Oral history interview with Leroy Magness, March 27, 1999

Leroy Magness spent most of his life in Lincolnton, NC, about thirty-five miles from Charlotte. A poet, and a man who "didn't want to be a troublemaker," Magness has an easy relationship with his past as an African American in a segregated southern town. He did not participate in the civil rights movement, nor approve of those that did, believing that good behavior was a better catalyst for change than activism. This determination to avoid conflict lies at the heart of this interview, and, it seems, at the heart of Magness's character. He will not place blame for segregation, and his principal memory of desegregation was some trouble between white and black students.