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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview A-0330, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
John Seigenthaler grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, during the late 1920s and
1930s. He begins the interview by recalling his growing awareness of racial
injustice in the South during the mid-1940s, explaining that his observations of
racism inspired him to pursue a career as a writer. Seigenthaler recounts his
childhood awareness of local politics, offering several anecdotes regarding his
uncle's interactions with Edward Hull "Boss" Crump
of Memphis and his own early proclivity for progressive politics. In 1949,
Seigenthaler became a reporter for The Tennessean, a major
Nashville newspaper. Arguing that it was a progressive southern newspaper,
Seigenthaler speaks at length about journalism in the South. During the 1950s,
Seigenthaler became a renowned investigative reporter; he offers vignettes about
some of his most memorable investigations, including the unveiling of voter
fraud in a rural Appalachian county, the murder of an African American man by a
white cab driver in Camden, Tennessee, and his confrontation with the Teamsters
in that state.
The latter investigation brought him into contact with Robert F. Kennedy in the late 1950s. The two men forged a strong working relationship and personal friendship, and in 1960, Seigenthaler helped to campaign for John F. Kennedy's presidential run. Shortly after the election, Seigenthaler declined a position as newly-appointed Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy's press secretary, preferring to keep journalism and politics separate. Still, he wanted to work for the administration, so he accepted a job as RFK's administrative assistant instead. During his short tenure working for the Justice Department, Seigenthaler played an instrumental role in negotiating with Alabama Governor John Patterson and Eugene "Bull" Connor for the safe passage of the Freedom Riders in 1961, which he describes in detail.
In 1962, Seigenthaler left the Justice Department to become the editor of The Tennessean. He speaks at length and in great detail about
the changing nature of southern journalism during the 1960s and 1970s, paying
particular attention to the impact of cultural homogenization and the corporate
takeover of regional newspapers. According to Seigenthaler, during the 1960s and
early 1970s, racism and poverty were not problems for the South alone but for the
nation as a whole. In addition, Seigenthaler laments that the trend toward
moderation in national politics would limit social justice activism. The
interview concludes with Seigenthaler's commentary about Robert F.
Kennedy's assassination and his role in Kennedy's 1968
presidential campaign.
Investigative reporter John Seigenthaler discusses his early career as a
journalist at The Tennessean of Nashville during the 1950s,
his work with Robert F. Kennedy during the 1960s, and his role as the editor of
The Tennessean into the mid-1960s. Seigenthaler focuses on
the unique nature of southern journalism and the homogenization of southern
culture during the 1960s and 1970s.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
To start with, to put some of this media analysis and impressions and so forth, into context, why don't you tell us a little bit about your earlier years, how you grew up in Nashville and . . .
I was born here, I was the oldest of eight children. My father was a contractor who almost went broke during the Depression. I grew up in this town with middle-class parents. I'd say that in terms of economics, middle-class income from the Depression until the 40's. I served in the war and came back. My uncle was an executive of the newspaper, vice-president and circulation director. I started at Peabody and he got me a job here as a cub reporter and part-time copy boy. My family was Roman Catholic, traditionalist Roman Catholics.
I think that I
You say that your uncle worked with the newspaper?
He was vice-president
Is this your father's brother?
My father's brother.
Was the newspaper then a kind of a part of your family? Were you close to that particular uncle?
I was close to him, but not that close. I always wanted to write. I
really thought that I was going to teach school. I came back from
service and went to Peabody College here with an eye on teaching school.
But I got into this, the newspaper, and I was good at it. I liked it. I
was fascinated by it. I was a control tower operator during World War
II. I think that I became aware of absolute separation of the races in
the Air Force and it struck me. I remember in the early mornings that I
used to
Is this '45 or '46?
About '45 or '46. My mother is still alive and, at 72, a beautiful woman. I never have understood why she wanted to do that—have a party for blacks. I put a lot of pressure on her, maybe. It was beginning to get to me by then—racial injustice issues, in '46. It was beginning to get to me, heavy.
So, it was a race question, more than a kind of a newspaper heritage that was starting to be more of a driving thing . . .
Right. Then, I started here as a copy boy and part-time reporter I guess,
in '48, and that was sort of off and on until 1949 when I became a
full-time reporter while I was going to
So, there wasn't much, say, overt politics in your family, around the dinner table discussions?
Well, my grandfather . . . and we lived during one period with him, was intimately involved with local politics, really up to his ass in it. But . . . it was always local politics. I remember my grandmother—my mother's mother—saying that on election night she used to worry about him. He'd always put on his pistol and go out.
Right here in Nashville?
That's right. And he used to tell great stories about the old days in politics. On my father's side, his brother, Louis, was the son-in-law of Bill Jones, who was Nashville's agent of Boss Crump. So politics was always there. Periodically, Uncle Louis' job with the state government would come up for family discussion. Every election, Uncle Louis' job was either in jeapordy or safe. He was either going to get promoted or he was going to get fired, depending on how Crump did. And in those days, Crump always did very well. I always was aware of politics at the very base level.
Having a job and that kind of thing?
That kind of thing. Or literally running the town for four years, which I always thought Bill Jones did. I mean, he was literally Boss Crump's boss in town.
Crump controlled Nashville?
Yes, Crump controlled much of Nashville politics through Bill Jones. And usually, they won. Later on, Uncle Louis had a tough time with his job. As a matter of fact, when I came here as editor in 1962, he was working in our press room. As a boy he had started out in the press room, and that's where he died. He came to see me and asked if he could come back, he still held his union card. Uncle Walter was circulation director and he and I were both helpful to Uncle Louis, and he came back.
So your sense of politics was more local than state?
By far. Another thing that stands out in my mind going back: I remember
those conventions about Uncle Louis. I remember conversations with my
grandfather. My grandfather used to tell stories about how he was
helping some guy get elected county registrar or county trustee. He once
was helping a veterinarian named Boots Brown in a race for some office.
This was one of the great stories that he used to tell. He was helping
Boots. And they ran a man against Boots who didn't have any legs. He
told this story many times . . .
My grandfather Brew's home place was right up here at 12th and Broad just
within two hundred yards from where we are sitting in my office on the
other side of the street. They had a parade on election eve that came
down Broad Street toward town. I guess that it started right around
here. And they put this fellow running against Boots Brown up in a
buggy. And they propped the stubs of his legs over the edge of the
buggy, and started down across the viaduct. And my grandfather and
Boots, the candidate, were standing in the background of this crowd
across the viaduct there. And my grandfather said, "Boots, you are
beaten. Your own mother wouldn't vote for you if she sees that
son-of-a-bitch like that." Well, I remember that story and I can recall
dozens of stories of his involvement in local politics. I remember that
he was involved in such things as getting people to pay their poll
taxes, or telling people that they should pay their poll taxes. He was
sort of a precinct politico for many years. By the time that I got old
enough to know anything about it, he had gotten older himself and was
out of a good deal of it. But again, it was all local and not state. One
of the other things that I remember . . . it's funny, the things that I
remember are things that come back to me as things that I'm proud to
remember about my family. My father was a contractor and he had a man
working for him named Gene Woodruff. And Gene Woodruff had a brother
named Horace Woodruff. I remember as a child, hearing around the
It's interesting that you, as a liberal southern journalist, there was nothing in your family background that would . . . the period that we are talking about is the time when Kefauver was challenging McKellar and Crump.
Right. Before that, even.
But your family, if anything, was on the other side.
That's right, at least on my father's side. My uncle Louis, I am sure,
would have been against Kefauver. Now my father was pretty independent
of my Uncle Louis. But I would suspect that Uncle Louis probably always
voted with Crump. Uncle Walter was, on the other hand, identified more
with the Tennessean, which was against Crump. He had
come up with the
Tennessean and he would have identified with Luke Lea
and later with Silliman Evans and the anti-Crump forces. His brother
would have been the son-in-law of Crump's agent in Nashville. But both
Uncle Walter and my father were almost apolitical. Uncle Walter
identified with Colonel Lee, who owned the newspaper before Silliman
Evans. He identified with Colonel Lee and against Jimmy Stahlman.
Really, the added split in Tennessee politics was inside the Democratic
party and was a prohibition versus anti-prohibition split. Colonel Lee
identified very strongly with the drys, although he was a wet. And his
editor, Edward Ward Carmack, a former United States Senator, was
murdered on the street in downtown Nashville. The wet forces identified
with Crump and the dry forces—Lea and Carmack—were anti-Crump. Wet and
dry didn't mean a damn thing philosophically, or in any way except
politically. Well, my uncle Walter came up on the dry side, with the
anti-Crump forces. That's the uncle who was with the newspaper. The
other uncle, Louis, was the son-in-law of Crump's man in town, so there
was that dichotomy of interests within the family. And I suspect that my
father was probably caught in the middle. And he went about his
contracting business and didn't give a damn one way or the other.
I can remember frequent discussions about Hitler. My mother was very
sensitive about our name, early. You know, even when I was in grade
school, thirty-seven, or thirty-eight she was very sensitive about
"Seigenthaler" being a German name. She suddenly insisted that it was
Swiss. Another thing about her that I think is very important: Rover Boys and
Tom Swift. And I was always encouraged to write. I
wrote volumes of poetry in grade school: just literally wrote bull-shit
poetry.
Was that as a vehicle to get you out of . . .
I don't know what it was, they just wanted me to be involved in letters
and literature. An interesting thing, I stopped by my niece's . . .
she's about eleven years old and is in the hospital with appendicitis, I
stopped by last night to see her and she has written a volume of poetry.
My sister is doing the same thing with her that my
German heritage?
