© This work is the property of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text.
MP3 file derived from WAV preservation master, which was derived from original analog cassettes.
The electronic edition is a part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South.
An audio file with the interview complements this electronic edition.
The text has been entered using double-keying and verified against the original.
The text has been encoded using the recommendations for Level 4 of the TEI in Libraries Guidelines.
Original grammar and spelling have been preserved.
All quotation marks, em dashes and ampersand have been transcribed as entity references.
All double right and left quotation marks are encoded as "
All em dashes are encoded as —
Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview A-0360, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
John Ivey was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1919 and raised in Auburn, Alabama. After completing college at Auburn University, Ivey came to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to pursue a doctoral degree in sociology. While at UNC-CH, Ivey met and married his wife, Melville Corbett Ivey, another sociology graduate student. Ivey and his wife describe the sociology graduate program, focusing on Howard Odum and Rupert Vance as especially influential figures. Emphasizing his increasing interest in regionalism at that time, Ivey discusses the relationship between Odum and Frank Porter Graham and their respective approaches towards addressing political and social problems in the South. Ivey graduated with his doctoral degree in sociology in 1944 and went to work for the Tennessee Valley Authority. In 1948, Ivey briefly returned to academia, teaching at UNC-CH and then accepting a position at New York University. During that same year, Ivey was recruited by southern governors to head up the newly-formed Southern Regional Education Board. Ivey moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where he served as director of the SREB from 1948 until 1956. He describes his own support of desegregation and acknowledges that he saw the SREB as an instrument for changing educational policies in the South. Ivey and his wife focus specifically in their discussion of their work with SREB on the role of southern governors, notably Millard Caldwell of Florida, and the competing visions of whether SREB should uphold or challenge segregation in southern public schools.
John Ivey received his doctoral degree in sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1944. He and his wife, Melville Corbett Ivey, describe their interaction with such leading figures as Howard Odum, Rupert Vance, and Frank Porter Graham. After a brief sojourn working for the Tennessee Valley Authority, Ivey became the director of the Southern Regional Education Board, where he advocated for the desegregation of public schools in the South.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
. . . your UNC context. When did you come here as a student?
'40.
In 1940?
Yes.
Where was your home?
Down the street here.
Oh, you grew up in Chapel Hill? Oh, when you were a youngster where did you grow up?
In Auburn, Alabama.
Is that right? I didn't know that.
He and Bob Anderson . . . Bob was younger than John but, they were very close together and Bob came up after John in Auburn. They were very active in student government and student life there. John's father was head of poultry research there at Auburn University. John has two brothers, Bill Ivey and Mac Ivey, and they all grew up in Auburn, Alabama and all three of them came to the University of North Carolina.
You came here as a graduate student then?
Right.
In sociology?
Yes. Melville was here too.
I came here as an undergraduate and I was in sociology and we met in grad school. I graduated in '40 here at Carolina. I was working for my master's degree here when he came to work.
What was your maiden name?
My name was Melville Corbett.
Melville Corbett.
I was named after my great-grandfather. I don't know who he was named after.
Where was your home?
Kinston, North Carolina.
You came here and you knew Bob Anderson before.
I brought him up here.
He actually came after you.
That's right.
I see. What about [John] Folger? When did you meet him?
Through his father. I offered him a fellowship to come here to graduate school.
All those boys because John brought all of them up and they all came up together.
Where was Folger an undergraduate?
He was an undergraduate at . . .
I ought to know that but I don't.
Georgia State College.
Georgia State in Atlanta?
Yes.
Well, you knew his father [Dagnall Folger] when he was working for the Resettlement Administration?
Yes.
That far back you did?
Yes, John had know him as an undergraduate and graduate student.
Where did you encounter him?
I don't recall.
He traveled so much.
Yes, I'm trying to figure out how you would have run into him. You were an undergraduate at Auburn from '35 to '40, in that period?
I graduated in '40.
So, you must have started in '36 and Dag Folger was head of the Resettlement—or at least active in—the Farm Security Administration.
Well, John might have run across him when he worked . . . No, that would have been much later. We knew John before then. I was getting ready to say when John went to . . . During the War John worked for the Tennessee Valley Authority. He did war work over there. But, you knew John before then.
Who?
John Folger and Dag.
