[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

JACQUELYN HALL:

I have read your fascinating The Making of a Southerner, and so I know something about your family background, your heritage and events through which you became alienated from that heritage, or … from aspects of that heritage.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Right.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But that book is primarily, I would say, an intellectual biography, and I'm very curious to have a little more information about the personal history that lay behind that intellectual odyssey. So I thought I'd like to ask you a little bit more about your family and your childhood and your education, and then we could go on to talk about your career after your work as the YWCA secretary in the twenties, which is pretty much where that book stops, as far as your own life is concerned.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Yes. It had a certain object to fulfill.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yes. You were born in 1897 in Macon Georgia?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Could you tell me a little bit about the family situation that you were born into?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Well, I was born in Macon, Georgia, and Georgia was my native state, as you'll remember. There were seven living children in my

---

Page 2

family, of which I was the youngest. And I'm not sure what type of detail … my father … I don't know whether you remember this, was trained as a lawyer. Do you remember? This came by reading law, which was a custom in his youth. But he, for a good many years, he was a product of that period when it was very difficult - the period following the Civil War - when it was very difficult for a young man to find a way of life that was anything resembling what they had known as they grew up and from their childhood. So he moved over into a salaried position for a good many years. Actually, I think at the time of his death, he was - which came, my recollection is, around 1910 - he was beginning gradually to work back in to the law, which was his first love. He'd been in politics some, in, I would almost say, a desultory sort of way.

JACQUELYN HALL:

He worked for the railroad?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What railroad did he work for?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

The Georgia Railroad. I had to stop and think, It no longer exists as such, naturally. It was a smallish railroad. And I don't really remember precisely what the nature of his work was. I should remember, because I would have been in my early teens at his death, twelve or thirteen, something like that. But I was never clear in my mind just what type … I'd been up to his office many times. He traveled, I remember that, but …

JACQUELYN HALL:

Your portrait of your father in your book is a very fascinating portrait of that generation of young men who grew up expecting to be master of their entire environment, and found themselves in the kind of position …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

You mean, if he had … when you say he grew up, you mean master of

---

Page 3

his …

JACQUELYN HALL:

Of his plantation and his slaves and his …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Yes. This was his rearing, of course.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was this very much in retrospect, your sense of your father, or, when you were growing up did you have a feeling of your father being a man who was not at ease in the …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

In the world in which he had … I would say he was a man torn between the past and the present, perhaps. Never having given up the past. The very emphasis he placed upon the Lost Cause was — which were his terms, not mine. I mean, these were the terms which, in the period of the first decade of the century, people used when they spoke of the by-gone Confederacy, you see, as the Lost Cause. And we were certainly reared, each of us in turn, to revere the veterans of that period and to do everything we could to help them. I mean, well, of course, naturally those who came out of the ranks of the old Confederate Armies were just ordinary people. They were those who had been brought in. And many of them at this period - not the officers, but the veterans who came to reunions were, many of them, old men - they were getting quite old by this time, those who had fought through the war. Of course, my father only fought the last year, as a boy, fifteen maybe. Those who had fought through it were now old men and were disappearing fast. And lots of them were in need. I mean, they were poor, they hadn't much to live on. And they were great … people would visit, trying to do something for them, to help them, you see, to carry on.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, your own family was not very affluent.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Well, not … I may have overplayed that some. [Laughter] I don't

---

Page 4

mean consciously. I don't at all mean consciously. We were certainly not well to do, by any manner of means, because we were living on my father's salary, which wouldn't have been affluent then. But we always lived in the "nice neighborhood." And … we rented, we didn't own, until just before his death, he had purchased this farm where you find me as a young girl, going to school.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What kind of effect did your father's disappointment in the historical circumstances he found himself in and in his own career have on his relationship with his family? I've wondered whether, in that kind of situation, a man would tend to turn very much inward and put a lot of the energy and hope that he might have put into his own career into molding his children and his hope for his children?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Into molding them, you say?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yes.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

He was a very active person, in the causes he was concerned about. So I don't think your picture is quite correct. He said the usual things that a husband said, in those days, that his wife was the one who … I've forgotten how the phrases ran in his speeches, though heaven knows I've heard them enough, But just remember, I was quite small, and where a sister or brother a few years older than myself would remember all these things of that period very clearly, and what he was like, my memories would be colored by my awe of him. Because he was a strict discipliarian, and you can see this would overcloud what was really there. But he had a phrase which many speakers had in that time, his wife taught the children prayers, he taught them to revere the Lost Cause. I mean, you see, this conception. I may

---

Page 5

have remarked in The Making that I doubted if there were many monuments to the Confederacy around in the little towns of South Carolina that he hadn't helped to dedicate. This would have been true. He was forever going around making speeches to groups, whatever the groups, along these lines, and he was also very active, though, in Masonic affairs. He was a thirty-third degree Mason and very active in state affairs of the Masonic Order. Now, you ought to remember there were a couple of periods when he was running for political office. So, he was an extremely active, outgoing man, and was known as one who was a great story-teller. These stories would be couched in what some would call long jokes. But he loved that old book, Slow Train through Arkansas. Have you ever heard of it? It was a book of tales, you might call it a book of jokes or tall tales. And he would have wonderful laughter over the tales or something of this kind. And similarly, his audiences, when he told them, were filled with laughter, because these were very well told and with quite a wry tone and an eloquent gesture and a sober face. In other words, had hosts of friends. Now, some of this I may not have made clear in my account, because I was evoking a picture of what it felt like then, hence my after-view, as I look back now, might not have come through as clearly as it should have.

JACQUELYN HALL:

He ran for the Senate in 1908, I think.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

He what?

