[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

RUTH VICK:

At one time the state council directors were invited to the annual meeting, and their presidents or vice-presidents were members of our board. And each year the field director for the state council, that was of the regional council, had an institute for the state directors. And they would all gather at maybe some beach or resort place, and they would meet for three, four, or five days and find out what each other were doing, what they were going to do next to improve the state council. But we didn't have a state council director for two or three years at SRC. You didn't meet Ed Stanfield, because he had gone.

JACQUELYN HALL:

He was the last one?

RUTH VICK:

Yes, he was the last state field representative, and he took a job in Texas. I think Ed was a little dogmatic about what he thought the state council director should do, and he and Paul sort of clashed on that. Alice Spearman. She married Marion Wright, who's retired, one of our ex-vice-presidents who was the president when I first went with the Council. She was the director of the South Carolina Council at the time, and they just had heated words, so Ed just resigned from that job. He said he thought that they should follow some sort of grand pattern the way they had said they would the year before. But I think Alice was out doing some of everything in the community and was doing a beautiful program. Got plenty of money. And when the new guy came in, Tom unknown, who's a real bright young guy. I don't know whether you've met him.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I've heard of him, but I don't think I've ever met him.

RUTH VICK:

Well, when he came she had money saved up that nobody, that

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the board didn't even know she had. [laughter] She just put the money away and saved it. She was a practical woman, just going about haphazard but doing some good. And so we never did hire anybody else as a field director.

JACQUELYN HALL:

In about '51 or so, I think, is when they first set up the state councils, isn't it, and gave them so much money and everything?

RUTH VICK:

They had so-called state divisions. It was 1954 when we got the Fund for the Republic grant, and I think it was beginning July 1 within the eleven southern states. I think Oklahoma was the only one who didn't want to be called a southern state. They didn't have any problem unknown.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Is that right? That's interesting. That's where I grew up.

RUTH VICK:

They had said first there would be twelve state councils, but Oklahoma was the one who said that they didn't need one.

JACQUELYN HALL:

That's amazing.

RUTH VICK:

So there were eleven. And each state council was given money to hire a fulltime director and an associate director or assistant director, whatever they wanted, and a secretary, rent office space, buy office equipment. And we had to report, I think, every six months to the Fund at that particular time. The first grant was an eighteen-month grant.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And it was especially to set up the state councils?

RUTH VICK:

Right. It was separate from what they gave the Southern Regional Council. And they were to be affiliated organizations. We hired the directors; they came, they were interviewed by the Southern Regional Council. And all the payroll was made from here. We gave

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them a lump sum, I think, every council, and I can't remember exactly what that figure was, to rent office space and buy equipment like typewriters, desks, file cabinets, and so forth. And they did that. And of course they were hoping that all of these state councils could have an integrated staff. Now in some instances it was almost impossible to get this in 1954.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Where was it impossible?

RUTH VICK:

Well, in Louisiana, New Orleans, I don't think they ever had a negro anywhere on that staff in New Orleans. It was a very young guy who was working with that; I don't know what ever happened to him.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why couldn't they do it then?

RUTH VICK:

I guess it was just the climate in the town, and there really wasn't much said about some of the state councils, but some of them were afraid to even let people know what they were doing or what they were. Like in the case of Mississippi, there was never any publicity although there was a negro woman who directed that in the beginning. I can't even think of her name now. [laughter] I can't remember all these names.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I saw some stuff about that in the files. It was almost a secret organization. Nobody knew it existed.

RUTH VICK:

Right. This was true in several instances. And even here in Atlanta, the Georgia Council didn't have a mixed staff until… Oh, it was a long time before the Georgia Council had a mixed staff. And it was just because of the director, and somebody'd come in applying and they got the job. And there was no effort made. They did, however, hire some black consultants that were at Atlanta University. They had

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people doing some consulting work for them.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were there any black directors of the state councils besides her?

RUTH VICK:

John McCowan came in in '66 or '67, I believe, with the Georgia Council. Let me see if there was another black one. Yes, he was the assistant director in Arkansas, Little Rock, Elisha Coleman. And he is the director now. The director was white. He was past middle age and became sort of feeble, and he did retire. And I think it's been a pretty healthy state council. They've never cried, "We don't have a nickel. We don't have a dime." And I think I remember hearing that he's gotten some federal money and that they're working with some federal program and it's been quite effective.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What are the state councils supposed to do?

RUTH VICK:

They are supposed to do almost the same thing that the Southern Regional Council is doing here, and sort of keep the Council informed as to what was happening in the smaller communities, because most of the state councils had little branches in small towns and counties. Oh, they were strung all out throughout the state of Georgia, in very small towns. And they would report to the central body what was happening, and of course a lot of research that we needed, and needed stuff documented, they'd do that for us, which was quite helpful. And they were supposed to become self-sustaining after three years.

JACQUELYN HALL:

They were supposed to get money in the states where they were?

RUTH VICK:

Oh, yes, they have memberships. In Virginia there was a minister, a very fine guy, Jack Marion, who got I don't remember how

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many one-hundred-dollar memberships from people in Virginia. And he really built his up. And he did real well moneywise, but didn't quite keep this up. And of course when he got a job and left, you see, the next person couldn't quite do what he'd done, so they just sort of went down. The South Carolina Council and the Arkansas Council and I guess the Tennessee Council, because the Tennessee Council, I don't think, ever got that much money until maybe recently they got a couple of grants from foundations. The Mississippi Council was able to get grants out of Rockefeller and …

JACQUELYN HALL:

They tried to raise money independently.

RUTH VICK:

Oh, yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So, completely on their own, they wrote their own proposals and …

RUTH VICK:

We went to Ford, you know, we first got the Ford grant, and they gave us money for the state councils, but not enough to keep them running.

BOB HALL:

When was that?

RUTH VICK:

In 1965. And of course we went back to them for more money for the next three years, and they gave smaller amounts on a descending scale. That was the end of that last year, so this year we don't have anything to give the state councils. But, fortunately, some of them have gone to foundations, and we got copies of three letters where Leslie Dunbar had funded three of them, Field Foundation unknown.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And that was altogether separate from you all. You didn't even know?

RUTH VICK:

No, he just sent us a copy of the letter stating that he

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funded them. Two of them got $25,000, and the other one got $14,000, this year.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What councils got them?

