Henry Belk

Henry Belk served on the board for 27 years, from 1945 until 1972, one of the longest tenures as a trustee in East Carolina’s history. First appointed in 1945 by Governor Robert Gregg Cherry (1891–1957) as part of his, Cherry’s, purge of pro-Meadows trustees and then subsequently reappointed by Governors Kerr Scott (1896–1958), Luther Hodges (1898–1974), Terry Sanford (1917–1998), and Dan Moore (1906–1986), Belk was one of the most widely known and revered of the trustees in East Carolina’s history. His service included a one-year term as chair. As the well-respected editor of the Goldsboro News-Argus with a genius for local color as well as things philosophical, Belk brought wisdom and down east charm to the board.

His lengthy term defies simple recapitulation: Belk guided the school as it moved from a teachers college to a college, and then to a university and finally one with a nascent medical school. He worked closely with four different presidents, Howard J. McGinnis (1882–1971), Dennis Hargrove Cooke (1904–1982), John Decatur Messick (1897–1993), and finally, Leo W. Jenkins (1913–1989). Throughout his tenure, Belk mobilized the power of his editorial pen and widely circulating paper for East Carolina’s causes. Plagued by congenital cataracts, Belk, a towering presence at 6′ 6″, was left totally blind in 1955. Nevertheless, he remained, with the help of this wife, his “General Manager,” a forceful advocate of progressive change for eastern North Carolina and the state. By the end of Belk’s tenure, East Carolina’s student body had increased ten-fold, moving from 1,049 in 1945, to 10,286 in 1972, as its physical plant quadrupled. Faculty and administrative numbers increased proportionately.

Belk’s most lasting and noteworthy contribution to East Carolina’s development came in 1961 when he encouraged the school’s new president, Dr. Leo Jenkins, to open East Carolina’s doors to African American students in compliance with the Supreme Court ruling of 1954, Brown v. Board of Education. Belk’s advice was both practical and humanitarian and helped persuade Jenkins to work with a local African American physician, Dr. Andrew A. Best (1916–2005), to recruit prospective students to pioneer, from 1962 forward, campus desegregation.

Belk’s longstanding service to East Carolina was recognized prominently in 1966 with the naming of a $1.3 million dormitory atop College Hill in his honor. When he announced the board’s decision to do so, President Leo Jenkins remarked how it was “highly appropriate that this beautiful new men’s residence be named for this champion of educational opportunities for all. Henry Belk’s name will serve as a constant reminder to the men students who are residents of Belk Dormitory that they owe an obligation to excel as citizens of our society in return for the opportunity that has been made available to them in keeping with Henry Belk’s ideas.” Earlier, in 1961, Belk had received the Handicapped Man of the Year Award from the Governor Terry Sanford’s Committee on Employment of the Handicapped.

Belk rose to prominence in Goldsboro with the News-Argus, but hailed from the western part of the state, in Monroe, Union County, southeast of Charlotte. After graduating from Monroe High and working two years for the Monroe Journal as a reporter, he completed a bachelor’s degree at Trinity College (now, Duke University) in 1923. While at Trinity, he was active in the college news bureau and reportedly helped publicize the “Blue Devils” identity for the athletic teams. After Trinity, Belk taught English and directed publicity at Wake Forest College (then north of Raleigh), and studied a year, 1925–1926, at Columbia University’s Pulitzer School of Journalism while lecturing in journalism at New Rochelle College, New Rochelle, N.Y. In 1926, he returned to North Carolina as editor of the Goldsboro News, which later merged with the Daily Argus to form the Goldsboro News-Argus.

