Dreams lead Nelms to NCCU

Arkansas native worked in cotton fields, 'but my mind was never there'

BLOOMINGTON, IND. -- The tufts of cotton are inconspicuous, tucked away in a glass jar high up on a shelf behind Charlie Nelms' desk.

But the cotton bolls, plucked from the Arkansas farm where Nelms grew up, are never out of Nelms' consciousness.

"I want to stay connected to those things important to me," Nelms, 60, said from his office at Indiana University. "They keep me grounded."

Nelms will soon leave Indiana, where he is the vice president in charge of institutional development and student affairs, and come to Durham, where he will become N.C. Central University's new chancellor. He starts work Aug. 1.

The cotton will come with him.

Though he has spent three decades in higher education -- including two stints as a university chancellor -- Nelms has always stayed rooted in that rural Arkansas farm. He mentions it constantly -- during job interviews, in speeches, in the preface to a book he wrote. He mentions it so often, some of his colleagues joke, "Here comes the Arkansas story again."

Charlie Nelms was the fifth of 11 children born to Eddie and Carrie Nelms on a farm wedged between two large, white-owned plantations. The owners of the plantations wanted the Nelmses' land, but Eddie Nelms refused to sell. In retaliation, the white owners blocked the utility company from running power lines to the Nelms farm, so Charlie and his brothers and sisters grew up without electricity.

To pass the time, young Charlie read and memorized poetry. He still has his favorites: "If," by Rudyard Kipling, copies of which he likes to give out to youngsters; and Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken," which he quoted upon being introduced to the NCCU community last week.

Nelms' parents raised cows, chickens, pigs and cotton, all while stressing the importance of education. Eddie Nelms also worked in a store and brought home out-of-date newspapers. Charlie and his siblings devoured them.

"It didn't matter that the news was old," he remembered.

Eventually, Nelms enrolled at the University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff, a historically black institution that, for a poor black teen in the segregated South, was often the only way off the farm. He studied agronomy and chemistry, and became student body president.

Years later, in the preface to a book, Nelms recounted his hardscrabble upbringing and explained his motivation for getting to college.

"It was fueled by my determination to escape our leaky tin roof house, the sun-up and sun-down days in the cotton field, the outhouse, coal oil lamps, and the other evils of poverty and racism," he wrote. "It was there, in the cotton fields, that I learned to dream and to strategize about how to help myself and to change the world. My body was in the cotton fields, but my mind was never there."

Nelms' time at Arkansas-Pine Bluff stuck with him. Many years later, Nelms realized that the best way he could give back was to provide his own expertise and leadership to a historically black institution. He spoke of that desire often and was considered for at least three leadership posts at historically black institutions before taking the NCCU job.

In Durham, he will head the fastest-growing institution in the 16-campus University of North Carolina system. Founded in 1910, NCCU boasts one of just two public law schools in the state and a burgeoning biotechnology program.

Affordable education

Nelms said he is coming to Durham in part because of North Carolina's historic effort to keep college tuition reasonable for its residents.

"That is very important to me because I think that is the only way people from low and moderate income groups can access higher education," he said.