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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 G-0028, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Lucy Somerville Howorth was born in Greenville, Mississippi, in 1895. Howorth recalls her mother's political activism as a Mississippi state legislator and as a suffragist. Her mother's leadership and political beliefs strongly informed Howorth's own sensibilities: she recalls that even as a child, she was aware of gender inequality believed that women should have legal and political equality. By the 1910s, Howorth had become involved in the women's suffrage movement. She helped to organize an Equal Rights Club for women while she attended Randolph-Macon Woman's College from 1912 to 1916. During World War I, Howorth lived in New York City, attending graduate school at Columbia University in psychology and economics, working for the Bureau of Allied Aircraft, and working for the YWCA industrial department. In 1920, Howorth decided to become a lawyer and since Columbia did not admit women students to law school, she returned to Mississippi to attend the University of Mississippi law school. One of the only two women law students at Mississippi at the time, Howorth graduated at the top of her class while actively involving herself in school activities. Following her graduation, Howorth practiced law, married Joseph Howorth, another southern lawyer, and became a judge. In 1932, during the Great Depression, Howorth successfully ran for the Mississippi state legislature, where she served until 1936. In 1934, Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed her to serve on the Board of Veterans Appeals, a position she held until 1943. Following World War II, Howorth worked actively to get women appointed to federal positions. Throughout her career, Howorth was involved in numerous women's organizations, including the YWCA, the American Association of University Women, the National Association of Women Lawyers, and the Professional and Businesswomen's Club. She describes her involvement in these organizations, her perception of the women who led them, and how these organizations evolved over the years.
Born in 1895, Lucy Somerville Howorth was born and raised in Mississippi. An activist for women's rights from an early age, Howorth was actively involved in the campaign for women's suffrage before she became a lawyer, a judge, and a politician. She describes her involvement in numerous women's organizations, her perceptions of the women who led those organizations, and their evolution over the years.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is Constance Myers interviewing Mrs. Lucy Somerville Howorth in Monteagle, Tennessee on June 20, 1975. Mrs. Howorth:
I wish to make a statement similar to the one that I made when Delta State University initiated a series of tape recordings. It is to this effect, that I have made many mistakes, I have committed blunders, I have done things that I wish I hadn't done and not done some that I should have, but I am not the type to go dwelling on errors. I think that life has to be lived positively and affirmatively. If I could learn from a mistake, I tried to do so. Otherwise, it was washed out. This may make my tape sound like a pompous egotist, and if so, it just has to be.
Thank you, Mrs. Howorth. Well said. Can you remember how you first became aware that equal rights for women was actually an issue?
Well naturally, I imbibed that with my early sitting at the knees of my
mother. One of my earliest recollections is sitting by her desk, she
would be writing and addressing envelopes, and I would arrange in little
stacks one leaflet of each color. They used to publish these little
leaflets in pink and yellow and white and blue and she would want to
insert in an envelope a set. My recollection is of playing with those
and of course, I learned the colors, I learned to assemble papers in an
orderly fashion and a good deal. But I was helping her to do whatever
she happened to be doing at the moment in the way of a public cause. I
just don't ever remember when I I didn't know that there was a question,
because the right to/vote was obviously The
Woman's Journal, you'll know that and will have come across it.
I used to read it everytime. I was and am an omnivorous reader, I don't
care what it is, if it is printed, I pick it up and read it. As a child,
I read all of those things that were probably beyond me, but anyhow, it
made a dent.
Were you raised in a politically conscious household generally speaking? Was your family aware of many other political issues and involved?
Oh yes. They were not political in the sense of being candidates. The first candidate in our family was my mother in 1923, but they always knew the candidates, they always knew the issues, they always discussed them. At our dining table, the conversation revolved around public issues, not around local gossip as to who had just gotten married or who_was going with whom or little petty things happening at the school. The conversation was on the level of public activities and issues and what was in the latest newspaper. Our house was full of newspapers. We had the Memphis paper, sometimes the Jackson paper, sometimes the New Orleans paper and sometimes the St. Louis paper.
What about New York and Washington?
No, I don't suppose that anybody in town took The New York
Times. Certainly, I was not aware of The New York
Times until I went to college. Oh, I knew that there was such a
paper, but I mean for any reading in the scope of it and so on. But when
I went to college, I discovered it and have read it ever since all my
life. I subscribe to the Sunday paper now.
In the community of Greenville, were there sufficiently large
I wouldn't say that there was any large number, but there were people. I have never found, and I don't know whether in her researches that Mrs. Meredith found out much about a Mrs. Mount, who moved away before I was old enough to know, but who seemed to have had a great influence on the women. I don't know what became of her or where she moved to.
I don't recall that name at all in the suffrage literature.
She is the one who introduced my mother to the homeopathic medicine and she . . . .
I see. Do you recall her first name at all?
No, I don't. You know, you don't think as you grow up to ask people those things and you get your mind on other things. But she seems to have been one that kind of stirred women up.
Mrs. Mount.
In Greenville, in the 1880's and 1890's. But I didn't suggest her name, I think, to Mrs. Meredith.
And she moved away, you believe, because you didn't hear of her subsequently?
No. I have no recollection of ever seeing her. I suppose I did, but it was before I was recalling my observations.
Were your parent's views, then, different somewhat from those that were typical of the community?
We have to make a distinction between my father and my mother. He was a
conventional Virginian who had moved to what was essentially a frontier
type of community. It always went hard with him. He joined the Methodist
Church,
And the absence of a reserve?
Yes. That was in her contacts with people. Her personal character and life were distinctly reserved.
Yes.
So, she had the adventurous mind and she was a little more willing to take a chance, which is the dominant attitude of these cotton planters who could in one year, make enough off of their crop to pay for their land and many of them were real gamblers, as well as gambling in their lives against flood and malaria and yellow fever and all sorts of things coming in. She was more of that type. So, there was a difference. But insofar as the community interest and being concerned with what developed in the community, they were both concerned.
Did your father disapprove of your mother's suffrage activity?
Well, that would not be the word, because I don't think that would have
gotten far, but he was a man who could not understand. You know, there
are men, you have found them, who with the best will in the world, can't
understand what it is about. Now, there are other men who do. My
husband, he understands and my father never lifted a word in opposition
and I am sure that if a vote had come, he would have voted for suffrage
for women. But as to
The desire for equal citizenship?
He thought, you know, "they have everything." It is partially a lack of imagination. That is, the kind of imagination that makes one person understand another person. Not the kind of imagination that can construct a story.
An empathetic imagination.
Yes. That's a good phrase.
Although your parents differed, still they doublessly projected a certain image before the community.
Oh, yes.
A unified image before the community.
I don't think that the rest, my two brothers are dead now and I never discussed this with my sister, but I don't think that they were aware. They left home early and I don't think that they sensed anything of a lack of sympathy or whatever you want to call it, but there certainly wasn't anything publicly. It was getting along happily and satisfactorily.
There were no repercussions in the community because of the suffrage activity? Or were there?
Oh, at times, yes. There were plenty of rows that went on, you know.
Can you tell about one or two incidents?
I don't know that I can. It's hard to pin those things down, you know.
There wasn't any case of open hostility. Now, you are writing in South
Carolina, and you have the same thing there, that at the end of the
Civil War period, you had the white people who were terribly poor and
what you call deprived now, but none of them ever knew that word and
didn't have that
That's the whole story, I think.
You see, her father had. . . .
He had been outstanding in the community.
Her father had been a colonel in the Civil War. He had been one of the four men in Mississippi who signed a declaration of freedom from the carpetbag rule and called on the other citizens of Mississippi to throw off the yoke. His daughter could do no wrong, really. They would mutter and wish that she wouldn't stir up the women and stir up the temperance work and try to close the saloons and this, that, and the other.
This is the same story that I found in South Carolina, of course.
Do you recall if your mother ever told you how she became interested in women's rights?
No. And I don't know that she pinned it to any one thing. Now, she had said that Frances Willard, who came to Mississippi and inspired Belle Kearney and inspired my mother and other women, that when she said that the women couldn't get anything done until they had the right to vote, then I think that is really what pinned my mother's mind to that point, that that was basic.
The vote wasn't to be an instrument for further reform?
No, and that, I think, a lot of people ought to understand. It would be used as an instrument for reform, but it was a basic right. My mother had a great sense of justice and so did these other women.
A twofold purpose, as a basic right and as an instrument.
Then, after you got it, you would use it. But she was a bit like I am, people would say something about how they are going to use the vote and I said, "Nobody asked my brothers how they could use the vote and I have the right to use mine exactly as I please."
It is nobody's business. She had a legal mind, her father offered to let her come into his law office and read law, which was an outstanding thing to do.
Why did she not do that?
She didn't do it, she said, because she felt that she should go back to Greenville, her father was living in Jackson, but her grandmother lived in Greenville and was getting old and feeble and she was the only descendant of that particular grandmother and therefore, she wanted to spend as much time as she could with her. That is the reason that she gave, and I assume that it was the reason. There might have been reasons of a more philanthropic type, she was religious and she had what you call now a sociological urge to do some good and that reading law in her father's office and then doing some pure law business, that was a little more on the side of pure business than her nature would respond to.
What about her children?
Well, of course then, she was not married.
That's right.
She had an interesting little episode. I don't think that I told Mrs. Meredith this. When she was a girl, must have been about fourteen, she was on a steamboat, going from Greenville to Vicksburg to there take the train back home to Jackson and there happened to be on the steamboat a member of the faculty of Vassar College. This, I guess, was about 1876 . . . when was Vassar founded? In the '70s, wasn't it?
I don't recall which decade.
Well anyhow, this member of that faculty tried to persuade her to go to Vassar to college. Something about her just flashed. So, she told her father about it and he said that she could. And again, she said that the reason that she didn't was because of this grandmother, that she felt that this grandmother would feel that she was deserting the South or something. In later years, she sometimes played with the idea of how different her life might have been if she had gone.
Something of this anecdote appears in the papers up at Radcliffe. There is a reference to her loyalty to the South and to Mississippi, rather than to the grandmother.
If she wrote anything herself, she would have left her grandmother out, because you see, that was what she considered a strictly personal relationship which she would never have gone into except in conversation with someone like me, you know.
Yes. I wonder when she first became aware that there were women's organizations to promote suffrage and equal rights for women? Do you have any recollection?
I don't know, but I think that she first ran into it through the home mission work of the Methodist Church, in which she was very much interested. She went to some meeting at which she met the leaders and I think that she read the newspapers and all. But Frances Willard, I think, is the one that really converted her to activity and shifted her major activity from the Methodist Church and the women in the church. But she used to boil at that even in the early days, because when she went to one of the first of these meetings, she found out that the bishops were insisting on the right to tell them how to spend the money and she didn't like that one bit.
One anecdote that I think comes from your papers was the one that [laughter]The
Southern Lady, about the minister worrying about women's prayer
groups, "I wonder what on earth they will pray for."
I ran across that, it was actually in a book. I have seen it attributed
to several things, but I picked it up in New York when I was with the
YWCA. You see, that was another issue, could the women meet without the
minister being present? I was just burned up once in Washington. They
asked me to go an Episcopal church,
Did you ask why?
I knew why, but I said, "You aren't a group of children and you should run your own affairs."
Yes, I know that you knew why, but sometimes this brings the question right out and makes them state it.
That's true, of course, all of the churches, I think, were pretty much that way and now, I don't think that the Methodists do and maybe the others don't.
I think that women have a great deal more freedom to function without male supervision in the churches these days. You were born, virtually, with the suffrage association in Mississippi.
Yes, July 1, 1895.
I think that the suffrage association was born in about March and I think that Carrie Chapman Catt came and toured the state.
She came, whether that year, I do not know, but the records
She came that year, I've forgotten the month, but it's a significant fact, I think.
I heard Mrs. Catt make her last speech at the Cause and Cure of War, when it was dissolved and then I went to New York when they had that big tribute to her.
Was this the Women's Centennial, or something of that sort? I read the newspaper account of that and saw her picture there and read that she was disappointed with the manifesto.
Yes.
Or declaration, I believe.
They had something, yes. It was all cooked up to honor her, really.
She deserved it.
She did, she was a very able and inspiring person.
Do you know if the question of women's voting had ever been raised in an official deliberated party in the state of Mississippi before 1900?
Yes, it was raised. I don't recall now, I don't have any notes with me, but it was raised in the constitutional convention of 1890.
Was it raised in 1868, by any chance?
I don't know. I would doubt it.
But it was raised in 1890.
It was raised in 1890, now. . . .
Do you recall what individual brought the question to the body?
No, but all of that has been written up somewhere. Did you run across an article written by a woman out in Texas about four years ago on Mississippi and the suffrage movement?
She's written a number of articles of that nature.
I wondered why she hadn't gotten in touch with me and I started to write and make some comments on some of her comments with which I didn't altogether agree, but then, it takes time to do those things.
This is Dr. A. Elizabeth Taylor?
I think it is. But in there, she used, as my recollection goes, the constitutional convention and the bringing up the matter of women. She puts it on the stand that it was a possible way of helping to alleviate the effect of the Negro voting. She dwells on that a good deal.
Well, this was a position taking by Belle Kearney and it was a position taken by Kate Gordon, according to the most recent historical literature.
They did, but what I object to in her article and in these others stressing that, is that when you are in the middle of a fight, you take every argument that you can think of and then after it, if you win that fight, then you begin to trim off what was essential and what wasn't and what you meant and what you just seized on, so that I think both Belle Kearney and Miss Kate Gordon are put in a rather unflattering light in stressing that argument.
It has been stressed, though, in recent historical scholarship, I think unfairly.
Yes, and also to take people out of the context of their times. Now, as I recollect, my mother never got into that, but I don't think she got into it because of any feeling of what is now called civil rights, but she didn't get into it because she didn't think that it was a good, sound argument. At least, that is what seventy years later, I think.
Did your mother and the suffrage movement have many supporters active in political life, either state or national political life, from Mississippi?
I wouldn't say so. They had more than was generally expected in Massachussetts, for example, but . . . and they had some quite influential people, mostly men, because they were the only influence that counted. But it was always an minority movement. Now, one year, an editor made a charge that nobody was interested in the suffrage activities and that there wasn't anything written about it. So, my mother subscribed to every county paper in Mississippi and I cut out every clipping for about six months and she bought yard goods and I pinned those clippings on and it went all the way around a large room and she took that on her trips to demonstrate the wide interest in Mississippi in what went on.
Was there a state senator, for example, maybe just a single one. This is what I really mean, or maybe a representative, an assemblyman?
Well yes, there were several men in the legislature and several in the state senate. Now, you know, I would hesitate to use their names because . . . well actually, this cousin, Vann Boddie, he voted some and helped Mama some and there were several. There was a man from up in Macon and over the state. The movement had some good support.
And what about in the Congress, from Mississippi?
Of course, Vardaman was possible, I remember that they put him down as possibly voting. The older senators, none of them and Pat Harrison, of course, he was building himself up and was on the popular side as far as Mississippi was concerned, but once women got the vote, Pat Harrison was very helpful and friendly and so on.
I noticed that you had a continuing friendship with him.
Not only I, but a number of women.
What were these men like that tended to support suffrage? What did they
do? Were they attorneys, were they editors, could they use their
Well, you take the editor of the paper in Greenville, Mr. L. Pink Smith. Basically, he liked Mama, he was in favor of suffrage, but when the heat was turned on him, he would go and take cover, you see, locally. When whoever was financing that paper or maybe just somebody that he recognized as having a good deal of local influence . . . but they were lawyers and there was a lawyer at home, a very distinguished man, R.B. Campbell. He was always friendly with Mama and helped her and advised her and checked her if she was making a legal statement on anything. He was friendly to her and he never stepped out and made a speech for her, but he may have introduced some speakers sometimes. There was a great deal of friendliness.
Any editorials in support of suffrage?
Oh yes, there were some.
Was suffrage activity reported fairly?
In most of the instances, every once in awhile, there would be some unfair reporting, but my recollection is that there wasn't much.
And there wasn't a blackout on suffrage news?
No, as I said, that demonstration. . . .
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
. . . didn't need glasses and until you get used to wearing them, you don't like to.
In addition then, to the men in politics who supported suffrage activities in Mississippi, you had some editorial friends, some editors. . . .
Now, these were for my mother.
Your mother's supporters.
You are still back with her.
Right. What about the merchants in the community, the early rising industrialists in the community? Did they take a position and were they vocal at all on this question?
They probably took a position in private, but insofar as my mother was concerned, they were always friendly. She would go around and she would get all of them to contribute if she was having a public speaker there, to get expenses for renting a hall and that kind of thing. Whether they were for it or against it, she could wheedle money out of them. It was a small, friendly community, you know.
How big was Greenville, then?
If you ran across, which you must have, that speech I made at Randolph [Randolph-Macon Woman's College], "From the Surrey to the Atomic Age," I gave the figures there. That speech has it, but I don't recall them, but it was a small community. It was very different from these things now. There wasn't the meaness and there wasn't the fear that is so common now.
I see that Greenville is in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, is it not?
It's in Mississippi, it's the Yazoo Mississippi Delta. People get confused because technically, the delta is the mouth of the river down in Louisiana.
I don't think that I am confused in this case, because I think of the delta that is formed by the confluence of these rivers.
It is the Yazoo river flowing southwestward into the Mississippi and this
begins south of Memphis. Memphis is on a bluff and about twenty miles
Yes. I have been reading V.O. Key, Southern Politics in
State and Nation and there is this geographical deliniation of
Mississippi political patterns, you know. I was going to ask you a
question about suffrage in connection with this geographical situation.
Did you find a particular area of Mississippi more receptive to the
notion of equal rights for women, did your mother find this?
I think not. I think there were little pockets here and there, as I mentioned, Macon over on the eastern part of the state it was a friendly community. It's in what they called the prairie section. And around Clarksdale, Mississippi, it was quite friendly. That's in the Delta. So, of course, as I said, little pockets here and there. And out somewhere that you would think would be mostly narrowminded, Vardaman and Bilbo types, you would get some friends.