JACQUELYN HALL:

He ran for the U. S. Senate …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

… in 1908?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Your dates are better than mine at this point. [Laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

But he was beaten very badly.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Oh, yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did he run for other political office and lose?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

No, I think he started again, to run for the Senate. I would have to go in and refresh my own memory, because some of these things I checked on and got down so I would have them accurately, at the time. But I think he once ran for the Senate and there was a great host of people running, as there so often was in South Carolina politics then. And all of them, as you remember, speaking from the same platform. This was the custom. They would go around together, the candidates, in the country places, and so on. But then I think he ran again when Tillman was running for re-election. I know his health became … he was ill. I mean, becoming ill. And he was not well, and I think the doctor advised him to … not to continue.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But he wanted to run against Ben Tillman?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Yes, and I think he entered the race. I won't say this for sure, but this is my memory of it. I get the two races confused, but I know he was running.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When you talked about an incident in which you saw your father chastising a black maid …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

I know. Oh, how I … [Laughter] … have not been appreciated for that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

By your family?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Well, let's not get that on the recorder. I don't want to be too specific on a thing like that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

We can delete anything that we want to …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Yes I know. But this was tough medicine. It was my memory, and a very vivid one. I was small, quite small. But I had decided, because it was for me a traumatic experience, and, without being over-psychological, it is easy to see that it would be an alienating factor as far as the racial system was concerned, and I don't question but that it was. So, it would have been removing if I hadn't cited it, I think, something that I know left a lasting impression on me. In this book I've just finished on Angelina Grimke, she had similar experiences with slavery. And this did not mean that on the spot she rejected slavery. She didn't reject slavery outright and consciously until she was twenty years of age, at least. But it created a sense of uneasiness in her. It made her disaffected, and she began almost unconsciously taking up for "the servants," you see. Well, this I could understand as I would read her diary and her letters, which recorded so faithfully (she didn't begin to write in the diary until she was twenty), but it recorded her memories so faithfully of these sentiments, how disturbed it would leave her, even though she still accepted the system. And this, I think, is the kind of effect that experiences of that kind on a child reared in the Old South, especially … even now it could be the case. The child is taught to be just and fair and kind and considerate and all these things, as important values and ideals, and then to feel just appalled inwardly by something you

---

Page 8

see or someone helpless, in the throes of those who rule. And this has a very deep effect, I think.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Does that incident stand out so much because it was in contradiction to your image of your father? Was it the only incident like that in your childhood, or is it just one … ?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

No, it was not the only incident. It was the only one of that kind. I never had any occasion for any other. I mean, there never was any occasion. But all of the conceptions of black people, all of the racial attitudes that were common, these were just everyday affairs, and not in any mean way, not in any unkind way, but simply a part of our environment. So you can't say that was an incident. What you found was that you were deeply imbued with the whole patterns of racial attitudes that were common in your environment. You soaked them in through the pores of your skin, quite unconscious of how you did it. You knew that all those around you, my people especially, my parents especially, put the greatest emphasis with us, their children, on the highest values, the most basic conceptions of American democracy and consideration for others and high ideals. I mean, all of this was just part and parcel of our upbringing. It was implicit.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What's so fascinating about your book is that I don't think I've ever read anything that showed so clearly how assumptions and values become … how children are socialized. How southern children become what they are. And then you begin to try and talk about how a child raised in that kind of atmosphere

---

Page 9

changes, mores beyond it, becomes aware of the contradictions in it and moves in one direction instead of the other.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

I wish everyone who has read that book comprehended what I was trying to do as well as you do.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Do you feel that people did not?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Oh, often they do not. Often.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, tell me, why did you write that book?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Why did I?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yes.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

I can give you my general purposes, I think, if I can vocalize them. I felt that there was still extant, widely extant, at the time I wrote it, which was in the late forties, a conception of a whole people being "inferior." I mean, innately inferior. The black people, Negroes. Hence, out of this grew the notion that prejudice was natural and could not be overcome if these people were inferior. So I knew out of my own personal experience, that it was neither innate nor true, and so I thought one of the best ways to demonstrate this was to give a picture of my personal experience which showed that I was indoctrinated with all these conceptions, and I got over it, completely. This was one of my aims. The other was to show the … so to say, the other side of the coin, that these feelings and attitudes were not innate, namely that they were culturally conditioned, that they came out of one's cultural background. And hence my reasons for this attempt to evoke how I was culturally conditioned was this story of my family, its background, its upbringing, our indoctrination with the Lost Cause, the way I loved it. Now, if a child learns to love this thing, so that she herself is

---

Page 10

caught up in it, this is really heady stuff. This is terrifically potent. And this could explain more for us, because we placed unusual emphasis upon all of this - but it was similar for white children of any class. And if people could but realize, at the period at which I wrote, you see, one just has to keep bearing in mind, this was pre-1954. At that period, segregation was just as intact as you can conceive of, as it had been for the last … well, for the period before it. So my wish there was to say, if this is culturally conditioned, then it can be changed by the culture.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You went to Columbia University, you taught at Smith, you were at …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

I was at Mount Holyoke for a year.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Mount Holyoke. When you speak of the kind of intellectual climate at the end of the forties, in which black inferiority was assumed, Sumner's notion of mores being embedded, not amenable to intervention, was that …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Well, this was the kind of sociology I was trained in, even in Columbia.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Is that right?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Sure. Summer. Folkways. I know you wouldn't have been brought up in it, but I was.

JACQUELYN HALL:

By 1947, when you wrote Making of a Southerner, was that still the kind of training that people were getting in universities?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

It depended upon the university, as to how much stress. At Columbia there was Giddings … you wouldn't know him, but he was one of the great sociological pioneers in this country. But, at this time, and even out at

---

Page 11

Wisconsin, when I went there, in the late twenties for my doctorate - I took my doctorate, I guess, in 1929 there, there was still a great stress on this conception of the mores and how implacable they are.