RUTH VICK:

Twenty-five to Mississippi, twenty-five to Tennessee, and fourteen-and-some-odd-figure to South Carolina. It was something special that South Carolina wanted to do, so he gave them that much. But he has always given money to the Mississippi Council. I think it's because he has faith in the guy who was there, Ken Dean, who is no longer there, but was quite effective. Just did some of everything. I think he went there before Les Dunbar left the Council. And Les got to know him real well. And of course he would go to New York and talk to Les. Les had visited Mississippi in so many places, and got to know what Ken Dean was doing.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What kind of things did he do?

RUTH VICK:

He got involved with the young people who went down during the summers to help register people to vote. He worked day and night with people who were trying to integrate the schools or get people registered to vote, just year around. He was really quite active and quite vocal. And once he was there as a director, he did actually hire negro secretaries, and they were in the First Federal Building there in Jackson, Mississippi. So he worked at least five long years, because he's just left there, and he's in New York studying. I think he's in Syracuse studying. He did marry while he was there. He married a girl who was teaching in Mississippi. She was from Tennessee originally. When I went up to Gatlinburg to a meeting, she brought her mother over to the meeting. A very pretty girl. [text deleted]

JACQUELYN HALL:

There were, then, a lot of differences in what the different councils did.

RUTH VICK:

Oh, yes, right. Some of them worked solely for membership, and others worked to see what they could do about certain things in certain places to help ease tensions and so forth. They did all sorts of things, according to what area, what was happening.

BOB HALL:

Did they act as lobbying agents?

RUTH VICK:

Not really. All of them had their tax exemptions, which said that they could not play politics. [laughter] Because I think some of them almost got in Dutch messing around.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But most of them weren't able to sustain themselves?

RUTH VICK:

No, not really. There were some of them that were just existing then. But the Louisiana Council just never did do anything. And then finally, I guess while Ed was there, not long ago, there was a span of about eight years when there was nobody doing anything in Louisiana. And this black woman who's a contractor there in Baton Rouge decided she wanted to try it. But she hasn't done anything; she hasn't been able to do anything with it.

BOB HALL:

It's a tough state.

RUTH VICK:

It really is. You know, I didn't know that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You don't think of it as being as bad as Mississippi or something.

RUTH VICK:

No, you don't, but it is, and it has been. A lot of people don't know that, though. They just hear so much about Mississippi, though; they think that's the worst place.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But they know there's been a lot going on in Mississippi.

RUTH VICK:

Right. Well, Alabama. I know I'd rather live in some parts of Mississippi than to live in Alabama. But a lot of people don't feel that way about it, not because of George Wallace but because of so many other things and so many other people.

JACQUELYN HALL:

There was some conflict along at different times between the council and the state councils, was there? The state councils thinking that they weren't getting enough support or that there should be more money or …

RUTH VICK:

Yes. Many heated meetings.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I kept coming across a lot of stuff here and there.

RUTH VICK:

Oh, yes. [laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

But I don't know exactly… What were the…

RUTH VICK:

You see, you got a lot of young people in as directors or working with a state council. They had different ideas, different views about what the state council should be doing. Like resolutions against the war in Vietnam, and so many things; we spent nights… I remember when we were in Gatlinburg, that was one of the issues.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What meeting was that?

RUTH VICK:

That was in September of '67. We met a whole week up there, the state councils and the Southern Regional Council.

JACQUELYN HALL:

The staff of the regional council?

RUTH VICK:

Not the full staff. There must have been about eight of us up there. Some of the senior staff people were there that knew what the state councils were …

JACQUELYN HALL:

And the state councils themselves were passing resolutions against the War or they wanted SRC to?

RUTH VICK:

They wanted the Council to come out and make a statement. And of course they knew how the Council felt about the War in Vietnam, but this was no time to deal with something like that, they thought, when they were trying to find out where the state councils were going and what they were going to be able to do after. Because we didn't know then that they were going to get more money in '68 for the state councils at that time, because Ford had said they wouldn't give any more money to the state councils.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did the Ford Foundation think that the state councils had not been worthwhile or successful?

RUTH VICK:

Evidently, yes. In a way, they really hadn't done some of the things that they wanted to do and could have done. And it was because, I think, they were understaffed, and there are so many people who will not volunteer to give you their free time, even though they like what you're doing. But occasionally some people came across people who were willing to do things like that without any money. But a lot of them just weren't able to do all the things that they wanted to do programwise, because their boards weren't strong, their committees… They had lousy committees, people who just didn't do anything but come and meet once a year. Like the Southern Regional Council's [laughter] board met. Some of them don't read their mail. They'd say, "Well, I never knew this happened." But you know, you know you send them everything, and it doesn't come back so they must have received it, but they don't pay any attention to it. So that's why we have that little newsletter now every month, from Southern Regional Council. It goes out to every board member, telling what's

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happening.

BOB HALL:

And the state councils put that out in their …

RUTH VICK:

They used to. [text deleted]

JACQUELYN HALL:

We should go in more chronological order, shouldn't we?

BOB HALL:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

[laughter]

RUTH VICK:

You should ask me questions; I should stop talking.

JACQUELYN HALL:

No, I was asking you. I'm really interested in the state councils. But I wanted just to find out where you came into the picture. Where did you grow up? Where were you born?

RUTH VICK:

In Cedartown, Georgia. That's northwest of here, sixty-three miles. It's on the same route as going to Birmingham. I remember when they built the road going to Birmingham from Cedartown. And my mother's people had land that they bought when they cut the road there, and it's just a very few miles, but it's close the Alabama line.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were your family farmers?

RUTH VICK:

No, they were not farmers. We lived in the little city, and my father was adopted. His mother and father both died when he was quite young, and he was adopted by a family. And he had all half-sisters and brothers who did live out. But he was a waiter for the only hotel. Cedartown was a mill town, cotton.

BOB HALL:

unknown mill?

RUTH VICK:

Cedartown Cotton Exposition Mill, I believe, was the name of it. And they had one other mill, and I don't know whether I can even remember the name of that mill or not. But it was a mill town. And my

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father worked for one of the men who owned the hotel and owned the mill. And he waited tables, plus he ran the only taxicab there in Cedartown, meeting the trains and taking the people to the hotel and so forth.

JACQUELYN HALL:

The same man that owned the mill owned the hotel.

RUTH VICK:

Right, Adamson. And there were five of us, five girls, and of course that kept my mother busy, keeping us clean and in school and feeding us and so forth.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Where had your mother's family been?