But there was little crossing over boundaries in most instances, wasn't there, as with other political issues?
Do you remember suffrage meetings after the movement was reborn in 1911 or 1912? You were about the age to be aware.
Oh, I went to several of the state conventions and acted as a page and
then in the year before I went to college, the spring of 1912, Dr. Anna
Howard Shaw came and I went to the state convention where she spoke and
then she came . . . well, maybe the convention was in Greenville, but
anyhow, she spoke in Greenville. Then when I went on to college that
fall, she came to Lynchburg to a meeting and spoke and I arranged,
freshman girl that I was, I stirred them up and arranged to have her
come out to the college. Now, there's
Well, it was a touchy issue. This was in about 1912?
This was the fall of 1912 and I found out, or somebody helped me out, because I was a freshman, that the rule of the college was that the seniors could entertain anybody that they wanted in what was called the Senior Parlor. So, some of the seniors agreed that Dr. Anna Howard Shaw could speak in the parlor and we had a reception for her and we had them hanging out the windows.
You used your influence with the members of the senior class, I guess.
Well, my sister had graduated the year before, so I didn't go up there as an unknown. I am still thrilled to this day that when the car came up with Dr. Shaw and she stepped out, I came up and started to introduce myself, she said, "Why child, I know you." You see, she remembered from Greenville.
Can you characterize her? Somehow, can you give a little descriptive paragraph?
Oh, she was one of the most charming people that I have ever known. She was witty and friendly and warm and eloquent. She was the eloquent voice of the suffrage movement so far as I am concerned.
I think that others concur with this.
And then. . . .
There has been some critcism of her organizing ability.
Yes, that was the argument used to get her to step down and let Mrs. Catt come in to do the final victory.
Was this a good decisiobn in your view?
Well, I think that it was, because it was one of those things where Mrs.
Catt's friends wouldn't follow Dr. Shaw and therefore to prevent a
schism . . . you see this thing time and again in public life, that one
leader is not . . . well, Lyndon Johnson, he said that he couldn't bring
unity to the country and I think that he was correct. So, he stepped
aside. What we got in return was something else, but we will skip that.
[laughter]
It was a strategic move politically?
Yes.
You don't think that the thing could have been achieved had Anna Howard Shaw remained president?
Not if the friends of Mrs. Catt wouldn't have been whole hearted, whereas the friends of Anna Howard Shaw did go whole heartedly.
It's the first time that I have ever heard it expressed that way. Thank you.
You see, I was at that convention. You see, my mother was at that time one of the vice-presidents.
I was going to ask you if you had been to a national convention?
Yes, and I was a senior in college and we had this Equal Rights Club, you see, affiliated from Randolph-Macon and so, I went. My mother said that she wanted me to have the experience of a national meeting and I went as a delegate from the Randolph-Macon chapter of the college.
Where was this meeting held?
Washington, at the Willard Hotel. So, I was all ears and eyes and I knew from mother the undercurrents and I watched the whole proceedings.
This was about 1916, in October?
October, 1915.
1915.
I went up . . . it has been very helpful to me, and I hope to other people. I went up the elevator one day and Dr. Shaw was in the elevator. Someone spoke to her and said, "Dr. Shaw, are you ever nervous when you speak?" She said, "Always, my dear. Until I begin, I never know whether I will be able to make a sound."
Mrs. [Eulalie] Salley had the same experience when she spoke in Aiken, [S. C.] when Dr. Shaw spoke in Aiekn. Dr. Shaw said to Mrs.Salley, who was to address her on the stage, "I'm frightened, I'm scared to death. I am always this way before a speech. Aren't you, dear?" And Mrs. Salley said, "Why heavens, no. I just talk off the cuff all the time."
I have two theories about that. One is that you do not reach your audience unless you are so tense and nervous yourself, so in the projection, you need that nervous tension. So many young women especially, you know, say, "Oh, I can't get up in front of an audience," so I tell them that. I say that one of the greatest orators of all time had this experience.
You are talking about Dr. Shaw?
Yes. Oh, of course you get so that you can stand up in an ordinary meeting and make a motion without getting any nervous fits. I think that probably Dr. Shaw's nervousness was enhanced in the South, because all these people in the Middle West and New England and all were forever warning her, "Be careful down in the South, they are different and you will say something wrong." And so on. That is rather interesting that you ran across the same comment.
It is. So, you traveled with your mother some for suffrage. Did you travel around the state of Mississippi as she organized?
No, I did not travel with her on suffrage trips. I only went occasionally with her to a convention, or a set meeting. You see, there is a distinction.
Yes, there is. But she did do traveling within the state as an organizer?
Yes, she did quite a bit of it.
And she did other things too, as an organizer?
I don't know whether this appears in any of her papers, but she and Mrs.
McClurg of Greenwood, were on a tour of the state, organizing and
speaking and on the train this particular day, it was one of these local
trains you know, there was a group of Millsaps College boys. They were
on their way to Jackson, they had had a ball game or something. So, they
saw the banners that my mother and Mrs. McClurg had, "Votes for Women."
So, they began making some remarks and booing and cutting up as students
will do. There was the old train "butch" they called him, the man or boy
who went around selling candies and pop and so on. Mama signaled this
man when he came along and asked him what it would cost to buy
everything that he had. This was fifty years or more ago. He said, I
think, five dollars or something like that. So, she handed him the money
and said, "Take this to those boys back there and give them everything
that you have." So, he did and then out came cheers, "Votes for Women.
Hurrah! Hurrah!" [laughter]
What superb political sense she had. [laughter]
A question came to my mind when we were talking about your Randolph-Macon days. In 1912, Dr. Shaw wasn't permitted to speak to the student body assembled.
No.
But in 1915, a chapter of the collegiate Equal Rights Association had formed?
That's right.
A lot of transformation had taken place on that campus. When did this happen?
Well, we formed that as soon as I hit the campus!
Yes, but it had to be chartered by the administrators.
Oh no, not then. This was a simple day. [laughter]
You were behind the organizing?
Yes.
But there were others?
Yes, we had quite a nice group.
I mean, that initiated this project, that set up that chapter?
And of course, I had a legal turn of mind, I didn't know what it was, but anyhow, I wanted to get us officially established. I knew that we were subversives, you see. But the student government at Randolph-Macon, they had a very strong student government association and so it adopted a rule that organizations should be set up on a points system and that one person could only have an office in so many points. In other words, if an organization rated one point, being president of it would be one point and the rule was that you couldn't have more than ten points. That prevented one particular person from holding all the offices.
And diverting too much attention from school work, too.
Well, it was one of these kind of democratic moves and equalizing things in distributing honors and responsibilities. Of course, if one girl was president of everything, none of them got any attention from her. So, I had gotten on the student government by that time and when they drew up the list of what would have so many points, I got the Equal Suffrage group, whatever they called it, to be put on that list. So, from then on, we were a legally recognized group by the student government and the faculty could go hang as far as I was concerned, because we would fight to the death for the right of the student government to recognize organizations.
How do you account for this? In those papers up at Radcliffe, there is a little list of your accomplishments, your memberships in those early school years and any affiliation with a college Equal Suffrage club doesn't appear. There is no reference to it. The Franklin Literary group appears, and a number of other things appear, but not any reference to this. I didn't know you were a member.
I was the sponsor of it. It wasn't in the annual, ever, I don't think. That's my recollection and I wouldn't be positive, my annual has been lost, so I haven't looked at one. But we had quite a lively one. I remember that Cole Blease was an awful governor of South Carolina, and one day he announced that he was pardoning 1800 or something like that and so, I took that and made a big poster. "All of these men can vote, but the South Carolina woman can't."
About the same time, he was involved in the firing of the first woman physician hired in the state mental institution, seeing to her firing. I see that you had a similar incident take place in Mississippi. Can you tell about that?
I don't know, I remember that it happened, but I don't recall anything
about it. We had another thing at Randolph-Macon and that was Mary
I think that Ella Harrison reports similar events down in Mississsippi, when she was organizing down there.
Oh, yes.
A person would be engaged to address a group on a literary matter and then would go off into suffrage.
So, we knew a good deal about subversive activities. [laughter]
Tell about some of the Mississippi suffragists. We've mentioned Belle Kearney several times. What background did she spring from?
Well, she sprang from a background of one of the strong Mississippi families. Her father was a distinguished man and was pretty well wiped out by the Civil War. I knew Miss Kearney very slightly and when you read that speech, you will see the little that I know about her.
You saw her a few times.
Oh, yes. I saw her. I saw her and went in and congratulated her the day that she was sworn into the state senate and I saw her after I married and moved to Jackson. She was spending most of her time in Jackson, so I saw her with some frequency.
Was she a professional woman, or was she simply an inspired. . . .
No. Have you read her book, The Slave-Owners'
Daughter?
No.
I gave a copy to Radcliffe. They are out of print and hard to find.
Well, it is probably available near where I live.
It would be available from. . . .
From interlibrary loan.
Yes. But she had practically no formal education and I think that she was sixteen when she organized her little school. She herself said that she only went to school through the third grade. But of course, her home was a home of culture and had probably a good library and so she organized that little school and then she went to Jackson to hear Frances Willard. So, that was where she found her niche and became a professional member of the staff of the WCTU, eventually.
Oh, she went from WCTU into suffrage, too.
Back and forth. But she was a professional worker and she was the first American woman to take a world wide lecture tour and then during World War I, she went over to. . . .
What did she talk about on that lecture tour?
She talked about . . . I don't know, I never have read one of her speeches, but I would assume that she talked on civic subjects and women and the part women should play and probably the evils of alcohol.
I wonder what kinds of audiences she addressed?
I don't know. I would think that maybe her reports are up there in the WCTU papers in Evanston. Her papers must be there.
Probably.
She wrote voluminously. I know that my mother would occassionally get a letter from her. My mother was very telegraphic in her style and Miss Belle was very flowery.
Well, what about Mrs. Ben Saunders? Do you remember her?
Oh, I loved Mrs. Ben Saunders.
What was her first name? I think that she was president of. . . .
Yes, she was. She was the president of. . . .
All I have is Mrs. Ben F. Saunders.
She married again late in life and I saw just about a month ago, ran into a niece of hers and she said something . . . well, I believe that she was down there at the Historical Society and she asked me if I remembered Mrs. Saunders, her aunt. I said, "Oh, of course." She apparently, this niece, regretted this late marriage. Mr. Saunders died fairly early and Mrs. Saunders was a widow a long time. She was a very bright person and she had a good deal of business ability. She was not one of these national, outstanding leaders, you know, but she was deeply interested in the suffrage movement. She was a woman of considerable means.
It seemed to require that when you virtually had to foot the bills yourself.
Yes, you had to foot all the bills yourself. She came to me, consulted me as a lawyer, to draw her will at one time and of course, I didn't have to know how much property she had to draw the will at that time, but she was a woman of great charm and she was quite attractive to men in an entirely dignified way. That meant that they didn't like to oppose her wishes.
I see here a reference to Mrs. Mount, a Mrs. Thomas Mount, but her own first name doesn't appear and she is from Vicksburg.
Well, she left Greenville and went there, I guess.
I just wanted some comments about these women and the backgrounds they came from, what you can recall. I have a reference to a Mrs. Charlotte Pittman, for example. Did you know Mrs. Pittman?
No, I don't recall her at all.
Mrs. Ella Biggs?
I have a vague recollection of her, but nothing that would help you.
I think that she did the publicity at the very outset of the organization. Miss Fanny Clark?
Now, that's not the Clark that I remember, but Clark is not an uncommon name.
Mrs. Mabel Pugh from Yazoo City?
I have a vague recollection, but I couldn't throw any light on her. I tell you, you can't go running everywhere, but the archives in Mississippi have been given the papers of Mrs. Lilly Wilkinson Thompson, who was in and out as president and those papers probably have a good deal of correspondence with different ones.
The interesting thing that I am seeking, really, is your characterization and the kind of thing that you might say about these women so that I can get an idea of their background. I would imagine that they are similar to the women who were active in South Carolina.
I would think so.
There is a pattern there.
There is. They are all people of good social position, you know, and mostly of moderate means, as I remarked earlier. The custom of the period was that if you had the background of loyalty to the Confederacy in your family, then you were accepted even if you couldn't always buy your own ticket.
How did Mississippi educators stand on the question of suffrage?
A few of them were friendly, but most of them were not.
The President, for example, of Mississippi State College for Women?
Of course, Whitfield, when he went in, was more friendly and eventually very friendly. He was president for six or eight years, but I don't think that they looked upon him for much help.
I wonder if the national leaders were permitted to speak there and how often, if at all?
I don't know. I do know that a good deal of effort was made to try and get an invitation to somebody to try and speak at some of the colleges, but I don't recall.
When were women first admitted to Ole Miss? I was going to ask you about the views of the Chancellor of 01e Miss and then I thought that I had better see if women were students there at that time.
It is my recollection that the University of Mississippi was the first state university to admit women. If it was not the first, it was the second.
I have a notion that Mississippi was the first state to open a state college for women.
Mississippi State College for Women, which was originally named I&C, Industrial Institute and College, was the first state supported institution for college education for women. [Presently Missippi University for Women]
That's what I thought.
And Mississippi was the first state to charter an institution to grant degrees to women and that was in 1819 and the compilers of one of these encyclopedias of education couldn't believe their eyes when they read that. So, they wrote it up as Missouri and Missouri was not a state at that time.
That's quite a joke on them.
I ran into that when I was working up a speech in Washington, and I went
over to the AAUW headquarters, where I spent a good deal of the time
anyhow, and I knew they had this encyclopedia and I wanted to verify it
and they had it wrong. [laughter]
That's a real joke.
Isn't it. [laughter]
Mississippi has another first for women and this is married women's control over property.
Oh yes, and there too. . . .
It always surprises people when I make reference to this fact in talks.
But what they do is, they say, "New York," which I think was two years later, maybe four years later, enacted a similar law and that the New York law was broader and therefore it. . . .
This is Constance Myers continuing the interview with Mrs. Lucy Sommerville Howorth of Mississippi, the interview taking place at Monteagle, Tennessee on June 20, 1975.
. . . and she was entertained by. . . .
Your mother went to North Carolina and was entertained.
At Dr. and Mrs. Archibald Henderson's, whom you may recall, was the great
biographer of George Bernard Shaw, and a very distinguished member of
the faculty. I do not recall the purpose of the trip, except that it was
a suffragist trip and she enjoyed it very much and enjoyed the
Hendersons and
I'll bet that you have a storehouse of those anecdotes.
Yes, there are a good many, you know, incidents where she did some little stunt.
Can you recall her talking about organizing in the different states?
She would come home always with some interesting tidbit, you know, and discuss personalities. She had quite a bit of wit. She was wonderful company when you got to know her. She was one of these people that would not open up to the occasional public. There was a lady here who owned a cottage who was the daughter of Judge Mayes in Jackson, who a contemporary of my mother's father. The two families had been well acquainted, but she happened not to have known . . . my mother who was older than she, and she told me once that she was walking along out here and she saw my mother on this porch and she thought, "I hear such things about her being so fierce and stern and hard to get along with and this and that. My father liked her father and our families were good friends. I am going in and call." So, she did. Well, my mother, you see, knew who she was and knew the family and so on and she was in a good mood and they had a wonderful time swapping stories and telling jokes on people they knew. After that, Miss Mayes said . . . she was Mrs. Mary Mayes Sanders, she said, "I went regularly to see your mother because she was the best company that I ever knew." She told me that once in Jackson and she said, "Everytime I go to Monteagle, one of the first visits I make is to your mother." So, that is the contrast, you see, of people who didn't like her views and. . . .
"Fierce." That's the first time that I've heard that adjective.
Oh boy, you get into a debate with her, she could chew you up and spit you out so fast. Like that Negro woman said, she knew what people were thinking before they did.
This was native ability, innate ability?
Sure. She knew when a speaker got up what that speaker was going to say and she had a devastating reply before he sat down.
Did she have formal academic training?
Oh yes, she had a bachelor's degree.
All right. I didn't know that.
Well, she went first, she was sent when she was about twelve years old .
. . you see, a very bright child, I'm sure you have found, is as much a
problem as a very dumb one. She had a stepmother who was a very fine
person, but the stepmother had five children of her own who were younger
and here was this little girl who was, I imagine, forever into
something. So, when she was twelve years old, she was sent her to
Whitworth College in Brookhaven, Mississippi. She always said that was
where she got her real education and she was about to graduate there
when she was, it seems to me, fourteen. The president of the college
told her father that that was entirely too young to allow her to
graduate. So then, he sent to Martha Washington College in Abingdon,
Virginia and there she stayed, I don't know how many years, I think she
was in the class of '78 or '79, something like that. I gave a book to
Radcliffe on the history of Martha Washington College, which is no
longer in existence. The president of the college when she graduated was
Dr. E.E. Hoss, who became a bishop in the Southern Methodist Church and
who had a cottage here at Monteagle and that was a lifelong friendship.
He respected
But she didn't go into teaching or into one of the professions, did she?
No, you've got to remember the 1880's.
Oh, I know.
But she did . . . now, I think you can tell what a girl has deep in her, whether she begins early to want to be financially independent and she got a position as a sort of tutor in Greenville of a family . . . I can't think of their name right now. [Mr. & Mrs. Pollack] The man was the president of the Grumble bank and had two daughters. He later went to New Orleans to be president of a bank there and they moved down there. That put her back with her grandmother in Greenville and she did this tutoring.
Which is teaching.
Oh, she was a strong teacher. We always had wonderful cooks, but she would take a field hand and make a wonderful cook out of her and never go near the kitchen. I never saw her in the kitchen.
But tell them how to prepare it?
Yes, and after it was on the table, after the meal, she would call her and say, "Now, this needed a little more of this and a little more of that." But she never went near the kitchen.
Isn't that something? The more I know of your mother, the more remarkable a person she appears.
As I say, she was wonderful company and she read beautifully. She won a medal at Martha Washington for reading and she could project her voice over several thousand people in an audience.
Had she been a man, she would have gone into political life or in the educational field.
Oh, she would certainly have been in the Senate. Of course, that was unheard of.
