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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-0358, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
George LeMaistre entered the University of Alabama law school in Tuscaloosa in 1930, shortly after the stock market crash of 1929. Three years later, he tried to set up a practice in a tough economic environment and soon found himself teaching law, then joining naval intelligence. He worked out of Louisiana as part of a relatively disorganized defense effort until the end of the war, when he returned to teaching in Tuscaloosa. He continued to teach law even as he moved into a banking career, eventually becoming the chairman of the F.D.I.C. LeMaistre died in 1994.
In this interview, LeMaistre recalls his experiences in World War II, including the Navy's efforts to combat extensive torpedo submarine activity in the Gulf of Mexico. He describes some of the personal relationships and minutiae of Alabama politics, including the roles of politicos like Foots Clement, Senators Lister Hill and John Sparkman, and governors Bibb Graves and Frank Dixon, among others. He dwells on the career of George Wallace, describing the gubernatorial primary loss that convinced Wallace to appeal to racist whites and Wallace's efforts to exploit the integration struggle for political gain. LeMaistre also considers at length the role of race and civil rights in Alabama politics and describes the integration at the University of Alabama.
LeMaistre believes that racism remained beneath the surface in Alabama until the mid-1960s. Until then, southern politicians dragged their feet on civil rights, but rarely exploited racial antagonisms to win votes, or spoke openly about opposing legislation for racial reasons. Of course, by the mid-1960s, as the civil rights movement was escalating, Alabama was experiencing spasms of deadly violence. LeMaistre positions himself as an observer, only inserting himself into the story when he describes his contributions to efforts to craft a nonviolent integration strategy in Alabama. This interview offers a detailed and thorough account of the story of race and politics in that state in the civil rights era.
George LeMaistre remembers Alabama politics from the 1920s to the 1970s, a story troubled by violent racism and the struggle over integration.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
So the firm started with you and Clement and Partlow in '30. Clement came in '34, y'all in '33.
Partlow and I started in August of 1933 and Clement joined us in 1936, '34. Gewin graduated and was a friend of ours, who, close contact. He didn't practice in Tuscaloosa till about 1949 when he joined the firm, he had practiced in Greensboro during the meantime and had been in the legislature for two terms, as I recall, and was also county solicitor down there and was prosecutor . . .
Who was it, was it Clement who wanted to run, what were you saying, wanted to run for something?
No, Gewin wanted to run for the seat which was the 6th district of U.S. Congress. He mentioned that several times, but he never did. The last time he mentioned it was when Armistead Selden ran and was elected, because he felt certain that he could beat Selden, who also was from Greensboro. Selden of course was a student in Law School when I was teaching there. He was a Sewanee undergraduate and also a Naval officer and had come back to law school after the war.
Yeah, it was after the war when he was here. I wasn't in school then but I just was working some with fraternity affairs when I was on the faculty here. So I knew some of those famous and infamous SAE's. But now, Clement never ran for an office at all. Did he hold positions in the party as such?
Not as such. Only office that was anywhere near political that Clement ever held was the head of the savings bond drive. He set all kinds of records for the Treasury Department in selling savings bonds both before and after the war. The way the firm broke up was in 1940 when Partlow, who was a member of the National Guard, was called into service—when they called the National Guard into service early in 1940.
Now which Partlow was this?
Billy. William D. He went into service I think in January of 1940 after he had run unsuccessfully against Pete Jarman for House of Representatives the year before and then in '41 prior to Pearl Harbor and prior to the declaration of war, Clement was called to work full time for the Treasury Department and in December '41, I was the only one here.
So you were left.
Left with the firm when Pearl Harbor happened. I had already gone into
the Naval Reserve and when Roosevelt was speaking to the Congress in his
famous speech, "We will hit them again and again and again." Just as he
said again the third time, the phone rang and they told me to report to
New
So that was when the firm disappeared—disintegrated.
Well, actually it didn't. E. W. Skidmore came in and operated his practice, wound up our practice, too. Of course, none of us came back until 1945. When we did come back, Clement and I started out practicing together and Partlow did not come back.
So it was after the war, you and Clement were back together. So those files were there in the office and would cover all those years.
As a matter of fact, if you could find the newspaper accounts of the race between Hill and John Crommelin and between Sparkman and Crommelin you would find that somebody broke into those files and purloined some of Clement's letters, and Crommelin published some of them attempting to prove that there was some kind of a hidden veil for Clement. It wasn't much of a conclusion that could be drawn from it and the letters obviously didn't hurt the man they were run against. But, we never did know who actually broke into those files. We had a young man working for us at that time who had recently graduated, and his subsequent conduct leads me to believe he was probably the one who did it. Mainly because he has never been back or called any one of us since he left the firm. Nobody has ever had any contact with him and yet no one ever accused him.
