[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]

HOWARD KESTER:

. . . that one right over there. She was a real angel and after she went away I started pulling out the boxes, I knew they were here in the files and when I got to 80 boxes, I quit counting [Laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, is the book based mostly on your own papers, the ones that are now on microfilm?

HOWARD KESTER:

No. I have papers that are in Chapel Hill, but others that still haven't been microfilmed. Papers from many people in all walks of life.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You have a whole . . .

HOWARD KESTER:

Like papers from people concerned about all the things I was attempting to do, Elizabeth Gilman, Niebuhr, Dorothy Dexter, and so forth and so on, that I saved out, because they are sort of personal.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Is there a collection of Fellowship of Southern Churchmen papers besides what you have, or are you . . .

HOWARD KESTER:

I've got them all.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You've got everything? Great. Well, why don't you start by telling us a little bit about your family, where you came from.

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, I was born in Martinsville, Virginia. That's in Henry County, just across the line from North Carolina. My mother was of Scotch-Irish ancestory, and my grandfather was the Manager of the John Daniel Plantation, which was partly in, if I remember correctly, in Amherst County about where Sweetbriar College is, and in Campbell County where Lynchburg is.

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And on my father's side . . . the Kesters lived in or around about Cologne in Germany. And they became Quakers, left Germany, went to England and struck up with William Penn, who in turn, got them to survey parts of Pennsylvania. Now the records say . . .

JACQUELYN HALL:

May I smoke?

HOWARD KESTER:

Please do because I am going to. Maybe I ought not to. [Laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, don't let me tempt you.

HOWARD KESTER:

Matches? Half of them don't strike . . . There were two brothers who come to this country, Johannes, and Praetorius, and from all I can get, Praetorius was the stronger of the two brothers who came. And he signed the first written protest against slavery in America. He's well remembered by Quakers even today, and then I've seen a plaque, at least one plaque erected to him, in Philadelphia.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you know about that?

HOWARD KESTER:

Years ago. No, I didn't know a thing about it at the time.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When you were growing up?

HOWARD KESTER:

Didn't know a thing about it. My father, he had some Quakerism in him, but Mama was a Presbyterian, a Southern Presbyterian, and he joined the Presbyterian Church, became an elder and a Sunday School teacher in Church . . . and a member of the Ku Klux Klan, too. [Laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was he an active member of the Ku Klux Klan?

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, he was never a leader, but people relied on him, they had so much respect for him. He was the kind of man who rarely, if ever, signed a contract. He said, "My word is as good as my bond." And there are some people around like that today, too, who, if they give you their word, that is all that is necessary, and . . .

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were you aware of him going to Klan meetings, or being involved in disciplining . . .

HOWARD KESTER:

Yes, through my mother. My mother found the regalia.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Oh, she didn't know he was in the Klan?

HOWARD KESTER:

She found it, yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

She didn't know it until she found the Klan regalia?

HOWARD KESTER:

Yes, and it nearly broke her heart. She didn't like any part of it, and I don't believe that Papa ever engaged in any violence. He had a fierce temper. [Laughter] It was his principle, he told you to do something once and that was all. You'd better do it. And for the survey of Pennsylvania, I don't thing the two brothers did that much, some of the relatives say that they surveyed the whole state. Well, I just can't believe it. And they were given land. I guess that after all Penn had to give them land . . . in what is now Chestnut Hill near Philadelphia. And either Williams . . . Williamsburg, I believe or Williamstown, in Pennsylvania and my father was a merchant tailor, it had been the great tradition. Some say it goes back five hundred years to a merchant tailor. Do you know what a merchant tailor is?

JACQUELYN HALL:

No.

HOWARD KESTER:

A merchant tailor is a man who makes men's clothes . . . has the whole cloth, and he fits them and puts the garment together and they come in for fittings to see that everything is all right, you know. And my father didn't want to be a tailor, but his father wouldn't have it any other way. The tailoring trade had been in the family for generations. My Father wanted to be an engineer and he had the mind for it. You go to Cologne today, or at least it was the last time I was in Cologne and you can see the names and they are all tailors.

JACQUELYN HALL:

They are all tailors?

HOWARD KESTER:

Yes, and my father wanted to be a mining engineer, but my grandfather said, "No, absolutely not, you're going to be a tailor." And he attended school. He went to what they called a Cutting School, in New York City, and became a first-rate tailor.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did he have a shop in his home, or where . . .

HOWARD KESTER:

Before I was born they lived in Bristol, and Roanoke and finally Martinsville, and then he ran into financial difficulty and we moved to West Virginia; Beckley in Raleigh County. And I have a brother, who is retired, living in Florida, near Orlando, and a sister who has the old home place in Beckley, and that's it. I came along in 1904.

JACQUELYN HALL:

He was a tailor when you were born?

HOWARD KESTER:

Yes, he was a tailor, never anything but a tailor.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Beckley is a Mining community.

HOWARD KESTER:

That's right, and I caught on while . . . Mama inadvertently, I suppose, showed us the regalia as children. My mother was really an angelic woman, and I don't ever remember her whipping me. [Laughter] I couldn't say that about my daddy.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were you rebellious?

HOWARD KESTER:

No. Well, I was when I went to college and on into seminary, and got into trouble.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You went to Lynchburg?

HOWARD KESTER:

I went to Lynchburg College and got an A.B.

JACQUELYN HALL:

To be a Preacher?

HOWARD KESTER:

That's right, and I got a certificate in Bible, and a certificate in Greek, which means you had four years of it. And we had some good teachers, good teachers.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did you become a pacifist?

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, I suppose in 1923 there were about 15 boys who were selected through the YMCA, the World Student Christian Federation, to visit the war-torn countries of Europe, and the idea being that when we came back, we would raise money and clothes and get books, and this that and the other, for the European students. And David Porter, who was the National Secretary of the Student YMCA made a visit to the College (we were having a student meeting or something) and he asked me if I would be the Regional Director of the European Student Relief here in the South. And I was going to school and carrying a pretty heavy load, but I didn't feel like I could turn it down. So I didn't, I took it, got paid for it. [Laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

That helps.

HOWARD KESTER:

Yes, it helps, you bet it does. They offered me a lot more than I would take 'cause I didn't feel like I could be honest about it, you know, and I got a telephone and a secretary, and did a lot of traveling. And the amazing thing is that I asked the, had the temerity to ask the Dean if I could make a two month trip through southern colleges, Negro and white, telling the story about what I had seen in Europe. And we were, in several instances, the guests of governments . . . of France, for example. Entertained, for example, in Verdun, and the same man who took Woodrow Wilson over the battlefield, took us over the battlefields. I don't know, I saw the hellishness of war, and I decided I didn't want anything to do with it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

The other people, the other 23 students who travelled with you, did any of them go on to become pacifists?

