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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-0009-2, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Arthur Raper was a noted southern sociologist and civil rights activist. During the late 1920s and 1930s, Raper served as the research director for the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, based in Atlanta, Georgia. Focusing primarily on those years in this interview, Raper speaks at length about his interactions with Jessie Daniel Ames and the role of the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching (ASWPL) within the Commission's broader program. Describing the ASWPL as a relatively small, independent branch of the Commission, Raper argues that Ames was both an effective and contentious leader. He describes her as an "excessive feminist" in this interview, explaining that she advocated for the importance and necessity of separate women's groups in dealing with social problems such as lynching. While Raper indicates that this stance was beneficial in allowing Ames to garner support for her declaration that white southerners ought not to use racist violence to "protect" white southern womanhood, he also suggests repeatedly that Ames's outspoken nature and ambition generated tensions between her and the male leaders of the Commission, including executive director Will Alexander and director of education Robert Eleazer. Raper cites only one instance in which he personally came into conflict with Ames, arguing that she sought to sabotage his testimony during the Senate hearings on the Wagner-Van Nuys federal anti-lynching bill because the bill did not reflect her views on how to best combat lynching. Raper concludes by discussing the contributing role of the ASWPL in the declining number of lynchings during the 1930s, and the exclusion of African American women from the organization. Researchers might find particularly interesting the ways in which Raper's assessment of both the negative and positive aspects of Jessie Daniel Ames reveal the underlying tensions and assumptions that characterized the challenges all women faced in public roles during that era.
Southern sociologist and civil rights activist Arthur Raper discusses his interactions with Jessie Daniel Ames and the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching during his tenure as the research director of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation from 1926 to 1939. Raper describes Ames as an effective but contentious leader.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
…I am writing a dissertation on that subject for Columbia University and I had the first draft of it completed when I came here in September. My first reader read it and liked it, I revised it according to his criticisms and my second reader has just finished reading it. It has to be finished in just a few weeks and he is not nearly as convinced by it as my first reader. So, that's what I'm…I'm rushing around doing more research and trying to meet his…
The first thing I want to ask you is, how extensive an organization was
the ASWPL really? How many members and how active was it? I know
generally the numbers that they claim to have, but I am still not sure
whether to emphasize that it was pretty much a one woman organization
run by Jesse Daniels Ames or to emphasize how many signatures they had
and how extensively they really did reach women missionary societies and
women all over the South. That's kind of a basic, central judgement that
I wish I
Well, O.K. This would be my estimate. There were about a half a dozen women who worked with Mrs. Ames and worked with her very faithfully.
About half a dozen?
About a half a dozen. And then the others were more or less peripheral, they came on call and they did what they were asked to do. They… but then, I think that happens with most organizations.
Yeah.
But, there were about a half a dozen. Mrs. Tilly was, I guess, the most outstanding one and I could dredge up all the other names, but I know about a half a dozen that were very active and they were responsive and they were on call and it wasn't a matter of her deciding something and then telling them what she had done. They, it was pretty much a committee process.
Uh-huh. How many people on the average would attend annual meetings?
I couldn't tell you.
You spoke at some of them.
I spoke at… I have records of having spoke to two of them. I have notes
on what I said and since I talked with you, I had that sort of in the
back of my mind and looking out for it when I was going through some
papers the other day. And I know I talked to the group
I have minutes of one of the minutes that you spoke to. Minutes on your…
Do you remember what I was talking about?
You were talking about, the general subject they were trying to deal with was whether to concentrate on mob violence or to begin trying to talk about legal lynchings and the prosecutions of the courts.
Yeah.
And you gave a really excellent speech about the complexities, I mean about the legal oppression of blacks. But, even though you were working in the CIC offices as research director, you didn't have too much contact with the ongoing activities of the ASWPL. Was it really that autonomous?
