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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 C-0031, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
William and Josephine Clement were married in 1941 and first moved to Durham, North Carolina, during the 1940s. Both were born and raised in the South, had always been strong advocates for racial progress, and quickly became involved in community organizations, particularly in support of school integration. Josephine eventually was elected to the Durham City Board of Education in the early 1970s and became increasingly involved in local politics after that. In this interview, both Josephine and William discuss their family histories and cover a broad range of topics while doing so. Josephine speaks at great length about her experiences growing up in Atlanta, Georgia, during the 1920s and 1930s. She emphasizes the examples her parents set for her and her sisters. She explains her father's inclination towards radical politics, his efforts to challenge and break racial barriers, and the presence of strong African American woman role models. In addition, she describes her own education and her strong dedication to her family. William likewise describes his family background, but focuses more on his involvement with the Masons and his work with North Carolina Mutual. Throughout the interview, the Clements stress the importance of confidence and self-esteem for African Americans, as well as the importance of group solidarity in achieving progress for changing race relations.
William and Josephine Clement were both born and raised in the South. They describe their family backgrounds and education. Josephine focuses on race relations in Atlanta and her father's radical politics, while William describes his participation with the Masons and his work with North Carolina Mutual.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is oral history interview for the Southern Oral History program with William and Josephine Clement, June 19, 1986, at their home in Durham, North Carolina. Why don't you begin again, Mrs. Clement, and retrace our steps here.
All right. I was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on February 9th, 1918. My parents were Irene Ophelia Thompson, formerly of Columbus, Mississippi. And my father was John Wesley Dobbs, a native of the state of Georgia; he was born in Cobb County in 1882 but his family had actually moved into Atlanta in 1897. They were married on June 6, 1906. Lived all of their lives in Atlanta, and had a family of six girls of which I am the fourth. I went to school at Atlanta city schools until the sixth grade. I went to Morris Brown one year in the seventh grade and then entered Spelman High, but during the time I was in high school we had the consolidation of the university.
Now there were no public high schools for black children at the time in Atlanta?
There were, but they were not quite adequate. And at that time all of the
colleges ran their own high schools. I also went to private
kindergarten, too, because obviously we didn't have any public
kindergarten. During the time I was in high school they had the
consolidation of the various colleges into Atlanta University and they
gave up their individual high schools and formed the Atlanta University
Laboratory High School. I graduated there in 1933 and entered Spelman
College in the fall and graduated there in 1937. I went to Columbia
University the next year and got a master's degree in home economics
education
Meanwhile, in 1946—oh, I'll go back a little bit—I did teach at the
Morris Brown College in Atlanta for two years during that time. Bill was
1-A in the draft, didn't know when he might have been taken. He was
almost on the verge of going when Roosevelt declared a moratorium. But
anyhow, I taught those two years. Then my second child was born. I had
the first one, Bill, Jr., then Wesley was named for my father, Wesley
Dobbs. And he (Bill) was transferred to Durham, to the home office of
North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company in 1946. We moved here with
my parents. Didn't know very much about Durham; I had been here once. We
were driving through to New York. Of course
During that time, and in the long interval that I had (between children)
I did teach at North Carolina Central University off and on, and mostly
part-time. I taught around my family. I haven't taught in about twelve
or fifteen years. In 1973, I was appointed to the Durham City Board of
Education. In talking to Bill about it he thought it would be a nice
assignment, that I would enjoy it, particularly since it was not an
elective board. Two years into my term the legislature changed it and
made it an elective board. After much deliberation, because in 1975
there were not many black people running for office, and certainly not
many black women, we decided that I would continue. So I ran in 1975 and
led the ticket, there were eleven people on there, men and women, black
What's his name?
He's Dr. Cleaveland Hammonds. He came here from eastern Michigan. He's still here.
After ten years (on the board), and five years in the chair, and I guess
because I was sixty-five, I thought I should retire. And I came off the
board and in about two months was approached by the Durham Committee on
the Affairs of Black People, which is our social action committee which
had sponsored me before. Well, I might say, when I ran the first time I
was sponsored by the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People
which was seeking to get more blacks on public boards and the League of
Women Voters which was seeking to get more women. But anyhow, they asked
if I would run for county commissioner. Bill laughingly told one of the
children that it took me all of five minutes to make up my mind. So I
did run. This was different. I was not
Is he or she a strong candidate?
Well, there are stronger people. He seems to be a person who's not very well known. He's only been in the city two years and people don't generally know him, so. You have to be careful about things like that but he is not one of the better known Republicans, not one of the strong ones. So that occupies most of my time outside of the home. It's the focal point of my work outside the home because I've had to give up most everything else because it generates so much activity in and of itself. But it's very interesting and very challenging and I'm enjoying it.
Have there been women county commissioners before?
One. Oh, pardon me, by the time I came on there had been two. There was one black woman, Eleanor Spaulding.
How is she related to Asa?
His wife.
That's funny, I don't know her as Eleanor. I know her as …
Elna, E-L-N-A.