HOWARD KESTER:

I don't know, I don't know who was that foolish.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So you wanted to go on a two months speaking tour?

HOWARD KESTER:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What made you think of going to Negro colleges as well as white colleges?

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, Channing Tobias, did you know him?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yes.

HOWARD KESTER:

Channing Tobias and william Craner asked me if I would visit Negro colleges. They said, "You won't get much money, or anything else, but the Negro students ought not to be left out." So it made no difference to me. I went to the white colleges, where I did get money, and girls brought out fur coats, dresses and everything you could think of and gave them to me, and I would ship them to New York, and off they'd go to Europe, I hope.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were you aware at that time of the Interracial Commission? The formation of the . . .

HOWARD KESTER:

I knew Alexander well.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you know him that early, in 1923?

HOWARD KESTER:

Dr. Will used to live right over there.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Is that right?

HOWARD KESTER:

That's right. He used to live right over there, and I knew . . . I can't be certain when it was, but I don't think I really knew Dr. Will well until I was at Vanderbilt, and he's an old Vanderbilt man and the Dean, Dean Brown, would invite him up each year to speak to us, and I got to know him fairly well. He laughed at my socialism. [laughter] He thought I was an absolute nut.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I bet. So the Dean of Lynchburg College was willing to let you take two months off from school?

HOWARD KESTER:

That's right, and he said "Get your assignments, and if there

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are papers due, you send them in, and some of the professors may require special work, after you return." So I went, and only one of the professors had me to come to his house every afternoon at five o'clock. But I made it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So you organized an interracial student group at Lynchburg College.

HOWARD KESTER:

I certainly did.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was that . . .

HOWARD KESTER:

That was the first one in the South.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was that a YMCA?

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, it was composed of students of Lynchburg, Randolph Macon, and Lynchburg Theological Seminary and College, which was a Negro institution, and as soon as I came back from Europe, well, when I saw the ghettos in Warsaw and Krakow, particularly Krakow, you know the Jews had to be in by sundown and there was a tremendous chain, larger than a regular 109 chain, clear across the gates, and every Jew had to be inside that before sundown. And when I saw it something turned over inside of me, and I came to feel that - "Well, by golly, this is what we do to Negroes in the South. We put them in restrictive areas, and exploit them in every way that we can think of." And I felt that the time had come for Negro and white students to get together, and I went over to see one of the students . . . no, I spoke, I spoke at the College, and afterwards met a man by the name of Jackson. He was studying for the Ministry just as I was, and I liked him, and trusted him, and vice versa. And we began talking about the formation of a student group, and at first we met over at the Negro college, because in those days it was hard to find a white college that would welcome us, and so . . . Is this what you want?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yes, I want the story.

HOWARD KESTER:

And then the Negro students said we ought to meet in a mutual place, and . . .

JACQUELYN HALL:

Rather than meeting at the black college?

HOWARD KESTER:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why was that?

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, it was a natural, yet unnatural thing to do. Why not swap around a little bit? So I went to the President of our college, John Hundley and asked him if I could bring the Negroes from the college, Lynchburg Theological Seminary and College, over to our college for a concert, declamations and orations, and debates and this that or the other, you know, and he said, "Yes, go ahead," and I did. Most of the students and the faculty turned out as long as the Negro students were singing, and when they started the declamations, etc. they began to leave, a few of them, and I became un-stuck. I went to the door and I asked one or two of them, a particular fellow by the name of Stone, who said "I'll listen to a nigger sing," excuse the work but that's what he said, "but I ain't going to listen to them talk," and he kept going. Well, then we decided that we ought to find a white place to meet in. We went to the YWCA, central YWCA of Lynchburg and they were gracious and they welcomed us, but Lynchburg was a very conservative town, and it was no time at all until pressure began to be brought against the Directors and the Secretaries of the YWCA, so they had to say - "I'm sorry." They were, but we had to find new quarters.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You went to the YWCA instead of the YMCA?

HOWARD KESTER:

Lord have mercy, yes. You'd never get anything out of the YMCA.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I was just talking to Grace Towns Hamilton . . .

HOWARD KESTER:

I know Grace.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And she told me the same thing.

HOWARD KESTER:

The YWCA was always way ahead of the YMCA.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How do you account for that?

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, I think for one thing, they were more adventurous, and saw the agony through which Negroes were passing more quickly and deeply than did the "Y" Secretaries. Now, that isn't true of all of them. The Secretary at the University of Virginia, Madison Hall, Kyle Smith, Carl Zerfoss of Washington and Lee, Dag Folger at Emory, well . . . I need not mention them all here, but they were concerned, and they were committed Christians.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who were some of the women? You went on then to become involved in the National Student Council and the Regional YM-YWCA.

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, we had a dickens of a time getting a Regional Council organized. When I first came to Blue Ridge as a student, it was a secretaries movement. The secretaries made the decision.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were the secretaries hired staff?

HOWARD KESTER:

They were employed by the individual institution, by Clemson or Emory, or whatever. But they felt, they truly felt that . . . most of them, not all of them by any means, I'm not sure I can even remember them all . . . that it was really a secretaries movement, and we were not exactly a nuisance, but we were to be tolerated and not allowed to participate in making decisions.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You mean people who were just members of local YMCA and YWCA Chapters did go to Blue Ridge but you really couldn't become part of the leadership unless you were a hired secretary?

HOWARD KESTER:

Yes, that's true.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And were they usually hired by the university rather than by the local chapter or by the National "Y"?

HOWARD KESTER:

Harry Comer was at Chapel Hill. Paul Derring at VPI. These men together with a few others saw that they day had come when students should have a voice in what kind of program they had.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Oh, the secretaries were adults?

HOWARD KESTER:

Oh sure.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Oh, I see.

HOWARD KESTER:

I'm sorry. So the students, not all of them, decided that they wanted a Field Council, what we called a Southern Student Field Council and they picked a boy from N. C. State by the name of Springer and me to be the goats.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Springer?

