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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
B-0003, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
This interview covers three separate conversations with Clark Foreman regarding his career in race relations, public service, and politics. His childhood in Georgia and his travels in Europe led to his work for the Commission on Interracial Cooperation in Atlanta with Will Alexander. His enduring reputation as a radical and rumored communist began during his tenure with the Phelps-Stokes and Julius Rosenwald Funds. He acted out his growing commitment to integration and political equality while supervising New Deal projects for the Department of the Interior, the state parks, the interdepartmental committee on Negro affairs, and the power division of the Public Works Authority. This interview also addresses his attempts to provide more public housing for African Americans, and his opinion of leadership styles within the Interracial Commission and the Southern Conference for Human Welfare. He explains why the Southern Conference needed to endorse the Henry Wallace 1948 campaign, even though it was unsuccessful. He also compares the contributions of socialists and communists to the Southern Conference at state and national levels. Foreman lost jobs over false reports that he endorsed communism or was too aggressive in his work. The interview concludes with comments by Clark and Mairi Foreman about his work with Black Mountain College, the Navy, and the National Citizens PAC, especially focusing on how his children developed radical views during those years.
Clark Foreman worked in the Atlanta Commission on Interracial Cooperation, the Roosevelt Administration, and the Southern Conference for Human Welfare from the 1920s through the 1940s. This interview traces his efforts to provide equal social services and political rights for African Americans through these organizations and explains how he developed these goals. He also discusses his travels in Europe, his work with Black Mountain College and organized labor, and his criticism of the communist scare. His wife, Mairi Foreman, explains how his views sometimes offended his associates but inspired his children to lifelong political awareness.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is an interview with Mr. Clark Foreman in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 16, 1974, conducted by Jacquelyn Hall and Bill Finger for the Southern Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina. We want to maybe do a couple of interviews. One today and maybe on Tuesday so we won't go on too long and get you too tired. Maybe today we can talk about your early years in Georgia, your work with the CIC and on up to the Southern Conference. Cover your later years on Tuesday. That sound okay?
That's seventy-two of them to cover.
Well, let's start in 1902. You were born in Georgia?
Born right here in Atlanta, just a few blocks from the Biltmore.
Was your Atlanta background important to you in your early years? The influence of your grandfather?
Well, I don't remember it except what I've heard. My grandfather was the
founder and publisher of the Atlanta Constitution.
My
That's Clark Howell, right?
No, Evan
So you grew up in Atlanta and went to the University of Georgia.
I grew up in Atlanta and I went to the public schools of Atlanta and then to the University of Georgia.
Was there an expectation that you would go into the Atlanta Constitution?
No. My oldest brother was the one who was interested in writing and he had ideas of going into that field, but I never did.
When did you go to college?
In 1916. Wait a minute. I guess it was 1917.
You were pretty young, then.
Yeah. I graduated when I was 19 in 1921. See, I was born in 1902.
What was your experience at the University of Georgia like?
Well, I guess it was a pretty ordinary experience at college. I took a
regular liberal arts course, so to speak. Latin, Greek and so forth.
Very little science. No economics. But the most important thing that
happened to me at the University of Georgia was that in my second year
there one morning at the Chi Phi chapter house where I was
living—Chi Phi fraternity—I came down for breakfast.
There was a lot of talk about a rape that occurred outside of the town
of Athens. Where they said that some Negro man had raped a pregnant
white girl and then killed her. Well, all day long on the campus there
was talk about this going on. And that afternoon I went up to the court
house, which was supposed to be a mobproof [back?]
What kind of things did you say about it in your letters to your family? How did they respond to your concern?
Well, I just said what a terrible, barbaric thing it was. And they wrote back, very sympathetically. My family was broadminded. Both my mother and my father were very broadminded, liberal minded people. Strictly bourgeois people. But they believed very strongly in free speech and the right of the individual.
How did the Atlanta Constitution treat lynchings?
I don't remember what the Atlanta Constitution did, but
I suppose they were pretty good about it. The Athens Banner, which was the local paper in Athens, was very good on the
subject and denounced the lynching. I didn't do anything about it then.
I went on to Harvard. The next year, after graduating at the University
of Georgia I went on to Harvard. I went to Harvard for a year.
That's where you met Corliss Lamont, isn't it?
