Interview with Guion Griffis Johnson, May 28, 1974.
Interview G-0029-3.
Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Johnson, Guion
Griffis, interviewee
[TAPE 2, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
You were talking about Louis Worth . . . the only scholarly . . .
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
Which of course thrilled me . . . and Louis . . . repeatedly, as long as
he lived, every time he'd see me, or write me a letter
[would] say, "When are you going to release Ideology? This is a
book that needs to be published. When are you going to release
it?" But it hasn't been released yet.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
If you can find Chapter One . . .
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
If I
can find Chapter One. I may decide that the
original Chapter One is all right after all. After all that year of
work. I was saying that [when we left Atlanta] we had put—I
had put all these manuscripts from my desk in one big carton. And that
was the one carton, plus some others, that the [moving] van could not
take, could not hold. And I wanted to bring, to put it in the car, the
trunk of the car. But the car was already full and I said
"Well, they're coming back tomorrow and get the
rest" and when the van finally, three or four weeks later, came
with this part load, I did not find the carton. But I was reassured.
"It was, oh yes, it's here. You'll find
it here. We had to
Page 46 repack some
things."
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
So they had gone back and picked up other things.
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
They went back and picked up some of the things. But I think . . .
something like the wheelbarrow [Laughter]
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
The rake and the hoe.
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
The rake and the hoe. They were on a screened porch but I think somebody
came by and helped themselves but they wouldn't take the box
of trash, which was papers. Guy still promises me that I'll
find that manuscript and my precious letters
11 in the basement. And we're now unloading the
boxes in the basement. He said "This summer, I'm
sure you're going to find Chapter One."
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
Maybe you will.
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
Maybe I will.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
I meant to tell you. You had mentioned that it was on microfilm at UNC. I
looked for it and couldn't find it.
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
You couldn't find it? Well, it is supposed to be on
microfilm.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
Now I looked downstairs in the main microfilm file and also in the North
Carolina collection.
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
And its not listed under my name? Well, I know they have had a microfilm
copy. I don't know what has happened.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
I'll ask again when I get in touch with the head lady. It
might be checked on to see what has happened to it.
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
Well, if you want to look at the manuscript, I'll be very glad
for you to use the working copy that Arnold Rose and Gunnar Myrdal
used.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
I would love to look at that.
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
Which eventually was returned to me and the first typing went to the
Schomburg collection. And that was the copy that was put on microfilm. I
know its on microfilm because I've had letters from all over
saying,
"It's so difficult to read this
microfilm, if you could possibly let me have
Page 47 the original manuscript I would so much appreciate
it because I cannot afford to go to New York to read it in the Schomburg
collection". From the University of Wisconsin, University of
California, places like that where students are using . . .
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
We should check again. I'll ask them again because it
certainly should be here.
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
Yes it should be. Because they did have a copy. I know that.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
Well, I don't know anything about the microfilm. It
wouldn't be in the Southern Historical Collection?
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
I don't think so. I don't know. Carolyn Wallace
would know of course. Do you know her? I think she knows more about the
content than almost anyone because she's been there
longer.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
Oh . . . I was in there one day and I was amazed at what she could tell
me . . . in the card catologue under everything I could think of. But
I'll check again. They might have just misplaced it. Might
not be a card.
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
Yes. I did not understand that either. Several times I've been
in the library and just looked to see if it were listed and did not find
it under Gunnar Myrdal or under Johnson. I thought it might be listed
under Guy's name.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
I looked under American Dilemma. So . . . how many
people reviewed each one. Was there a large staff to read the . . .
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
I suppose four. Donald Young, Shelby Harrison, Louis Worth and then
someone who had a specialty in this field would be a fourth member who
would usually read the . . . but those three come to mind.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
And then when the reviews . . . but this was for your own personal
manuscript [unknown].
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
No, part of my Ideology manuscript. And various other persons
Page 48 read the church and race relations and the Negro church. I
don't know that anyone read the value premises.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
. . . publish the Negro church, too. Not much has been done . . .
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
I know. Those two were not approved for publication. I don't
know why, except it was read, those two manuscripts were read by a
friend of ours at Yale who had done something on Mississippi which we
did not like and which I reviewed unfavorably. And so he gave me a very
bad mark on my review, on those two manuscripts. I'd taken
maybe six weeks to do one and six weeks to do the other. That sort of
thing. He was right. It was not a through job.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
But as a basis for . . . really its amazing how little has been done.
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
Yes, this is true.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
You would think now after, what, thirty years . . .
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
Don't mention it, more than thirty years. Thirty-four
years.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
You would think the shelves would be full of things. Well then, you spent
the time after you came back revising . . .
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
Yes, revising. I went to New York to do research, some more research.
Carnegie Corporation gave me and Guy some more money to do more research
on his study of crime and me to do more research, if I wished. Or to use
the money in any way. They said "You don't have to
do anything. You just weren't paid enough. And so
we're giving this to you as sort of an honorarium or some
compensation for the hard work that you put in on the study."
But I chose to use mine to go to New York and employee a secretary and
collect more data.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
And then when you came back from that were plans in the making for you to
go to Atlanta for . . .
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
No . . . came back and did research for a year. Then the war came and I
was stopped in the middle of a sentence. When one of the women in
Page 49 town wanted me to take a position in the office of
civil defense—a volunteer position, of course. I said
"I am sorry, I am trying to finish a manuscript. I cannot do
it." And she said "What are you, a Nazi
sympathizer?" I said "Its just that I think my
contribution would be greater by finishing the manuscript than it would
be by doing some trivial job with the civil defense."
"I shall certainly remember this," said she. When Guy
came home for lunch I told him and he said "Well, I think that
the pressure on you is going to be so great that you just better stop
your research and do this work." So I was on the rationing
board and issued all the ration books except the first one.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
This was here?