HOWARD KESTER:

Springer, and we asked the secretaries for a meeting, which they granted, and we met over in Lee Hall, and down in one of the classrooms. And Springer, I remember so well, came marching into the classroom with a great armful of milk bottles to illustrate the difference. Here were all these students, but they had no representation, and no voice, and that's what we wanted. And then I followed and I had a way of talking myself into trouble, and sometimes I had to talk my way out of trouble too. So I said the Secretaries were our servants, not our masters, and we ought to have a voice in everything that transpired at Blue Ridge. A couple of secretaries got so mad they didn't know what to do. One was Malcolm Guess of Ole Miss.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you know that, Bill?

WILLIAM FINGER:

No.

HOWARD KESTER:

And after the meeting . . . well, to me it just looked like it

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was going to break up into a riot, and a student from VPI, Mel Williams, M. C. Williams, got up and said "Let us pray."

JACQUELYN HALL:

That is always a good strategy. So did you get representation? Did they change the structure?

HOWARD KESTER:

We did. We . . . it was somebody, I don't know the name, I ought to, I doubt if he is even in the records, but one of the secretaries moved that our concern should be granted, and it was voted upon and passed.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So what kind of structure was set up then?

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, we elected a President, a Secretary and each State had one, or two, or three representatives on the Field Council. And each year thereafter, we had what we called a pre-conference retreat. John Bergthold, who lived right over here, he was the central figure in it and he thought the time had come for students to participate in decision making. He came from Red Bird, Minnesota.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Now was this the National Student Council?

HOWARD KESTER:

This was part of the National Student Council.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So it involved women as well as men?

HOWARD KESTER:

Not yet.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When did this meeting happen that you are talking about?

HOWARD KESTER:

It was around . . . it was either '24 or '25, I can't be certain, but . . . if I had the energy to dig through all my notes I might come across something, but roughly, it was during that period. And the girls, the women, YWCA met just before the men students. They preceded us, they met before we did. And one year, around 1926, we decided to have a joint meeting of the women and the men down at Sky Camp. It was known then as a boys camp, Sky Camp at Blue Ridge, and that's where I met Alice my future wife . . . well it was one Sunday afternoon that I met that girl.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You met Alice at the first joint meeting?

HOWARD KESTER:

My first love.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Is that right?

HOWARD KESTER:

That's right, and it was mutual. I stayed with John Bergthold and Mabel, his second wife, who later died of cancer, a wonderful woman. They lived in High Top Colony during the summer. The regional office was in Atlanta and they had a home in Atlanta, and they were going down and said, "You stay with us, we'll take you to Atlanta to see Alice," and Mrs. Bergthold loved Alice. And when her father heard that I was going to Tuskegee because we had had Dr. CArver up at Blue Ridge and I was going to study under him . . . Do you know about Dr. Carver.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yes.

HOWARD KESTER:

And Ms. Bethune, but they had provided no place for them to eat or sleep. And we had a large delegation from my College, Lynchburg College, and I said, when this business came up, here were two guests coming, you know, notable figures, that we'd be glad to have Dr. Carver stay with us. We rented a cottage, there were so many of us . . . Craggieview Cottage over here at Blue Ridge, still there as far as I know, and Dr. Carver became our guest. We determined that he would not be alone, that we would share his meals, they would send the meals over from Lee Hall, from the dining room, and we decided to see that he was properly cared for that we would keep him company. He got up at four o'clock each morning, and I usually got up about that time too.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You usually got up about four o'clock in the morning?

WILLIAM FINGER:

Each morning? [Laughter]

HOWARD KESTER:

Every morning, and he and I became very close friends, and he'd take me on walks at daybreak, and he poured out this knowledge of plantlife . . . this flower or herb and what it was good for. So I decided that

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summer that I was going to Tuskegee and study under Dr. Carver, and the invitation was issued, and I went down; but when Alice's father heard that I was going to Tuskegee, he, like my own father, hit the roof.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You weren't married then, but you were courting.

HOWARD KESTER:

Courting, yes, but when we were married, and I am not sure I have ever told this before, her father disowned her 'cause she was marrying the kind of guy that I was.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did he stick to that?

HOWARD KESTER:

Yes he did.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did that mean?

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, when we married, we married just a little ways outside of Decatur. That's where they lived, on Adams Street in Decatur, Georgia. And he and his second wife refused to come to the wedding, and I guess that was the last time I saw any of them . . . that summer was the last time that I ever saw him. But Alice's first, her own mother, was a tremendous person. She had no racial prejudice and color didn't mean a thing in the world to her, and if anybody was sick, Miss Ruby looked after them.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did she live in Decatur?

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, she died before Mr. Harris moved his family to Decatur . . . died at childbirth. They lived way out in the country. Do you know where Warrenton, Georgia is? Well it was just beyond that, and Mr. Harris was running and managing a plantation with a view to selling it off into smaller plots 100, 200 and 500 acres. It was a huge plantation. That is where Alice was raised and that is where her father lived.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So Alice didn't have anything to do with her father again after she married?

HOWARD KESTER:

She couldn't. He wouldn't let her in the house. She went and

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lived with her sister, Buelah, who was the second daughter, and that's where we were married, in their home. This was pretty hard.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I bet. So was it after you had married that you went briefly to Princeton and . . .

HOWARD KESTER:

No, before I was married. I had always had a great admiration for Princeton because Kyle Smith, who was Secretary of Madison Hall, which was the YMCA at the University of Virginia won my admiration and respect. He was born in Brazil, I believe, his parents were Missionaries there. And I thought it had a name, you know, Princeton had a name, and I thought that I could get the kind of training that I needed for the Ministry at Prenceton. Well, I got everything else but that.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you have any contact with Unions when you were up there?

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, I did later.

WILLIAM FINGER:

But not that first time?

HOWARD KESTER:

Not that first time. Wait a minute, I did, once I did. I went to Yale more than I did to Union to talk to professors whom I knew, and whom I was certain would understand my point of view; at least I hoped they would, and they did, and helped me a great deal.

WILLIAM FINGER:

How did you know those Yale professors?

HOWARD KESTER:

Pardon.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you know the Yale professors through your YWCA work?

HOWARD KESTER:

No. I knew them personally and through their books.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Through their books, and you just went out to see?

HOWARD KESTER:

I went up to see them and to talk with them.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you go to see Reinhold Niebuhr too?

HOWARD KESTER:

No, Reinhold Niebuhr was one of my closest friends but I did not know him until later on.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you go out to see him then? That early.

HOWARD KESTER:

No, I didn't see Reinhold until I started working for the Fellowship of Reconciliation in 1928.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Was he at Union already when you went to Prenceton?