To show you the state of my mind at that time, just across from me in the dormitory where I lived was Donald CulrossPeattie, who later became quite a writer on botanical matters. And he invited me to go and hear W.E.B. DuBois at the Liberal Club. So I said okay, I accepted. When he came to call for me it was about 6:30 and I said "Well, isn't it awfully early to be going." He said "Well, we're going for dinner." "Going for dinner? I didn't understand that. I can't go." "Why not?" "Well, I can't go and have dinner with a Negro." He thought that was pretty silly and so did my roommates. And we argued about it until I had no rational defense. So I said okay and went. That was my first break, so to speak, from the southern tradition.
What other events in Cambridge do you remember from that year that pushed you into further breaks from your southern tradition?
I don't remember anything else on the Negro question. W.E.B. Dubois was very fine and made a great speech and I was very impressed by him at the time. I don't remember anything else on the Negro question.
You went on to London from Harvard?
Yes, after a year at Harvard my family gave me $1,000 to go to
Europe for a trip. So I said "Can I just take the
$1,000 and make it last as long as I want to, not go on one
of these special tours." They said yes.Outline of History, which I read going over on the boat and
was greatly impressed by it. Particularly the last chapter when he
talked about what could be. He talked about the kind of society that
should be. So when I got to London I thought I ought to talk to him. I
wrote him a note and said I'd like to come talk to him. He didn't
answer. I looked him up in the telephone book and found that I had sent
it to his country place instead of the place he had in town. So I called
up. His secretary said "Who's calling." I said
"Mr Foreman." She put him right on. I said
"Mr Wells, I wrote you a letter but I sent it to your country
place and I haven't received a reply so I thought maybe you didn't get
it." He said "Oh, then you're not the Mr Foreman I
talked to this morning." Apparently the only reason I got
through right away to him was that he thought I was somebody else.
Anyway I did and he told me how busy he was and how he couldn't take
time away from his writing and so forth, but wanted to know what I
wanted to talk to him about. I said "I can't go into it on the
telephone, but I would like very much to have a little while with
you." He said "Well, you write me another letter and
send it here and I'll see." I did write another letter and sent
it over by special messenger to his apartment and he replied very
promptly and said I could come a few days later. He gave me an
appointment for 15 minutes. When I went over to see him for the 15
minutes, he was very cordial, very nice and I told him why I'd come to
him. I'd read his book and I was very much impressed by it and I wanted
him to advise me what he thought would be the best thing for me to do. I
really was coming to him just the way I would come to a doctor, for
advice as to what I should do with my life to carry out the ideas he had
in that last chapter in the book. He said "Well, no doctor
would diagnose on the basis of such a small amount
What did your father do for a living?
He was the state director of the Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company.
The time came, I got ready to leave, father said well, he couldn'tChristianity and the Race Problem. Now my
parents had been writing me all the time urging me to come on home and
get to work, you know, don't just stay over in Europe indefinitely. But
when I read Oldham's book, he told about the starting of the Interracial
Commission, the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, it was called,
and what a good job they were doing in Atlanta. Well, here I was from
Atlanta, reading a book in London, learning about what was happening
here in my own home town that I had never heard of before. So I decided
to come home and go to work for the Interracial Commission. When I came
home I told father that's what I wanted to do and he said
"Well, I know the head of it very well, Dr Ashby Jones. He's a
very close friend of mine. And I will arrange for him to see
you." So he did. I went to see Dr Jones and he was very kind,
but he said I should see Will Alexander, the director. I went to see
Will Alexander and told him that I wanted to work with the Commission.
On the basis of reading one book you were interested enough in race problems to come back and go to work for the Interracial Commission?
Well, I was interested enough to do it before I read the book, I guess. But the book only showed me where I could work. Anyway, I went to work and I was very pleased with that salary because it was quite a good salary at that time. The first one I'd ever earned.
What did you do?
I became the secretary for the Committee for Georgia. Arthur Raper talked
about it yesterday a little bit. And set up these committees around the
state. For instance, I went to Augusta, Georgia, and went to see some
people there. I went to see the leading white people that I knew about
and talked to them. And they said "Look, we don't have any
trouble in Augusta. Everything is fine here. We have the best niggers in
the South. No trouble at all." Then I went to see the Negro
leaders and talked to them and they said more or less the same thing.
"We don't have any trouble in Augusta. Everything's fine here.