Wait a minute, I'm talking about Asa Senior and I bet you're talking about …
No, this is Asa Senior. She was the first woman, black or white, on the board of county commissioners. It's still a bastion of white males. Most everywhere you go to the meetings there are a sprinkling of blacks and very few black women on the board. But Elna, let's see, about the same time I was running for board of education, I think she ran for the board of county commissioners. And she served for about ten years. So it was her vacancy that they asked me to fill.
Had Asa been county commissioner before?
Yes, he was, for a short period of time.
He'd been the first black person to serve on the county commission.
Yes, he was the first.
William, why don't you begin then. Is it 1912, am I right?
1912 is correct, May 6, 1912. I was born in Charleston, South Carolina.
My parents: Sadie Kathleen Jones and Arthur John Clement. My mother was
a native of Charleston and my father was a native of Rowan County in
North Carolina. I went to a Catholic school for eight years, and then
from there I went to Avery Institute. Avery is an American Missionary
school. I don't know if you are familiar with the American Missionary
school. They started Fisk University and Tougaloo and so forth, but they
had secondary schools. And I finished Avery in 1930. I
John L. Wheeler?
John L. Wheeler, correct. And I worked with him. And then in 1946 I was
transferred and promoted to agency supervisor and I worked in the home
office. And during that period I worked as agency director,
vice-president. And then I became vice-president in charge of agency
operations. And then I also retired as executive vice-president in
charge of our field operations. I was elected to the board of directors
in 1962 and
Now, in connection with my extracurricular activities, I became involved as soon as I got to Durham, really, in the Durham Committee and also the Scarboro Nursery board which I served, and then got involved with the United Fund (then, it's now the United Way). And in 1970 I was elected president of the United Way, which was really the first black that they had ever elected to serve in that capacity in the South at that time, according to the research that they made. And we had wonderful success. I had a great team. We'd had problems in trying to really reach our goal during the late '60s and we decided to have a conference out at Quail Roost, a group of leading citizens, and we worked out a six-point plan to try to revitalize the United Way and we did. We implemented that program in 1970, and, believe it or not, we raised our goal that year and we have not missed our goal in Durham since that year. Last year, we went to around two million five hundred thousand dollars.
Then I got involved in the scouting. Our sons got involved in scouting,
and I became what we call a division chairman, and they used that term
during that particular period because that kept you from becoming a part
of the council. You were a part of the district and not of the division.
But anyhow, we finally
Then in the Durham Committee I became a member of the education committee and eventually chairman of that committee, and it was during the time that we were suing the city for separate but equal, that was the suit that was being heard. Thurgood Marshall was working with the NAACP; he was the attorney that came down. And in the meantime, in 1954, the Brown decision came down, so that eliminated that.
Then we started working on the matter of integration, and so, you know,
about what went on in Virginia, and North Carolina, and finally, we had
the pupil assignment law passed in North Carolina, and it was our
committee's responsibility to go into sections of Durham to get the
parents to agree to petition the school board for reassignment because
the kids were leaving that community, walking past elementary schools,
coming across to the black community. So we were able to get some of the
parents and finally after a long period of time, I recall the many
visits that we went up to the school board and I can hear the chairman
of the board, now, Mr. Fuller, saying, "Never! Never! Never!" And they
did a lot of things. They tried to start a double
Would this have been in the early sixties, late fifties?
No, this was in the middle sixties, I imagine. During the early sixties.
Josephine, are you on the board at this time?
No, she didn't go on the board until August 1973…
No, another era.
Yeah. There were no blacks on the board at all. It was really interesting. Some of the papers that I turned over to the Southern Historical Society [The Southern Historical Collection], some of the clippings from the papers, we were fortunate to have saved them. I had a very good secretary who really kept files, that's why my files, I think, were in pretty good shape.
So that was quite an experience. We finally got the school to approve six
blacks to be integrated and there were three members on our committee
and we took those three young students to one of the elementary schools
for that whole year. We alternated. And then we got the parents and the
friends, got clothes, remember we got clothes for the girls, and so
forth. That was another really thrilling experience. So then I really
retired more or less from the Durham Committee as chairman. I'm still on
their committee and on the executive committee.
I became involved in education through North Carolina Central. North Carolina Central was made a part of the university system in '72 and I succeeded—gosh, what's his name, the big lawyer—Chambers, Julius Chambers. Julius Chambers was a member of the North Carolina Central trustee board but he then became a member of the board of governors for the university system in '72 and I was appointed to fulfill his unexpired term, which I did. So I served on the board as trustee for ten years—almost ten, nine and a half years— and served as chairman of the trustee board for a period of almost five years. I was elected chairman of the trustee board; that was another very interesting and thrilling experience because we went through some trying times. The university litigation was in effect. You know about that case, and that lasted for a long period of time and finally settled it, worked out an agreement whereby the university decided to set up some goals and so forth. My term expired and I went off the trustee board.
Another very interesting time was the law school got into difficulty and
we were cited by the American Bar Association as to whether or not we
should lose our accreditation. So we were able to get Mr. Strong, he was
a professor at the University of North Carolina law school and it's
known as the Strong Report, and he came and took a look. We worked with
him on that. And they outlined some requirements that we had to meet.