It probably is the Irish. There is a heavy Irish literary heritage I can
remember her telling me about Currin and Edmund Burke and Jonathan
Swift. I grew up knowing Jonathan Swift as a political satirist, not as
the author of Gulliver's Travels. And she really had a
deep sense of Irish history.
Do you think, then, that your early interest in journalism was motivated more by the family's sense of upward mobility rather than a concern with issues?
Probably so. And probably with that involvement with letters, which with
my mother was a near passion. Reading to us as children was a passion
with her. Christmas, 1935, she gave me a volume of William Shakespeare
that thick, which I still have and which I read from periodically late
at night. So, I think that I was very comfortable with the language very
early. I'll tell you a funny story. The first day I worked here as a
reporter, as a full fledged reporter . . . the first day, they said,
"All right,
What kinds of arguments, city council arguments or what?
City council arguments and . . . well, PercyTimes Bureau, came here while I was here. A dozen good
journalists are in Washington and New York who started here.
How did that start?
It just started. I think that early in the 50's, there was a little more
freedom on the Tennessean than there probably was
anywhere else around.
Around the state, or around the South?
Around the South. Ralph McGill in Atlanta was a magnet down there. YouThe Constitution was
great in those days because of them. But I would put the freedom allowed
reporters on the Tennessean. Today I think it probably
exceeds that against any paper in the country. I hope it does. Maybe the
Globe in Boston would be an exception. I went
through an awful lot of shit from time to time as a reporter. I thought
that with all its freedom they were too restrictive on some matters.
In the 50's you thought this?
When I began to want to move into areas of investigative reporting, I thought that there were some restrictions. I wouldn't bump into it but once in a while, but when I would bump into it, when I would rub up against it, you know. I would be crushed about it.
What kinds of areas?
Well, I remember one in particular in about 1959. A place called Clay County, a rural county on the edge of Appalachia: a poor county. The county courthouse smells like a French pissoir: it reeks of urine, you know. And a man came into see me and said, "There's a vote fraud up there." I went up, spent literally a month getting affidavits documenting the fraud and came back. We sat in this office, right here. The editor by that time was Ed Ball. He
was here with our lawyer. I spelled it out, showed them the affidavits and the lawyers didn't want to run it. I don't know why they were afraid of it. But they didn't want to run it. The editor said: "There is enough going on right here in Nashville without going to Clay County." And I got furious about it, I walked out of here saying, "That ought not to ever happen to anybody." I brooded about it three or four days and that fellow who was just here [John J. Hooker, Jr.] was a young practicing lawyer then. I went up to see him. And I said, "Look, there's a hell of a lawsuit to be filed." "What?" I spelled it out and he said, "Well, I can't go to them (the people whose affidavits I had taken), but if they come to me, I'll be glad to discuss it with them." So, I got the people who had given me affidavits and brought them in, and they talked to Hooker. He filed a lawsuit for them. The next day, the chairman of the election commission resigned, Frank Thurman, was his name. I never really understood why the paper didn't want to get into that. I had about three or four experiences like that. They were really debilitating to me. I got upset about it. I made up my mind that I would never make any reporter put up with that if I had anything to say about it.
Were any of those examples beyond electoral politics? Anything about the McCarthy era or crackdowns on unions?
No, it was a liberal newspaper I honestly think that they were nervous about libel in this case. Frank Thurman was the chairman of that commission, a man who had some prestige up there, fully capable of suing you, you know. I think they were nervous that I was dealing with panhandlers and people on welfare; they were worried that they would get hit by a lawsuit. That's what I think.
I mean, your own interest as an investigative reporter at that time, did it go beyond electoral . . .
Sure. The piece of investigative journalism that I am most proud of, in
looking back on it involved a murder case. We've got a reporter around
here named Nat Caldwell, who is good. He has been around forever. Nat
Caldwell was a veteran. Some black people came to see him. They told him
that a man had been murdered in Camdem, Tennessee. They said this fellow
had been murdered over an eight dollar cab fare. I went down there and
spent about a month, lived in the black community. It turned out that
this cab driver was white. He stabbed this black man, a saw mill worker,
for an eight-dollar cab bill. He had thrown the knife away. They had
arrested
Is that the one that you are most proud of?
Yeah. It was really the first time that I felt like I had a scalp on my
belt. I always thought that it was worthwhile. Here was the black man.
He had been dead for a month. The murder had been hushed up in the
community. Nobody gave a damn. I went in there and lived for a month and
I really came to identify with the mother of the victim. I didn't like
anybody associated with the other side, I was an advocate from the first
week. I knew that he had been murdered and that the town had covered it
up. And so, I went into it. In that case, when I came back and talked to
Coleman Hartwell, who was them the editor, he was super on it. Now, in
the McCarthy era, I was very much interested in the Highlander Folk
School fight, which was really peripheral . . . you know, in terms of
McCarthyism. It was a local issue.
Do you remember any of the legacies of the Wilder coal strike, any of their union activities?
Well, no . . . you know, there was always a free flowing discussion up
there and there was always something going on. And looking back on it, I
think that Myles was probably one of the most beautiful con men who has
ever been around here. I'm not saying that he was not committed. I
believe that he was. But he also, you know, was a hustler and . . .
Pulled you in?
That's right. He served a very worthwhile purpose. I covered some of the legislative hearings when they tried to sink them, when they did sink them. On a purely phony charge, you know.
Did you try to present that?
Yeah, I did. I was not assigned to it, but frequently, I found that I would not be assigned to a story and I would try to worm in on it. I would try to work the periphery of it, whether it was politics or a social issue. There was another big issue. Westfelt was assigned to Vanderbilt when Jim Lawson was trying to get into the Divinity School. I was on the city desk then, and I think that I played a very meaningful role in making sure that the paper kept Vanderbilt's feet to the fire. That board of trust out there was Neanderthal, you know.
You were about to say something about the Tennessean?
I thought that we were always moving. In retrospect, we were much too strident in political affairs and much too partisan in political affairs.
This is still the 50's that you are talking about?
Yeah, the 50's. I came back as editor in 1962. Part of it was a reaction,
I think, to the Stahlman tradition in journalism, the Stahlman-Lee fight
in journalism. And that had to do with McKellar and Crump. Looking at it
today and looking atBanner was making those abrasive movements I think
that probably we had a very healthy, volatile conflict, which was
philosophical. I mean, the Banner was a supporter of
the McCarthy tradition and we were anti-.
How did that breed the names that you have mentioned? People like Fred Graham and Halberstam . . .
I think that they were looking around for a place where they . . . Dave
Halberstam left Harvard and went to West Point, Mississippi. He was just
too hot for West Point, Mississippi. It was too small a town for a
liberal Harvard Jew. He came up here because he had heard about the Tennessean and had heard that there was some freedom
up here. But more than that, he was looking for a job on aPost's ombudsman, he is now the editor of
the Washington Post's newspaper in New Jersey. He was
here.
What kind of influence did these guys have on you?
Well, we were really contemporaries, you know. We were equals. And I
think that we had influences on each other. We would stay up late, there
was a tavern down the road here, a half block down the way, called
"Blackie's Place." And we used to go down there and drink out of coffee
cups, sort of an after hours place, you know. Blackie was a deaf as a
post you would sit around there or you would go to the Alley, or you
would sit around the city room. Or you would be out, maybe playing
poker. And the give and take on everything ran wild. You know, the
people I've mentioned were the people who agreed with me or with whom I
agreed in general philosophically. But there were others on the staff
who would bounce conservative points of view against them. And sometimes
it would be a real hostile discussion. But you know, it was a healthy,
vital, vibrant, continuing exchange over the role of the press, the role
of politics, social issues. And I thought that we wereTennessean?" Another young woman stood up and said, "My mother
won't let me. She is not going to have you humiliate us." And I made a
flat commitment. "Anybody that brings it in, if you will meet with
whatever deadlines there are, I am making the commitment that we will
publish it." Only a couple of months ahead of that, we had desegregated
our death columns. When I go on college campuses today and talk, I am
almost embarrassed about civil rights struggles in the late 50's, early
60's. I remember that in the Justice Department, we thought that it was
the most important, the most crucial, the most vital of all the things
we were involved in. And it is almost embarrassing to bring it up now. I
never do, unless they ask about it.
I want to talk about the Justice Department a little more in a minute, but before we leave the 50's, I am still curious about all this creative . . . who there was, if anyone, among the reporters that you have mentioned, or the editors that you have mentioned in the South, anyone from Hodding Carter to Mark Ethridge, that you would view as a mentor?
McGill was, I think, for all of us. He was for all of us on the Tennessean a symbol. Coleman Harwell, who was here and
who was a very open man and a great editor. He was a martinet, tough to
get along with, demanding, a scathing in-house critic. But he didn't
write a column and therefore, he didn't stand publicly for anything. The
paper stood for something. But he personally didn't stand for anything
outside this newspaper community. But I think that McGill stood out as a
target and a symbol.
Did you have other sort of personal motivations, did you feel driven from the 50's, I mean, were you . . .
I'll tell you. First of all, I think that a Catholic background may be as
much fundamentalist as a Baptist or as a fundamentalist as a Church of
Christ background. It comes on with very, very strong attitudes of right
and wrong. And looking back on it, you know, I don't know what I believe
or what I don't believe. It's not really important anymore. Christianity
is a good thing. It's just a great religion that has never been tried. I
think that if we would try it, it would be just fine. But nobody has
tried it and so we don't know how it would come out. But you know, I
think that it does have all the answers with peace and love. But
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
. . . I think that my identification with the Kennedys was not just their Catholicism. I identified with their liberalism, with Jack's liberalism. But I also identified very deeply with what Bob was doing to the Teamsters' Union. I was in that struggle here.
