George Mitchell and Harold Fleming, SRC directors
Vick describes onetime SRC director George Mitchell in this excerpt. Mitchell was a storyteller whose stories earned fame for him but not for the SRC. Harold Fleming, however, used his talents to promote the organization, publishing articles and building a mailing list. Fleming was director when sit-ins began, and gave protestors advice.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Ruth Vick, 1973. Interview B-0057. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- JACQUELYN HALL:
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How was he promoting himself more than the Council?
- RUTH VICK:
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It seemed as though the people that should have known about the Southern
Regional Council didn't, but they knew George Mitchell.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
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Like what kind of people?
- RUTH VICK:
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The people that could help us most, like other foundations, like
Rockefeller and Field. You know, we've gotten very little
money from them. We had almost none, maybe
$5,000, with all that money they had, millions and millions of
dollars to spend. I just think he'd sit up and talk about
what he had done. And when he came to the Council he came in charge of
veterans' affairs, because it was at the time that World War
II was being ended. Veterans would be coming back looking for work, and
they knew that in the type of society we were living in, that they would
be the last ones to get jobs when they came back. I think he had worked
very effectively in that, but when he got to be Director of the Council,
he didn't like detail or anything like that. He liked to go
off speaking, telling tales, and all that.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
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He was a big story-teller.
- RUTH VICK:
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He was a big story-teller. And I think that the Council was just
forgotten in the mainstream. A lot of people didn't know what
the Council was. So Harold really did a beautiful job.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
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Of publicizing the Council. What would he do, write articles for
magazines and things?
- RUTH VICK:
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Anything. All sorts of articles, doing research, then getting it
published, putting it before the public. We built the
tremendously under him, and then Leslie Dunbar
continued it. Leslie came under Harold as Research Director, because we
haven't had a good research director since
[laughter]
Leslie became Director.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
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I know.
- RUTH VICK:
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No, we just haven't had one. I think that's one
thing that the new man is going to do. I'm very excited about
George Esser. I really am.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
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How did Harold build up your mailing list?
[Omission]
- RUTH VICK:
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Harold knew a lot of newspaper people, media people, that he'd
dealt with while he was Director of Information. And he just began
spreading the word around and what the Council was doing. And then the
state councils did have a newsletter. We had a
newsletter that we put out about the state councils. And of course
we'd send information to the newspapers. He just got a lot
more stuff going. We had more stuff really going once we got the state
councils on their feet. And then the Council started doing so much more,
hiring more people, and starting publicizing everything we did. And you
got some people on your board who came out with these statements at
these annual meetings every year, which kept people
. And then they put out so many more publications
about school desegregation and all that sort of stuff, and people were
just eating it up like mad. Every time a group
would come up, like the medical group here in Georgia, and they would
visit all the doctors that said they wanted open
schools, and all the other organizations that came up.
we'd just . We
kept people aware of everything that was happening, so it helped a great
deal.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
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Who was Director when the sit-ins started?
- RUTH VICK:
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Harold Fleming.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
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How did SRC respond to that? Did it take people by surprise?
- RUTH VICK:
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I think the very fact that it did happen when it happened—
because nobody knew it was going to
happen—was a surprise. But then we began to cooperate with
the students. The students would ask our advice on things, and we would
tell them what we thought. Because at that time we moved from
Sixty-three Auburn. But when the first student marchers went down Auburn
Avenue, we stood and watched them.