education.	29:05
Lisbon Berry	It started out as a liberal arts school, and I think it remained a liberal arts school from day one. And he taught the type of cultures that stuck with his students. The women were treated with respect. And as a matter of fact, he made sure that the women—All the women in the school belonged to him, he was the master. I remember one incident before I went to North Carolina College, I was working in Washington, as I told you, and I came down to visit a girlfriend of mine who was a graduate student, really, at that time. But she was living in the freshman dormitory, because they did not at that time have a dormitory set aside for graduate students. And after six o'clock in the evening, the boys go one way and the girls go to their dorm.	30:03
Lisbon Berry	So Marie and I were standing out in front of the dormitory and she started say, "Uh-oh." I said, "What's the matter?" She said, "There's Dr. Shepard." And I said, "Well, so what?" She said, "Yeah, but he doesn't like for his girls out here socializing this time of night." And he stood up on that bench for I against the longest time, and I wouldn't leave and he wouldn't leave. So he finally decided to come down to see who this arrogant young rascal is.	31:03
Lisbon Berry	It's working, right?	31:34
Kara Miles	Yeah.	31:36
Lisbon Berry	Okay. Where was I?	31:36
Kara Miles	Dr. Shepard came down, and, "Who is this arrogant man?"	31:38
Lisbon Berry	And he was, "Who in the heck is this talking to my girls?" And he came down, I knew him. As a matter of fact, it is had said that we were distant relatives. My father's mother and Dr. Shepard's mother were sisters, I think. So it made me some kind of cousin along the way. But anyhow, he knew the family. My sister had gone there before and my father graduated there, so he knew the family. And he got down and he saw me and he said, "Boy," that was his laughing, "what are you doing out here?" I said, "Well, I'm thinking about coming back to school. You got any place down here for me."	31:42
Lisbon Berry	And we sat and chatted for a long while. And after a while he said, "Marie, you go on inside. It's time for you to go inside." And she was a graduate student. So that's how strict he was with his students. And I think he was a firm educator and would not let anybody take advantage of him. I remember once he changed and sold his school to the state, which he did back in the [indistinct 00:32:52] years, whenever that was, he went over to the general assembly, because he said his school needed some things and he wanted them to allot a certain amount of money to his school, North Carolina College. And they told him, "Sorry, we don't have any money in the budget for that."	32:23
Lisbon Berry	He said, "Well, I think our school needs the same kind of upkeep as all the other schools in the state that are owned by the state." They said, "We just don't have the money for it." So he told Hezekiah, who was his driver, "Hezekiah, drive through Chapel Hill. And we'll go back to Durham through Chapel Hill." And he went through Chapel Hill and saw that they were painting the university and making repairs and doing a lot of things over there in Chapel Hill. And he said, "Okay, Hezekiah, take me down to Sherman and Williams paint shop." And he left there, went downtown, and made a contract to come out and paint his school, the entire school. And said, "Now when you finish, I'm going to send the bill to the state. They can pay if they want to."	33:12
Lisbon Berry	He was just that kind of a leader and just refused to hear no, and said, "No, you're not going to help my students. You going to do just as much for the Negroes as you doing for the White folks." And he made sure that. So that was my touch of history with North Carolina College.	34:03
Kara Miles	Why did you choose to go to North Carolina College?	34:30
Lisbon Berry	My father, that's my father's school.	34:33
Kara Miles	Your father went there.	34:35
Lisbon Berry	And my sister went, she went ahead of me. I didn't think my father could afford to have two of us in college at the same time. That's one of the reasons I went to Washington to work. And Josephine, my sister, Josephine Johnson, she is now, went to college. And when she finished in '43 I think it was or '44, I went in '46. After the war in '46, I went to school, et cetera. And I thought it was one of the better schools in the state. At that time, we could not go to Duke University or State. And it was, I thought, one of the better schools in the state for liberal arts.	34:36
Kara Miles	Tell me about social life there.	35:30
Lisbon Berry	Social life there, very strained. There was not much social life during that time. We used to play cards a lot, and I think that still goes on in college campus, playing all kinds of cards. I used to love to play bridge and still do, but there were very few students on the campus who played bridge. So I had to get part of the faculty involved in my card playing. But it was nice. I used to play with the Dean of Law School and his wife would play. And there were one or two other students that we would go and sit down and play with him. But the others were playing all kinds of card, including poker. Sam Shepard, who is Dr. Shepard's nephew, was in school at the same time I was there. And he used to liked to play poker all the time.	35:32
Lisbon Berry	With regards to the social part of it, with the girls, a lot of the fellows found their wives there. We had, I think, very good relationship, even though strained at times. But there was always a wholesome atmosphere. And you could see the girls and hold hands in the cafeteria, restaurant in the mealtimes, and the social hour. North Carolina Central had a Junior's Bowl, it's a beautiful little hole in the ground. I'd say, hole in the ground, it was really very hilly on the campus. And there was one bowl, we used to call it the Junior Bowl, where the lovers would go and walk through and sit, and have their moments of romance on the campus. But it was nice. There were a lot of kids there who, as I said, met their spouses.	36:34
Lisbon Berry	They always had good athletics, and good athletic program. As a matter of fact, when I was there, they had the state championship, the Mighty Midgets. Because of the war, there were not that many tall people playing basketball. And they used to have these food kids, 5'11, I think I think was the tallest man on the team. Now, he can't even get out on the court with a basketball team now. But they had a good basketball program and a good football program and a good track program. And a matter of fact, the man who is in charge of the Olympics this year, Johnny Walker, used to be a track coach at Carolina Central when I was there. So we had had good athletes and good athletic program and a good social program.	37:59
