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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-0007-1, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Howard Kester was born in Virginia in 1904. Raised by his father, a merchant tailor and Klansman, and his religious mother, Kester left home to attend Lynchburg College during the early 1920s. During his time in college, Kester had the opportunity to tour war-torn Europe in 1923. After witnessing the devastation that World War I had wrought on Europe, Kester became a pacifist and abided by that philosophy for the rest of his life. Upon his return to Lynchburg, he became increasingly interested in race problems in the South. Likening the plight of Jews in Eastern Europe to that of African Americans in the South, Kester helped to organize the first interracial student group in the South. He describes in this interview how his efforts to find locales for interracial student meetings were often met with fierce opposition in the community. After graduating from Lynchburg, Kester continued to work for causes of social justice. In addition to his hope of eliminating racial hatred, Kester became an advocate of the labor movement and began to seek ways of uniting African American and white workers in the South. During the 1920s and 1930s, Kester worked with such groups as the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen. In the early 1930s, he worked closely with the NAACP in order to investigate incidents of lynching throughout the South. Around the same time, he began to work closely with the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, helping to establish the Delta and Providence Farms. Throughout the interview, Kester emphasizes the importance of his Christian faith and his adherence to the Social Gospel to his thoughts on social justice. In the early 1930s, Kester joined the Socialist Party, but remained fiercely opposed to Communism and its infiltration into the labor movement because he believed it was not in tune with Christian values. Kester's recollections throughout the interview are revealing of the problems of race and labor in the South during these years. Moreover, he offers illuminating anecdotes and insightful assessments of other social justice leaders such as Reinhold Niebuhr, Will Alexander, Jessie Daniel Ames, Will Campbell, and Kester's wife, Alice Harris Kester.
Howard Kester was a pacifist and social reformer in the South from the early 1920s through the 1960s. In this interview, he focuses on his adherence to pacifism, Christianity, the Social Gospel, and Socialism. He describes his work to end injustices associated with race and labor, and assesses the work of prominent social justice leaders in the South during the 1920s and 1930s.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
. . . 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
Well, is the book based mostly on your own papers, the ones that are now on microfilm?
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.
You have a whole . . .
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.
Is there a collection of Fellowship of Southern Churchmen papers besides what you have, or are you . . .
I've got them all.
You've got everything? Great. Well, why don't you start by telling us a little bit about your family, where you came from.
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.
May I smoke?
Please do because I am going to. Maybe I ought not to.
Well, don't let me tempt you.
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.
Did you know about that?
Years ago. No, I didn't know a thing about it at the time.
When you were growing up?
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.
Was he an active member of the Ku Klux Klan?
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 . . .
Were you aware of him going to Klan meetings, or being involved in disciplining . . .
Yes, through my mother. My mother found the regalia.
Oh, she didn't know he was in the Klan?
She found it, yes.
She didn't know it until she found the Klan regalia?
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.
No.
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.
They are all tailors?
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.
Did he have a shop in his home, or where . . .
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.
He was a tailor when you were born?
Yes, he was a tailor, never anything but a tailor.
Beckley is a Mining community.
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.
Were you rebellious?
No. Well, I was when I went to college and on into seminary, and got into trouble.
You went to Lynchburg?
I went to Lynchburg College and got an A.B.
To be a Preacher?
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.
How did you become a pacifist?
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.
That helps.
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.
The other people, the other 23 students who travelled with you, did any of them go on to become pacifists?
I don't know, I don't know who was that foolish.
So you wanted to go on a two months speaking tour?
Yes.
What made you think of going to Negro colleges as well as white colleges?
Well, Channing Tobias, did you know him?
Yes.
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.
Were you aware at that time of the Interracial Commission? The formation of the . . .
I knew Alexander well.
Did you know him that early, in 1923?
Dr. Will used to live right over there.
Is that right?
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.
I bet. So the Dean of Lynchburg College was willing to let you take two months off from school?
That's right, and he said "Get your assignments, and if there
So you organized an interracial student group at Lynchburg College.
I certainly did.