Let me jump back before we get into the Justice Department. Again, with the reporters, Halberstam, you, Fred Graham, that were on the staff here . . .
Let me just see if I can remember some of the people who were here,
because there were a great number of them. Creed Black is now the editor
of the Philadelphia Enquirer. Tom Wicker, who was here
in the 50's, as you know, he is with the Times. Chuck
Coates is now teaching journalism in New Mexico and went with NBC News.
Westfelt produced the Huntley-Brinkly News Show for five years. He is
now executive producer at NBC. Fred Graham, we've mentioned. Halberstam,
we've mentioned. Jack Hullet was on the copy desk at the Washington Post, the metropolitan copy editorial chief untilTimes.
Now, he came in in the early 60's. Bill Hannah is now with the Times. So is Reginald Stewart. Rudy Abramson, who is
now a Pentagon specialist for the LA Times, Jim
Squires . . . now, some of these people I brought in. Jim Squires is the
bureau chief of the Chicago Tribune and is about to
turn the Chicago Tribune around, or at least their
Washington bureau. And then at least another half dozen that I could
pull out. Gene Graham, Pulitzer prize winner down at the University of
Illinois. This place was a hotbed of top-flight, hard-hitting
investigative journalists.
How long was Jim Squires here?
About three years. Now, he was a protege of mine. I brought Jim Squires in.
Two questions: To whom in the 50's would you attribute the fact that this really was a mecca for . . .
Coleman Harwell, who was the editor. And to a lesser degree, Silliman Evans, who let him be the editor. Silliman Evans owned the paper.
How would you contrast that with, say, the Atlanta Constitution?
Well, I think that McGill was a journalistic
I'm just curious. When were you first aware of I.F. Stone?
Early, pretty early.
The 50's?
Yeah. Pretty early.
Drew Pearson, too?
Oh, yeah. Drew Pearson . . . one of the great moments of my life was when
Mr. Evans brought Drew Pearson down here and I got to interview him. I
was a young reporter. I remember that he made a speech in which he
opened . . . I don't remember anything he said except his opening. He
said, "I came down here to take the Silliman Evans cure and it damn near
killed me." But I was aware of Drew Pearson. I don't know what that
meant, because I don't think that he drank much. But it was a funny
line. But earlier, I knew about Stone, I knew what Pearson was doing. We
ran Pegler. I loved Pegler, because he read so well. I use to just laugh
like hell at Pegler, disagree with everything that he said about Henry
Wallace, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, but I
Were any of those people . . . before we go on to the Justice Department . . . what you would call "radical?" When you talk about the liberal press . . .
No, I really didn't see them that way. We had an op-ed page on the Tennessean early. I can remember in high school
reading the op-ed page everyday. Everyday, reading everybody on the
op-ed page. That was Lippman, Pearson, Pegler, it was even Dorothy
Kilgallen and Earl Wilson. It was Fred Othman whose column was
Buchwald's forerunner. He was a real wit. And I really very early
identified with that op-ed page. I knew it was opinion that I was
reading, and I loved it. I really loved it. But, you know, I don't think
it ever occurred to me in high school, or at Peabody, or at Harvard as a
Neiman fellow about the true meaning of the First Amendment being
absolute Then I started being exposed to Hugo Black. My own
understanding of the role of the press and what the role of the press
has come to mean to me dates back to about 1958 or 1959 when I began to
get on to Hugo Black.
How did that happen?
Well, I don't know. The first time I heard him say that libel had no
basis in law, I violently disagreed with that. I thought that was an
irresponsible statement. And I understood that he was the only court
dissenter who felt that way. You know, he was on to it very early. I
heard him speak once. And then shortly after I heard him speak, I heard
Justice Bill Douglas speak down here. Now, it seemed to me that the two
of them were on to it, that they were coming to grips with it. Black was
ahead of Douglas. I heard Black speak in Washington and I don't remember
where it was, but I remember he said: "The Constitution was written by
men who understood absolutes and who spoke in absolutist terms." I
didn't know what in the hell that meant. And then, somebody got up and
challenged him and he said, this fellow said, "There is no such thing as
an absolute." And he said, "What's your business?" The fellow said, "I'm
a lawyer." He said, "Do you believe in every man's right to an open
trial by a jury of his peers?" And he said, "Yes." "Would you want a man
tried under any other conditions?" He said, "No." "That then, is an
absolute right." The lawyer
William O. Douglas?
Yeah. And he was a great friend of John Hooker, senior, the fellow who
was just here, his father was a close friend of Bill Douglas. Douglas
was the best man at his wedding. And Hooker, sr., had him out to his
house and I began to probe Douglas on what he thought. Well, I could
tell that Douglas was not as far along as Black was then. He is now. But
you know, I just don't have any reservation about it now. But, it
started then, with hearing about Black's dissent. I can't remember what
case it was. It might have been Near vs. Minnesota. It might have been
Pennekamp vs. Florida. It might have been the dicta in the Harry Bridges
case. But in one of those cases, he took the line that there was no
constitutional
Let me ask you one other thing about the formative things in the 50's. We can't leave Ralph McGill the way you put him, without commenting on the vicious anti-Communist stance that came out of Atlanta during the 50's. And you were all in the creative group of male minds that was here. People didn't speak out about that much, did they? You know, it was obviously taken so far along and . . .
Yeah.
Why is that? Why didn't something happen to you in that whole arena of prejudice, like it did in Camdem, Tennessee?
You know, I guess that you really have to confront it in terms of
personality. When it hit Myles Horton, I could understand it. It was
pretty clearly defined. I think that if I had come up as the son of
Walter Reuther's parents, and been exposed to that sort of dining room
rhetoric, or exchange and give and take, I would have arrived where I am
much earlier. I think that basically, my people were moderate, decent,
honest people who thought that society needed restraints. You know, they
believed that there were
There were remnants of that with you?
I was not conditioned — not just by my parents, I think not by school,
too. You know, you don't come up in that parochial school environment
without having strong feelings about right and wrong. And part of that
right and wrong is Christ and anti-Christ. God and anti-God, Communists
and Catholics. You know, "We are right and they are wrong." And unless
you get exposed to inequity, and injustice, racism is not so apparent on
its face. You really had to work with Cold War problems, before you were
really willing to say, "It's not right for us to do something just
because we argue that somebody else does something." It's not right, nor
is it consistent to follow a nationalist policy out of a sense of
patriotic duty. And incidentally, you know, I think that McGill had a
lot of those hang-ups. Ralph McGill had the good sense to know Joe
McCarthy was trying hard to subvert the Constitution of the United
States and subvert freedom in this country but he couldn't come to grips
with Vietnam. Not ever.
That's a good place to go on from.
What was your first contact with the Kennedys?
Yeah, I was involved with the investigation of the Teamsters here, starting in 1956.
Did you cover that?
I covered it. Nobody else on our staff really wanted it. It was a liberal newspaper: we had been sympathetic to organized labor. I had strong positive feelings about organized labor. I didn't want it either. I had been covering the federal courts and working on the city desk on weekends, as part-time city editor. But it was just so tough, what had been going on in this community, so blatant and so wrong, that I couldn't ignore it. They were blowing up buildings, beating the hell out of truck company owners. It was really organizing by violence. And in those days, I was not in any sense of the word a pacifist. But it was obvious that not only was the labor-management process being undermined but that politics were being undermined.
They were literally raising hell all over town. They would blow up a beer
place. A dozen cars in a car lot would have
Schoolfield?
Schoolfield, yeah. And the Chattanooga press had just given him a free
ride. And he was bad news in many areas outside of the Teamsters. But
there were a couple of Teamsters cases that really put the finger on
him. I went down there and talked to some of the people on the
Chattanooga Times. The reporter said, "We know it, you
know, but . . . " They were very sensitive about being, "New York-Jew
owned," which was what Schoolfield would say about them, openly. And
they never really took him on. So, I did from up here. Then, in '57, I
went up to a seminar of the American Press Institute. By this time, I
was beginning to get known pretty well around as an investigative
reporter. I had done this thing with the blacks down there in Camdem. I
had done a good job in Texas. I had found a man in Texas who had been
he called me on the telephone down here and said, "Look, I'm sending two investigators down there. I've been over this case over the weekend and I think that it's awfully good and I would like to come down there and we are going to get into that." I said, "Great." And he sent two investigators down that week and that's how I got into it.
He was staff counsel?
Chief counsel for the committee.
Well, we could talk about this Teamster thing for a long time.
Well, we shouldn't.
Do you view that as . . . well, let me ask it this way. We've been talking about the press, you have been vigorous, aggressive.
Right.
Here you have a chance, you know, to make big and you were obviously ambitious, you were trying to show Robert Kennedy, you didn't want to mess around with his under . . .
I didn't want to fool around with Alderman, that's right.
And you were also, I mean, did you see the press
I don't know whether I ever did. I don't think I ever at any point in my
life thought that I had a springboard. I liked what I was doing. If I
stopped being publisher tomorrow, I would like to go back to being
investigative reporter. Probably couldn't afford it. But I was good at
it. I liked it . . . It was worthwhile. I was very, very happy doing
that work. I was very happy. I was pretty cynical about government. I
will just take you quickly through the events that brought me into the
Justice Department. I worked on that with him. They came to Tennessee.
