Food Service Workers Strike of 1969

Cafeteria food service on campus was first introduced in the 1950s, but dissatisfaction soon mounted as growing enrollments brought longer lines and complaints about the choices and quality of the food offered. In 1964, the Carolinian student newspaper ran a comparative analysis of the food services offered at UNCG, Chapel Hill, and N.C. State, finding the other two institutions’ services superior to those on the Greensboro campus. In response to this criticism, the university gave up its own food service that summer and, for the first time, contracted with a national campus food service, ARA-Slater (now Aramark).

This relationship between UNCG and ARA-Slater would last for forty-five years (until 2009), but not without controversy. The first strike against ARA-Slater occurred in December 1964, when black full-time employees objected to a proposed pay cut, even though they were already being paid only ten cents an hour more than primarily white part-time student employees.

Scene from the picket lines of the ARA Strike, 1969

By 1969, tensions had increased. Following strikes at UNC-Chapel Hill and at North Carolina A&T, ARA-Slater employees at UNCG - including some who were students at A&T - went out on strike on March 26. The issues included the hourly wage, lack of overtime pay, sick and holiday pay, performance reviews, and dismissal procedures. A flyer noted that the "demands must be met as soon as possible but no later than immediately." While not overtly related to race, the workers' grievances underscored the differences in opportunities and expectation afforded to the university's primarily white students and the primarily black staff that served them. As Chancellor Ferguson would later recall, "Initially, the strike was not a black and white issue, but in time an element of race conflict was involved because most of the workers were black."

Following the walkout, the SGA voted to support the striking workers and to call for a boycott of the cafeteria. In a controversial move, SGA also voted to use student funds to hire an attorney to represent the striking workers. On the night of March 31, a crowd of approximately 1200 students, including activists from A&T, demanded that Chancellor Ferguson answer their demands. Ferguson agreed to address the campus the next day, at which time he stated that he must remain neutral. Behind the scenes, however, Ferguson was involved in the negotiations between ARA-Slater and well-respected black attorney Henry Frye. In the end, ARA-Slater offered the striking workers even more than they had requested, and the strike ended April 2. Despite calls for competitive bidding, ARA-Slater's contract was renewed for the following year.

Pat Shore Clark (Class of 1958): A Distinguished Career in Public Service

Patricia Jane Shore of East Bend, North Carolina, earned her B.S. in Business Education from Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina (now UNCG) in 1958. She had intended to be a school teacher of business and commercial subjects and had already accepted a teaching job in Elkin, NC, when another opportunity arose that would change her career path.

Pat Shore with Senator Sam Ervin

In order to have her records updated at the Alumnae Office at WCUNC, Shore wrote in a letter to the Alumnae President that there had been a “slight change” in plans and that she was now working in Senator Sam J. Ervin Jr.’s Office in Washington, D.C. Shore’s job as secretary to Sen. Ervin quickly grew from “doing the invitations and engagements, to handling education legislation, then coordinating the other staff” in the office. She performed her duties as secretary so well from 1958-1973, that when Sen. Ervin’s top administrative assistant, Jack Spain retired, Sen. Ervin asked her to take the job. She “was so stunned” at first that she initially rejected the offer, but was soon persuaded to take on the task and in early 1973, she took the top job on Sen. Ervin’s staff. Sen. Ervin described Shore as “an exceedingly intelligent person,” who has “vast knowledge in the procedures of the federal government, a charming personality and is well qualified.” She was believed to have been the first women appointed to such a position by a Senator from any Southern state.

With Ervin’s retirement in December 1974, Shore’s employment also ended. The knowledge she had gained from working in a senator’s office helped her land her next job as a lobbyist for General Foods Corp. This turned out to be only a short refrain from public service.