Yes, you came across Dag working as a first year graduate student. I
think you have to know a little bit about John. When John came up here
to get his master's degree Dr. Odum and Rupert Vance took an interest in
him and they didn't want him
Sure, all kinds of places. Did you know Odum and Vance before you came here as a graduate student? You must have known their reputation at least.
Yes, I knew of them.
But, you didn't know them personally?
I didn't know them personally.
I was Dr. Odum's teaching assistant when I was getting my master's degree.
A couple more people I want to ask you about. Winfred Godwin is a little bit younger than this group, is that right?
Right.
Was he a graduate student here also?
He was a graduate student after I left. I didn't know him here.
We didn't know Winfred until we got to Atlanta.
What about Phil Hammer?
I knew Phil Hammer through . . .
He was here long before we were.
No, I don't think so, Mel.
He was in the postgraduate school around here when I was an undergraduate because I knew his wife, Jane. Jane worked for Horace Williams. She had a teaching assignment just like I did for Horace Williams in the philosophy department. We both knew of Phil.
But, he wasn't involved in any of these regional planning programs?
No.
The sociology department?
No, not at all. He came along later and was interested in the North Carolina state planning.
Are there any other individuals that I have not named but that you think of as being kind of present at the creation of SREB? Not politicians but staff people.
Woodrow Breland.
Tell me about him.
Woodrow was a graduate student. I picked him up at Auburn and brought him up here and gave him a fellowship. He went on through and got his doctorate.
Would it have been during the war in the early 40's?
Yes.
Yes, it was during the 40's. Woodrow came up here and his wife, Peggy Breland, Margaret James Breland. Margaret James Breland was very important in the movement too. Margaret James and Woodrow worked very close with my husband and working with students and writing and that kind of thing.
Bill McGlochlin, of course, was very important in the SREB movement at that time. John had known Bill in the Tennessee Valley Authority. Bill was director of personnel. Then we ran across him when John went to knoxville for eighteen months. John was a full professor here and he left to go do war work in Knoxville. That's when he started working with Bill McGlochlin. He went to the University of Louisville, and was a vice-president there before he died. Bill was still at the Tennessee Valley Authority when he came over to the SREB.
You came here as a graduate student in 1940. How old were you then?
About twenty.
Twenty years old.
I was born in 1919.
Okay, so you were twenty or twenty-one at the oldest. You went straight into the doctoral program?
Yes.
Not only that, they devised a special curriculum for him. [laughter]
How long did it take you to get the doctorate?
I got my degree in 1944.
In '44.
No.
Does that seem right?
No, that doesn't seem right. wait a minute. Yes, that's about right.
Were you in the military at all?
No.
He was one of the head cadets at the ROTC in Auburn. He got all kinds of
honors but they wouldn't let him in the military. [laughter]
You are probably telling him more than he wants to know.
You were born in Auburn?
I was born in Raleigh.
In Raleigh, but your father had gone to Auburn to teach.
That's right.
How old were you when you moved there?
I was about five.
Just a young kid. So, that's really your home.
Yes.
By the time you got here Howard Odum had been here for a long time. He was an institution here by then.
That's right.
Rupert Vance was practically as well.
Rupert Vance had been Odum's student.
He was his understudy.
He took him and shaped him and Zimmerman over in the economic's department, they shaped him practically. Harriet Herring, Rupert Vance, Katherine Yaca, Guy Johnson—all of them were in that group.
And in effect what they singled you out for was what they had gone through. Isn't that right?
Yes.
Were there other people that they singled out like you, the next generation, your generation, to be sort of their proteges?
I got most of the people through the TVA. I got fellowships for them. Odum just engulfed the whole operation.
In effect, you were a recruiter for him. You were helping him locate and identify and bring in new graduate students.
And new generations, that's right.
Would that be a correct assessment?
That's right.
Let's talk about Odum and Vance as personalities for a minute. Did they always work closely together? Were they always good friends, not rivals, but real associates?
I think so.
Dr. Vance had great respect for Dr. Odum. He was like a father figure.
How did Odum relate to Frank Porter Graham and some of the other institutions around the campus here?
Graham in his orbit got tied up with the cattle breeders and Odum through vance and different people with the WPA, whose names I don't recall . . .