They made an investigation. They had a hearing and it literally shook
this state to its heels. It exposed corruption. Schoolfield was
impeached / convicted. About six police officers in about four cities
were fired, a TBI agent was fired (Tennesse Bureau of Identification)
agent five or six Teamsters were sent to prison as a result of it. It
was a big scandal. I had been able to penetrate the surface with news
stories. But the power of Senate subpoena was phenomenal. For example,
there was one fellow here who had just beaten the hell out of a truck
company executive. This truck company executive went into court and
said, "I'm not going to prosecute." And theThe Enemy Within. So, I wrote him a letter and told
him that I would be glad to spend three months on it, but I didn't have
any more time. But it took longer. I extended my leave after the Neiman
Fellowship for about six months, which would have taken me from June of
'59 to the first part of '60. I came back here, went on the city desk.
The political campaign came along, Kennedy went into it. Coley Harwell
came out and said, "Look, he's going to be in these campaigns, wouldn't
you like to cover them?" By this time, Silliman Evans, Jr. was the
publisher. He called me in and said, "Look, I'm going to be for Lyndon,
but it looks to me like Lyndon is not
Bob had asked me to come into the Justice Department as his press
secretary. I said that I didn't want
I had grown an awful lot. A lot that I had seen was beginning to come together. I said that I would like to be in the administration. I said, "I would like to stick around for a year working with you."
At any rate, I went into the Justice Department as his administrative assistant. Ed Guthman came in as his press secretary. I was very anxious to get involved with civil rights activities. Burke Marshall was in civil rights and needed somebody who had a southern accent and . . .
Did you work with John Doar?
Yeah, I worked with John Doar.
Did you go to Fayette County?
As a matter of fact, if you look at Fayette and Haywood Counties, you'll
find that they went for Nixon in 1960. John Doar is responsible for
that. John Doar is and was a Republican. He had been hired by Eisenhower
and sent down there in those years. The only black areas of
What year is this, '61?
'61, yeah. The first wave of Freedom Riders left Baltimore and got as far
as Anniston and the Klan got them, burned the bus and beat the hell out
of them. They were a rather interesting group. If you looked
Who called you to go?
Simian Booker was a black reporter for Ebony Magazine.
He was an old friend of mine and an old friend of Bob Kennedy's. And he
called me and said, "Man, it's real shit down here." He said, "It's
rough."
He was traveling with them?
Yeah. He had come into see us before he left. And when he called, I took
the call first and he said, "You know, we can't get out. I don't know if
we are ever going to get out of Birmingham. They have got the airport
surrounded." I told him to wait; had been trying to get through to the
Attorney General for a couple of hours. And so, I went to see Bob and
said, "Simian is on the phone." He talked to him and said, "I'll talk to
the President and we will get somebody down there to help." So, he
called the President and the President said, "Well, who have we got."
Bob said, "John's here, he can go." He said, "Send him. And see if you
can get Patterson on the telephone and tell him
And Ross Barnett.
. . . and Jim Eastman and Ross Barnett. So, I went down that night and got with them at the airport. I then met with the officials of the airline and worked out a plan to get them on board the plane before they would take any phone calls. Because, you know, they would have bomb threatened them and kept them there forever. There was a crowd outside the terminal. They had been there almost around the clock. We flew them out to New Orleans and I was in bed about midnight that night. Bob called me and said, "There's another wave starting down from Tennesse, you had better get back to Birmingham." So, I got a U-Drive-It and drove back to Birmingham from New Orleans that night. Bull Connor had met them when they got off the bus and threw them in jail. And I went through three or fours days with Fred Shuttlesworth on one side and Bull Connor on the other trying to negotiate. One night Bull took them out of jail and ran them back to Tennessee. They hardly got to Tennessee before they were back. There were cars there waiting at the Tennessee line and they beat Bull Connor back to Birmingham, you know. The next day, he rounded them all up again and threw them all back in jail. John Doar had been trying a voter rights case in Judge Frank Johnson's
court in Montgomery and it looked like we were going to have to go to court in Birmingham to get them out. Suddenly, Patterson flew back into Montgomery and gave me an interview. I drove down to Montgomery and went into see him. And finally he said, "We can protect them and will." I then left and met with Doar and while I was with Patterson, we got the president of Southeast Greyhound and the Attorney General on the line and I had a conversation back and forth. The result of it was that we agreed that the state of Alabama would protect them from Birmingham to Montgomery and from Montgomery to the Mississippi line. It has been written about so damn many times . . .
Your exact role hasn't been . . .
No, I don't think it has. So, then Doar and I drove back to Birmingham.
Bull agreed then that if Greyhound would carry them, he would let them
out of jail. The understanding though, with Shuttlesworth and the
Freedom Riders was that the bus would make a regular run. They would
stop at every small town. They wouldn't run an express bus. Well,
Greyhound couldn't get a driver to take it on that basis. At any rate,
when they got on the bus, Doar and I drove to Montgomery
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
. . . you know, and I said, "What happened?" And he said, "Well, you got
messed up with these niggers and you got hurt." I said, "You better call
Mr. Kennedy." So, he
Why did you leave the Kennedy administration?
This job came open here as editor. Silliman Evans died. His younger brother Amon took it over when I had been city editor here. Amon had been a reporter. His younger brother thought I was good and he wanted me to come and he asked me and I did.
That's sort of a personal answer, let me go back and . . .
Sure.
What motivated you to move from the South to Washington and from journalism to government?
Well, it was really . . . in my whole life, it has really been events
that have taken me where I have gone, more than anything else. I
wouldn't deny for a minute that there has been a driving ambition, you
know. I guess that part of that struggling middle-class business, in the
50's and 60's we were on the make, you know. It's too corny to say that
I thought that Horatio Alger was anything but a horseshit myth, but we
were imbued
Within government or in journalism?
No, in neither. In business, administrative jobs. And always politically related. They wanted me to be a lobbyist. I remember talking to him about one of those and he said, "How much are they offering you." "Well, they haven't really talked about it in terms of the money, but I think probably twice what I'm making." He said, "Listen, don't even talk to them unless they are willing to talk four times what you are making." I said, "Well, I'm not even talking to them anyway." I didn't want to do that. I said to him, "I want to get back into journalism." It was pretty obvious that I was very close to him and I think that people . . . you know Washington has a glut of leeches and I think that bankers and businessmen thought that here was a chance to get a young fresh kid on the make and have a friend in the administration.
I had about three really good job offers. But I didn't want that and I
agreed to take this job only because I knewNew York Times and recommended Dave
Halberstam. He was interested in Halberstam anyway. I didn't want to go
to work for the Times at that time, I don't know why,
I just didn't.
Did you want to stay in the South?
I did want to stay in the South. I always had the feeling that southern
journalism was better. I still have that feeling, that southern
journalism is better. I don't know if I could prove it if I had to. I
probably couldn't prove it. But it does seem to me that the South has a
close tie to letters, to journalism. Maybe southern journalism . . . I
am now an avid believer in John Egerton's theory of the Americanization of Dixie and the Dixiefication of America. I
think that we have exported our worst and imported our worst. We've sent
poor blacks and poor whites to infest the ghettoes and hillbilly havens
of Chicago and Detroit, Cleveland, and we have brought in branch plants
and small shirt factories—industries to pollute the atmosphere. And
everybody wanted to come to Atlanta Atlanta is just "little New York"
now, I mean, nobody who has any sense now wants to come to
How about in the press, that same feeling?
I think that the press may be the difference. I think that the one
contribution that perhaps we have made from Henry Grady to Ralph McGill,
anyway . . . and I don't know what is going to happen from this point
on, but I think that there has been a pretty good tradition of southern
journalism. McGill and Hodding Carter are two examples of it, but North
Carolina has been infested with good newspapers. I think that Georgia
has had more than its share. Waterson started something very good in
Kentucky and I still think that Kentucky is southern. I know that I went
to the ASNE last time in Atlanta and Fritz Hollings and the new Senator
from Arkansas, John Seigenthaler, and some black legislator—a woman—from
Georgia—were on the program. A guy got up from Milwaukee and said,
"Look, I don't understand this thing about the Stars and Bars. What is
it about the southern flag? I see it everywhere." Well, they gave him
two answers that were identical. I couldn't believe it. Here were two
guys, Fritz, (relatively "progressive" and Bumpers)—everybody is talking
about him running for president—who stand up and say that flag is a
matter of pride, traditional pride. Well, I jumped to my feet and headed
for the microphone and Barry Bingham, Jr. beat me there. He said, "I
think that is
Heddermans?
Yeah, Tom . . . you know, Jackson, Mississippi is a newspaper disaster area. And the chains have come. I mean, Tom Hedderman, as far as I know is a perfectly nice fellow. But you know, I couldn't work for his paper and he wouldn't have me. And I would understand it and so would he.
The theme that you are pushing, though, you mentioned the homogenization. It seems that there are two ways that that can affect southern journalism. It can affect individual writers, Barry Bingham, Jr. and yourself and the newspapers they put out, you know, the kind of journalism that gets written. But it can also affect control. Corporate control is seeping into southern papers, just as much as ITT is buying southern farms.
Yeah, I agree with that.
What does that mean?
That's a problem. I think that it is very tough to have great southern editors if they are part of a national chain. Now there are exceptions to that. I think that Pete McKnight in Charlotte is a fine newspaper editor and he understands the South as well as anybody I know. And there are others. You know, Scripps has some good newspaper editors in individual cities and they are southern. But I do think that you lose something of the character of a community when the paper goes with a chain. It could happen to any paper in the South at any time, if a chain ever bought the St. Petersburg paper, I don't know whether they would keep Gene Patterson or not. But Gene Patterson is a great southern editor. I think that the great southern editors and the great southern journalists and great southern reporters are people who have been free to act and interpret freely as a part of the community, as opposed to a part of a national chain. You know, McGill was writing primarily for Atlanta. What he said just happened to have relevance all over the South.