It was fairly autonomous. That's the way Alexander worked. He let me do
about the way I wanted to do. He didn't have me under his thumb. I hope
I did what he wanted me to do, but I did it more or less on my…well, in
other words, it's, if some program was started, and he said, "Now,
you'll take charge of this." Why, some people don't mean it when they
say that, but he did. And Mrs. Ames carried this on…oh, he was in and
out from the minutes I'm sure, he was talking now and again. And Mr.
Eleazer did too, to a lesser extent. But,
Why did she think that women…why did she want women to be…I mean, you could be a feminist and want women to be integrated into male organizations, or you could be a segregationist…
Well, she wanted them to be integrated out. She wanted them separate.
Why was that? Why did she?
Well, I don't know. It was just…some women are that way and some women are not that way. And I usually know when I meet a woman very quickly which way she is going to expect me to go. And I try to accomodate her, if there's any reason why I shouldn't…
Well, was it partly because that enabled her to exercise leadership. I
mean, it gave her a certain, it gave her a constituency
Yes, yes, that was clearly part of it.
See, she came there, she had been secretary of the Commission in Texas, as you know, of the state committee. And then, she came up there because she had succeeded in a way.
Because she had succeeded?
She had succeeded in Texas and she came over to the central Interracial Commission office. And, well, she in some ways looked upon the Interracial Commission as something she was going to take over sometime.
She wanted to take over the whole thing?
Well, yes. She had an inclination in that direction. I think that if you'll look around, you'll find that most people around here have a notion that maybe they'll come into the leadership. These things are placed so if that does happen, why they are there when the door is open. Well, she did that and a little beyond that I think. See, when Alexander went to Washington, I think that she had the definite feeling that she should have been put in charge of the Commission. But, she wasn't.
Who was really in charge of it while he was gone?
Well, all of us, and nobody.
But you were more closely in touch with Alexander, weren't you?
Well, I was closer in touch with Alexander than Mrs. Ames was.
This will really get into the basic problem that I have…it's this. I think, I have gone through all of her public papers, I've gone through many of her private family papers and journals and interviewed her daughter and friends of hers and I have a pretty good sense, in a way, of what this woman was like, the complex motives that she had. And yet, this is something that my second reader objects to about my dissertation and I don't think that it's altogether justified. I think it's sort of simple-minded. He wants to know, he says that I am ambivalent about her, sometimes I portray her as a…you know, "do you like her or not?" That's a question he asked me. Whereas I don't think that's really, you know, that's not what I'm trying to say in the end. Either "Yes, I admire her, she's a wonderful person," or "Jesse had all these weaknesses and faults,". I think that people are very complicated and yet I agree with him finally that I have not been able to portray her very clearly. What was she like? Can you give me some sort of, you know, specific ideas…
I will say this. That anybody who portrayed her as I knew her, because that's all I can say, as I knew her…would not come out with too attractive a character.
Is that right?
That's correct. Now, after I talked with you, no, it wasn't
A few, small town papers…but, generally…
O.K., O.K. But, generally, it was accepted. And she could
Why was she able to do that so well? Would you say that she was a good administrator, she was a good organizer? The women did like her, I mean, or at least, were very loyal to her and very admiring of her. Why is that?
Well, she could do it because she took this lead that resulted in the organization of these very strong church women's associations. And particularly the Methodist women's association. The core of it was the Methodist women.
But, if she was so aggressive in meetings and tended to offend people, why didn't she offend the women?
Well, she was able to do what she wanted. They were doing what they…she was doing what they wanted her to do.
Uh-huh. But her personal style was not…
She sensed this thing and she got in front of it, there was a followship
there and she got in front of it. She created it to some extent, but it
was already created. It was there in the women's
This general analysis and the anti-lynching sentiment had already been developed by the research and by the…
It was being developed, you see. We had already published the initial
finidings, "Impeach Judge Lynch" by the way, and there had been quite a
few press releases, it had been carried pretty widely on the general
situation. And then here was a place now, where the women could do their
thing and Mrs. Ames was a "women-do-their-thing" person. And that was
the kind of person she was. And she did it marvelously. O.K., now that's
number one. Number two: she did the second thing and she did it
superbly, so far as I know. And I had a chance to see it fairly close
range. And that was in her dealing with Lulu, the daughter. Mrs. Ames
told me one morning with tears in her eyes, she said, "Now, I've got to
leave this off," or something-else-something-else, "because Lulu needs
me." She said, "You know, something happened to me some years ago…"
these were not her words, but this was the essence of it… "and it's
indelibly in my make-up. Lulu was very, very sick and nearly died and
they thought she was going to die one day. Lulu thought maybe she was
going to die. And the next morning, when she was past it (whatever it
was may have been pneumonia, I don't know what) then Lulu looked at her
mother," Mrs.