Frank Alexander, Guy Johnson and his wife Guion Johnson, Harriet Herring was in labor relations in the South. They were all graduate students that came through the curriculum. Zimmerman, I don't know where Eric Zimmerman who was over in the economics department . . . was very sympathetic to regional studies and he and Dr. Odum together were a very strong influence in the University. Frank Graham was very sympathetic to regionalism in the movement. Of course, Dr. Odum was interested in race relations. He has books that he wrote on race and so forth. I think he had one on race that he was writing when he died. Dr. Odum counseled Graham. I think they were fairly close. I know Dr. Odum was always very protective of him, he defended him.
They came together on the issue of race.
Yes, Dr. Odum would always come to the defense of Frank Graham and if there was anything he could do to help him he would help him. They both had their enemies as you well know. There was always an active group trying to get rid of both of them. We knew Frank Graham when John went to NYU. Frank Graham was at the UN working on the Kashmir problem.
In the 30's, in the late 30's, before you came here . . . In fact, since you were at Auburn as an undergraduate in '38, I wonder if you by chance went to the Southern Conference for Human Welfare meeting in Birmingham that November?
No.
There was a large delegation of Auburn faculty members and students who went.
Strangely enough John's interest in regionalism came from strictly reading. He got hold of everything Dr. Odum had written and he started reading it. He read Zimmerman and he read Vance and so when he came to Carolina most of his experience was out of the books, it wasn't knowing the people or being in the movements or anything like that. It was strictly academic. It made up his mind he wanted to know more about what it was. He really was in pre-med. He was going to study to be a doctor at one time.
That meeting in Birmingham, which was presided over by Frank Porter Graham, who made the keynote address, was not attended by Odum and Odum never had any association with that organization. Frank Graham remained active in it for about ten years. It became very controversial. It was branded a communist organization and so forth. Graham stayed with it and Odum never touched it.
Dr. Odum was very, very careful about trying not to be touched by the
stench of communism if he could. If it came right down to the last
battle he would go in and fight. He thought you ought to be smart enough
to evade it to begin with. It would be
Conversely, Odum was instrumental in Southern Regional Council and active in it for the rest of his career.
He put a lot of time in it.
But, Frank Graham never had anything to do with SRC.
One was more interested in political issues and the other one was interested in social issues. They just went special ways. It wasn't that they were competitive or anything like that, it's just that their interests in their ability to do good or to do something—they had no clout in certain areas so they stayed out of them. That's the only way that I could see it.
It's just something I wonder about when I read and I see one of them is here and very active and the other one won't go there and the other one is over here and the other guy doesn't go to it.
See, I don't think there is anything particularly there. They both were a little prima donna-ish, we both know that. That's an established fact. When it came to important things I don't think . . . There were more hard feelings between Coates and Odum. Graham, quite frequently, was refereeing that, trying to keep that one going.
Who was Coates?
Coates was head of The Institute of Government here at Carolina and really got in an awful lot of trouble.
What was his whole name?
Albert.
Albert Coates. What about W.T. Couch, did he figure into this in any significant way?
We knew him and of course we came in contact with him. He was over at Duke, wasn't he?
No, he ran the press here.
Oh, I know. I got the wrong man.
Did you know Couch pretty well?
Pretty well.
The press was really the voice of this movement in many ways because it published so many of the works of Odum and Vance and many other people who were working in the South at that time.
One was Margaret Bond. Was that her name?
Marjorie Bond.
She was the editor over at the press and she, John, and Dr. Vance did a book together on the South. She was instrumental in getting people interested in writing about the South at that time.
I never did know Couch. I knew him when I saw him, but I didn't know him.
You got you PhD in '44, where did you go then? You went to work for TVA then?
Yes.
How long did you stay with them?
Three years.
Until '47?
Yes.
Then where did you go, what was your next assignment after the TVA job? Did you come back here?
Odum gave me a job here. He brought me back from Knoxville.
You were teaching here?
Teaching and researching and developing a program for the American Council on Education, which was concerned with translating research on the South and teaching materials that could be used in the classroom. I did all the work for elementary and secondary schools and colleges in agricultural experimental stations.
He did an awful lot in state planning when we came back for the simple reason that he had gotten his doctorate in state planning, state and city planning. It was the overall view of social planning and engineering and so forth. They set up a special division for you. What was that?
