Film to air on Friday, Sanford

by Rob Christensen, News and Observer, January 6, 2015.

The 1948 study group was almost certainly the most famous in the history of the University of North Carolina’s law school.

It included Bill Friday, the future president of UNC, future federal Judge Dickson Phillips, future Chapel Hill Chancellor Bill Aycock, future UNC Board of Governors Chairmen Bill Dees and John Jordan, and on the fringes, a neighbor and upperclassman, future Gov. Terry Sanford.

I was reminded of that distinguished group recently while previewing an excellent new documentary, “A Generation of Change: Bill Friday, Terry Sanford and North Carolina, 1920s-1972.”

The documentary, which will air Thursday at 10 p.m. on UNC-TV is produced by Durham filmmaker Steve Channing of Video Dialog.

The film follows the careers of two men I covered extensively when I was a young reporter – Friday and Sanford.

Both were formed by the Great Depression and their experiences in World War II. When they emerged from the war, they were ready to assume leadership of North Carolina at an early age.

“In one sense, we were old people,” Friday said.

Friday became UNC president in 1956 at age 36, the youngest major university president in the country. Sanford was 44 when he became governor in 1966. He was later elected to the U.S. Senate, became president of Duke University and twice ran for president.

Both were small-town boys, Sanford from the Scotland County town of Laurinburg and Friday from the Gaston County town of Dallas. Both also were influenced by Frank Porter Graham, the famous UNC president and one of the South’s most influential liberal voices.

In 1948, North Carolina was still a poor state and a segregated one. Both Friday and Sanford worked to make it easier for people to climb the ladder into the middle class. They did it by keeping college tuition affordable and expanding the UNC system; by creating a community college system; and by pumping more money into the secondary and elementary school system. And they worked to break down the system of segregation where they could, and to stem the violence that marred so many places in the South.

As North Carolina began moving out of poverty in the post-war period, Friday and Sanford sought to keep a spotlight on those left behind.

When I think of Friday and Sanford, I am always reminded of my favorite Norman Rockwell illustration that was a Saturday Evening Post cover in 1954.

It showed an old farmer sitting on the back of his truck, smoking a cigarette with his excited son, all spiffy in a cheap coat and tie, suitcase at his side, waiting for a bus that will take him to college.

It is pure cornball. Sanford and Friday, part of North Carolina’s greatest generation, were all about helping those who followed them to move up the ladder.