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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-0063, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Josephine Wilkins was born in Athens, Georgia, in 1893. Raised in a religious family, Wilkins began to challenge authority at a young age. She was educated at the Lucy Cobb Institute in Athens before being sent to "finishing school." In the mid-1920s, after finishing her degree at the University of Georgia, she went to New York City to study art at the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts. While there she took a course in social science at Columbia University and decided to work more closely with people. In 1925, she moved back to Athens, Georgia, to work for the Georgia Children's Code Commission and worked on passing child labor laws. Around this time, Wilkins became increasingly involved in the League of Women Voters and, by 1934, she had been elected as the organization's state president. In 1937, Wilkins received a grant from the Rosenwald Foundation, which she used to start the Citizens' Fact Finding Movement (1937-1940) in order to promote awareness of issues pertinent to Georgia and its relationship to the South in general. In addition, Wilkins describes her perception of and involvement in the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, founded in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1938. According to Wilkins, the Southern Conference sparked concern among government officials for its leftist leanings. Wilkins explains how communism was certainly a present, if not predominant, thread in the Southern Conference until the rise of McCarthyism in the early 1950s. Wilkins also discusses her friendship with Jessie Daniel Ames and Ames's anti-lynching organization, the Commission of Interracial Cooperation, which disintegrated and was succeeded by the Southern Regional Council (SRC) in 1944. She remained involved on the executive board of the SRC until her death in 1977.
Josephine Wilkins was born in Athens, Georgia, in 1893. In the 1920s, she became increasingly interested in issues of social justice. In the 1930s, she became the president of the Georgia chapter of the League of Women Voters and helped to found the Citizens' Fact Finding Movement. In addition she describes her involvement and perception of such organizations as the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, the Commission of Interracial Cooperation, and the Southern Regional Council.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Tell me something about your family background.
Now how much of that do you want? You want the background of people that you're interviewing and then something of what they have done, is that it? Well, I grew up in Athens. My father was a banker. My mother was a pillar in the Episcopal church. I was pretty much saturated in religion, organized religion, as I grew up. And I have often wondered why I have developed as I have because it was certainly not what I was supposed to be or do. And my family, we in many ways don't speak the same language although there is a close bond. I feel that young people who grow up in an environment where they get the approval of the people who are very close to them, their parents and their family, get their approval, their interest in what they do are so fortunate, because there is a time when you are so unsure of yourself and your thoughts. I know very early I began questioning religion.
When were you born?
When was I born?
Yes.
Do I have to tell you that?
I just wanted to know when you were growing up.
I was growing up in the twentieth century. Personally I am not, as far as age is concerned, I'm not sensitive of age at all. But the only thing is that I feel a reluctance to broadcast age. People limit you in their response to you, they fit you in a certain period and they link you. I pick up on things that people think and it's very bad for me. So I've just decided that I'll not broadcast it.
The first kind of divergence from the way your family was was over religion?
Yes, I mean I suffered over that. I felt that, in the first place all this faith business, that didn't make sense to me. Really you had to question before you really had a sound base. I felt that my mother, my beloved mother, that if she had grown up in another religion that is what she would be. And all of this walking on water and if they had all these miracles back then why couldn't they have them today? I just didn't like this idea of immaculate conception. That didn't make sense to me. Oh, my heavens, I just suffered because Sunday after Sunday I would approach the Sunday when I was going to talk to the minister. And that there must be some other people in the world who had thoughts like I was having and I was afraid to talk to them because I knew it would come back to my mother. You have me digging back into those dark ages back there, but in fact in many ways it sort of clears up your own thinking. And I hadn't realized that this was the first crisis in my life—over religion.
I came back from school and I had grown up in what they called the junior
auxiliary of the Episcopal church and I took the leadership of the
junior auxiliary. I'm wondering if that was something else. I would
rather tell you this first: They had all kinds of things that the
women—the girls—were supposed to do—bazaars and all this and I just
hated it. So I thought, I'll just be on the Altar Guild. There was this
friend who was connected with the library of the University of Georgia.
And this particular Sunday arrived when we were to decorate the
altar.
That you would see the error of your ways?
Well, I was not coming to church and everything, and they didn't
understand what was going on with this daughter. I remember one day this
assistant rector came out to talk with me, and we talked in the living
room. And finally when it was over he went out and he said to my mother,
he said, "She's all right, really she's all right."
But I was reaching an awful lot around about that time. But we can't cover the world in here this afternoon.
At my next retirement I found out that there were things that I couldn't
do in Athens, Georgia. That was when I headed up this junior auxiliary
group. I gave clothing to a little girl in school, or rather the little
group was clothing this girl. They did not know her name; I did. And the
teacher came and said that something should be done about this little
girl, that the mother was dead, the father was keeping a drunken group
around him and was using her older sisters in the world's oldest
profession, that this little girl was just coming along and something
should be done about it. Well, as far as I was concerned, something had
to be done. And I took that on. They moved me around from one division
of the government and another. In the process I found this whole street
right behind the University of Georgia with red lights and the houses
owned by my friend. I found out why the newspaper had changed
Had you been aware of the suffrage movement going on?