HOWARD KESTER:

I am not sure that he was. I can't be too certain when he came, but the first I ever saw Niebuhr, I do remember this — it was in Detroit at a National Student Conference.

WILLIAM FINGER:

When was that?

HOWARD KESTER:

It was at a student conference in Detroit, and Reiny, you know he says he cut his eye teeth on a Ford, and I can't remember that we actually went to a Ford plant, and I doubt it very much. But through him, we learned what Ford was like. There was Bennett who really ran the plant. Old Henry was too old to do so.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Do you remember what year you went to that student conference?

HOWARD KESTER:

Let's see.

WILLIAM FINGER:

I was just curious on how you got interested in Reinhold Niebuhr and how you became friends.

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, yes. I got interested in Reiny and he in me when I was working with the Fellowship of Reconciliation in New York. Reiny says he was never a pure pacifist, and the question came up some years later in the FOR, regarding the extent to which we were involved in the class struggle, and I took the position, because I was working with the coal miners in East Tennessee and they wouldn't let me go out day or night without a guard.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Was this at Wilder?

HOWARD KESTER:

At Wilder, and I think John Knox said that I shouldn't let the matter bother me. But I reported it at our national conference, FOR conference, and some of them hit the ceiling and said, "You've got no right to have these

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miners guard you." Well, they (the miners) wouldn't hear of me going without them.

JACQUELYN HALL:

That was easy to say by somebody up in New York.

HOWARD KESTER:

And I said, "Whether you like it or not, we are already involved in class struggle. Every time you eat a loaf of bread or buy a ton of coal, you are participating in the struggles and the agonies of the workers or the miners, and unless you try to do something about it, you are a sinful person." Well, that didn't set very well, but many of the members agreed with me.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I just read a little piece written by John Niven Sayre? Someone who was a Simon Pure pacifist and a good firend.

HOWARD KESTER:

John Nevin Sayre.

JACQUELYN HALL:

John Nevin Sayre. A little history of the Fellowship and I was struck by the way he talked about the controversy over the relationship of the Fellowship to the labor movement, and he quoted . . . he said, "One of our revolutionary members said that maybe one reason we weren't, didn't want to involve ourselves in the class struggle was because we own too many dividends."

HOWARD KESTER:

[laughter] Heavens . . . He's still alive.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Is that right?

HOWARD KESTER:

And he's up in his nineties, upper nineties, I think.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did the Fellowship . . . it supported the labor movement in a general kind of way.

HOWARD KESTER:

Yes, that's right, but that began when J.B. Mathews, and later A. J. Muste became Secretaries.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was J. B. Mathews a southerner?

HOWARD KESTER:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Where was he from?

HOWARD KESTER:

He came from Kentucky. His father was Chief of Police in some little town in Kentucky, and J. B. was, I suppose — J. B. Mathews at one time was one of the most respected and beloved Professors and Teachers in Nashville.

JACQUELYN HALL:

He taught at Vanderbilt?

HOWARD KESTER:

He taught at Scarritt, and he almost single handedly prevented a race riot at Fisk by calling a judge, the Governor, and other prominent people and telling them not to send the police or interfere with what was happening.

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was it in 1919, that wave of . . .

HOWARD KESTER:

No.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Much later than that?

HOWARD KESTER:

It was later than that. It was in the . . . it must have been sometime in the late twenties. I can't be certain about it, but he was a man of great courage, and like Roger Baldwin, he was a spellbinder.

JACQUELYN HALL:

A spellbinder. It seems to me that Scarritt College had an unusual number of people like that in comparison with Vanderbilt.

HOWARD KESTER:

That's right. Chancellor Kirkland ruled Vanderbilt with an iron hand. I got fired from Vanderbilt.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When you were Associate Secretary at the "Y".

HOWARD KESTER:

And the Secretary got fired along with me.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I wondered. I read about that incident and I guess it was John Egerton who said that you were censured?

HOWARD KESTER:

Um hum.

JACQUELYN HALL:

By all the presidents of various universities, but was it Dr. Kirkland who was most upset?

HOWARD KESTER:

They all met together . . . here is what happened.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Including the President here?

HOWARD KESTER:

It was around 1928-29 when the western powers, France, England, Germany invaded China, with a view to carving it up. I decided we ought to have a meeting about it. We had no business in China, and I went to the Dean, Dean Brown, O. E. Brown, and asked him if I could call a meeting of all the students in Nashville to talk about this situation. We had a Missionary, the name I don't recall at the moment who was in Nanking when it was bombed. We had Mathews from Scarritt, and we had a student, a very brilliant student from Fisk from Trinidad, British West Indies, whose father occupied a position of some importance and Malcolm Nurse this Negro student from Fisk, was a brilliant person . . . really brilliant, and the three of them spoke, and in those days students didn't have automobiles. They had to use street cars, and we had no intention of segregating anybody, but they came in by schools because of the street cars. It was a problem with transportation, and they sat together, and I think my wife and a girl by the name of Catherine Butler, who came from Binghamton, New York were the only white women sitting next to Negroes . . . I am interested in these names coming back to me . . . [laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

You have an incredible memory. I am interested in all the names you can think of because I'm trying to locate as many of these people as I can.

HOWARD KESTER:

Catherine Butler, she may not be here. I think she had to leave the YW at least for a while because of tuberculosis, or something of this sort. Anyway, they . . . Catherine and Alice, were the only two people, girls, white girls, who were sitting next to Negroes. I'm sure of that, and the Curator of the Museum at Vanderbilt, he lived in Wesley Hall, which was the School of Religion, he came by and saw all of these Negro and white folks, you

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Page 19

know, and he called the papers . . . that it was a white and black meeting, and there were quotations. I think it's in The Tennesseean "that big buck Negroes . . . niggers were sitting next to white women."

JACQUELYN HALL:

Front page news.

HOWARD KESTER:

Front page, and Chancellor Kirkland called all the Presidents of the Colleges, including Scarritt, Peabody, Fisk, eight or nine were included, and they held a meeting, and the Chancellor said, one of the professors later told him, he said, "I don't mind the jackasses braying, I just don't want them braying on my campus." So the Dean called a meeting, he was forced by the Chancellor, as I understood it, of the student body of the School of Religion the next day . . . he had been a Missionary in China, and he talked about the improvements that the English and others had brought into China, and we were quite wrong in our condemnation, and when he got ready to close he said "I want to see Mr. Kester in my office immediately." Alice was sitting right by me, we were married then. We were married in February and this was in March, I reckon.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did she think she had gotten herself into!