The white folks just treat us fine. Everything's good." I said
"Well, I noticed when I came out here, that the paving stopped
when it got to the Negro part of town." "Oh yes,
that's true, and there's no water, no sewer . . . " There were
no public facilities for the Negroes who lived in Augusta. So I said,
"Isn't that something that we should do something
about?" They were all very interested in doing something about
that. Then I went back to talk to the white people and told them, the
white leaders. And they didn't know about it
What kind of leaders? Were these church leaders or business leaders, bankers?
Both. Church, largely. I don't think there were many bankers in the Negro community in Augusta at that time.
I meant white and Negro.
Well . . . in the white community . . .
The mayor of the town or the ministers . . . .
I don't remember who it was I went to see.
In general, though, in setting up interracial committees, what kind of people were you trying to . . .
I'd try to find out who were the most influential people in town and the most likely to talk to me about it, you know.
But you talked openly about your interest in interracial activities and people would see you and . . . .
Sure, sure.
What kind of accomplishments did you . . . ?
Well, they set up the committee and they did get the streets paved and they did get the public facilities extended into the Negro community.
Did you set up local interracial committees in other towns?
Not in every town, but a few towns. Arthur Raper said Augusta, Brunswick and I don't remember how many others.
What were some of the other issues that you tried to work on?
Issues? No ideological issues. It was just a question of getting the roads paved and getting the facilities evenly distributed.
Those were the limits of what you were trying to do at the time?
Well, as Arthur Raper said yesterday, what we were trying to do was to get the people to working together. And for them, when they sat down together, to decide among themselves, what they wanted to do. How far they were willing to go.
Had you started to become aware of the poll tax?
Not at that time.
Did you learn about it through this kind of exposure to towns across Georgia? More political kinds of issues.
I don't think I did. That development came later and what happened, after
I'd been down in Georgia here for two years . . . . I began to feel
pretty depleted, you know? I felt that all the time I was trying to pull
people along and I was not getting the inspiration that I needed. So I
decided that I should go North for a while. About that time Thomas Jesse
Jones, the director of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, came down to visit the
Martha Berry schools. He stopped by Atlanta to see Will Alexander and
asked me to go up there with him, to the various schools. I did. And I
told him that I was planning to go to New York and he said that he
thought that would be a big mistake, that I should stay down in the
South and get my Ph.D. I said I wasn't willing to go back and ask my
father to support me anymore and that I was going North. So he said
"Well, next year I'm going to be in Africa, so if you come up
and work in the office as my assistant on a part time basis and go to
the University of Columbia and study for your Ph.D. we can give you a
good salary." So that was very good and I accepted that offer.
But while I was up there, I realized that politics was a crucial issue.
I don't know when I realized it or whether I realized it here and then
there or just how. But what I do remember is that Thomas Jesse Jones was
horrified at this and wrote my father a long
Let me ask you something about the Interracial Commission before you go on. You said that you felt depleted, you weren't learning anything or weren't getting any inspiration in your work with the Interracial Commission. What about Will Alexander? You didn't learn anything from him or you didn't feel any . . . ? What was your impression of him?
Well, he was always very friendly. My impression was of a very nice Methodist minister.
He didn't have any vision of change in the South that he communicated to you?
I guess he did have visions in terms of Christian ideology, you know, but it was nothing that got into me. And as Arthur Raper said yesterday, always when people said what are the objectives of the Interracial Commission, he would say "Well, we don't have any objectives as such. What we're trying to do is work together as far as we can." And that made a lot of sense to me then and it still does. Because if I had gone down to Augusta and told those people "Lets do this and let's do that" there would have been much more resistance than if I said "Well, let's get you together and see what you want to do."
It made sense to you but it didn't take you very far, it didn't inspire you.
No, it didn't inspire me because I didn't feel I was getting the education that I needed.
What about Arthur Raper? How would you describe the differences between Arthur Raper and Will Alexander? Or were there any? Were they very close in their . . . .?
Arthur Raper took my place when I left. I didn't know him tool well.
Was Jessie Daniel Ames there at the time? What was she like?
Yes, she was there. She was a very good woman.
Do you remember what kind of work she was doing?
Yeah, largely on getting women together against lynching. I found Mary McLoud Bethune a more inspiring person than most any of the others, although John Hope was a very inspiring person to work with, too.
So you went to work for the Phelps-Stokes Fund?