No.
So the League of Women Voters is really the first thing you had heard about women getting involved in politics?
Miss . . . What was the woman's name? Miss Roberta Hodgson was the one that I went down with. I'm sure I wouldn't have gone had she not suggested going.
How did the League of Women Voters strike you at that time? Did it seem like a rather far out thing to be involved in, that women should do that kind of thing?
Oh, no. To me it was so wonderful to see that kind of woman because . . . I was reaching for what life was all about and for a place in it.
Were the women who were organizing the League, had they been suffragists themselves? Were they women that had been in the suffrage movement?
Yes. I was just trying to think . . .
But they really seemed like different women.
Oh, yes, wonderful. I just seemed to be unwilling to settle for just keeping house and sort of dropping out of the world, it seemed. It was a question of, oh, what has happened to so-and-so? Oh, she married. What happened to someone? Oh, she married. That just closed something out. I grew up with this absurd sort of thing that my mother instilled in me—that there was something that I must do in the world, and if I didn't do it it wouldn't get done. That there was a role I should play in the world. Now it was very interesting that she should say that. Of course, she was playing the role in the church. She wanted me to be a missionary! Just an aside: I know that the fact that in my early life my whole life revolved around the religious atmosphere and purpose, being purposeful . . .
You then translated that purpose into secular terms.
Absolutely.
How about your father in all this?
My father was . . . I had great admiration for my father. He was absorbed
completely in business. I admired him very much: his appearance . . .
After the Civil War they had very little left. They
How did he make his money? In textiles?
No, he was a banker, and investments. He had his hands in all kinds of things. When he cashed in everything, why, he still owed seventy-five thousand dollars. The only thing that he retained was a policy at the University of Georgia. And he belonged to the Episcopal Church. The first money I ever made was paying the premium on that policy at the University of Georgia.
So he lost everything?
He lost everything. The only thing that was left was . . . He didn't talk
business, except very seldom. But I remember his coming
What kind of a plant?
Work clothes, overalls, shirts. And when he died in '40, why, every nickel of that $75,000 had been paid off. With the exception of a $100 donation to Agnes Scott College and $25 to Berry School up in Rome. I think that's a pretty good record for a man, don't you?
Right. How did his financial troubles affect you? Did you have brothers and sisters?
I had one brother and one sister. Well, unhappily he never did talk frankly with us about the whole thing. When I say frankly, it was not an effort to withhold, but he didn't say, Now, children, this is the situation. We've got to, don't you know? This thing just, oh, just sort of, you were just sort of bewildered for a while.
Was there a real change in your style of life?
Oh, my heavens, yes. The most terrible thing back then was to have a
mortgage on your home—it was just something you didn't do. And the old
homeplace was in my mother's name, and a mortgage was put on it. I
didn't know too much about how terrible this was at the time. I
Did you go to college?
My education is very scant, and very individual.
That's the best kind.
I went to the Lucy Cobb Institute in Athens, Georgia, which was a girls' school. It was organized at the time that they were trying to get public education established in the United States of America. And this was an effort to sort of combat this, and this was to protect the young women, you know.
So they wouldn't have to go into public school?
I started there in kindergarten and went right on through. You didn't learn very much. I was in the art room a good part of the time. That was supposed to be junior college, such as it was.
It was supposed to go up through junior college?
Supposed to. Then they sent me up to the Castle on the Hudson where you learned how to get up and sit down.
What is that?
It was called the Castle on the Hudson, a girls' finishing school. So I
went up to be finished.
Did you feel pressured to get married and settle down?
No, no, no, although . . . well, anyone in my setting would have to be
rather popular over at the University of Georgia, don't you know.
It sounds like Zelda Fitzgerald's youth.
I went up . . . You asked me a question. What was it?
You were talking about you wanted to find some way to support yourself.
No, I just thought everybody ought to, you know. This mind was loose, and
it was just . . . I enrolled at the New York School of Fine and Applied
Arts in poster advertising. And one of the first things they had us
doing was a bookplate. And we were to do a bookplate. I don't know why,
but I hit upon an arrow and I did an arrow which they liked very, very
much. And they had me enlarge it on a tremendous thing like this. But
after this summer there I wanted to stay on. We had been housed in one
of those old brownstones, and of
And I came back. Well one, I reached the conclusion that . . . in the
first place I would go to art galleries. And I would see all these women
with poodle dogs and these men with spats buying these art works to put
in the galleries for somebody to see and so forth. And I didn't feel
they needed me to be doing any more pictures. Here were these gorgeous
sunsets every night, and no one ever saw them. I should be doing
something more! And then the climax on that was [when] Robert
I came back from New York with pamphlets. I had a box, a wooden box as big as that, that wide and that thick that was just full of stuff I had collected. All kinds of things about what was going on in the world. From a course at Columbia and I had . . .
Were there a lot of liberal and radical ideas floating around in the Art Students League?
No, no, no. This was in the mid-twenties. No.
So you were still very much in isolation thinking about all these things.