They set up a division in the Institute for Research in Social Science. Gordon Blackwell was pulled into it. Vance and Odum always cheered us on.
That was where the seeds of SREB were planted, isn't it?
That's right.
The next year, '48, there was a governors conference in Wakulla Springs,
Florida. And '48 was a very important year because that was the year of
the Dixicrats and it was the year of Truman's election. It was the year
of a very divisive political
Right.
The governors in Florida subsequently met later that year in Savannah and it was out of those two meetings that SREB came. Does that sound right to you?
That's right.
Do you remember at what point you were approached about working for this group and who approached you to do it? Was it Odum or would it have been somebody else?
I was tied in with the Council of State Governments in Chicago, which tied in with the university background. It was tied in with the . . . I can't remember.
Okay, so somebody approached you, somebody came to you and said, "This organization is going to be formed and this is right down your alley and we need you to go to work for this." Who would that have been? Would that have been Odum or Vance or would it have been somebody in state government?
Odum and I had a big difference of opinion. Well, I say, whether to develop my career and contacts with academic affairs or political science figures or the extent to which I should be an academic person.
This was essentially a political job [SREB].
Yes.
Dr. Odum always said that John was trying to do too much. He was
spreading himself too thin and he wanted him to go and just be a
professor and write. John's interests were in
So, who do you think it was who came to you and said, "This is not a research job, this is a people job and we need you for it?"
Did Millard Caldwell, John, was he one of the early ones?
I suppose you could say that.
We knew Ernest Melby out of Chicago. I don't know whether you have ever heard of Ernest Melby. Ernest Melby was an educator, he was in high administration and he was at the University of Chicago. John had gotten used to him and he took a great liking to John and he wanted him to come into education, the field of education. John, when he was graduate student, had done work with the American Council on Education and in translating research into education. He made up his mind that that was the field that he wanted to do because people kept doing research and solving problems and then making the same mistakes over and over again. The real problem was to try to find some way to get the research into channels of action.
Into the curriculum.
Yes, that's right. So, rather than just be a catalyst, he saw himself as
a catalyst or as a translator of research. That's what he wanted to do
and Ernest Melby understood it. Ernest Melby took a job as dean of the
college of education at
We went to New York to take this job and Dr. Odum was terribly disappointed.
Would that have been in '47 or '48?
Yes.
John took a lot of political bashing because he was going to NYU to study and to work.
Did you accept it?
Yes.
Yes, we accepted the job. We were staying at a hotel in New York and we found a house out in Westchester. The Melbys had helped us find a house. We had the children and we were trying to get settled so he could start work. We kept getting telephone calls from Millard Caldwell. Mostly Millard was the one who kept calling.
He was then the governor of Florida.
Yes. Who was after Millard? Who was governor after MIllard? I can't think of his name. He went on to become head of the civil rights.
Roy Collins.
Roy Collins.
This was too early for Roy. Roy wasn't in on this then.
Can you think of anybody else who was importuning you to not to go to New York and live but to come back down here and take this job?
Yes, it was very simple, the American Council on Education, which was chaired by Zook . . .
George Zook.
George Zook . . . set up a committee on research and education. The influence of that committee spread throughout the country. Floyd Reeves, do you know Floyd Reeves?
I think I do.
Floyd Reeves is an important person.
Where was he?
He was at the University of Chicago.
A lot of the movement . . . A lot of the people that did work in the
South at that time were influenced by the University of Chicago. [laughter]
I'm going to tell you about this thing. Zook created this committee and
Maurice Seay of the University of Kentucky was on it. He put a lot of
time and energy on it. Thurgood Marshall before he got into politics . .
. This committee, ten people on it, I can't remember all of them, played
a major role. You raised the question, who talked me into coming to the
Southern Regional Education Board. Frank Porter Graham came into the
picture, in the sense that he helped to get this committee set
He was afraid it was going to get too political. He was scared of politics.
He never did like politics.
He was scared of politics.
He didn't like conflict.
Well, that's true, but he had an awful lot of it. He was in constant conflict.
He didn't relish it.
He didn't trust politics. As soon as they started getting too political he would always go around another way if he could make it.
Well, that takes you from where I got my education to the Southern Regional Education Board.
You went to New York and only got as far as a hotel in Manhattan and you turned around and came back South to Atlanta.
That's right, we did.