I don't suggest for a moment that this affected people in general. I'm now thinking of my particular field of specialization, where much of this was accepted. But in some universities - at the University of Chicago, I doubt if it was, by the books that came out of there in that very period. They had Park. You wouldn't know him, perhaps, but he was a great scholar in this whole area. So I don't think one could generalize about that. It just happened to be my experience. And you must also realize that when I went to Columbia University for my master's degree, which I took in, I think it was 1919, if my memory serves me right. I'd have to look up on my vita to see. But when I went there, I was raw, fresh from the South. I'd never been out of the South, until I went there, and this meant that everything that I was seeing, learning, hearing, was mediated through this kind of veil of southern experience, even though I found I welcomed breaking these good old taboos in which I'd been reared, I thoroughly enjoyed having Negroes in my classes, eating with them and listening to them and feeling, oh, my this was very exciting. I was just throwing overboard all these stupid things, I mean, you know, the way a youngster does. And I was very, very raw, I felt … I feel, as I look back. I didn't feel it then. But, again, so that my biases of breaking away from the mores, myself, would have made me see probably more emphasis than was placed on the mores, I suspect.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But this book was meant to be read by, in effect, a popular audience more than to …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Oh, very much so, very much so. That's why I attempted to make it as personal as I did. It was not, I'm sure, as personal as the publisher would have liked, But I had these certain objectives in view, so that I brought to it what material I felt was pertinent to my objectives, not a lot of side issues that might have been — looked into in a full-fledged autobiography.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Have you ever thought of writing a full-fledged autobiography?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

No, I haven't. Angeline Grimkà satisfied me on that, very much. Very much. Hers could be, in my view, having just marvelous material, as I had, all those first hand letters and diaries, very deeply intimate stuff. It was very satisfying material.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How was The Making of a Southerner received?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Very well indeed. Extraordinarily well. Far beyond anything I expected, not in sales, because these things rise and fall. If I could find my scrapbook of clippings, you would see how very widely … I had some of the most interesting of people who reviewed me in the major [publications] the reviews came out the very week the book appeared, which surprised both me and the publisher. I had a third page review in the Times Book Review by Lillian Smith. No, that was not in the Times. I'm sorry. Lillian Smith's was in the Herald Tribune Book Review. In the Times. I forget the man's name who did it … oh, Hodding Carter. And what … Daniel … what's Daniel, the former publisher of the Raleigh News and Observer.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Jonathan Daniels.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Jonathan Daniels reviewed it in one of the papers. I had an

---

Page 13

excellent review in the then Saturday Review. And then, what interested me in many ways, I took a clipping service so I had it, was the wide-spread reviews in the southern newspapers.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Oh, really?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Yes. Oh, very widespread. I haven't looked it up in years, but I made a scrapbook at the time of the reviews, and they are really voluminous.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I read a review in the Journal of Negro History, just very, very …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Well, I didn't appreciate that as much as I should have, because I knew … I'd had much correspondence with the man who wrote it. He was then the editor. And he was a very interesting person, and a nice person. I could tell you more about him some time. He's no longer there, I guess, probably. But he was quite undiscriminating. It was just laudatory, and I don't like that kind as well.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, he also took off from your book to …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Tell of his own experience.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Tell of his own experience.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Well, he had a very interesting history, which he had told me of. He owned a small plantation, he and his brothers and sisters, his family, down in Georgia, and would go down there fairly often. He taught. He was a teacher in a junior college, I think, in the Washington area, of history. And he wrote me that his … within his own family he had - I don't remember now. I probably have the letter tucked away somewhere - but he had one or two siblings - I don't recall whether they were brothers or sisters - who had passed into the white world. And he sent me a picture to show how white looking he was. And he was, tremendously.

---

Page 14

He sent me a photograph, which I'm sure I may have returned to him. Probably he asked me to. But he was trying to convey to me this highly contradictory … and it was fascinating. I found it very interesting. Highly contradictory experience which he had, in his own immediate family. This happened often, with a book of this kind, that people write you, and I got many, many, many letters on this book. Quite different ones, quite contradictory. Occasionally I still get one.

JACQUELYN HALL:

From people from the South, talking about their own …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Usually people from the South, yes. Speaking of their own experience, or telling wherein theirs differed from mine, but more often that they had had the same experience of change that I had. Once in a while I'd get one saying you aren't fit to tie the shoelaces of your ancestors, or something like this, but not many of that kind. A vfew crank ones, you know. I think writers always … I mean, authors of books often get … expecially if they're on a controversial subject.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was the book criticized for?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

I haven't looked at these reviews in so long, my dear, I'd have to look it up. I'm not sure. I seem to remember that Jonathan Daniels felt … in fact, I think it's on the jacket of the book now. I know what Lillian Smith criticized it for. I can tell you that. She had a formula, which was that there were three things wrong in the South … sex … I've forgotten the other two … which accounted for the whole

---

Page 15

racial situation. There were three things. They all began with "s" I think. Do you remember that? 1 * Sex, sin, and segregation.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I sure don't.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Well, she had felt I didn't have enough sex in it. [Laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Very interesting.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Yes. And Jonathan Daniels … this is just on the second or third edition, printings, I mean, not editions, but printings. It is out, you know, in a reprint. It came out just a couple of years ago in a reprint.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I read it in the older version.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Oh, naturally. And the reprint is just … they crowded it into the space. It's a facsimile reprint, but they put it on very thin paper, so it … this is natural. This is to save money on the reprints. And the reprint is quite expensive. Jonathan Daniels: "She has written a story of her section and her generation, and not merely the richly remembered and vitally developed record of a girl named Lumpkin who followed the North Star …" I deserted the South, you see… "But has not ceased to look back South with as much affection as fear." This is the type of thing that would be considered, perhaps, critical. I don't know. But that was the nature of it. Most of them, though-Hodding Carter, William McFee, in the New York Sun, which was still extant then, Zonathan Daniels in the Chicago Sun Book Week, Harnett T. Kane in the Philadelphia Enquirer-they were extraordinary reviews. I was thrilled with it, of course. But you would have found those from the South very thoughtful. I don't recall any that were heaping approbrium on it, at

---

Page 16

all. On the contrary, they were very thoughtful, and often even penetrating. I mean, in recognizing this was the kind of thing that could happen to children, to be indoctrinated with these racial views and have to get over them.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What about your own family? How did they react to it?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Well, I don't mind telling you, but I don't like to put it on the record, because it's their business, if you see what I mean.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Do you want me to turn it off for a minute?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Yes, and I will … [interruption]

JACQUELYN HALL:

We've talked about your father. What was your father's name, by the way?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

William.

JACQUELYN HALL:

William Lumpkin.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

I have a feeling he was called Will, but my mother always referred to him as Mr. Lumpkin. Oh, this was a custom in that day. Or "your father", in talking to us. But I think I can remember hearing her when she would call him that. We were very respectful, deeply respectful, of my father, so that … I don't think people, men, in those days, exchanged first names, you know, much. They either referred to people by their last names or it was mister. Actually, my father was called … wherefrom, I don't know, "colonel".