HOWARD KESTER:

She never protested, never protested. She felt that I did what I had to and it had to be. And she sat right beside me, and I went in and talked to the Dean, and he was quite angry. His face was flushed, he said, "You did not tell me you were going to invite Negroes," I said, "Dean Brown, I said all the students, and that's what I meant." And I said, "You've known me long enough to know that I wasn't going to exclude the Negroes." He said, "In any case, you are fired." So I was.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you get any faculty support?

HOWARD KESTER:

Except from a few of the professors at the School of Religion, Dr. Kesler, Alva Taylor and one or two more.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Albert Barnett?

HOWARD KESTER:

Well he was at Scarritt. I got support from him.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But not enough to keep them from firing you?

HOWARD KESTER:

Mathews was fired from Scarritt.

JACQUELYN HALL:

He was fired at that same time over that same issue?

HOWARD KESTER:

Over the same issue.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was he a teacher?

HOWARD KESTER:

He was a teacher and a good teacher.

JACQUELYN HALL:

He was fired because of this meeting?

HOWARD KESTER:

That's right, and there were a lot of repercussions. The girl, who was Dr. Jones, secretary, he was President of Fisk, Margaret Fuller was her name, and he called her in to his office. She was the Chairman of our Student Interracial Group. We met every Saturday down at the Negro Baptist Publishing House for lunch and talk and fellowship, and he said, "You have to resign as my secretary or resign this position you hold." She called me in tears, "What should she do." I said, "There isn't but one thing you can do, stay at Fisk." Because she had a mother to support, the only support her mother had, and I said, "Nobody is going to think hard of you."

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were there repercussions for the black students involved?

HOWARD KESTER:

[Shakes head negatively]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why is that?

HOWARD KESTER:

If there were, I never knew about them because there were too many professors at these Negro schools who felt the time had come when we should act together and there was great sympathy for all of us who got moved out.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So you left Vanderbilt and became the student Secretary for the Fellowship of Reconciliation?

HOWARD KESTER:

That's right.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How?

HOWARD KESTER:

The year I came back. I stayed in New York for two years, and then I came back as the Secretary of the FOR in the South, Southern Secretary.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was that the first Southern Secretary they had?

HOWARD KESTER:

That's right.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did you happen to get involved in the FOR, when it seems that it was very muched based . . . a northern-based organization. Why did you move into that rather than working . . .

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, I got an invitation from a man by the name of George Collins, who lives now somewhere in California. He'd been Lieutenant in the Marine Corps during World War I. He was about, I want to say six feet six, that wouldn't be missing by much, and he had been to Blue Ridge to the Student Conference and he had met me, and he had met Alice, and we liked George. "Shorty" is what everybody called him.

JACQUELYN HALL:

"Shorty" Collins.

HOWARD KESTER:

"Shorty" Collins.

JACQUELYN HALL:

This little history says that you were discovered and converted by Shorty Collins, and that's when you joined the FOR.

HOWARD KESTER:

Yes, he had had a profoundly significant experience in the War, but the New Testament is what converted me.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How would you describe your . . . what was it that you believed in that determined these kind of activities that you engaged in, and the organizations that you joined?

HOWARD KESTER:

I think it was the New Testament.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But a lot of people believed in the New Testament.

HOWARD KESTER:

Not just the New Testament, but the prophets. "A man is worthy of his hire," for example. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," and I started to tell you about my mother not whipping me . . . when we did something wrong, there was a large closet, a clothes closet in her bedroom, and she would take us, all three of us or two of us, or maybe just me into the clothes closet and talk to us and pray. And when I learned, I was about six years old that women could be sinful . . . there was a sex scandal in town, and you know kids hear everything . . . and when I discovered that, I guess it was about the greatest shock of my childhood because my mother had been so perfect. I think it was . . . I remember one time, we had . . . when we were children, we had to take naps in the afternoon. We had to go to sleep. We'd lie down, usually stretch out in the living room on the carpet, or maybe on a quilt or something, and we had a great big family Bible, like this dictionary over here, and there was a picture in it of the Slaying of the Innocents, do you remember that?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yes. I sure do.

HOWARD KESTER:

And I was looking at the Bible, and I saw that picture and I started . . . I guess I was a little fellow, to beat the Bible, this picture you know, and my sister saw me and she thought it was an outrage, you know, and of course she told Mama. Then Mama came in to see what it was all about, what I was doing beating the Bible, and as soon as she understood what it was all about that was the end of it.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you think your mother would punish you or something?

HOWARD KESTER:

I didn't know what was going to happen.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You couldn't stand suffering?

HOWARD KESTER:

No, I just couldn't, and the Negro people we had around our place were really wonderful People. Their homes were always open to us, they were

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Page 23

employed by my father, as cooks and caretakers of the animals and all of that sort of thing. I got to know them, and I developed real love for them because they were good to me and my family. And my father and mother had a habit of . . . habit isn't the right word . . . if they found a child, who was orphaned or having a difficult time, they would take him in, and he became a member of the household. I don't remember a girl, but boys, little boys to do the chores. He had to do the chores.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was traveling and organizing for the Fellowship in the South like in the twenties? How successful, how many members were there, or local chapters?

HOWARD KESTER:

Not many.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did you comeup against? You spoke on college campuses mostly?

HOWARD KESTER:

Altogether I think I spoke in over 250 colleges and universities from the University of Minnesota to the University of Texas across the South. There were some places I couldn't even put my foot on the grounds, I was poison.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did you talk about?

HOWARD KESTER:

I talked about war, race, industry, the sort of thing that was agitating the students in those days.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you talk about the New Testament too?

HOWARD KESTER:

Sure, sure, that was the basis for it all. I felt the church, you see, ought to be involved in the troubles of the Family of Man, and when I say involved, I mean trying to do something about it, not just preaching sermons. And there wasn't many people who felt that way about it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you think of yourself as a Social Gospel . . . did you read Harry Ward?

HOWARD KESTER:

Oh yes. I read Harry Ward. I knew Harry Ward, but Harry was too close to the Communists to suit me. You didn't know him.

JACQUELYN HALL:

No. What do you mean? How was he close to the Communists?

HOWARD KESTER:

He was a fellow traveller. I am almost certain.

JACQUELYN HALL:

In what sense?

HOWARD KESTER:

As Reiny told me . . .

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who did?

HOWARD KESTER:

Reinhold Niebuhr.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, what did he do that made him . . .

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, he was an ally to . . . with the leadership in the Communist party.