In the spring of '48 . . .
We had two small children and believe me it wasn't easy.
Would that be the right time, the spring?
Yes. At NYU they voted to give him a leave of absence. When he went back
up there as chancellor they announced he had the longest leave of
absence of anybody that had ever had a job at NYU. [Laughter]
How long did you stay in Atlanta then?
Nine years.
From '48 to '57?
Well, not quite that. '48 is right, but '57 comes a little harder.
We went to New York in '57. '56 would be closer, wouldn't it, John?
I think it was.
Leland was born in New York and we had been there a year when she was born, so it was '57.
When you got to Atlanta, you turned back to Chapel Hill and started recruiting all these people that you had brought over there for graduate studies.
He didn't have to recruit them, they all wanted to come and work.
Folger and Anderson and all the rest of them.
It was a wonderful time to be alive because everybody seemed to know what they were doing and they wanted to do it and all they needed was for somebody to give them an opportunity. They had the opportunity and it was just a wonderful place to be and a wonderful time to be alive.
I want to explore one part of the whole construction of SREB with you to
clarify a point. There was a lot of talk in the press at that time about
the governors' collective strategy to avoid desegregation. It had become
a big issue. The University of Arkansas had admitted black students to
their graduate schools without court pressure that same year. Kentucky
was about to do it under a court order. Maryland and Missouri, all these
border
One hundred percent.
He was the friend of the court. He took an awful beating for that.
Before we talk about the beating you took, I want to talk about the time right at the time you took the job. Do you recall the governors or their staffs essentially spelling out for you the political realities of this job and what the limitations were as far as race was concerned?
I don't remember.
You made up your mind to come back to Atlanta and take this job. The organization was already created, I mean the governors had said, "we are going to do it" and they were putting up the money to staff it.
But there wasn't any staff.
There wasn't any staff.
It was a card table for a long time.
You were it.
That's right.
So, I'm wondering if anybody in the political realm said to you, "this is what your job is and these are the limitations, we're trying to keep black students from going to these schools?"
I don't recall any series of discussions like that on the limitations on the Southern Regional Education Board as a device to keep blacks out of white schools and whites out of black schools.
Millard Caldwell was very important in this whole evolution. He was the governor of Florida and he was a person I could always get on the phone.
He was the first chairman of SREB, wasn't he?
That's right. And so Doak Campbell . . .
President of Florida State University?
Right.
Good friend of Caldwell's?
Good friends.
Doak always wanted John to be president of Florida State. He tried his best to get him to come.
This is kind of a blunt way to put it, but I need to know this. If you were describing the politicians of the South in that time you would think of people like Herman Talmadge, and Senator Bilbo, and John Rankin, and some others as just sort of boiler plate racists. There was no veneer there, they were what they were. There was another group of governors who were very conservative but who probably wouldn't have gone to the barricades to keep segregation in place. Do you think of Millard Caldwell as being one of the latter? Was he soft on integration or was he a hard-line integrationist?
He didn't much care.
He didn't much care. He wasn't an ideological racist.
That's right.
He definitely wasn't.
The fact that he was more of a pragmatic politician who wanted to get his program through made it possible for him to see SREB as an instrument for improving education in the South, and if it resulted in desegregation down the line he wasn't going to get to worried about it one way or the other.
Right.
Maybe the ideal kind of person to be chairman the first time. Not an ideologue, not a bleeding-heart liberal and not a boiler-plate racist, but a pragmatic, program-oriented person.
He had trouble learning to work with me. I had trouble learning to work with him. We were so different. He would go to any lengths. He called me one day and said that I was causing trouble for him with the governor of Mississippi.
Governor [Fielding] Wright.
Governor of Mississippi and I had to get acquainted with each other. It became clear that in their eyes the political cart was not running the show).
Let me see if I can make clear what you are saying. Governor Wright of Mississippi and Governor Thurmond [of South Carolina] and Governor Laney of Arkansas and a few others at that time were in the midst of this whole Dixicrat revolt. They had a political agenda they were working on. It must have become clear to them fairly early in SREB that unless you were taking this organization in the direction they wanted to go, that is, a hardline segregationist direction, that you were going to cause trouble for them. And if I understand what you say about Millard Caldwell, he wasn't necessarily in their camp or anybody's camp, he was just trying to get his job done.