What kind of home background did she spring from? What was her home like?
Her home was like most of those post-Civil War homes. She was born in
1863 and her mother died the first of January, 1866 and her father was
practicing law in Greenville. He had come to Greenville along about
1854, or something like that, and read law with her maternal grandfather
Abram Fulkner Smith and formed a law partnership in 1856 and he was
practicing law when he joined the Confederate Army in 1862. So, he came
back to Greenville and then her mother died and he married again in
about a year and that wife died after about a year and then he married
Miss Aimee Webb in Montgomery, Alabama. There was a good deal of
teasing. He went over to make the commencement address at a college and
was invited out to dinner at her house and [laughter]
Did she travel? Or was her travel pretty well restricted to the southern states?
She went to the 1876 exposition, which is now coming to the front, you see and she used to tell of hearing the record, you know, the first phonograph of Edison's there. The little girl, "who had a curl right in the middle of her forehead and when she was good, she was very, very good and when she was bad, she was horrid." She would do that in the squeaky voice of that machine. It was a wonderful thing, you see. It was extraordinary. Then when she married my father, they went to New York and Washington and up there on her wedding trip.
But she remained eternally loyal. . . .
She said to me and to my elder sister and I take it to other people, that until she went to a meeting a Boston, and it seems to me that it was about 1920, it wasn't '20, but anyhow it was after World War I, that when she stood on Plymouth Rock, she felt for the first time that she was an American.
Up to that date, she had felt she was a Mississippian, or a southerner?
Yes.
Was there a chapter of the Southern States Women Suffrage Association in Mississippi?
I don't think so. I don't have any recollection of it.
I keep hearing about that, and I can't pinpoint its location.
I don't recall it.
Do you recall if, when the National American Women's Suffrage Association
moved over and became or formed the League of Women Voters, if
No, you see, my mother wouldn't have anything to do with the League of Women Voters.
Well, now this is another important and interesting question.
She considered it a fatal mistake. She considered that the women were selling their birthright, so to speak, to go into that, that to make yourself effective, you had to go into a political party.
Which took, I presume, a partisan position on issues?
Yes, and she considered that a very unfortunate development and she blamed Mrs. Catt for allowing that to happen. She never liked Mrs. Catt, really, after that. She wouldn't have said this publicly and generally, because she was very careful to avoid anything like a schism.
Of course, this was the position taken by the National Woman's Party and Alice Paul.
Oh, yes.
And I wondered if they were active in Mississippi?
No, there were one or two people in Mississippi that took an interest in and affiliated with them, but it was a very skimpy thing and I never heard of any kind of an organization that they had.
Can you recall Alice Paul or Maud Younger or Doris Stephens or Lucy Burns or Mabel Vernon or any of these individuals, if they came down and. . . .
Let's go through that list.
All right. Alice Paul, who was. . . .
She never came. I knew Alice Paul. She's still living, isn't she?
She has had a stroke and is very, very ill in Ridgefield Connecticut.
Oh, I'm sorry. No, she never came, to my knowledge. Of course, you see, I was away a good deal of the time. It seems to me that Maud Younger made a southern tour, but I am not positive.
She came to South Carolina.
It seems to me that she did. Now, Doris Stephens I don't think ever did. And who else?
Lucy Burns.
No. I don't think so.
I may have mentioned Mabel Vernon. I just pulled that name out of a list.
Mabel Vernon I am sure never came to Mississippi. I can't be positive, because I was in New York, I was here then and so on. And I wasn't charging my recollection with all these things.
To your recollection, there was no chapter or branch of the National Women's Party organized in Mississippi?
No.
You are not certain, are you?
Well, I wouldn't know positively, but. . . .
But you're pretty sure.
I'm pretty sure. I think they had one or two people from Mississippi who . . . I know that in later years they had some affiliates, but I think that back there they weren't. . . .
Before ratification. I know that right after ratification that your first
law partner was interested in the Women's Party, or so I
Vivian wasn't . . . [laughter] [laughter]
I was going to ask you how her career turned out, what she did afterwards. I know that she graduated with distinction.
Well, I'll tell you myself that that was dredged up, but I don't want to, you know . . . Vivian was an attractive person and I was fond of her, but she was young and had to wait to be admitted to the bar because she was not twenty-one and she only had a high school education. She had a grand and glorious time at the University. She hit the law books a little. . . .
A little lightly?
Yes.
This may have been dredged up, but it was noted in some of the papers.
When she died, it was in the paper then, in the obituary notice and there was something else in that notice that was not a fact in my opinion, but you know, you don't want to be. . . .
What kind of person was she? What kind of a background did she have? How is it that she decided to go to law school, an unusual quest for a young woman then?
The distinguished member of their family was a brother of her mother and
he was a chancellor at the time and later got to the Mississippi Supreme
Court. It wasn't very much later, it might have been at that time and he
was sort of the ideal of the family. Her father was a lawyer and he
How long?
I don't know, because you see, I went to Jackson and I was plenty busy and then I went to Washington. She married and for awhile kind of dropped out and then came back into law practice. I think I had one letter from her and then as I said, she died soon after I got back to Mississippi and I wasn't sure where she was. She was a likeable, friendly person. She was a blond, not a beauty, but attractive-looking. Well, there weren't many with distinction in that class, there were about five.
You were the only two women. That's why I singled her out to comment on and ask you questions about.
I took quite an interest in her and did what I could to help her. All the class laughed one day, I knew, you see, that she had been out the__night before and I knew that she hadn't cracked a book. So, that particular class, the faculty member was a fine man, but very methodical and he called on everybody a certain number of times. So, he worked down, he followed the alphabet, he worked down to where she was next. I asked a question and got an argument going and took up the rest of the period. The boys knew what I was doing, they all knew that she had been out at a party.
That's real sisterhood.
Some of them, you know, had been to the party. [laughter]
And she got through all right.
Oh yes, she got through.
At any rate, I noticed that she. . . .
Don't correct that, I mean, I wouldn't go around and do . . . especially now that she is dead.
She was attracted to the Women's Party. I don't know whether she took a
membership card, but she was attracted to it. If I say, "belonged," that
would mean a membership card. She was attracted to it and may have
subscribed to the periodical, something of this sort. She lured a good
deal of literature, I understand, to be sent into Mississippi to The Woman Voter offices. Miss Minnie Brewer says that
she was being swamped with literature from. . . .
Yes, but I don't think Vivian Cook was responsible for that. There were two Vivian Cooks in Mississippi.
Oh?
The other one, I don't think had anything to do with the Woman's Party. She could have. She was quite an able and skillful political personality. She held one or two state positions. She was from Crystal Springs.
Well, it's very possible that she was the one that was interested in the Woman's Party.
She might have been. The Cooks were a brilliant family and there were
twelve children. One of them, Miss Fanney, was responsible
Not the Vivian that graduated with you?
No.
This is difficult with the same reference to two different people.
Yes, there is the chance of some confusion. Now, Minnie Brewer was a good friend of mine. Minnie is still living in the hospital, Mississippi Mental Hospital.
She was the daughter of a governor, I believe. [Earl Brewer]
Yes. I used to have wonderful times with Minnie. She was one of the smartest people that I have ever known.
She was mighty enterprising to run that newspaper.
Oh, yes.
And against all the poltiical opposition, I understand.
No, it just gave them fits, there wasn't any opposition. I mean, they couldn't do anything about the newspaper, as long as her father would pay the bills.
They could tell people not to subscribe and what crackpots they were.
But Joe Howorth edited that while Minnie went up to the University of Wisconsin in 1924, about six months to study journalism. He was practicing law in Jackson and Minnie was scouting around for somebody to edit it while she went there, to Wis.
That was good of him. He's a liberated man.
Oh, yes.
He has been.
So, when Minnie went into the hospital, they said that they had never examined anybody with as fine a brain, a mind such as she had.
Did some terrible calamity befall her?
I don't know, I never enquired as to the diagnosis and none of the family ever mentioned to me what it was.
What interests in Mississippi opposed suffrage, according to your recollection? Who had the propaganda against it or was funding against?
Well, of course, the women always thought that the liquor interests did and I would assume that they did. Apart from that, I doubt if there was any really organized. . . .
The railroads?
No, there wasn't any reason for the railroads to be against them.
No, there wasn't any reason, but I've seen it mentioned in other connections.
I don't think the railroads were. Now, the preachers, you know, were the great obstacle.
And then you didn't have a significant textile industry to oppose it.
No.
That was the case in South Carolina.
No. You see, we had practically no industry in Mississippi.
No. Is this the Southern Baptist Convention that has just met?
Yes.
It was just a reiteration of their decisions last year. They made a similar decision last year. How pompous, how arrogant!
Oh, they just burn me up.
Your mother addressed the Mississippi legislature in 1914. Do you remember her reactions to that episode?
Well, she considered it quite an honor.
Yes indeed, it was.
But aside from that, I don't recall her comments on it. I was in Lynchburg at college.
Do you know what kind of a reception she received?
I think that she had a wonderful one. Once she got started, you know, with an audience, she knew how to play them just like a musical instrument. She had a beautiful command of language and her voice had the emotional overtones that so many Irish speakers have.
You think of her as a woman in which the Irish predominates?
Yes.
Over the English or the Scots?
Her ancestry has a strong strain of Welsh and they are very similar to the Irish, but her paternal grandfather came directly from Westmead, Ireland and I have always considered that her political gifts were those of the Irish, although she had a stability and a logical approach that is not generally Irish. You see, the second Chief Justice of the Mississippi Territory was her great-grandfather.
Your great-great-grandfather.
Yes. And his name was Lewis, and that particular Lewis family came to New England from Wales. Then, her father was a great lawyer.
So, she was reared in the tradition of argumentation and political stance-taking.
Yes.
Was she interested in other questions as far as equal rights for women were concerned, such as equal pay for equal work?
Oh yes.
Women's rights to guardianship?
Oh, she campaigned, she is responsible along with all those others who helped her, but she gave the leadership.
She was their leader.
She gave the leadership to the movement for equal guardianship in Mississippi. When I was a child in Mississippi, a man could will an unborn child. He could appoint in his will a guardian for his unborn child. . . .
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
Yes, I know about this law, it is what brought Mrs. Eula Lee Salley into the suffrage movement in South Carolina.
Women generally aren't aware of these things and then when they are alerted to them, some of them get into real action. My mother always believed in chipping at the fringes and making progress as you could and she felt the injustice of this and felt that it had an appeal. So, she enlisted others and it was part of the suffrage movement.
Usually this was in the platform, the suffragist resolutions.
Oh, yes.
Since Mississippi wasn't an industrial state in any sense of the word and didn't even have a small developing industry, I suppose, there wasn't a concern for the conditions of work and pay.
About 1912, my mother went to a meeting in Atlanta, I think it was, of the Southern Council on Social Welfare and I think I still have the big fat printed report of that and there, they took up child labor and the condition of women in industry.
Then she was indeed interested, enough to go to Atlanta for a meeting.
Oh, yes. She was interested in the whole scope of what today is the women's movement.
Was there any concern with the status of black women? I realize that times were different, but I wondered in what way she might have. . . .
Here is one illustration. My mother stirred up Greenville to have a public health nurse and this was the first public health nurse in the state of Mississippi.
What were to be her functions?
Tuberculosis was the great menance of the day and also, not spoken of so much, but venereal disease, which was rampant among the black people, especially. So, she said that at the time that a number of people asked her, "Is this nurse to go among the Negroes?" And she said, "Yes. They come in and nurse our children, they cook our meals, they wash our clothes. If they have an infectious disease, we get it too." She gave the practical reply. Now, she had herself a humanitarian interest, but she gave the practical reply to silence the opposition. That is one reason I say that you must not give too much weight to what a person uses as an argument in the middle of a fight. She could not see the community drawing any distinction between the white and the black in the matter of a public service like public health. I went with her once to where they were going to show one of these public health movies. They weren't movies then, they were just slides, you know, to a black church. I have never forgotten the picture of the fly tracking across the cake.
I'll bet that you always keep a cake cover on your cake.
I keep a cake cover and if I think a fly has been anywhere near that cake . . . but she did quite a lot of things like that to try to ameliorate the. . . .
What about birth control, family planning? That was a new movement, though.
There was no such thing thought of at that time.
Well, between 1910 and 1920, there was a little agitation going.
In the East.
Yes.
But she wrote, she showed it to me late in her life and it is at Radcliffe, she wrote a paper which she read to a group in Greenville which . . . I forget the title, but the theme of it was a woman's right to her person. It was not caged in the explicit language of today, but there was no doubt of the meaning.
Much foresight. These are the phrases used today. I understand that your mother disapproved of the League of Women Voters because of its non-partisan position. I wonder if the women who joined the League of Women Voters initially in Mississippi soon drifted away, the suffrage women who . . .
Some did and some didn't. There still is a fairly strong, moderately strong League of Women Voters in Mississippi. Now the one that started in Clarksdale, was not the first, but one of the first and one of the strongest and then it disbanded and I am not sure that they have one there now. They have a fairly good one in Jackson.
When it was first formed, the attempt was to capture the enthusiasm of these women who had just been engaged in that bitter suffrage battle. These were partisan women.
Well, certainly they were and they were practical, political women. They had learned some hard lessons. They had been sold out and they had been tricked and they had bitten some sour apples.
The League of Women Voters tended to lose them after a few years, in South Carolina it certainly happened.
Yes. And you had to withdraw if you ran for office, you see.
And a different group of women then were led into the League of Women Voters.
Yes, a studious, lady-like group that couldn't really tangle. At least, that's what I think.
I am very interested to hear of your mother's critique of the League of
Women Voters. So many suffrage workers, people connected with the
National American Women's Suffrage Association tried to get a loyal
Oh, I never had a thing in the world to do with it. When I have been in conferences where four or five or six or ten women's organizations were cooperating, yes and of course, I have always been friendly and polite, but around Washington, that Arlington League was quite a strong one, but several of them that I knew resigned to run for the Virginia legislature and so on.
Did some of them leave to go into business, too?
Some, I said to one of them once, "You've learned your lesson, haven't you?" She said, "Yes, I wish the League would do something stronger." But, it does fill a place in the education of a voter. I remember once in my office in Jackson, a man came in about some business and I said, "The election is next week," he traveled for some business and I said, "You are going to be here, aren't you?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Well, you had better decide how you want to vote." He said, "You know, I've never voted." I said, "That's nothing to be proud of." He said, "I do not know how to vote." Then I explained some of the processes to him, but that showed me that that aspect of what the League of Women Voters does was needed and it is needed by the men as well as the women. Here was this man who was bashful and he didn't want to admit that he didn't know how to mark a ballot and how to. . . .
So therefore, your mother was out of this whole business of citizenship schools, that were being held the first two or three years after the suffrage was passed.
No, she helped with some of those where it was purely to teach them how to register, where to register, when to register. . . .
But this was a League of Women Voters activity.
Yes, but it wasn't solely the League of Women Voters.
No, but generally the League sponsored it. But still, if your mother believed in the citizenship schools. . . .
The women's clubs did it, the federated clubs, the civic clubs. There wasn't any League of Women Voters then.
The League of Women Voters really gets all the credit for it in South Carolina, the citizenship schools.
Well, I don't know anything about it in South Carolina, but there wasn't any League of Women Voters in Greenville, Mississippi, the Woman's Club taught and tried to show people how. In Mississippi then it was quite complicated. You had to register so far in advance and you had to register in the county and you had to register in the town.
So, it really did require some
In 1930, she . . . you see, I had married, my father had died and there
wasn't anybody left in the family in Greenville and in Cleveland, my two
brothers and my sister lived. So, she bought a corner lot out of some
property that my oldest brother owned and built a home there and that is
the home in which I live, although we enlarged it, changed it and put in
air conditioning and so on. So, she lived there until her death and she
voted there, but Cleveland, she said to me, was a little country town
and she said, "Anytime that I went down Washington Avenue in Greenville,
I could stir up some excitement." You see, in Cleveland, she lived out
on the edge of the little town and somebody had to drive her and there
wasn't any block that she could walk along and speak to everybody and
stir up some excitement and get some votes for her candidate. So, we
suggested to her to
It was this very cottage?
Oh, yes. She bought this cottage in 1912. I will show you the first cottage the family owned.
There was one in the 1880's, wasn't there, or 1890's.
1890's. I think that it was about 1892 when she and my father bought the first cottage, which was over on this street over here, across this little bridge. She sold it and then it burned two or three years after it was sold, so it is no longer around. She bought this in 1912. She found that she wasn't happy to just come up here and go to a boarding house. They don't have those anymore, you either own a cottage or you rent one from somebody. There is no hotel and no boarding houses.
When your mother died, she left her library to the little southern Methodist college in Aiken.
No, she didn't. She left her library to me.
Then, how did this. . . .
Then my sister, who shared my mother's interest in the Independent Church, which I do not, asked me about giving to that school my mother's theological books. She had a very fine library of theological books, religious books.
How many volumes would you estimate?
It was a little over two hundred that we sent there. So, she my sister asked me if I were agreeable to sending them there and we wrote up a document that they could be recalled at anytime, but I never expected to recall them and neither does my sister and for all practical purposes, they are given there.
You might know what happened to the college, or do you?
No I don't.
I telephoned, because I thought that you might be interested in this
information and I thought it should be included. This Southern Methodist
College was coeducational and attracted fifty to sixty students
annually, starting in the 1940s. However, as soon as the University of
South Carolina chose Aiken as the
For several years, we would occasionally get some report from them, but I
haven't heard anything for many years and I have no intention of
reclaiming the books. As far as I am concerned, all along, it was a
final gift. My sister thought that some of the family or someone might
want them. My mother asked me once, "What is to become of all these
books, Lucy?" I said, "Give them to me and I will see that they have a
home." I have made a practice of when I see somebody who is interested,
From her library?
