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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-0347, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
Herman Talmadge served as Georgia's Democratic governor from 1948 to 1955 (and a brief stint in 1947), and as that state's senator from 1957 to 1981. In this interview, he shares his opinions on integration and race relations in Georgia. Talmadge, who opposed integration, claims that he did so to avoid tensions. He maintains that had the federal government stayed out of the South, states like Georgia would have integrated slowly but surely and with significantly less strife.
Georgia politician Herman Talmadge reflects on race in southern politics and the intrusive process of desegregation.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[I'm talking with former Governor and Senator Herman E. Talmadge]. . . Democrat of Georgia, now retired, living near Jonesboro, Georgia. Interviewed of Friday, November 8, 1990. I just thought maybe we could talk about a few things. You're a survivor, you know. A sort of a revolution has gone on in the South since 1945 or so.
I survived until '80, and then I got beat [Laughter]
Yeah, but you're still hale and hearty, and you're enjoying your life. You've got some good bird dogs out there, I see.
I think I got my mother's genes. She lived to be a 101.
Your mother did? Is that right? That's amazing. I wonder, when you think back on all that's happened in the South since the end of the war really. I mean that's when the huge change. . . .
[Interruption]
So much has happened. You go back and you start reading newspapers and magazines, and you just think, gosh, either I didn't know all this happened or I'd forgotten it. It was just so much.
Passes gradually and you don't notice it like you would if it just suddenly jumped out of it. . . .from being blindfolded. It's been phenomenal really.
Let me ask you a little bit about earlier on. You came out of the service, didn't you, in about '45?
Yes.
Could you give me just a little bit of the background, your military background?
Sure. I was commissioned in naval intelligence as an ensign in April,
1941. I was called to active duty in the intelligence office in Atlanta
in September, 1941. I'd been trained for cable sensor work in New York,
and shortly after the Japs hit Pearl Harbor on December 7, I was
transferred to my mobilization assignment, which was 67 Broad Street,
New York, which was central intelligence and cable
How old were you at that time?
I was born in '13, so I was 27 years old.
Twenty-seven years old. Out of college a few years? Out of law school?
That's right. Had been practicing law, just started practicing law in
Atlanta. Then I got fed up with cable sensor work in New York, and I
requested combat duty. They sent me to the first midshipman's school at
Northwestern University about the middle of '42. In that same class was
Robert Taft, Jr. After I finished midshipman's school, they tried to
teach us the fundamentals that you learn in the Naval Academy in four
years in sixty or ninety days, I've forgotten. Then they assigned me to
a ship that was under construction in California, the USS Tryon. It was
a disguised hospital ship. The Japanese paid no attention to the Geneva
Convention, so while it was a hospital ship, we [Interruption.]
So you were back in Georgia then at the beginning of '46, and back in law practice and interested in politics?
That's right. I had come back just shortly before my father engaged in his last campaign for governor in '46.
And do I have it right that up until about 1940, governors served two year terms and could succeed themselves, and that got changed. . . .
Ellis Arnall was the first four year governor.
First four-year governor and he could not succeed himself.
That's correct.
Then the '46 campaign which turned into that kind of musical chairs. . . .
For governor, right.
The two governor thing.
My father died, and the legislature elected me and I went through the courts. I won two out of three court decisions from the lower courts, and lost the state Supreme Court decision five to two. Then I vacated the office, and then I announced I'd carry it to the people and won the unexpired term of my Daddy in 1948.
Which means a two-year term, again, was in effect. That election was for two years.
Right. The unexpired term of Eugene Talmadge, that's what I served.
Right. And that did not disqualify you to run for a four-year term.
For reelection, right.
So in 1950 you ran for. . . .
I was elected for a full four-year term.
Then were you elected to the Senate in '54?
Had a two year hiatus. I was elected to the Senate in '56.
In the '50 campaign, when you won the full term, as well as '48, some of the reading that I've done indicates to me that Governor Arnall might well have challenged you. Could he have legally challenged you in '48 for that, or would he have been ineligible to run?
He would have been ineligible in '48. He would have been eligible in '50.
But he didn't make any go for it, did he?
No, he did not. We had the acting governor, or rather M.E. Thompson was sitting as acting governor, and the Arnall group and the Rivers group supported Thompson.
Did it surprise you some that Arnall never really made a serious run again for governor?
No, it would have been impossible for Arnall to challenge Thompson because he was acting as governor and he was a member of the Arnall faction. So it would have divided their forces irrevocably. Now, if Thompson had stood aside and let Arnall on, it would have been different.
Knowing what you know now about all that has happened since 1954 Brown decision and all the civil rights stuff and
everything, do you think, if you had it to do over, you'd do anything
any different than you did while you were governor? Particularly about
your governor's time, I'm not thinking about the senator.
I'm sure there would have been some particular things I would have done different. What are you referring to?
Well, I'm thinking, for example, about the white primary?
No, I wouldn't have been elected if I'd done different.
You wouldn't have had a chance?
Not a snowball's chance in hell.
Some people would have said the same thing about Arnall with respect to the poll tax, but he went ahead and took it on.
No, that was not the issue of the white primary at all.
Didn't have the emotional impact?
In fact, my father supported repealing the poll tax.
Did he?
Yes. In fact, the overwhelming majority of the people were probably in favor of repealing the poll tax, but at that time probably 10-15% of the white people were in favor of repealing the Democrat white primary.
So you had a solid 85% white mandate?
Not that many votes because people don't vote directly on issues, but the sentiment of the people was about 85%.
That's pretty hard for a politician to ignore, isn't it, if he wants to stay in business?
Well, if you want to challenge it, just don't run for public office. Resort to the courts.
During that time, a great many whites, and you yourself, used to say,
"The problems that we have in this region, we can work out. And
if the federal government will not
Actually by the time we passed the civil rights bill [1964 and 1965], any black that wanted to vote in Georgia was registered and did vote. As a matter of fact, during my father's race in 1946 probably 130,000 blacks voted in that primary. By the time I ran in '48, probably 200,000 blacks voted. We didn't pass the Civil Rights Act until the '60s. By that time, virtually any black that wanted to vote in Georgia was voting. Now, breaking down segregation would have taken a little longer. They were beginning to make some inroads in the cities, but not in the rural areas. It probably would have taken another 25 years on segregation.
Yeah. Would it have been a good route to go, do you think? I mean, you felt it pretty strongly then.
Well, it would have prevented lots of turmoil and everything else that we did have. 'Course, the route that we should have gone, when they passed the Fourteenth Amendment, that really was the basis of all these so-called rights and still is. At that time, we ought not to have ever had segregated schools, segregation in the South. Once you adopt a pattern and a mold of conduct with all of the laws involved, including your Constitution, and it's been in being for over a 100 years, people don't change their habits.
They really don't. I've done some reading, too, back in that period of time, and the laws really came into place between about 1877 and the turn of the century.
Right. As a matter of fact, we didn't have the white primary law in Georgia, I don't think, until about 1917.
Yeah, it was after the turn of the century.
Called Neil's Primary Act. They had done it, though, by resolution in the Democrat Party prior to that. But blacks voted in elections up until, I guess, the early 20th century.
Then you had 30 or 40 years where it was just. . . .
That's right. What made the people so mad and disgusted them so, see, the blacks had, unfortunately, a lower level of education than whites, and they would vote, say, 10,000 votes in Augusta, Georgia, and the results would be 9,995. Just like voting cattle or pine trees, and that's the reason they disfranchised the blacks. [Richard] Daley [of Chicago] in his heyday couldn't muster the votes that they did in those days, black vote. Manipulated, bought and sold, just like cattle. That probably had more to do with disfranchising them than their color, really.
Prior to the Brown decision, that was in '54, those
cases were in the lower courts for about three years. And even before
that, there were some higher education rulings. . . .
A ruling in Texas on the university system that antedated the voting issue.
And some of those went back quite some time. Looking back on that now, it
seems to me that people surely must have seen this coming. And yet when
I talk to people, regardless of their point of view on whether they
think Brown was good or bad, they still say they were
shocked when Brown came down.
I tried to anticipate it to some degree with my
Yeah, the buildings and all of that.
I had a mammoth school building authority. We built more schools in Georgia than any state in the union except New York and California. Each one of those states had about three times our population and much higher per capita income. I did that to try to equalize the opportunity for blacks and whites. When I took office, the white children were riding school buses to school, and the black children were walking. I changed all that. I equalized the salaries, I put them in school buses, and I put them in good buildings. Frankly, part of that was to try to stave off the threat of integrated schools. It didn't work.
Could it have worked?
Looking back on it in hindsight, it could not have worked, probably with the lawsuits. Looking back on it in hindsight, it was the proper thing to do regardless of motive. When they passed the Fourteenth Amendment, following the War Between the States, they ought to have broken down the barrier of segregation at that time.
Right then, yeah.
Then we'd have never had the problem that we had in the courts, and the local level, and everything else.
It was your responsibility, and it fell on you to deal with the whole notion of the law said separate but equal, the courts were about. . . .
And the people said that, too.
And the people said that, and the courts were about to say something else.
I was between the people and the courts, really.
From an economic standpoint, leaving aside the politics and all that, do you think Georgia could have supported two separate school systems that would have ever been adequate in the larger scheme of things?
Well, we did in those days. Strangely enough, more money we spend on education, the worst the SAT scores get. So there's a hell of lot more to schools than just money. I found that out when I was governor. It takes an apt teacher and an apt pupil to have a good school. You can do it under the shade of a pine tree, if you've got that. But the main problem with education today is the fact that we've had a complete breakdown in discipline in this country. It's true in the homes. It's true in the schools. We don't use the rod any more. They used that freely when I was a student, and I needed every whipping I ever got, too, and they all helped me. We've had a complete breakdown of discipline in the homes and the schools and the workplace and even in the military. That's the problem with education today.
Well, there's no doubt that a whole lot has changed in this society, and right now, I think everybody's got an uneasy feeling that nobody knows quite how to get it back on track.
We've got to restore discipline, and I don't know quite how to do it.
But prior to Brown, were you shocked by that ruling?
Did you go along thinking that it would never happen?
Well, I knew what the decisions of the court had ruled. The latest one that I recall, I believe was 1896, and I think it was full-bench [unanimous] decision. I knew that it was not unheard of to reverse decisions, but I thought in a matter that fundamental that the courts would be pretty slow about it. And the real shock that I got was [Chief Justice Earl] Warren got a unanimous decision.
Nine to nothing. And Plessy, the 1896. . . .
Plessy v. Ferguson was 1896.
It was seven to one. Charles Evans Hughes, I think, was the only dissenter. So that was virtually unanimous. This was a complete turnaround.
It was a judicial revolution and a political revolution really.
And yet by the time Roosevelt had put. . . .
[Interruption]
We were talking about that period of time right in the early '50s when
the cases were in court and whatnot, and Brown was
unanimous. That was really the shock for a lot of people, I think.
I wouldn't have been so surprised if it had been 5 to 4 decision, but unanimous was. . . .
Let me ask you about Ralph McGill. He opposed you pretty much through the time you were governor.
He opposed some of my philosophy. I'm not sure that Ralph McGill didn't vote for me. Our personal relationship was good, and he had many kind things to say about me personally in his editorials. We violently disagreed on the segregation issue.
Yeah, but up until Brown. . . .
He was a strong segregationist.
Yes, he was.
Fact, everybody was but about 10%, as I told you. Ralph was the personification of liberalism in Georgia, and he was a segregationist also. Old Tennessee hillbilly which makes it natural.
That's right. And when he changed his mind on that is when Brown came down. His view, which I think historically, you'd
have to say, was the correct view, was I don't care whether I like this
or not, this is now what our constituted system says.
He was just way ahead of public opinion on that issue.
And from that time on, he caught a lot of flak.
He did.
Because he stuck to. . . .
In fact, he was hated for two or three years by most white people.
What was your view of him in that crucial time right after '54?
Oh, our personal relationship was cordial. My first campaign against M. E. Thompson, we had a debate. We didn't have television at that time, and he [McGill] was the moderator. He handled it extremely well, fair to all sides. He said many very kind things about me in his editorial columns. The only thing we basically differed on, as I recall, was the white primary and segregation.
As you look back on it now, would you concede that he was historically right?
With perspective hindsight, yeah. He antedated public opinion about eight or ten years.
Do you have admiration for him for taking that position?
Oh sure. I attended his funeral.
Pretty lonely position there for a while, wasn't it?
Yeah.
Because, as you say, he was bucking 80% or more of the white opinion.
Oh, the tide of public opinion. He was a very courageous man, and a very fine writer. Strangely enough, now, my father's relationships with Ralph McGill was very cordial. They got along fine.
What about Ellis Arnall? Did you have a good personal relationship with him?
After I got in the Senate, Ellis and I developed into a good, close
friendship. When I ran for reelection to the Senate
Is that right? He was identified as a liberal in the '40s.
He was ahead of his time.
Was he a segregationist liberal, the same way as Ralph McGill was?
Well, I'll tell you what he said [Laughter] [Laughter]
But you don't interpret that as being reflective of his personal views?
Oh, I don't know. I wouldn't want to say exactly what his personal views were, but as long as he was in Georgia politics, I know what his personal views were.
They were essentially segregationist?
Yeah, when he got in national politics, maybe he had a change of heart.
Here's a question I've wondered about a lot. When '48 came, you were running for governor. Strom Thurmond and Fielding Wright bolted the Democratic Party, went off on their own, and you never blinked an eye. I never saw anything in the record to indicate that you even thought about going with them. Why not?
I knew it was a futile effort. Third parties had no chance, and I had already been nominated for governor on the Democratic ticket. I knew I had four years ahead of me to govern this state, and I didn't want to make a blind end run for something like that. So I stayed away from it. Strom Thurmond was a cousin of mine. My mother was. . . .
Is that right? Did you lend any visible or even token support to Franklin Roosevelt in that election, I'm sorry, Harry Truman in that election?
Stayed out it completely. Georgia went overwhelmingly for the Democratic ticket. Had I gotten involved, possibly I could have carried the state for Strom Thurmond, but I didn't attempt to do so.
Over next door in Alabama. . . .
It went for Thurmond. South Carolina went for Thurmond, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas.
In Alabama, even though Jim Folsom was the governor, and was, you know, pretty far more toward the left than. . . .
He was a real liberal, yes.
And yet they couldn't even get the Democratic Party on the ballot in Alabama. How do you read all that? I mean, that was a real salad bowl of mixed up stuff that year, wasn't it?
Yes, it was.
But your conviction was that you could steer a course independent of the national Democratic Party and the Dixiecrats?
Well, I didn't steer any course. I just was the Democratic nominee and making plans to take office. I didn't participate in the general presidential elections at all.
I see. Would you characterize your views at that time as being identical or similar to those of [the Dixiecrats]?
Well, they were sympathetic with Thurmond, but I knew it was a useless chase. I believe that they call it Don Quixote chasing windmills. I didn't want to get involved in it.
During your first term, well, let's see, from the time you were elected, you really went into the governor's office to be governor, really, in '48, didn't you? I mean, that was when you were elected.
Yes sir, immediately after the general election in '48. I took office in November of '48.
What was the reason for that, rather than in the spring of '49?
Serving the unexpired term of my Daddy. See, I wasn't elected for a regular term.
I see, right.
M.E. Thompson was acting governor only, and the constitution provided he would serve until the next general election. Then when I was elected, I took office. Now, the rest of the ticket didn't take office until the next January.
The whole white primary thing was the big issue of that period then, wasn't it?
Yes.
And your feeling was, as you said, you really felt you had no choice?
Not if I wanted to be in the political arena in the state. And those were my views at that time, too. My views politically and my views personally.
Do you think of that now?
Anyone who has studied carefully the Reconstruction history of Georgia would have similar views, without the present experience.
Well, as you think back on it now, do you have any regrets about that? Do you wish you had maybe seen it a different way?
No sir, if I had, I'd been a private citizen and never served as governor or senator.
During that time, a couple of people whose names show up in the newspaper clippings, I wanted to ask you about. One was a professor at the University of Georgia, named James Barfoot or Barfield, something like that, and in '48 he was sort of a liberal guy, and he announced for office on the Henry Wallace ticket and got fired at the university. Do you remember anything about him? And a Baptist preacher named Joseph Rabun?
Yes.
And he also ran for political office. What do you remember about him? I'd never heard of him before until I ran across this.
Joe Rabun was pastor of my Daddy's church at McRae, Georgia, my home
county, and my father's hometown. When my father was running for
governor, he [Rabun] involved in the campaign, speaking out against my
Daddy. Naturally my father's preacher in a small town in south Georgia,
Daddy told me the press played it up as though it was the second coming
of Christ. [Interruption]
Rabun was constantly in the press. He's a great man. Nobody ever heard of him prior to that.
I'd never heard of him until. . . .
Being pastor of Gene Talmadge's church and opposing Gene Talmadge made him a hero immediately in the eyes of some. So he didn't last very long at the church. He was unchurched, and as I recall, maybe ran against me in '48, as I remember, or tried to.
No, but he ran for something. I think maybe he ran for the Senate. I can't remember now.
Anyway, I got him a job when he was unchurched in Atlanta, I've forgotten what it was.
You got him a job in state government?
No, some private industry job. I've forgotten the details.
Why'd you do that?
'Cause he was hungry [Laughter]
I understand he died. I asked somebody about him.
He never did preach anymore. I've forgotten the job I got for him. It was something in private industry.
Some of your other contemporaries while you were governor were Folsom in Alabama. What'd you think of him?
Folsom was an attractive fellow. Sort of like—I don't like to
compare a man with a dog—but that's the best analogy. You've
got some dogs that you're particularly fond of. You know all of his
weaknesses, and you don't want any bastard picking on him. That's the
way I felt [Laughter]
He had a lot of weaknesses.
He had lots of limitations, but he was an attractive fellow. I didn't
want anybody picking on him, just like I wouldn't want you to go out
there and whip my puppy [Laughter]
On this whole issue of politics and ideology, was he a real liberal?
Oh yeah.
Was he an integrationist?
Well, I think he was. He supported Henry Wallace and all that sort of business over in Alabama.
What about Sid McMath over in Arkansas?
Sid was a liberal. He was a Truman fellow. I don't know what his views were on integration.
What about Earl Long?
He knew Earl well. Earl was a liberal governor. I don't know what his views were on integration.
Well, I think about all these people in this particular period of time because, again, hindsight is always so crystal clear. Looking at this period now from '45 to '50, it strikes me as kind of a golden opportunity for the South to kind of fix its on social wagon on its own terms. And it kept on saying right on into the '50s and '60s, "if y'all will leave us alone, we can work this out." Now, when I look at that period, '45 to '50, and there was this sort of new spirit of possibility as a result of victory in the war and the economy changing and people having been out into the world and come back, whites and blacks alike, and with a few people to just say, "Why don't we fix it now? Why don't we just go ahead and make some changes, allow some political rights, try to really fund the schools to where they're equal? Maybe not attack the whole segregation issue head on, but. . . ."
We did that, except the segregation issue. Starting with my building authority, equalizing teachers' salaries, put them in school buses. For all practical purposes, when I left office in 1955, the school system was equal in Georgia for whites and blacks.
Anyway, this is just kind of a theory of mine, I guess. You don't see that period of time as a missed opportunity, do you?
Well, the first governor that was elected, up as late as Jimmy Carter, he
was elected on George Wallace's coattails.
All right, so we're talking nearly twenty-five years, aren't we, twenty to twenty-five years?
Even after Carter, people in Georgia elected Lester Maddox governor in 1966.
That's right, that was after Carter.
About 1970 when George Busby came along, was about the first time race was not an issue in this state.
That's nearly twenty-five years.
In the gubernatorial election. So that's '53 to '70, a period of. . . .
That's seventeen years, but we're really talking about from after the war.
About twenty years, yeah. And even George Busby wouldn't have dared mention integration at that time.
So what you're really saying is it happened as quick as it could have happened.
Just about that. You don't change mores and attitudes of people by law. It takes time and education.
In light of that, would you, again, looking back on the Brown decision of the Supreme Court, would you see that as a
tragic mistake or was it our salvation?
Well, I don't see it as either. I see it as evolution of legal principles. Of course, the state slowly evolved, and the region, to accept it.
Was that a good direction for us to have moved historically?
Well, really, we should have started long before. We should have just started with the Fourteenth Amendment. It could have been done with ease then. We'd just lost the war, and they'd crammed it down our throat at the point of a bayonet. That'd been the time to do it.
We kind of muddle along one way or another. Are we moving in the right direction?
What respect are you talking about?
Is this region, did the South, has it ended up being the South you wanted it to be, or is it falling short of that?
Well, this whole country is falling short of what I want it to be. The South, economically, I think is making more rapid advance than any section in the country.
And maybe other ways, too?
That's right, other ways too. But there's many shortcomings in our society today. 'Course, you can't change them. If I was a dictator, like with the power of Adolph Hitler, I'd probably do a lot of things. But when we see the work ethic destroyed, when we see morality destroyed in this country, when we see discipline destroyed, when we see fiscal sanity destroyed, it makes you wonder whether we're not in the last days of the Roman empire. Many parallels.
We've certainly got some pretty, yeah, it's kind of chilling, isn't it,
come to think about it? But I get back finally to the first question,
the first thing I said to you.
If you're talking about racial customs alone, yes. I just gave you my views of the whole nation, and that includes the South. We've gone downhill dreadfully in many respects in the last two decades. I don't know whether we can correct it or not.
But on this racial thing, you feel like we've probably come out pretty well on that?
Yes, I think we have. All the dire predictions that many of us made, didn't come to pass.
Which maybe says something about the character of southern people, white and black.
Actually, I'll tell you a story now about relationships between blacks and whites. My roommate on my first ship, the disguised hospital ship, was Mack Perry. He was also from Georgia. He was a newspaper man. He went to Mercer University. We had abroad our ship at that time what we called the S Division, which was the blacks.
The S Division? Wonder what that stood for?
Cooks. Servants, really. They were cooks and chefs and cleaned up the
officers' quarters and all like that. Every time one of those fellows,
they all had Yankee division officers,
1976.
Even though they figured he was a southern redneck, they figured they could trust him. 'Course, he wasn't portraying redneck views in those days. I don't know what that relationship is, but it's been historically true in this country.
And in your view, still is?
Yeah.
Certainly there are differences that are remarkable. When you just get out on the street, just in casual contact, relationships in the South are different than they are in other parts of the country. Senator, I've really enjoyed this.
Enjoyed seeing you. What do you do?
I write.
Only write, and nothing else?
Yes sir. That's all I do.
[Interruption]
When I was in college at the University of Georgia, Time magazine would come out Thursday afternoon. It cost 15 cents.
I would take my 15 cents and go up to the store and buy me a Time magazine and read it from cover to cover.
This would be in the late '30s?
Yeah, early '30s. I finished law school in '36. I thought any man at that
time that read [Laughter]Time magazine from cover to cover was
reasonably well versed on current events, domestically and
internationally. And then I got out of school and started reading Time magazine, a lot things, where I knew the facts.
Lenin came in to see me when I was governor and wanted to know what I
thought of Time magazine. I let him have it with both
barrels. I told him the same story I've just told you. I said,
"Now, when I see a Time magazine story about
the South, I know that it's only a satire. It's written to be cute and
to entertain. It doesn't have a damn, remote reality about the
South." I said, "The greatest economic story that's
going on in America today is in the industrialization of the South, and
Time magazine hasn't had one damn word to say
about it." About three weeks later, the Time
cover was the industrialization of the South Time tried
to
Yeah, right. One more quick thing, I know your wife needs to ask you. . . .
[Interruption]
He's a writer. He's published about eighteen books. This is going to come out in about two years. Going to talk about the transition of race relations in the South.
You were at the University of Georgia in 1932 then?
Yeah, '31 to '36.
Do you remember the night Franklin Roosevelt was elected?
Yeah.
Where were you that night? What anecdote can you recall about that night, election returns or anything?
I don't remember the details. Of course, it was a foregone conclusion at that time that Roosevelt would sweep the country.
Were you active in politics yourself then as a student?
Only for my Daddy. He was governor at the time I was a student there. I started working in his campaigns in '32. Then I was a freshman.
That was an election year?
He was elected in '32, and my job was to advertise his speeches, one of
my jobs. That was in the days when politicians went from courthouse to
courthouse and faced the people and talked to them straight, instead of
reading twenty second slogans [Laughter] [Laughter] [Laughter]
Wow. Did you see your Dad's campaign as being tied in any way to the Roosevelt thing?
Oh, everybody in the South, in the election that you are referring to. . . .
The '32 election.
The election you're referring to, Georgia cast 90-some odd percent of its
votes for Roosevelt. The Republicans in those days were the blacks, and
what we call post office Republicans. That was some fellow that hoped he
was going to be appointed post master or rural letter carrier [Laughter]
But in '32, it was pretty much a solid thing. I talked to. . . .
I don't imagine you could have found a white man in Georgia that would
have admitted publicly in '32 [Laughter]
I talked to Governor Coleman over in Mississippi not long ago, and he told me a very similar story. He was a freshman at the University of Mississippi that fall, and he told about listening to the election returns on the radio and how excited he was. He thinks of that as when he got into politics.
When Coleman was elected governor, he came over here to study what we'd done in the schools to try to relate it to Mississippi.
Talking about race relations, I was a senior at the University of Georgia when the University of Georgia was integrated with Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter.
Is that right? And Charlayne Hunter who's now on the nightly news.
I was a senior. And when the governor started talking about, going to
close down the University of Georgia, I thought, this is ridiculous.
Most people thought that there was no reason to have such a hullabaloo
about two people wanting to come to school. Then I went to work with the
Extension Service, and there had been a black extension service
So much has happened, you know. It's very, very remarkable when you think about what changes we've gone through that we never dreamed we would. It's fascinating. Well, I've really enjoyed seeing you all.
Good to see you.
END OF INTERVIEW