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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-0057, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
Ruth Vick joined the Southern Regional Council (SRC) in the 1940s, becoming its only black employee at the time, and rising through the ranks to become a board member at the time of the interview. In her lengthy conversation with two interviewers, Vick discusses decades of SRC history, describing its leadership, organizational details, internal politics, and the SRC's place in the growing civil rights movement. The SRC supported the direct action civil rights movement that emerged in force in the 1950s and 1960s but chose study over sit-ins as a means of change. Vick devotes a great deal of time to discussing the role of African Americans within the organization. The SRC was not immune to the pervasive racism of the segregated South, and African Americans struggled for recognition and equal treatment within the organization.
Note: The interview is undated, but it likely took place in the mid-1970s. This interview will be most useful to researchers interested in some of the organizational details of the Southern Regional Council.
In this lengthy interview, Ruth Vick describes her tenure at the Southern Regional Council (SRC), an interracial organization committed to racial justice in the South. The SRC supported the direct action civil rights movement that emerged in force in the 1950s and 1960s, but chose study over sit-ins as a means of change. This interview addresses this decision as well as decades of internal disputes.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
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.
He was the last one?
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
I've heard of him, but I don't think I've ever met him.
Well, when he came she had money saved up that nobody, that
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?
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
Is that right? That's interesting. That's where I grew up.
They had said first there would be twelve state councils, but Oklahoma was the one who said that they didn't need one.
That's amazing.
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.
And it was especially to set up the state councils?
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
Where was it impossible?
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.
Why couldn't they do it then?
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.
I saw some stuff about that in the files. It was almost a secret organization. Nobody knew it existed.
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
Were there any black directors of the state councils besides her?
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.
What are the state councils supposed to do?
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.
They were supposed to get money in the states where they were?
Oh, yes, they have memberships. In Virginia there was a minister, a very
fine guy, Jack Marion, who got I don't remember how
They tried to raise money independently.
Oh, yes.
So, completely on their own, they wrote their own proposals and …
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.
When was that?
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
And that was altogether separate from you all. You didn't even know?
No, he just sent us a copy of the letter stating that he
What councils got them?
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.
What kind of things did he do?
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.
There were, then, a lot of differences in what the different councils did.
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.
Did they act as lobbying agents?
Not really. All of them had their tax exemptions, which said that they
could not play politics.
But most of them weren't able to sustain themselves?
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.
It's a tough state.
It really is. You know, I didn't know that.
You don't think of it as being as bad as Mississippi or something.
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.
But they know there's been a lot going on in Mississippi.
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.
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 …
Yes. Many heated meetings.
I kept coming across a lot of stuff here and there.
Oh, yes.
But I don't know exactly… What were the…
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.
What meeting was that?
That was in September of '67. We met a whole week up there, the state councils and the Southern Regional Council.
The staff of the regional council?
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 …
And the state councils themselves were passing resolutions against the War or they wanted SRC to?
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.
Did the Ford Foundation think that the state councils had not been worthwhile or successful?
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
And the state councils put that out in their …
They used to.
We should go in more chronological order, shouldn't we?
Yes.
You should ask me questions; I should stop talking.
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?
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.
Were your family farmers?
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.
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
The same man that owned the mill owned the hotel.
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.
Where had your mother's family been?
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.
Through an adoption
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.
Were they people that worked in the mill?
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
The school you went to there in Cedartown was
Right. They didn't have but eleven grades. Everybody had to go
away to finish that last year
Both the white kids and the black kids?
No. They had separate schools. They had a school for white and a school for negro.
Separate and unequal.
Right. The whites could finish high school there. But the last year all of us had to go away to finish high school.
To a boarding school?
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
A lot of kids must have been hindered from ever finishing school by that.
They were, because a lot of them never finished.
Was that one of the reasons why they didn't put in a twelfth grade?
I don't know why they didn't.
So that black people wouldn't have a high school education.
That's a
When did they do that?
About four years ago. They just decided
Is that
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.
Was there just a small black community there?
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.
Was it unusual for a black family to live in the middle of a white neighborhood?
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].
But you pretty much just grew up not having any real …
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.
That's amazing.
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
Was it after you were out of high school that your parents split up?
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
Is it sort of a middle-class neighborhood?
We lived as good as anybody, I guess. We had all of the
When was that? When were you born?
1916.
So the Depression was …
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.
From the college.