JACQUELYN HALL:

Your mother was from an old plantation owning family as well.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Yes, that was her childhood background, but you may recall, I think I tell this, that her parents died and she and her three sisters and I think there was one brother were cared for by her grandmother, and then it became too much of a burden.

They were still, then, on the parental home plantation in a different part of Georgia from where my father's people came from. And so kind friends of the family took two of the girls one place, and the two others went to other kind friends and were reared. And my mother and a sister just younger were reared by wonderful people in Augusta, Georgia. And my mother I do say in the book, was given this remarkable education by her tutor.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I'm very interested in this.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Mr. Neely. You see, his name I will never forget because it was always on her lips. My mother … as my father was, they were both brilliant people intellectually, no question of that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Your mother's learning was a prized family possession. I remember you using that. A prized family possession, your mother's education.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I thought that was great.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

And this, I'm sure, quite without my … You see, you have an interesting combination here, looking at it in a detached way. The inner pressures of the individual herself, which I certainly felt, you know, a keen interest in intellectual things from childhood in my reading and all, but also, you had - I had, as we all did, - this tradition of my mother's of the importance of learning, of the importance of intellectual things, of the joy of them. And nothing was more fun in my childhood

---

Page 18

than, of a Sunday, mother would always read aloud to us. And there are certain books that I still cherish more because of that association of the pleasure of hearing interesting … Pilgrim's Progress. I adored it, you see. It was almost up to a mystery detective story in the fascinating grip that it could have. These adventures of this pilgrim. These were great fun. Not that that was why they were read, but it was a classic and we were read to. So, yes, I think you cannot tell: there could be the potential for interest, but whether that interest would necessarily have surfaced to make the person go ahead and pursue those, without this experience which aroused them. I don't know.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Your mother had taught a while before she was married.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Is that … ?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

But I don't know much about that period. I was not old enough to want to ask questions about that. Something like that I would ask about, you know, experiences and what you did there and here, but I don't remember asking questions about that period. She may have talked about it and I not listened. I don't doubt she did. But I do know that she taught for … well up to the time she married.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were you closer to your mother or to your father?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Oh, I think it's easy to say that I was closest to mother, because, for one thing, father died when I was still pretty young to feel close to him. And as it chanced, he was … my oldest sister, he was very close to her and she to him, and this was a wonderful experience for her. And, of course, she is now dead. But I had the opportunity to see much more of my mother as I was growing, and she … in fact, she lived until 1925, and I had her, not

---

Page 19

all the time, but I had her with me when I was traveling on the national staff of the YWCA. I had an apartment, for example, for a while in Atlanta … for a couple of years we had headquarters there, in about '23, '24, '25, somewhere in there. And she came and stayed with me, because by this time she was a widow, you see, and all her children were grown up, and I would persuade her to come and be with me for many months out of the year, many. So that I did see much more of her. She was a beautiful person.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Tell me a little more about your brothers and sisters. What were their names and what did they do? You were the youngest, so whose footsteps were you following in, or how did you … how were you affected by your older … ?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

I don't know that I was following in any footsteps in particular. [Laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who's shadow were you trying to get out from under?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Pardon?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you feel yourself to be in the shadow … ? [interruption]

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

… six older than myself. Actually there were three other children that came first, and they … two, at least, died in a matter of a short time. Had one of these diptheria epidemics in the year when they were … this would have been back in the last century, you see. After all, I, the youngest, came toward the end of this century, and this would mean that they dated quite far back. But there were seven surviving children. That's nothing. Angelina had eleven living children, with four others, so … [Laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

It's hard to imagine.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Isn't it, though?

JACQUELYN HALL:

What were their names?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Oh, well, it began with my oldest sister, Elizabeth, and my oldest brother, called Hope. He became an Episcopal clergyman.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did your oldest sister do?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

She taught first. She trained …

JACQUELYN HALL:

She went to college?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Oh, she was a very gifted woman, and father had her trained … took her for training - and I can't remember, I did know - either in Boston or New York - I think it was Boston - for teaching of what they called then elocution. What we would call today theater, you see. I had a colleague over at Wells who taught theater there, drama, and - a very gifted woman, she is. She's now retired. And she loved it when I would sit down and talk about my sister in those beginning years of teaching. Then she taught at Winthrop College in South Carolina, up to the time of her marriage. And I couldn't tell you … I don't know how many years she trained. I know father would take her North. He was absolutely intent that she should have her gifts developed. She had magnificent gifts. But then she married and had four children herself. But she had a wonderful intellect, and at the … when she had … either had hit eighty - she died a number of years ago - maybe she was already eighty, I'm not sure of this, she began the writing of a novel. And she was staying with a son, married son, a surgeon in Birmingham, Alabama, and she commuted down to the University of Alabama and took the writing course and worked on this novel. So, you see, she was a very enterprising woman. And she did "little theater" for many years in Asheville, where she lived. She was very, very talented.

JACQUELYN HALL:

She lived in Asheville after she married?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Yes. Oh, yes. After she married. She died there. Her husband was a surgeon there. So she never lost her interest in the area of teaching and study, but she never went back to it. Oh, indeed, I am quite wrong. She didn't go back to that, but she took a correspondence course at the University of North Carolina Law School - I think it was North Carolina - in law, and got her law degree, passed the state bar examination When her children were growing up and she needed to handle various family affairs that had been left her - real estate and things by her husband. And she continued to maintain her connection, mostly doing good deeds toward people who hadn't … she didn't have an office. She may have had an office for a while, I'm not sure of this. I think maybe she did, in Asheville. But in any case, she continued her little occasional practice of law for somebody who was in difficulties and she would go and help them get out of it. Which was, I thought, a most delightful thing. [Laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

When did she get her law degree? Do you remember when it was that she got her law degree?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

I thought … I don't know whether they have a correspondence course at North Carolina. I would doubt it. But it was somewhere … some perfectly respectable law school in the state somewhere, and she passed the bar examination.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Amazing.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