Was that . . .
That was the first one in the South.
Was that a YMCA?
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?
Yes, I want the story.
And then the Negro students said we ought to meet in a mutual place, and . . .
Rather than meeting at the black college?
Yes.
Why was that?
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.
You went to the YWCA instead of the YMCA?
Lord have mercy, yes. You'd never get anything out of the YMCA.
I was just talking to Grace Towns Hamilton . . .
I know Grace.
And she told me the same thing.
The YWCA was always way ahead of the YMCA.
How do you account for that?
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.
Who were some of the women? You went on then to become involved in the National Student Council and the Regional YM-YWCA.
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.
Were the secretaries hired staff?
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.
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?
Yes, that's true.
And were they usually hired by the university rather than by the local chapter or by the National "Y"?
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.
Oh, the secretaries were adults?
Oh sure.
Oh, I see.
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.
Springer?
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.
Did you know that, Bill?
No.
And after the meeting . . . well, to me it just looked like it
That is always a good strategy. So did you get representation? Did they change the structure?
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.
So what kind of structure was set up then?
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.
Now was this the National Student Council?
This was part of the National Student Council.
So it involved women as well as men?
Not yet.
When did this meeting happen that you are talking about?
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.
You met Alice at the first joint meeting?
My first love.
Is that right?
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.
Yes.
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.
You usually got up about four o'clock in the morning?
Each morning?
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
You weren't married then, but you were courting.
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.
Did he stick to that?
Yes he did.
What did that mean?
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.
Did she live in Decatur?
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.
So Alice didn't have anything to do with her father again after she married?
She couldn't. He wouldn't let her in the house. She went and
I bet. So was it after you had married that you went briefly to Princeton and . . .
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.
Did you have any contact with Unions when you were up there?
Well, I did later.
But not that first time?
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.
How did you know those Yale professors?
Pardon.
Did you know the Yale professors through your YWCA work?
No. I knew them personally and through their books.
Through their books, and you just went out to see?
I went up to see them and to talk with them.
Did you go to see Reinhold Niebuhr too?
No, Reinhold Niebuhr was one of my closest friends but I did not know him until later on.
Did you go out to see him then? That early.
No, I didn't see Reinhold until I started working for the Fellowship of Reconciliation in 1928.
Was he at Union already when you went to Prenceton?
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.
When was that?
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.
Do you remember what year you went to that student conference?
Let's see.
I was just curious on how you got interested in Reinhold Niebuhr and how you became friends.
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.
Was this at Wilder?
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
That was easy to say by somebody up in New York.
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.
I just read a little piece written by John Niven Sayre? Someone who was a Simon Pure pacifist and a good firend.
John Nevin Sayre.
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."
Is that right?
And he's up in his nineties, upper nineties, I think.
Did the Fellowship . . . it supported the labor movement in a general kind of way.
Yes, that's right, but that began when J.B. Mathews, and later A. J. Muste became Secretaries.
Was J. B. Mathews a southerner?
Yes.
Where was he from?
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.
He taught at Vanderbilt?
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.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
Was it in 1919, that wave of . . .
No.
Much later than that?
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.
A spellbinder. It seems to me that Scarritt College had an unusual number of people like that in comparison with Vanderbilt.
That's right.
Chancellor Kirkland ruled Vanderbilt with an iron hand. I got fired from Vanderbilt.
When you were Associate Secretary at the "Y".
And the Secretary got fired along with me.
I wondered. I read about that incident and I guess it was John Egerton who said that you were censured?
Um hum.
By all the presidents of various universities, but was it Dr. Kirkland who was most upset?
They all met together . . . here is what happened.
Including the President here?
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 . . .
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.
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, youThe Tennesseean "that big buck Negroes .
. . niggers were sitting next to white women."
Front page news.
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.
What did she think she had gotten herself into!
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.
Did you get any faculty support?
Except from a few of the professors at the School of Religion, Dr. Kesler, Alva Taylor and one or two more.
Albert Barnett?
Well he was at Scarritt. I got support from him.