RUTH VICK:

Her family was born right there in Georgia, and I think right out from Cedartown. My father was really born in Alabama, according to the records that we had. But his people died, and this family adopted him.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Through an adoption unknown?

RUTH VICK:

I don't know whether it was through an adoption agency. They just took him and reared him. I don't think there was any such thing as adoption agencies at that time. So we grew up in a small town, healthy atmosphere. Our house was right in the center of the block, and we were the only negro family that lived on the street. We didn't pay much attention to that because we were young at that particular time, and we played with the kids all day long. They played with us, and they would eat sometimes at our house, and their mothers would visit my mother and all that sort of stuff.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were they people that worked in the mill?

RUTH VICK:

I think some of the family across the street from us worked in the mill. But the family on the corner to the left of us; I can't remember what the Hanburgs did, but they were not mill people. But very

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friendly. We played during the summer and that sort of thing together. Quite neighborly. But then when my older sisters went away to go to school, after they finished high school and they came back and they started unknown and my father said, "Well, I'd better sell this and buy build some other place," because he knew a little bit more than we did about how things could happen with black men coming in the neighborhood and so forth and so on. So he bought a couple of lots about four blocks from where this was and built. Now there were still some whites on this street, but not many. And he built, and we lived there until we all left and my father left to work in Cincinnati. My mother came here to live.

BOB HALL:

The school you went to there in Cedartown was unknown?

RUTH VICK:

Right. They didn't have but eleven grades. Everybody had to go away to finish that last year [laughter] , except the …

JACQUELYN HALL:

Both the white kids and the black kids?

RUTH VICK:

No. They had separate schools. They had a school for white and a school for negro.

BOB HALL:

Separate and unequal.

RUTH VICK:

Right. The whites could finish high school there. But the last year all of us had to go away to finish high school.

JACQUELYN HALL:

To a boarding school?

RUTH VICK:

My last year I spent with one of my older sisters in Bainbridge, Georgia. Her husband was the assistant principal of the high school there. The youngest sister, who's right under me, was the only one able to finish high school there; they had added that twelfth grade, so of course she went. But all the others had to go away. Now

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our two older sisters did board in to finish high school right here in Atlanta.

JACQUELYN HALL:

A lot of kids must have been hindered from ever finishing school by that.

RUTH VICK:

They were, because a lot of them never finished.

BOB HALL:

Was that one of the reasons why they didn't put in a twelfth grade?

RUTH VICK:

I don't know why they didn't.

BOB HALL:

So that black people wouldn't have a high school education.

JACQUELYN HALL:

[laughter]

RUTH VICK:

That's a unknown reason unknown but you see, we were too stupid at that point to realize that this was something they were doing to us. Oddly enough, they integrated the schools there without any suit, without anybody saying anything. They took the elementary white school and made it a junior high for all the kids. They took the negro school and made an elementary school for all the kids. They built a brand new high school for all the kids. And they're being bussed all sorts of ways, because the people are living here, there, everywhere. It's just not the negroes living off in one section; it isn't like that. We visited there last year. My sister from Virginia was down and hadn't been there for years, and they just wanted to run on down one day. So we rode down there and saw unknown. But it was written up in the paper.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When did they do that?

RUTH VICK:

About four years ago. They just decided unknown They got together and did it, and they didn't have any problem at all. They never had a

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fight or anything.

BOB HALL:

Is that unknown Adamson family?

RUTH VICK:

No, he's long been left there and dead. His wife died even before we left there. And some other guy came in; I'm sure he's dead now. He would have been on the way to a hundred years old. I'm sure he's not still alive. I think they've even closed up the hotel; I don't think they have a hotel there anymore.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was there just a small black community there?

RUTH VICK:

There weren't as many negroes as whites, by any means, but I don't know the ratio. The population was about ten or eleven thousand when we were there. I don't think it's grown that much, but they have done a little bit about building up around the area. And we didn't even think to ask about any industry or what had happened. But we noted that there were quite a few blacks as well as whites building real beautiful homes. They were expanding the areas around, and they were building, and it was quite pretty. But they haven't done anything to the downtown area.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was it unusual for a black family to live in the middle of a white neighborhood?

RUTH VICK:

Sort of, I think. Not too much, because my mother said before my father moved there and all of us were born there, right at that particular place, they had lived on another street where there were about eight or ten white families, and nobody ever said anything. And we did own our home. And of course I think all the other people in the area owned their homes, maybe except one person. But I don't think it was [unusual].

JACQUELYN HALL:

But you pretty much just grew up not having any real …

RUTH VICK:

No, we didn't know anything about it. We thought it was sort of odd when we got ready to go to school, but we never paid any attention to it, not at all.

JACQUELYN HALL:

That's amazing.

RUTH VICK:

And we met up with one of the girls who lived next door to us. She works at the arsenal base in Huntsville. In J. C. Allen's one day my sister and I were shopping, and she saw us and we saw her, and we thought we recognized her and she thought she recognized us. And we hadn't seen each other since I know we were in our teens. And you have never seen anything like it. She was so happy to see us, and we were so happy to see her. And, of course, she told us all about her family and where they were and what they were doing. I don't think anybody was left in Cedartown. But, of course, the same with us; nobody was left unknown.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was it after you were out of high school that your parents split up?

RUTH VICK:

After college. Right after the Depression he couldn't find work there, because just everything was just shut down. So he found work at Cincinnati and went there. But of course my mother spent a lot of time in Cincinnati with him. And they just rented the house out, because we didn't think it was wise for her to stay there by herself. We were never going back there. But of course just before my father died he asked us if we still wanted to keep the house, and we said no, not necessarily, because none of us were ever going back there, so we sold it to a young doctor before he died and split the money five ways

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with us, because there wasn't any need of her staying there. And we've just gone back to visit once or twice since then.

BOB HALL:

Is it sort of a middle-class neighborhood?

RUTH VICK:

We lived as good as anybody, I guess. We had all of the unknown things that anybody else would have. We always had an automobile, just about everything. The only negro doctor there lived across the street from where we lived. And most of the nicer homes were on the street that we lived on at that particular time, but they're beginning to build some great big, beautiful homes there now. [laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

When was that? When were you born?

RUTH VICK:

1916. [laughter] October, 1916. I left to go to high school about '32.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So the Depression was …

RUTH VICK:

It was pretty bad, pretty rough. My oldest sister did two years of college, and she taught to help. And then the next sister taught—you know, you could teach after high school at that particular time—she taught one year; then she married. She was the first one to marry, the one next to the oldest. And she was the one who married and lived in Thomasville, but taught in Bainbridge, and I was able to go and live with them and finish high school. So it wasn't so bad. And all of us were able to get scholarships to go to college; we got scholarship aid.