Why do you think that southern journalism's tradition
I think the ordeal of racism has been something that we had to live with
and worry about and write about. And it's not just journalism. I think
that southern letters have been better. The fugitives were products of
the South. They were something uniquely southern. The fugitives were
basically literary people. Out of their group grew the agrarians, who, I
think, were less less literary and more political. They were far out
philosophically. But they were clinging to the southern way. And the
"southern way" gave us something to rub up against, you know, something
to react to. There has always been a challenge in the South. There was
always a lynching or a rape or a railroading of some innocent black in
some community in every state of the region. There was some injustice
every month for six or seven decades. You know, when recession hit the
rest of the country, it hit the South harder. The ordeal of reporting on
events in the South was more of a challenge, I think, for the southern
journalist than for reporters in other parts of the country. Now, I'm
not saying that everybody lived up to it, but it seems to me that there
was always the possibility that somebody on a paper is going to be up to
it, somebody would serve as a continuing conscience for one paper or
another. You can't hire these people to
Let's relate that to corporate control of these newapapers, the chains. Historically, have the newspapers of the South been less dependent on the corporate chains?
Well, I'm not sure, Scripps was in here pretty heavy pretty early. McGill
was a product of the Cox chain, a small chain, but a chain nonetheless.
I don't really know how delibitating chain ownership wouldSouthern Magazine or the South Magazine, they did something on this . . .
The South.
The South. That's it, they did something on this a few
editions back, whether corporate ownership was . . .
They did a kind of a surface thing.
And I thought about it some at the time. You know, maybe we are not as .
. . maybe we haven't been as good as I think we have been. If I have to
pointNew York Times and point to people who have come
from the South, to the Times . . .
But for political and economic analysis, Fortune
Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, they
all draw on the South the same way that the New York
Times and the Post . . .
Have you ever thought about why that might be?
I think the talent has just been developed here. There has not been a
fight going on in every other community of the country. Racism in the
South has given us for a hundred years something as newspaper people,
something to write about, to be concerned about to try to rationalize,
to try to live with. And I relate it directly to that. Now, there are
other social factors that also make it unique, that have made it
unique
Are there things that are going to take their place? Like the strip mining in east Tennessee? what the Peabody Coal Company and TVA, and all that kind of corporate inroad into the South? That's going to take a more sophisticated kind of journalism.
Yeah. And I don't think it is just going to be southern, either. I think
that the problems of strip mining goes as far west as the shale states.
I declined to join the L.C.Q. Lamar Society, because — I like Brandy
Ayers, but I never could agree with him or come to any point of
agreement on whether I think there is any sense in furthering the myth
that we have all the answers because southern leaders were nursed at
black mammies' breasts. I mean, hell, as I look at the South today, I
see us trying to become little LosThe Mind of the
South and find that there is a mind of the South. I don't think
that it is that clearly defined anymore. And I think that it is a waste
of time to go around talking about it and acting as if we have found
something that is meaningful in our racist heritage. I think that's a
waste of time.
Talking about the future of investigative journalism, it seems to me that investigative journalism is a search for who calls the shots, who controls . . .
I agree.
The conflicts that you are talking about during the civil rights movement were out in the front and generally, they were between middle-class folks. You know, is investigative journalism, and uniquely southern investigative journalism, going to expand into questioning corporate control? Is it going to become a more subtle thing than out front racial clashes?
I just don't know whether it will or not. It depends, largely, on the
commitment of the press to unexplored areas of regional life. This paper
has traditionally supported TVA. We wrote an editorial of restatement of
policy, restatement of support, about three weeks ago. But, we wrote it
with grave reservations about TVA's role with particular regard to the
environment. TVA has now joined arms with the AEC and I don't think that
anybody is sure about nuclear reactors as a replacement for coal in
terms of producing electricity for the Valley. And beyond that, TVA has
been an offender, ravaging the hillsides and not demanding that its coal
contractors reclaim the land. My wife, this week, joined a group to try
to block the construction of the Hartsville nuclear plant. She believes
that TVA has not told people the truth aboutitor has not investigated to
find
Against the background of being so continually associated with a paper that was intimately involved with the fight for TVA and has backed it traditionally, when did you personally first start to ask questions about TVA? Was it environmental or earlier?
Yeah, well, I asked questions about it at the time of Dickson Yates.
Because I saw then that . . . if Eisenhower had packed that board with
private-power people, which I think that he thought he was probably
doing (or the people who were advising him thought that he was doing
that) I think that I understood from that point on — or at least from
Dickson-Yates on)-that TVA was only as good for the people as the
members of that board were responsive to the concept of public power
over private power. And I would think if Ford names a very conservative
private power-oriented person to the board next year, in March or April,
TVA may not die, but it will be a
TVA needs to open up all of its councils, and discuss dangers; talk about
what you do if you have an earthquake or a terrorist takeover of a
nuclear power plant. What they have done is kept it close to their
bosom, talked about it to no one, admitted what they were doing to
nobody, and gone to bed with Westinghouse and Exxon Nuclear. And I think
the result of that is that TVA is in danger of losing its credibility as
an agency that serves the people. I have always felt bad, too, about its
power of eminent domain. It has moved too fast, too many times and in
too many areas for no good reason. You know, you reach a point of
saturation with flood control and production of energy. After you've got
this many dams, how many more dams do you need? We are not flooding the
Valley anymore, that's pretty much in control. And I have been out
Have you covered urban renewal in Chattanooga?
Yeah, we have. I must say, what's going on down there is . . . I think they are up to their ass in it. I don't know where that is going to lead.
You have both of them on the strings right now.
Both of them. And I never thought that we would get either one of them on the strings, you know.
A theme that has been in your history, the way that you have described
it, and is involved in the
Right.
A newspaper has a chance to make more of a splash. It's a bigger power
broker. You had a chance to stay in Washington in government and you
came back for different
Right.
Does that seem like a contradiction to you?
Well, again, I guess . . . and maybe this is not a direct answer to what
the question is, but you talked earlier about ambition and
agressiveness, the whole characteristic of my life has sort of been a
young man on the make. And you know, the facts speak for themselves. My
response to that is that I sort of set out the area I wanted to work in,
I really enjoyed working in it, I worked like hell in it and as doors
opened, I walked through them and maybe I kicked a few of them open
along the way. I don't know. So, that's one thing. On the other side,
there has been, I think, as a product of that work experience, going
through those doors, I think that there has been a continual development
of
Otherwise, you would observe?
It's not that important for me to get scalps on my belt anymore, that's really what I'm saying. I'm not saying that the fight is not worthwhile, but after you see a lot of good men blasted, you know, you wonder whether it is.
Against that, why did you choose to release this about Baker? Choose to get into that.
Well, a bright young guy walks in here with that and it was obviously
factual. I feel no tie to Howard Baker. If he is there, he's there and
that's our role. As I say, if some activist walked in and said, "What
about it?"
Against Blanton?
Against Blanton.
You did? I didn't know that.
Yes, sure did.
Why?
It was close, but his record on civil rights and human rights was
slightly better. Blanton had introduced some legislation that . . . I
think he was the product of a district that was really sort of an
extension of Mississippi and Alabama. And Howard's record on those
issues where you could draw a clear cut vote between Blanton and Baker
was better. On things like . . . well, Blanton had supported legislation
to cut off kids from college loans if they participated in
demonstrations on campuses and a lot of silly business like that. Things
that really didn't commend him for the Senate. I think that he grew a
lot in two years. And that's the next question, "Well, why did you
support him against Alexander?" Well, we supported him against Alexander
because I think that he came to understand that he could not be elected
as a Democrat in Tennessee unless he opened his arms to the new ideas
and to all the people. And he made an effort at that. He worked with
Harold Ford very hard in Memphis to get him elected to
Can you think of anything else about southern journalism that you want to discuss?
No, but if I do, I'll call you on Thursday and we'll go back into it again.
O.K.
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
I've been really thinking about the whole question of what it is to be a southerner in the 1970's, for a good while. The discussion with Brandy Ayers has been one that has gone on. I've thought about joining the L.Q.C. Lamar Society seriously and finally, he almost put it on a basis of friendship. And I backed away from it, primarily because I just don't believe that emphasizing southern heritage is really helpful to any of us at this point.
Let me ask you a question about that and it might be a way to . . .
To get into what you want to talk about.
Yeah, and you too. So, you will know more where we are coming from. I got
Jericho for Christmas, you know, that James Dickey
. . .
Right.
And there are a lot of ways of emphasizing southern heritage. There are a lot of magnolias and all kinds of taints. Right?
Right.
What you said about Walter Reuther the other day, that if you had been
Walter Reuther's son, you might have had a different political
You know, you came out of a Nashville family. You got interested in electoral politics. You were stretched in certain ways, right?
Right.
We don't know enough about . . .
Stretched, but never really shoved in any direction.
But there were people who were shoving in our southern heritage. Jim Dombrowski was shoving people, Myles Horton was shoving people. People got shoved as workers, too, that weren't in that middle-class, protected, Wilder, convict labor. I think that we need to know about that southern heritage. Because the issues are really complicated now, in the 70's. Civil rights was clear, clear to you as a reporter. It was clear that we had to move through that. Corporate ownership and amalgamation of farms and newspapers is not as clear.