Lisbon Berry	We had fraternities and sororities. As I mentioned earlier, that we had a group of young men who started the interracial fraternity that I think had its native chapter in the Brooklyn College campus. And they came down and initiated this fraternity Beta Delta Mu. And I think I saw a picture of us the other day, about six of us who started the actual chapter at North Carolina Central. And I can't tell you right now where any of those guys are, but we were all very close at that time, so we did have that kind of fraternal thing.	39:01
Kara Miles	This was an interracial fraternity, but you all were on an all Black campus.	39:46
Lisbon Berry	All Black campus. I think the interracial part came, it was established in Brooklyn and they had White members and Black members there. And it was our hope that, eventually, we would get some of the kids from Duke or Carolina to come over and join with us and be an integrated fraternity in North Carolina, with the hopes of getting—	39:50
Kara Miles	It started Brooklyn, New York.	40:13
Lisbon Berry	Mm-hmm. Yeah. And before you leave, maybe I'll find that picture showing the	40:16
Kara Miles	That'll be fun.	40:22
Lisbon Berry	—the six of us that established that.	40:23
Kara Miles	What made you want to join that organization as opposed to the rest of the fraternities that were there?	40:29
Lisbon Berry	I think I got turned off by the other fraternities of all the whipping and the beating and the harassment that was going on in the fraternities. And it just didn't seem like they were interested in the scholarship of the student. They were more interested in who could take the most paddles and it just turned me off. Beta Delta Mu was more concerned with your scholarship, and if you didn't have a certain average, you couldn't be even considered by the fraternity. And I like that, that impressed me as what a fraternity ought to be above. Strangely enough, I did not join any of the other regular fraternities, the Alphas, the Kappas and the Omegas.	40:35
Lisbon Berry	And yet while I was there, I ran for the student government president. And they of course were the political parties on the campus, as well as the sororities. Fraternities were your political parties. Each fraternity had a candidate running for the office. And at that time, I don't think we had established the Beta Delta Mu fraternity on campus, so I was sort of an independent. And everybody said, "Oh, shoot, you can't win this thing. How you going to do it?"	41:21
Lisbon Berry	But it turned out that there was a fight between the fraternities. I'm not going to support the Kappa or I'm not going to support the Omega and the Deltas and the AKAs and the Sigmas all were saying, "Uh-huh, Uh-huh, we aren't going to have any of those guys." And it turned out I had an overwhelming victory, and became the student government president for a year. But that was the other kind of things that I think did—Well, Dr. Shepard died during my second to last year there. But he allowed them to have a student government going, and I think Dr. Eller was the one who really pushed it. So I think, if I remember correctly, I was either the second or third student government president on the campus.	41:58
Kara Miles	What did you do in that capacity with the students?	42:51
Lisbon Berry	There were a lot of then problems with the students. Some of the kids wanted longer hours to socialize, because of the limit that Dr. Shepard had put on them, 6:30 or seven o'clock you going in. And so we started establishing programs for integrated, I guess you call it, between men and women anyhow, male and female students to do different programs and things that the boys could go by and pick the girls up, and at least take them to the auditorium and that kind of thing, to the programs or to the libraries, those kinds of things.	42:57
Lisbon Berry	And I guess on every campus you have the problem of sex. And of course, I felt that the students had to take some responsibility for their sexual conduct, and not just wait for the administration to start saying, "These are your dos and don'ts." And we started establishing some dos and don'ts that we felt that the students should do, and got them established on campus, things like that.	43:38
Lisbon Berry	We participated in some of the decisions that administration was doing about various things that were going on on the campus. I think we finally got the board of governors to put a student on the board of trustees for the college. Those kinds of things were going—I don't know if it was under my administration or the one that followed me, but I knew we were trying to get things done. And I do know that Dr. Eller did hire me for a year to work with the administration, sort of a liaison between the students and the administration. And I think that may have led to the implementation of having a student on the board of trustees, those kinds of things. And I guess, what are some of the problems you have today on college campuses?	44:12
Kara Miles	There's so many, drugs, alcohol.	45:10
Lisbon Berry	Well, we didn't have the drug problem much. We did have alcohol, but drugs, no. And cigarettes were—Very few people did much smoking. So we didn't have the drug problem, but we did have the alcohol problem. And as I said the sex problem.	45:14
Kara Miles	Could you tell me what some of those dos and don'ts were that you all decided on?	45:31
Lisbon Berry	Ooh, girl, you talking about when did I finish 1950? You talking about 50 years ago? No, I really—Give me a day or two to think about it. Oh, maybe if I get to get the echo, I can refresh my recollection of some of those things. That would be interesting, wouldn't it? I guess you guys would like to know what's going on.	45:36
Kara Miles	Yeah, we would.	46:00
Lisbon Berry	But before you leave, maybe I can find those papers and we can—	46:02
Kara Miles	Okay, good. You were part of the group who founded Beta Delta Mu?	46:05
Lisbon Berry	Mm-hmm.	46:09
Kara Miles	How did you all find out about that organization?	46:09
Lisbon Berry	One of the other members of the fraternity, who came from New York, I think, and he knew about them and hand-picked a few people and asked them if they were dead interested. And we said, "Yes." One was the editor of the campus paper.	46:18