He wasn't actively political?
He became actively political later as a Republican down in Florida.
Well, that would lead you to that conclusion almost.
But at any rate you would think that anybody who ever worked for six to eight months in a law office at least would call up and speak to people in the firm at some time after that. It would be rather unusual for thirty years to go by and never have any contact. But I don't know that he took those papers out. What happened was he took pictures of them and put them back. Things that were run were the photostats.
Actually Bull Connor's big buddy in Birmingham head of the detectives—was his name Darnell?
That sounds vaguely familiar. I think that was his name.
There's a Darnell in the police force here that has nothing whatsoever to do with it. This man, whatever his name was, was head of detectives up there, came down and conducted an investigation and said he knew who did it, but we never did know for sure. At least I never did.
But these were letters from people like Estes Kefauver and Kefauver's law
partner. There was a letter in there from one man had written in
Tennessee and asked how he could spend that much time in politics and
how in the world he could afford to do it without taking a political
appointment or running for office. Clement had written back about the
And this man took this to mean that he was selling his services for legal work that was brought to the firm, although that was not exactly correct. As far as I know we never had a case out of Tennessee.
At any rate that file if we could have located it would have a great deal of information. I don't know whether I ever told you or not but Clement's law books were worth examining. The margins of the books were all filled up with tallies showing how many would vote for something, how many against. Other people would make notes about what the case was about, but Clement spent all his time worrying about the political things that were going on the campus. How many Wallaby had, how many Garrett had, how many so and so had. He spent the entire time thinking about politics.
Well, now just to round out this chronology, you and Clement and Gewin were together from '49 to 1960 when you went to City National.
That's when I left the law practice—in September of 1960. Clement died one year later. Approximately one year after that Gewin went on the bench. That would have been about '62, I think he went—early '62 or late '61. Clement died in September '61.
I can't remember the date—seeing Gewin in Houston.
That was after '62 but Gewin was on the bench when the Meredith case came up in Mississippi.
I remember when Jack Kennedy went on nation-wide T.V. He referred to the judges being Southern lawyers and referred to him as Judge Gerwin.
That would have been before September '62.
Because that was when the actual order had been issued requiring him to be admitted and that came from the Circuit Court of Appeals.
Was that the 9th?
At that time it was the 5th circuit. It's now the 11th. Alabama is in the 11th. Mississippi is in the 5th.
Ours is in Atlanta now.
So the law firm (I mean you three) itself continued in a way, I mean in the legal records.
Actually, what happened, the young lawyers who were with us continued together for about a year and then they split into two law firms.
I see. Was Perry one of them?
Perry Hubbard and Vann Waldrop stayed with the original firm with about five or six lawyers. Gordon Rosen and Bernie Harwood went into another firm.
I didn't realize Gordon Rosen was originally—
Gordon came in just about the time Gewin did. Bernie Harwood was Bob Harwood's son. He is still practicing here. He and Gordon and George Wright started a firm and since that time the Hubbard firm has split into two. Split into three. The young tax man they had there, Bob Tanner, and two or three others pulled out and started their own firm.
Well back in 1933-'34 when you all started, how many law firms were there in Tuscaloosa?
There weren't over 20 lawyers in Tuscaloosa. Now there must be 200 or at least 180 I would think. You could count the law firms in town on one hand—at least at that time.
But Foots was the most politically active?
He was. He was 100% politically active. He didn't profess to look up law or write legal documents or anything of that sort. He spent all his time working on politics. I must say, very successfully. He was probably the best political organizer that ever worked in this state. He was such a good organizer that when Ed Livingston ran for the Supreme Court, after about three weeks E.L. dodged Foots. When he'd see him coming down the street, he would cross over to go around the block to keep from meeting him because Foots would have another job for him to do, somebody for him to see in another county. He just couldn't stand it, he said. He wasn't able to do all the things that Foots thought up for him.
Foots died in '61. He wasn't too old. Just about 50?
He was born about 1910 so just about 50.
I remember. It was rather sudden wasn't it?
Well, he'd been sick for a long time but of course he was so much overweight that from time to time he'd lose 50 pounds, put back 60, lose 40, then put back 50 and over his career he lost at least a ton. His heart just wouldn't take that sort of thing.
And I guess they weren't as sensitive to that problem as they are now. I guess it's just as well—you'd enjoy life more.
His first successful political race really began before he graduated and that was Chester Walker defeating Fleetwood Rice for probate judge and that was in Tuscaloosa. Judge Rice had the support of all the politicians, every single county official and all the rest of them were out working.