The physical need was a big need because we were meeting in the old
library building on the campus, that's where the school of law
And Governor Hunt got interested in some of the things that I was doing, I suppose, and he appointed me to the State Ports Authority, and I was the first black to serve on that. We had the responsibility of trying to improve our operations in Wilmington and Morehead and I served on that board for about three, four, or five years. And when Governor Martin, who is a Republican, came in, the next day I was released.
In the meantime, I was appointed, when I retired in 1978, I was appointed
by the city of Durham to represent the city on the Raleigh-Durham
Airport Authority. The airport is owned by the four governing bodies,
the city of Durham, the city of Raleigh, the county of Wake, and the
county of Durham. And each agency appoints two representatives, so we
have a board of eight. And I
That brings us up to date.
Oh, I forgot about the Masons, gosh, I forgot that.
We have a family tradition there.
And that's the tradition, really, the connection. My father was a master Mason in Charleston, South Carolina. He was a member of the Nehemiah Lodge. I looked that lodge up the other day when I went down to visit the grand lodge of South Carolina.
But my father-in-law, John Wesley Dobbs, was an outstanding Mason and a
Masonic scholar. And we (Josephine and I) got married. I didn't go into
our marriage because Josephine related that, but we were married in
1941, December the 24th, and our office really was in the Masonic
temple, North Carolina Mutual regional office, and so I was going to
Georgia, we were making a tour through Georgia in 1941 celebrating our
30th anniversary and that's really when I met Josephine. But Mr. Dobbs's
office and we got to be good friends and so forth. And finally, after we
married, and having no sons, he talked with me about Masonry. He told me
that, "Bill, I know you want to be a businessman and you are dedicated
to North Carolina Mutual, and I don't want to interfere with that, but a
little Masonry will not hurt you." And so I accepted that challenge and
became a master Mason, was raised by him in his lodge in Atlanta, H. R.
Butler. And then
So I transferred to Durham and became a member of Doric Lodge, number 28, in 1946. And in 1948 I was elected senior warden and then in '49 I was elected worshipful master of my lodge and served for two years and that makes you eligible to become a member of the grand lodge. And so I started attending the grand lodge of North Carolina and in 1959 the grand master, who has the power to appoint some of his officers, he appointed me as a special deputy grand master and I served in that capacity for fifteen years until 1974. And then he retired as grand master and Bishop Shaw, Herbert Bell Shaw, of the A.M.E. Zion Church, became our grand master and he appointed me deputy. And he died suddenly in 1980 in Indianapolis attending a church convention, and I succeeded him to the office. Now I had to be elected. He died in January; our grand lodge meets in October. And so in October I was duly elected grand master of the jurisdiction of North Carolina, which is one of the largest jurisdictions in the country. We have 20,000 financial Masons. We must have a hundred Masons, but we have 20,000 financial; we have 18,000 Eastern Stars. And so we have a big operation.
That's really one of my big operations now. We're in the process of having our regional meetings. We donate to charity more than $70,000 a year. We have a scholarship fund of $25,000 that we give to North Carolinians who are finishing high school going into college, any college of their choice, and it's male or female. And what we did, we established an endowment of $250,000 and the investment from that. So it's perpetual; we don't have to allocate it every year and vote it. We just allocate the funds from the endowment. And the resources now of the grand lodge are in excess of two and a quarter million dollars. I'm glad you mentioned it because that's really been fantastic.
It's been an important part of your career.
Oh, yes. Particularly in the later years. I've always been involved in Masonry but since I retired and had the time and so forth to give to it, it has really been fascinating and we have a tremendous program, and we are now concerned about helping people. We have an orphanage that we give $20,000 every year. We've given the NAACP $10,000 in the last fifteen years. And we just made a special contribution to the NAACP in connection with their moving their headquarters from New York to Baltimore. And we also give funds to the United Negro College Fund and many other charities in the state and also in the country. Fantastic program.
In the future, there may be people listening to this who aren't aware that in—well, it really begins in the eighteenth century, what Prince Hall founded in 1787, I think.
Well, Prince Hall himself was raised to master Mason in 1775. He was born in Barbados and he came to Boston at the age of fifteen. In 1765 the British regiment was stationed there in Boston protecting their harbor and because of the tea and so forth and all. He was raised by the British regiment in '75. That was one year before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. But the regiment moved on, and these newly-made Masons had no charter. You cannot operate as a Mason without a charter. But he had the foresight to petition the grand lodge of England, because the regiment was an English lodge chartered by the grand lodge of England. And so they granted a charter in 1784. I had the pleasure two years ago of going up to Boston to see the original charter, African Lodge, 459. It's now in a vault; they only bring it out on special occasions. They have it sealed and everything and it's under security. But he had the foresight and so in 1790, the grand lodge of Massachusetts was established and he was elected grand master. And one of the landmarks of a grand master is to issue dispensations, and he issued a dispensation to establish a grand lodge in Rhode Island, in New York, in Pennsylvania, and in New Jersey. And so we trace our origin back to the grand lodge of New York.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
… King Solomon Lodge, number one, and it's still operating. That same
year we established another lodge in Wilmington, Giblin Lodge, number
two. And then the year later,
That's a nice little sidelight because a lot of historians in the future, scholars listening to this or reading the transcript, may not be aware that, as I was going to say, back in the seventeen hundreds, the eighteen hundreds, and on into the twentieth century, that there was a black organization and a white organization; particularly a lot of whites don't realize that there was a separate organization.