[Laughter] So you see she did keep up her professional interests, in one way or another.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did she think of your work? Did you maintain close relations with

---

Page 22

your older brothers and sisters?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

I … you know, once you move out of the orbit of the South, you never have as come-and-go relations as you do if you just settle down right in the midst of family. But, naturally I always kept up with her, and delighted in her. She was a remarkable person.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Your brother became an Episcopal … ?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Only my oldest brother became an Episcopal clergyman, and his son after [him]. The other brothers … the next two brothers, named Alva and Morris, were both lawyers, which was also in the family tradition. And then a sister, Grace Lumpkin, about whom you wrote to me. And then my youngest brother next to me, whose name was Bryan Lumpkin. And his family, wonderful family, still live in Columbia.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did all of your brothers and sisters stay in the South except … ?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

All the brothers and sisters did, except myself and my sister Grace who lived in New York for many, many years. But all the others. I hope I'm remembering correctly. Oh, no. No, no. My brother Hope. My oldest brother was a missionary in Alaska for five or six years. Then he returned from there and took a church in Madison, Wisconsin. And I lived in his home during the three years that I was doing my residence work and writing my dissertation for my doctoral thesis. That's one reason why I ended up at Wisconsin for my degree, because they were there and live in the rectory, which was a great big old rangy house there. And I happened to be very specially devoted to that brother, and it was a great privilege for me that I always cherished that I could live there.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You went to college at Brenau?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Had your … ?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Family gone before me?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yes.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Yes. My sister. [Laughter] My oldest sister. And my sister Grace was there for a year or so.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Is that a girls' school?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Yes, it's a little college. It's still on the books. I still get their stuff, you know, their alumnae association. I don't keep up with them much, but …

JACQUELYN HALL:

I thought it was very interesting that that's where you were exposed to the social gospel.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Well…

JACQUELYN HALL:

Is that the case?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Only I happened to be there when I was exposed. I graduated from there, and then stayed on two years as a kind of a little handyman assistant in history, which was my first love and I always wish I'd stayed in it. And this was the time at which the so-called social creed of the churches was appearing. By pure chance … we had a visit from one of these ranging national secretaries of the YWCA, who came in, saw us as a fruitful field - hopefully fruitful field - there, and I … this was the great wide world that they were bringing in. They were far-thinking women. They were professional-minded women, too: in this period, you see, in that they [Y.W.C.A.] were able to draw to themselves some very remarkable women. One of them was a southern woman, another was a northern woman who visited us often, and then there was still another one on the national staff who was one of their prize kind of people, who went around for a series of meetings, talks, this kind of thing, what we might call today … oh, I forget what they call them in the colleges, now.

---

Page 24

the kind of religious weekends, this kind of thing, that the local YWCA organized. And then there were, you see, the ten-day student conferences at Blue Ridge and places of that kind. And there you would just hear the whole run of exciting people, who were talking about the "problems" that we were feeling ourselves bumping up against all the time. Well, this whole thing burst for me about my last year in college, then I stayed on there two more years. And I was part time assistant in history, but, also, I was called local YWCA secretary, because I'd been president of the Y my last year. And so I was just dumped into or propelled or something - or drawn is probably the best word - into this whole fascinating world outside. And I could… I could depict for you … I mean, I don't mean I will do so, but what the elements were at this period. Now, bear in mind, World War 1 broke out in 1914. I graduated in 1915. I was on there [at BEENAU] the two succeeding years. Immediately following World War 1, the whole peace movement burst with full force, you see, on American society. Especially the student world. The whole reaction against what, up to that time, had been the foreign missions business. There was a tremendous reaction against it, right at this time. And I was at conventions of … what was then called the Student Volunteer Movement, and went to state [meetings] over these next years, where this sense [emerged] that we had no right to foist on these other countries this missionary type of action, which didn't take account of their social conditions, you see, because then it was "Save the world for Christ." And it was not, "Help these people out of their poverty and out of their need and out of their … these terrible conditions in which they are living." So that you'd go to one of these great student volunteer conventions and you would have these rising student groups getting up and saying, "We want to hear about the

---

Page 25

bad industrial conditions of this country. We want to hear about the ending of war. We want to hear about the starving in these countries, et cetera." This kind of social gospel thing. And it was just the … the atmosphere was ripe with it. We were just awash with it, and it was a very exciting time for young people.

JACQUELYN HALL:

It's so interesting, because the twenties are always seen …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

What's that?

JACQUELYN HALL:

It's interesting, because the twenties are conventionally seen as a time when social concern and reform movements were on the wane, in which people were turning to …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

At that time?

JACQUELYN HALL:

(Yes. turning to their private lives and the new morality and whatever.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

That came after, I think. This was a later thing. This receded, this movement I'm talking about. But not before the student volunteer movement practically disappeared.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When did the student volunteer movement disappear?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Well, I'd have to check my records. I … you know, I kept somewhere various little bits of records out of that period. I can remember one report I wrote while I was a student secretary for the national YWCA - this was between 1920 and 1925, some time - to my department in the national YWCA, student department of the national YWCA, which was dealing with a visit I had made where someone had come back from one of our summer student conferences saying that the national YWCA was advocating social equality between the races. And it happened that this remark reached my home city of Columbia. I hadn't lived in Columbia for

---

Page 26

several years because after I graduated from college I was, you know, going other places, taking jobs that kept me away. I wasn't living there and hadn't lived there. Well, this little report that dealt with … I was asked by people, the chairman of our student department, as it was called then, the national YWCA, to go there, because this was creating problems in the city YWCA. We [in the] student department were always creating problems for the city YWCA, because we were interested in industrial questions and interracial questions and these matters, and this was very tough for boards in the cities made up of more or less conventional women, who were trying to serve the industrial girls in the community and the girls who worked in clerical jobs and so on and so forth. This was really creating a crisis, because one or two ministers had taken hold of it and read it to attack us in the pulpits. There was one particular woman who was very active in the local Y there, who was extremely wrought up about it and so on, and I was to go in and look into this whole thing and try to interpret what had really happened.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were you sent there because it was your home city?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

No, not at all, because that was in my territory. No, they probably didn't even realize it was my home city. No, it was just my territory.