No, but let's just settle this. This draws the line where I would like to
have it drawn. Nothings been talked about, written about, thought about
or discussed more than the southern heritage. Let me tell you why I
think that it's dangerous. I said the other day that it seems to me that
aside from letters—and I certainly consider journalism a vital part of
the region's cultural life— the South really has made no distinctive
contribution to the total society. All that has come out of that, or
most of what has come out of it— has been pain, torture, struggle,
conflict, controversy. All of that has been the product of poverty or
racism. Those two factors have really created most of the ordeal that
the South has experienced. I'm
Possessive plural.
That's right And we've come to think about the South in the same way. We
think of the Klansman as a part of ourselves; we think about George
Wallace as a part of us. Lester Maddox as one of us. It seems to me that
we've got a great sense of guilt because of people like that. The
problem has been that while we have been willing to talk about it and
think about it, very, very few of us have either been willing or able to
do a bloody thing about it. The South is as segregated today as it ever
was. This is a city that is split by race. White neighborhoods are still
white; black neighborhoods are still black, job discrimination is still
rampant. You find a token black in a bank, or a token in an office, or a
token in a newspaper city room, or a token on a television screen. But
we are still racially separated. And that is continuing, despite all of
the rhetoric about a "new South. Despite all the study and all the
analyses. I said to Brandy Ayers when IYou
Can't Eat the Magnolias?" His response was, "We do." I read
Willy Morris and I think the same thing, "Do we really need it, Willy?"
And after I've read You Can't Eat the Magnolias and
North Toward Home and Morgan Rouser's book here on
southern political voting trends, I conclude the same thing that I guess
I concluded when I read V.O. Key and Jack Cash. "Yeah, that southern
contribution is important," but it is not as relevant in the 70's as it
was when V.O. Key or Jack Cash wrote about it.
What's relevant in the 70's?
What's relevant in the 70's is that it is no longer southern. It's national. Let's just face what has happened to American society, it has become southern in character. Sure, we still have more blacks than any other region in the country, but we don't have more black dominated cities. I mean, Dick Hatcher in Gary is a reality and he was elected because Gary, Indiana, decided that it was going to be racially black.
It couldn't decide otherwise, apparently. Gary, Indiana has a black mayor because that is a black city. Washington, D.C. is a black city.
What about economics?
Well, just look at those downtown communities and what is happening to them. What's happening to Gary is the same thing that is happening in other cities, southern and eastern and western and northern.
Some statistics the other day showed that from 1960 to 1970, the number
of blacks in the South steadily decreased, until about '69. It just
leveled out, it now appears to me that it is levelling out at about
50%
Percentage?
Yeah, the rest of them are spread out now all across the country. Now,
you take that factor and then project that to what happens in Gary and
Chicago and Cleveland. Maynard Jackson is not even a first. I mean, he
is a fifth or a sixth or seventh. The black mayor of Atlanta was elected
because Atlanta went black later than Gary or Cleveland. And Carl Stokes
was elected because they went black sooner; Dick Hatcher in Gary because
the same thing happened. Walter Washington in Washington because the
same thing was obvious. You get 80% black and you just have to have a
black mayor, even the federal government could read that. I wouldn't put
Tom Bradley in that category because I think that Tom Bradley is the
exception. But there is an analogy between Los Angeles. I mean, Lester
Maddox is really the prototype of the traditional southern politician,
but Lester Maddox is no longer southern. Louise Day Hicks and Sam Yorty
are as southern as the prototype of the southern politician: Lester
Maddox. I said the other day, without really explaining it, that we have
exported our worst and imported the worst that they've had. One of the
things that we've exported is our separateness, our separate society.
We've sent off so many blacks that we have literally segregated cities
and the result of that is that we have changed the political climate in
places like that. So, while Tom Bradley is an exception he was not
elected because the blacks in Los Angeles outnumbered or nearly
outnumbered the whites. They didn't in L. A. He certainly came into
power because in that instance, Sam Yorty was everything that the
typical stereotype southern politician was. Tom Bradley just happened to
be the fellow who moved into that political vacuum and got elected
following that. Tom Bradley could have been a white liberal as easily
and been elected. People out there were sick of Yorty.
Let me ask you this. The base of a lot of what you said . . . I don't have any real quarrel with it, but racisim and poverty are not causal phenomenen. Those are the results of things. Those are the kind of twin specters that you used to say that . . .
To say that they creat the ordeal and the turmoil . . . yes.
We have exported that and those remain with us. Racism and poverty
No doubt.
Colonialism is still with us in a more subtle form, when Peabody Coal is here and in Montana and . . .
But that says something, you know, the fact that they are both here and in Montana and in Pennsylvania. I mean, if it is not Peabody, it's somebody else.
That's right. The whole country, perhaps.
What you are saying then, is that the whole country is as colonial as the South.
I'm not sure that I am talking of it in terms of colonialism. But I
understand what you are saying. What I am saying is this: that I am
confident that the South finally accepted in concept the wisdom of the
Supreme Court's decision, not just because they understood in the South
that not a hell of a lot would be done about it, but because the simple
justice of it finally got through. Look at the South from 1954 to 1960:
aside from Little Rock and a few other places, there was not that much
confrontation. In 1961, I don't think that anybody in the country knew
how active the Kennedy administration was going to be, not even those of
us who were inside that administration. I mean, there were really strong
reservations about Bob Kennedy. And we went in there and began to move
and the resistance to that was substantial. Heavy. But, you know, when
you made the argument about the wife of a veteran killed in Vietnam,
traveling from Mississippi to Arlington and then going home and not
being able to go to the bathroom or to a country-friend chicken place or
a restaurant, the simple equity involved had made an impact. What I am
saying . . . I could go on and make that case again and again and
that
Are they newspaper men?
Yeah, well, I don't know whether I am or not. I won't know until the
challenge comes. But I can look around the South and it looks to me that
it is possible. I mentioned Gene Patterson the other day, and Pete
McKnight, and Claude Sitton and Johnny Popham, and Reg Murphy . . . You
know, I look at Reg Murphy. I don't see that there is much fire left in
the old Constitution. But I know he is a good man.
Now, the question is whether he is good enough. I don't know what
happened to Gene Patterson and Jack Tarver in Atlanta. Everything that I
have
Let me go back a minute. I sense a sense of frustration at being able to pinpoint our solution.
Yeah, sure there is.
Is there something that is uniquely southern, that we have maintained an illusion of living in a community, and has that kept us from being honest with ourselves about a class society?
Oh, sure. And the one thing that we have done is convinced ourselves that
we were "different." There was nothing really good about being
different. And still, we told ourselves that we were different, as if
that meant we had superior qualities. There was nothing really good, by
my standards about the southern way. It was good and bad. The
ambivalence that has been part of the mind of the South during my
lifetime, is a natural ambivalence. You know, there is something to be
said for an agrarian society. We haven't had one in a hell of a long
time. But there is something to be said for an agrarian society. There
is something to be said for a slower pace, a better or more relaxed
attitude about work. But while the southerner for the most part, has
seen that as . . . part of his society as being worth protecting still,
at the same time, he has wanted very much to be like the North. He has
wanted to be industrialist. And so, he brings in the industry, which
puts burdens on him. Then he screams because things aren't like they
used to be. "Things aren't like they used to was." That ambivalence is
more pronounced in the South than it is elsewhere in the country,
because of the
He was here long enough.
Yeah, for long enough to make an impact.
Well, let me get at this another way. Let me ask you a question. Do you think there is something, that . . . what you are talking about is that sense of family, the sense of community?
Well, that's here. In the 1940's, the late '40's, maybe early '50's, in
'46, there was a race riot in Columbia, Tennessee. There was a man who
lived here named Edward War Carmack, who had run for United States
Senator a couple of times. He went to Columbia, all the blacks had been
jailed, and he
And headquarters.
That's right, and headquarters. And that means for the South, last hired,
first fired. You know what the blacks said about employment in the
nation, the methods that the South is now going to have to experience,
if this economic downturn continues, is that we . . . and again, notice
how I say, "we" are going to be. Which is just exactly the point you
make, we do think of ourselves as families . . . we are going to find
ourselves hurting most, the last to get relief. And what I am suggesting
by—all that I am really saying-is that if the South continues to look
upon itself, if we continue to look upon ourselves, as being "different"
as opposed to recognizing the nation in the 1970's for what it is, a
very homogenous society, then I
That's quite a rap you just gave. You are talking about a person not seeing the homogenization as a limitation, you know, retaining the illusions of a uniquely southern . . . the idea that we might have answers. What I am trying to get at is the limits of Egerton's book. We have got to transcend this. The homogenization theme is a limited one. I don't think that you can relax, in the way that he does say, with "the Americanization of Dixie." I'm not sure that I can say exactly why, but let's try to get at it in this way: In 1962, things were clearer. The Justice Department was on the move. You went to Montgomery, you were an activist. You had been an ambitious reporter and you jumped out of your car and took the chances in Montgomery, a big chance, as it turned out. Lots of things happened in the country and to yourself personally in those years. The country has changed a lot in twelve years, too. Personally, in 1962, you came back to the newspaper. You said the other day that you wanted to come back to the South. That seems too simple an explanation. You had the opportunity of a lifetime.
Oh, sure.
You had access to national, and in fact, to international power.New York Times. So,
let me ask you, in 1962, first of all, what you thought were the
possibilities of the government, you mentioned the other day that the
press doesn't have the subpoena power that the Department of Justice
does. The possibilities of the government, the possibilities of the
press . . . then, the possibilities of what you could do as a
journalist, which you say that you like better than you know, with the
New York Times. Let's go from there . . . talk
about that a minute and then we will come back to it. Why did you
leave?