They have not come together yet.
Black history is very important because of the legitimacy of Prince Hall.
That's why whenever you see a grand lodge that's named—and Josephine's
father was responsible for this—in the forties, they went around and got
all of the jurisdictions to change the name of their grand lodge to the
Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge, to identify it because we can
trace our legitimacy to the charter that was issued by the grand lodge
of England. You did have three grand lodges in England back in those
times: there was the grand lodge of Scotland
Well, you're talking about the grand lodge of Scotland.
That's a legitimate grand lodge. That's a legitimate grand lodge, because we went down to Trinidad on a visit and my host was a member of the Masonic family, but his charter and history goes back to the grand lodge of Scotland, which is legitimate. But it's very important as far as black history is concerned in America, because this is the only charter that has ever been issued to blacks on the North American continent by the grand lodge of England. And so we feel that we are legitimate. So we refer to persons who are not members of Prince Hall as non-Prince Hall Masons. We don't call them clandestine but non-Prince Hall.
There's a pretty good history, a recent scholarly work, on Prince Hall …
Oh, yes. I have some books here.
… done by a graduate student out at the University of California, Berkeley. And then another done on fraternal organizations in general, looking at Odd Fellows, Elks and others.
Is there a counterpart for women?
Yes, they have auxiliaries. But you know, that's really a continuum from African history; they had those secret societies in Africa.
Oh, yes. It's interesting; we went to the Museum of Natural History in New York and we saw the ritual and so forth. And we went to Africa in '73, and went to Senegal and talked with some. And then "Roots," you know, they talk about it in "Roots."
And we visited a lodge in Liberia.
In Liberia, right. In fact, the lodge that was burned down when they had the coup, remember, we had visited that lodge. It was right there by the hotel. And I don't want to take up much time talking about it but that's a very interesting story because we went over there just to visit. And the gentleman who was there at the time, who was a Mason, he knew Mr. Dobbs personally.
Dad went over there for their liberation in 1957 when they declared their independence.
You're thinking about Ghana, Sweetheart, we're talking about Liberia.
Oh, yes, Ghana, right, OK.
This is Liberia. But he went over there, see, Liberia was free long before that and the Tubmans were all Masons, and Mr. Dobbs was very much involved with them and they made periodic visits. But anyhow, this gentleman knew Mr. Dobbs and he found out that Josephine was the daughter, he stayed with us all day and he was killed in the coup when Liberia had its uprising. He was killed.
He was a graduate of M.I.T.
Streak, was his name. That's another side, that's a story in itself.
Well, while we're talking about Masonry and your father, maybe now is the
time to make this transition and get back to talking about your parents
and your childhood and early memories like that. Tell us a little bit
about your mother and
Yes. My father was born in Kennesaw, out from Kennesaw, in Cobb County.
This is Georgia?
In Georgia, yes. They were poor farming people. His father died and his mother left the two children with the father's parents. She went to Savannah to work. So he grew up with that large family along with some of the younger ones. She did not forget them, though. He always said he could have stayed up there in Kennesaw, but she came back and got them. I presume when they were old enough to take care of themselves, because she had to work and they had to work. They went to Savannah first and then they came to Atlanta. He was fifteen years old when they came to Atlanta. My father was born in 1882. And he was able to attend the academy at Morehouse. Here, again, all of the colleges had their own high schools, and the academy was an outstanding part of their offering. He would like to tell stories about how he would get up early. He worked for a physician by the name of McDougald, who incidentally was a brother to the McDougalds here.
R. L.
Yes. He was the oldest brother in that family and he was a pharmacist. He
had a drugstore and it was my father's job to open it up in the morning,
clean it up, in the winter time to make the fire; in other words, to get
it ready for
My mother had a more middle-class upbringing. Her father was a barber and a businessman. He and his partner owned two barbershops in Columbus—one for whites and one for blacks. And they lived rather well for the little town of Columbus, that they had. My mother was privately educated and was a graduate of Union Academy in Columbus, at sixteen years of age. Got her certificate, her license to teach. But her father would not permit her to leave Columbus. He said if she could get a job in Columbus she could teach, but conditions were very bad.
Was Union a church-related school?
I really don't know anything about it. I'm sorry that I don't.
It no longer exists, does it?
I doubt it. I would doubt it, but that would be interesting to try to find out. But she graduated in 1901.
Do we have her maiden name?
Irene Ophelia Thompson, she was. And her father would not let her go out to teach because conditions were so bad for young unprotected girls, and particularly if they were attractive and my mother was sort of, I guess you'd call, a ? woman type.
Anyhow, she had a sister who was married and living in Atlanta and she would go up to visit her periodically and when her new baby was coming, and she met my father when she was nineteen. They married two years after that. They were very much in love. They had a marriage of fifty-five years. I can remember one day my mother said, "Just think, I'm seventy-five years old and my husband sent me yellow roses." That was her favorite. Very romantic. There were six girls born in my family; they had no sons. (My father was hopeful to the end.)