Uh-huh. When did that happen, that incident?
I don't know if it was…
Was she talking about something that was way far in the past? When Lulu was a tiny child, or…?
Well, no, no…
Something that was happening right then?
No, it wasn't then, but it was when Lulu was big enough to talk and big enough to realize that she was a tremendous…
Burden…
…strain and burden to her mother. "Don't you wish I had just died last
night?" Well, perhaps Mrs. Ames had wondered or thought that, I don't
know what, we all are human. But when add it to the child, confronted
her as it were, she literally had to say yes and do yes, because Lulu,
she was a smart kid, she would very readily say, "Well Mother, I thought
you said you wanted, you were glad I lived." O.K., but she did that
insofar as I know, and I know that she did it well, and it wasn't easy.
Because she had these committments and these
Well, how did that personal burden, strain, affect her work, her public work and her public personality?
May have increased it, may have made it better.
May have made it better?
May have. Because all those women knew that she had Lulu. And in spite of having Lulu, she did this and most of them, I think, would identify with her as having this load, and even then, why, she was doing this, well, "let's cooperate with her, let's help her. If this is the way she wants to do it, why, let's do it that way. Let's don't put any unnecessary strain…" I don't know.
Do you think she…
I'm just rationalizing, reasoning here, but I don't see why it wouldn't work that way. I think it did work that way.
Do you think she at all…
As a matter of fact, I think that she exploited it a little bit.
Exploited it a little bit.
I think maybe she did. It certainly would have been in that direction instead of the other direction.
Did she talk a lot about it?
No, she didn't talk much about it, but she knew she had told me this story. And she didn't need to talk very much about it. We'd already talked about the basic problem…
Right, right.
And she knew that she and Lulu had faced the basic proposition.
So, now, that's number two. Now, number three. Mrs. Ames was, I don't know why, I never called her Jessie, I always called her Mrs. Ames.
Did everybody do this?
Oh, I think we did in the office. I think Eleazer did. Eleazer nearly hated her.
Oh, is that right?
Yeah. He appreciated what she did, every now and then, but it wasn't enough to offset his resentment.
Well, she was pretty scornful of him, too.
Well, she was, I know she was. And she may have been scornful of me, but I, frankly, I didn't care. I mean, it didn't occur to me to bother about what she thought about me. I mean, I was interested in what she was doing and when I could help, I would, but none of that was…I wasn't…
Why did it bother him so much.
I don't know. He was…his own wife was sort of an Ibsen's Doll's House, not quite, she was a very gracious lady
and a very competent lady, but she always was the gracious hostess and
had everything exactly right. In fact, I met Mrs. Raper in their
house.
Oh, really?
But, he had that attitude towards women. They were to be here and do these nice things and well, it was sort of an…well, I don't need to explain that role, because it is very well observed anywhere where you can walk into a house and in three minutes, you can see whether the wife is doing anything except taking care of him.
Did you have a different attitude toward women that enabled you to get along with Mrs. Ames?
Well, I think maybe I did. I thought my mother was equal to my father and I thought my sister was equal to me and when we got some children, I thought my daughter was equal to the boys. I mean, I've never had any hang-up on that. It was just there, and that was it. You had to have both of them for the world to go on and that was that. Well, but now, she had the philosophy that they had done this wonderful thing about helping prevent some lynchings, and they did. And they had got these women to stand up on their hind legs and make these statements which you've read and they called them to the public's attention. But she felt that lynching and all matters generally was of concern to the local authorities, to the states, the districts and the counties. It did not go to the national level. It stopped.