JACQUELYN HALL:

From the college.

RUTH VICK:

From the college, yes.

BOB HALL:

What was the Depression like?

RUTH VICK:

I guess I didn't realize how bad it was until my father told us some of the things. It was rough. And of course we always had something to eat, and we kept our home. I remember him giving up the car when he left to go to Cincinnati, which must have been '32 or '33.

JACQUELYN HALL:

He just got laid off from the hotel?

RUTH VICK:

Oh, yes. Everything. It was bad. Nothing was happening.

BOB HALL:

The mills closed?

RUTH VICK:

One of them did. One of them closed completely down. But my father had gone on notes with so many people when he was doing real well, friends. "I need money. Henry, would you please sign this note?" He wasn't able to collect any of that money; he had to pay that money. And so therefore he unknown better find a job, so his half-brother's son lived in Cincinnati and told him, "I think I can get you a job if you come up here," so he left and went up there. And he worked with a man—I'm sure the man had to be a millionaire—who owned several lumber yards. He lived there in their home, and they treated him just like one of the family. And these people still correspond with us now. They have a home there in Pass-a-Grille Beach in Florida; it's not far from St. Petersburg. I tried to reach them when I was in Clearwater, because I wanted to ask them if they would come over.

BOB HALL:

Who is that?

RUTH VICK:

Louis and Dorothy Hinshaw. They still live in Cincinnati; they just spend the winters in Florida. All of the children are grown. But my father was there when the youngest boy was born, and saved his life once, and of course they were so grateful for that. But they said they thought of him as a member of the family; they never thought of him

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as being a servant. And whenever you went to visit, you sat at their table; you ate with them. You sat in their living room. You did all the things that their family did. They're just real fine people, all the children. She did write us, I guess about ten years ago, which she asked us never to mention in her husband's presence. She said that the son that my father saved—my father had saved him from getting killed—committed suicide, and they have never gotten over that. But she told us not to ever mention that if we were ever around him. But she has a son who's a doctor in California, and one of the sons teaches at Columbia or somewhere there in New York. Then she has another son who at Harvard unknown, but they're all unknown. And I think the only one who's not married is the one at Columbia.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So then you got a scholarship?

RUTH VICK:

Yes. To Morris Brown. There were three of us in college at the same time, the three younger ones. But we all got scholarships. The three younger ones live here. The youngest is Rhea. She went to State College, and it was in Forsyth at that time. That merged with unknown State. And I think there were a couple of training colleges, something of that sort. Evelyn, the one older than me, went to Spelman. She was unknown. Two of us were here together. My mother had an aunt that I was named for, and she lived right off the campus at Spelman, so I stayed with her and went to school, about seven minutes' walk to Morris Brown.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was it like to go off to college?

RUTH VICK:

Oh, it was wonderful. [laughter] You know, you never want

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to go back. Oh, we'd go back and have a lot of fun at Christmastime and things like that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was Morris Brown a girls' school?

RUTH VICK:

No, it was coed. But they offered the best business course that you could get in Atlanta, and that's what I wanted. I didn't want to teach, so that's why I went there. And Evelyn minored in French and psychology, but she wanted to teach.

BOB HALL:

How did you know that you didn't want to teach?

RUTH VICK:

I don't know. There was just something about it. I just did not want to teach school. And I told unknown when she retired, "Now I wish I had taught school, because at least I could retire unknown money." [laughter] Now I have to wait until I'm sixty-five. Isn't that horrible?

JACQUELYN HALL:

When can teachers retire, at sixty?

RUTH VICK:

Oh, no, they can retire before that. It's the number of years. She had taught thirty-two years. But I've been working thirty-two.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What were the students like at that time? Were most of the kids at school there just very involved in their studies?

RUTH VICK:

Right.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were there any social questions going around …

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

JACQUELYN HALL:

… or education unknown?

RUTH VICK:

Morris Brown is a Methodist school. And of course you had to

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promenade instead of dance; you could not dance. And I don't think I ever went to an activity like that on the campus; I just heard about it then. What I did was to go to school, and I did participate in some of the other activities, though, but I just didn't go to any of the dances. I went to all the football games; they had a good football team at the time that I was there. And I was on the debating team one year. [laughter] Just something else to do, something extra. And I did my library work and everything before I went home, so I had my evenings free. I had a lot of friends that went to Spelman, so I spent a lot of time on the Spelman campus once I had finished with my work, because most of my friends went to Spelman. And we were right off the campus. They would always sneak down for a little party, down to my aunt's house. So it was a really interesting; we had a very, very good time when we went to school.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What years were you there?

RUTH VICK:

From '37 through '39. It was a two-year business course.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you have much awareness of other things, that the New Deal was going on, and the labor-organizing drives?

RUTH VICK:

Oh, yes. I became interested in… The guy who taught me economics, who just died a couple years ago, left Atlanta and went to Detroit; he got a good job there. But he taught economics at Morris Brown, and he made you aware of all of the things that were happening. He was a very, very good economics teacher. I thought I would never be able to understand anything about economics. I had to finally talk with him and told him; I said, "I'm not absorbing what you say." I said, "I must get it, because I cannot stand to get a bad grade." So finally

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he kept talking to me, and I finally got into it. After school the first job I had was with an insurance company here. I was keeping the records for the people who did the ordinary work, and I was doing some secretarial work, too, because I was taking dictation at that time. [Omission] Then the next year I went to Macon and taught typing and shorthand at the Georgia Baptist College. It was a church-owned college, very small, but it was interesting. And then I got a job with a real estate company here in Atlanta the next year and kept their books; I started bookkeeping unknown. And when I married, I left and lived in California. I lived in San Francisco and Alameda. I was married to a guy who was an architect, and he was a draftsman with the naval air base there at Alameda. He was supposed to have been essential to the war effort. Did I tell you that story?

JACQUELYN HALL:

No.