Why did I leave the Justice Department and come back? Well, as I say, I
told Bob Kennedy that I was going to come back. I had told him that I
was going back to journalism. I didn't know I was going to come South, I
had no way to know that this job was in the offering. And when I talked
to Reston and Wally Carroll, about going to work for the Times, it was a brief interview one morning in which I made it
clear that I was just getting ready . . . this was between the election
and the inaugural. They had heard of Halberstam, they had taken a lot of
people from the Tennessean. And they said at the
outset, "Are you interested in coming?" I talked to Wally Carroll first
and he said, "Are you interested in coming into journalism?" I said,
"No, I'm going into the Justice Department." And I thought that was
going to be an interesting experience and it was. The conversation
immediately turned to Dave Halberstam and I talked to them about him.
They were already considering him. So, to say that I ever really
considered or that they actually made a job offer wouldn't be completely
accurate. I had the feeling that they were interested if I was.
You had an entree that you could have pursued.
Well, I had enjoyed that campaign. I could have pursued it,New York
Times . . . the name escapes me, but I know him (Luther
Houston). But he went out of his way to come down and say, "Look, I
guess that you are going to be moving into the office." And I said, "No,
I'm not." And he stayed on for a few months. I didn't want to be part of
that press office. And quite honestly, I knew that I was going back into
journalism and I said I was. Now, I might have gone to the North after a
year or two.
But, you say, "We."
That's right. As it relates to the Kennedy administration?
No, I'm saying that earlier in our conversation, you used "we" in terms of the South.
Oh, sure, that's right.
So, in '62, you did come back South rather than going North.
That's right. I think that part of that was that the job opened here, but I was very happy to come back South. It was like coming home, you know. I guess that if I left here tomorrow and stayed in journalism and somebody came in and said, "Do you want to go to work for a newspaper somewhere else?", I think I would say that this paper was . . . let's say that this paper was purchased by William Loeb and the Teamsters, which would really make it impossible for me, you know. And let's say, if they did that, I think that I would go north toward home. No, I would prefer staying in the South. I would prefer going to a southern community. What you say about that feeling of community is still there and it always will be there for me.
But it was more personal to you, rather than a strategy, like you said that the southern press was a more powerful tool . . .
I'm not sure that I think that it is a more powerful tool, and I don't think I said that. But I think that the southern press has produced more men of value for journalism than other regions. And I think that I can make that case.
Well, in '62, you were still energized by the New Frontier.
I really was, yes.
But you are talking about a kind of personal thing. You wanted to come back home and that wasn't what was . . .
Why did you leave in '62?
It came up.
The job came open?
You know, if you started out on a paper as a copy boy and somebody calls you and tells you that they want you to be the editor and if you love journalism, you come.
For letters, or you wanted the power?
It was just that it was something that I ultimately was going to go back to and here was an opportunity to do it at a new level. It was really a great opportunity for me, a superior opportunity.
Compared to being the administrative assistant for Robert Kennedy?
Not even close for me. I didn't think about it twice. I told him about it
and he said, "Well, you've always wanted to do that." But interestingly
enough, his wife, within twenty-four hours, came by to see me and said,
"I hope that you don't leave. I think that it would be a mistake for you
to leave." I knew what was happening. He was an interesting guy, he
didn't like to have people say no to him. Nobody likes to have people
But it is hard for me to believe that with what was happening in 1962 in the Kennedy administration, that a paper that had a local base at least and a state kind of arena at most, is analogous to being administrative assistant of Robert Kennedy.
The Attorney General of the United States?
An activist Attorney General.
An activist Attorney General . . . well, . . .
This is before the events of 1963.
Right.
You were looking at an eight-year Kennedy administration, basically.
That's right. And I will have to say that I enjoyed the position of power. The work was hard. We worked sixteen hours a day, but I worked that hard when I came back here. The pay here was not that much better. I was well paid in those days, as Washington employees of the government went. I guess that in a sense, you could even say that I lived in a southern environment, I lived in Virginia. But I will have to say that I never thought twice about it.
Did your wife want to come back?
Not that much. I wanted to come back. She was willing to go wherever I
went. She was never . . . she is from Lexington, Kentucky and Rome,
Georgia. She was a professional singer, her whole life has been music.
Before me, it was really Music City that attracted her here from Rome,
Georgia. She was pop, not country, but she knew an awful lot of the
country music people because her station was WSM and she was good. And
she spent some time with Arthur Godfrey and she did television and radio
shows in Nashville. So,
Was it more of a personal decision rather than a tactical or strategic decision about how you wanted to work and . . .
I thought that I was cut out to be a newspaper man. I thought that I could do other things. I think that I could have been a success at anything that I wanted to be in, you know. I mean, I think that I have some innate abilities. I really thought in 1962, that I was cut out to be a newspaper man. I had spent ten years in that, I thought that I did it well. I thought that I wrote well enough. I thought that I was tough enough. I did not want to be a "press secretary" inside government. I had dealt with too many of them as a reporter. While I was in the government, I found some natural ill will for the press.
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
But I was not comfortable with the anti-press feelings I found existing among people in government. The criticism that came from Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon was an exaggerated form of the sort of press criticism that exists in government at high levels in every administration. I'm convinced of that. Not many in government, outside of those people who have been in the press, really appreciate or understand the role of the press. The adversary relationship between those in government and those in press is natural and it is going to be with us for a long, long time. I talked about Justice Black the other day and didn't really get into that in any depth. I don't think that I was a First Amendment absolutist when I was in government. I am today. I was headed in that direction, though, and I was not ever comfortable when occassionally hostility for the press would be expressed by those inside government.
By Bob Kennedy?
Not so much Bob Kennedy, because he had been exposed to the press. I
think that Jack Kennedy and to a lesser degree Bob Kennedy, saw the
press, not just as an adversary, as Nixon and Agnew saw them, but also
as an agency that could be helpfully used. I can remember people like
Louie Oberdorfer or Bill Orrick, who were Assistant Attorney Generals,
Lee Levinger, who was an Assistant Attorney General, wondering why Bob
Kennedy would spend an hour with Holmes Alexander, who was a very
conservative columnist. They thought, you know, no matter what you say,
he is going to come out of there and it is going to be very negative.
Why would he spend that time? Well, I think that the Kennedy approach to
the press was much more like Roosevelt's approach than Nixon's. They
never said that there were bastards in the press without laughing about
it, or chuckling about it. While people at lower levels would say that
there were bastards and mean it.Herald
Tribune out of the White House, which was a Presidential order,
I never felt comfortable about that. As much as William Loeb prostitutes
the business I'm in, I still always felt that he had a right to do it.
And I feel that way more today than I did then.
You mean that Kennedy cut the Herald Tribune out of the
White House press corps?
No, no. He refused to take the newspaper, wouldn't let it on the premises
of the White House. Absolutely outlawed it from the White House. The
President, by personal order, canceled the subscription to the New York
Herald Tribune and wouldn't let it in the White
House. I don't recall what the issue was, but when I heard that, I never
felt comfortable about it. And Bob Kennedy was the sort of fellow that
would always listen toHerald Tribune.
Let me move on this. One of the things that I would like to talk about is what you have mentioned as your own perspectives of the limitations of government and the press. Your obvious loyalties were with journalism and the press.
Yes, despite its inability to function without a subpoena in government. They've got the power and so they can get more done, perhaps, in terms of cutting out evils. I guess that it has been proven again by Woodward and Bernstein, who opened the door, but who couldn't get there. Go ahead.
Well, it's harder to know what the issues are in the 70's. But you are afraid of the moderates, in the sense that people have relaxed with John Seigenthaler and that kind of thing . . .
Afraid is probably not the right word.
Well, what would you use?
Reservations. I have grave reservations about their abilities to provide adequate leadership for the answers that are needed to the problems of the 70's.
O.K., those are some of the limitations of government. That kind of a
facade, of an image, a moderate. You said, "Will we continue to hail
them?" Is the place of the press in the 70's, aside from the unique
southern question, to continually challenge that facade, to expose it,
to
My answer is yes. A simple and emphatic, "yes." In quotations, underlined
and an exclamation mark after it. "Yes!"
All right, then . . .
It is the only agency in the society to do it. But again, let me say . . . well, go ahead.
The other day, you said that you were an observer. You are an ultra-liberal, but you are an observer.
Well, I don't know that I am an ultra-liberal, I just don't argue with anybody who says I am.
But you said that you were an observer and not an activist. But you were clearly an activist in 1957 and . . .
In '62.
'62. And now, you say that the press should be, emphatically underlined and with an exclamation point.
Yes.
That is a contradiction.
Well, is it really? Here is the thing about it, I also said . . .
You will run stuff, if it is brought to you, that . . .
Yeah, sure. I don't want to be . . . I guess that all things are relative.
1968, Bob Kennedy came here to make a speech and afterward, he came to my
house. He said, after that, he sat down with a hundred leaders
But you will deal with my question?
All right, I will. I'll deal with the question afterwards. I went up to the Gridiron Dinner, which was probably in March. I got to Washington and called him on the telephone and he said, "What are you doing?" I said, "I've come to see the Gridiron." And he said, "Well, if you've seen one, you've seen them all. Why don't you go with me, I'm going to make a speech in Iowa for Harold Hughes, who is running for the Senate. It's going to be a fund raiser and there are going to be two or three governors there and then I am going on to break the bread of social justice with Cesar Chavez. And I am leaving in an hour." So, I packed my bags and met him at the airport.
You began here?
Yeah, I was here and then flew to Washington for that Gridiron. So, the anecdote goes back a little bit. We go to this place in Iowa, he speaks for Harold Hughes. Afterwards, in a suite, there are four governors, Guy, Hearne, Docking, Hughes. And their intimate advisors. One of them opens the conversation, John McCormally, who is a newspaper man from Iowa and didn't come to hear the speech, I don't think, probably stayed up in that suite. He began the conversation by saying, "All right, Senator, when are you going to announce for President?" I have the feeling that at this time, Bob was really in the throes of decision making.