But not enough to keep them from firing you?
Mathews was fired from Scarritt.
He was fired at that same time over that same issue?
Over the same issue.
Was he a teacher?
He was a teacher and a good teacher.
He was fired because of this meeting?
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."
Were there repercussions for the black students involved?
Why is that?
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.
So you left Vanderbilt and became the student Secretary for the Fellowship of Reconciliation?
That's right.
How?
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.
Was that the first Southern Secretary they had?
That's right.
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 . . .
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.
"Shorty" Collins.
"Shorty" Collins.
This little history says that you were discovered and converted by Shorty Collins, and that's when you joined the FOR.
Yes, he had had a profoundly significant experience in the War, but the New Testament is what converted me.
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?
I think it was the New Testament.
But a lot of people believed in the New Testament.
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?
Yes. I sure do.
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.
Did you think your mother would punish you or something?
I didn't know what was going to happen.
You couldn't stand suffering?
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
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?
Not many.
What did you comeup against? You spoke on college campuses mostly?
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.
What did you talk about?
I talked about war, race, industry, the sort of thing that was agitating the students in those days.
Did you talk about the New Testament too?
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.
Did you think of yourself as a Social Gospel . . . did you read Harry Ward?
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.
No. What do you mean? How was he close to the Communists?
He was a fellow traveller. I am almost certain.
In what sense?
As Reiny told me . . .
Who did?
Reinhold Niebuhr.
Well, what did he do that made him . . .
Well, he was an ally to . . . with the leadership in the Communist party.
He was finally kicked out of the Union Seminary, wasn't he? It got too difficult for him to stay there.
I guess so, because he and Reiny were almost like this . . . warring with one another.
Did you think that at the time?
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.
You didn't, were you able to form local chapters of the Fellowship?
A few.
Where were they?
Well, Nashville was the central place, and the members were widely scattered.
Who were some of the local leaders or people involved with the Fellowship?
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.
Why were you not able to organize more students?
Pacifism was way over on the left, you know?
Yes.
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.
You felt that strongly, right at the time? Or was it later on?
Right then. When I left his house.
Was it Browder's personality?
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.
When did you start thinking of yourself as a Socialist?
I believe it was in 1932.
How did that come about?
Norman Thomas.
You were converted again?
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.
How about Van Bittner? John Wright . . .
Those names are familiar.
They didn't influence you as much?
No.
So you joined the Socialist party about 1931.
I ran for Congress.
Well, you did all right, didn't you? You beat out the Republican.
I beat the Republican.
Who did you have working in your campaign?
Myself and others.
Is that all?
That's all.
Didn't Norman Thomas come down and campaign with you?
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.]
Alva Taylor.
Alva Taylor.
Tried to start a labor church.
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 . . .
E. Franklin?
E. Franklin, and he would chew you into the tinest morsel and spit you out.
I can imagine.
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.
You and Norman Thomas had just been interrupted by the steam whistle.
Yeah, and . . .
You didn't hear a word he said.
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.
Did you have a Chapter of the League for Industrial Democracy in Nashville?
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.
What did you think of Norman Thomas as a leader of the Socialist party?
I thought he was the best man for the job.
But the party declined his leadership?
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.
Were you involved in the expulsion of the Trotskyites?
Yes.
That was really disruptive.
Yes.
What was that all about?
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.
Why?
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.
Was that mostly because of Norman Thomas?
Yes, mostly.
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?
I dropped out of Fellowship in 1934, and I ran for the Socialist Party in 1932.
And you left the Fellowship over the labor problem, etc.
Yes.
Tell me a little bit about Wilder, Tennessee.
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.
Recently?
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.
You didn't know anyone when you first went there?
Not a soul.
You just knew the conditions?
I knew the conditions.
How did you know about the conditions?
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.
Is Albert Barnett alive?
No, Alva died several years ago. I think he changed a little bit in his attitudes.
When he got older?
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.
You were another Lafayette?
What did you think you could do for the mines? You weren't working for a union or . . .
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.
You took those things with you?
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