Appointed by Gov. Luther H. Hodges (1898–1974), Ralph H. Hodges (no relation to the governor) joined the East Carolina board in 1955, the same year Mrs. Merle Umstead (1901–1988), wife of the late Gov. William B. Umstead (1895–1954), and Judge Luther Hamilton (1894–1976) of Morehead City, were sworn in in Raleigh, in the governor’s office. Hodges served a single four-year term as a trustee, and was not reappointed per his request.
Hodges’ service on the board coincided with East Carolina’s slow advance towards desegregation following the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision declaring segregation unconstitutional. In 1956, Hodges joined a group of political figures, including Gov. Hodges, local Democratic Party leaders, a newspaper editor, and several educators, including John D. Messick (1897–1993) and Leo W. Jenkins (1913–1989), president and vice president of East Carolina, in a lunch meeting with Thomas J. Pearsall (1903–1981), a member of the governor’s Advisory Committee on Education. Pearsall and the Advisory Committee had proposed a plan for ostensible compliance with the Supreme Court even while allowing means to bypass it by (1) permitting local school districts authority to assign students to particular schools, (2) providing private school vouchers for those who preferred them, and (3) allowing local boards to close schools, if they chose, rather than integrate them. The “Pearsall Plan” was later declared unconstitutional but from 1956 through the early 1960s, its rationale informed the responses of many North Carolina school boards to the Supreme Court ruling. Ralph Hodges, then also a member of the Beaufort County Board of Education, joined Gov. Hodges and indeed the remainder of those attending the meeting, in supporting the Pearsall alternative. A photograph housed in the ECU University Archives captured a moment at the meeting when Gov. Hodges, ECC board of trustees chair, Arthur Tyler, President Messick and others appeared pleased to have devised a non-confrontational yet clearly evasive response to Brown v. Board of Education.
Hodges was born and raised in Washington, N. C., to a family with farming interests. He graduated from North Carolina State College (now North Carolina State University) in 1916, with a major in agriculture. While at N. C. State, he was a member of the Agriculture Club, the YMCA, the Class of 1916 football team, manager of the sophomore track team, captain of the sophomore baseball team, a member of the stock judging team, the German Club, and president of the Beaufort County Club. He received honors in scholarship each of his four years at N. C. State. He was also a member of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. A participant in N. C. State’s Military Training and Education program (required of land-grant state colleges), Hodges was second sergeant in Company Q of the Regiment. During WWI, he registered for military service but also claimed an exemption due to a hernia.
In the “Senior Class Prophecy,” the N. C. State yearbook, the Agromeck, joked that Hodges and another student, Vic Johnson, “had found politics easier than farming, and after many years they had become bosses of the Democratic Party.” The prophecy was not far wrong. After graduating, Hodges returned to Washington, got married, and then helped to establish the Beaufort County N. C. State Alumni Association and served as its secretary-treasurer. Then, in 1921, he was elected as an alderman representing Washington’s Fourth Ward.
In 1936, Hodges was named mayor, filling the unexpired term of Sam R. Fowle, Jr., who was nominated by Congressman Lindsay C. Warren (1889–1976) to serve as postmaster. The following year, 1937, Hodges ran for and was elected mayor, and served in that capacity through 1943. During his administration, Washington celebrated the completion of a new “hard-surfaced road,” then known as Highway 99, linking it to Plymouth. The town also saw the advent of public utilities made possible by a “city power plant” funded by the federal government’s Public Works Administration (PWA), a New Deal initiative coordinated by the U. S. Secretary of the Interior, Harold L. Ickes (1874–1952). In 1941, Hodges, then chairman of the East Carolina Council of the Boy Scouts of America, helped coordinate, through his office as mayor, a Boy Scout Camporee in Washington Park on the Pamlico River involving more than 1,500 Scouts. The same year, Hodges announced that the town and county had secured an option on a 300-acre site west of Washington for the proposed Beaufort County-Washington airport. During WWII, Hodges served as commander and chairman of the Civilian Defense in Beaufort County helping to coordinate local blackouts and resource management for the war effort.
In 1949, Hodges was named to the State Survey Panel Board and worked with East Carolina’s Dr. Leo Jenkins to investigate building programs for school systems in eastern North Carolina. Hodges also served as chair of the Beaufort County Board of Education and as president of the Beaufort County Scholarship Foundation, Inc. He was also a member of the building committee coordinating the construction and opening of the George H. and Laura E. Brown Library in Washington, dedicated in 1954.