This is March?
It would have been March, I think. February, maybe. It
New Hampshire?
New Hampshire. I don't remember the date in New Hampshire, but the date
would have coincided with the Gridiron Dinner in Washington, which it
seems to me, is every year in March. But I don't remember when New
Hampshire was, maybe April. He said, "Look, I've already said that I can
foresee no possibility of doing this." And it was interesting to hear
those governors talk about their own political futures, in terms of his
political future. Hughes represented sort of a consensus when he said,
"Well, I'll tell you one thing. I am sick of this administration and
Lyndon Johnson's inability to hear what the people are saying. I don't
think that Gene McCarthy is really saying all the things that ought to
be said, but a number of my supporters are committed to Gene McCarthy
and if you got in, you would just foul it up for me and them. But you
will have to decide." That night, after they left, Peter Edelman and I
stayed up late and argued with each other in front of him about our
ideas. That argument continued the next day on the way to California. My
position was that he should not run. My position was that Lyndon enmity
for him was so deep that as a sitting President, Kennedy could never
take the convention away from him. And that to run, would in effect, be
to lose. Peter's argument, on the other hand, was, "I think that he can
beat Lyndon Johnson and whether he can or not is not important. What is
important is for him to be the moral leader of the Democratic party."
And I said, "You can be a moral leader of the Democratic party and not
be a candidate. You will be in great demand at events like this one all
across the country." We went the next day to see Cesar and after that,
flew from Delano down to Los
What about for the man?
For anybody. That's not saying that I wouldn't work for somebody in a campaign for a few weeks. But, I would have gone back if he had been elected President, if he had asked me to come. I might have gone back to some position of power. I'm not saying that when I am sixty, if somebody asked me if I wanted to be an ambassador, I wouldn't go to Chile or Argentina or Luxembourg, but I am saying that that would be a form of semi-retirement, you know. I just don't think that the opportunities for changing society from inside government are that meaningful. Government is the corporate colony.
Can we quote you on that?
Please do. Government is the corporate colony.
Isn't that inevitable?
Well, I don't think that it is inevitable. I suppose that if you look at
the history of this country for at least the last hundred years, you
would have to say that there is a cyclical turn to events which
inevitably leads us back to where we were in terms of issues. And that
each time the cycle is completed, we find that we are a little better
off than we were before. If you take from 1960 to . . . and I am not
saying that they are ten year cycles, I don't think that there is any
regularity to the cycle, but busing when it came to Nashville, was as
critical a problem for the total community, as was the desegregation of
movie theaters. Now, in the interim, the whole picture had changed. If
you consider a few blacks in a few jobs a change. If you consider whites
sitting in lunch rooms with blacks, and blacks sitting in the downstairs
of the movie house instead of upstairs, a change. De facto instead
of de jure. Only partial to the degree that the
ownership is not total and anybody who is bought in government is free
to cut the shackles anytime that he wants to cut them. But I think that
it is inevitable that the corporate power structure will continue to try
to buy, and I would certainly include within that corporate ownership,
that element of organized labor which has been making offers inside the
marketplace for a long time. When I say that I am now an observer, I
just think that after twenty-five years in the newspaper business and
after the last five years, I am probably more cynical than many others
and to the degree that I am more cynical than I was in 1949, when I came
into this business, I am more of an observer and less of an activist.
That doesn't mean that I don't enjoy activism and that if it is thrust
on me by others on this paper, that I won't accept my share of the
responsibility for it, or that I won't encourage those who work here to
be activist. I think that I do everyday. I'm just saying that my
understanding has altered as to how dramatic a change can be wrought by
either well-meaning
Was there an event, when you were in government, within the Justice Department, that made you more cynical, especially under an incredibly idealistic administration, that showed the limits of how far government could push vis-a-vis corporate power?
Not really, because I don't think that I had begun to approach the point where I am today until 1968. I think that's . . .
You were real spunky and bushy-tailed when you came back.
That's right. When I came back to Nashville, and still am. You know,
there are some things that I just won't do. I belonged to the Rotary . .
. I was inducted into the Rotary Club in Nashville after I came back as
editor. The Rotary Club, after so many years, was confronted with the
black question —black membership— and they came around and negotiated
and said, "Look, don't quit, we are going to bring about this change."
And you know, I was willing to discuss it. I thought that maybe if I
didn't get out, it would make some difference. Well, after a little
while, it became obvious that I was kidding myself and they were kidding
themselves or maybe they were kidding me and themselves. And I quit and
quit over that issue. I don't belong to organizations in the community
anymore. I don't belong to the board of the United Fund or the board of
the Chamber of Commerce or any corporate board. I just don't think
that's the proper role for a newspaper man. Now, there are others on the
staff . . . there are young women on the staff who belong to NOW and a
couple who belong to the NAACP, who participate in those affairs
Do you work with Marie Lirillo?
Well, I am on her board. And that is the one I have stayed on. And I
would quit that one, because I think that I would probably be able to
provide editorial support to them that could be helpful, which I can't
do since I'm on their board. But her board has not been . . . I mean,
her financial support has been rather tenuous throughout. So that's one
that I have stayed on. I'm going to resign at whatever time I think is
meaningful. When I quit the United Fund, it doesn't hurt anybody and
maybe most people applaud, most business men who are on there applaud.
Probably not, but . . . I used to enjoy the Rotary Club. It was nice to
go up there and sit down at a table, because about once a month,
somebody would attack some editorial that I wrote. "I just don't
understand your position on this." And by the time that the luncheon was
over, more than one was probably upset about it. And it's not that I
like that much controversy, I have an awful lot of businessmen who are
good friends. They somehow think that I am a pretty nice fellow and they
don't like the editorial columns of the Tennessean,
but they don't find me an unlikeable man, I guess, and I don't dislike
them. Our roles are just different.
Do you have anything else?
No, the one thing that I really wanted to have an opportunity to
articulate in a little more detail is that whole thesis by which I
myself expressed some ambivalence as it relates to the South as a
region. I think that the South as a region is through. You can't change
culture and you can't change history and God knows, I wouldn't want to.
But there is nothing about the South in the 70's that is distinctive or
as distinctive as it was in the 60's. And as I see the natural evolution
of
Because this is oral history, too, let me ask . . . if you have the time . . .
Sure.
It is timely now to look back . . . you know, you sort of skipped over Northern California, those two months. Were you there when Kennedy was shot?
Well, I was in Northern California.
And what do you think of Lowenstein's stuff now?
I feel about . . . let me answer it first. I can't
You were with him?
I was in the car behind him . . . We went back to the hotel and my wife
and son were in my car with me, with my mother. They had
Do you tell that story very often?
No.
I'm not surprised.
No, I don't tell it very often. You know, we were very close. We were
good friends, we talked weekly on the telephone. I was thinking about it
the other night, The Missiles of October was on t.v. I
remembered that he called me from the Russian Embassy once, down here.
It was late in the evening and I was at the office working. It came
through the switchboard and he said that he was making a long distance
call and could he get in touch with me if I were home or somewhere else
and I just happened to be in the office. And he said, "Do you have any
relatives or friends in Florida?" I said, "I've got no relatives, I
might have some friends." He said, "You'd better get them out of there.
There is going to be some strafing
He was the Ambassador?
He was the Ambassador. And it appeared also that theMissiles of October, Vienna and the Berlin Wall
and the Bay of Pigs, that Khrushchev would have the idea that JFK would
back away. I think that part of RFK seeing Dobrynin . . . maybe the
whole reason for his seeing Dobrynin . . . was to impress upon Dobrynin
that we were, that the country was going to stand up.
What was the day of the phone call, do you remember?
I don't have any idea. It would have been, well, it was before the pilot was killed, or it could have been the night that the pilot was killed. That might have been what had me down here that night. It could have been that it was the night the U-2 pilot was killed. There was some crisis in the news during that whole period. It was within two or three days. I am sure that my secretary has kept all of my telephone books, so I'm sure that I could get the date that Robert Kennedy called. But on the other hand, I have to pick and choose between dates, because we talked weekly on the telephone, certainly every other week, or every three.
He hadn't been down here?
No, it had been a long time since he had been down here.
You talked weekly while he was still in Justice, or . . .
Yes.
Or afterwards, as Senator?
Well, we talked regularly for as long as he lived. We were in frequent
communication. After he was a Senator, I made a couple of
Where was this?
At the airport. And all of a sudden, he comes along and there was this
young woman sitting there on either a suitcase or something. She is
carrying two signs, one says, "I love America, Apple Pie and Bobby." And
the other one said, and this is the one that really got him, "The Banner loves Bobby." The Nashville Banner, you know, and he knew about the Banner
and he said, "The Banner loves Bobby?" And he
literally . . . I mean, everything just stopped. He had a very wry, but
a very strong, sense of humor. A caustic wit, he had a great ability to
poke fun at himself. During the days of the McClellan hearings, some
lawyer in Chicago called him a vicious little monster. And Kenny
O'Donnell who was then his administrative assistant, called him and
said, "George Clinton, who is a lawyer in Chicago, says that you are a
vicious little monster. And AP wants a comment." He said, "Tell them
that I said I'm not so little." That was the sort of wry humor he
had.
Was it more than personal friendship, do you think that he saw you as a key in the South?
No. No, I think he saw me in the same way he saw many others. Pierre, Kenny, Walter Sheridan, . . . as a friend.
END OF INTERVIEW