Foots organized a group that met every night at Pug's after Pug's closed. They'd sit at the counter, Pug'd give them coffee or coca-cola—whatever they wanted—while they made plans for the next day's work. They divided the voting list up into small segments and each man had a certain list of people he had to report on the next night. They kept a running account of how that race was going and until the week before it came off, the local political establishment had no inkling they were in trouble. They were already defeated. Chester Walker won by a sizeable margin. The strange thing about it was Wood Rice and Boss Hinton, who were the big powers before that, became the closest friends Foots had—after he demonstrated his ability.
So he really got started in county or local politics?
Local.
Although you said he was active in student politics.
Oh yes. He worked faithfully in student politics even after he graduated.
See, he wasn't married in those days and the students in the campus
machine used to come up to
Right across from the SAE house.
And the Hill grocery had a supermarket right below. Clement managed that operation for Dr. Patton. T.H. Patton owned that whole building—that whole block almost.
I remember the one that ran the drugstore was Ben Levy.
No. He ran Rex's. The man who ran the drugstore at the corner of 12th avenue was Doc Martin.
It was called Spanish Inn Drugstore but the next one was on 13th Ave., Rex's. The man's name was Leverty. I remember one night—I don't remember his first name, but Leverty came running out after a shop lifter and hit him over the head with a pistol and the gun went off when he hit him. Leverty ran one way and the shoplifter ran the other, scared both of them so they never made an arrest.
At any rate upstairs at the Spanish Inn is where it all took place.
That's where it all took place. John L. Lewis' nephew, Fats Lewis, lived up there.
You mean the labor leader's nephew?
Yes. Bob Jones lived up there, Foots Clement lived up there—15 or 20 of the most politically active figures on the campus lived in the Spanish Inn.
And that would have been in the early 30's.
'32. Foots lived there and ran it even while he was practicing law until about 1938, I believe. When did Bear Bryant graduate?
Around '35.
Well, the next year Bryant was married and rented a house at Buena Vista across the highway from the Highlands.
He married right after he graduated; he married Mary Harmon Black.
I think before he graduated; she made him come back to get his degree. They had a room in their house they were not using and Foots moved in and lived with them until Bryant went to Vanderbilt to coach. He left the Spanish Inn in' 37 or '36 or so. He didn't marry 'til after the war in the fifties.
So he really had plenty of time to devote to politics—campus and local . . .
And if you were associated with him you had plenty of time too, because it didn't make any difference to him what the time was. If we came through Birmingham at two o'clock in the morning and there was somebody he needed to get in touch with, he didn't hesitate to stop and call them.
He always said, and I think he's right, although I don't think it's a
very popular practice, that the way to impress a man with the importance
of what you had to say to a man was to wake him up and talk to him. When
you call him up in the middle of the night and tell him what you want
done, you can usually get it done. Right or not, that was
He really didn't practice law as such, then?
No, but the way he got into the State political field was through the Chester Walker race in Tuscaloosa County. That attracted some attention. That race was in '36 or '34. Lister Hill had been in the House of Representatives since 1923, and he was not unfamiliar with campus politics either. He was president of the student body here and he organized the first campus machine.
When Black was going to the Supreme Court, Hill decided to run for the Senate and whether that election was in late '37 or '38, I don't remember. I think it was in the summer, as I recall, Black was on a trip to Europe for summer vacation when the appointment was made, and that thing about the Ku Klux Klan broke while he was on shipboard coming back. Maybe that was the best place for him to have been. Of course he would have been run over with reporters before he had a chance to think about a statement.
But anyway, a Pittsburgh paper broke it while he was at sea and I think that the election was called in the fall of '37, but I'm not sure. When Hill ran, he had represented the district that I came from in South Alabama, and he knew my father, and I had shaken his hand. Montgomery was the northern part of the district.
That district ran all the way from your county on the Florida line.
Covington. So when he came up here, he came to our office, he of course knew Dr. Partlow, Billy's father, he was head of Bryce. And he heard about Clement, and he just asked us to meet him there one night and so the three of us just got in this little room that wouldn't hold four chairs—we just stood around the desk and talked. That's when Foots started working for Lister Hill.
That's when he really moved into state politics. Has Virginia talked to you about Lister Hill?
Virginia Hamilton?
Yes.
She talked to me one time.
She didn't take you down on a tape recorder?
No, I don't think so.
She has done some of these oral history things.
I think she did bring a recorder one time when we talked. The report she
had on Hugo Black I think was factually correct . . . In that speech,
that paper she read the other day, as I say, I think she attributed to
Hill a little more ambition than he really had when she said that he was
thinking about going after Hugo's seat. Actually he was thinking about
saving Hugo's seat for the Democrats, when there was such an uproar in
the Party because it began to look as if Black could not be reelected,
and he was coming up shortly after the appointment was made. I don't
know whether it was the following spring he would have had to qualify—I
guess it was. He would have had to qualify to
To the "big Mules" it would have been.
Yeh, so that was when Hill was looking at that place . . .