Apart from politics, Hodges had a successful business career, working as secretary-treasurer and banker for the Washington wholesale dry goods firm of Suskin & Berry, Inc. In 1956, he was elected to the Advisory Council and the Executives’ Councils of the Southern Institute of Management and the American Institute of Management.
Sources
- “Boards of Education Confirmed in Raleigh.” Coastal Times (Manteo). March 30, 1950. P. 1.
- “Boards of Education Named by Legislature.” Coastal Times (Manteo). March 25, 1955. P. 1.
- “Boy Scout Camporee at Washington Fri.: Big Event to 1,500 Boys from Eastern Carolina Council.” Hyde County Herald. April 24, 1941. P. 4.
- “Business Notes.” News and Observer. October 6, 1956. P. 16.
- “Committee Begins Survey of Schools.” News and Observer. September 15, 1949. P. 6.
- “Four Named to ECC Board.” Statesville Record and Landmark. August 31, 1959. P. 8.
- “Hodges Wins New Term as Washington Mayor.” News and Observer. April 13, 1937. P. 2.
- “Little Washington Selects Next Mayor.” Durham Sun. April 22, 1943. P. 9.
- “Local Woman is Named Trustee of EC College.” Daily Times-News. August 31, 1959. P. 2B.
- Loy, Ursula Fogleman and Pauline Marion Worthy, eds. Washington and the Pamlico. Raleigh, N. C.: Washington-Beaufort County Bicentennial Commission, Edwards & Broughton, 1976. ECU Digital Collections. J. Y. Joyner Library. East Carolina University. Greenville, N. C. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/17020
- “Messick and Jenkins at a luncheon [with Thomas Pearsall].” 1956. University Archives # UA55.01.1924. J. Y. Joyner Library. East Carolina University. Greenville, N. C. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/23171
- “Mrs. Wm. B. Umstead Becomes ECC Trustee.” Durham Morning Sun. August 7, 1955. P. 10.
- “Omnibus Bill Names Boards of Education.” News and Observer. March 8, 1959. P. 5.
- “Ralph Hodges Named Mayor of Washington.” News and Observer. January 22, 1936. P. 12.
- Records of the Chancellor: Records of John Decatur Messick, 1947-1959. University Archives # UA02-05. Box 6: Hodges, Ralph, Member of the Board of Trustees, 1958-1959. J. Y. Joyner Library. East Carolina University. Greenville, N. C. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/special/ead/findingaids/UA02-05
- “School Board Bill Offered.” News and Observer. March 30, 1949. P. 10.
- “Six New County Alumni Branches Organized.” Winston-Salem Journal. July 30, 1919. P. 5.
- “The Class of Sixteen.” Agromeck, 1916. P. 45.
- “The Ticket for City Officers.” Washington Progress. March 24, 1921. P. 5.
- Toler, Mary M. “DeMille Home in Danger.” News and Observer. May 30, 1954. Sect. IV., p. 17.
- “Towns Will Join for Celebration.” News and Observer. November 24, 1939. P. 10.
- “Washington and Beaufort Urged to Attend Meeting.” News and Observer. April 21, 1936. P. 8.
- “Washington Gets Grant for Power Plant Project.” News and Observer. July 29, 1936. P. 2.
Related Materials
Image Source: News and Observer, May 20, 1954, Sect. IV, p. 17. Cecile B. DeMille (left) and Ralph H. Hodges, photo from DeMille's August 31, 1940 visit to Washington.
Image Source: Agromeck (North Carolina State College Yearbook), 1916, p. 45. Senior photo of Ralph Hinton Hodges. https://d.lib.ncsu.edu/collections/catalog?f%5Bclassification_facet%5D%5B%5D=North+Carolina+State+University.+Agromeck&to=catalog%23show_metadata
Image Source: Messick and Jenkins at a luncheon [with Tom Pearsall]. Ralph Hodges, standing, is second from the right. ECU University Archives # UA55.01.1924. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/23171
Image Source: Buccaneer, 1957, p. 20. Hodges is standing, second from the right. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/15308
Image Source: Buccaneer, 1956. P. 121. Hodges is sixth from the left. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/15307
Citation Information
Author: John A. Tucker, PhD
Date of Publication: 03/28/2023