Lowenstein's Legacy
By the time Lowenstein left Raleigh, all downtown lunch counters had desegregated, as well as all city recreational facilities, indoor theaters, most restaurants and several hotels.64 Although one certainly cannot give Lowenstein full credit for this accomplishment, it is hard to deny that he played a large role. In July, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, ensuring these newly integrated businesses would not resegregate.
Although Lowenstein left North Carolina amidst controversy, the state liked to claim him as its own. The NCSU library has a copy of a 1966 article written about Lowenstein in The New Yorker on which someone wrote, "He'll be back in North Carolina one of these days," across the top.65 When Lowenstein organized the Conference of Concerned Democrats66 in 1967, the News and Observer ran a story recognizing him as a UNC graduate and a former NCSU faculty member.67 In 1969, he returned to NCSU to deliver a speech criticizing the government for spending money on an Anti-Ballistic Missile system.68 He spoke again at NCSU in 1976, this time about the controversies surrounding the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy.69
The press coverage Lowenstein received after his assassination on March 14, 1980 perhaps best proves the legacy he left in Raleigh. In an article published in the News & Observer on March 15, an NCSU professor claimed he had never met anyone "who better loved the human race."70 Local pastor W.W. Finlator remembered that he "was willing to pay the personal price to bring about change."71 A March 18 story in the News & Observer painted him as someone who "had a way in the long run of making pronounced and unusually beneficial changes."72 An August 24 article detailed Lowenstein's life and his murder.73 In the span of 16 years, Lowenstein had gone from villain to hero in the North Carolina press.
Lowenstein continued to make the papers in the years after his death. In April 1985, Joe Cincotti wrote an article entitled "The Original Activist: The Mystery of Allard Lowenstein" in the Spectator.74 Later that month, NCSU professor John R. Lambert, Jr., wrote a scathing criticism of The Pied Piper in the News & Observer, calling Cummings' thesis "unsubstantiated."75
Today, many people in North Carolina have never heard of Al Lowenstein. Lowenstein left Raleigh more than forty years ago, and a large portion of today's population was not alive during the civil rights movement. His legacy lies in the stores, theaters, and parks open to residents of all colors, a legacy taken for granted by youth unaware of the struggles that took place half a century ago.
