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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-0034, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin was a southern writer, academic sociologist, and social
activist. Born in 1897, Lumpkin grew up in Macon, Georgia, where the "Lost
Cause" was championed by her father and her intellect was fostered by her
mother. Lumpkin describes what it was like to grow up in this southern family,
which later served as the basis for her autobiographical The Making
of a Southerner (1947). After offering her family background as
context, Lumpkin argues that she wrote her book out of her gradual realization
that race was culturally constructed and that she hoped to improve race
relations by raising awareness of how she herself grew to be conscious of its
construction and its social functions. Central to Lumpkin's own cognizance of
race relations was her work with the YWCA while a student at Brenau College and
as its national student secretary for the South during the early 1920s. Speaking
of her work with the YWCA, Lumpkin stresses the importance of the social gospel
to the work of the YWCA. In particular, Lumpkin describes how race relations and
industrial conditions were of primary concern to the YWCA. In addition to
discussing the role of African American women in the YWCA, Lumpkin explains how
the YWCA worked to ease tensions between women of divergent groups by developing
collaborative, interracial groups and by promoting awareness of challenges
working women faced by way of the Industrial Department. Lumpkin also discusses
her decision to leave the YWCA in 1925 in order to pursue her doctoral degree in
sociology at University of Wisconsin. Having already earned her master's degree
in the late 1910s, Lumpkin returned to academe and remained there until her
retirement in 1967. In this interview, Lumpkin's discussion of her academic work
is largely centered on her graduate work and her earlier career in academe. She
concludes the interview by briefly describing her research on Angelina and Sarah
Grimke; her relationship with her sister, proletariat novelist Grace Lumpkin,
and the similarities and differences in their career trajectories; her role in
the Institute of Labor Studies; and her book, South in
Progress (1940).
Southern writer, academic, and social activist Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin describes
growing up in a family where the "Lost Cause" was heralded and her subsequent
work towards promoting causes of social justice. In so doing, Lumpkin describes
her work with the YWCA, her education, her career in academe, and her books The Making of a Southerner and South in
Progress.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
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.
Right.
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.
Yes. It had a certain object to fulfill.
Yes. You were born in 1897 in Macon Georgia?
Yes.
Could you tell me a little bit about the family situation that you were born into?
Well, I was born in Macon, Georgia, and Georgia was my native state, as
you'll remember. There were seven living children in my
He worked for the railroad?
Yes.
What railroad did he work for?
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 …
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 …
You mean, if he had … when you say he grew up, you mean master of
Of his plantation and his slaves and his …
Yes. This was his rearing, of course.
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 …
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.
Well, your own family was not very affluent.
Well, not … I may have overplayed that some.
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?
Into molding them, you say?
Yes.
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 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.
He ran for the Senate in 1908, I think.
He what?
He ran for the U. S. Senate …
Yes.
… in 1908?
Your dates are better than mine at this point.
But he was beaten very badly.
Oh, yes.
Did he run for other political office and lose?
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.
But he wanted to run against Ben Tillman?
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.
When you talked about an incident in which you saw your father chastising a black maid …
I know. Oh, how I …
By your family?
Well, let's not get that on the recorder. I don't want to be too specific on a thing like that.
We can delete anything that we want to …
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
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 … ?
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.
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
I wish everyone who has read that book comprehended what I was trying to do as well as you do.
Do you feel that people did not?
Oh, often they do not. Often.
Well, tell me, why did you write that book?
Why did I?
Yes.
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
You went to Columbia University, you taught at Smith, you were at …
I was at Mount Holyoke for a year.
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 …
Well, this was the kind of sociology I was trained in, even in Columbia.
Is that right?
Sure. Summer. Folkways. I know you wouldn't have been brought up in it, but I was.
By 1947, when you wrote Making of a Southerner, was
that still the kind of training that people were getting in
universities?
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
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.
But this book was meant to be read by, in effect, a popular audience more than to …
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.
Have you ever thought of writing a full-fledged autobiography?
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.
How was The Making of a Southerner received?
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.
Jonathan Daniels.
Jonathan Daniels reviewed it in one of the papers. I had an 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.
Oh, really?
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.
I read a review in the Journal of Negro History, just
very, very …
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.
Well, he also took off from your book to …
Tell of his own experience.
Tell of his own experience.
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.
From people from the South, talking about their own …
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.