Why was she so obsessed with that…
It stopped with the state level.
So, I had my one very serious situation with her, which I never discussed with her. I never said a word about it. It was when the Federal Anti-Lynch legislation, the Van Nuys Bill, I forget what the number of it was. Walter White wanted me to come to Washington and testify on behalf of it. Did you run into this somewhere?
Uh-huh. I just accidentally came across the hearings themselves and read them. And read your testimony.
Well, isn't that a hell of a thing there. All the bic-bic-bic bic…the record can't show what actually happened.
Why, what was it like?
Well, the record…As a matter of fact, it's not in the transcript of what
happened. Because, it was a tremendously more broken and they actually,
whoever wrote it up, tried to make some sentences out of some of those
things. They were interrupted over and over and over again. But, that
isn't the serious thing. Mr. Connally, when he came in there and looked
at me, he thought that he, on that committee, was representing the
Southern point of view. And the Southern point of view was that "we
didn't want any interferrence with administrative matters in the
Southern states." Particularly on race. O.K. Now, this was his
assumption and this was his operation.
Yes, you were "under Walter White's influence"?
Yeah, I was "owned" by him, or something else, you know. And by gracious, the further he went, the further he saw that I was just as Southern as he was. And then, when he would just be flouncing around. When you read that again, watch out for this one point, and this one point only, when he begins to ask me specific questions about specific lynchings at specific times and all of those lynchings were after the time when I had quit making case studies of lynchings…
Right.
…which Mrs. Ames knew, and she was one of the few people, nobody on that committee knew it. Tom Connally didn't know it. Tom Connally was in touch with Mrs. Ames and Mrs. Ames sent those documents up there to him. "You ask Raper now, when he comes before his committee, you ask him about the lynchings. See, now, he's an expert on lynchings. He's made case studies of a hundred lynchings. O.K., ask him about the one that happened on May 4, 1937 in Danielsville, Georgia", or wherever it was.
Where the local officials had prevented any action?
Yeah, yeah. "Did I know about that?" "No, Mr. Connally, I didn't
Now, why did she do that?
Because she was so intent on maintaining her point of view. that she would do anything.
Why did she become…why did her whole justification of her career and her self image become wrapped up in maintaining this one position…
Because that's the area in which she had had status, that was the area in which she was somebody. She was nobody at the federal level. She was somebody when she had to talk to these women in these states and she had to get in touch with them by telephone or get in touch with them by telegram and she could do it. But this other she simply could not weather. In other words, she was big in her area…
She had all kinds of rationalizations.
She was big in her little pond, but she couldn't transcend it. She didn't transcend it. I suppose that between her and Walter White, I don't know, but there certainly wasn't any love between them.
Right.
And Walter wanted me, after she had done this—and it was perfectly clear what she had done—he wanted me to make a statement about it and I said, "No, no, I'm not going to do it." He says, "We can put that old bitch in her place." I said, "No, no, no. We aren't going to do it. I'm not going to have anything to do with that. And don't you do it either. You've asked me to come here and I've come. And we saw what happened and it wasn't what we wanted to happen, but it's what did happen."
Did he use those words?
Oh, something about like that. I mean, it wasn't less than that. Because he was utterly disgusted to see one of what he looked upon as his prize witnesses—because I was from the South and the South was without a voice except for Connally—practically without a voice…in that hearing.
White's career was tied up also in his view of that issue.
White's career was tied up in the federal thing. Hers was tied up in the
local thing and when they came together, I thought I saw both situations
and was trying to cooperate. I would to continue to put the major
emphasis local, but I think also that the other has to be taken into
consideration. And I had seen, practically everywhere I had been, people
who would have been glad to have been asked questions under protection,
who perjured themselves if they didn't answer them correctly, they would
have answered them correctly because, "this is my
Well, White did publish that letter that she wrote to Connally. Do you remember that? In 1940, she wrote a letter to Connally congratulating him on the success of the filibuster and having defeated the Anti-Lynching League.