So I wrote this up, my experiences, conversations and so on. It was quite … I ran across it a few years ago, and had forgotten I even kept it. It was just a copy of the report I sent to them, and filed, and I suppose when I put it away I thought, "Well, that will remind me of some of …"

JACQUELYN HALL:

I'd love to see it.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Well, I don't know whether I would … I don't know where to lay my hands on it. It's way… in one of my boxes up in the attic. But, this kind of situation was frequently, fairly frequently, developing in those

---

Page 27

years when we in the student division, the student end, of the national YWCA, were considered to be concerning ourselves about social problems when we should have been concerning ourselves about religion, you see, and this kind of crisis quite often arose.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So conflicts would arise both on the local level, between student chapters which were mainly in colleges and the city YWCA in the lo …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

In the locality.

JACQUELYN HALL:

… as well as on the regional and national level, or how did those kind of conflicts work themselves out?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Now, you've asked me a couple of questions. I'm not clear what it is you …

JACQUELYN HALL:

I just … I'm very interested in the relationship between the YWCA …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Organization.

JACQUELYN HALL:

… organization and the student division.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Well, it's a very different relationship now, from what it was when I was working in the nineteen-twenties. It's virtually, to the best of my knowledge, virtually an independent … the student division is, still, I think, under the national board of the YWCA in New York, but I think it virtually moves in its own orbit, along with the men. But for many years, we were quite separate from the YMCA. And always, of course, felt ourselves far in advance of them. [Laughter] This was …

JACQUELYN HALL:

Do you think that was really the case?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

That we were in advance? Oh, that would sound … what is the word I want? You can think of it …

JACQUELYN HALL:

Grace Hamilton told me that that was definitely the case.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Oh, have you seen her?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, it does seem to me, that from what I've read and people I've talked to that that was the case. I'm very curious about why women students seem to have been more progressive on social issues than their contemporaries

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

I always felt … well, let me remind you of one thing. Your lady that you did your …

JACQUELYN HALL:

Jessie Daniel Ames.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Yes. Just remember women were far in advance of men in these matters, in the churches. I … I can't remember her name. I think it was Mrs. Steel. Did she ever speak of someone named Mrs. Steel? Oh, you didn't … you had to go by the records for her.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Uh huh. (Yes.)

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

There was a Mrs. Steel - I think I'm right about her name - who was a leading figure in the Methodist women's groups, who worked on such things as anti-lynching laws and other … some of these very social problems that I am referring to, on better race relations, on these interracial groups, et cetera. Mrs. Weatherford was very active in all of that. And they were always way ahead of the men in what they did, what they advocated, their willingness to take steps contrary to the mores of the community, so that I think that it's not so much a matter … I wouldn't classify it as greater courage or daring or any of these ways of categorizing it. But I think I would almost say that these women students as I knew them, and the group was relatively small who were ready to just down the barriers, you know, just

---

Page 29

discard them and ignore them. It was relatively small. But I think they were able, because of their ability to accept what their humaneness dictated to their consciances, I think they just took their best impulses and acted on them. And it was easier, they did not have as many of the fears, the very deep-laid fears, and bigoted attitudes that men were reared in.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But they were …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

They were … they had the same environment, I grant you that. I'm really floundering here. I don't know how to express what I mean. But we surely experienced it. This …

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, I'm very interested in trying to document this phenomenon. That's why I …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

What's that?

JACQUELYN HALL:

I'm interested in trying to document this phenomenon.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Well, it is difficult.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I don't know the answer myself.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

And I'm not really now referring to the way the older men felt. This system that Dr. Weatherford set up at Blue Ridge, for example, of segregating these black … Negro speakers, you see. [Laughter] I'm so well adapted now to the new terminology I can hardly say Negro. All this segregating them and taking their meals to them, except when they spoke and all was cosy and we'd all go in in a company to the platform, et cetera. This was something that our Negro staff members, our younger ones, not the Miss Ruffin period, the ones I talked about, but these younger women over on our student staff. Frances Williams was … I still hear from her, a lifelong friend. Jane Sadler is

---

Page 30

now dead, the one who was at Blue Ridge that time that I …

JACQUELYN HALL:

Jane who?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Saddler. Juanita Saddler, Juanita Jane Saddler. We called her Jane. Juanita was what she signed her name. Her middle name was Jane. Juliette Derricotte, who was a marvelous person on our staff, and who … she was killed … injured badly, in an auto accident, and didn't get the right treatment, I'm afraid, at the hospital. But these women would just say to us in staff meeting, "We aren't going to do it."

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, then, maybe the difference was in the leadership that was being provided by younger black women, not from so much a difference in …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Well, this was the beginning of our education in this. But, you see, by the time we began to have, say, interracial groups, I would say they raised the level of our education and our practices. But we were ready for them to raise the level, you see.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Do you suppose it has something to do with women being less vulnerable to social pressures …?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

I think so. This is what I was trying to express a while ago. This is what I meant when I said that the men were really imbued with some of these attitudes and were vulnerable, yes. Very much so.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I wonder, not to make too much of Lillian Smith's theory, but I just happened to come across last week when I was in Atlanta a little article by Mrs. Andrews, who was the head of a right wing organization called Southern White Women for the Preservation of the White Race, something like that, she was always heckling Jessie Daniel Ames. And this was an article in her newspaper …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Oh, it's early.