They were very musical, my mother and father were. I can remember my
father playing the piano. That was a great treat when he sat down to
play the piano. He played in a style of Scott Joplin. As soon as I heard
Scott Joplin's music, you know, when it came back, I thought about my
father and always that syncopated that kind of rhythm. He played by ear.
My mother was a trained musician. She had had piano lessons and she knew
how to read music. And so between the two of them, they kept up with all
of the music. They had a piano when they first married; that was very
important to them, to have a piano. And they loved music. And I can
remember when they would go to New York to see Broadway shows and would
bring sheet music back from all the latest shows. Not so long ago we saw
"Eubie," the life of Eubie
Was there ever any conflict between your father and mother over the style of music, because if she is classically trained, she didn't want the children playing syncopated music?
No, except I can remember my father putting his foot down on a radio—having a radio in the house, he said because we would not play music. Everybody had to take music lessons, beginning at seven. The first four took from a teacher across town. I think the last two took from Ruth Wheeler; here again, the Wheelers were our neighbors in Atlanta. They took from her, but everybody took piano lessons. Singing was very important to us. We sang in the college glee club; we sang in the church choir; whatever music was around, we participated in that. And of course, my sister, Mattiwilda, became a world-renowned operatic star and is still doing some concertizing. But all of us were involved. My oldest sister, Irene, was a very accomplished pianist. She was the only one who followed through with her piano music. She took music and French through Spelman. All six of us graduated from Spelman. Two have the doctorate degree, and everybody else had the master's degree.
In what fields?
Irene was in languages, and she lives here, incidentally. She's the mother of Maynard Jackson, who was the first black mayor of Atlanta. That's an interesting story; I'll come back to that. She taught French; she studied in France at the University of Grenoble and then again at Toulouse.
My second sister, who went to Jackson, Mississippi, got her master's from Atlanta University and became chairman of the language arts area at Jackson College, and there is a building named for her—the Willie Dobbs Blackburn building there on campus.
My next sister, Millicent, taught at Arkansas State and then came back to Atlanta and then taught at Spelman and she just retired in the last two or three years; and she is an authority on Africa, Afro-American history, African art. She was planning to make her eleventh trip to Africa this year, but because of the terrorist situation, she didn't go.
Then I'm the next one. Then Mattiwilda was next. And then my youngest sister, June, is in counseling; she's a marriage and sex counselor. She has her doctorate in education and a master's in counseling from NYU, and has taught at Tennessee State. She was married to Hugh Butts, who was a psychiatrist; they have since divorced. But June trained with Masters and Johnson, and she's now working in Washington.
So we were a very happy family. Spelman was an important part of our
life, because we went there over such a long period of time. And some of
our earliest memories—in fact, I was born in the infirmary on campus at
that time. For a period of time
Maybe we could capture more of Spelman, Atlanta, the myth and reality of early Atlanta.
Well, I had a happy childhood. Unlike some things you read, and as I have thought back on it and looked at it, I think the reason was because we were so severely segregated. We were really protected from some of the more traumatic experiences that some other people had. They had a large community of black people in Atlanta. It has always had a good, strong black community. And later, of course, as you got older, you ran into some of this. My father's philosophy was that you never accepted segregation unless you absolutely had to. That meant you didn't go to theaters, you didn't go places for amusement because there was no pleasure to go in the back door there. If you had to go on the streetcar to go to school that was worth the sacrifice. And he fought segregation for integration at every turn. I can remember when he decided that he was not going in the side door of the terminal station anymore.
This was the bus terminal?
No, it was the train terminal. And he drove up to the front door in his Cadillac and his driver, and got out and walked in the front door. I don't know, what year do you think that was?
I don't know, probably in the fifties. I can remember it, all right.
But everybody was horror-stricken, and all the black porters came to greet him and to take his bags, and he strolled through and went on back and nobody touched him.
This would have been, do you think, before World War II, that early, or would it have been …
It was in the forties.
Gosh, it probably was or late thirties, somewhere in there.
Mattiwilda—remember, she was on her trip back and he alerted Chief Jenkins.
He had a good relationship with … As Grand Master Mason, he had a rule that each Master Mason must be a registered voter, also. This posed a problem for people in rural Georgia trying to get registered. And so they would appeal to the grand lodge and my father and a big lawyer from Atlanta, the best lawyer they could employ, would go to these little places. Sometimes they were successful, sometimes they were not. Trying to help people get registered. Sometimes they were chased out by the Ku Klux Klan. Sometimes the Ku Klux Klan would come to Atlanta looking for him. But he had a good relationship with the sheriff of Fulton County, who told him never to open his door to anybody because they would have to serve a warrant through him, they could not serve it directly. And this saved him, I think.
How do you account for that relationship?
There have always been some good white people.
Not usually the sheriff.
Really!
Chief Jenkins was the chief of police.
I thought he was the sheriff of Fulton County.
I think it was Chief Jenkins.
But Atlanta has been an unusual place. It's been forward, progressive. But my father continued that through the thirties and forties, voter registration. There in about—when did they form the Atlanta Voters League, that was before we married and went to Atlanta—the late thirties?
The late thirties, because it was going very strong in 1940-41.