Well, yes, I know that. But this is right in harmony with what I knew her to be and what I knew she did. And this was in harmony with sending that stuff up there. Matter of fact, I know when the fellow came to the door, I'm not sure who it was, I'm not sure but that it was Governor Rivers that brought those sheets of paper to him…when he switched from this…He was just bouncing around with all sorts of crazy questions, but then all of a sudden, here you were just right square on the track of "now this specific lynching at this specific place and this specific time, how about that Mr. Expert?"
She was criticized so heavily for her stand and at the end of the forties, she had very few supporters.
Well, I know, I know.
But she…Did that not bother her?
Well, she was determined.
Look at the letter, I haven't seen the letter to Connally, but this is exactly what I would expect. I mean, if there wasn't a letter like that somewhere, I'd be surprised.
Right, right.
I'd like to see the one that he wrote back to her and thanked her.
Right. I looked, audited his papers in the Library of Congress somewhat, looking for correspondence between the two of them. Specifically around this hearing that you're talking about, you know, to see if there was any exchange between them after he used her information, and couldn't find any.
Well, I don't know, maybe there wasn't any.
Or he may not have kept it.
I've thought about that a great deal. It was impossible for him to have had the details on that, except out of our office.
Sure. Why did you not even say anything to her about that?
I didn't need to. She knew that I knew it.
And she felt completely justified?
Well, I don't know whether she did or not. But, I was, about that time, a
little after that, busy with Myrdal and with Greene County and I was
busy doing what I wanted to do and I thought it was
Well, let me ask you this, still along the lines of the women's work. It's clear that she and Alexander did not get along from the very beginning. Don't you think that's true?
Yeah, I know that's true.
And I tried to deal with that a little bit, but the problem is that I only have her side of that. All the comments about the relationship are from her. Now, from what I know of her, I can well imagine that Will Alexander had a good side, had his own side to tell, but I don't know what it was.
Will Alexander never talked with me about that, but very little. And the
things that he said…
Did she flaunt her femininity, her sexuality? At the same time that she tried to…
Not very much. This was just what he said to me one time after she had been in there and…
But did that ring a bell with you, did you know what he was talking about, a certain way that she…
Oh yeah, I knew what he was talking about.
But what I'm trying to get, was it something about the way she acted, or might you have said that about any woman?
No, no, no, no. He wouldn't. He had very great deference and respect for Mrs. Tilly and a lot of women. No, no, he wasn't anti, he wasn't anti-woman.
Well, how did she act? That would lead somebody to describe her like that.
Well, I don't know anymore than I said.
But, my image of her is sort of contradictory. That on one hand she would be sort of flaunting and you know, do things that would lead somebody to say something like that about her. On the other hand, it would be for her to not be feminine enough, not acting like a woman.
Well, I don't know. I could imagine and rationalize it, but these
Yes, I'm the one that's on the spot.
You can get some insights and you can use the rest.
Yes. I need to be fairer. I mean, I feel fairly objective about it, but I just don't know…Was it true that he didn't want her to come as director of women's work in the first place? She felt that that was so, but I don't…
She may have felt that that was true, but I think that if he hadn't wanted her, she wouldn't have been there. So far as I know, Alexander wasn't somebody who just accomodated somebody just because they wanted to come to Atlanta.
Well, why did he keep her on, if he disliked her so much.
Well, I haven't said that he disliked her so much. This is yours, and I'm not saying that it's incorrect, but I don't think that he disliked her so much. He appreciated the fact that she had gotten these women together within this "women do their thing", however so much he…in other words, it was worth it. It maybe wasn't the way he wished it could have been done.
Now, there was a woman who worked… did you run into the name of Maude Henderson?
Yes.
O.K. Maude Henderson was there before…
Right.
And Maude Henderson lived with Mrs. Raper's parents in Druid Hills. Now, never anything like this, that I ever heard, and Maude Henderson was there, just before I came. I think Mrs. Ames was there when I came, in '26. When did she come?
She came in '29.