He was very fond of John. He couldn't get along with him but he was very
fond of him. He always said, "I like that boy, that boy is a fine
fellow. He's going to be a fine man." He kept saying that all the time.
[laughter]
Well, Caldwell must have been getting some political flack from these other guys.
I'm sure he did.
They were saying to Caldwell, "you've got to get this guy Ivey in line because he's going to mess this whole thing up for us. Is this possible?
It's true.
It wasn't only possible, it was the truth. [laughter]
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
Almost from the very beginning of your job as head of SREB the political pressures that surrounded the racial issue came to bear on you.
Right.
Did Caldwell pretty much stick with you in the way you were doing your job?
He stuck with me.
Even though you had disagreements you never did fall out of favor with him?
No. He ended up trying to make me president of the college down there.
Florida State. John designed them a college down there and then he tried to get him to come and be president of that.
Would that have been the university of South Florida?
Yes. John did the original design. He didn't get credit for it. [laughter]
I can tell you for a fact he didn't get credit. I'm in a position to know because I was the first PR director at the University of South Florida. I had no notion that you had any direct involvement with it at all.
He kept trying to get them interested. . . . He's never done just one
thing he always has lots of things he's doing all the time. That was one
thing he was definitely interested in and he got Millard interested in
it and Doak Campbell interested
Ken Williams was pulled into it.
Kenneth Williams.
John knew him when we lived in Atlanta. John did a study of the schools
in Atlanta mainly because our children were going to school in the
basement of church. Our youngest one didn't even have a desk his first
two years. I told John, I said, "you are out trying to save the region
and your own child doesn't even have a desk to go to school with." [laughter]
In 1948, you and Millard Caldwell, he was the chairman and you were the executive director, do you recall how long he remained chairman of SREB?
He went from SREB chairmanship back into private practice after he left the governor's office. I don't believe I can pull anything out of my mind.
I can check that to see who came after him and when it was and all. By 1950, it was pretty clear then that there was this real split in the ranks between the ones who wanted SREB to be an instrument of segregation and those who wanted it to be an instrument of educational improvement.
That's a fact.
You were over here on this side. Thurmond, Wright and Laney and Talmadge and a bunch of others were on the other side.
Jim Folsom.
Jim Folsom would have been on your side, wouldn't he?
Yes.
Herman Talmadge was sort of on again, off again too, wasn't he? Herman and John got along beautifully. Herman would listen to anything John had to say. John could always get in to talk to Herman and Herman was always very kind, very generous, and very receptive. He never turned him away on anything.
Did he or any of these others give you a hard time after you took the public position on that Maryland case?
It seemed to quiet them down.
[laughter] [laughter]
Did you ever feel like your job was in jeopardy?
Every morning.
He never felt very secure period. [laughter]
From politicians obviously.
Yes, politicians. I had the most interesting job you could have.
Everybody that wasn't after him was boring. [laughter]
Did the university presidents give you a hard time or were they pretty much all on your side in this?
I had pretty good credentials.
They didn't recognize his . . . I remember when we moved to Atlanta and
John was so busy all the time. But people were very nice to me. Bill
Paty and his wife were so wonderful to us. I remember she took me to a
social event right after I [laughter] [laughter]
How would you characterize your own philosophy on the racial issue back at that time, Mr. Ivey?
How would I characterize my . . .
You're looking at somebody that never does see color. He sees people, he doesn't see color. Never has. When he came up here as a graduate student and Dr. Odum was teaching at night school, I don't know whether you know that, but Dr. Odum had classes over at Durham, and the black colleges over there in Greensboro. He taught them at night because they couldn't get accredited professors to do the graduate work so the kids could get degrees. He would recruit graduate students and this one [John] was one of the main ones who volunteered to go over.
Even when he was starting out and he had so much on him because he really hadn't had that good a background and all to start out the way he was. He was going over and teaching at night. He enjoyed his classes very much and the students. He made a good friend . . . What was his name? We met him back in India, we came across him in India. Do you know who I'm talking about? Anyhow, he was a black professor and very strongly in the Civil Rights movement and John came across him working as an assistant professor over there. We used to stay and play basketball with him and his wife.