Because Black's background is labor oriented in Birmingham, particularly, and Hill, I guess, got interested in it at that time—but going back to Hill's origins—political orientation in Montgomery: now were he and Gunter, were they pretty much together?
They were.
Gunter is usually considered the boss in Montgomery for a long time.
Bill Gunter controlled Montgomery for a long time. Bill Gunter was a distant relative of my mother's. I never knew him that well, but I met him and talked to him. But he was not the Boss Crump type of boss . . .
No, I know that.
He didn't lay down hard and fast rules, but whatever he said was what
happened and I think there was an occasion a little later on when Gunter
and the others pulled away from
I was wondering about that.
It was very close. Whether he squeaked out a little margin in his own county or whether he lost it by a little bit, I don't know, but he lost a tremendous amount of support.
In the last two or three years a little book came out on the Halls—did you see that? Grover Hall Sr.— Grover Hall Jr.
Grover Hall wasn't a big supporter of Hill either.
Well, what I was thinking—although they came to be later on, I guess, kind of reconciled or something but—they were not in the beginning but— the other person I was thinking of—do you know Mills Thornton? He has written a good deal.
The name is familiar, and I know he made the first talk in this series, but I wasn't here and I didn't get to hear it. Where is he? At Michigan?
He's a professor at the University of Michigan, but he's from Montgomery. As I understand it, his mother was a Gunter, and I guess Bill Barnard was telling me.
Well, we still have a Gunter in politics—Annie Laurie Gunter you know is state treasurer now—has been for two terms. She can't succeed herself, but I understand she is going to run for Secretary of State.
Do you remember Mrs. Sue Gunter?
Out here at the University?
Yes.
Yes.
Now, was she related?
I don't know.
I thought she was from Montgomery.
She may have been. She was Assistant Dean of Women.
Well, she was mainly official chaperone. That was the job to stand at the door and sniff everybody.
To see whether or not those young men were coming in with alcohol on their breath.
That's right, that was the general idea. Actually Clement was primarily in politics, but what about Gewin? Was he involved?
Gewin wasn't that much involved in politics. Gewin would make a speech for a candidate or would do specific jobs; helping organize Greensboro or something like that; or helping him write up the platform or something of that sort, but he didn't spend full time on it like Clement did. Clement used to take a map of the state and divide it into I don't remember if it was 13 or 15 trade areas. And he would draw a line around those areas very much like Congressional districts except they would be smaller, and he would assign certain people to organize those areas, and most of them were people who had been in school right in the area.
He knew . . .
He had a machine going all over this state just made up of acquaintances who had gotten interested or that he had helped some way—getting some political favor or something. So when the time came to have a state-wide race, it took him less time than anyone else.
Cause he had all . . .
He had all of it already set up. He'd spend a few hours on the telephone and he'd have his organization going. Of course he kept me broke with the telephone bill.
Well, that's what I was wondering . . . who's paying for all of this?
But that was where he started in that Hill race. I'm just trying to remember who was Hill's opponent in that race. [It was Tom Heflin in 1938.]
We can pin that down I'm sure.
I'm trying to remember whether Frank Boykin ran.
Would he have been in that district?
No, I'm talking about the race for Senate. Boykin was in the House at that time.
He was from Mobile, wasn't he?
He was from Mobile—the old first district. He did run later against Sparkman and was defeated. But whether he ran in that race—seems to me he did—but whether he just threatened to run, I don't remember.
Wasn't your role something like Gewin's? You tried to keep the law office going? But you were well aware of most of the things going on, I guess.
Well, I used to write a lot of political ads and speeches and stuff like
that. I remember one mayor's race here. I wrote the ads for all three
candidates. Dr. Walker was running
Yeh, Yeh . . . But you were not doing any teaching then?
Yes, I was teaching eight o'clock classes.
You did?
I had an eight o'clock class every morning.
Even . . .
Not until '38. I was teaching in the summer of '38—I began teaching eight o'clock classes in fall '39
Well, that's when I started law school in the fall of '39. I didn't remember you were teaching a class.
I was teaching when the war started.
What did you teach?
I was teaching evidence and —I taught evidence the first year, I taught
torts and trial and appellate practice, and one year I taught a course
in equity. After the war I taught a course in equity pleading, oil and
gas; went back to evidence and in '48, I guess, I wrote a book on real
estate practice. And I started teaching real estate transactions—making
an examination of abstracts and closing
Oh you did?
See, Ed Livingston, when he left, the practice court was open.
Was he . . . Mr. Ed Livingston on the faculty in the '30s?
Yes, he was on there when I went to law school '30 through '33.
He was? And then . . . ?
Then he was elected to the Supreme Court in '38 or '9—somewhere around there. Must have been '39 cause I took his place.
Oh, that's right; so he left when I started in '39. The ones I had, course the dean's contracts, Whit McCoy and criminal law and . . .