RUTH VICK:

It turned out that there were quite a few people working at Alameda, and he had been there for way over a year, going into his second year of working. And he came home one day and told me that they were fixing up this little room in the attic up there, no ventilation whatsoever. And he said, "I understand that some of the Southerners have been griping about working beside a black here." And he said, "I know that they're thinking about putting me up there." He said, "But the day that they put me up there," he says, "I'm not going to take that." I said, "Well, I know you're not. I know you're not going to do that. You're not going to let them do that to you." He said, "No, I'm not." But neither one of us thought that when he quit

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that Uncle Sam was going to call him. [laughter] Well, it was about thirty days after that. Of course, he had got another job at one of the shipbuilding companies, Kaiser Shipbuilding Company. He got another job; he knew he could get another job. But about thirty days after he left the Alameda Naval Base, he got drafted. So I came back to Atlanta and went back to work with the real estate company. And the day I left the real estate company I was called to come to work at Atlanta University—and that was in '44—at the School of Social Work for the man who was head of the School of Social Work, unknown Washington at that time. He knew me, and he said he needed some additional help, so I went over there and helped him for a week. And the next Monday I got a telephone call from Grace Hamilton telling me to go see Dr. Ira Reid at Atlanta University; he wanted a secretary. I said, "Oh, my goodness. I've heard about him. I know I can't …"

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why was that?

RUTH VICK:

He was such a fast thinker and everything. He rarely found anybody able to take the dictation. And so I was a little frightened, but then I said, "Oh, shucks, I'm going over to see him." So I kept the appointment; I went over there had saw him and talked to him. And he was interested, and I didn't think much about it and I said, "Well, I'll let you know." And he said, "Well, I need somebody. I'd like to know as soon as possible." And this must have been around the first of April, and so I didn't say anything for a week, so he called me. And he said, "Young lady, I really need somebody, and I'm interested. Won't you come and try?" So I said, "All right, I'll come and try." So I went back over there, and we started working,

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and it was the most interesting job. And that's how I became acquainted with the Southern Regional Council. He was the Associate Director. He was the head of the Department of Sociology at Atlanta University, and he was the first Associate Director.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who was the Director at that time?

RUTH VICK:

Guy Johnson. And the Council paid me two-thirds of my salary; AU paid me one-third.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But you were working at AU.

RUTH VICK:

But I had a desk, and I worked sometimes at Southern Regional Council.

BOB HALL:

To do what, to keep their books?

RUTH VICK:

No, I was Dr. Reid's secretary. I did his secretarial work for the Southern Regional Council.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And you hadn't really heard of the Council or been acquainted with it before that.

RUTH VICK:

No, I had read about the old Commission, just a little bit about it, not too much, because there wasn't much in the papers then about it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was the Council like? That was about forty …

RUTH VICK:

That was '44; that was in the very beginning.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So they were just getting started.

RUTH VICK:

I worked from April through December for them. And the work got so heavy at Atlanta University, we had already hired a second person at Atlanta University while I was working then at the Council, Marie Saxon. I had known her husband, and I met her; she's a South Carolinian. So Dr. Reid said, "What do you say, Mrs. A., that we let Marie go to the

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Southern Regional Council, and you stay over here?" And I said, "That's fine with me." So I stayed at Atlanta University, and she went to the Southern Regional Council. I think she worked there about three years or more, and then she decided she would teach, and she's still teaching.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So were you in the board meetings and executive meetings?

RUTH VICK:

Oh, no, no, no. You didn't get in any of those things.

[laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

You were just a secretary.

RUTH VICK:

Right. It was very little. It was very interesting at that time. Mrs. Tilley had an office down the hall in the church building. They had what you call state divisions at that time, and she worked in a State of Georgia. And she used to come down. The first day she saw me they introduced me to her, and she turned up her nose.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What?

RUTH VICK:

That was the funniest thing. Yes, it really was.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why …

RUTH VICK:

And she said little things around to the other girls in the office. There was a Miss Margaret Price there. Jane; I can't remember Jane's name before she married. She married a Dr. Simpson later, and then she married Hal Fleming. And then there was a young girl from Macon, Georgia, who had to give up the job. Her husband was in the service at the time. But her mother found out what the Southern Regional Council was and that there were some blacks in it, and her mother almost drove her crazy, so she had to give up the job and leave. I unknown

JACQUELYN HALL:

And why did Mrs. Tilley turn up her nose?

RUTH VICK:

I don't know. I guess she had just never been around anybody. She didn't know who I was. She didn't know me or anything like that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What kind of things did she say to the other people?

RUTH VICK:

She'd say, "Who is she? Is she going to be down here?"

JACQUELYN HALL:

You were the only black secretary?

RUTH VICK:

Yes.

BOB HALL:

But that's what it was about.

RUTH VICK:

That's what it was. It was interesting. Nobody would have ever believed that now, all the stuff that she had done beforehand, unmasking the Klan, doing this, that, and the other. But this was just something new to her, you see. There I was going to be so close. And so I didn't very much of Mrs. Tilley then at all. But then when I ent back in 1954, you see, the Council took her off their payroll and made her Director of Women's Work.

JACQUELYN HALL:

In about '49.

RUTH VICK:

No, in '54.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You mean she hadn't been on the Council payroll. What had she been doing?

RUTH VICK:

She had been collecting dues from people in Georgia, memberships, and turning over a portion of it to the Council for a subscription to New South, like the other directors. But they knew that she wouldn't be able to do the type of work that called for directing or going around the state and all that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why was that, because she was too old?

RUTH VICK:

Yes. So they hired Dr. Guy Wells, who had been at the college in the little village, whatever the name of it was. Anyway,

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he had retired from the college, so he took the first directorship of the Georgia Council. And she came on and directed women's work.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Had there not been a Department of Women's Work at all up until that time?

RUTH VICK:

No.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Then what was she supposed to do?

RUTH VICK:

She was supposed to work with all the church women, which she did. And she had a meeting that brought all of them together. It was actually a South-wide meeting that she had, once a year.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were these white church women?

RUTH VICK:

There were some Negro church women; they were not all white.

BOB HALL:

This was after '54?

RUTH VICK:

Oh, yes. This was after '54. Well, the only place you could meet was Atlanta University. Dorothy Hall in Tuskegee. There weren't but a few places you could meet, so most of the meetings were held at Atlanta University, because you could live there; you could eat there. None of the hotels would take you at that time, so you had to go to a black college campus.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was Mrs. Tilley's attitude toward you then?

RUTH VICK:

She became very, very close to me. At that time she didn't have a secretary. I was doing some of everything when I went back there. I went back as Assistant to the Secretary-Treasurer. She called and told me that they needed somebody and would I come, and I said yes, because it was paying more than I was making at Atlanta University.

JACQUELYN HALL:

It was her that called you to come back there to work?