From her library. Then, Randolph-Macon, when they instituted the Women's
Studies program and named that section of the library for me, I sent
them something over a hundred books. I sent them a list and let them
select, you know, the ones that weren't duplicates. Then, Emory
University, Bishop Harmon, every once inawhile I run across . . . this
sounds funny, in your own house, you know, and not a great big house,
but those books are hard to look at, they are hard to read. So, every
once inawhile, I run across one and I write Bishop Harmon and ask him if
they need it at Emory or want
Well, I think that you are choosing some very fine repositories.
Well, it's a problem. I am on the library board in Cleveland and I have learned a whole lot about libraries and I learned that the American Library Association has its standards and one of the standards is that they have to "weed", as they call it. Well, these little libraries with libarians picked up from here and there from very limited backgrounds, they don't know the value of a book and its potential value and. . . .
They may weed it out.
They throw them away. In fact, I go there and pick up some every once inawhile. Well, you don't want twenty copies of Elsie Dinsmore.
Or twenty copies of a certain edition of American history textbook. One copy will do to show how people were thinking about American history in that period.
That's right.
Tell me a little bit about your mother's work in the Mississippi legislature. Did she seek reelection and why not? Or why?
She didn't seek reelection. The reelection came in 1927 when Greenville
had gone through the flood. The worst flood of modern history was the
Mississippi River 1927 flood. The levee broke the 21st of April and the
water didn't all recede until in August. The whole community was in a
state. She announced for reelection and then the opposition began to
show various signs of stirring up a very bitter campaign and announced
some candidate. So, she withdrew. She said that she thought the
community couldn't stand a badly split fight and that it was obvious
that there would be no holds barred and it would be a bitter and
desperate campaign. She
Was the man loyal to her program?
Yes, he acknowledged, you see, he was for her, he was a friend of hers.
I mean her program within the legislature.
Well, in the Mississippi legislature, you don't have much of a program.
What did she accomplish in her term?
She accomplished quite a good deal. Her main accomplishment or her
biggest accomplishment, was the reorganization, the rebuilding of the
Mississippi Hospital for the mentally ill; it was on the edge of Jackson
and a very rickety old thing, built in the 1890s and flimsy and just
awful. Well, the Jackson building interests wanted the land. The medical
people and the humanitarian interests wanted a new institution. She was
chairman of the committee on Eleemosynary Institutions. So, they worked
out a plan for the disposing of the land gradually and there was never
any scandal. There was grumbling about the way it was done, but there
was never any scandal and it was one of those things that could have
been a scandal. My personal attitude is that it is a personal tribute to
her aacumen and business ability, plus other considerations that enabled
them to evolve this scheme. They set up and built what is now called
Whitfield, which
This certainly was not done for all legislators.
It has never been done for any others, so far as I know. Now, they did have recently a man who is dying of cancer and who has been in the legislature for twenty years and was speaker of the house. They had something recently to give him a testimonial and so on, but nothing at all like this thing for her.
Well, for what do you think that your mother most wanted to be remembered?
I don't think that she ever bothered about that.
You don't think that she was thinking about it.
No, she was always. . . .
Here and now.
Yes. Now, she did ask me about her papers. I was down visiting her and she opened a drawer and had it full of stuff. She said, "Lucy, shall I burn this?" I said, "Oh, no. No." "What's going to be done?" I said, "Well, I will see that it will be put where it can be used and help in history."
I'm glad that you have that historical sense and that you got those materials deposited up there at Radcliffe.
Well, I did a lot of thinking about where was the best place and of course, I have been jumped on for not having them in Mississippi, but I said, "No."
I would think that Randolph-Macon would have wanted them.
Randolph-Macon didn't have a grain of sense about that kind of thing then and I'm not sure that it has now. It has more, because they have the courses in women's studies and they did set up this section of the library and name it for me, but I don't know how much . . . and it didn't have the money, it didn't have the space. They did try to get some of Pearl Buck's and I believe she gave the manuscript of one book. They had the manuscript of one of Frances Parkinson Keyes' books. For a long time, her associate and collaborator was a Randolph-Macon graduate Katherine McKeiver and it is through this alumna that they got it. Bird trilling outside That's what we hear up here, the thrush.
That's what I hear, too.
We never hear it in Mississippi, but up here. I don't know all of the birds, but the thrush I know. Back to historical papers Most people don't have any sense about such things. I have rescued things occasionally. Of course, Joe, he keeps every scrap of paper.
He should and he must. File them away. Why not? I have some questions on Mississippi political life, but I think that I will defer these questions until the last session, when I do ask your assessment or evaluation of trends in Mississippi and regional and national politics. What I wanted to ask you about were your views of the generalizations that historians of Mississippi and historians of the South have made about Mississippi events and personalities.
Well, Mississippi has had a bad press from about 1830.
And South Carolina hasn't fared much better.
No. South Carolina has had a little glamour that Mississippi hasn't, even Natchez hasn't had it. But so far as people having respect for the predominant attitudes . . . they are not so different in South Carolina.
What historians have said, they use this term demagogue so freely, I just wondered what you think of that term for Mississippi politicians from 1900 through the present?
Well, I think as I have read and observed the history of other American communities, that insofar as the demogogue is concerned, we don't have any more than other places. Now what Mississippi suffered from from the days of Vardaman on until World War II, was the use of the race issue in politics and there, of course, that issue was not so strongly abused in other states, especially in the Middle West, for example. You get out in Nebraska, you have demogagues. . . .
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
This is Constance Myers continuing the interview with Mrs. Lucy Somerville Howorth of Cleveland, Mississippi in Monteagle, Tennessee on June 22, 1975. You wanted to make a comment, Mrs. Howorth, about Vivian Cook.
Yes. Yesterday, you mentioned that Vivian graduated with distinction and
I made a remark indicating that that was a bit of news to me, which
indeed it is. But I wouldn't quibble about a thing like that because it
is a matter of record. The University of Mississippi, if anyone Eagle customarily published the
list of honors and distinctions and awards at commencement. So, there is
no use in quibbling over what is a fact in one way or another. Now,
after thinking, I did have a vague recollection that Vivian did, as you
say, flirt with the Women's Party. I also still think that the other
Vivian Cook who lived outside of Mississippi for some years at about
that time, that she may have also, but I do verify your recollection
about Vivian Cook of Clarkdale. For some reason or other, I saw very
little of Vivian in the early days after graduation. Now, my
recollection is that the obituary of Vivian not only contained the
statement about her graduating with distinction, but also something
about her being the first lawyer or something of that sort and neither
she nor I were the first woman laywer in Mississippi. She was the first
in Coahoma County and I was the first in Washington County. But so far
as I have been able to find, the first woman was Bessie Young, og
Grenoda who graduated in the law school about 1910. . . .
Ole Miss Law School?
Yes. And who was from Granada and she practiced there a little, with very little success and then I think that John Sharp Williams secured her a position in the government and when Mabel Walker Assistant Attorney General, she took Bessie Young, or accepted her, in the Alcohol Control Division that set up the Volstead Act Enforcement Group, which had a very thankless and tough job. She [Bessie Young] did very well at that. When the New Deal came in, she manouvered a transfer from New York, where she had been, to Washington. That is where I met her when I went there in 1934. She died a few years later of cancer at a rather young age. She was quite an able person and had a successful government career as a lawyer.
Now, this was Miss Young?
Miss Bessie Young.
In the reference I have to Vivian Cook's National Woman's Party
affiliation, there is a letter to you from Minnie Brewer dated February
20, 1923 indicating that Miss Cook visited the National Woman's Party in
Washington and the party expressed a desire to have her run information
about their operations in [laughter]The Woman Voter. Minnie
commented, "If women find out that there are two parties, maybe they
will wake up and form some concrete ideas on the subject and apparently,
she indicated that Vivian Cook was a member of the Woman's Party,
because I put this notation down after reading that letter. Then later
on, Miss Brewer writes to you, just a few months later in the same year,
that the National Woman's Party is just sending literature into this
office by the carload. She published some, but killed the worst part.
Well, I don't think it was. In fact, it wasn't anybody's official
publication, except Minnie Brewer's. [laughter]
Both of you were professional women. Even after you had reached this status?
Minnie wasn't what I call a professional woman.
But she was. . . .
She was being a journalist, yes. I don't know where Minnie got the idea.
She started it and then got ahold of me. Somebody told her that I would
be a good person. Up until that moment, our acquaintance had been
casual, because . . . well, I had been away from Mississippi when her
father was governor and I had met Minnie occassionally, you know, but I
hadn't paid much attention. We became very close friends and she called
me her general counsel. Well, of course, if we had needed any big
lawyer, her father would have stepped in, because while I considered
that I was a good lawyer, I was still a neophyte at that time and just
barely beginning to practice. But I saw Minnie and was up there in
Clarksdale, oh, I would say at least once every two weeks and sometimes
she would come down to Cleveland and we corresponded, as you have
discovered. We plotted and planned and worked. Then, she did decide to
become something of a professional journalist and did in the spring of
1924, go to the University of Wisconsin to study journalism. That was
when my present and only husband, Joe Howorth, (we were not married
then) became editor of The Woman Voter for that
period. That's when he had some experiences with the problems . . . of
course, as soon as I heard that he had taken it, I said, "Go back to
your law practice. It is fatal to mix, to try to run any business like a
newspaper and be a lawyer."
How could you perceive that at such a young age? How could you perceive these things?
Well, insofar as law practice, while my father was a civil engineer, I
was brought up in the legal atmosphere and hearing people's comments on
what makes a lawyer and these people who had fallen by the wayside and
failed were so often ones that the money wasn't coming in fast enough,
so
Oh, I seeYou see, people have got to think of you as. . . .
You've got to have an image to project.
I was furious one day, and every woman lawyer has had this experience, I would venture to say. One day, I was talking to somebody that I thought was a friend of mine, a member of the Business and Professional Women's Club and she had gotten more free advice from me, I suppose a thousand dollars' worth. She was telling me of something that had come up in her business and she said, "I needed a lawyer." Did she come to me? No. She told me that she needed a lawyer and she had gone to Johnny Jones. You see, she didn't associate me, despite the fact that time and time again in a casual conversation, she had asked me to solve a legal problem. So, if a man does something that associates him with something other than a law practice, he gets in the same box and so, that's what I told Joe.
What were your aspirations when you were in high school?
I didn't go to high school, I went to a preparatory school in Greenville
and my only aspiration was to get to college. They had a little benefit
bazaar or something and they had this lady who hadn't lived in town long
who was an amateur fortune teller and she didn't fool herself or anybody
else about the validity of what she wasy saying. But each of the girls
would go to the little tent that had been put up, you know, a little
cloth around poles. She would talk about a dark man in their lives.
These were teenagers, you see, or she would talk about the family that
she saw coming down the road. When she came to me, she said, "You won't
be rich,
Then, she knew the family, she knew a little bit about you.
She didn't know much, she was a stranger in the community. She had been there a year or so, a very casual acquaintance of the family. She wasn't a relative or a "connection", as they say in the South. I've forgotten who she was. So, that puzzled me. It always did puzzle me, what made her do it, but she knew that she had done something, you see, and she made that explanation to my mother, that she was glad to have somebody to say something different. I could see, you would get bored.
It didn't make a special impact on you, did it?
No. [laughter]
But if you were in a prep school, weren't the aspirations of the other students there also to go to college?
Oh, yes. I was put in this little school that was set up in Greenville on the condition that they get me ready for college in three years. My mother decided that I wasn't working hard enough in high school and she saw no sense in dilly-dallying four years. They adopted a rule that they wouldn't let you skip a grade.
Then, your aspirations weren't really different from your peers, there in the school, at any rate?
No. I didn't dress up as much as many of the other girls, but we were all good friends, you know, and we all went to the same parties. It was a simple life in a small town at that period.
But maybe you weren't as interested in being on the dating circuit?
No. I had some boys making glances in my direction but I wasn't too concerned about it. And I thought that some of the girls were just silly with their concern about primping and all that sort of stuff.
Could you make a generalization about what has happened to most of those girls that you were in prep school with?
Well, unfortunately, most of them have passed on, but the one that I . .
. that was really just the best friend I've ever had, she lives in
California. She went to college, she was a year behind me because she
wasn't jumping a grade, in effect. She went to Randolph-Macon and then
we went to Columbia together and until the last few years, we have
managed to always see each other once a year. She is a gifted person. I
always thought she would be a writer and she did get at least two books
to publishers. I never saw them and one of them, she was quite
enthusiastic about and wrote me about, but then it never came out. So
what it was, she is a bit languid and was low on the energy side, and I
Would you mind telling her name?
No, her name is Mrs. Clive Marshall and I have kept nearly every letter that she ever wrote.
Who was she?
She was Augusta Stacey and those letters are to go to Radcliffe, but I think that I will make a provision that they are not to be used until both of us die.
I've come across her name now that you have given it to me
I kept the letters in the beginning because I thought that she would be, not a Faulkner, but a good writer. When we went to Columbia, she studied journalism and she had a job in Virginia on a little country newspaper. But here is the way we met. They lived on a plantation and her mother wanted her to have better schooling, so they were moving into Greenville and the Episcopal Church — we were members of the Methodist Church — borrowed the lawn of a prominent Methodist member for an Easter egg hunt. So, I think that I might have been ten, but this lady from the Episcopal Church came to my mother and said that she hoped she would let me go to the Easter egg hunt and that she promised to look after me. So, I went to the Easter egg hunt and they had tables, you know, for the ice cream and cake part of it and sitting across from me was this girl who was a perfect comedian at age nine or ten, she is a year younger than I am. I was fascinated, so when I went home, I told my mother, "I met the most wonderful girl and I want you to go call on her mother. They have just come to town and I want to be a friend of hers." So, that's it and I just never forgot that party and meeting Augusta. She was just marvelous company.
How different were your aspirations from those of your classmates at Randolph-Macon?
I don't know . . . the girls of that period were not as frank about what
they were thinking as in later periods. I remember one day, there was a
girl I thought was on the stupid side, but she looked wonderful. She was
sort of tall, she was substantial, she wasn't stout, but she was
substantially built, a wind wouldn't blow her over. And she had a kind
of comfortable expression on her face, you know. She wasn't a beauty,
but she wasn't homely either. And as I say, a placid expression that
reassured people that looked at her. I don't know who was sitting by me
on the bench out on [laughter]
So, the Randolph-Macon girls weren't terribly expressive about what they might have intended to do in life, or was it pretty assured that they would marry?
Well, that was it, but they didn't articulate that like the girls did in the `30s and so on. Some of them were going to teach, but it was generally assumed that most of them would go home and do a little society and marry.
Was there ever any question about the value of an expensive college education for that kind of life-time vocation?
Oh well, now, that argument has raged since Plato.
But I wondered if you women at Randolph-Macon thought about it?
Well, that kind of thing is thrown at you, you couldn't avoid it. Somebody would come along, "What does your father think of throwing away all this money?"
Well, what have they done with their lives, those women that you went to Randolph-Macon with, other than Miss Stacey, who became Mrs. Marshall?
Well, now, she worked on a number of newspapers and so on. She wasn't just domesticated.
Were other women in the professions?
Oh, yes. One of them, Virginia Allen, she went to Africa as a missionary
and then died from cancer. There was one, Virginia Howlett, somebody
ought to get ahold of Virginia. She lives in Philadelphia and she was
executive secretary, at one time, for the Junior League. She helped get
them into the constructive social work. She is, I think, the first woman
elected as an elder in the Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia that she
goes to. She is badly crippled with arthritis. Then another one was Mary
Stahlman, a brilliant girl. Mary Stahlman who married Judge Douglas in
Nashville and helped him write some books and edited for, I think, over
fifty years, the book page of the Nashville Banner.
Yes, that's a Stahlman venture.
Yes, her father was the owner and her brother, Jimmy, was the editor for so many years. Well, Mary did a most distinguished job on that and she was very well known among literary circles and always went to New York at least once a year for some of the big literary events. She gave to Randolph-Macon her collection of autographed books, which is quite a collection. Mary broke her leg or hip or something and had arthritis and couldn't walk and last year or the year before, she had one of these new operations and they replaced the joint and she walks now. She never got over the fact that I trimmed her twice in the annual debates.
I'll bet you trimmed quite a few people. [laughter]
Well, in the course of time. [laughter]
I think there is a discontinuity with the past in the present generation, I don't know why.
That's one thing at Delta State, Dr. Dennis has me come over, he has a class in current events and for the last two years, he has me each winter semester be at the class one period. They just ask me questions and when they ask questions about something like idealism, I go all the way back and come down very quickly so that they will get a sense of that. To brag a little, they voted my class as the most interesting period they had had for the year.
That is the value of oral history, where persons who have contributed and participated in significant events, can't be present, an oral history tape recording may be second best and. . . .
Yes, if it is relevant to the particular issues being brought up and discovered. That is the problem with something like we are doing that wanders all over the face of the earth.
I know, but when they are indexed, Mrs. Howorth, you can pinpoint specific areas where it will be helpful.
Oh yes, you can.
Right after Randolph-Macon . . . well, you stayed a year after you graduated, didn't you?
Yes, I was invited to. The psychology department in
Did you like doing it?
That taught me that college faculty wasnt for me. And when all this
uproar about having students attend faculty meetings . . . well, shoot,
stop quarreling with them. Let them come, they will be so bored that
they will forget all about it and be thankful that they don't have to
go. [laughter]
You didn't have uproars when you were there?
There were not uproars, but what I was talking about was the student
uproar about their demand to be admitted to the faculty meetings, that
if once they attended three or four, they would be cured of that
complaint. No, there wasn't anything unpleasant in the meetings, but
they were deadly dull and they offended my sense of order, because here
with all these Ph.Ds and what not,
How did you know parliamentary procedure?
From home. My mother was a great parliamentarian.
And the legal tradition, too.
They had a big fuss in Greenville once, the Kings Daughters had the only
hospital in town and they gave one of the medical profession's doctor's
orders not to send patients to the hospital. Well, the community split
between the doctors that the Kings Daughters would admit and the ones
that
But you considered very briefly an academic career?