From the college, yes.
What was the Depression like?
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.
He just got laid off from the hotel?
Oh, yes. Everything. It was bad. Nothing was happening.
The mills closed?
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
Who is that?
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
So then you got a scholarship?
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
What was it like to go off to college?
Oh, it was wonderful.
Was Morris Brown a girls' school?
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.
How did you know that you didn't want to teach?
I don't know. There was just something about it. I just did
not want to teach school. And I told
When can teachers retire, at sixty?
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.
What were the students like at that time? Were most of the kids at school there just very involved in their studies?
Right.
Were there any social questions going around …
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
… or education
Morris Brown is a Methodist school. And of course you had to
What years were you there?
From '37 through '39. It was a two-year business course.
Did you have much awareness of other things, that the New Deal was going on, and the labor-organizing drives?
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 [Omission]
No.
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
Why was that?
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,
Who was the Director at that time?
Guy Johnson. And the Council paid me two-thirds of my salary; AU paid me one-third.
But you were working at AU.
But I had a desk, and I worked sometimes at Southern Regional Council.
To do what, to keep their books?
No, I was Dr. Reid's secretary. I did his secretarial work for the Southern Regional Council.
And you hadn't really heard of the Council or been acquainted with it before that.
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.
What was the Council like? That was about forty …
That was '44; that was in the very beginning.
So they were just getting started.
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
So were you in the board meetings and executive meetings?
Oh, no, no, no. You didn't get in any of those things.
You were just a secretary.
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.
What?
That was the funniest thing. Yes, it really was.
Why …
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
And why did Mrs. Tilley turn up her nose?
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.
What kind of things did she say to the other people?
She'd say, "Who is she? Is she going to be down here?"
You were the only black secretary?
Yes.
But that's what it was about.
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.
In about '49.
No, in '54.
You mean she hadn't been on the Council payroll. What had she been doing?
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.
Why was that, because she was too old?
Yes. So they hired Dr. Guy Wells, who had been at the college in the
little village, whatever the name of it was. Anyway,
Had there not been a Department of Women's Work at all up until that time?
No.
Then what was she supposed to do?
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.
Were these white church women?
There were some Negro church women; they were not all white.
This was after '54?
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.
What was Mrs. Tilley's attitude toward you then?
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.
It was her that called you to come back there to work?
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."
Did you ever say anything to her about her earlier attitude
No, I didn't, but
Who was he?
… as she wanted me to do. Patterson Funeral Home. No, they couldn't do that.
What year is that?
That was in '61.
That's just unbelievable.
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
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.
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.
She'd never been in the position where what she wanted to happen was blocked.
Right.
Sixty-three Auburn Avenue. In a Methodist Church building.
Where all the other Methodist offices were?
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?
Yes.
It was right across the street from there. It's now nothing but a parking lot.
Was there difficulty in having an integrated staff in that building?
Some people tried to make something out of it. But the bishop was on our side.
What bishop was that?
Bishop Moore.
Oh, Arthur Moore.
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
From '51 to '54 that was happening?
Right.
Was George Mitchell Director?
Yes. He was the Director at that time. And they really didn't have any money. People weren't giving money.
That was during the McCarthy era. Was that part of it?
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.
Why was that, do you think?
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.
You were there, I guess, when Tom Mitchell was attacking the Southern Regional Council and …
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
Frank McAllister was the director of that?
Yes. And what they did was to provide recreation and education for labor people, union people throughout the State of Georgia.
Union members?
Yes, union members.
Union organizers?
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.
Did the union people come here to that night school?
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.
Was that integrated?
It was the CIO union?
AF of L-CIO, yes. We got a lot of labor
Frank McAllister, what was he like?
He was a very fine person. He was originally from Illinois. He married a
southern woman, I think from
How was he to work for?
A very fine guy. I enjoyed it very much.
You were working there when …
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.
The two staffs of those two different organizations would meet?
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.
There's always a lot of …
Overlapping, yes.
All of these organizations are very …
Right.
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?
I don't know of another organization like that.
Was SCEF working then?
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.
But SCEF was being really attacked …
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 …
… Conference Education Fund.
How do you mean, get mixed up?
They would say things about us that they meant to say about them.
In the papers.
Yes, in the papers. All sorts of stories and things.
George Mitchell was on the board.
Right.
Do you remember any of those incidents, like Dombrowski, meetings he would hold?