She came in '29? Well, I came in '26, so I was there some time before she was, now that's interesting, I didn't know it. But then, you can't remember everything.You'll find out later. She came in '29. Came from Texas. O.K. Mrs. Henderson may have still been there then when I first…I guess she was. But never a word like that did Alexander ever say about her. But then she wasn't this driving, she couldn't have set up that women's association that Mrs. Ames set up. And Alexander knew that.
Well, what was the difference between Mrs. Tilly and Mrs. Ames that made Tilly so much more able to get along better with Alexander?
I don't know, she was just…it was personality. She was just a very quiet,
effective…she knew exactly where the sun had come up every morning and
where it was going to go down that night. And she had thought a great
deal about these things, she was utterly committed to the things that
Alexander was talking about and that Mrs. Ames was talking about. That
was the reason that Mrs. Ames could do it, because that were a few women
around her that went at it. Now, some of those women…if I had the list
of the names and tried to
Well, let me ask you this along those lines, if it's true that the basic
research had been done, the Tragedy of Lynching was
published, which pretty much established that…
Well, it was published in '33….
Yes, it was later, that's right…
Yes, it came in '33. We published the Lynchings and What
They Mean, which was a summary of the statistical material that
we had gotten from Tuskegee and something about the cases at the end of
'31. And her organization, when was it set up?
It started in '30.
Yeah. Well, it was set up, see, we started talking about this lynching
study early in 1930. We were already doing case studies and already come
back with them and I had already done the basic research in the files at
Tuskegee. I did it in 1929, maybe the first part of 1930. But, we were
publishing stuff and there were newspaper releases that Eleazer was
putting out—you know, everytime that he could get something—because he
was very much interested in it and doing a good job. But, there would
not have been a women's anti-lynching effort if there hadn't
This is my question, well, two related questions. One big question. Why did lynching decline? Secondly, how important was the ASWPL really in the decline of lynching? Among all the different factors that caused its decline. Was the ASWPL…
The dominant factor?
Well…yes.
If you have an inclination sometime, if you want to, I'll show you the
clippings that came out when, I think I have a set of clippings on—I
know I have— that came out when the book came out, but then this is a
little bit after the fact, in terms of her organization. Because that
was '33. Of course, she ran on up towards '40. I don't know, lynching is
related to a thing that I was trying to say last night, near the end of
the session over there. There are periods when combinations of
circumstances make it possible for new things to emerge
Well, the research was done, the analysis, the research was done by other people, but she and her organization spread the word. What was their validity? That's what I'm trying to get at. If she had not organized that movement, but the research had been done, so that this general argument was there, then, what would have happened?
About the same thing. Maybe not quite. It was an additional plus…
Well, this is a hard question, how do you say how much…
I don't think you can. But the nature of mob violence relates to a whole
bunch of factors and the one thing that came into the situation in 1930,
see, we were going into the Depression and what not, We weren't going
into heydays, we were going into hard days and the lynchings might have
gone up tremendously before you got to '35. And as it was, they
generally stayed below what they had been five years before. And the
thing that came in there was the Southern Commission on the Study of
Lynching and plus Mrs. Ames' work. And that was new.
Why did you call her "feminist" tin the beginning? Did she call herself that?
Yeah. She just said, now…she hadn't been in Atlanta, whenever it was when she came…she hadn't been in Atlanta any length of time at all until she sort of let it be known that she was the person who was heading up the women and that we didn't know how to work with women and that kind of thing, you know. Well, it worked with some of the women, and it didn't. Some didn't say it that way, they didn't think that way and they were very effective. Mrs. Albright in the Southern Methodist Missionary Society, she was a little before this. But, she had been a very stable and sound woman leader in the work of the Interracial Commission. And she didn't have this "this has to be done that way." She (Mrs. Ames) came up from Texas, she knew how to work with women and women worked differently from men, and I mean, well, she just sort of said that and said it in that tone of voice. Of course, we all heard it.
Right. Well, one thing that puzzles me, I have it…she was a feminist
clearly, but she also said very critical things about women.