I really did, I thought that I would probably go on and get a doctorate
and most likely teach. Then, I was asked to come back the next year in
the political science department. I was also offered a promotion to come
back in the psychology department. But my mother wanted me to try not
doing anything and maybe she thought that I needed a rest and maybe she
wanted to have me around. You know, the motives are mixed in those
things. So, I agreed and the war, World War I, was going on then, you
see and my mother was the chairman of the county council of the women's
council on defense. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw was the national chairman and
she called on her old friend and ally to head it up in Washington
County. So, she was full of activity about that and I started helping
with the Red Cross. One of the [laughter]
But soon, you became involved in the war industry.
That was later. I had this friend, this Augusta Stacy, they had moved away from Greenville. Her father was a most remarkable man. He made and lost three fortunes, so . . . .
[END OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE B]
Well, Augusta Stacy wrote that her mother said that she could go study
journalism at the summer session of Columbia University if I would go
with her. So, after some conferring at home, it was agreed that we would
and I would go into the university graduate school. I wasn't going to go
to the teacher's college, which most of the people that went from
Mississippi did do, but I was going to be in the university proper. So,
we went, but her mother decided to go, too, and take the next younger
daughter, who was about twelve I guess, Margaret. She was quite a bit
younger than Augusta, there was a boy in between and so we all went to
New York. Well, about that time, there had been one of those horrible
murders in New York, so we were cautioned by Mr. Stacy and my parents
and everybody that we knew not to get into a taxi in New York. Well,
here we were, we had all this luggage and we got off the Southern
Railroad in Pennsylvania Station and got a red cap and told him that we
wanted to get on the bus for Columbia University. We got on the bus and
we enjoyed it all, you know, we climbed up to the top and somehow or
other loaded all these suitcases and everything. We rode and we didn't
see anything that looked like a university to us. Finally, we began
What years were these? Do you recall?
Oh, sure. It was in 1918, the summer of 1918. So, after a little while, I decided I liked New York and I didn't think my parents could afford to keep me there and so, I found that another college friend, who had left Randolph-Macon and gone to Smith and graduated that summer, she had lost a year by the transfer, she turned up and was there and these Smith girls were working for the Allied Bureau of Aircraft Production. So, Hilda said that she thought she could get me a job in there; I might have to pretend to be from Smith for a day or two, but that didn't matter. So, she did and I did and this was my first taste of industrial activity.
I wanted to ask you about this, but I wanted to ask you a question about Columbia University first. You liked New York, how did you like the university? Was the work very different from the kind of work that you had had at Randolph-Macon?
No. I was interested in that. First of all, I was kind of shocked at the
factory-like atmosphere of everything, it was a tremendously large
institution and I had never been north of Washington. So, I disliked
that impersonality, which must be dreadful now, but my ego was picked up
by the fact that I was admitted to the classes that I wanted as soon as
I said
Did you have some distractions in New York? I noticed that on your report, you dropped out of some classes?
I did two things. One, you see, I got this job at the end of the summer session and then I enrolled in the extension evening classes. Well, as long as this Allied Bureau of Aircraft Production continued, my work was that of a gauge inspector, which you probably don't know what is. It is measuring the angles of screws and bolts.
So different from the study of psychology and philosophy.
That's right. But as long as I was working with that, which didn't take
one ten-thousandth of a brain cell, I could study at Columbia and I
enrolled to take a master's degree in psychology. I had this course in
abnormal psychology, which was wonderful for me because we made trips
out to all these institutions and so on. Well, then after the end of the
war, this mechanical work lost interest for me and I began scouting for
something else and my mother was worrying about me up there in New York.
She had volunteered in Mississippi to help the YWCA get money for its
war work activities and they had set a goal for Mississippi for ten
thousand dollars and it never crossed their minds that they would get
more than five hundred. So, she got out and beat the bushes and got ten
thousand dollars for them. So, they wanted her to come as an exhibit
number one to a big reception they had in St. Louis. So, she went up
there and she met some of the higher ups and she told them that they
were missing a great opportunity, that the brightest thing that had ever
hit New York was there and when they got back to New York, they should
get in touch with me and give me a job. [interruption by Joe Howorth]
I know the difference.
Then, I hadn't been a big YWCA member at college. I liked the secretary
all right and once or twice, they roped me into doing something, but
that wasn't a major interest of mine. So, I got there and chatted with
whoever was delegated to speak to somebody of my classification at that
time and then somebody in the office spoke up, said, "We just had a call
from the Industrial Department that they want a research clerk." I, of
course, didn't have any notion of what that was. They said, "Call . . .
" and I've forgotten her name, but they said, "Tell her that we have
someone who might be interested." She came and she was one of these
people who fascinate me when I first meet them. She later left in about
a year and went back to Colorado and she was the first woman ever
elected superintendent
How do you think that came about? I mean, how was it that. . . .
It came about . . . you see, I learned all this later. Of course, I didn't know anything about that procedure then and I learned about this later, that when the vacancy occurred, this woman said, "I don't want a file clerk. I want somebody who can come in here and help plan programs, make up reading lists and so on." Well about the second day I was there, I realized that they needed not a political scientist, but they needed an economist and a student of things like the labor movement. Randolph-Macon, which was a wonderful institution in my opinion, had the very poorest sociology professor that, in my opinion, ever lived. I scarcely knew what the Industrial Revolution was and I wouldn't have known at all if I hadn't read the novels of Charles Reade as a child. I had read the novels of Charles Reade and I had read the novels of Charles Dickens and I had a little notion of what they were going on about when they were talking about the Industrial Revolution. So, I did two things. I went over to the New York Public Library and got a stack of books on the industrial conditions and the history of the Industrial Revolution and economics and then I went out to Columbia and switched my courses.
I noticed that switch. International law. . . .
Yes. I got that, you see, it was post-war and I was interested, that was
an interest of mine and also with the YWCA, I had observed enough, that
they had an international interest from college days. So, that was the
explanation for that switch and I really studied that. I was becoming an
industrial expert. It was the Industrial Department of the YWCA and they
had classes for industrial workers and they were sending
Now, back to your war work, wasn't this in Mississippi that you were involved in it?
No. What I was involved in in Mississippi was simply the Red Cross and I got quite an acquaintance with the Red Cross people while I was there and when I moved to New York, I joined the Red Cross group and began to build my acquaintance there. I did those things, not anticipating that they might become important in my life, but I was just instinctively knew to build wherever I was, whatever I was doing. I joined the Democratic Ward Club in New York because women could vote in New York and they couldn't in the country at that time and my first vote was cast for Al Smith for governor in New York State.
So, you really didn't go into war work in Mississippi, it was Red Cross work.
It was local, too, Greenville. Well, of course, I went around with my mother in her. . . .
Now, this guage work . . . what was that?
A gauge inspector.
Was this for a company or for the government?
Yes, it was one of my first experiences in the handicaps and foolishness
of the treatment of women. This was an Allied Bureau of Aircraft
Production. The United States, in its usual fashion, put up the
Where was the plant, where were you doing this work?
We were doing this work in New York City.
In what location?
The first location was down near Wall Street, in what they call a loft, and we were divided in sections that did different parts of the process. Then, we moved up to much pleasanter quarters in Abercrombie and Fitch, the fourth floor, I believe. The second or fourth floor. They weren't doing much business during the war. The point about having a central inspection of gauges is that that was how mass production was possible. The Greenfield Tap and Die Company could make a gauge, a screw or a bolt, in Greenfield, Massachussetts, which I think is where it is, and then that could be used on a part of something that was made in Ohio if the gauge, the screw and the bolt fitted the place on the machinery and consequently, every ten thousand or some figure, was pulled from the mass and sent to us to check. Now, they had about six different processes in the checking because you had to have those measurements to a ten thousandth of an inch.
Great exactitude.
Yes. And the man at the head of it was an Englishman who
Southern sensibility.
Southern sensibility, feminine sensibility, all of it rolled
Was Mr. Sutherland the Australian?
Yes. And he said he hoped that everybody would do the best they could under the circumstances and that as long as we worked together we would be happy.
How many employees were there?
About twenty-five in that room.
How many in the operation as a whole?
Oh, I don't know. They came and went, but I would say around 100.
How many women of your twenty-five in the room?
They were all women.
Oh.
You see, there were only these men supervisors. That's where I learned that men gossip as much as women. There was one of those men who every morning wanted somebody to run to him with some stories.
You had some to give, too, I suppose. Some tales.
Oh, yes.
Were many opportunities open for women in war work?
Oh, yes. After the war came the great "go back home."
What about in Mississippi? Were there any opportunities for women in war work in Mississippi or was it principally Red Cross and volunteer work?
I would guess, you see, I wasn't there, but I think there was some shipping work down on the coast and some women probably. . . .
Was there a Women's Land Army in Mississippi?
No, not as I recall. Rosie the Riveter was a Second World War slogan. The production methods in World War II were quite different from World War I, the mechanisms had spread so much more. Randolph-Macon sponsored Dr. Meta Glass, in charge, they sponsored the Land Army. She later, you know, went to Barnard as Dean and was President of Sweet Briar.
I don't know the history of the Land Army, I just know that it existed.
Well, she Dr. Glass did and sponsor the Virginia unit that was Randolph-Macon's contribution. Whereas Smith, you see, was furnishing employees not only to where I went to work, but to a great number of factories and plants in the New York and New England area.
Where did you live in New York?
I lived with a friend who had an uncle and aunt who lived in New York. They lived in a very staid and dignified boardinghouse Mrs. Fitch's, on West 76th Street and they had gotten Hilda in early. I had at the first a room down the street then moved into the boarding house, Mrs. Fitch's when a room came vacant.
Near Central Park West, or near what?
It was about two blocks west of Central Park West. There was wonderful
food and very dignified. They had a parlor that you could use
occasionally if you wanted to and eventually I had a nice room there. It
was up on the fourth floor, what used to be the maid's quarters. They
converted it into
The YWCA involvement and changing your course work to international law, I guess. . . .
And economics. You see, I had one of the fine economics professors there.
These stimulated you and inspired you to go to law school, I suppose?
Well, that came to me . . . I do not know when it was formulated in my
mind, but the first time that I knew that it was in my mind was when a
dentist in Lynchburg . . . now, I've always gotten along
[END OF TAPE 3, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 4, SIDE A]
So, after this encounter with the dentist in Lynchburg. . . .
Then, I began thinking, "If I do want to be a lawyer, why, there is no
reason why I can't do it like anybody else." So, it was in my head and
then as I thought along, I decided that, well, there would be a lot of
quarreling and fussing about this and I had better see if something else
would appeal to me. So, you see, I tried the year as an assistant on the
faculty, more or less trying out if that was the field for me. Then, the
war came along and so any permanent decisions were pushed aside in the
effort to win the war. Nobody today can understand how in World War I
everybody pitched in to do something to help win the war and every
person like me wanted to do a great deal more than they did. So then,
this YWCA job came along and I thought, "That's a practice something
like social work and I'll see how that sits." Then, I had a friend in
New York and she and I figured out something about starting a business
in New York with something different and eventually, she made quite a
success of it. But I finally decided somehow that I wanted to study law.
Then I announced that decision and resigned at the YWCA and believe it
or not, they tried to keep me and
But before you resigned, didn't you make application to law schools? There was no competition in your mind that law school was. . . .
Well, there was a competition in my mind in that I wished I could go to Columbia University and I was just irritated beyond words that I could study international law in a room and then when I left, they took up a course in evidence and I was not permitted to stay in that room and take that course. That just made no sense to me.
Women were not permitted to go to Columbia Law School?
Oh no, not until about . . . when was Harlan Stone Chief Justice? He was Dean of the Law School and a friend of mine, Judge Mary Donlon later she was a judge on the Court of Customs Appeals, she went to him along with some others, you know, trying to get Columbia University Law School open and he said, "It will be over my dead body." So, when it was opened and he was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Mary Donlon sent him a telegram that said, "I congratulate you on not having your dead body lying on the steps of the hall at Columbia. Women are now there." So, you couldn't get in and I couldn't get in and New York University Law School didn't really appeal to me, yet women were admitted there. So, I decided that maybe the South was the place for me after all and I could go to the University of Mississippi. So, that's what happened.
I am surprised that southern universities didn't have their law schools closed to women.
Some of them did, but the University of Mississippi was a state
institution and it had admitted women back in 1880 and no school of the
University was closed to them and as I have said earlier, Bessie Young
went there, I think,
I take it that your stay at Old Miss Law School was a happy experience?
Oh, yes. You know, I don't worry about whether I am happy. I think
happiness is a by-product. It's not a goal and if you are doing what you
want
There is also commitment, throw yourself into a commitment.
Now, when I got to the University of Mississippi campus, it was to me a
deadly place. I had come from New York, where there was stimulation on
every corner and people who fascinated me and inspired me. In September,
1920, Lee Russell was governor of Mississippi, the worst that we have
ever had, so far as I can determine and he had abolished, led the
movement to abolish fraternities and they had been abolished. The
fathers of many sons and daughters of the type who would ordinarily have
been there, they sent them somewhere else. There was almost a boycott by
quite an element within the state of the university at that time. Then,
Lee Russell and his kind were all for egalitarianism. They didn't want
anything that put anyone above another. There wasn't any kind of student
activities like Randolph-Macon had. They (Randolph-Macon) had had a
student activity for every moment of the day and of all kinds of
descriptions. That's how this relationship . . . not "relationship",
that's too strong of a word, with William Faulkner came about, in that
this friend of mine in Greenville, Mississippi, who was a
Was this a two year course in law at Mississippi?
It was a two year course. They were trying to change to a three year course. For myself, I felt that if I went to school for three more years, I wouldn't be any good. I had to get very quickly into something. Then, the other members of the class said that they had come with the understanding that it was two years and they either couldn't afford another year or this, that and the other. So, we won our first case. We had a little session of the enrollees of the freshman law class and appointed a committee and went to the dean and made our presentation. He agreed that the catalogue had made a contract and they couldn't make the change until the next year, which they did and Mr. Howorth was in that next class. But we did it in two years.
Did this include summers?
No and they put in some new courses, of course, to make the three years and I took all of the extra courses.
Did you?
Yes.
When did you do this? On your own after you had graduated?
No, I did it while I was there.
You just took a double load?
Yes, they let me do it and I did it. This sounds awfully conceited, but I don't know when I came to the conclusion that I could do three times what anybody else could within a given area. I couldn't go out and dig a ditch, I knew that. But in a lecture room, I could do three times. Take at Columbia University, there were these old Yankees, you know, oh you see, the University was distinct from the Teacher's College. The Teacher's College was full of southerners.
I know. Anita Pollitzer from Charleston, who was an organizer for the Woman's Party . . . .
I knew Anita.
She was there when you were there.
She was there, she probably overlapped, but you know, you don't get acquainted with all . . . .
But you did know her?
I knew her later, I knew her quite well. In fact, we were quite good
friends. These people, as I said, there were very few southerners in the
University proper, especially in the summer school and especially then
when the men were all in the Army mostly. So these people, they were
much older than I was, and said "we didn't know anybody from Mississippi
would be interested in all this kind of stuff." Then, when the grades
came out, this little shrimp from Mississippi was up there with the best
and they continued to not understand. Well, I could tell them, but I
didn't, that both of my great-grandmothers went to, one of them went to
Elizabeth College
So, you experienced that patronizing attitude, condescending?
Oh, I had been a wonder to so many of these people, these Yankees.
But you excelled at Old Miss, too?
I took first honors. The story as to that, I've told it often. I will show you a picture of the law school, I think that I have it in the car that has just come and as you entered, off to the left, there was a round room that could have been used for a classroom and the boys had appropriated it for what they called "The Bull Room." Well, I recognized that they had a right to get off to themselves and talk like they wanted to talk among themselves, but I also recognized that the room was in the Law School Building and as far as I was concerned, nothing was to be off limits, but that this would be handled discreetly. So, I would drop in there every once in awhile just to establish that I had a right to be there, but not enough to be a nuisance.
The Bull Room.
Yes. So one day, I came along, I think that it was the first week of the
school semester and I was a few minutes ahead of class time and three or
four of the boys were in there, we called them boys and I guess that
How? A debate?
Well, knowing what was the assignment, and by that time, of course, I had had a lot of experience that most of these young men hadn't. I had studied at Columbia, I had competed with some real good minds. Now, I don't mean that they didn't have good minds, but they hadn't had anything like the education that I had. They hadn't had anything like Randolph-Macon. So, Sid . . . I always felt kind of sorry about it. When the quarter grades came in, I was a half a point ahead and when the half came in, I was two or three points ahead. So, he was either deciding that he couldn't have it close or . . . then, by the end of the second term, the summer, he was definitely about seven points or something like that behind. So, from then on, nobody came within ten points of my grade.
But you set your goal on delivering this senior oration.
Well, that was something else. I hadn't thought about that at first. I
don't think that anybody does much, maybe some people do, but I didn't
because I was helping start this dramatic club and then decided that the
weekly newspaper needed some upbuilding and I persuaded them to let me
edit a column, which I stole the title from The New
Republic. I don't suppose that three people knew about The New Republic there, anyhow. "Books and Things."
That's how I really worked with Faulkner, because he contributed to that
column and while I never changed a word of anything that he put in,
technically I edited his contributions. I did ask him for contributions
and I did discuss what they were and I did print them. So, I was doing a
good many little things besides sticking to the books. So, I thought it
would be more or less automatic that whoever made the highest grades
would be the class orator and then at commencement of the first year I
was there, the man that had made the highest grade was not the class
orator, but somebody further down the line was picked.
How did that happen?
Politics, I guess, but anyhow it happened. I hadn't any idea of how it
happened, I may have made guesses, which I've forgotten by now, but the
thing was that I caught the significance that you not only had to have a
high grade. So, I knew that there would be some strokes against me as a
woman, that some of the people on the faculty committee would say, "Oh,
well . . . " So, I did what I could and I don't know what all, but I do
know that the dean's wife pulled for me and I do know that some of the
faculty did. So, I was appointed class orator. The class orator was
supposed to be the person who had made outstanding scholastic record and
who had done the most for the student body. I am sure that they counted
[laughter]Marionettes. . . . I was president of it the
second year, the first year, Ben was president and there was a Scribbler
Society, which was a chapter of a Greek letter honor society, but
because they couldn't have any Greek letters on the campus, they called
it The Scribblers. It only admitted men and so, I organized a group of
women writers. We called it The Ravens. I deviled them into having a
girls' basketball team and got out and acted as a referee for the games,
got teams from two or three places. Believe me, it's work. I've always
had respect for anreferee since then.