Kara Miles	—you into that?	0:01
Lisbon Berry	Came down from New York to do it.	0:03
Kara Miles	So is that an interracial group came to do that?	0:04
Lisbon Berry	Mm-hmm. I'm trying to remember if I have a picture of that. I don't think so. I don't remember seeing a picture of that. And I don't know where any of those guys are now, I certainly would like to get in touch with them.	0:06
Kara Miles	Yeah. Is that organization still around?	0:28
Lisbon Berry	I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't know how long it lasted because after I left in '50, I went back to Washington and I didn't keep in touch. I think for a couple of years I did and then we kept—I know the chapter was on the campus for a couple of years, but I don't know when it stopped. But then I was in my younger age and I was scatting around.	0:31
Kara Miles	And I wanted to ask you about Howard. What was Howard like?	1:03
Lisbon Berry	Howard was all right. Howard was law school. I did not get into the undergraduate. My brother finished Howard undergraduate. But I went Howard Law School for three years. And it was in the '54 when I started law school then. And of course, that's the same year for the Board of Education case. So we were in as a part of that, as I mentioned earlier. But Howard's Law School was the school for Civil Rights lawyers, anybody who was interested in civil rights needed to go to Howard Law School. Charlie Houston was Dean before I got there, he was Dean and Thurgood was there.	1:07
Lisbon Berry	When I was there, Johnson was the dean of the law school and he was an outstanding cooperation lawyer and it was not necessarily was a civil rights lawyer. Jim Nabert was a civil rights lawyer. He had another lawyer, Frank Reid, who worked with the team of lawyers, worked on the school desegregation case. Charlie Quick was the professor there then, a good lawyer in property. Washington, there was a George Booker Washington who was another property, we used to call him Mr. Property. All of the staff professors but one, I think that I had were Black. We had one White professor who had become a part of the government, he worked with the Department of Justice and finally came over, because of the change of administration came over to the school.	2:10
Lisbon Berry	Although we were considered a civil rights school, most of the lawyers that finished Howard would be able to practice law anywhere and with any firm. Many of them went on to be corporate lawyers and outstanding politicians. I referred to Earl Johnson from Florida, Jacksonville, Florida, went on to become one of the first Black civil city councilpersons in the city of Jacksonville and participated in the consolidation of the city and county governments in that state. Goler Butcher, who just recently died was the outstanding woman in our class, she was the scholar. She finished law school with all A's and one B. And I think Charlie Creek gave her a B and almost killed her for giving her that one B, because everybody knew how smart she was. But she became a State Department Foreign Service expert with her law and then she went back to Howard to teach.	3:36
Lisbon Berry	Several others I think—Marsh was not a part of our class but he became quite a civil rights lawyer from Howard, in Richmond and became the mayor of Richmond. I think he came—Doug Waller, the governor of Virginia was a class behind me at law school, at Howard Law School. So, not only were they taught civil rights action, but they were taught good law and the law that could stand up anywhere. Most of the members of the class passed their bars wherever they went to take the bar except California. And I think we just feel that nobody can go from an out-of-state law school into California and pass that bar without going—I don't know of anybody who's ever passed that bar.	5:00
Kara Miles	Why is that?	5:51
Lisbon Berry	I don't know. I don't know. It's just that I think that California wants to respect for their law schools and they will not allow any other outside lawyer or law school to come into their school. And that may not even be true now, but it was for a long time. We had fellas who left here and would go to California to take the bar and couldn't take it without, and couldn't pass it without first going to one of the California law schools for at least a year or six months or whatever.	5:56