Well, that was the very thing that Alexander and Eleazer, particularly Eleazer, sort of turned them off on her. They felt that women should be delicate, they shouldn't be bossy and loud and coarse. And every now and then, she'd exhibit all those qualities.
Coarse? Did she curse and use bad language?
No, she'd sort of stomp around.
Who do you know that's like her. How can I get a picture of what she was like? Did you ever know anybody else that was like that?
No, Mrs. Ames was one of her own.
Do you see her in some ways as being like contemporary, very hard line feminist, you know, in the Women's Liberation Movement. The spokesmen? Do you think she would have felt sympathetic toward that?
She would have towards women having their own thing. She had a feeling that there was a mystique about the female species, that was something transcendent and that you had to know that and be part of that, or you couldn't do this thing. She had that, and that flattered some women and they liked it to some extent. But, she didn't do it in this loving indirect way, she sort of came at you with a wheelbarrow and a shovel.
Why did she choose, I know the obvious things, it's just what we
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…by the men, rationalize pretty much, particularly at the political level, that this was necessary to protect white women. O.K. now, she's a white woman.
This is a way that her feminism could come into the racial issue.
Right, right. And it's very much more difficult to work with interracial relations and affect anything than it is to take one segment and a very raw and vibrant aspect of it.
This fitted in with her Texas background.
How Texas?
Oh, Texas is the frontier. Texas does have its rowdies, Texas is a
bombast. And if you can lie, if you can brag and tell the truth, "Brag"
says the Texan. If you can't, why brag anyhow. Well, I mean, Texas and
Oklahoma and that whole area, it's just a different kind of world from
what you have in the older Southeast. They have qualities and some of
them are wonderful, but there was a lot of lawlessness and braggadocio
and bigness goes with it. So, she came in with that into this rather, in
some ways with a woman's point of view, particularly the man's attitude
towards the woman, to this woman who was meek, and loving and taking
care of the man and so she walked in and took a look
Yes… Was she real sensitive, I mean did she put people on the spot for making remarks about women that she didn't like or if they had a condescending attitude toward women. Did she put people up against the wall on the woman issue? Or did she just exude…
She just exuded. No, she never did take me to task and I was trying to think if I ever heard her take Eleazer to task. I don't think I did. But, it wasn't that, it was just the attitude, just this and this and this. If you were going out of a door and the two of you happened to get there at the same time, she would just…
So, you wouldn't open the door for her?
Just symbolic. She would, the way I'm feeling that is what I'm trying to say. But, I don't articulate it so that it gets across to anybody. But, it was not a matter of "now these are the rules and you've got to live by them with me in here in the office." It wasn't that at all, it was rather an attitude of, well, this mystique, coming back to that…it's as close as I can get.
Yes. That's really interesting.
And we just didn't know anything about it. We weren't part of it. You had to be part of it, to know anything about it.
Did she like men?
I really don't know. I don't think she did, very much. I think
What you were saying about the lynching issue versus interracial reform reminds me of another thing I wanted to ask you. What about the decision that she made to exclude black women from the women's anti-lynching organization. Do you remember the controversy around that? I've had a hard time dealing with that. My sense from going to the records was that at the time, it was not a big issue, although some people objected to it, but people who have read my work seem to see that as a big thing, you know, real significant that she would do that and how can I explain the exclusion of blacks…
O.K. Let me give you another part of the backdrop in Atlanta. There was an organization that was called the Association for the Preservation of the White Race. Did you run into this?
Yes.
See, this is all white. Now, when they came into this, I remembered some
of those first discussions and this will show in the records, I'm sure
and you're well aware of it. When they first started talking about this
women's anti-lynch business, there were some black women in there. And
then as time went on, it got all white. But, it didn't it started off as
an interracial discussion. See, the Southern
Well, since the interracial aspects of things was so important, why
wasn't that very scandalous?
Now, ask your question again. I think it's a good question, but I want to be sure that I got what you said.
Why they excluded black women and how the black people on the Interracial/Commission felt about that? It evidently was not a big issue at the time.