Did you have Hepburn?
Hepburn for both real and personal property and then Mr. Masters taught equity.
Yes.
I guess that's about all you had in your first year. Legal bibliography—that's the one that . . .
That was Dean Farrah, wasn't it?
Well, who was Mavis?
Mavis Clark.
She was the one who did it all. I guess it must have been listed under Dean Farrah.
And when Hepburn became Dean . . .
He became dean right after Dean Farrah.
Yes, he did a little less teaching. I remember I took over one of his property courses. See, right after the war in 1945, I got back here September the 14th and I think school started the 15th in '45, and I taught full time because they had so many GI students coming in, they didn't have enough people to teach them so I taught full-time and practiced too, and I was glad to get it because coming back out of the navy, I didn't have any practice.
Right. See, in the fall or summer of 1944 I decided I've got to start on my dissertation and so I just resigned from the University. I hadn't been able to do much; I'd done some research, but I was teaching history, running the Union building, and acting Dean of Men. Well, there were very few men here.
Yeah, 'til the next year; then they flooded the place.
Well, I went and I stayed in Montgomery through the fall and winter of
1944-45, but we were on the quarter system. Dean Moore called me and
said, "You've just got to come back. I'm desperate, everybody has left
except Mrs. Panell, and even Al Thomas has left. He went into the OSS
and John Ramsey wouldn't . . . he was something in the historical . . .
the army historical program. So there really wasn't anybody, so I
agreed. I said, "As long as I don't have to teach Latin American
history, because I cannot. I know nothing bout Latin-American history."
Well, I came back in
We got some good students long about that time: Frank Johnson, Tom Christopher, Reese Phifer, Rufus Beale, all those were in the same class.
Well, back from the war . . . [some discussion about the tape running out] Maybe before next time we can get our chronology a little better organized.
Maybe we can get some information about who the various candidates were. I can remember the ones that we represented, so to speak, but I can't always remember who was on the other side. For instance in the Truman race, I remember quite well that Foots Clement was the only person in the state of Alabama that I knew who predicted that Truman would win. And that was when Truman took his whistle-stop campaign . . .
That was in '48.
In '48 Clement said "that is going to win this election." And of course none of us could vote for him, and of course we just didn't think he could get votes in Alabama—didn't have a chance of getting elected. But he did win.
But now Foots never . . . What was his connection with the national Democratic party?
He was very friendly with people in the national party through the senators.
I see, that was the tie—Hill and Sparkman.
He was very active in the state Democratic Party, and the national committeemen were always good friends with Foots. Again, I can't keep straight who all those people were, but people like Albert Rains and John Sparkman and Lister Hill were always active with the national party. We had some, Pete Jarman for instance, wouldn't work for the national party at all. Some in our Congressional delegation just didn't think the national party could help them. I remember when Jim Farley came through town in Roosevelt's . . .
Was that the first?
First administration.
He was the leg man.
This was after '32, he was Postmaster General at this time. Between '32 and '34 he had been down here and had met Clement and some others and I don't remember, I think they all rode a train together from here to Birmingham or somewhere. But I remember quite well when he came through on the train, he came out on the back platform to make a little talk at Tuscaloosa station, and he saw Foots over there and yelled, "Hey, Foots!" That just pointed up how much of a memory Jim Farley had. He could remember people's names better than Dr. Denny almost.
Or Ralph Adams, Ralph Adams was awfully good at it.
Yes.
But he never, Foots never really held an official position.
He never considered one.
I guess he could work better without being in an official capacity.
Well, it was helpful not to be in a position of working to get something for yourself.
He just loved it, I guess.
It was a good thing as far as our whole law firm is concerned that none of us ever took a place. I had left law practice before I ever got the appointment. I did have an appointment as referee in bankruptcy from the district judges in Birmingham. I guess indirectly that might be connected with politics. More than likely it was because Seaborn Lynn was a close friend of ours. He also had been appointed by the President at the behest of Senators Hill and Sparkman. So there were a lot of good connections and good contacts, but there was never any feeling that if I don't do this, I won't get that job. So none of us ever really felt that we had to either do something we didn't want to do or that they had an unusual call on us. The call was always the other way.
Just as a matter of curiosity—the referee in bankruptcy, does he do the same thing the judge would do?
That's what the term really means. "Referee" means that the judge has referred to that person the bankruptcy case for him to handle it for him. Today there is no referee.
They don't use . . . ?
They now have a new code which was passed two years ago which designates certain people as judges in bankruptcy and they have original jurisdiction rather than have something assigned to them by a district judge. Used to be that the federal judge would refer to me all the bankruptcy cases in Tuscaloosa. But now they come directly to the judge of bankruptcy, whoever he is.
Well, now George Wright is the . . .