JACQUELYN HALL:

… criticizing a YWCA meeting which had taken place, an interracial meeting taking place in Atlanta in which, according to her, black men were seated next to our southern white women.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Right.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And I wonder whether that whole aspect of deep, emotional, psychological racial fears, which must have centered around, not white men and black women of course, but black men and white women being thrown into situations together, was something that white women did not really feel.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Did not feel. I'm sure you're right, and I'm certain that Lillian Smith, in my view, was quite right in the stress she placed, not in - I don't bother about her more or less Freudian interpretation of this Mammy-white male relationship… I mean, black mammy, white male - if I remember rightly. I haven't looked at her stuff for years. I don't mean that, but I do mean the fears, partly from guilt and partly from just the way any youth, boy, can grow up, with fears about the competition or whatever of another race, and their fears that their women may be subject to approach by these tabooed people. Although they are not tabooed from approach to black women, you see. Now, I think Lillian Smith's stress on that is certainly a very important factor, and I don't question it at all. It just happened that wasn't what I was dealing with.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But didn't …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Is that what you are … ?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yes, that's exactly my opinion. But, if you can remember, didn't young white women … I mean, didn't you have to deal with your … the stories of rape and assault during Reconstruction, dangers of white women being left alone on the plantations, and that whole fear of what …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

The whole thing in The Clansman.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yeah, right.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Yeah.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But that, I think, would have been internalized by white women so that they would tend to view their own vulnerability …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

I suspect … this kind of thing is awfully hard to pin down, because this emotional aspect of one's make-up, so to speak, is very deeply buried, and we just plain don't know what our … in a bi-racial situation, what are the roots of the fears that are usually found there, you see. We don't know what contributes to those fully. We can kind of analyze it, and guess at it, but the truth is that if anyone asked us to pinpoint it in ourselves, we wouldn't know. We would know that we were always required to have a man with us after dark, to walk home if we were somewhere, or to come and call for. We would kind of sense "Hush-hush" in the atmosphere about certain topics. But … and we would read in the newspapers sentiments expressed by politicians such as, "I will go and join the … whatever you call it, the crowd that was going to lynch so-and-so for the rape of a white woman." This kind of thing. All this seeps in to the consciousness, of course, and we sense these things, that they are there. But I think there are all sorts of un-analyzed and un-realized fears that arise in such a bi-racial situation, on both sides. And one of the things I had to learn was that if we feared the intangible, how much more did women on the black side fear the intangible. And when that penetrated to my consciousness, that our intangible fears were nothing to what they (black women) had tangibly to fear… they were helpless, in other words, and their men were helpless.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did Juliette Derricotte and these young black women that you were working with in the YWCA verbalize such fears and talk about those experiences?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

It depended on which ones you were talking about. Some did. Some of my friends did, and others did not. But I think I learned enough. And I couldn't tell you which ones did what. But I learned enough from them, and from students, to know … I mean, youngsters who were … I came to know, to realize, have this penetrate. Sometimes it would be in group discussions between us. Those discussions of very small groups of people. And it would not be said in so many words, but it was a kind of thing that one comprehended as you listened, what lay back of it. It was a very intangible thing, and not one that is easily expressed. But I am confident that it is a persisting and very hard to discard set of fears. And they are intangible. And probably it is one of the most difficult areas to, so to speak, clean up for the person who is rooting out of herself, her upbringing. Cut it off a minute … [interruption] What is your feeling of Lillian Smith, what impression … ? If I may ask a question. I'll try not to ask questions.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Oh, you don't have to answer that.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

It's a pity she's not alive so we could talk to her.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I went to Old Screamer Mountain, about two and a half years ago, three years ago, and interviewed Paula Snelling, who was her companion and worked with her. The visit to Old Screamer was very fascinating.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

I'm sure it was.

JACQUELYN HALL:

The interview was not very satisfactory. I didn't … well, I got a sense of her as being extremely protective of Lillian Smith's image and her …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

And her memory.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And her memory, and not willing to say anything that was not pretty much conventional and in praise, you know, and not at all willing or interested in talking about herself. She really subordinated herself.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

How very interesting.

JACQUELYN HALL:

This was a fairly short conversation. I don't know whether that … Did you know both of those women?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

No. I only knew, and fairly casually, Lillian Smith. I met her on a couple of occasions, chatted with her. Her review of my book, of course, was lengthy.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I got interested in her when I was working on my dissertation and working on the end of the period when the old Interracial Commission ended and the Southern Regional Council began, and she was a very early critic of the Southern Regional Council for not facing the issue of segregation.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Of course.

JACQUELYN HALL:

There was an exchange between Guy Johnson defending the Southern Regional Council and Lillian Smith resigning from the board over that issue. And …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Actually, I … yes, go ahead.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And also, I was interested in the whole thing between her and Ralph McGill and the kinds of very unprincipled and awful attacks that he made on her.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

I didn't realize that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Oh. And then they were reconciled at the end But I'm curious about the way she now is a revered figure among southern liberals. During her career, I think the opposite was the case. She was very …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Oh, she was controversial.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yes. Strange Fruit was a terrible thing, and people didn't want to deal with that at all.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Oh, yes. Well …

JACQUELYN HALL:

I don't know. Tell me how you see her … you were doing your work at the same time that she was writing …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

More or less, yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you see yourself in the same …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

World?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were you trying to deal with the same kind of thing?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Not really, because I always felt that she was very much influenced by her psychoanalytic views, and I tended more to detach myself and see it more or less in experiential terms, you see, rather than giving them some theoretical explanation. I gave them explanations in my mind, but … so I didn't feel myself particularly close to her point of view. You understand, on principles, yes, I was completely sympathetic with her. I took her little paper for a while that she was getting out. I think she then called it The South Today, so I read that, and I respected her and admired her very much. But now I suppose I felt she overemphasized one explanation.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I suppose it was especially scandalous for a southern white woman to write about those kinds of topics, because explanations that she …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

It was if she was living in the South. If she'd been living out of the South I think it would have been … what I did was to admire her for staying in the South, tremendously. I thought it was a very wonderful thing to do. And to be as fearless as she was in expressing her views. This was really quite something then. When it comes to the position of some of the men, such as … well, such as in the old … what was that called? Interracial … ?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Interracial Commission.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

… Committee. Commission. Right. I always felt, and I knew Dr. W. W. Alexander a little, saw him often in conferences and that sort of thing. I always felt that he was well in advance of some of the others. That part of his discretion, which the women for some reason seemed able to ignore, but … I mean, being so discreet. But some of the men honestly thought… and some of those associated with him at Blue Ridge, honestly thought it very unwise, for example, to eat together. This used to be one of our big debates there at Blue Ridge. Seems just childish stuff, that could have been …

JACQUELYN HALL:

What kind of relationship was there between the Interracial Commission and the YWCA student movement?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

The YWCA?

