The only answer I can give is
[pause], "Why aren't you Negroes satisfied? Look how good we are to you.
Now, don't bug us too much." That was the attitude. "Don't bug us
anymore." And then they'd do all that you just mentioned. "Just look
around, look around." What did the superintendent tell me when I was
asking him—I was leading a committee of black teachers, fussing and
scuffling and trying to get equal pay with white teachers back in 1939,
'40, and '41. We were getting 15% less pay. When we were given a job,
we'd be put on the schedule with white teachers and then clipped 15% for
no other reason than the
Page 24 fact that we were black.
The superintendent called me out one day. He brought in five Negro
principals and five Negro counselors and me. He had eleven of us Negroes
out there at his board of education, and for an hour and a half
practically every statement he made was, "Mr. Johnson, don't you see how
nice Louisville is in comparison with Birmingham and Atlanta?" I said,
"Mr. Superintendent, right out of your office upstairs I've already
gotten the information. Your statistics department furnished me with the
information, and I think at one of the cities, I think Birmingham, I'd
be getting 56% of what the white teachers made. Over in Atlanta, I think
it was 64%." He said, "And you're not satisfied with 85%?" I said,
"Hell, no, I want 100%. That's your trouble, Mr. Superintendent. I got a
master's degree from the University of Michigan, and you've got a man
teaching in the white high school who has a master's degree from the
University of Alabama, and he's making 15% more money than I do. He
teaches the same number of students. He teaches out of the same
textbook. We have the same number of classes, and the same number of
days per week, same number of hours per week, and he gets 15% more. I've
got a master's degree from a school that doesn't recognize the school
that the other man got his masters from." I said, "How do you square
that with fairness?" He said, "If you're not satisfied with the way we
treat Negroes, why don't you quit?" "Because I don't want to quit.
You're going to have to fire me, man." See?