JACQUELYN HALL:

He was finally kicked out of the Union Seminary, wasn't he? It got too difficult for him to stay there.

HOWARD KESTER:

I guess so, because he and Reiny were almost like this . . . warring with one another.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you think that at the time?

HOWARD KESTER:

I didn't know too much about it. We had a meeting of the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen in Chattanooga. It was interracial, interdenominational at the Third Presbyterian Church of which T. B. Cowan was the Pastor. And the people of Cowan's Church in Chattanooga took us into their homes and the women of the church prepared the meals, and it was almost an unheard of thing, and it was well written up in the press. George Fort Milton was editor of the Chattanooga Times, and he gave us good space. We had workers who were on strike down around Rome Georgia, and well, we just became involved in everything that gave people trouble.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You didn't, were you able to form local chapters of the Fellowship?

HOWARD KESTER:

A few.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Where were they?

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, Nashville was the central place, and the members were widely scattered.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who were some of the local leaders or people involved with the Fellowship?

HOWARD KESTER:

Constance Rumbow, Albert Barnett, John Knox, who is now at Alexandria. He used to be at Union, one of the finest New Testament scholars in the world. Well, I think he has become an Episcopalian now, he used to be a Methodist. But they were few and far between, they really were.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why were you not able to organize more students?

HOWARD KESTER:

Pacifism was way over on the left, you know?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yes.

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, at this meeting in Chattanooga there were three or four of us, Francis Hanson, Geroge Strether, and myself, and I think there was one other student, Irving Brown? Wasn't Irving Brown the AF of L representative in Italy that put on this post card campaign for Italians to out-vote the Communists? Do you remember that? I think Irving was with us, I can't be certain. You know, we decided that things were in such a mess . . . see, this was right at the bottom of the Depression, and if the Communists had anything to offer, we better find out about it. Well, who would we see. Alice said "We'd always go to the top, we'll see EArl Browder," and we called him and he said "Don't come to my office, but come to my home." He gave us the address and we went. Within fifteen minutes after Browder had started talking, I knew that Communism was something that I wanted nothing to do with. I guess I proved it too.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You felt that strongly, right at the time? Or was it later on?

HOWARD KESTER:

Right then. When I left his house.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was it Browder's personality?

HOWARD KESTER:

His disregard for truth, his position that the ends justifies the means the goal was the main thing, and what you did to try to realize the goal didn't matter.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When did you start thinking of yourself as a Socialist?

HOWARD KESTER:

I believe it was in 1932.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did that come about?

HOWARD KESTER:

Norman Thomas.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You were converted again?

HOWARD KESTER:

I knew him from committees on which we served. I had met Norman while I was in New York with the Fellowship of Reconciliation. We were on the same committees together. I had great admiration for him, not only for his heart, but also for his brain, and he had enourmous integrity and honesty, and I held meetings with Norman in Nashville and Little Rock and of course, he was very, very up on the organization of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union. But he never tried to politicalize it . . . he never. He wanted a bonefied labor union, and I admired him greatly for that, you know. Because, well, I worked for Walter Reuther; I didn't know Victor too well, but I knew Walter very well, and John L. Lewis.

WILLIAM FINGER:

How about Van Bittner? John Wright . . .

HOWARD KESTER:

Those names are familiar.

WILLIAM FINGER:

They didn't influence you as much?

HOWARD KESTER:

No.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So you joined the Socialist party about 1931.

HOWARD KESTER:

I ran for Congress. [laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, you did all right, didn't you? You beat out the Republican.

HOWARD KESTER:

I beat the Republican.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who did you have working in your campaign?

HOWARD KESTER:

Myself and others.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Is that all?

HOWARD KESTER:

That's all.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Didn't Norman Thomas come down and campaign with you?

HOWARD KESTER:

We had a whistle stop for Norman, and when the train stopped Norman came out on the rear platform to speak. Of course, we had a lot of Socialists there, and . . . really not lots, maybe 35 or 40, maybe 50. The engineer turned on a steam valve, you couldn't hear a thing. [Interruption - Mr. Kester has moved a good ways from the machine making transcription extremely difficult.]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Alva Taylor.

HOWARD KESTER:

Alva Taylor.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Tried to start a labor church.

HOWARD KESTER:

That's right. He was Professor of Social Ethics and the Chancellor at Vanderbilt never did like him because he would take his students to not only labor meetings . . . I was . . . [interruption] I was in his classes and he would have us go over to Fisk. We'd go over about once a week, and have a seminar with one of the Negro Professors running the seminar . . . Dr. Charles Johnson, Frazier, what's Frazier's first name?

JACQUELYN HALL:

E. Franklin?

HOWARD KESTER:

E. Franklin, and he would chew you into the tinest morsel and spit you out.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I can imagine.

HOWARD KESTER:

But what he said was true. He was fed up with southern bigotry. Excuse me I'll be right back, I want to get some water. [Interruption]

WILLIAM FINGER:

You and Norman Thomas had just been interrupted by the steam whistle.

HOWARD KESTER:

Yeah, and . . .

WILLIAM FINGER:

You didn't hear a word he said.

HOWARD KESTER:

Hardly a word he said, and we did have a large meeting for Norman in Alva Taylor's Church, and my wife, Alice, assumed responsibility. It was at the evening meal, is what it was, and I remember Norman liking the biscuits and strawberry preserves, and he really was a tremendous guy.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you have a Chapter of the League for Industrial Democracy in Nashville?

HOWARD KESTER:

No, what we did have, we didn't have a chapter, but Alice and I . . . you know, they had lectures, lectures and we ran those in Nashville for I don't know how many years, and I was on the circuit myself, and I was out mostly in the Mid-West.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did you think of Norman Thomas as a leader of the Socialist party?

HOWARD KESTER:

I thought he was the best man for the job.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But the party declined his leadership?

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, that was one reason I left the Socialist party, because it is split all to pieces. There were too many factions and I joined it because I thought it was a unit, you know? If you had disagreements, you settled them peacably by talking them out. And some of those guys, particularly around New York, I just couldn't talk to them. They had the last word on everything. I can't remember those boys' names.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were you involved in the expulsion of the Trotskyites?

HOWARD KESTER:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

That was really disruptive.

HOWARD KESTER:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was that all about?

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, I was a member of the National Executive Committee. And the question came up that they wanted to join the Socialist Party, and Norman was afraid that if they did, they'd really destory the Party.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why?