I went to the Phelps-Stokes Fund and worked there for two years. After
I'd worked there for two years I'd got my M.A. at Columbia. The Julius
Rosenwald Fund, Edward Embree, president of the Julius Rosenwald Fund,
What had you done to . . . ?
I believe I had thought W.E.B. Dubois was right and that political activity was the real answer. I hadn't done anything otherwise. It was just that he thought I was a dangerous radical.
Did you try to push Phelps-Stokes in that direction?
I tried to push him but he wasn't pushable. He was a Welshman. Jesse
Jones. I remember I was working in his office at the time that Lindbergh
flew to Paris. He came in and said "Oh, isn't this wonderful,
wonderful. Only a Nordic could have done this." I was
horrified. Here was a blackish Cephalic Welshman with a long head, as
un-Nordic as you could be and still be white. I said
"Nonsense." Well, I
Did Will Alexander think you were a little too aggressive as the secretary of the Georgia Interracial Committee?
I don't think so because Will Alexander, when Edwin Embree sent him the letter that he got from Jesse Jones, Will Alexander wrote a long letter to Embree recommending me, on the basis of which Embree gave me the job.
There weren't any conflicts between you and the other staff members of the Interracial Commission?
No. Alexander and I didn't have any conflicts, no.
What exactly did you do at the Phelps-Stokes and at the Rosenwald Funds?
In the Phelps-Stokes Fund, while Jesse Jones was in Africa, my job was just sort of to take care of things in the office and see that letters were answered. I didn't really have to do a great deal of anything except to go to Columbia and get my M.A. degree.
Then you moved over to the Rosenwald Fund, to do what?
Then I went to the Rosenwald Fund. And the story with the Rosenwald Fund
was this: When Julius Rosenwald set up the Rosenwald Fund, he gave
$25 million with the provision that it all had to be spent
within 25 years. But he gave it in Sears Roebuck stock. So in those
first five years they gave away money every year, but at the end of the
year stock had gone up so much that they had more money than they began
with. It was 1928 when I went . . . . So Embree was very much worried
then that he wasn't going to be able to get rid of all this
$25 million within the 25 years he had to do it. So my job
was to think up new ways of giving away this money. Which pleased me a
lot. His idea really was for me to go out
Did you publish the results of that study?
I did later on as my Ph.D. thesis. I'll tell you about it. At that time
there was no county in the South which provided a free library service
for all the people. I thought that was a pretty bad thing and that the
Rosenwald Fund could do a good job by giving assistance to a number of
counties provided they would give free library service to all the
people, rural and urban, Negro and white. So we found 13 counties that
agreed to match our money on a four or five year period and set up these
county libraries systems. Which I imagine now is a pretty general
pattern in the South. After a couple of years with these libraries and
schools and so on and so on, along with the declining stock market,
Embree was no longer afraid of not being able to give away the money. He
was
Why did he want you to go to Europe for a year?
Get rid of me. I was on his hands and he had his money and he didn't know what to do.
Wasn't that a little odd just to say I'll pay your way to Europe. He could have said "Go out and find a job" couldn't he. He didn't have to keep you around and send you to Europe. He must have been impressed with your work or something.
Well, maybe he was. Who am I to say he wasn't?
Was the only reason he wanted to get rid of you because he was worried about his money or did he think you were moving along in directions that he—
There was no indication of anything except financial. And he gave me this
year's salary and said go to Europe. On the way over to Europe, on the
boat, I met my wife, who was a Canadian. And she was going to Paris to
do stories for her paper. She was the women's editor of the Toronto Daily Star.
You were going to Paris also?
Yeah, I was going to Paris also. Then from Paris I went on
That's very romantic. Traveling all through eastern Europe and then swinging back through Paris to get married.
So you just knew her one summer and then married her the next summer?
Yeah.
Did you have any idea at that point that you would return South and she would leave Toronto . . .
Nope.
Did you think you would stay in the North? After you got married did you think you would go to Canada?
Well, what happened on that was I got a letter from her saying that she was arriving on such and such a date in July. And the next day I got a letter from Edwin Embree saying that he wanted me to come back to the United States. There was an important job over here to be done. So I wrote him a letter. I couldn't tell him at that time when I would be able to come back because I didn't know.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
I wrote him and told him that I would be coming back the first part of August but I couldn't tell him just exactly when.
Did he give you an indication of what the job was?
No. The day before Mairi arrived I got a cable from him saying
"Cable when you will arrive." So we got married after
a few days and I sent him a cable saying "Just married. Would
like to stay a couple
Had you decided to get married before she came?