RUTH VICK:

Not Mrs. Tilley, no. The gal who was the Secretary-Treasurer. George Mitchell was there, and George Mitchell knew me. And he had called me earlier about becoming his secretary, and I told him I hadn't taken dictation in so long, and I said, "In fact, I've been doing nothing but bookkeeping. I haven't even been typing. I couldn't possibly do it." I said, "Do you want somebody?" He said, "Yes. I want a good gal." I said, "All right, I have the gal for you," and so I sent her. She took the job. And the Secretary-Treasurer, Katherine Stone, told me, she said, "I think I'm going to need somebody to help me, because we're going to have all these state councils to take care of." And I said, "All right," I said, "but don't call me until you get the money." [laughter] "Because I'm not going to quit one job for another one." She called when they got the money, so I gave a month's notice and I went down May 1, '54. Mrs. Tilley was quite congenial then, and of course I was doing some of her work. I was cutting the stencils for her and running them off for her, doing a lot of things unknown. And her husband became very fond of me. I guess she had told him how nice I had been to her. He was really a very fine man. And he went with her; he backed her in everything she did. He was retired when I first knew him. I think he had been in some surgical supply business. But he had been a successful businessman; he was retired.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you ever say anything to her about her earlier attitude unknown ?

RUTH VICK:

No, I didn't, but [Interruption] research and told unknown was leaving. She had a run-in with Dr.

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Mitchell, so he told her she could go find another job. Emory Bayh and his wife were visiting Atlanta, their son, with a young baby, so she invited us out to her house for dinner, Mrs. Tilley did. Liz unknown was black—that was George Mitchell's secretary that I had found for him—and I was black; we were the only two black people there. So Liz picked me up that afternoon, and the fellow that I was dating then, because I was divorced from my first husband at that time. The fellow that I was dating was here from Chicago, so she told me to bring him out, so I took him out. We drove out there and parked the car and went in and we had a nice dinner. And Mr. Tilley was so sweet; he was helping with everything. And just as we had finished eating the telephone rang, and Mr. Tilley answered the phone. And he called Mrs. Tilley to the phone, and she answered the phone. Well, pretty soon Katharine Stone went there, and I could hear them talking but I didn't know what they were talking about. I said, "I'd better go back there and find out what's happening." So I went back there and I asked. I said, "Katharine, let me help you with the dishes." She said, "Oh, no, you don't need to help me with the dishes." I said, "Well, what is all the talking then?" I said, "Was it the telephone call? Was somebody threatening Mrs. Tilley? Is something happening?" And she said, "Somebody made a crank call and said that they had better get those so-and-so-and-so-and-so's away from there, or they would do this, that, and the other." Well, I went to Mrs. Tilley and Mr. Tilley and unknown said, "Mrs. Tilley," I said, "We don't want anything to happen." I said, "We've have a nice dinner, and we've chatted a while," I said, "and before it

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gets late, I think we should go on home." I said, "Now, we have done exactly what we come to do. We had a lovely dinner; we talked." And I said, "We can leave before anything gets too bad, that something might happen." She said, "I'm really not afraid that anything is going to happen, but I certainly am sick over this." I said, "Well, don't be sick. We know that there are sick people anywhere." She said, "My neighbors would not do this." But she found out exactly who did it. Some man who was visiting somebody across the street. So Emory Bayh decided that he would walk to the car with us, just to see if anybody made any move. Well, what had happened was, the man who was visiting had backed his car right up on the front bumper of our car, so we could not pull out, and we couldn't back up nor pull out. So we got out there, and Emory saw this car unknown in like this, and he said, "Somebody did this on purpose," and we said, "Yes, it's true. This must have been the guy that called." So we stood there and we looked around. Well, this guy was still sitting on the porch with the people he was visiting, across from Mrs. Tilley. So when he saw Emory with us, he walked over, and he said, "Am I blocking you?" And Emory said, "Well, I think they can't quite get out. Is this your car?" He said, "Yes." And Emory said, "Well, it would help if you would move your car so that they can get out, so they can leave." So he actually got in his car and drove on off; he didn't go back to the people across the street. She found out who it was later, because the people across the street told her who it was. And then when her husband died, she insisted that I come to the house and go to the funeral

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because she said, "He thought so much of you, and this is what he would have wanted." Well, I tried not to go because I didn't like funerals, but I went over to the house. She made me ride in the car with her and her son. And we went to Patterson's and stood there; we were there an hour before the funeral. Well, Patterson would not let me walk in and sit with the family …

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who was he?

RUTH VICK:

… as she wanted me to do. Patterson Funeral Home. No, they couldn't do that.

BOB HALL:

What year is that?

RUTH VICK:

That was in '61.

JACQUELYN HALL:

That's just unbelievable.

RUTH VICK:

And Mrs. Tilley said, "If anybody had told me this, I never would have believed it." He would not let me go in with her and sit where she wanted me to sit. He made me wait until they were all seated, the family, and then I could go and sit in the back. That's what he did. But, you know, I acted real, real white that day [laughter] , as the people say. I didn't say one word.

JACQUELYN HALL:

[laughter]

RUTH VICK:

I didn't exchange anything with him or any words with him, anything. When he said we couldn't do that, I didn't say one word.

BOB HALL:

missing

JACQUELYN HALL:

[laughter]

RUTH VICK:

But you know, Mrs. Tilley talked about that, she talked about that, and she talked about it, because it really hurt her. It really did. It hurt her.

BOB HALL:

She'd never been in the position where what she wanted to happen was blocked.

RUTH VICK:

Right.

JACQUELYN HALL:

[laughter] Where was the Council located at that time?

RUTH VICK:

Sixty-three Auburn Avenue. In a Methodist Church building.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Where all the other Methodist offices were?

RUTH VICK:

Yes. The North Georgia Conference offices were there. But the building is down now. Do you know where the telephone company is, on the corner of Ivy and Auburn?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yes.

RUTH VICK:

It was right across the street from there. It's now nothing but a parking lot.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was there difficulty in having an integrated staff in that building?

RUTH VICK:

Some people tried to make something out of it. But the bishop was on our side.

BOB HALL:

What bishop was that?

RUTH VICK:

Bishop Moore.

BOB HALL:

Oh, Arthur Moore.