I guess the point I would like to get you to elaborate on a little bit is
this was the time before the Civil Rights movement really began. Of
course, nothing ever begins all of a sudden one day, there are
antecedents. This period of time, particularly the time from the end of
the war until the Brown decision in 1954, was a time
when people in one way or another were having to decide where they stood
on the issue of desegregation, on the end of segregation and Jim Crow
laws and all that kind of thing. Some people had decided a long time
before that, but the society had not decided and the culture was not
being transformed in any extensive way at that time. So, any time you
found yourself in a situation where the issue came up constantly,
segregation versus desegregation, you had to make your own philosophical
choice on where you're going to stand on that. I'm wondering if during
this period of time you ever saw the job you had at SREB as being either
a job that would lead to
I took the position all the way through that the economic development of the South, political development of the South, was dependant upon how well, how people could get others, on an equal basis, to work with them.
My contacts with people, I enjoyed
Do you feel that it [SREB] developed its own internal power that made it possible for it go on and serve the region irrespective of the views of the governors of a given time?
That's right.
Do you think you were aware of that as early as '48 or '49 or is that something that evolved later?
From the beginning.
You had it from the beginning. The governor of Mississippi and the governor of South Carolina and the others who were practically every day saying in public, "we will never ever allow blacks and whites to go to school together as long as I'm governor of this state," either knew that wasn't true or else didn't realize how powerful an instrument for change they had created when they created SREB.
It was the latter.
They didn't realize.
Our approach to it seemed to be, the minute they find out that we double-crossed them, the press double-crossed them, we're in trouble.
Did you reach that point?
Yes.
Fairly early? Certainly by 1950, when that Maryland thing happened you had reached it, hadn't you?
Yes.
Did you stay in trouble with some of those people from that point on?
Sure. There was something about me . . .
He didn't take it as being dangerous. [laughter]
You didn't take it personally?
He didn't take any of it personally. He's always realized that it was so much bigger than he was that it didn't bother him because it didn't weigh on his shoulders very much. He worried but . . .
James Byrnes of South Carolina was a member of the Board of Directors of SREB, and Chairman of the Board of Trustees, too.
Of the University of South Carolina or what?
Yes. I think he had been Secretary of State.
Right, and he got elected governor.
Policy papers.
[unintelligible].
Byrnes became mad?
He was all upset.
In other words, he criticized you for giving him this position paper and said if he wanted to make his positions public he would write his own statement.
That's right.
Did he do that in public in the course of the meeting or did he say it to you privately?
Both.
Both?
He said it publicly because he had to, politically. He said it publicly because he wanted to.
Cause he wanted to. What was it that he objected to so much in that paper?
He was a pretty unyielding person in his positions and on race in
particular; he was not a reconstructive liberated man of the world as he
was in so many other ways. Do you think that
He changed his relationship with me after that.
You and he didn't get along too well? On a formal level.
He was always pretty nice and friendly towards John socially. He was always very careful to speak to him and to be complimentary to him. He's a very sociable fellow anyhow, though, as you well know.
I don't want to give the impression that I was
No, no, I understand what you are saying. Whether or not you yourself had
a secure position it seems to me that the organization was secure once
they had created it there was no way they could undo it. They couldn't
say, "oops, we made a mistake, we changed our mind, we don't want
regional education, we don't want any of this," strictly because they
saw it going in a racial direction that they didn't like. They couldn't
have gotten away with that it seems to me. The realization that SREB had
a life of its own, that the governors as individuals no longer had the
power, I mean, they could have stopped their state's appropriation
probably. Individually they could have done that, but there never was a
majority for that position anyway. SREB would have gone on even with a
partial budget until somewhere down the line when everybody must have
looked at it and said,
John tried to develop the universities. He traveled all the time during those years. He was never home. He would speak to legislatures. He would go from state to state to state speaking to any legislative group, the House, the Senate, anybody that would open up to him he would go and speak. It was always about economic development or educational development. He would go from university to university. There were very few colleges and universities that he didn't hit one time or the other. He would just thoroughly go through. Then they organized the legislators in the SREB so that they had conferences and study committees and that kind of thing. Then you had your legislators knowing what was going on as well as the governors knowing what was going on as well as the presidents of the universities and colleges. You had a support group. You had a network of support.
Did Howard Odum ever have any further contact with you over the organization of SREB? He wasn't real keen on that idea as it began. Did he change his mind? I know you kept a personal relationship with him or I assume you did.