Lisbon Berry	But back to Howard, not only did we participate in the moot court trial for the Board of Education, the school board case board, Board of Education case, we had other outstanding lawyers. Jim Nabert, who I think a very outstanding professor in law. And I never ceased to marvel at his memory. He could walk in a class and start talking about a case and you can start taking one side of a issue in that case. And he said, "Well, did you look on page 72 in the second paragraph where the court said—" and read it to you verbatim. When you turn that page and he's giving it to you line by line, word by word, just amazing. And you don't run into his class and not know your lessons.	6:28
Lisbon Berry	And it was that kind of, I think law school, you don't go up there and just think you going to watch. My class started with I think about 35 members and we finished with 17. 17 of our classmates pass, finished Howard Law School. So, they would let you know, "Half of y'all not going to be here." So you had to know your work and be able to—	7:32
Lisbon Berry	They started—Well they had a moot court team that would argue with other law schools. And although I wasn't smart enough to get on those moot court teams. Howard's teams usually were either first or second. And they had the law schools of American U, Georgetown. There was another private school there that was doing a good job of producing good lawyers. I can't remember his name. But Howard students, once they got in the moot courtroom, they were just outstanding lawyers from the very get-go. What else can I tell you about Howard Law School?	8:02
Kara Miles	Well, that must have been such an exciting time to be there with the court cases and things that were going on there?	8:55
Lisbon Berry	I think it's always exciting to be in school in Washington because of the Supreme Court. When they were arguing case, of course the law schools were turned out and some of us were able to get passes to go in and hear the arguments. And all law students are welcome to go to the Supreme Court and to hear the arguments firsthand from all of the law schools and all issues that come before the Supreme Court. So, I think even now it's an exciting place to be for a law student.	9:03
Kara Miles	Were you there when they read the Brown versus Board?	9:40
Lisbon Berry	Mm-hmm.	9:45
Kara Miles	You were there in court?	9:46
Lisbon Berry	Yeah.	9:48
Kara Miles	What was that like?	9:50
Lisbon Berry	I wasn't there when they read the opinion, the decision. I was there when they argued the case before the Supreme Court and when Brother Davis and Brother Thurgood used to had their—had their day in court, so to speak. It was very interesting to be able to hear those arguments being made. Not realizing until now, 'cause it's just like sitting in, go downtown hear a court, hear a case. And we didn't realize just how historic it was going to be at that time, it's just another case. But then we found out that this was really a history-making thing. So it was quite a time, quite a time.	9:51
Kara Miles	You still can't think of that question, the stupid question that the guy asked Thurgood Marshall, can you?	10:38
Lisbon Berry	No. No, I can't. No. I don't know if I can ever remember that. Because it didn't register, to me until—And nobody, Thurgood was just talking about how stupid it was. "Nobody would ask those stupid questions like that. Go on man, what's the next question? Damn." I can see him saying that just as plain and I can't remember the question. But the next day he came back and said, "Uh-huh, never again. Never."	10:44
Shirley Hart Berry	To help kids feel good about themselves during the time of Jim Crow, you're Black and you don't have what others have. And school started at that time, for White children started before schools for Black children. And they had passed to school, Lisbon and his sister and his mother. And he saw little White children out playing and they weren't in school. So he said to his mother, "Mommy, you forgot to send us to school. Why aren't we in school, did you forget?" And his mother without batting an eye said, "Son, it just takes them longer to learn." And just kept on with what she was—I don't know if she was driving or what, I don't remember, I think she was driving down street. And never blinked an eye. And I just love it, it's my very favorite story.	11:27