RUTH VICK:

He's now retired. But he was one of the original five on the charter. He was a very pleasant person. Just some people in the North Georgia Conference from some of these small towns didn't like it, and they tried to make something out of it. But for a long time we didn't have a negro on the staff. From about '51 until about '54 they didn't have any negroes. They had a very small staff, because

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they had very little money. That's when George Mitchell was actually borrowing on his insurance and on his home to pay salaries and things for some of the people.

JACQUELYN HALL:

From '51 to '54 that was happening?

RUTH VICK:

Right.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was George Mitchell Director?

RUTH VICK:

Yes. He was the Director at that time. And they really didn't have any money. People weren't giving money.

BOB HALL:

That was during the McCarthy era. Was that part of it?

RUTH VICK:

It could have been. I've never heard any information as far as anything of that sort. The first money that they got was Rosenwall money, and when that gave out they couldn't quite convince the foundations or philanthropists that this was a needed thing in the South.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why was that, do you think?

RUTH VICK:

I just don't know, but finally he got to the Fund for the Republic, which was a subsidiary of Ford. It went through years of negotiating with them, and finally the money came through in '54, in April, 1954.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You were there, I guess, when Tom Mitchell was attacking the Southern Regional Council and …

RUTH VICK:

No, I was with the Georgia Workers Educational Service then. There was a little period in there, '46 to '51, when I was working for Dr. Reid at AU, and he got this visiting professorship at New York University. And I said, "Oh, shucks, I don't want to stay over here and work while you're gone." He said, "Well, I'll tell you what, they're

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looking for somebody just like you at the Georgia Workers Educational Service. Do you know Frank McAllister?" I said, "Yes, I've heard about him." He said, "All I have to do is call and tell him that you're interested, and you can go on in for an interview." He said, "You'll probably make more money, but I hate to lose you, because when I come back I know I can't take you back unknown." I said, "Well, you probably won't come back to stay." Well, he talked to him, and I got the job.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Frank McAllister was the director of that?

RUTH VICK:

Yes. And what they did was to provide recreation and education for labor people, union people throughout the State of Georgia.

BOB HALL:

Union members?

RUTH VICK:

Yes, union members.

BOB HALL:

Union organizers?

RUTH VICK:

No, just union members, not the organizers. Supplied recreation and education. They held night school in the office. It was on the corner of Cortwell and Forest Avenue. [Interruption]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did the union people come here to that night school?

RUTH VICK:

Really, the night school was held for people right here in Atlanta, union members right here in Atlanta who wanted to learn how to conduct a meeting. And some of them couldn't read, couldn't write; they taught them how to read and how to write. And then there were a lot of them had no recreation whatsoever. They had a recreation director. They'd go off wherever they wanted to go in the State of Georgia.

BOB HALL:

Was that integrated?

JACQUELYN HALL:

It was the CIO union?

RUTH VICK:

AF of L-CIO, yes. We got a lot of labor unknown financed by Rosewall, too. And we had a lot of labor unknown the labor was interested in the union people being educated and know what was going on. They were taught how to conduct a meeting and all that sort of stuff, just anything.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Frank McAllister, what was he like?

RUTH VICK:

He was a very fine person. He was originally from Illinois. He married a southern woman, I think from unknown, Georgia. A very fine guy. And I went as his secretary and the bookkeeper. And he left about a year before the organization liquidated, and took the job as head of the Labor Education Division of Roosevelt in Chicago. He just died last year. He had a heart attack and died. He was supposed to come down to a meeting that Emory was having, and we got word that he had had a heart attack and died just the year before unknown before. But it was a real interesting group of people.

BOB HALL:

How was he to work for?

RUTH VICK:

A very fine guy. I enjoyed it very much.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You were working there when …

RUTH VICK:

The Council was having such hard times. But you see, I was in close contact with them, because we all went to the Hungry Club on Wednesday. The Hungry Club started while I was working at Atlanta University with Dr. Reid.

BOB HALL:

The two staffs of those two different organizations would meet?

RUTH VICK:

We would always go to the Hungry Club, because there were interesting speakers there, and that was one way of getting together and seeing people. So we would always meet other people there. We knew what was going on because some people on their board were on our board.

JACQUELYN HALL:

There's always a lot of …

RUTH VICK:

Overlapping, yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

All of these organizations are very …

RUTH VICK:

Right.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What were some of the other organizations like that that were working with SRC at that time? Your group and what else was going on then?

RUTH VICK:

I don't know of another organization like that.

BOB HALL:

Was SCEF working then?

RUTH VICK:

Oh, SCEF was, but they didn't have an office here. No. I remember many letters that I wrote to Dombrowski in Louisiana at that time, because there were a lot of people on their board, but they all got off. The man I worked for, Ira Reid, was on there. I'm sure that Frank was, and he got off. Any number of people. But I can't remember all the things that they told me. I wondered why. Well, they said that Dombrowski was really an overpowering individual, and he didn't listen to his board. He did things that he could have avoided doing. And not that they believed that they were communist at all—they never believed that; all of them said that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But SCEF was being really attacked …

RUTH VICK:

Right. And they did some shady things, and I think they had some people around that caused people to attack them and that sort of thing. And they did some foolish things, which I don't remember all the things, but they did tell me some of the things that he did. So people just began dropping off the board. And they used to get us mixed up with them all the time, the Southern Regional Council and Southern …

BOB HALL:

… Conference Education Fund.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How do you mean, get mixed up?

RUTH VICK:

They would say things about us that they meant to say about them.

BOB HALL:

In the papers.

RUTH VICK:

Yes, in the papers. All sorts of stories and things.

JACQUELYN HALL:

George Mitchell was on the board.

RUTH VICK:

Right.

BOB HALL:

Do you remember any of those incidents, like Dombrowski, meetings he would hold?

RUTH VICK:

I just didn't pay too much attention to it then. I was writing letters and things, but it's not too clear to me now, the things that were going on, what was happening.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Are the papers from the Southern Workers Group anywhere?

RUTH VICK:

There should be some somewhere. Miles Horton up in Tennessee.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Highlander?

RUTH VICK:

Right. The last attack was while I was at the Council, and they had a meeting. Highlander Folk School. Brad Brown, C. H. Parrish, they were up there at the time, went up to a meeting. And they had

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this guy from Atlanta go up. He went up and took some pictures, but what he did was to take the pictures that he took—and I don't know how you do this process, but photographers know—how you can take this person, cut it off, and put it with another person. So he had negro men dancing with white women and white women dancing with… And of course, as long as they saw this …

JACQUELYN HALL:

And SRC people were at that meeting?