JACQUELYN HALL:

YMCA-YWCA.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

YMCA. I would say, as far as the YMCA went, it was a kind of an interlocking group. This is my impression, but you could substantiate it if you just took the list of boards. And I have it purely as an impression. I've never gone and checked it. But if it wasn't interlocking, it was interworking. They were very close in their relationships with each other.

---

Page 37

I mean, in their work relationships,

My guess is that the evaluation would place the Interracial Commission more in advance in its work and its views than was the …

JACQUELYN HALL:

But the YWCA was not connected with the Interracial Commission very much?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

I don't think the YMCA was connected with it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Uh huh. But not much overlap of personnel between the YWCA and the Interracial Commission.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Oh, no. No, no. Because women … well, there was Mrs… what's her name? Your …

JACQUELYN HALL:

Mrs. Ames.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

She was on the staff there at the Interracial Commission. But it worked more with the churches. I believe I'm right about that. And there are books on it which you can check.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And it was dominated by men pretty much.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

I would say so. But so … it's a little like comparing students in women's colleges with women in universities. In a women's college there are only women, among the student body. And this was the old story, anyhow. And naturally they had opportunities for leadership. Whereas in the man-dominated organization, women played very little part. Whether they did more out in the communities when later they set up these community relation councils - there are remants of it still around Virginia, for example, which began with the old Interracial Commission and continued a little under the Southern Regional Council but they practically, I think, have died out.

JACQUELYN HALL:

There are so many different questions that are coming to my mind, and

---

Page 38

I'm afraid I'm getting … I'm not proceeding chronologically at all, but you … you worked in the YWCA and you have taught mostly in women's collges in your career. Is that the case?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Say the second thing again.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You taught mostly in women's colleges.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Yes. You mean in my teaching years. Yes, I did.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you deliberately choose to do that,, or how did that happen?

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

No, I think those were the jobs available. I don't think … well, this, for example, would illustrate it. When I was at the University of Wisconsin as a graduate student there, working for my doctorate, and we had a wonderful department, and I loved it. Professor E. A. Ross was head of it then, and some of the older generation of sociologists there. I was very anxious … because up to that time, you see, I had finished my YW work in 1925, and then I went on to Wisconsin then and was there for three years. And I was eager to have what we called then a teaching assistantship, which gave one teaching experience, usually in the introductory courses …

---

Page 39

and applied for it. This was, say, after I'd finished one year of my residence work. You wouldn't ever hope to get it the first year, but the second. What they did was to offer me - and I took, it of course, a fellowship in sociology, which I was glad, indeed, to have… but not a teaching assistantship because these were reserved for the men. The reason I wanted it was to get some teaching experience, you see, before I applied for a job when I finished my doctorate. The fellowship for that … I worked there - you worked some for your fellowship, helping Professor Ross organize his course material, pull together the readings for the course, this kind of thing. I did that for two years and I graded some papers. That's all; that sort of thing. But, this was not the point. So this kind of expectation - shall we put it, rather than anything harsher [Laughter] was quite prevalent. Now, there were on the Economics side - at that time there was a joint department - there was at least one woman who was a teaching assistant, on the Economics side. I think only one. There would be as many as seven, eight, nine teaching assistanships, you see, because these were huge …

JACQUELYN HALL:

There were probably no women on the faculty.

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

There was one, and she was both a Dean and taught a course in History. She was a distinguished historian, a woman historian who had come from … I'm not sure where she had taught history before. I think Wellesley. I forget her maiden name; it was known among historians. But she was then married to a judge there in Madison and so was located there. A wonderful person, but she had, I believe, faculty full-time status. I think there were no others, but there were some at the levels of Instructor.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Let's go back a little bit, because I want to talk about this theme of how you as a woman happened to achieve the kind of professional independent life you achieved. When you graduated from Brenau and then you stayed there two years as a tutor: how did you happen then to go on to Columbia and get your M.A. How could you afford to do that? What made you…

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Well, just as I did at Brenau, I think I remember rightly, I borrowed to get through, because, I mean, it was kind of an operation for which I gave some service. But, I guess I - goodness - I think I was helped on it somehow; I think I borrowed some for the Masters. Now then, I had saved a bit from my Y. W. salary to go to Wisconsin, but also then I got, the second year, a fellowship, and then for my Ph.D. dissertation I won a research fellowship, for work on my Ph.D. which was a fellowship granted to a woman - called the Harriet Remington Laird Fellowship, which had been endowed, and then a woman was appointed to it, one each year, and I got that for my doctoral dissertation. So, by these various means, …

JACQUELYN HALL:

Your family was not able to help you…

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Oh, I suppose surely they were able to help me some. My memory is very vague on it; I always managed to make my way.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Something which I thought was very interesting that you said in your book was that a little circle of women you knew in college who were interested in the same things wou were, were interested in intellectual pursuit were not girls of family, of "good" families…

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Did I say that? … I didn't remember.

JACQUELYN HALL:

They were girls who vaguely thought that they were going to do something after college, that kind of division between …

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

You see, some of these memories… this is a very interesting thing about writing a thing of that kind, that as you write, or as you work on it and make notes, your memory jogs and things come back. But if you just thought here out of the blue - you see, I've even forgotten that I said that. But as you work it triggers, these things… and it's amazing how much you can remember…

JACQUELYN HALL:

What it made me wonder was what was the class background of the young women who became involved in the YWCA with you, and went on to become the student that…

KATHARINE DU PRE LUMPKIN:

Let's make a distinction here. There was first, as I remember it, and now you bring it back a little, the group of girls in college that I felt most intellectually congenial with who were also interested, we'll say in History as I was, several of whom who went on to teach; most of them taught in the public school system, not so many, maybe seven, eight, nine - good friends, splendid minds. There was another young woman who was really a girl from - and I guess this is maybe what you are thinking of - I may have spoken of her, she comes back to me now, and she was probably from the country, and had more or less a rural education and made her own way and I suspect may have been working her way along in college; we had various ways of doing that then. A good many of us were doing it. And, she was a very bright person, extremely bright. And later did have a career; I cannot think what was the nature of it, but I think it was in the field, that I went into, Sociology. And she became a very excellent scholar. I cannot even recall her name, but there was this group, within college. Now, they did not

---

Page 42

go along with me.

JACQUELYN HALL: