The Influence of Governor Kerr Scott
Governor James Baxter Hunt, Jr. reflects on how his early impressions of Governor Kerr Scott taught him how understanding and utilizing the political system can improve citizens' lives.
Interview on 2012-05-29 00:00:00 -0400
Transcript
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And Kerr Scott came along and was elected in 1948 as governor.
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This was a time when
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the political
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power in North Carolina
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lay in the hands of big business,
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companies that provided electricity,
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banks, the big companies,
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which by the way are very important; we have to have them.
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But they controlled politics
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at that time and the little farmers didn't have much of a voice.
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The money for politics came from these big companies.
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and their idea was hold down taxes, hold down regulation.
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Don't mess with us. We're doing fine but don't you mess with us, government.
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Stay out of our hair.
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And the situation was that people out in the country didn't have electricity.
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They didn't have telephones.
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They didn't have paved roads.
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They had poor schools and not much healthcare.
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And nothing was happening to change it.
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So this fellow, Kerr Scott, came along. He first became commissioner of agriculture.
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From Haw River in Alamance County.
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and he thought those things were wrong and they ought to change.
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So he was commissioner of agriculture for a few terms and then in 1948
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he ran for governor against the power structure in the state
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And he beat them.
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And he came into the governorship
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and lo and behold he proposed that we
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force the electrical companies that were serving the towns to run power lines out into the country,
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that we require the telephone companies to put lines out to the country,
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that we pass a bond issue
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-a three hundred million dollar bond issue, which is nothing today-
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so that we could pave roads
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and people could get from their farms into town without getting stuck in the mud.
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Well, my family had worked hard to elect Kerr Scott.
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They thought he was the kind of progressive person that would improve the lives of us average people.
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And Kerr Scott won and he went about doing the very things he said he would do.
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And one of the things he did, when I was thirteen years old,
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was to have our farm road paved.
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Now, as I said, most people don't understand how important it is to have a paved road because they all live on them now.
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In those days most of them were not paved.
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They were dirt,
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and as I said, you'd get stuck in the middle of the road in the winter,
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And Kerr Scott paved ours when I was thirteen years old. I stood at the mailbox
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-my house was about two hundred yards from the mailbox-
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and I saw that road paving machine come down our road,
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laying down that asphalt,
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paving our road,
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and I thought to myself,
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through politics you can improve your life.
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You can get some things down that you deserve to have done and that people need to have done.
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That's the first time it really hit me
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about how important it is to get involved in the political process.
This video is an excerpt from a longer interview. Contact the Special Collections Research Center to request the transcript of the full interview.