There were about four hundred registered black voters in Atlanta and my father and attorney Austin Walden, who was a Republican (my father was a Democrat). Let me say this: my father was a Republican all his life, as most black people were, to pay their debt of gratitude to the Republican party. He became dissatisfied with it, and in searching for something better, he moved to the Socialist party with Norman Thomas.
What year would that have been, do you know?
It was before Franklin Roosevelt, so that probably was back in the
twenties. Roosevelt came in the thirties, so probably in the twenties. I
think he said he voted for Norman Thomas twice. Seeking something that
would help people, would better them. There was not the connotation that
you have today with socialism. When Roosevelt came to office in
He was the last person to see Mr. Roosevelt at night, he put him to bed; he was the first one to see him in the morning, you know, because he was disabled.
McDuffie.
So he was able to get my father in, and of course, Mr. Roosevelt was a Mason himself, and they talked about forty-five minutes; they had a good conversation. So my father, as I said, stumped for Roosevelt. But then after Roosevelt went out, he went back to the Republican party. At the time of his death, he was vice-chairman of the Republican Georgia state committee. But anyhow, he and Mr. Walden formulated the bipartisan Atlanta Voters League. Built that up and then began going into other places to build up voter registration. When Maynard ran for office, that was his political base.
This is Maynard Jackson.
Mm-hmm. My oldest sister's son. He was the first grandson of these six daughters.
Your oldest sister, Irene?
Irene. There were no sons in my family, and I think the first three grandchildren that came were girls, and then finally this boy. At the time Maynard was inaugurated, I suppose my father's name was on more lips than Maynard's. People were saying, "Oh, if Mr. Dobbs were only here." I always said, "I'm sure he's here because he wouldn't miss this for anything."
What year did you father die?
He died in 1961, the year they integrated the schools, the city schools in Atlanta. But he was a staunch fighter, a civil rights fighter all of his life.
When you mentioned about the name: he always taught us not to accept anything less. The interesting thing now is I've lived long enough to see that reversed. White people will come in and say, "Well, hello, Mary! Hello, John!" Or, "How do you do, Mrs. Clement?" You know, if they don't know it's a kind of reverse. But anyhow, that part is all right. But he really gave us a sense of self-esteem and self-respect that so many of our black children don't get.
Did that carry over in the schools? You talked about the irony, perhaps, of the complete segregation giving you something of an advantage in this regard.
Yes, because we had black teachers in Atlanta and teaching and teachers, the whole profession was very different then—people took a personal interest. And maybe it was just the times. We've lost some of that now.
Teachers, I imagine, had prestige.
Yes, this is very true, this is very true. Because it meant that you had gone to school. Nobody ever asked you if you wanted to teach. If you were fortunate enough to go to school you taught; that was all there was for you to do.
But, I think of him so often, and the tremendous courage he showed, and
where he got his sense of self-worth, having been born in a barren land
up in Cobb County, reared by this
He also had a love of poetry. We have a letter in his handwriting that he wrote my mother. Do you remember that letter?
Yes.
Penmanship, English, poetry, everything—it was just a marvel. But anyhow, I had a very happy and very pleasant childhood.
Was he a religious man?
Not too much.
Was he out of a Methodist tradition?
Well, actually, his mother was Baptist. I can remember my grandmother
being in the Baptist church. My mother
I can remember that we could always take people home to dinner and being in Atlanta there were a lot of girls in boarding school from different places. We could always bring them. There was a place where people could stop by. He knew people like Adam Clayton Powell. Oh, he came in one day and we heard the piano going and everybody rushed in to see who this was and it was Duke Ellington, he brought him home from Auburn Avenue. He was very cosmopolitan, traveled a lot in his latter days. He went to Africa to the liberation of most of the countries that came about. And just thoroughly enjoyed life. He and my mother both, they had a very good life and lived it to the fullest.
I think we should switch over to and we'll come back because I would like to hear more about Spelman as an institution, your memories from that. And maybe something about sweet Auburn Avenue and black Atlanta.
And I would like to know, too, about the Klan. Were you aware of the danger that your father was in and was that …
Well, I was grown about this time, you see, by the time he was doing this kind of thing. But yes, there was real fear. I was talking to someone the other day when they were talking about terrorism and how glad they were it wasn't in America. And I said, "Oh, but we've had terrorism in America always." I said, "The Ku Klux Klan was a terrorist organization. The express purpose was to keep black people down."
But you know, by being in Atlanta, Atlanta was an oasis and really didn't belong to Georgia. When you got out of Atlanta, I used to drive from Atlanta to Savannah, and my mother would always hate to see me go on that trip but my father would encourage me to go. As I look back on it now, he didn't talk about women's liberation, but he insisted that we all prepare ourselves and we have education, be prepared to work, and he instilled something in us that a lot of women don't have. He wanted us to be married and to be good wives and good mothers and all, but there was a feeling there that women should have a certain amount of independence, I think, that was a little unusual for that time.
Do you think, while we are on it—because this is, I think, a key question that scholars in the future will be interested in—do you think that black women historically have been more independent, and why?
In whatever way they could. Well, they had to be independent, not overtly
but covertly, because the society would not permit black men to play
their rightful roles, and America has always feared black men. But black
women could say
Roosevelt declared that all persons who had thirty years of service could retire. They were trying to create jobs.
