She had called me on Alcatraz when we took it over. Lew Barton was the first Lumbee I heard from, and Helen was the second. Dr. Ruth Woods was the third, and she came out to Alcatraz to visit. All three of them were very excited about the Alcatraz occupation, which has led to many positive things for Indian people.
Both Mr. Lacy and Dr. Helen were leaders in the Indian community. Both made huge contributions, but Helen went way beyond everybody. Helen got half a dozen major pieces of legislation passed in Congress, some with little help from Indian Country.
Mr. Lacy Maynor was one of the early Lumbee leaders who attended the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) meetings. He understood the value of reaching out to other tribes and making friends with them. That has been one of my themes for the past 40 years. We don’t need to make any enemies of any Indians; we need their friendship and support. The past 30 years have proved the wisdom of this approach. But Mr. Lacy knew it way back in the 1940s. He paid his own way to attend NCAI meetings. And he would be the only Lumbee Indian there.
He started life as a schoolteacher. But when I got old enough to know him, he had become a barber in Pembroke. His shop was right on Main Street. And his house was right across from the Methodist Church, where it still is.
He knew my family and knew I was having a hard time as a teenager. But he never let on. When he would cut my hair he would always talk to me as if we were long-time friends. He would ask about my grandpa Purcell and my grandma Jessie, and about how Momma was doing, and how Daddy was doing in the VA hospital in Fayetteville. He was a gentle, cultured man, and he and Miss Sally raised a wonderful family.
He ran for judge in Maxton, and became the second Lumbee ever elected to that position. Mr. Early Bullard was the first one, and he hired Mr. Lacy as his assistant. When Mr. Early quit after two terms, Mr. Lacy ran and won. It is ironic that he ended up being the judge who sentenced that infamous Catfish Cole to a year in prison. Catfish’s hateful KKK meeting at Hayes Pond near Maxton in 1958 ended in disaster when his 50 racists were surrounded by 500 mad Lumbees, who ran them off. Catfish left his car there, and someone else had to drive his wife home.
Mr. Lacy came from a family of leaders himself. His sister Vera Lowery was one of the founders of the Lumbee Regional Development Association (LRDA). Her husband Elmer Lowery was the principal of Pembroke High School for decades. Mr. Lacy’s other sister Fanny Lowery was a schoolteacher who married the first Indian truancy officer, Zeb Lowery. Their son Dennis became a wealthy and successful businessman in Charlotte. Their son Jack is a well-known lawyer in Tennessee and has been mayor of his city. He is also one of the founding board members of the huge restaurant chain Cracker Barrel. Their other son Gene was a successful minister in Richmond, Virginia for years.
“Daddy told me I should have a life of service,” Helen told me 30 years ago. “He said he would sacrifice for me to go off and get a good education. So I have tried to live up to his expectations.”
“I knew I was going to help Indians,” she told Venita Jenkins of the Fayetteville Observer in an interview in 2009, “because that’s what Daddy said I was going to do. In August I will be 74, and I wonder if I have done what Daddy wanted me to do.”
Helen left Pembroke before she finished high school. Mr. Lacy sent her off to prep school in Newport, PA at the age of ten. “We didn’t have a high school at that time,” she told Ms. Jenkins. “The school only went through the tenth grade.”
From there she went to Berea College in Kentucky, where she finished in 1957. Berea was the first college in the South to be racially integrated. It also still offers a tuition-free education to its students. Her degree was in History and Political Science. And then she went to work, which she continued doing for 50 years.
She is one of only two people I have ever discouraged from getting their doctorate. There was a good reason; she was already way past a doctorate. Helen ignored me, quit her job, and went to VPI to earn her doctorate in Educational Administration. She got it in 1993, over a quarter of a century after she got her BA. Not many people do that.
Let’s remember Helen for the many positions she held over the past 53 years:
• Intern, National Congress of American Indians, 1958-62
• Staff member, U. S. Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, 1962-68
• Director, Office of Indian Affairs, U. S. Office of Education, 1968-73
• Director, American Indian Nations, Save the Children Federation, 1973-75
• American Indian Policy Review Commission, 1975-77
• Chairperson, Indian Education Task Force under President Carter, 1977-1980
• Program Director, National Commission on the Rights of the Child
• Founding Director, North Carolina Indian Cultural Center, 1988-91
• National Director, Indian Head Start, 1991-94
• Director, Senior Advisor for Museum Programs and Scholarly Research, National Museum of the American Indian, 2000-2007
And don’t forget some of the things that Helen helped to accomplish:
• Convener, Capitol Conference on Poverty, 1962
• Passage of the Indian Civil Rights Act, with the approval and blessing of Sen. Sam Ervin, 1968, after six years of effort
• Founding Board of Directors, National Indian Education Association, 1968
• Co-founder, Coalition of Indian Controlled School Boards, 1972
• Passing the Indian Education Act of 1972
• Passing the Tribally Controlled Community College Act of 1978
• Founding Board Member, National Museum of the American Indian, 1987
• The Native American Languages Act, 1990
We lost Helen this past December. There won’t be many giants of her size to come along.
Dean Chavers, Ph.D., is the Director of Catching the Dream, a national scholarship and school improvement program for American Indians, located in Albuquerque. His address is