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
Here in Chapel Hill. Before I went in to the V12 program. Then I did the
office of civil defense work, which was the public relations officer for
the county, went all over the county . . .
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
What kinds of things were you doing?
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
Simply explaining the position of America in the war and the need for
cooperation and the need to plant war gardens and explaining the
rationing program, trying to get the cooperation, simply get the
cooperation of the people to observe rationing. And rationing was
successful, despite everything Mr. Nixon has said about it's
being unsuccessful. It was successful. I wrote for the national office a
little, several little books on "Know Your Community"
and "How To Interpret the War." And in the closing
days of the war I was tracked down in Macon, Georgia, by Paul Porter who
asked me please to come and take over the community service division in
Washington. And travel all over the western United States, doing for
them what I had done . . . I had set up conferences here and had invited
the national people down to show how we had brought the local people in
to discuss their understanding of the rationing program. And this
Page 50 impressed them. And at that point I said
"The rationing program has already been killed. There is
nothing I can do to save it. Sorry, can't do
it."
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
This was with the end of the war . . .
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
This was in 1946 that he tracked me down in Macon, where I was trying to
help with getting volunteers for the juvenile court in Macon.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
Why was the rationing program . . . you thought it was being killed
prematurely?
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
Yes, and that there had been relaxation on the national level and that
there had been so many prominent people speaking against the rationing
program that I . . .
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
Whereas if they had been supporting . . .
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
Whereas if they had been supportive, yes.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
Did they just think things were over and there's no need . . .
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
Yes, no need. And then, of course, industry and business had been
violently opposed to the program. Because the prices were being held
down. War Price and Control Board. Some people . . . this was a part of
the campaign to abolish rationing as soon as possible.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
You were still . . .
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
I had nothing at all to do [with OPA in Atlanta] We'd gone to
Atlanta and I was in the Georgia Conference on Social Welfare.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
And so this had all been in North Carolina.
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
All of my work, yes, had been in North Carolina.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
And then the V-12 program, you taught in . . .
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
Yes . . . I guess beginning in January 43.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
And then that went until . . .
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
August of 44.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
And then you left and . . .
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
Went to Atlanta. Came back in late August of 47.
Page 51
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
So you were there for three years.
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
Yes.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
When you were there . . . you had mentioned that when you were in Atlanta
. . . that you were working for, working at editing Georgia
Welfare and Executive secretary with the Georgia Conference
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
On Social Welfare. Yes, right.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
I was really interested in how you said you were all over the state and
trying to drum up support for the Regional Council.
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
Well, doing this indirectly.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
Right, but I was just wondering where you went for support. Who were
other liberal groups who were supporting Guy's work in
Atlanta at that time? Who were your allies and who were your
enemies?
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
The churches were allies for the most part. The Methodist Church, Bishop
Arthur Moore, was very supportive. And the Presbyterian Church and the
Episcopal Church. And I worked with United Church Women on the state
level and on the local level.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
This was when your volunteer work really got cranked up again for the
first time.
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
Yes, this is true. But the board of the Conference on Social Welfare was
very eager for me to participate in all aspects of the life of the
community in order to enhance the prestige of the Conference on Social
Welfare and make it more possible for the legislature to open the purse
for social welfare programs.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
I see. That was a big switch for you, to go from research and writing on
Antebellum North Carolina then Gunnar Myrdal . . .
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
Yes . . . yes . . . it was.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
-
How did you get involved in it initially. Were . . . I mean, did someone
approach you and ask . . .
Page 52
- GUION GRIFFIS JOHNSON:
-
Yes, yes. The president of the Georgia conference on social welfare and
Mrs. M.E. Tilly who you know—no, I think it was Jackie I said
should study Mrs. Tilly. Mrs. Tilly did much of the work that Mrs.
Daniels—what's her name—Jesse Daniel
Ames had been getting credit for doing. Mrs. Tilly came to me with Miss
Lucille Wilson, who was director of Old Age Assistance in State Dept.
Public Welfare . . .
END OF INTERVIEW
1. Minor Gwyn. Dr. Gwyn was a tease and liked
to needle even his best friends. He may have been mocking some other
faculty member, but even so his remarks were significant.
2. At that time, he was a graduate assistant
and we were research assistants in the Institute for Research in Social
Science.
3. In the autumn of 1927. It was while Dr.
Spawn was on this trip that the Ferguson clique in the Texas Democratic
Party, which opposed Dr. Spawn's liberalism, took advantage
of his absence and developed a situation which caused him to resign soon
after he returned home.
4. Guy had been assigned the areas of the Negro
Church and the Church and Race Relations but his heavy administrative
responsibilites made it impossible. I prepared the manuscript and he
wrote prefaces to the two reports.
5. Others on the selection committee were
Samuel A. Stouffer, William F. Ogburn. Various specialists were also
asked to read manuscripts in the areas of their specialties. It was as a
specialist that Louis Wirth read my Ideology manuscript.
6. Others on the selection committee were
Samuel A. Stouffer, William F. Ogburn. Various specialists were also
asked to read manuscripts in the areas of their specialties. It was as a
specialist that Louis Wirth read my Ideology manuscript.
7. The interview must have turned from the
Myrdal study to the work in Atlanta, 1944-47.
An American Dilemma
9. Richard Sterner had come from Sweden to work
on the study and later a younger Swedish economist arrived, Gunner
Lange. He was later at N.C. State in Raleigh for a short time.
The American Dilemma
11. From my brother, J.F. Griffin, who was on
the first Commission to settle the boundary of the two Koreas, and from
my V12 students in the Pacific.