Item Info

Title:

Lisbon Berry (primary interviewee) and Shirley Berry interview recording, 1993 July 20

Date:

July 20, 1993

Creator:

Contributor:

Miles, Kara Giselle

Description:

Name: Lisbon Berry; Date of Birth: 1938-07-13; Place of Birth: Washington, DC; Occupation(s): lawyer; Residence: Wilmington, NC. Name: Shirley Hart Berry; Date of Birth: 1922-03-02; Place of Birth: Bridgeton, NJ; Occupation(s): educator; Residence: Wilmington, NC
Informant ID: 237; Informant ID: 238; Interviewed by: Kara Miles.

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Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

Source Collection:

Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South interviews, photographs, and project records, circa 1864-2011, bulk 1990-1999

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The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired the Records of the Behind the Veil Oral History Project from the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies in 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2002.

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Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

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Copyright for content created by the Behind the Veil project is held by Duke University and made available to the public using a Creative Commons Attribution / Non-commercial (CC-BY-NC) license.

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Interview number: 1177
9f74af00-3eb1-4821-b343-d032da5c354e
behindtheveil
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ark:/87924/r4wp9zn2h
3e9b53ae-aac2-42ce-b9ac-642fc90a0e5b

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Lisbon Berry (primary interviewee) and Shirley Berry interview recording, 1993 July 20

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1. Lisbon Berry and Shirley Berry administrative file, 1993

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Lisbon Berry (primary interviewee) and Shirley Berry interview recording, 1993 July 20

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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