For Northern Alabama.
But there are other judges too.
Oh yes. And they all now have status somewhat similar to the Federal district judge.
Yeah. Well, we went up a couple of weeks ago when Fulford was made a bankruptcy judge.
Clifford?
Yes, you didn't know that?
See, I didn't get the papers while I was gone.
Oh, I guess you were away then. He succeeded Coleman.
Well, I'm glad he did.
And he called up and wanted Dora and me to come up. Said they were going to have a little ceremony in Judge Pointer's courtroom, and, oh, the place was just overflowing with people—clerks and secretaries and all his friends and so forth were there.
I think Clifford got a bad deal when he didn't get the district judgeship. He deserved it if it's a political appointment.
He worked so much in the Democratic . . .
I thought Heflin did him a grave injustice, and I wouldn't blame him if he never voted for Heflin.
I know he was, but you know you usually get over those things.
They introduced other bankruptcy judges, and there were I guess 5 or 6 of them.
One of the bankruptcy judges for Alabama is a boy named Chandler Watson. Boy . . . he's 65 years old. But he was one of my students out there from Anniston.
So they don't use referees?
No longer have referees. Now they still have special masters that a federal judge can appoint to decide certain facts.
In a particular case?
Yes, but that's just for a single case.
Apparently Coleman . . .
Steve Coleman has been referee in bankruptcy for 40 years.
He had been referee and didn't have the title of judge until that new act.
Yes. Of course everybody called him judge, but it was just a courtesy. His title was really referee.
Well, I was just curious about that. Well, George Wright was not actually judge then until this new act.
He was referee in bankruptcy when the new act was passed.
Did the same thing as you?
Now— now he's called judge, bankruptcy judge.
Apparently he's considered the senior one. I don't know how they refer to—presiding judge, I guess.
Yes, he's stationed in Birmingham.
Yes, but he lives here.
I know it. That's his headquarters. If he wanted to file something in his court, Birmingham would be just as good as here.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
We can start off with any recollections of the early years and of law school. Now you came—where did you do your undergraduate?
At the University of Michigan.
Oh, that's right.
I was at Ann Arbor when my father died, and my family was planning to live wherever I went to school. My older brother had already graduated and was doing graduate work at Duke, and my younger brothers were not yet college age. So we decided to move to Tuscaloosa to live rather than go some place else. We certainly didn't want to live in Ann Arbor. The winters up there didn't appeal to me that much.
What did you major in?
I was majoring in journalism, actually. I was working on a sports page of
the Detroit Free Press and the Cleveland News, not because I had any talent as a sports writer but
because my roommate's father was the sports editor of the Cleveland News.
But you got some experience.
He got us jobs while we were in school. We covered the sports on the Michigan campus for those two papers.
Is that how you first got interested in sports?
I was already interested in them, but that's where I made use of it for the only time I can remember.
It increased you interest?
Actually I might have gone on to school up there except that one Sunday I
had hitch-hiked into Detroit to watch a baseball game and Herb Vetter
who was doing the work for the Chicago Tribune was
trying to call me and he missed me and left a note for me to call him.
Came over to the house. And I didn't get back 'til late that night. I
called him the next morning, to find out that he had resigned from the
Tribune and had recommended me to take his place.
And when I called they figured I didn't want it cause I hadn't responded
and they had already given it to somebody else. If I'd got that job, I
might never have
One of the peculiar twists of fate—but you did, when you decided to study law, you thought you would be practicing in Alabama.
Oh yes. So we came to Tuscaloosa to live.
And it was the only law school in the state. That was 1930, as you say, with the depression just around the corner.
Well, it had just begun, actually. The crash of '29 had come in the fall just before that. We moved up here in the summer of '30 so it was about six or seven months after the stock market crash when we came to Tuscaloosa. And banks were failing right and left. We went through three bank failures in one year, in each of which we had accounts and we got no payments, no deposit insurance from any of them.
Did that have some effect you think on your later banking experience?
Well, actually, I'd say it made me appreciate deposit insurance when I read about them adopting it in the banking act of 1933. It became effective January 1, 1934.
It was one of the early New Deal measures.
But in 1929 I had worked—my father had got sick in January, so I came
home from school and worked in a bank in Florala from January first to
September first, and each month I'd let them deposit my salary in my
savings account. I was living at home. I didn't need any money. So they
put it in this savings account so it would bear interest at the great
rate of 3 ½ percent and when I went back to Ann
Never got any of it?
Never got any of it. So I was pretty much sold on deposit insurance. It wasn't hard to get me to believe that that was a good thing.
I can understand that. I remember they were encouraging savings. They started in the schools in Birmingham—a savings program. And of course it was in cooperation with one of the banks. They got a lot of business started that way. I never had very much in it, but I guess it did survive. Of course, Birmingham was hard hit.