Yes, we named our son after him.
Did he continue to be a counselor, a mentor of yours, a colleague during those years? I'm thinking of a different category here now. He was special to you earlier on, you were his protege.
He was special to us right up until he died.
That's what I wanted to be clear about.
I remember when he died. He didn't want me to come but he wanted John to come. John went to see him and he sent a note back by John to me. He wanted to see John but he didn't want me to see him in the condition he was in. He didn't mind John seeing him in that condition. We were very close with him right up until his death.
When was that?
'54 or '55. Somewhere around in there. I'm just guessing. I remember we came up when they were having the funeral. John and I didn't go up close. We went up to the cemetery but we didn't go in with the family and all. We stayed way over on the side. It was mighty hard.
Back in those days when desegregation was more and more an issue or race was more and more an issue, the position that most people tended to take was, whether it was governors or the press or other people in public life, the common statement that you heard was, "if the North would leave us alone, if Congress would quit trying to push programs down our throats, we will work out this social problem in our own way and on our own terms." Would you say that was a fairly common statement that you would hear governors make and whatnot in that time?
I don't know about . . .
I'm thinking that people who took that position really never were able to
deliver on that promise. If they said, "we don't need a federal
anti-lynching law or anti-poll tax law or fair employment practices law
at the federal level because we can
I think a lot of the answers to the questions will come in 1992.
That's what he says all the time. He says whatever happens with 1992 is going to determine how successful it was.
What do you think is going to happen?
I think the governors, new governors—in Georgia . . .
It's either going to be Zell Miller or Andy Young.
Andy Young.
We just need to get it together.
Yes.
He's also noted that in the past years, in the last decade, the SREB has become a research, largely a research organization, which is needed.
But, not a action group.
But, not a catalyst agency and not a transiator of that research. They do
the research and publish it and wherever it lands is fine, but that's
not the way to go about it. That's the
This has been very helpful for me and I'm certainly very much indebted to you both for letting me come and talk to you. Do you think of anything else that we hadn't talked about along these lines that you would like to say?
When we were in Michigan and he was there in the College of Education he
got Parkinson's while we were at NYU. He helped the Ford Foundation and
Westinghouse do an experiment in airborne television. He went over and
then became the Dean of the College of Education at Michigan State. John
was very discouraged, he didn't know what he could do, whether he was
capable of working or anything because he was relatively disabled. John
Hannah insisted that he could be Dean of the College of Education there.
We stayed there nine years. When they integrated the schools in
Bogahusa, Louisiana he went down. He didn't tell me about it but he went
down and visited the elementary schools and they were chasing him with
shotguns and pick-up trucks. [laughter]
The older I get the less I understand.
Just wait until you get to be our age. [laughter]
Have you had any contact with the Council of State Governments?
No sir, I haven't. I know that organization, but I never have had any contact with them.
I used to go with John when he would go to conferences and conventions.
He would take me with him. I had heard so much about Jim Folsom and I
remember going to a conference of the subcommittee that he was heading,
certain educational problems in the South, and so I went in just to
listen to him. I swear he was one of the most erudite men I have ever
heard. He had the facts at the tips of his fingers. He made perfect
sense. I would have gotten up and followed him anywhere, then I realized
this was Jim Folsom. [laughter]
I'm going to get Terry Sanford . . .
There aren't any young people coming along these days like there were in
our day. We go over to the Sociology Department and everybody is a
statistician. They don't care what they are studying just so they can
get the figures and run the
I was saying a while ago, Terry Sanford . . .
A book by Terry Sanford? I think I know where it is, but I'm not sure. I was looking through some things the other day and I found a book where John had gone when Terry Sanford was governor. He asked John to come for dinner and speak to the group and talk about education in North Carolina in general. This was back when we were at Michigan State. They published everything he said and he didn't know about it. Somebody had sent him a copy of it a long time ago. At that time he was hoping that Terry Sanford was going . . . He kept asking John questions. Asking him what he thought about so and so and to be frank. That was one particular occasion where John just laid it on the line and let them have it. They published it. John had hoped that Terry Sanford was going to do more. I don't know whether it is not possible to do it or whether they just don't have the know-how or the leadership to do it. They keep doing the same research over and over again, I know that.
END OF INTERVIEW