RUTH VICK:

Oh, yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were the pictures of them?

RUTH VICK:

Yes, there were pictures of them and the names, and this communist outfit and that communist outfit Oh, yes, they had the pictures in there, and I'm sure they're filed somewhere in Research, because they were in the Augusta Courier.

BOB HALL:

They weren't in the Constitution?

RUTH VICK:

No.

BOB HALL:

The Constitution didn't participate in that whole thing?

RUTH VICK:

No. Ralph McGill knew what the Council was. He had been closely connected with it from the beginning, and he knew unknown

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did SRC do about that?

RUTH VICK:

We have some stuff there in a file attacks on the Council, and there were answers made. And people would write; like McGill would write an editorial, and so forth. So there never was anything that …

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did the people who had been trying to help Highlander Folk School get off of the board and quit going to those meetings?

RUTH VICK:

I don't think they went as much after that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When was it that the Tennessee legislature was attacking Highlander and finally destroyed it? Fifties, I think, wasn't it?

RUTH VICK:

Was it early sixties or late fifties? It could have been late fifties. Because the woman who was working with Miles Horton came here and worked with King, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I don't know whether she's still here or not.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who was that?

RUTH VICK:

Oh, what was her name? I think I'll remember. But she came here. I don't know whether she's still with the SCLC or not. She came here and worked.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was SRC involved in that in any way, when the Highlander …

RUTH VICK:

No. SRC, I don't think, said anything as such.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was there any debate about whether SRC should come out supporting Highlander Folk School or take any kind of stand?

RUTH VICK:

I can't remember exactly what unknown, but… I really can't remember.

BOB HALL:

Wasn't there an association of southern liberal organizations?

JACQUELYN HALL:

NARRO? Was it called that?

RUTH VICK:

Yes, NARRO.

JACQUELYN HALL:

That was an organization of all …

RUTH VICK:

All the agencies. Right.

JACQUELYN HALL:

… representatives of all these different agencies.

RUTH VICK:

Right. Our people began to participate in it, I'm sure, after

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Harold Fleming became Director of the Council, and not before that. I don't know how long NARRO had been existing. They had what they called an inter-agency conference here in Atlanta that met unknown while Harold was here and after Harold left, and the Council was the secretary for that group and sent out all the notices. And of course you always had a representative from the Y's and the Urban League, NAACP, and all of the Jewish organizations and whatnot, they would come together. I don't know that they ever really did anything. I don't think they did. I don't think NARRO's done anything.

BOB HALL:

I was just wondering whether that would be a format [forum?] for SRC and other organizations to issue statements in support of the members, when Highlander or SCEF was being attacked whether SRC supported…

RUTH VICK:

There might have been some. I don't think there was anything openly done. I think it was talked about, but there are a lot of things that Miles Horton, they said, has done that he shouldn't have done. Now I don't know what it was, and I don't know whether it was politics or what, but they had been on him a long time. But they said he had been using funds for his personal use that were meant for the organization. And I think Internal Revenue uncovered a lot of stuff up there. And I think that's what really ruined him, was unknown that he had really misused those funds, and that he had been operating out of his home and paying himself rent. And there was a lot of little stuff; I can't remember all the things that happened. But there was quite a mass going on.

BOB HALL:

They worked long enough; they should have been able to find something.

RUTH VICK:

They found something.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who was Director of SRC when you came back to work for them?

RUTH VICK:

George Mitchell. He was there '54, '55, '56; he left in January of '57. He retired. And he needed that January paycheck for his thirty-three quarters for Social Security. He could not get that Social Security until he was sixty-five, but he retired, I think, at fifty-five or fifty-six. But he had been in TIAA because he had taught, so he had it planned where he would have enough income to live on, because you know the story about going to Scotland and him building over there.

JACQUELYN HALL:

He went to Scotland and built himself a little house?

RUTH VICK:

Yes. He and his wife built a house.

[TAPE 2, SIDE A]

BOB HALL:

Way out in the country.

RUTH VICK:

Yes. They said one night a few friends were at his home, and he blindfolded himself and stuck a pin in a map and said that that would be where he would retire, and it was a small place in Scotland.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Gosh. Why did he want to leave the country?

RUTH VICK:

I don't know. I think this was just something he thought he wanted to do, and of course his wife didn't want to do it. They have two daughters. But she went, of course, and I guess they had just about finished their home when they found out that he had arteriosclerosis. And he didn't live long. He died, and of course she stayed on and sold the property. She's working in Richmond, Virginia, now; Virginia is

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her home. And Virginia was his home, too.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was she active in things in the Council?

RUTH VICK:

She would come and help with anything that the Council was doing. If we were swamped with work, she'd come down and just pull off her shoes and sat up there and helped fold stuff, take it to the post office, do anything. She was a smart and very sweet woman.

BOB HALL:

What is she doing in Richmond?

RUTH VICK:

She is teaching, and I don't know what she's teaching. But she was prepared.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So you came to the Council just as they got the big, pretty good-sized grant from the Fund for the Republic.

RUTH VICK:

Yes. They said it was for three years. [laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

And the Supreme Court decision unknown segregation had taken place.

RUTH VICK:

Yes, the same month I came there.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So the Council must have been really starting in a new thing then.

RUTH VICK:

Right.

JACQUELYN HALL:

For the last three or four years before you came, what was it?

RUTH VICK:

Just nothing. It was just existing, and that was it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Just a few staff people and …

RUTH VICK:

Right. They had four.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So what did the Council do to try to… How did they respond to the Supreme Court decision? What was their idea of how they

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could help?

RUTH VICK:

They had had C. H. Parrish, who was a sociology professor from Louisville, come down and go through the South unknown visiting people to find out how they felt about it, before the Supreme Court decision. They knew it was coming.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Is that where the Fund for the Republic gave …

RUTH VICK:

When they submitted the proposal to the Fund for the Republic, there were so many letters back and forth. I've never read all of that sort of stuff that they sent. That's something I just didn't do. Did you ever see any of that in …

JACQUELYN HALL:

I did, but I didn't really …

RUTH VICK:

I didn't read that at all. I just never thought about picking up that big document and reading it, but I know that they wanted to help the state councils. That was one of the main things. George Mitchell was really wrapped up in that idea, and he thought that after they got on their feet that there was no need for the Southern Regional Council any longer. And when he left, we had very little money unknown

Harold Fleming, because the Fund for the Republic money had gone. So Harold Fleming started talking to pe