But then they blocked him.
That's why he went down to Warm Springs to talk with the president.
He didn't want to retire at that particular time, he wasn't ready. But when he got ready, they blocked him.
And he got to Roosevelt through the valet.
McDuffie.
That's intriguing. And it was at Warm Springs, Georgia, that that took place?
You see, McDuffie was a barber and he worked for Herndon in Atlanta and
when the president started going to Warm Springs, his friends there
wanted to get someone to come
And McDuffie had been a barber for Herndon?
Yes. He worked in …
This is Alonzo Herndon?
Alonzo Herndon, right, on Peachtree Street. And so, he kept on telling the president when he put to bed and so forth, "You know, my grand master's pension hasn't come through, yet." He said, "Well, the next time I go down to Georgia I'd like to meet him." He told him about his Masonry and so forth and all. So finally, that's when he made a trip down to Warm Springs and they arranged this appointment for John Wesley Dobbs to see the president, and he told him about this incident. And so the—
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
…Jim Farley (Post Master General under FDR). And they got the wheels turning, and the next thing he knew, he was officially retired and his pension checks started coming. What happened was, according to Mr. Dobbs's story to me, that he went into the mail service around twenty-one. So he was fifty-one. So it meant that he would get his pension beginning at age fiftyone and such a long period of time to be on pension, and that's why they were really blocking it.
So he was the Grand Master in the Masons at the same time he was working at…
No, no, this was a later period…He always did one or two extra things to earn money; he had a large and growing family and there really was not much that a black girl could do between teaching and nursing work, and he couldn't get summer jobs and things to help out. So he would sell insurance, sell stocks and bonds, whatever, to try to augment his income and help his family.
Did your mother ever get to teach?
No, and you know, after he died, Mama came here to live with me. In his
characteristic fashion, he had arranged for everything. And I found I
got to know my mother better at that time; you know, I was a middle-aged
woman myself, and I guess we could understand each other. She had never
written a check in her life, she had never worked outside the home, and
she'd clearly worked inside the home, because I can remember how Mama
used to sew, she used to fix hats, get these beaver hats in the winter,
straws in the summer, redecorate them and pass them around, the
different ones; and we laugh now, and say sometimes that when we went
out, Mama would have made everything we had on, except our shoes. So she
certainly worked, and did her share, but it was always in the home, and
this was part of the protective quality, I think. My father had lived
through the race riots—well, I can't tell you the disrespect that white
men had for black women, and he always tried to prevent any white man
But it sounds as if he were more protective of your mother than perhaps the daughters—you and your sisters—that he would encourage you to express yourselves…
After we were grown, and everybody went out, he kept his hand on everybody.
After you were grown and married
Did he see you and your sisters as having careers; was this ever broached as a possibility?
Well, teaching, that was the only thing that we'd do; and I think all of us came up more oriented to families than toward teaching. I think I always thought of my family first, and teaching around my family, rather than teaching and looking after the children;—fortunately, I was able to do that, and I'm very thankful that I was. We have a large family, we have six children, and they were spread out; so every time I went back to teaching, there'd be another one, and I'd have an interruption.
He was more the role model, then, than your mother, in your immediate family?
Um … They were very different; both very strong, very strong characters,
but my mother had a very sweet and soft-spoken way, she was a very
gentle person, whereas he was more forceful, and she was completely of
the old school, deferring to his wishes on everything, so that she never
had any problem there. But my mother was an unusual woman, in that she
worked in the home, we had company, I never heard her complain about
Was she a clubwoman; in addition to being an Eastern Star, was she in the National Association of Colored Women, for example?
Well, she was president of the YWCA, and I told this story when I was speaking to the YWCA on one occasion. I thought—well, they were talking about civil rights and integration, and I told them I thought the story of my family illustrated the changes that we had come through. My mother was president of the Phillis Wheatley branch of the YWCA in Atlanta, which was completely segregated. She took a great interest in the Y; I can remember, now, that she gave our Victrola to the Y. We had one of those, with records from Caruso to Bessie Smith. I came here, and somebody told them that I was the Y worker; I was not the Y worker, it was my mother, but anyhow, I couldn't get out of it, so they put me on the board there. And I didn't do a lot outside the home, then. I worked with the Scouts—Bill mentioned the Scouting program—and I had the Cub pack, I was a den mother, and I worked for the PTA, and so forth. But I did go on the board, and that was the time of integration: during the time I served on the board, they integrated the Y—the YWCA—and they put two black women on the central board, and each year, they put two more, to integrate it gradually. That meant I was one of the first two that went on.
They would have been proud of you.
Yes, but then our daughter, our oldest daughter, who lives in Potomac, Maryland, outside of Washington, has just finished a term as the president of the greater metropolitian YWCA. So I thought that was interesting, and told the story.
Do you remember black women in Atlanta who were leaders and role models, that you looked up to?
Yes. My mother had a black physician, with our last two children, Dr. Georgia Dwelle.
How do you spell the last name?
D-W-E-L-L-E. Georgia Dwelle. She had her own clinic.
Do you know where she took her training—at Meharry Medical School in Nashville.