Yeah, we had a big bank failure out there in Ensley—Sam King's bank. Mr. King moved down here and lived in Tuscaloosa for a good many years. I got to know him pretty well before he died.
When I was teaching, my brother and I had an apartment there at 1414 down on the corner of Reed Street and University. The Hamilton Bushes lived in between. Was Erskin Ramsey connected with that too?
I don't know. He was very much connected with Ensley.
Yeah, I know he was.
But whether he lost a lot of money in it or whether he was an officer I don't know. Mr. King went to jail.
Yeah. Well, I had just heard that he took the rap.
Well, this banker in Florala where I lost my savings account, also was
sent to jail. And tried to commit suicide—shot himself in the head but
missed anything of vital importance. He didn't die and some of the
people said
It wasn't very strictly enforced.
It wasn't till they all went broke. When they went broke they began to enforce it against those who were in office. But even today it's almost impossible to conduct a banking business without violating some law. The truth in lending law said that you should state the annual percentage rate of interest that you're charging in a certain size type. If you happen to use a note that is one point above or below that then you've violated a law.
So you can't be watchful and be aware . . .
No you can't. We had a situation in 1933 when Roosevelt took office in March. One of the first things he did was proclaim a bank moratorium.
Well, the states had declared . . . Michigan had started . . .
Several states had declared a moratorium. Michigan was the first state to do it. But when he took office he said all the banks should be closed and none of them should be reopened until they satisfied the authorities that they are well enough capitalized to serve the public. Some of them never did reopen, but most of them reopened anywhere from 15 days to 3 months. But it was a pretty difficult time. I know I had three dollars in my pocket when we closed the banks, and there wasn't any place to get any more.
In Tuscaloosa at that time—were there just two banks?
Just two banks. City National and First National. First National was the survivor when they merged the Merchant's National Bank which originally built the building that First National now occupies. And First National was a block down the street in what used to be Adrian's Department store. When they took over the Merchant's National, which was failing, First National moved into the old Merchant National's quarters.
When was this?
Twenty-nine.
It started failing early, and what about City National?
It survived and managed to stay open. Neither one of them was very big—wouldn't have made a tremendous amount of difference if they had closed them both, I guess. It would have made a lot of difference in Tuscaloosa, but it wouldn't have mattered anywhere else.
City National was where it was there on the corner.
It was on the corner of 23rd Avenue and University Avenue.
Yeah.
Now that's occupied by Security Federal.
And the Moodys were all in the First National?
They were in the First National. Washington Moody and Frank Moody's grandfather I think were the original ones who started that bank in 1871 or something like that. And J. H. Fitts, Jim Fitts, the architect's grandfather, is the one who started the City National Bank. He didn't call it City National, it was J. H. Fitts and Company, and he was president of Alabama Bankers when it was still J. H. Fitts and Company.
I remember seeing that. I was looking at some newspapers from Tuscaloosa in 1880, and it just said J. H. Fitts and Co.
That name didn't change until 1900. But the bank continued to operate. it was still J. H. Fitts and Co.
And when did the Alstons come along?
They came in the twenties—before the collapse. Mr. Cochran was the
connecting link, I guess you might say,
Didn't the University always have its money in the City National?
Well, Mr. Fitts was the treasurer of the University.
Oh he was? Before Shaler Houser?
Oh yes. Mr. Fitts was treasurer of the University in 1865 when they burned it. And he was treasurer when they started the little bank. Matter of fact, he met the University's payroll when they tried to start it up again after they rebuilt it. He paid the payroll himself.
You mean in the Reconstruction years?
Yeah.
It actually closed for several years. I've forgotten the dates.
I don't remember them either but roughly between 1865 and 1870.
Back when the radical government came in 1869, then things went really to pot.
And of course that's the source of Dr. Denny's call on Franklin Roosevelt
when he asked for WPA money to build the library. He (FDR) said well,
we've run out of money to do that sort of thing. All we can do is
replace something that has been burned or damaged in a tornado. He
(Denny) said that's what I'm talkin' about—a library that burned. He
And if Dr. Denny knew it, he didn't admit it that Congress had appropriated money in the 1880s.
Either money or land; I forget which. They gave 'em something. I think they gave the minerals one time.
That's right.
And they gave them the coal lands up in the Warrior basin, too . . .
Now I'm with you. It might not have been an outright money deal.
Yeah, they thought they had paid for it.
They used the money to build the so-called second quadrangle—Clark and Garland and Manly.
And, course, they got that 16th section reserved for the use of schools. A lot of it was squandered.
Yeah, I imagine there was a lot of mismanagement in all of that. But now, coming back to the Law School—in 1930 what was it like?