No. How could I decide to get married before she came?
You mean you decided in three days after she arrived on the boat?
Yeah.
You were a bold young man.
As my mother said, how could you tell? How could you be sure? But we both were sure and it's worked out very well.
Did you write a book when you were traveling around Europe?
Yes.
Did you expand your dissertation about Negro education?
No. That had all been published before I left. At Columbia you have to
publish your dissertation before they'll give you the Ph.D. That was
fortunate, too, because the Rosenwald Fund took care of that. They paid
for the publication of the dissertation. Anyway, when Mairi arrived, her
assignment was to write a story about how the French spend their summers
in French summer resorts. So we decided that we'd see. I went to the
American Express and asked what was the best place to go to see, at that
time, resorts, summer resorts. So he told me the name of some beach
—Deauville— Greek
Civilization. He had been a professor of Greek Civilization at
Oxford. So I said "Well, Alfred, why don't we have a Greek
ceremony. Be married in a Greek ceremony." He said well, that
wouldn't be possible because that took two weeks. They started one week
and then finished the next week. I skipped, in this process, the fact
that in the morning we thought maybe we could get some extraterritorial
help so to speak and had gone to see the Canadian consul in Geneva. He
turned out to be a friend of Mairi's father and he said "Are
you Colonel Frazer's daughter?" She said yes. He said
"Well, I think you should get married in Toronto. Toronto is a
very beautiful place to get married in. I was married there."
We said thank you very much and left him and went to see the American
consul. When we got to the American consulate they said, "Oh,
he's not here." "Where can we find him?"
"He's probably swimming out in the lake." So we went
out there and swam out to this raft and there, sure enough, was this
fellow. I started talking to him about it and said we wanted to get
married. He said he couldn't do it, that he didn't have authority, which
wasn't right. He did have authority. Could have done
That's the book that you wrote.
Yeah. Then later on . . . the substance of my lecture I wrote in an
article for the New Republic and they published it
with a big whole front page given to it. So when I got back WW Norton,
the publisher, asked me to put it into a book. I did. After the lecture,
we gave a reception at the hotel had a sky room up at the top. I
remember this young man who had worked for them, worked for the
Zimmerns. Later on became a professor of psychology at Harvard. He was
the one told me we couldn't get married because of the bans. When he
heard me introducingConstitution and she was the women's editor of the Toronto Daily Star, some enterprising reporter picked up the
fact that we were married, see, and wired our respective papers. Wired
the Toronto Daily Star and the Atlanta Constitution. So there were stories, very confusing, about the
marriage saying that . . . I had wired my family saying that we were
married in Geneva. So when the paper got the wire from New York they ran
a story that we'd had this double wedding, civil and religious ceremony,
you know. How they could have done that I don't know.
How did your parents handle all this, these cables and . . . ?
They didn't mind. My mother said "Well, how could you be so sure?"
What kind of impression did your trip to Russia make on you?
That I didn't want to live there. My impression of Russia was that they were really struggling and trying to do something. But they were so far behind us that they had nothing really to teach us except in the spirit of working.
Political ideology of the times didn't effect you? Leninism.
No. In fact, some of the people that I knew there were called Trotskyists
and one of them later on disappeared. The husband of Freda Utley. And
she wrote a book called The Dreams we Lost in which
she said I was one of the few people who came to Russia who was not
taken in by the prevailing euphoria.
Had you read Marx's and Lenin's works in London at the School of Economics?
I don't think I read them in London, but I read them in Russia. I studied a lot in the Marxist Leninist Institute in Moscow. I said I studied . . . I read there.
What were your criticisms of what was happening in Russia?
A complete lack of freedom. Complete lack of bread, or almost a complete lack of it. 1932 or '33. Very hard times.
Were you aware of how hard the times were in the States?
No. I missed out on the depression completely. I mean by that I was fortunate in keeping afloat during the depression, thanks to the Rosenwald Fund.
When you came home you still were able to keep out of the
When I came back to New York in 1933 Embree and Will Alexander met me and told me that when the New Deal had been set up they made a presentation to Roosevelt saying that there should be some special provision made to be sure that the Negroes got their fair share of the New Deal. Roosevelt agreed but said that it should be handled by Harold Ickes. So they went to see Harold Ickes and he said suggest me a name, give me a list of names of people that you think can handle the job. So they gave him a list of names, out of which he chose me. Ickes chose me.