It was not a big issue at the time. Now, you could ask me whether Mrs. Ames was carrying on some other interracial work that involved Negros…
She was doing that, wasn't she?
Yes, but I can't tell you what it was. She wasn't working on, so far as I
can recall, she wasn't working on anything else educational, she wasn't
working on anything that had to do with health, she wasn't working on
anything that had to do with economics or anything that had to do with
welfare. That I remember. So, I don't know what she would have been
doing. This thing just about took up her time and it was, I repeat, so
utterly and crucially to the bull's eye on this thing that
Did it have anything to do with her racial attitudes, her attitudes toward black people? Do you think that she found that a convenient way to avoid having to work with black women?
I hardly think so. I don't know. I simply…she had her show, as you said. And she was encouraged to go ahead with this original work. Now, see, I could imagine this now, now this is imagination. But I could imagine that she would have felt, "Well, I can go to the sheriff down in Baker County, Georgia better with an all white group than if I have an interracial group." I don't know. I don't know if that entered into.
But you yourself weren't critical of the ASWPL for excluding black women? You didn't think that was a real weakness or an affront to blacks?
I don't recapture now any particular…I seem to remember something of…, as I'm dwelling on it now, something of the recall of why did we do it this way, "isn't there some way we can do it and keep them in, because we are an interracial commission." But there was nothing that came out so that it was anything like this other stuff that we've talked about here that was out in the open.
Now, did you run across anything where the Negro women were talking about this?
Well,….
In your letters to her or the letters that she wrote to anybody
References to it being brought up in annual meeting during the early
thirties when they were organizing and…
Well, she was a Texas Democrat. Big D. As was Tom Connally. She was of the stripe of Tom Connally. I had voted the Socialist ticket back when I was younger and I had worked with Harry Laedler and Roger Baldwin and Eliott Pratt. I doubt if she ever voted the Socialist ticket.
She never thought about economic problems and problems of class and…
So far as I know, she didn't, no. But she was somewhat interested in the work that I was doing in Greene and Macon Counties and the reports that I was making into the Commission and the things that we were writing. She was somewhat interested in those, but I don't remember her ever, and I haven't thought about this until right now, but I don't remember her ever saying, "Well, it looks like a program should be developed around this need that you've identified here, these facts that you've got here. Maybe we could go down there and talk with some people and do something about it." Nothing like that.
Well, what about race? Well, with integration for example, was there differences between the two of you or between her and Will Alexander on the issue of segregation or on any kind of racial issues? Or do you feel there was pretty much solidarity of the general attitudes the…
I think she was less inclined to associate with Negros than we were.
Is that right?
Yeah.
Why is that?
Well, I don't know. Now, you're calling to my attention that this was an all-white organization…from when?
From the beginning pretty much. I mean, there were black women at the early meetings, but by the time it was organized in 1931, it was all white.
I know there were black women at some of those meetings, because I was
there and I know there were blacks there. You know, when you get older,
you find things a little bit suprising. I'm wondering, I would have said
if somebody had asked me if I knew, without any of the background that
you've given me here, because you've looked into that particular thing
more than I have…I just remember what I remember…But I would have said
that I thought Mrs. Ames stayed in touch with Mrs. Moton as long as she
was there and then later with Mrs. Hope and some of the other Negro
women, even while she was doing
And they had joint meetings sometimes. They had black women who would come to ASWPL annual meetings. There was some crossover like that. Her daughter told me that she in the end, especially after she got much older and really was dying, that real hostility toward black people kept coming out.
Really?
But I don't know, I don't want to make anything of that.
No, let us all die in peace.
Exactly. But, I do have a hard time pinning down, I mean, I'm not interested in that, when she was older, but in pinning down. I don't want to call her by a label, you know, was she a liberal or a moderate? But I do have to make some kind of judgements about where she was in the political spectrum and she's hard to pin down.
She wasn't among the liberals.
She wasn't.
She was not. She was pretty much a Tom Connally Texas Democrat. And it
doesn't surprise me at all, as I said, that it doesn't surprise
Well, I do too. I'll do my best.
END OF INTERVIEW