PAR T I I : I N T O T H E MODER N ER A , 1958- 1974
faculty either. Dr. Vines had a school vehicle, and the director of the tech school, Leo Olsen, had a school vehicle. No one else had a school vehicle to drive 24 hours a day. As if Vines did not have enough problems dealing with faculty unrest over the new technical programs, Hattie Mae Butterfield discovered her salary to be less than the salary of certain male faculty. Butterfield had earned a doctorate, one of only two on campus at the time (Sidney Blakely was the other), and she was paid less than Claud Yancey, who taught business courses. She is reputed to have confronted Vines, arguing her advanced degrees and years of experience merited a higher level of compensation, but Vines allegedly contended that Yancey, a married man with several children, required greater remuneration than the unmarried music instructor. Butterfield, who was a forceful woman and not known for her sense of humor, turned on Vines and reportedly said, “Well, I did not realize that we were being paid to be prolific in those areas. Would it perhaps help if I bore an illegitimate child?” Although no one seems to recall whether Butterfield received a raise, the story illustrates the power and control that Vines exerted over life at the college. Often described as a “benevolent dictator,” Vines managed the campus affairs and made almost every decision, especially in the areas of personnel. His ideas concerning inequality of pay for female employees may seem arcane by current standards, but those ideas were the reality of the times. James E. “Pete” Howard, art instructor, talked about President Vines: Vines was an old ex-coal miner. In fact, he had scars from working in the mines. You get a little scratch, and coal dust gets in, and you carried a blue scar for the rest of your life. So he had little places on his face and his hands where he had blue scars from working in the coal mines. He was a tough guy, and he called me in one time. We’d just been given contracts. He had a bad habit of calling you and saying he wanted to see you day after tomorrow and not telling you what he wanted to see you about. So he called me and asked to see me day after tomorrow and to bring my copy of my contract with me. I’d already turned in the signed contract for the next year. So I brought my copy of my contract and handed it to him, and he opened his desk drawer and put it in and closed the drawer.
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I said, “That’s not fair.” He was just intimidating me. Tried to put me in my place, teach me that I’m on the edge and so on. We talked awhile, and he gave it back to me before I left the room. He just had total control. Never really Eugene T. Vines delegated much of anything. He controlled the place and kept it all under his thumb. I don’t mean to say there was anything bad going on. What I’m saying is that it may have been the only way the college could survive at the time. He was doing the only thing he could do to make this thing work.
Integration With the 1954 Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education, the segregationist shield of separate-but-equal dissolved, and the integration of public life in America began. The infamous spectacle playing out in Little Rock during 1957 brought the issue to the forefront as America turned to its educational institutions to lead the way toward integrating minorities into a so-called “whites only” society. Since its inception as an extension of the public school system, Fort Smith Junior College had maintained a policy of admitting only white students, a policy that continued after the school went private in 1950. Shortly after the Little Rock Central High School events of 1957, the college’s Board of Trustees entered into discussion concerning the admission of African-American students. Little of the actual discussion was recorded in the minutes, and the board ultimately decided to table any resolution for admitting students of color. Unfortunately, the resolution was not resurrected at the next meeting and died a parliamentary death. The principal argument raised against admitting African-American students concerned private donations and the fear among board members that certain individuals would cease contributing badly needed funds to the college.