Home of Doctor Fuller Lowry
March 27, 1973

Dr. Fuller Lowry Born in 1881
Peter Brooks Born in 1902
 

Brenda Brooks: How much talking did your family ever do as far as passing it from child to child?

Dr. Fuller Lowry: Way back then, it seemed like that uh the Indian people uh a lot of them believed in the Republican party you know that a lot of them voted the Republican ticket. Uh Uh. They claimed to have uh some reasons for that you know. They, at first there’s a few of them that didn’t like the Democratic ticket, but later on the Democratic ticket became a little more popular than the Republican. They kept gaining until later on most uh most of the people got to be Democratic.

B. Brooks: But what, the first thing I need some correction on, if I'm wrong: The little bit of reading I've done, I've learned that the reason that the Indians maybe leaned towards the Republican was because it was under a Republican administration that Indians were given the right to attend schools. There was laws introduced that would not prohibit any person, regardless of race, to go to school.

Lowry: Right

B. Brooks: And then another thing that it did, that it was the Republican adminstration which gave the Indians their right to vote again. And so this -- I think these two things --

Lowry: That's right, it's -- so many of them were Republicans, and leading Indians back then were voting the Republican ticket. But later on the Democrats got ashamed of all that, and they got to doing more and more, and winning people over by making bigger appropriations and that.

B. Brooks: What kind of process, if you can remember -- your father and grandfather: Did they have to register like we do today? Or, tell me something about the process that enabled a man to vote.

Lowry: They had to register to vote, they had the registration through the

Peter Brooks: Mr. Fuller what did the Red Shirts do for us? Remember?

Lowry: That’s what you’d call the Democratic leader. They changed some of the Republicans to Democrats you know. I don’t hardly think it did very much for the progress of the people.

B. Brooks: Well, I’m not aware of what the Red Shirts mean, you gotta tell me.

P. Brooks: Well, this is from my father, I don’t remember it. This happened before my time. As I understand it from what he said. The Red Shirt ,uh, organization it wasn’t an organization in it’s entirety, uh, the, the Democrats began giving this Indian and that Indian a shirt, and it was a red shirt, so they would know him, you see, as they saw him.

Lowry: Trying to win the Republicans over to the Democratic Party.

P. Brooks: That’s right. And my father never did vote a Democrat ticket as long as he lived.

Lowry: Mine didn’t either, mine voted Republican.

P. Brooks: Republican ticket.

B. Brooks: And both you men are probably register Democrat.

Lowry: Yeah, we’ve voted Democrat throughout

P. Brooks: That’s right.

Lowry: And then later on it got to where to we didn’t all together look at the party but the man.

B. Brooks: Right.

P. Brooks: That’s what we, but here there’s been so many tactics that the Democrats have put forth, only a few years ago they would always have as many as three running on, say on the board of, on the school board. And if you didn’t vote for as many as three, you’re voted wasn’t counted. You remember that.

Lowry: Right

P. Brooks: And these are schemes whereby they, they the Democrats worked in order to keep the Indians out of the schools. In positions of authorityship.

B. Brooks: Well, what else did this red shirt mean other than just the means of identifying. If an Indian said he would change from Republican to Democrat and they gave him a red shirt, what else would he get because he changed his party?

P. Brooks: Nothing. He got something took away from him.

Lowry: He thought that he might get a position later, but…. He was looking forward to a position.

B. Brooks: Well, its been about a hundred years, about a hundred years since the Republicans had the Indians on their side, so to speak, in Robeson County.

Lowry: No fifty years.

B. Brooks: Because this is, Well this is the first Republican Governor we’ve had in the century. So it was in the late 1800’s, and so now, young people my age, there are a lot of us who are having the tendency to respond to the Republican administration again. So, do you agree with me that maybe history is repeating itself?