HOWARD KESTER:

They would exercise a great deal of influence and power and there were a lot of very intelligent younger men, students . . . Francis Henson, for example. I always liked Jay Lovestone, very much, who was a Trotskyite, and . . . no, I don't know whether Jay was or not. He was a leader of the Communist Party opposition, CPO, I think I may be mistaken about his being a Trotskyite, but he was certainly no Stalinist. And when the two of the men met me in Minneapolis and the Trotskyites and talked to me, I listened to them. But I didn't make a commitment one way or the other. They wanted me to commit myself that I would vote for their inclusion. And when the time for the vote to be cast came, I voted against them.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was that mostly because of Norman Thomas?

HOWARD KESTER:

Yes, mostly.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When you were working with the Fellowship and the Socialists Party . . . when you joined the Socialist Party, did you drop out of Fellowship about the same time?

HOWARD KESTER:

I dropped out of Fellowship in 1934, and I ran for the Socialist Party in 1932.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And you left the Fellowship over the labor problem, etc.

HOWARD KESTER:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Tell me a little bit about Wilder, Tennessee.

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, Wilder was one of, I think I could find you an article . . . have you read the article written by the Nashville Tennesseean by . . . I forget the girl's first name.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Recently?

HOWARD KESTER:

No, written back in 1933 or 1934, somewhere along in there. I'll get you a copy of it. I can find my copy upstairs. Well, there were three coal mines. Wilder, was the chief coal mine, and Davidson and Tipton, and Tipton was up at the top of the mountain and Wilder was down at the bottom. And Alice and I organized what we called Aid Day, and when we first went in there, we simply knew that they were in trouble, and wages had been cut and cut and cut. You worked 16 hours a day, and the maximum pay was $2, and by the time the rent was taken out, the electricity was taken, out bath house, what are you going to live on? So we went up, at first they know whether we were on the level or whether we were really representing the company. And I could understand their attitude.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You didn't know anyone when you first went there?

HOWARD KESTER:

Not a soul.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You just knew the conditions?

HOWARD KESTER:

I knew the conditions.

WILLIAM FINGER:

How did you know about the conditions?

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, I had friends who lived in Allendt which was just a short ways from Wilder, and through the grapevine. I think Albert Barnett first told me a good bit about Wilder and he was instrumental in getting me to go up there, and offer our help.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Is Albert Barnett alive?

HOWARD KESTER:

No, Alva died several years ago. I think he changed a little bit in his attitudes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When he got older?

HOWARD KESTER:

I think he became more conservative after he went to Emory. Well anyway, they accepted us and at the first meeting, it was a Sunday afternoon, Barney Graham, the President of the union intorduced me, he told the story about Lafayette coming to this country to help us, and here was another Lafayette coming to help them.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You were another Lafayette?

HOWARD KESTER:

[laughter]

WILLIAM FINGER:

What did you think you could do for the mines? You weren't working for a union or . . .

HOWARD KESTER:

No. We could feed them. We usually went up on a Friday and we would get students from Vanderbilt, or Scarritt. Those Scarritt girls were always willing to go, and we were going to have Aid Day, and my wife kept a strict record of everything, second-hand clothes, almost anything that you could name, we had, and canned goods for desperate families.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You took those things with you?

HOWARD KESTER:

Sure. Canned goods, even the Rabbi at the Jewish Temple there in Nashville just opened the room where they kept all the canned goods and said, "Take what you want."

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were you in contact with Highlander Folk School?

HOWARD KESTER:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you go up there for workshops?

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, not so much for workshops, I got interested in Highlander in the very beginning but it became too close to the Communists to suit me like Commonwealth.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How was Highlander connected to the Communist party?

HOWARD KESTER:

Well I think Jom Dombrowski, do you know Jim?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yes.

HOWARD KESTER:

I think he was a fellow traveler . . . I won't say, I certainly don't want to be sued. I don't think he carried a red card, but I think he was a fellow traveler, and Myles seemed to . . . Myles Horton seemed to impress me as being very sympathetic to the Communists, and Don West, you know. He became a member of the Communist party and his sister married the district organizer of the Communist party here in the South. Nat Ross, I think was his name.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, it seems to me that the work that Highlander was doing with labor organizers was very much the kind of thing that you were doing.

HOWARD KESTER:

Yes, but I didn't, I didn't want to be associated with the Communists.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why was that?

HOWARD KESTER:

I just didn't believe in them.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You didn't see them as part of a movement, as one part of the larger movement that you were part of, as doing some constructive things, or as being worth supporting anyway?

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, I think at first I felt that way. That was one reason why I went to New York to see Earl Browder but I got to know, not by name, but by face, a lot of Communists.

JACQUELYN HALL:

In the South?

HOWARD KESTER:

In the South, and they just didn't strike me as the kind of people that would push along the basic ideals and ideas of the Christian faith, and that is what I was concerned about.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How strong was the Communist Party in the South in the thirties?

HOWARD KESTER:

It was pretty strong.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Stronger than the Socialist Party?

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, I can't say, but it was pretty strong, I expect that it was stronger than the Socialist party because they were revolutionaries, you know. I went to many meetings, I was invited to a meeting in Birmingham, to a Negro church on Easter afternoon . . . Easter Sunday afternoon, and it was about the time of the Scottsboro Boys . . . it might have been Angelo Herndon, I can't remember. But it was a protest meeting, and the place was so jammed packed I could hardly get up to the pulpit where I was to speak.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who had called this meeting?

HOWARD KESTER:

The Communists, and after it was over, two of the men came to me and said, "We'd like to take you and your wife around to where we live." And they did. They drove us all over Birmingham, so we wouldn't be able to locate their headquarters. And the thing that I remember about them, was that they were both tall and thin, and had a swanky apartment in a swanky area in Birmingham, and the appeared to have ample means to live on, you know, and it looked like to me their clothes were very expensive, you know, probably tailor made and expensive, and I was amazed at the literature that they had stacked all about the apartment.

[TAPE 2, SIDE A]

[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]

HOWARD KESTER:

. . . and I don't think they ever told me their names, if they did they would have been fictitious.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Where were you in the controversy within the Fellowship of Reconciliation, over how much to emphasize Christianity and whether they should espouse broad humanism . . . were you very much . . .

HOWARD KESTER:

Ahhhh.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you think of yourself or talk about yourself all through this period very clearly as a New Testament Christian, and not as a . . .

HOWARD KESTER:

Yeah. I joined Niebuhr's Socialist Christians because I thought they had something to say, and something very important.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did it mean to think of yourself as a Socialist? In what sense were you a Socialist? What kind of changes did you want to see come about?