Belk was an energetic advocate of the promise and potential of eastern North Carolina. A lifelong Democrat, he admired an earlier Wayne County figure, Governor Charles B. Aycock (1859–1912), and actively promoted his remembrance through work on the Aycock Memorial Commission. In 1959, the centennial of Aycock’s birth, Belk presented a paper to the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association, “A Ten-Year Plan for North Carolina,” exploring Aycock’s legacy as an advocate of universal education and its relevance for contemporary times, with emphasis on the need for generous support for public schools and the state’s community college system. While Aycock’s white supremacist speeches dating from the turn of the twentieth century, later brought him into disrepute, Belk never broached those dimensions of Aycock’s legacy, instead focusing on the former governor’s advocacy of “universal education, equal opportunity, the necessity for the strong to protect the weak,” and “his [Aycock’s] theme song … ‘the right of every child to have the opportunity to burgeon out all that is within him.” Ironically, Belk’s grasp of Aycock’s legacy helped facilitate the desegregation of North Carolina’s public schools in the decade ahead.

Throughout the 1950s, Belk had admittedly concurred with the board’s consensus in maintaining campus segregation by appeal to the school’s charter and its Jim Crow statement of East Carolina’s purpose as educating “young white men and women.” Yet in the early 1950s, Belk’s columns in the Goldsboro News-Argus were also expressing concerns about the meagre attention given African Americans by the North Carolina press. In one, Belk asked, “Did you editors ever have any twinges of conscience about the manner and scope of coverage you give Negro citizens of your community? I do.” After recounting how his paper attempted to cover African American news, Belk confessed that his staff did not include a single “Negro reporter assigned to cover Negro news.” He added his hope that such a reporter would be hired, and concluded by remarking, “By and large, North Carolina papers are not adequately and systematically covering Negro news. We ought to do better.”

When he stepped down as president of the N. C. Press Association in 1951, he remarked, “… if a paper is published in a section that has a large percent of Negro population, it is not serving advertisers adequately unless this large percent is adequately represented in the news columns.” By 1963, the News-Argus had hired two African Americans to its staff, and Belk had participated in various initiatives within his capacity to provide, slowly but surely, greater equity in race relations.

Belk’s most notable contribution to desegregation at East Carolina came in a May 1961 letter to President Jenkins as the latter stood at the crossroads of racial change. Belk explained,

“… the college cannot much longer refuse to admit non-white students who fully and completely qualify. As you know, State College [now, NCSU], the University at Chapel Hill, and Woman’s College [now, UNC-Greensboro] have granted such admissions for the past few years.….

“We would be doing only what others are doing to put East Carolina quietly and without fanfare into the new stream. If we do not so act we shall in due time be the object of attention which might cause much more repercussions and reactions than admitting a few qualified ones.

“There is every evidence from Washington that regulations concerning discrimination will be carefully observed.… A policy of barring non-whites may even see the college denied aid in some fields.

“The board is not authorized under the charter to make … [any other] decision. The ban on other than white students was removed under the charter adopted when the Higher Board reorganization was put through. You will recall that originally the charter specified the college was for ‘white’ students. When the new charter was passed by the Legislature, it evidently was anticipated that the college should be in a position to act as wisdom indicated.”

Belk’s argument was more pragmatic rather than humanitarian, with strong emphasis on the negative consequence of not proceeding with the inevitable. At that time, court orders and even federal troops were necessary as some campuses and states refused to comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling. Belk surely understood that Jenkins, himself a pragmatic leader, would be better convinced by practical reasoning than by ethical appeals. In crafting his words, Belk, always the careful editor, spoke with his audience in mind. Jenkins was swayed and proceeded with East Carolina’s gradual desegregation beginning in the summer of 1961. No other trustee went on record voicing their support for compliance to President Jenkins as forcefully as did Belk.

Belk also helped guide East Carolina through the Cold War-inspired speaker ban controversy. In 1965, he, as the senior trustee, seconded William A. Blount’s motion that East Carolina adopt the policy recommended by the Governor Dan K. Moore and the Speaker Ban Study Commission. This policy gave the trustees regulatory powers over and primary responsibility for campus speakers. It also stipulated that known Communists or those who had “taken the Fifth Amendment when asked about political affiliation” be “infrequent” speakers on campus and only invited to when it clearly served “the advantage of education.” The policy affirmed that “it is vital to our success in supporting our free society against all forms of totalitarianism that institutions remain free to examine these ideologies to the extent that will serve the educational purposes of our institutions and not the purposes of the enemies of our free society.”