Well, you told us this morning about your inspiration for getting this hard hitting commencement address. I wonder if you could tell it again?
As I said this morning, I am basically an advocate. I may not look like
it in all this free talking, but I don't like to make a speech to
celebrate Decoration Day or something like that, you know. I like to be
pleading a cause and of course, sometimes like that historical society,
there was some sense to that, I was trying to make those younger people
see what had motivated things and that there were people who had done
things before. So, after I had agreed to be the class orator, I was
worrying about what to put in there, to get my teeth into something. We
had convocations there of the student body, they called them "chapel"
and we had them about once a week or once every two weeks. So, I came to
chapel and the chancellor of the university presided at this particular
one. He didn't always. Usually, they had some minister or some outside
speaker or something, but he decided to do this one. So, in the course
of his remarks, he quoted from some statement that had been made at some
institution. I think that perhaps it was by some parent who was upset
that his son had heard
So, I worked that speech up and I didn't let anybody see it before it was delivered, because I wanted it to come as a. . . .
You had that much freedom?
Not after that. After that, they made a rule that the faculty committee should go over the speech. The average student had a faculty person to help with his commencement oration, he had tutoring in the delivery, coaching, so that the matter of not knowing what was in the speech really hadn't come up.
But you hadn't asked for these aids, had you?
No. I didn't want them. I had no intention of asking for them. There wasn't anybody around. . . .
But ever after?
That's what I was told, that they took care that it didn't happen again. Although, you see, as I said this morning, when the faculty committee studied the speech, there was nothing that they could take a stand against. That is, to say that I shouldn't get my degree.
But it's a critique of administrative practices.
Yes, it is. Dr. Cash, at Delta State, he read it this
It could.
Well, it almost got lost for posterity.
I wonder if it was published?
Oh, no.
Well, Miss Florence Simms at the YWCA wanted to see it published.
Yes. I may have . . . no, I didn't. She took a great interest in me and
in 1922, the YWCA in Mississippi had a state secretary who was doing the
high school work, the Girl Reserves, they call them Y Teans now. Well,
the YWCA had run out of war money and was getting down to basic
activities and they served notice on Mississippi that it had to take
over the financing and operation of this work. So, the secretary had
picked up my name somewhere and she came up to Oxford to see me and she
asked if I would become chairman of the board that would have to be set
up to administer, to collect money for employees and make policies and
this, that and the other. So, I agreed to do it. Now, the YWCA was
having its bienniel convention at Hot Springs, Arkansas that spring and
I thought that if I was going to go into this, I should renew my
affiliation or associations with national personnel. You see, I have
never been a local person, I have always wanted to know who was at the
top. So, I arranged to go over for the convention and Miss Simms was
there and she gave me the opportunity, one of the pleasures of my life,
Judge Florence Allen was going to speak and she arranged that I would
introduce Judge Allen,
Yes. I haven't been there, but I know.
It is somewhat similar to this. The car broke down, which in 1922 was not unusual and we sat there on the side of the road and talked for an hour or more and it was a great occasion with me. Then, she died the next January.
How did she know about your commencement address, its merit?
Well, she didn't know the merit, I mean, I think that I probably discussed it because it was already being formulated in my mind. I probably discussed it then and I don't know how she heard about it, maybe I wrote her. I wrote her occasionally and she may have learned that it had been well accepted.
It's said that this address was inspired in part by the evolutionary controversy then, the view of evolution being . . . .
Well, that inspired the chancellor's remarks and the whole
And what was the community reception of the address?
Well, it was enthusiastic. I assume that there were some people who went to sleep, there always are, but the vast majority were just very attentive and very enthusiastic and I got a long standing ovation at the end, which after all, for a commencement oration . . . .
Were you lambasted in the press at all?
No, not in Oxford. The Oxford Eagle, their little
paper, never would . . . .
[END OF TAPE 4, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 4, SIDE B]
Why is it that you said you were so willing to give of your time in interviews this way?
It's not giving of time. That is no particular gift at my stage in life,
but it is a giving of innermost thoughts, many of which I have never
tried to put into words to any other person. Because it seems to me that
the times, which always seem to older people and maybe always are, out
of joint. I think the spread of alienation and the attitude of so many
people today that there is no hope . . . these students at Delta State
University asked me, "Do you think that the United States is done?"
Well, if a person can study the life of another person and see that with
purpose, with attention to each step and directing it toward the next
step and by seizing opportunities, and concentration, that person can
accomplish a great deal,
You seem to have your philosophy pretty clearly outlined.
Well, I pity the person at eighty who does not.
There are some, though.
Well, I'm sure the "fliberty-gibbets," as they used to say.
Back to your commencement address, just one more comment, one more question. I would like to know more about community reaction, not just audience reaction, but community reaction. You said that a woman approached you.
I described that incident and I want to say that this is the first time
I've ever told that incident in what might be called "public." It had a
great imprint on me. After I spoke
She was a woman of some education?
She was bound to have been. She probably taught school or something like
that and she had sat back in that miserable, poverty-stricken area, I'm
sure that there wasn't a library in the county and there wasn't
anything, and thought her thoughts. Well, I never forgot that. It did
several things for me. It made me think that you can never judge an area
solely by its appearance and statistics, that there may be gold in them
thar hills that look so barren and desolate. And it also made me feel
that if I had a gift that could move people so, I should be very careful
of the cause in which I used it. I have never wanted, I have accepted
money sometimes for speeches, but mostly I have insisted that the public
was supporting me, or the government, or I had adequate means and I
didn't want anything. That's one of the reasons. Then, I have never made
a speech that I didn't believe in. And a good deal of it is due to that
woman, because I developed it, I always had quite a wit, you know, and I
could get up at a banquet and make them all fall off their chairs
laughing, but I wouldn't
But this instance
You see, you don't have that kind of thing happen much and I was feeling high and this came in.
What were the kinds of cases that you first handled? Well, let me ask you another question first, did you have any trouble getting clients when you first began to practice law?
Well, every lawyer does and you certainly wouldn't be telling the truth if you said you didn't.
But this was something of an unusual phenomenon, a so-called "lady lawyer."
A "lady lawyer" gets publicity and gets attention, but getting business is something different. I opened in a little office in Greenville when I came from law school in June. I wasn't making much headway, I did a little business and then I wanted to get to making enough money to support myself, so I came here to Monteagle with some cousins. The first automobile trip from Greenville, Mississippi to Monteagle and we went over creeks! I mean, the road was nothing but creekbed and it was a very adventurous trip. Well, anyhow, I began to think that maybe I ought to try to connect up with something and be a law clerk or something. Well, in talking around, my brother-in-law, Mr. Audley W. Shands, a Cleveland attorney, offered me a place in his office and I accepted and I went to Cleveland. He had one of the largest practices in the Mississippi Delta and he was an amazingly fine lawyer. He was equally good before a judge as well as a jury and he had. . . .
Did he do criminal cases, civil, corporate law, what did he do?
He did very little criminal law at that time. He had practiced a good deal of criminal law and later, he went back to some of it. But at that time, he was doing chiefly chancery, land law, estates, guardianship and suits on accounts and suits on contracts and enforcements of contracts and all of the business law. There wasn't in Mississippi at that time much of what you call corporate law. He represented the Illinois Central Railroad and when the Mississippi Power and Light came in, they employed him and so on, but not like what you call corporate law today. It was a country law practice, a very interesting one and a very human one, you might say. As I said, estates and so, he made me a lawyer. Up until then, I was. . . .
You were going serve as his apprentice?
Yes. He took me, whenever he had a client come in with a case, he would
send for me and I would sit there and learn how he elicited the facts
and how he shaped up to what principle was involved. Then, I did a great
deal of research and I looked after all the papers. Then, he let me
argue cases as he felt more confident of my ability and I worked on
briefs. He made a lawyer of me. He was a great lawyer and he died in
1935 when he was only fifty-five. But I left his firm in the fall of
1926 and he was very much upset with me. He said, "You are just getting
to be some account." I said, "It may seem so to you, but I'm getting to
where I don't make any decision without checking with you and I can't be
a lawyer and not make my own decisions." So, I went back to Greenville
and opened an office and shared it with S.B. Thomas on his invitation.
It surprised me, he wrote me and said, "Lucy, I hear that you are coming
to Greenville and I want to rent such and such space and I can't afford
it. Will you come in
Chancellor at the university?
No, chancellor of the court. We have divided jurisdiction in Mississippi: the law side being the circuit judge and the chancery or equity side having the chancellor. That court handles all land cases, wills and so on. So, I was in Greenville then and I had a thriving business built up the first thing.
What was this law partner's name?
Sam(S.B.)Thomas. He later became chancellor himself and he just died last year. He died while Joe was sick, so I couldn't go to the funeral. He told somebody that he didn't know what work was until he watched me. He made very good company and wit, you know, and told funny stories and was popular and easy-going. But we would get a case together and he would work then, because you see that he was enough of a fair-minded person, he would see what I was doing and he would do his part.
I see that you were drafted as League of Women Voters counsel?
No, I wasn't. If you saw that, it was wrong somehow.
Well, it was informal counsel. They were going to investigate an irregularity involving a Mrs. J.O. Wallace.
I've forgotten the details of that, but what I was, I was the legal counsel for the Mississippi Federation of Women's Clubs. Now, I steered clear of the League of Women Voters. It may be that they wrote me sometime and asked me to see "how come" about something.
I think this woman had involved herself under League auspices and declared a political position and the League was up in arms against her because it was a supposedly non-partisan group.
Every once in awhile something turns up that I am supposed to have done and maybe I did, but I don't have the foggiest idea and I do know quite distinctly that I was always polite to members of the League and as I said the other day, maybe not on tape, that I had conferences with their officers in conjunction with officers of other organizations where there was some common organizational problem, but mostly I was always a partisan Democrat. As I said, I joined the ward club in New York City and I never made any pretense of not being a Democrat. Now, when I came to administer the law, it didn't matter whether the person appearing before me was a Democrat or a hottentot. The law was administered as fairly as I could see it, which is a very different thing. Some people don't understand the difference.
Then I see that you drew up the articles of a business partnership between Minnie Brewer and Miss Forbes and Miss Smith.
It wasn't Miss Smith, it was Miss White.
It was subsequently dissolved, I understand.
Yes. We had a big set-to down in Jackson when it was dissolved. Well, I
wish we had time to go into that particular project and the beginning of
my associations which started then from time to time with Earlene White.
Because she subsequently became the national president of the National
Federation of Business and Professional Women and I was what she called
jokingly . . . and the joking was proper, "her campaign
Was she a Mississippian?
Yes and the members loved her. So, it was like reelecting Franklin
Roosevelt in '36. It was just one of those things:
What was this set-to down in Jackson?
Well, Earlene White and Ligon Forbes were both newspaper women but more
on the business side of newspapers, that is, advertising. And they had
come up with one of these ideas of promoting a newspaper and they would
go to a community and sell, persuade the editor of the paper to let them
put on this campaign of getting subscriptions, you know. Usually, they
would give some little awards or something, but I don't think they
agreed to do that in this case of The Woman Voter. And
The Woman Voter, The Woman Voter. Well, I don't know whose fault
was what, but the upshot was that they went along a few weeks and then
began to get into some difficulties and so, we wanted to enforce the
clause in the contract about reclaiming these lists and they didn't want
to turn them loose. They wanted some considerable payment and I suppose
that maybe I had some business in Jackson and they, Ligon and Earlene,
had left Clarksdale. Anyway, we all met down there and they kept on
asking
You had a great tribute paid to you as a person who could draw up a
contract in a most excellent fashion and this was so surprising among
"lady lawyers." [laughter]
That was her father. You see, I had put in some little trick that favored
Minnie and that Ligon and Earlene didn't realize quite the impact that
it would have. But after that, you know, the strange thing
Who you won against?
You see, Earlene marked me down from that day as a person who would be a good ally and not to try any funny business with. But Earlene was quite gifted in the warmth of her personality and she could make a fine speech. Now, it didn't have any ideas, but it made people feel good.
Was she a good administrator in her position?
Yes, she was. She made me chairman of the Program Coordination Committee, they called it, it was new. She made me chairman of nearly every special committee that popped up.
So, you had a good working relationship?
Oh, yes. She sent me to Norway to represent the national at the board meeting of the International Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs and that was a wonderful experience.
You were connected with AAUW. Did you know Jessie Stokely Burnett? This is just off the cuff.
The name is familiar. Who is she?
She's the South Carolina organizer of the AAUW.
She was one of the early ones. . . .
She taught at Furman University or Greenville Woman's College, as it was called.
Yes, she was with the Southern Association of Collegiate Alumnae. I knew
most of those women slightly. I knew a few of them well, but you see,
She was a suffragist and had lunch with the Pankhursts when they came to Greenville. I see this Association of Women Lawyers caught you up in its membership.
Well, I've always believed that you should support the professional organization of whatever profession you are in. I was present at the organization meeting of the National Association of Women Lawyers in Minneapolis in 1923.
Yes, I remember that now.
Well, I don't know what they call me in it, they have a history that is coming off the press in August 1975 and I am kind of curious to see if I will be listed in there.
Who is writing this history?
I don't recall. I ordered a copy. It was announced in a recent letter from the president. I attended a number of the conventions of the National Association of Women Lawyers and I knew some of them very well and some of them not so well, practically every president until the last four or five. I was what they call a vice-president from Mississippi for many years. I had several articles published in their journal.
I saw those.
But I never got into the real workings of the organization. You know, you can't do everything.
I sometimes wonder how you did so much. There was an International Association of Women Lawyers.
Oh yes, I belonged to that. I forget when we started it up, but. . . .
About 1929, was it not?
Somewhere along there, you know, when so many international movements were getting under way.
What do these groups actually accomplish in the long run?
Well, it depends on which group you are talking about.
Well, let's take them one at a time. The National Association of Women Lawyers.
The National Association of Women Lawyers has done a great deal. It battered and banged to get Columbia University, for example, and people like Anita Pollitzer and myself and so on, we never missed an opportunity for that kind of thing. You would write letters to the papers and you would go to see whoever was the dean or you would go to the trustees, more likely, because you had sense enough to know that that's where the power is . . . or some donor. Then, it has promoted solidarity among women lawyers, kept them driving on unified lines. Then, I think that there would never have been a woman judge if it hadn't been . . . I mean in the strict judicial area, and prior to 1950, there were no women judges, if it hadn't been for the National Association of Women Lawyers. All over the country, they worked for it. And you see, the American Bar Association . . . finally, I think a year ago, they presented some woman's name, but they didn't ever before. But the woman lawyers always threw a name in there so that whoever was doing the appointing, the governor or the president or the mayor or whatnot, couldn't say that there wasn't any woman.
They were active regionally, too?
Yes.
But you said that you just couldn't organize those Mississippi
Did I say that?
You said, "They were so cool toward organizing into an association."
Well, there weren't but four or five and one of them went to the Labor Department and Miss Buchanan made quite a success there in the women's division and then later on, the legal staff of the Labor Department.
You got an interesting letter from the Connecticut organization, the "OWL", Organization of Women Lawyers. They wanted you to join as an associate member, I think.
Yes.
Did you join?
No, I don't think so. I think that I decided that Connecticut was too far away.
The International Association was interesting. . . .
It was.
It was so noble, grand. . . .
As I recollect, we had some meetings in Washington and New York and I met a number of them and then of course, when I was in Paris for the International Federation of University Women, the Paris women barristers gave a dinner party for me and were also very nice in many ways and then in London, the women barristers gave me a luncheon in 1924 and again in 1970.
This organization, with its statement of purposes, was it an action group
or was it just an association where women lawyers could get
Well, of course, they were too few and they were too far between to be a real action group, but they encouraged each other. Now, you live in a different age.
Yes.
But when you are all alone and trying to get something done, this encouragement even in a letter from somebody over in South Carolina who is in the same sort of a box and then if you can meet even once a year, a little, it is very encouraging and keeps your spirits up.
Well, then you moved to Jackson and married, or you married and moved to Jackson.
Yes, that's it. You see, Mr. Howorth was a lawyer in Jackson and to tell the truth, we talked about his coming to the Delta, because I really had a good practice going there and I decided, I think more than he, that it wouldn't be fair to him. In Mississippi then, and the situation being what it was, if he came there, everybody would say that he was just marrying me because I had a good law practice and he would go down in public estimation, while I could move to Jackson, which was my mother's childhood home, where her father had practiced, where. . . .
[END OF TAPE 4, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 5, SIDE A]
This is Constance Myers, continuing the interview with Lucy Somerville Howorth from Cleveland, Mississippi, the interview taking place in Monteagle, Tennessee on June 23, 1975.
[looking at picture]
No, that's Mrs. Le Point Cassibry Smith, who is the director of the Bolivar County Library and who has traveled with me for . . . oh, we started in '63. She went to New York with me. Joe arranged that, he saw that I was getting restless in Cleveland and he doesn't like to travel and he doesn't like New York and I love it. So, he approached La Point one day and said, "How about taking the Judge to New York? I'll give you the trip." So, she did. She had never been and she is one of these people kind of like me, don't ask her something if you don't expect a "yes", and so we went to New York and had ten days of theater and concerts and I showed her some of my old haunts. So, we went to New York every year through '68, then my brother had a stroke in '69 and Joe and I moved in and took over his law practice and kept it going. So, I had to skip the New York trip, but I. . . .
Have you been back since?
That summer, 1969, I said, "Come on
What year was this again?
'69.
And Pat King wasn't there yet, was she?
No.
Was Jeannette Cheek?
Oh, yes.
She is a friend of mine, we have appeared on programs together.
Well, we got to be quite good friends in earlier years when she was there. I had known all of them, but I have never seen Patricia King.
She is a very young woman.