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, the only thing that I was concerned about . . . The thing that I was concerned about was justice for all people, and I was struggling to achieve the goals.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But what did you think it was going to take to bring about that?

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, I thought the only way we could do it was by word of mouth, and by writing about conditions, exposing conditions, and I became interested and concerned. In '34 I investigated my first lynching for the NAACP.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was that the Claude Neal incident?

HOWARD KESTER:

Claude Neal.

JACQUELYN HALL:

That was incredible.

HOWARD KESTER:

That was a horrible affair.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I read the piece that you wrote. How did you happen to do that?

HOWARD KESTER:

Walter White had asked me to do it - undertake an investigation of the lynching.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why did he think of you as someone to go and investigate a lynching?

HOWARD KESTER:

He knew of my concerns through the student movement, and whenever I went to New York I always went around to see Walter. I went to his

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Page 35

home, had dinner with him, I knew the family, and I suppose that he just thought that I was foot loose and fancy free, and I could get off and go, and I would go. And I did, and I almost got lynched. I just did get away in time.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What happened?

HOWARD KESTER:

When I told Walter I'd go, he wrote the President of the Negro school in Tallahassee. What's that called now . . . Tallahassee University, University of Florida.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Is that Florida Union?

HOWARD KESTER:

Florida Union, that's right . . . and that I was coming and please give me all possible aid. And I went straight to Tallahassee, and it was on a Saturday night when I got there and Neal, I believe, was taken down from a limb on Sunday, I believe. And he called his faculty together . . . and I understand his feelings, I probably would have done the same thing if I had been in his shoes, and told them to have nothing whatever to do with me, because the legislature was going to meet and determine the funds the school was to receive, and if they found out that they were in any way mixed up with this investigation into this lynching, they'd (the college) be in trouble. And he was right. And I didn't know it of course. When I went there I saw a girl that I had met at Kings Mountain - a member of the faculty. And she came over to me hesitatingly, and she told me very quietly what the President had said, and she said, "But you go outside and you stand at the far corner of the porch, and I'll see if I can do anything to help you."

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who was that?

HOWARD KESTER:

No, I can't remember, I wish I could. So many of the people I worked with are gone now, and I just can't remember them all. I remember the face, I know exactly what she looked like.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So you stood at the corner of the porch?

HOWARD KESTER:

Yes, and in a minute or two she brought a Negro over, a young man, who was the Pastor of the Negro church in Marianna, and she said to me, "He might be able to help you." He and I talked in subdued tones for several minutes. I told him what I was trying to do, and I asked him if he thought he might help me and he said he didn't know. And I said, "Will you meet me at the church, would you meet me at the church maybe with some of your elders, or just by yourself on Sunday afternoon?" (The following Sunday afternoon, it was a weekend). And he said "I'll try to be there." When the time came for me to go to the church . . . now something told me . . . I have a little bit of woman's intuition . . . not to go in my car, to walk there like I was taking a late Sunday afternoon walk, and when I got there nobody was there, no lights or anything of that sort, and I decided to stay on the outside of the church. And just about dusk, cars began to come up the road into the church yard. Now, how they knew I was around there, I don't know, but they did. There was a ravine that led from the church down to Marianna. The church was up on a kind of a hill, and the ravine was full of briars and bushes and everything. They were looking for me, and they had flashlights and the lights from their cars, and there wasn't anything for me to do but crawl down the side of the hill to that ravine. I had told one of the Negro porters at the hotel what I was doing. I thought I could trust him. Had to trust somebody, and I didn't dare go in the front of the hotel, so I went around to the kitchen and he was there and let me in, and he took me upstairs, washed me and fixed me up, and then just as soon as I changed my clothes, I went down and spoke to the clerk at the desk, you know, and then went out on the front porch, just as if nothing had ever happened. But if they had laid hands on me that night, it would

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have been the last of me. I am sure of that. The next morning a fellow, a filling station operator where I traded, from whom I bought the picture of Neal hanging on the limb of the tree, I bought it from him . . . when I went over on Monday morning he said, "You better get out of town, they are looking for you." He didn't have to say it, but in a matter of thirty minutes I was on my way to Nashville.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Where had you gotten your information?

HOWARD KESTER:

I talked to all kinds of people. I bet I ate a hundred hamburgers at hamburger joints, filling stations . . . those are the places that I got my information from, just listening, and some of the people wanted to brag about the lynching.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Didn't people realize that you were a stranger?

HOWARD KESTER:

What?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Didn't people wonder . . .

HOWARD KESTER:

It was a tourist area, Mariana, and a nice hotel. Lots of people just came for vacation, and I figured if I could get to the Alabama line I would be safe. I thought they followed me, I don't know, I can't swear to it . . . and I finally stopped at the home of an Episcopal Minister, who was an elderly and wonderful man, I believe it was in Eldorado, but I can't be sure, and he understood the situation. That's one of the hard things, investigation of a lynching. The Episcopal Minister was the first Minister I went to see.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Wherever you went? Why was that?

HOWARD KESTER:

Because they always knew what was going on.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why not the Methodist Minister?

HOWARD KESTER:

One Methodist Minister in Gastonia . . . his son is now the Chaplain at SMU, Grady Hardy, his father understood I was at Kings Mountain

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and sympathized with the strikers. I was in Gastonia, you remember? On the night the blow-up came. The Sheriff had been shot and fires were breaking out, people shooting . . . sometimes in the right place at the right time . . . or the wrong time.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Was that the right place at the right time?

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, Liston said he would give his eye teeth for my notes, but I could never find them when he was writing his book. I told him everything I knew, but that wasn't much . . .

JACQUELYN HALL:

What were some of the other lynchings you investigated? How many did you investigate?

HOWARD KESTER:

Well, I was thinking about that today. I would judge in the neighborhood of between 20 and 25 for the ACLU, the NAACP, The Workers Defense League, mostly for the NAACP. And one of the most atrocious ones occured near Duck Hill, Miss. The Neal lynching was bad enough, . . . in between what, in Mississippi, is known as the prairie and the delta, is an area, or was, now I haven't been there in 25 or 30 years, known as the Piney Woods. It was an area of very poor whites.

WILLIAM FINGER:

North Mississippi?

HOWARD KESTER:

Yeah, and they didn't . . . that's where the clay eaters were to be found. You drive down a country road and you'd find these holes on the side of the road from which the people would secure clay. The clay contained minerals which the people thought helpful toward their health.