What was the book criticized for?
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
I sure don't.
Well, she had felt I didn't have enough sex in it.
Very interesting.
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.
I read it in the older version.
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
What about your own family? How did they react to it?
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.
Do you want me to turn it off for a minute?
Yes, and I will …
We've talked about your father. What was your father's name, by the way?
William.
William 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".
Your mother was from an old plantation owning family as well.
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.
I'm very interested in this.
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.
Your mother's learning was a prized family possession. I remember you using that. A prized family possession, your mother's education.
Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
I thought that was great.
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 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.
Your mother had taught a while before she was married.
Yes.
Is that … ?
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.
Were you closer to your mother or to your father?
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
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 … ?
I don't know that I was following in any footsteps in particular.
Who's shadow were you trying to get out from under?
Pardon?
Did you feel yourself to be in the shadow … ?
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
… 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 …
It's hard to imagine.
Isn't it, though?
What were their names?
Oh, well, it began with my oldest sister, Elizabeth, and my oldest brother, called Hope. He became an Episcopal clergyman.
What did your oldest sister do?
She taught first. She trained …
She went to college?
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.
She lived in Asheville after she married?
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.
When did she get her law degree? Do you remember when it was that she got her law degree?
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.
Amazing.
What did she think of your work? Did you maintain close relations with
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.
Your brother became an Episcopal … ?
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.
Did all of your brothers and sisters stay in the South except … ?
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.
You went to college at Brenau?
Yes.
Had your … ?
Family gone before me?
Yes.
Yes. My sister.
Is that a girls' school?
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 …
I thought it was very interesting that that's where you were exposed to the social gospel.
Well…
Is that the case?
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.
It's so interesting, because the twenties are always seen …
What's that?
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 …
At that time?
(Yes. turning to their private lives and the new morality and whatever.
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.
When did the student volunteer movement disappear?
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
Were you sent there because it was your home city?
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 …"
I'd love to see it.
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
So conflicts would arise both on the local level, between student chapters which were mainly in colleges and the city YWCA in the lo …
In the locality.
… as well as on the regional and national level, or how did those kind of conflicts work themselves out?
Now, you've asked me a couple of questions. I'm not clear what it is you …
I just … I'm very interested in the relationship between the YWCA …
Organization.
… organization and the student division.
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.
Do you think that was really the case?
That we were in advance? Oh, that would sound … what is the word I want? You can think of it …
Grace Hamilton told me that that was definitely the case.
Oh, have you seen her?
Yes.
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
I always felt … well, let me remind you of one thing. Your lady that you did your …
Jessie Daniel Ames.
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.
Uh huh. (Yes.)
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
But they were …
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 …
Well, I'm very interested in trying to document this phenomenon. That's why I …
What's that?
I'm interested in trying to document this phenomenon.
Well, it is difficult.
I don't know the answer myself.
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.
Jane who?
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."
Well, then, maybe the difference was in the leadership that was being provided by younger black women, not from so much a difference in …
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.
Do you suppose it has something to do with women being less vulnerable to social pressures …?
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.
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 …
Oh, it's early.
… 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.
Right.
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.
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.
But didn't …
Is that what you are … ?
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 …
The whole thing in The Clansman.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
But that, I think, would have been internalized by white women so that they would tend to view their own vulnerability …
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.
Did Juliette Derricotte and these young black women that you were working with in the YWCA verbalize such fears and talk about those experiences?
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 …
Oh, you don't have to answer that.
It's a pity she's not alive so we could talk to her.
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.
I'm sure it was.
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 …
And her memory.
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.
How very interesting.
This was a fairly short conversation. I don't know whether that … Did you know both of those women?
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.
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.
Of course.
There was an exchange between Guy Johnson defending the Southern Regional Council and Lillian Smith resigning from the board over that issue. And …
Actually, I … yes, go ahead.
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.
I didn't realize that.
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 …
Oh, she was controversial.
Yes. Strange Fruit was a terrible thing, and people
didn't want to deal with that at all.
Oh, yes. Well …
I don't know. Tell me how you see her … you were doing your work at the same time that she was writing …
More or less, yes.
Did you see yourself in the same …
World?
Were you trying to deal with the same kind of thing?
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.
I suppose it was especially scandalous for a southern white woman to write about those kinds of topics, because explanations that she …
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 … ?
Interracial Commission.
… 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 b