So then, the next year, I don't know what struck us, but I said, "Let's
go to England." So, we went to England and I visited what we claim is
the old family home, but I think that it's a rather shaky claim. It is a
beautiful place outside of Edinburgh and we stopped in Ireland and then
the next year, things were all in an upheaval in Europe. So, in '71 . .
. Joe [laughter] [laughter]
You've been hopping.
Well, why not?
Why not? Are you going anywhere this year?
I don't know. Le Pointe is all sewed up. She is the president of the Mississippi Library Association this year and she goes out of office technically the first of January, but the new one gets elected in October. So. . . .
You might have an autumn trip.
I don't know what we are going to do. She has a daughter marrying in August.
What is this woman's name again?
Her name is Smith, but her given name is French, La Pointe.
And you call her Mrs. La Pointe?
She is Mrs. Warwick V. Smith in social life.
I see.
But in business, she is Mrs. Le Pointe Cassibry Smith and she is a remarkable person.
Makes a fine traveling companion.
She suits me. You see, that's essential.
Now, we were talking yesterday about the change over, you married and moved to Jackson. How different did you find Jackson as a place to practice law?
It's the difference between a country town and a city. While at that time
I think the population of Jackson was 60,000, whereas today I think that
it is around 275,000, but 60,000 and 5,000 is quite a bit of difference.
So, there was more industry, there were more people, it was more
difficult to know the people who were going to sit on the juries and you
see, with a woman in that day and time, when only men were on the jury,
you had a problem. In Cleveland, I solved the problem by joining the
Eastern Star. My father was a great Mason and in Cleveland and in most
communities in Mississippi, then men of the Masonic Orders . . . who
were carpenters, day laborers and railroad employees and men of that
type, except the farmers, who sat on juries, their wives and sisters and
cousins
You joined the American Legion Auxiliary.
Oh my, yes. Well, you see, Joe was quite active. I think that he was a charter member of that Jackson post, anyhow he was quite active in it. The Legion then and the Legion today are two different organizations. All of the men of prominence and influence had been in World War I and they were all in the Legion then and they all threw their weight and influence about it.
I think that the Masons and Shriners have changed somewhat in composition, too, between then and now.
Well, I think so, too. I think they had begun to lose their influence
back in the '30s and I think that has continued. You know, I knew people
in Jackson, I had an aunt there, Mrs. H. R. Shands, formerly Bessy Nagut
and her husband,
Did you have a lot of clients?
Well, we were building.
I'm interested in your marriage and how it might have affected your career in retrospect. Did you find your marriage in any way an impediment in your career, in any way whatever?
That is very difficult to know, because it's as Roosevelt used to say, an
"ify" question. I think it changed the nature of my career in that as a
solo person I would have operated differently and in a way, I might have
struck within the state a little more power. But I think it
You avoided that label, that unhappy label.
That's right, you see, and I think that I also avoided some of the sharpness that many single women seem to develop, that comes out as a rasping quality. I certainly would not change the course of my life.
To have a confidant of the opposite sex is a tremendous release and. . . .
Well, I think that human beings are made to go in pairs and I think that each supplements the other and if they are really congenial and devoted and none of this stupid domination. Soon after we were married, Joe said, "I want this to be a freeing experience for you." You see, he had seen this other kind of stuff, even if he hadn't as an individual, he had as a lawyer because he saw divorce cases every few days. And he has never . . . and I have never asked him to go into it, but he said that he had to change his whole point of view after he met me.
He did have to?
He said that once. So, I assume and you would have expected that he would have grown up with the traditional Lutheran-Presbyterian attitude that the man is the lord and master. His father was a Lutheran minister
The tradition of the Judeo-Christian attitudes.
Yes.
Well, you've had a rare and valuable helpmate.
Yes, I'm well aware of that.
So, you didn't find it a hindrance to your career; it just altered the
nature of your career somewhat. You had no children. Was
Well, that's my private business.
Were you caught up in the political hubbub of Jackson right away?
Oh, yes. You see, I had a political background with my mother having been in the legislature and my family always more or less prominent, but in the city of Jackson there was a very astute man as mayor and he balanced all the elements pretty well, but we considered ourselves as being among his supporters and I think he always considered that. We were always very friendly. He had to be very discreet, but I think that he threw a little weight in my favor and I don't think he was party to the cabal that was formed, I'm sure, in the latter days of the legislature campaign to defeat me. I never thought that of Walter Scott, he was very careful in things of that type, he had to be.
How did you begin to move onto the political scene? What were your first political baby steps in Jackson as you sought to move into the political world?
I didn't want to move into the political world, I knew that, you know you
do know, you know the color of your eyes and you know what you can do
within limits and I knew I had what I call a political gift. That is, I
could attract people, I could have them see my way of thinking, I could
make them willing to follow me, persuade them is a better word. But I
wanted to be a good lawyer, that's all I wanted to be. Then the
Depression came and it was catch as catch can then. We had a good client
who did our dry cleaning and he came to us one day and said, "I'll keep
on doing your cleaning for you and won't charge you and I hope you'll
keep on doing my legal work and won't charge me." Then, there was a very
What was one of his titles?
One of his titles was Bossman; Son of Haman, Black
Earth I believe that was it.
What was his theme, do you remember?
Yes, his theme was the Negroes and the whites in the Mississippi Delta and the beginning of trouble. I didn't read all his books that he wrote; I think there were about six. I had too many acquaintances who wrote books and then I had to read all the law decisions. I don't know what general readers do now; books come out so fast.
And his wife's name and the title of her volume?
I don't recall. I was trying to run down something about Louis for this
Faulkner business and I couldn't find either of them in Who's Who or her's in Who's Who Among American
Women, but her's would be
Well, did his novels simply attract a Mississippi readership?
No, he joined the FBI. You see, the Depression ran us all to doing different things and he joined the FBI and some of his writing was about that. He lived out in California, the FBI sent him out there and he was out there for quite awhile, then they moved to Nashville - he died a year or so ago.
I see that you developed a friendship with Senator Pat Harrison?
Yes, that came fairly early. You see, we were never in the
Vardaman-Russell-Bilbo and all that tripe faction. So, when Pat Harrison
ran against Vardaman, my family fought for Pat Harrison and I got
acquainted with him. I was in Washington every once in awhile and met
Harrison, but the real acquaintance came at the 1924 Democratic
convention when my mother was a delegate from Mississippi. Now, I wasn't
there but for two days, but she was one of the few members of the
Mississippi delegation who was financially able, because of obligations,
able to stay throughout the convention. She demonstrated her skill.
Harrison, you see, thought the delegation should be in his pocket. Well,
she outsmarted him steadily. They didn't agree on who should be the
candidate part of the time and part of the time they did. And he
developed a genuine respect for her. So, then, soon after something sent
me to Washington and
He had to get a lot of southern support for one thing.
It was in his committee. He was chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. It couldn't have gotten to first base without his help and Wagner, he could make speeches in New York, but as to collecting votes in the Senate, he couldn't do it. He was a fine man and I have great respect for Senator Wagner, but I have always felt that the cabal of newspaper people and writers would boost anything that showed up from New York and were unfair in not giving credit to Pat Harrison.
It has never been just or accurate as far as the South was concerned.
It is, but you know, it is the same way with other places. I went out to
North Dakota once to the AAUW and I sat there listening to them talk
about how they couldn't do this and they didn't get recognized for that
and one thing and another and so when I was introduced to make a little
greeting, I said that I felt so much at home, that they sounded exactly
like a Mississippi group feeling oppressed and at the bottom of the
totem pole. [laughter]
It's a remote state with a small population and it does share a great similarity.
Yes.
And a homogeneous kind of population, too.
Well, of course Mississippi, what the blacks call the power structure was homogeneous, but the state was far from it.
But as far as participatory citizenship of the time was concerned, it was
homogeneous. About the business of Governor Mike Connor
Pretty much. And the record of his administration, which was a very fine record of restoring the state to financial stability and starting on a constructive road and reorganizing and getting the educational institutions back on accredidation lists, all of that and Connor has never been given adequate credit, in my judgement. Now, all of this is gone into in great detail, I think . . . I know on the tapes of Jane Elliot..
Is it really necessary to besmirch an administration and to destroy a person politically, even in a political contest for office?
That is one of the tragedies of our system and maybe of all systems of
government. You see it in Shakespeare's plays, "If I be King, then Thou
art the Knave." I told Jane Elliot, this I think is interesting, but it
is a repetition of what she has, that when we went to Washington to the
Roosevelt inaugural in 1933, there was a large delegation and I was
among the delegation. On the way up, it was a sleeping car special with
all of us and so on the car, Mrs. Sennet Connor wife of the Governor
asked me if I would be a part of their residence at the hotel. They had
learned that a large suite at the old Wardman Park, the Sheraton Park
now, had been set aside for them and that they had an extra room and
would I be pleased to occupy that. So, that threw me with the governor's
party, which of course, was fine and saved me money that I didn't have.
So, I was included in the smaller entertainments of the Mississippi
group. They had a large ball for all of us, they had a large this, that
and the other. But then they had smaller ones just for the governor and
his immediate circle. So one Presidents I Have Known, well, they said then
that he had given George Allen ten thousand dollars to pay for the
entertainment for the Miss delegates I don't know how much he had given,
but he had given this money to pay for the entertainment of the
Mississippi delegation and he was a guest, but
But Senator Harrison did not?
Oh, no. No. So therefore, I didn't telephone Connor, I didn't write him but one of his best friends turned up in Washington about that time with whom I could communicate. So I said to him, "Do everything you can to persuade Mike Connor not to run against Harrison. He is going to have the worst defeat of his life and his record will be smeared and smirched and he will never get credit for what he has really done for Mississippi." Now whether that man got that message to him, I don't know, but if he did, it didn't do any good and that is exactly what happened.
Do you agree with the historian, Albert D. Kirwan, about both Vardaman and Bilbo? What Kirwan said was that "it was necessary to resort to dramatic steps and slogans to attract attention to your political campaign, to yourself, in the face of a hostile press."
No, I do not agree. In Mississippi at the time that Vardaman rose to the
surface, there was no diversion at all except politics. I as a child
went to meetings, I loved them, it was the biggest excitement of the
season, everybody all ages went and out in the hills they had what they
called "dinner on the grounds." It was a big event. You had no radio,
you had no t.v., you had no good roads,
Kirwan would argue, would have argued that both candidates in opposing each other had to outdo each other in one way or the other and in the case of a hostile press, the other had to become more flamboyant, perhaps.
I would agree that in a contest, each person has to resort to something
to attract attention and to convince the potential voters that he,
because at that time there were no women candidates, that he could
accomplish more than the other person. The hostile press . . . what in
the world did the press mean in Mississippi? You had the Jackson Daily News and the Clarion Ledger
and the New Orleans paper and the Memphis paper and I doubt if one-tenth
of the people read them and they had a built in. . . .
[END OF TAPE 5, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 5, SIDE B]
You say that the press represented the interests, sometimes the railroad interests so that sometimes there was a built in. . . .
Yes, there was a built in rejection of it. Now, I think that in things
like Watergate, for example, where the press kept
Don't you think there's a different attitude, maybe, toward the press today than then, more respect for it than perhaps there was in the '30s?
I don't know about that, but I think that maybe a larger portion of the people look at the press, although you see these comparative analyses of t.v. and the press and t.v. is something else, but let's don't get into that. I mean, it is interesting, but it is not on my career.
Kirwan also claims that overdue reforms were effected by the so-called demagogues, curbing the corporations, regulating public utilities, tax equalization, the building of hospitals and sanitoriums, literacy programs. Do you agree?
To some extent. Now, Vardaman did make on the whole a good governor. Now he committed what to me are crimes, his destruction of the pitiful little Negro Normal School in north Mississippi set back the education of the Negroes fifty years, because the teachers . . . I've known some of them. Good people, but not much more than a third grade education and here this little Normal was struggling and he killed it and he tore up the higher education of the state and they said that he threw out a cousin of mine at the university and he threw out the father-in-law of my sister, all of which is true, but that wouldn't make me . . . if they needed to be thrown out, in my judgement, why I wouldn't have opposed it. But he got the political turmoil into the University of Mississippi.
Was its accreditation removed temporarily?
Well, at that time, they didn't have much accreditation, but that stirred up a hornet's nest there and it continues to this day. They have done a great deal of trying to get rid of it, but they haven't succeeded.
Did Bilbo do some good?
Bilbo is . . . I don't give him much because he was such an immoral character. I don't mean his personal conduct, I mean his political conduct. The less said about his personal conduct, the better, but he was always trading and trafficking and he kept the legislature always not knowing what would happen.
Here's my last question now about Kirwan and his themes. He. . . .
I haven't read him for a long time.
He insists that these reforms were brought about by such as Vardaman and Bilbo. The fact that these reforms were brought about by such individuals was the price that Mississippi had to pay for neglecting reform for so long. Do you agree with that?
I don't agree with that. I think this, that Mississippi did neglect
reform. I think that Alabama did, I think that all of the South did and
I think when you neglect reform and it is brought into being, there is
bound to be more of a shock and difficult adjustment than if as soon as
the problem appeared it was dealt with. We see this in Washington today
with this energy business. Forty years ago they should have begun to see
this. So, I never did agree with Kirwan entirely, he's a fine writer and
certainly worked with the subject and his writing, I
Well, one more historian and I won't say much about him, but James Silver, I understand, instigated a great deal of heated controversy during his term at the university.
Of course: James Silver's wife is one of my best friends. She and I, "Dutch" as she is called, we belonged to the same college sorority and. . . .
Is this AOPi or ADPi?
AOPi. Alpha Omicron Pi. Somebody asked me once, "I can't imagine why you take an interest in doing anything for these silly college sororities?" I said, "How do you think they continue to exist? Somebody has to put some sense into the management." So, Dutch has been one of those who has helped with the administration of the sorority and I like Jim Silver and I think that he served a purpose, he made a cockleburr every once in awhile and he certainly was one. They are very happy down in Florida.
I didn't know where he went.
Well, he went first up to Indiana to Notre Dame, but he has arthritis and the cold there just immoblized him and he suffered terribly and he developed a heart condition and the doctor said that they had to get to a different climate. He went down to Florida and expected not to do anything, but they were starting this . . . you know, they have universities springing up everywhere and one was springing up where he was and they got him first, I think, on the. . . .
Which one was that?
I can't recall now. But his book, Mississippi: A Closed
Society, which I. . . .
What did you think of it?
I agree with it a great deal. He wrote it hurriedly and it is slap-dash and I think it. . . .
Yes, and it is loaded with prejudice.
Oh, yes. There is no effort at all to be fair. I thought that his attack on that rabbi was totally uncalled for because the man had helped him and the man had tried to do what he could and I think that somebody set fire to his house and all and just because he wouldn't go along with something that Jim Silver wanted, why he put in . . . and I was told by a mutual friend that Jim Silver's friends tried to make him take that chapter out, that it was totally uncalled for and in the long run, in the circle of friends, it reflected on Silver and not on this man, Rabbi Somebody.
I don't remember that chapter.
Well, I think it's the last chapter in there, toward the end of the book. And you had the feeling of it being dragged in. Silver has great admirers among the students of the university, he was at the University of Mississippi a wonderful teacher. He was arrogant, but opinionated people sometimes make the best teachers, you know. This idea that a teacher has to be a bland pussy-foot is utterly wrong. You don't remember those if you look back over who taught you.
As far as historians of the women's movement are concerned, I see a new
chapter beginning for you in 1928 and this is why I want to ask you what
your views are on a thesis advanced by William L. O'Neal in his volume,
Everyone Was Brave. He says that all the impetus
gathered
No. I have never accepted that thesis. I do agree that to some extent the
fervor and enthusiasm and unity was dispersed, but I do not agree that
it was entirely dispersed and I think that without all that effort and
without winning the vote, we would be back where we were in 1890. I
could certainly never have had my career. The women who like Bessie
Young
Of course, William O'Neill would go on to say that women didn't effectively use this new found power.
They didn't use it to maximum effect and they didn't use it to the degree that the women leaders and the rank and file of the suffrage movement wished that they had, but they here and there used it.
Of course, William O'Neill believes that the goal of the vote was wrong
for women to seek. They should have been seeking
Well, of course, that is a lot of foolishness in my judgement.
Gerda Lerner disagreed with O'Neill, agreed with you.
Of course, this same thing is bobbing up down here in Mexico, this International Women's Year from down. . . .
I guess that I have thought too much about our interviews and I haven't been able to follow the news.
Well, that conference is going on and the dissension is showing, well largely from the Communist-oriented countries, that until there is an economic revolution, women cannot expect anything and that the goal should be that first.
Gerda Lerner points out that women's liberation in the Soviet Union means old ladies sweeping the streets.
Exactly. I had a friend who went there. He was an army officer and I asked him, I said, "When you get over there, if you can, find out whether the men in the army salute a woman officer." He came back and told me no.
Gerda Lerner, who is a very level headed historian of women in America,
The Grimke
Sisters of South Carolina and Black Women in White
America, and is a professor at Sarah Lawrence,
She's correct. You take in Mississippi, you've read
Was Whitfield a good governor?
Yes, he died in office, you know. He died from cancer and he was ill, so that actually, he only had about two and a half years. He initiated many reforms. There is a new biography of him that has come out and I. . . .
Can you remember the author and the title?
His name is Baker and he calls it Catch the Vision. His
name is Bill R. Baker. He put a notice in the paper and asked people who
had anything, personal experiences with Whitfield, to contact him. So, I
wrote him a letter and he refers to it in his book and I met him down in
Jackson at this historical meeting. He is a Baptist preacher in Clinton,
Mississippi and he points out all the progressive programs that
Whitfield initiated. It was an era of good feeling. He was a kindly man,
sometimes did some things that were not too bright and he was not an
exciting man, but the session of the legislature and all was cooperative
and there wasn't all this infighting that went on whenever Bilbo took
office.
I would like you now to insert your comments about your father, if you would.
My father was born in 1850. That made him thirteen years older than my
mother. He was born in Richmond, Virginia. He was educated
Women are no fun in politics, are they?