On the recommendation of Will Alexander?
From the list that Will Alexander and Embree gave him. I don't know who the other names were, if that's what you mean.
So you went to work within the Department of Interior.
Yes.
Let me ask you first to go back a little bit. What was the thesis of your article and your speech on the new internationalism?
That the withdrawal of such a large part of the world economy as the
Russians represented made the old theories of capitalist economy out of
date and no longer workable. At the same time, the socialist theory that
could have a new system wasn't going to work because of the fact that
the United States and the rest of the world didn't go into it. And that
. . . what I said was that there would be more and more exchange between
governments and less and less between individuals. So there would be
more intergovernmental activity in economics. And that's what I wrote up
in a book called the New Internationalism.
Wasn't there some protest on the part of the blacks about the appointment of a white man?
Not at first. When I took the job . . . . When I went in to
Were there any other black secretaries in the Washington bureaucracy at that time?
At the time I gave the job to Lucia Pitts she was the first black
secretary in government. Gene Talmadge, who was then the governor of
Georgia, went on the radio twice a day and denounced me for doing
such
That's amazing, because the other government dining rooms stayed segregated, didn't they. The department of Interior cafeterias were the only, still were the only integrated cafeterias in Washington.
Well, later on even, during the Second World War, when they built the new big Interior building, some women employees came to Ickes and protested the fact that Negroes were eating in the dining room. So he went down next day, himself, and ate in the general dining room. When he got through he stood up on his chair, knocked on the table and said "I've got an announcement to make. Yesterday several employees came to me and complained about the fact that Negroes were eating in the dining room and I want everybody to understand that it is absolutely okay and it should be done and if anybody comes to me with any complaints on the subject any more that person will be fired." So that was the end of that.
So in 1933 and 1934 you ate with Luca Pitts . . . you ate with your secretary in the dining hall.
Yeah.
What were your duties as adviser of the economic status of the Negro? That was your title?
Yeah. Adviser on the Economic Status of the Negroes. Another example of
the kind of thing that went on. You see, when I went in there Ickes said
"It's understood with the President that even though you're
working in my office you're to be operating throughout the government,
anywhere."
Did that have a ripple effect throughout the CCC? Were there more and more black officers . . . .?
Well, I can't generalize as to how prevalent it was, but that's something you could find out. I mean somebody that did research on it could find out. But it did have some ripple effect, but how much I don't know.
Were you involved at all in the public housing aspects of the Department of Interior?
Very much involved in it. At that time, in 1933 and '34, my involvement was to see that Negroes got their share of the jobs. And when they started a public housing venture or any other public works, say in Atlanta, that ten percent of the Negroes—or whatever the percentage of the population was—got jobs.Finally we got an order to that effect through the Public Works Administration. That employment should be on the basis of the population. And if the skilled workers of the town were available, they had to be . . . jobs had to be given to Negroes in proportion. But later on I became the director of defense housing. That was an entirely different story.
Did you try at all to challenge segregation in the public housing projects that you built?
Well, as a matter of fact I didn't because that had to be done through the local housing authorities. For instance, any housing that was built in Atlanta was done through the Atlanta housing authority. They made the policies. Policies were not made in Washington.
Did Ickes try at all to pressure them, the local housing authorities . . . ?
No, I didn't.
Did that issue even come up?
No.
It was just assumed that housing projects would be segregated.
I think now thatwe were just so eager to get houses built that we weren't thinking about the problem of segregation. But I don't remember the issue ever being made. Anyway, after two years I said to Ickes that I thought that Robert Weaver was capable of handling the job. And if he would make him the advisor, I would resign. Ickes said that he would make him advisor, but he didn't want me to resign. He would like me to stay on as his special counsel in his office to give him advice on general things. Which consisted largely of writing his speeches and working on a book for him and so forth. So that takes us to 1934.
You stayed on as his special adviser?
Yeah. That's '34. So I think that's enough for today.
[End of November 16 interview.]
[November 19, 1974 interview begins]
During the panel discussion you mentioned an incident which almost got
you fired from the Interracial Commission. I wondered if you would tell
me that incident again and any other similar incidents which might give
us some idea about what the members of the Interracial Commission, the
white members in particular, were trying to do. What their
Yes, well, this man, Marion Jackson
But he wasn't typical of the board?