In 1966, as East Carolina’s push for university status turned more contentious, Belk spoke out strongly in support, declaring, “East Carolina must have university status. It cannot realize its full potential unless it has the proper foundation. University status would give the school the means to develop this potential.” The same year, in honor of Belk’s twenty years of service on East Carolina’s board, a new $1.3 million dormitory atop College Hill was named in his honor. President Jenkins had backed this move in part out of recognition of Belk’s wise counsel on matters related to campus desegregation, the speaker ban issue, university status, and other initiatives, but also because he knew well that in honoring Belk he would win praise from all corners of the state as Belk’s colleagues — including numerous newspaper editors — would declare the honor well-deserved and East Carolina wise in making it possible. With controversy over university status approaching boiling point, Jenkins and East Carolina needed as much support as could be rallied and honoring Belk was one means of gaining it, or at the very least, momentarily defusing opposition to East Carolina’s ambitions.

And Belk greatly admired Jenkins. After East Carolina attained university status, Belk nominated Jenkins for the “Man of the Year in North Carolina” award. Earlier, Belk had been instrumental in Jenkins’ selection as East Carolina’s president following Messick’s resignation in late 1959. Then chair of the trustees, J. Herbert Waldrop (1895–1966) appointed a three-man search committee including Belk, who was then the senior board member, to serve with Henry Clay Oglesby (1908–1985) and Charles H. Larkins (1906–1975), in reviewing applications. Belk and the committee unanimously recommended Jenkins. For the next dozen years, until his passing in 1972, Belk and Jenkins were close allies in advancing East Carolina’s progressive agenda as the dynamic force behind the ongoing transformation of eastern North Carolina.

The beginning of Belk’s end came during a trustee’s meeting at ECU when he “blacked out and fell from his chair.” A few weeks later, he underwent prostate surgery, but his condition gradually deteriorated and in just over a year, he passed away. Eulogies from every corner of the state and region soon followed. At East Carolina, Jenkins remarked,

Henry Belk was a great American.… His word was highly respected by those who disagreed as well as those who agreed with him. He will be greatly missed on our board of directors because he was an inspiration to us all…. East Carolina University was fortunate to have a man of his warm human nature, good humor and wise counsel on its board of trustees and as a member of its executive committee for many years.… His was a steadying hand during years of rapid increase in enrollment and variety of programs. He loved the institution deeply and was interested in its programs of on-going service, its growth and stature. He encouraged the young people who came to Greenville to obtain an education, and he wanted them to get the best available.

Robert Morgan, former attorney general and chair of the board of trustees, observed, “I think he was one of the greatest North Carolinians of my lifetime…. ECU will always be indebted to him for long before anyone else was publicly advocating the advancement of the institution, he was writing about the contributions it would make to the boys and girls of Eastern North Carolina.” Terry Sanford, then president of Duke University, added, “Henry Belk was a creative citizen and a stout defender of the value of an enterprising press…. his devotion to public causes made him one of the more valuable North Carolinians of his generation.”

In addition to the dorm named in his honor, a journalism collection, initiated with a gift by Jonathan Daniels, editor of the News and Observer, to ECU’s Joyner Library, began the Henry Belk Journalism Library Collection. In an ironic twist, Belk Dorm was demolished in 2014 to make way for a new dormitory complex atop College Hill.

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Sources

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• Reflector Staff. “Saying goodbye to Belk Hall.” Daily Reflector. January 12, 2014, updated October 1, 2019.
• “Robert Morgan Heads EC Board.” News and Observer. October 2, 1964. P. 8.
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• “Two Editors Named to ECC Trustee Board Posts.” News and Observer. October 19, 1963. P. 8.

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