North Carolina, South Carolina, and West Virginia (comprising Area 3) only one year later. Hobby spent the 1960s organizing the spread of unions in the South and promoting AFL-CIO-endorsed candidates for public office. He also strove to become president of the North Carolina chapter of the AFL-CIO, and was successful on his fourth attempt in 1969. Hobby considered the previous president, Milton Barbee, too timid to lead the organization into the future. Political career The overarching theme of Hobby's career in politics was to advance populist causes and the position of labor. He served in a variety of roles to make this possible, with his interest in politics becoming evident by the late 1940s. Early years at Voters for a Better Government (VBG) Hobby's first union leadership position at the American Tobacco Company's local plant was his stepping stone into politics. He was elected president of Voters for a Better Government (VBG), an officially non-partisan, but Democratic-leaning, Durham-based organization in 1949. Uniting liberal academics from Duke University and North Carolina Central University with laborers of all races, VBG helped elect the progressive Dan Edwards as Mayor of Durham. Hobby became part of the Durham County Democratic Party power structure, and he soon involved VBG in the 1950 Senate race, which pitted conservative Democratic candidate Willis Smith against Frank Graham, the former president of the University of North Carolina, who had been appointed to the position. Smith won with a campaign that characterized Graham as pro-integration and as likely pro-communist. Hobby was frustrated by the obvious racial undertones of the loss and concluded he had to work harder to develop a message that would unite, not split, white labor and Blacks. VBG's efforts to register more Blacks increased under his leadership, with Hobby working with Dan Martin, a Black political organizer to try to end the Jim Crow system that prevented Blacks from exercising their rights as citizens. Director of Committee on Political Education (COPE) Hobby continually ran into the same racial issues in politics, particularly when he served as southern director of the AFL-CIO's Committee on Political Education (COPE) from 1958 to 1969. The Durham United Political Education Committee (DUPEC) allied with conservative businesspeople to eliminate Hobby's and his allies' control of the Democratic Party. DUPEC accused Hobby of "selling their jobs to the NAACP". Throughout North Carolina, white unionists flocked to segregationist gubernatorial candidate I. Beverly Lake in the