No, he wasn't typical.
Was there any difference between the staff of the Interracial Commission
and the board as far as how far they were willing to go in
I was never conscious of any conflict.
I have been doing research on Jesse Daniel Ames and the campaign against lynching and I came across some remarks of hers somewhere about you, saying that you were awfully hot-headed and aggressive young man. Does that surprise you?
Doesn't surprise me at all. She came in some time after I was there. She came from Texas and joined the staff. I thought of her as being a very aggressive woman.
In what way?
In wanting things her way. She came in with the idea of sort of changing things around, seemed to me, as I remember it, to her way of doing things. And they weren't always mine. I think we had some mild disagreements but I don't think they were anything deep or ideological.
What kind of things did you disagree about?
I don't remember. But they weren't anything important, I don't believe.
Do you know what the source of tension was between her and Will Alexander?
I was not conscious of any tension except she was the kind of person that wanted to take over everything. She probably wanted to tell him how to run the organization and he resisted a little bit. That would be my guess.
Yesterday when we stopped we were at 1934.
Came 1934, I said to Secretary Ickes that I thought Robert Weaver could
handle the job and would he accept him as adviser if I resigned. He said
he would but he wanted me to stay on as his special counsel to help
Was it while you were special counsel that you organized the interdepartmental committee on Negro affairs?
Well, I'm not sure whether I did that before or after I became his special assistant. What I did was to go around to speak to every one of the secretaries and ask them if they wouldn't have somebody on their staff do the same kind of work I was supposed to be doing. Some of them did have. For instance, in Commerce . . . Eugene Kinkle Jones was there in Commerce. I think his secretary was named Roper. I'm not sure of this now. Henry Wallace wouldn't have anybody. He didn't think he needed it.
Well he was under a lot of pressure at that very time about the Agricultural Adjustment Act.
He did need it, but he didn't think he did. I talked to Harry Hopkins.
Harry Hopkins thought he knew better, you know. He later on got married
He stayed for just about six months, I think.
He came in and left
What was the purpose of the committee?
To relieve me of the responsibility of trying to work through other
secretaries. I had a very good relationship with Ickes
You held hearings in the South, didn't you, about the effects the NRA and the Agricultural Adjustment Act were having on blacks?
No I didn't.
Oh. It was pretty much an internal operation. You weren't going out and trying to find out . . .
No. You're talking about this committee? No, the inter-departmental committee was just a way of comparing notes, making suggestions to each other what we could do. So we may have suggested that somebody else hold these hearings, but I didn't have anything to do with them.
What kind of information did you have about what kind of effect the New Deal agencies were having on blacks?
Well, the letters that I would get complaining about discrimination. I got one letter from Mississippi from some tenant farmer down there. He wrote to "Your Race Majesty" and he wanted to know if I couldn't do something about helping the situation down there.
Did you feel like you got any results for your efforts?
Well, I think we got some results from that regulation about employment.
They had to employ on public works jobs a proportionate amount of Negro
skilled and unskilled. I think there were some results in
What was your perception of the internal conflicts that were going on within the administration? Did you feel frustrated? Were there a lot of pressures on Ickes, for example, that were keeping him from being able to go as far as he might have gone? Or at that time did you feel pretty self confident about what you were doing, pretty hopeful?
I don't remember feeling frustrated or self confident. A lot of articles in the Negro press and so forth about the need of having a Negro in my job and I was very sympathetic to that. And as soon as I felt that Ickes would do it, I moved in that direction. There was a meeting in Washington where I announced it. John W. Davis was this firebrand. He was having some meeting and I think the meeting was designed to protest my being in the job. I was on the program. When it came time for my speech, I announced that I was resigning and that Robert Weaver was taking over. That had a somewhat deflating effect on Mr John Davis. Emotionally deflating. He weighed about 300 pounds.
What did you think of Henry Wallace at that time?
At that time I thought Henry Wallace was difficult and evasive. I thought that he could have been more forthright about the problems facing him than he was.
It's always amazed me that he emerged as the Progressive Party candidate in '48 and by then was seen as being so radical.
Which he really wasn't.
Of course C. B. Baldwin was close to him and kept working on him. Milo
Perkins was gone; he didn't have anything to do with the
He was rather strange. Fanatic.
A veterinary can probably tell, but I can't.
He was fanatic in what way.
Maybe religiously, I'm not sure. He always struck me as being rather fanatical.