Pat Shore during her time as Director of the NC Washington Office

Created in 1975 by Governor Jim Holshouser, the North Carolina Washington Office was a way for North Carolina to maintain a presence in Washington, D.C. outside of the legislative process of the congressional delegation. The Office was not simply a lobbying firm for the state, although that was certainly part of the mission. Its purpose was to keep track of legislation that would affect state government directly; keep tabs on federal programs of interest to the state and assist in applying for millions in federal grants; and act as a travel director and escort for state officials in Washington. The Office operated out of a four-room suite just two blocks from Capitol Hill. When Jim Hunt was elected Governor in 1977, he chose Pat Shore as Director of the Office. Shore served as the Director there from 1977-1984. Gov. Hunt said of the NC Washington Office under her leadership that, “[the office] has been extremely useful to the state in a number of ways, particularly in keeping a close working relationship among the state congressional delegation and the rest of the state’s leadership…That makes the North Carolina voice heard more strongly on Capitol Hill.” While there, Shore also helped to establish the organization Women Executives in State Government.

In 1985, Shore moved back to North Carolina and joined R.J. Reynolds Industries, Inc.’ governmental affairs office as group director for corporate public affairs. Though she returned to work in the private sector, she also continued to serve the public in many ways. She has served on UNCG’s Board of Trustees, received the North Carolina Council for Women’s Public Service Award in 1998, and served on the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation’s Board of Trustees (where she continues to serve as Treasurer). In 2014, she was honored by the Foundation for her leadership -- and the award presented to her was also named for her.

State Normal and the Woman's Betterment Association

In the late 1800s, the state of education in North Carolina was bleak. The illiteracy rate was 36% (compared to 14% nationwide). Per pupil spending on education was one of the lowest in the nation, and the average teacher's salary was less than $24 per month - about half the national average. The school year was only 60 days (compared to an average of 135.7 across the United State). In an 1883 report, North Carolina State Superintendent of Public Instruction John C. Scarborough placed much of the blame on the lack of proper teaching (also known as "normal") training. Scarborough wrote, "The larger number of teachers of the public schools [are] non-progressive, knowing nothing of any studies except such as they had imperfectly learned at the ordinary schools and nothing of the improved methods of teaching ... They were simply school keepers, nothing more."

First graduating class of State Normal and Industrial School, 1893

With the chartering of the State Normal and Industrial School (now UNCG) by the General Assembly in 1891, North Carolina politicians and educators created an institution specifically aimed at training female teachers for public schools in the state. When the doors to the school opened on October 5, 1892, 176 students enrolled to learn how to teach and improve the state's educational opportunities. In fact, of the 717 women who graduated from the school during its first 22 years, all but 33 went on to teach for some period of time in North Carolina public schools.

While the students were learning how to improve their teaching, the graduates were still being forced to teach in sub-par facilities - often one-room wooden school houses which educational leader James Y. Joyner deemed to be "a lion in the path of rapid progress." A 1902 address to the student body by the institution's founding president Charles Duncan McIver particularly struck the students. He stridently urged them to "labor as mothers and teachers to provide education" in the state. As a result, they formed an organization known as the Woman's Betterment Association, a group which sought specifically to improve North Carolina school buildings.

No. 2 Williamsburg schoolhouse (Rockingham County, NC), late 1800s

The motives which led the students of State Normal to organize the Woman's Betterment Association are best expressed in one of their early informational bulletins: "Realizing that under present condition, and with the present surroundings of the average school-house, it is impossible to train the youth of the state properly, and realizing further, that unless the women of the state take hold of this very important matter it will remain neglected, the students of the college have organized themselves and call upon the other women of the state to join them in making attractive and habitable the houses in which our children spend five days of each school week."

With the Woman's Betterment Association leading the charge, educational leaders across the state were charged with examining existing schoolhouses and making recommendations for improvements (or replacements). Viola Boddie, a charter faculty member at State Normal and head of the department of Latin, was one of the professionals sent to survey the educational landscape. She recalled "traveling around the state in an open buggy, pulled by a mule, observing rustic schools with spaces between the logs wide enough to 'throw a cat through if not a dog.'"

New No. 2 Williamsburg schoolhouse (Rockingham County, NC), 1906

Only four years after the creation of the Woman's Betterment Association, 1,133 new school buildings were constructed in rural areas across North Carolina at a cost of $490,272. The total value of the entirety of public school property across the state almost doubled in that short four-year period. According to a 1906 state report, these improvements were a direct result of the work of the members of the Woman's Betterment Association, who "became effective lobbyists for every educational case."