I don't know… (to her husband): do you?
No, I didn't know her very well.
But she had a clinic on Boulevard, and Mattiwilda and June were born there, I remember.
I can remember black women in Atlanta as teachers, businesswomen,
clubwomen, like my mother, who presented themselves well, dressed well,
were leaders in the church, those activities. Atlanta was a great
society town; there were a lot of wealthy people, black people, in
Atlanta. I had a friend who I grew up with, lived about two blocks from
me, and we were classmates all the way through, whose father was a
physician. The mother had her own car (that's back when I was growing
up), and she would take us places. Not many black families had two cars,
and not many black women drove, in those days. And she
I think maybe we'd better finish up, and let you (to William Clement) have the mike for a while.
Well, I was just thinking, really, both of us have had really strong family backgrounds. My mother, as I said, was a native of Charleston, and she finished Avery Institute, same school that I had graduated from, in 1891. That's her graduating exercise program; I went back there and got it. My father, as I mentioned, was a native of North Carolina. He went to Johnson C. Smith; it was Biddle University at that time. And he went there in 1901.
And this is in Charlotte.
Charlotte, North Carolina. And he graduated from college in 1905. And he walked from Rowan County, which is about forty miles, to Charlotte, in order to get his college education.
My grandfather and grandmother on my paternal side were very strong persons. I knew them better than my maternal grandparents. My maternal grandmother lived with us, she worked for some white people down on the Battery in Charleston (that's downtown) but during the time that I was young, coming up, she did not work, and she really lived across town, and finally lived with us, and died with us, with my mother.
But my paternal grandparents, both of them were slaves. They were slaves
up around Hickory, North Carolina, and when the Emancipation
Proclamation was signed, they left the plantation, going north; they got
as far as Rowan County, which is about
Then he came back and gave a part of that land to the Presbyterian
Church, and he became a member of that church, and was a ruling elder in
that church, sixty-five years; until I reached the age of fifteen, my
brother and I—incidentally, I had one brother and one sister; both of
them are living—we went up there, my brother and I used to go up to
Cleveland to work with my grandfather on the farm. We got there in time
to lay by the crop, to do the last plowing and so forth, but our biggest
assignment was—he had customers that he furnished wood for, in the town
of Cleveland, North Carolina, and he knew—the grates in each room had a
fireplace—and he knew the size that we would cut the tree down, and saw
it back and forth. And then we would take
So that was a tremendous experience, and he told us a lot; I'm sorry now that I didn't really record a lot of that, because he was an unusually—and my grandmother was very unusual—she developed a cleaning business. I don't know if you've ever seen clothes cleaned using gasoline and salt, mixing. And those customers would come by and leave their clothes the first part of the week, and she would clean them and so forth, pressed them, and they would come back on the weekend and pick them up.
Kind of early dry cleaners.
Yeah, right. And then they were very religious, particularly my grandfather, and in the rural areas, they had church services every other Sunday, maybe at the Presbyterian church the first and third, and the Presbyterian church the second and fourth. But anyway you had church. The church is still there now. Incidentally, we still own that property. Been in our family now since 1870.
My father was a very industrious person. He always was very careful and
conservative with his money. And one of the first things he did, he
bought an additional farm for his parents, for his grandfather to farm,
in order to make a livelihood, because the tract that my grandfather had
bought was around eleven or twelve acres. But then my father bought this
hundred-acre tract, which was about three miles from Cleveland, down
going toward
Now, my father was very, very interested in extra-curricular activities in Charleston, particularly the YMCA. And my mother, incidentally, was involved in the YWCA. I can recall as a youngster, going with her—she was the president of the board in Charleston, and I would go with her—we didn't have a babysitter, so you had to go with your parents to a meeting. And she'd put me in a room, and give me a little something to do while she was in the meeting. Then my father was very much interested in the YMCA, and really, was responsible for bringing all of the concert artists: Marian Anderson, the Jubilee Singers, the Johnson Trio, Hazel Harrison—all these are names I just happened to think of—that's how he raised the money for the YMCA to support their programs and so forth. So he was a very interesting person.
But the Dobbs family, when I came into the Dobbs family, in 1941, as I
said, I had been widowed, I was only twenty-nine years of age, with this
baby of four years of age, the Dobbs family just took us in. I remember
courting Josephine—she was just twenty-three—I said, "you know, you've
got a difficult assignment, to learn how to love not just one person,
but two," and to take on this responsibility at that age. And my mother
really wanted this daughter to stay with her, but somehow, I made a
decision that she was going with us. And fortunately, it was a good
decision, and my father—I'll never forget—he finally told us it was the
best decision. We got married in Atlanta, we went to Charleston, got
Alexine, and brought her right back to
Family people.
Family people. And June and Mattiwilda. They were just teenagers. And they took Alexine over. And then we had these two boys, and the others came along.
But he had a very close family relationship, and I think that has influenced our family. We've been married forty-five years, but we have developed a very close family. They believed in educating; we've done the same thing. Our oldest daughter finished Spelman, went to the University of Iowa and got her master's in speech pathology. Then our son went to Morehouse College, and he finished his training and went to the Wharton School and got his M.B.A. The next son finished Morehouse, and