Oh, I was fun all right, but I wasn't going to have that kind of business.
I really feel that a good many male politicians fear a woman entering their particular bureau or. . . .
Oh, they do.
They fear that women are not as susceptible to this kind of thing.
They also, and it's understandable, think, "Well, I've got to not swear
as much and I've got to be careful about the kinds of stories that I
tell." You know, the atmosphere changes. It changes with a group of
women when one man walks in. I have always understood all of that, but
if
I imagine that your father was a good counterbalance to your mother's personality.
Well, I think so. He was quiet, you know, and he didn't get into all these excitements and he took things mostly calmly.
Not a partisan person especially, was he?
No, and you know, you and other people think that I am so much like my mother. I am not. I am intellectually and I am in my bents and I am in my sense of justice . . . at least I call it that. But she was a fighter to the last ditch.
But you have a sense of partisanship.
Oh, yes. But in my practice of the law, in my governmental administration, in my activities with women's organizations, I have been the moderator of disputes and worked out compromises time and time again. On the AAUW, one of the national board members said, "You are John Adams." And he was partisan, all right. So, I couldn't understand and I read two biographies of John Adams after that and I found out what it was, that when he was in a meeting he did try to bring them to an orderly finding and he was universally deputized to write the finding. That's what happened in the board.
There was his effort to keep possession of neutrality during the Napoleonic Wars.
That's right. Oh, I can fight to the ditch, all right, if I have to. Now, my sister is like my mother in the extreme partisanship. She considers that I am a. . . .
Your mother was still able to keep her friends. She didn't make enemies, did she?
She made plenty of enemies, but she kept her friends. There is a
difference. When I was elected, of course it was due to the system and
not to me, as vice-president of the AAUW unanimously. Well, as I said,
it was the system and not me, but I telephoned from Atlantic City to my
mother. I knew that she would be pleased and so I was told that [laughter]
Did you want to make any further comments about your mother here?
Yes, I don't believe that any of these tapes with Mrs. Meredith or yours
have brought out her very fine business ability. She inherited a little
real estate from her grandmother who had lost all property during and
after the Civil War and she in 1924 worked out and accepted a settlement
from her
She did this time and time again?
Yes. She left a substantial estate and those of us who inherited that property, it has all enhanced in value, I mean what was left when she died. It just illustrates the universal type of person she was, the sort of mind that she had. She was a good architect, she revolutionized this little cottage. When she bought it, the porch was out to here and it had plain steps going down to here. She widened the porch and she put those circular steps, which make it fascinating. She did the same thing at the front, the porch went all the way across and she cut it and the steps went down to the walk and she put them to the side. The cottage is full of little things that she did.
It's full of her own little personal touches.
My sister has inherited that quality. She can take a place and do it.
Why did you decide to run for the Mississippi legislature?
Well, we were going down in the financial hole and as I told somebody, I decided that I could win and so, I did. But I asked the advice of people, partially because I wanted to get angles on the county and how the pockets of influence were arranged and partially, if you ask a person's advice and that person says, "Do something," and you do it, then you've got a supporter. So, before I announced, I did do a good deal of preliminary soundings. But really what made me think I could win was this aunt, my mother's youngest sister, half sister, and her husband. [Dr. & Mrs. H. R. Shands] He was the brother of my sister's husband, you know the family is all in a mess of interrelationships all tangled, so. . . .
[END OF TAPE 5, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 6, SIDE A]
This is Constance Myers, continuing the interview with Lucy Somerville Howorth of Cleveland, Mississippi, the interview done in Monteagle, Tennessee on June 23, 1975. We're talking about the Faulkner Week at the University of Mississippi.
Yes, and that was extended to two weeks with the second week to duplicate the program of the first week.
In this upcoming August, 1975?
Yes, beginning on August 3rd and running through the 17th, I guess and I am to be a participant in a little discussion group, people who have known Faulkner personally. And I agreed to do that and the president of the AAUW and the chairman of this annual women's conference that they have been having this last four years, moved in on me to hitchhike on this Faulkner business which would bring me to Mississippi in August when I gnernally never show up. You know, people have been nice to me and I said, "All right, if you can fit it in and if you can handle it." So, they have scheduled in Jackson on August 2nd some kind of a women's conference. I haven't really paid much attention, but I think the last few years, they (the women's organization) have had an annual "Woman's Day and have given what they call the Susan B. Anthony Award anb which Mrs. Meredith said ought to be called the "Nellie Nugent Somerville Award," because why name something in Mississippi for Susan B. Anthony? They haven't told me, but they are cooking up something and the price of this thing, I learned was to make a speech. Well, they knew that I wasn't going to agree to write a speech in the summer and deliver it. I have to write speeches now, it doesn't look like it as we talk, but I can't depend on my brain to find the right work unless I've some guide, so now I find I must write speeches. So, they said to do the speech that I did at the Mississippi Historical Society.
That's a fine one.
So, I have polished that up and cut it here and there and added something about their meeting. They haven't said it, but you know you feel these things, they are going to give some kind of an award and the University of Mississippi is to send a car and chauffer up here for me.
For heaven's sake.
Well, if they wanted me, they had to do it. A friend of mine acted like you did, said, "At a boy, Lucy, make them produce." I said, "I'm not going to ask Mr. Howorth to drive me to Oxford in August, and I don't do cross country driving."
And to get to the airport is an ordeal.
Well, they said something about flying and I said, "Look, I would have to get somebody to take me to Nashville and then you would have to meet me in Memphis. No, I'm not going to do it. Just send somebody up to Monteagle." So, they are sending a car and driver to Monteagle and there is no problem for the women to get me from Oxford to Jackson. I'm not going to stay all through the second week, I will leave the day after the part of the program in which I am a participant and come on back because that weekend is the annual free-for-all meeting up here of Monteagle assembly members and I don't like to miss that.
Well, let's go back to the Mississippi legislature now. How did this, then, come about?
This uncle, Dr. Harley R. Shands and his wife, Bessie Nugent Shands,
sitting around, they brought up the subject, as I recollect, that there
were no good candidates for the legislature and this was going to be
So, you won the election?
Yes.
How decidedly?
It was not too flattering, if you mean that. It was decisive, it wasn't like this New Hampshire thing. I think that I won by about 200 votes, something like that. I've forgotten. 200 out of about 14,000. So, it was nip and tuck. There were some precincts that I carried overwhelmingly and some that the opposition carried.
Can you tell why you carried certain precincts?
Organization. No mystery. You get good workers and they get out and touch all the bases.
What were the hardest fights that you had in the legislature?
That is hard to say, because legislation is negotiation and compromising.
Tom Bailey who was speaker of the house and later governor, he called me
in and said that he wanted to appoint me chairman of a committee. Well,
that was unusual, you know, for a first termer. He said, "I'm going to
make the three women, each of you a chairman and I will give you first
choice." So, I said that I wanted to reply later, I wanted to look over
the committees. [Recorder is turned off and then back on.]
Did you cause any fireworks?
Oh, yes. Sometimes, but mostly. . . .
Did you step on any vulnerable political toes?
No. I tried to avoid that, everybody knew which ones they [laughter]
What was another?
Well, we set up the public park system, we hadn't had any.
Hadn't had any?
There was a forestry commission and so they were happy as birds in the
springtime . . . my committee, you see, had this forestry bill and the
federal government was coming in with the Roosevelt administration with
all its development of public parks and public lands and public forests.
So, they kept coming in and we passed all these laws giving the federal
government authority to acquire lands and so on. So, we greatly extended
the authority of the forestry commission and the whole system of
publicparks was initiated. Then, they had for the first time a
Conservation Committee
Why on earth do you think that you received this federal appointment? Did you seek it?
Oh sure, we needed money. And so, I had gone to the Democratic National Convention. . . .
In 1932?
Yes, in 1932.
Now, this was before your term in the legislature?
No, I was a member of the legislature.
This must have been. . . .
It was 1932. The convention met at the end of June and the legislature had been from January to June. So, you know, I went up there and Miss Dewson who was the head of the women's activities for Roosevelt. . . .
First name?
Mary W. Dewson. I had met her when I was in New York City with the YWCA
and she was a good politician and she remembered names. So, it was a
renewal. Then you see, after Roosevelt was inaugurated, she was put in
as head of the Women's Division, of the National Democratic Committee in
fact she was practically that before the inauguration. But anyhow,
afterwards, there was no question. So, she is the one that said that
about Ellen Woodward being a bit of southern fluff. I had a little place
in her mind and I was cleared, the Mississippi delegation and all the
people had me
And people were purposefully seeking, in a sense, token women.
That's right. So, there's some of the civil rights business. Therefore, I would have a chance of getting something more important. I would have preferred something, maybe, in Mississippi, but there wasn't anything there that appealed. They were smaller jobs at that period, you see.
So, once you got up to Washington, you really liked it didn't you?
Oh, I liked it. "Brer Rabbit in the briar patch." I began to see people that I had known in New York and college friends. . . .
You didn't feel at all overwhelmed when you first arrived?
No.
What were those first days like?
Oh, they were full of excitement. They had a big dinner at the Washington Hotel not long after I got there for women appointees, not especially me, in the Roosevelt Administration. I joined the Woman's National Democratic Club and I was active in the AAUW, you know, and the B and PW and I was here, there and everywhere and having myself quite a fascinating time from my point of view. It might have bored somebody else.
What about your office facilities? What kind of arrangement did they give you?
I was along with two other women appointed to the Board of Veteran's
Appeals. It was a presidential appointment and the veterans were making
a drive at that time to make it an important position. Foremerly, it had
been just a division within the Veteran's Administration and they had
quite a fight over whether it should be entirely independent of the
Veteran's Administration and that fight was lost. But they insisted that
the members be called "Judge" and it finally shook down that 1/3 of the
members would be selected from professional employees of the Veteran's
Administration and 2/3 from what they called the outside. Those were
looked upon with a bit of scorn by the Veteran's Administration as a
group of political appointees that had to be pacified and kept quiet and
not allowed to throw any monkey wrenches in the working of the machinery
of appellate judication. The board had been operating under its new
statutory authority and regulations for about six months when the three
women arrived. The two other women, one from California and one from
Missouri, were not professional women. They were good practical people.
So, we were put in a room similar to the room that the other members
occupied. The board was divided into sections of three. One doctor, one
lawyer and one lay person was the theoretical setup. We had very
important looking offices for those simple days, they wouldn't be now.
There were rugs on the floor of a degree of thickness and the desks were
mahogany, well simulated mahogany, but they looked mahogany and had
plate glass on top, which was a mark of distinction. These things are
very amusing, you know, and they come out in books time and time again.
We were put in there, there were three desks and outside the office was
a secretary who (we were told) was to take phone calls and
They put three women in the office together?
And on each desk was a set in a looseleaf folder of statutes governing the rights of veterans, the jurisdictions. There were about six volumes of administrators' and solicitor's precedent decisions and there were two fat volumes of regulations and procedures of the Veteran's Administration. So, we chitchatted for a day and then I began to think about it. So, the next day, I said, "We are supposed to be reading all this stuff and if you don't mind and think it's a good idea, I'll check through and I will make out a little outline for each day of what we will go over and discuss."
The school teacher.
So, we did.
Were you, in a sense, above them in the pecking order? Because of your professional status?
Well, eventually that emerged, but not. . . .
Not initially.
At the moment, we were all the same. So, this went on, you know, nobody came in to see us, nothing. Well, we were smart and we knew what made the world go around and we knew that we were being hazed and that they were hoping that we would pack up and go home.
Please let me insert one question. In this position, did you have the opportunity to stir things up the way that you had stirred things up some in the legislature?
Well, not so much. Occasionally a little.
Do think that there was any effort on the part of any individual in Mississippi politics to get this firebrand out of the Mississippi legislature?
No.
No?
I wasn't a firebrand.
O.K. You were changing things?
Yes, but I. . . .
You were an innovator.
But they didn't think so.
Really?
I don't think that if you talked to any member of the legislature . . . Jamie Whitten is up in Congress and he was a member of that legislature. I worked through people. I was just somebody who was interested in the subject and I would say, "Now, you go around and see So-and-So." I didn't stand up there and denounce them, any of that kind of stuff. It wasn't my idea of how to get things done.
So, they weren't removing a troublesome person?
No. I might have become that later, but I wasn't at that time. I mean, I wasn't recognized and my views weren't fully understood. So, we worked along there, I think that it was at least three weeks, studying and going off and having a pleasant lunch together.
And nobody came in?
No. So, finally one morning one man came in a board member, an outsider.
He stood around and chatted and told some stories and had a little
pleasant
Who were they? Were these people soliciting your advice?
Oh, no. You see, they were presidential appointees. They were Democrats. They were outsiders and it began to dawn on them that if we were frozen out, then there would be a sense of success by the insiders and they would be next. The first caller was from Tennessee, the second from New York. Now, they didn't put it that plainly, you know.
But you had enough savvy to. . . .
They began thinking about it. "After all, these are loyal Democrats. The
President has recognized them. We shouldn't be acting like this and
doing the dirty work of these inside people." Which is what they were
doing. Then, there came an inside man, you know, the grapevine worked
for us all right,
This man, what was his training? The one that was already having cases?
Well, he had been a troubleshooter in the Veteran's Administration for years. They put him wherever they had a problem. He had at one time been on the old apellate section. And as I say, he was quite an able man. So, the governor said that he would look into it. So, in a day or so, there came a memo around that sections of the board were being reorganized and with new assignments and each one of us was put on a section. So, that was the end of any internal discrimination.
Did you have to leave your office and move elsewhere?
Well, we moved into a similar one, you see. Each section had this office with three members.
[END OF TAPE 6, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 6, SIDE B]
. . . we wanted to be treated like just another member of the board and we were assigned from then on to different sections. You see, these other two were lay people and I was a lawyer. So, it never would have happened except that two of us would have been on the same section. That is, I could have been the lawyer and one of them could have been the lay person, but under normal conditions, we never would have been, with two of them being lay persons and me being a lawyer. That really would have let the V A in for someting if we had wanted to start something.
How did women in Washington seek each other out, women appointees, women in politics?
The grapevine worked and the papers reported appointments. The ones that
were in the field of presidential appointments were, the Democratic
party women's division made a point of seeing that they got
I saw a lot of invitations in your papers.
Yes, I really did have quite an active social life.
You did. I want to ask a question about that later. Was the sense of sisterhood or the sense of competition stronger amongst you women?
Oh, sisterhood. We didn't call it that, but we knew that we were all in the same boat. I don't mean on the Board of Veteran's Appeals, I mean throughout Washington. Now, that little talk I made about Mrs. Woodward, I brought out that the minute that we felt that one was threatened, we all threw in whatever political weight that we could, plus the grapevine information.
I wonder to what degree that is operative today?
I couldn't say, but I imagine that it is to an extent. Maybe not as much because there are so many more women, but they are under a good deal of harassment now that for awhile we didn't have. Some individuals had.
What on earth was Sue Shelton White doing up in Washington?
Sue was one of the finest people that ever lived. She was from east
Tennessee, the daughter of a not too successful Methodist minister and
she studied law. She went to Washington. I don't recall how it happened,
but she affiliated with the National Woman's Party and she was thrown in
the clink for parading and protesting and so on. But she came down to
Tennessee and
Right. Mrs. Dudley was N.A.W.S.A.
So, she was a very charming person. Sue went back to Washington and I
think that she worked for the government somewhere and then in the low
days of the Democratic party, she went into the national office and Sue
White single-handedly built and held together the women in the national
Democratic party through the lean days of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover.
Now, sometimes, in the beginning, you see, Charl Williams was brought
there and that was part of the price of her support, that she be given a
place in the Democratic setup. I don't know when Charl left. You see,
Charl was basically an educator. She had been superintendent of schools
in Shelby County and Charl was quite somebody. I always got along with
Charl. Lots of people didn't, but I did. I knew her, you know and she
was a very able person. So, she got into the National Education
Association headquarters staff, which paid a whole lot more than the
Democratic party could at that time. So, there was a succession of women
who were the front, but Sue stayed there and worked. I persuaded
Florence Armstrong to scrape together what papers Sue had left and give
them to the archives. Sue was a modest person and she would always let
somebody else take the credit, but she wrote wonderful letters. I
remember meeting somebody from Utah that had come to Washington. I don't
know how I happened to see her before she had seen other people, she
said, "Where is Sue White? She wrote the most wonderful letters and she
is the one person in Washington that I want to meet." Sue left
directions that I was to be
And you did do that?
I did do it. She left directions that minimum money was to be spent. So, you shouldn't laugh at something like this, you know, but Gawler's was then the place that handled the funerals of presidents and dignified people and so on and. . . .
What was the place?
Gawler's. It may still be there. So, they took over and I went to select a casket. The law requires, you know, that you have a casket for cremation, but I couldn't see any sense in spending much on something that would be burned up right away. So, I kept telling the man to show me something more reasonable. He said, "When are the family coming?" I said, "The family isn't coming and I am the only person you have to deal with. Show me what's next."
He was nonplussed.
[laughter]
Good thing that some of us do.
So, I said, "Get some of these people that were associated with Sue and get them to write about what she did and what it meant." So, Jack Tate was one of them. I don't know how many she asked from the Woman's Party. Florence had joined them and was friendly with all of them.
In what context did you know Anita Pollitzer?
Anite Pollitzer, it seems to me, studied law at New York University.
She was not a lawyer, she studied art history at Columbia. She taught at the University of Virginia for one year and then was hired as an organizer for the Woman's Party, but was in New York City all the years that you were in Washington.
Well, you see while I never joined them and whereas I frequently wished
that they would go away, I was quite friendly with many of them and she
was one of them. Now, Mabel Vernon, we became great friends and worked
together on many committees and especially for what is now the
Organization of American States, the Pan-American Union. Mabel Vernon
was always interested in peace and international movements. There were
others of them and through Sue White, Sue saw that I met ones that she
thought I might like and that might like me. I had narrow escapes, you
know that in Washington or in life, you've got to make sure that you
don't get into what are fringe outfits and especially when the Cold War
and all and the McCarthy business came up, but this was before that.