It was a pretty closely knit group of people. You knew everybody, you
knew where they came from, when they were gonna go home, who they'd see
when they got there, and what their plans were when they graduated. One
reason that you were pretty sure about what they were going to do was
you knew there was no job available for any of them. You couldn't go out
and hire yourself as a lawyer to anybody. Walter Gewin in 1936, I guess,
or whenever he graduated, got
Long-time Congressman.
Yeah. And I remember when I graduated, I wrote several people and tried
to find a job and Mr. Evins E-v-i-n-s, used to be the counsel for the
Birmingham News and was also counsel for the TVA when
it first started, called me one day. He had known my father in the
legislature some ten years before that. He called me and said, "George,
I've got something that you might be interested in. Next time you're in
Birmingham, come to see me." Well, I didn't have anything to do so I was
about ready to go that afternoon. This was, I think, on a Friday, and on
Monday I was planning to go up to Birmingham to see what he was talking
about. I just had a feeling that it had something to do with the new
legal set-up at the Tennessee Valley Authority.
This would have been when—the fall of '33?
In '33 after I had already set up an office. It would have been in
September or somewhere along in there. But unfortunately, Mr. Evins had
a heart attack and died that weekend, and I've never known yet what it
was
Was the freshman class larger—by the time you got to be a senior had many fallen by the wayside?
Yes, a lot of them would fall out because they simply couldn't afford to go any more.
Not because of Dean Farrah's threats?
Well, as I say, they couldn't afford to go because Dean Farrah wouldn't let them work and go to school at the same time.
Couldn't work at all?
He wouldn't let you have any kind of a job. Fact is, he frowned very much
on students working on student publications—the Corolla and the Crimson White. He just didn't
want his law students doing anything except studying law.
"The law is a jealous mistress."
That's what he used to say. He said you've got to live like a hermit and
work like a horse".
He didn't take too much to the lighter side.
No, he didn't. He wasn't joking when he said the law was a jealous mistress.
They followed then the pretty strict case method of teaching, didn't they?
Altogether. Everyone of the classes—the ones that I had were taught by Bob Harwood, who taught a course in Domestic Relations, and Dr. John Masters who taught Equity, the Dean, who taught Contracts and in your second year taught Constitutional Law, and Hepburn, who taught Personal Property in the first semester and Real Property in the second, and then Ed Livingston had the practice court and that's all you took in your freshman year.
Ed Livingston was—he was a practicing attorney. Was he a judge then?
He was an adjunct professor, but they didn't call it that in those days. He was practicing with his brother Frank; he had an Office in the First National Bank Building and Ed taught two courses—Practice Court and Evidence.
Now Whit McCoy was there, wasn't he?
Whit McCoy taught Criminal Law. That was another course you had your first year. We had another professor named Brockelbank—Bill Brockelbank, who taught Common Law Pleading. And in your first two semesters you had to take all of those courses which pretty much crowded your first year in the essentials of the English Common Law.
Was it Dean Farrah who brought the case method?
It started at Harvard. The dean had . . .
Was he at Harvard?
No, he graduated from Michigan in 1912.
Uh huh.
And he and Dr. Denny came here the same year.
Oh, they did—
He had been to—had been the dean at Stetson University down in Deland, Florida, and had done a pretty good job getting that school going and it's still a pretty good law school. The case method was tried at Harvard and had become very popular. I guess it still is—most everybody still uses it all over—there's some courses now that are getting away from it. More seminars being taught, more writing courses, but there are still a lot of professors who simply stick to the case method—require their students to be able to stand and tell what that case is about. That was the Dean's method and you didn't vary from it one bit. You gave the cause of action, well he gave the title of the case, the jurisdiction where it came from—Michigan Supreme Court or United States Supreme Court or whatever, and you gave the cause of action, and you gave the facts of the case, the question that arises from those facts, the judgment of the court, and the ruling of the court. Every case was treated in that same fashion.
You did have to prepare summaries, didn't you?
You were not required to turn them in; you were encouraged to prepare them for your own use.
But you didn't have to turn them in—for your own use in preparing for the exam. Well I had understood that later on it had been modified, at least some Professors had modified . . .
It has been modified a great deal. Today you can buy summaries before the court starts. All of the big publishers now publish summaries too.
And they do have textbooks.
Textbooks are still case books in style. And there are a few textbooks written in style other than case law.
More of a narrative.
Some of them are written pretty much like Corpus Juris or one of the others like American Jurisprudence or some of the other definitive authorities, but they cite numerous cases—they just don't take the facts out of any one. They have a lot of citations that you can follow up on.
Now, as I recall last time, you started actually teaching very soon after you finished, didn't you?
Well I guess I did more informal teaching. You mentioned preparations of summaries. I made summaries that evidently covered the course pretty well, because from the year I graduated to the year 1937 or '38, there would be eight or ten students who would gather at my house or at Foots's apartment or some place like that