I'm afraid so. I remember I went . . . I was reaching, just reaching. I'm
a pathetic case—I'm still reaching! I heard about some lectures that
were going to be held at the Philosophical Society. They were on the
great religions of the world. So I joined in. And I
Well, anyhow, I came back to Athens with all my papers and I was still reaching. I wanted to go to Europe. I know now but I didn't know then that things were very tight as far as my father was concerned. I remember taking him down to the train—that was the only mode of transportation except cars at that time out of Athens. He was going on a business trip and he said to me, "Now big sister, I won't say that you can't go but I say to you, I don't want you to go." That settled that for that summer. I think it was that year that [Roberta Hodgson took me to the League of Women Voters meeting.]?
Was that when you got involved with the Children's Code?
No. During that year I selected me a tour and found out all about the
people that were going to go on it. And I had this lawyer whom I was
going with quite a bit look up some of the people and so forth. Also, my
father had made a practice over the years of giving us credit and stocks
and money to buy this, that and the other. So I had collected. I think
the entire tour cost $850. And we were going to thirteen countries in
six weeks—a typical tour.
I came on back to Georgia and saw in the paper where I was on the
committee to entertain the Legislature when the Legislature came to
inspect the University of Georgia. And Gerrod Smith, who was
vice-president of the bank, was chairman of the group. I went down and I
said, "Let's do something different." I said, "You've been having a
barbecue for these people every year, and the chancellor makes an
address. Let's do something different." And he said, "What different do
you want to try?"
After he had read about this?
Well, he had come over; he had been there and saw it. And I insisted I was not the person to do that. I came over and talked to him. And I insisted that I was not. He insisted that I was. And I came on back to Athens. I remember going out and sitting under the arbor, trying to think through. Because somehow or other I realized that that was a turning point—of art. And I came back, and my sister quoted me on this. She said I came back and I said, "Now this is it, I'm more interested in people than I am in things." And I came over to the Legislature. I don't know why they wanted me. I had some imagination. I don't know why, but that's what I did. And we got through the child labor law at that time.
You were lobbying for the child labor law?
Yes sir. We had five child labor laws: one was for adoption, one was some
kind of desertion law, for children that were deserted. That legislation
really was not ready to throw in the hopper at that time. I came to know
that through a man who was visiting on the faculty of Emory University
and worked with the children's code. And he talked with me at length
about it, and he made me promise that I would not
That was when my father was going down to Florida. And I had several
things open to me growing out of that experience. One of them, George
Foster Peabody wanted to send me to Columbia on the understanding I
would come back and work in the South. And I look back with some
interest that the National Manufacturers Association wanted me to lobby
for them.
We were then having annual meetings of the legislature. And when this
came up again, I felt that I had to come to it and did. But by then
there was no money at all. And so I came on the large sum of $150, paid
for by
When did you get involved in the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching?
I was never involved.
You were never involved in that? Were you involved in the Commission on Interracial Cooperation?
Only on the periphery. Remember that my family had no money then and I had $150 a month and part of that was going for an insurance premium on my father.
Were you living in Athens?
No, the second time I was over here. My sister had come over to get a
job. I remember I took her down to get a train. I had a wire from her—I
wish I had that wire now. She and a friend of hers and these two boys, I
put them on a train—they were all coming over here to get work. And I
had a telegram from them: "We all have positions." They had positions
with Sears Roebuck! And I came on over with the
Things were really shaken up.
But after that the session in the legislature, the second session of the
legislature, was over and we got the adoption law through. I felt that I
just wanted to stay on with that thing. A special session was being
urged. And I felt that I had to make money, and I didn't know how to
make money and still be free. And the only thing I could work out was
insurance. So I went about this thing quite systematically,
investigating insurance companies to find out which one I wanted to go
with and I picked out Equitable Life. And I went to the manager and said
that I was interested. I did not want to sign a contract
When were you elected state president of the League of Women Voters?
I was elected state president of the League in December of '34. I was president until 1940. Meanwhile I started something called the Citizens' Fact-Finding Movement.
I've run across it in my research.
I was so eager with the League to get some things done. And those were
the days when the really accepted thing for a woman was still magnolias
and pouring tea and chautauquas. Woman's club and garden club was the
accepted thing. And we did some pretty good things, a series of forums
that we put on that built up a listening audience in
Then you were traveling around visiting these organizations?
I took a trip through the state, having written to them prior to my coming saying that I was taking a trip through the state, I wanted very much to talk with them—this was on League stationery—and that I expected to be in Albany or whatever the city on such and such a day, and hoped that I might see them at eleven o'clock, or four o'clock or something, that I would call before coming into the city. And I struck out. Prior to doing that I made a study of the purposes of these organizations. And I found that so much of it was palliatives, you know. For instance, the Lions Club had an excellent program for the blind. But all the time in Georgia they had a whole new group of blind children because they didn't have drops in babies' eyes and all that. So my line was that I was president of the League of Women Voters and I didn't feel that I had enough information about the state to intelligently lead it. And I wondered if they didn't feel the same way. I had a very encouraging response and so forth, and I felt we could get together on this thing. And I said I'd be very happy to arrange a meeting.
What were some of the groups, the other groups involved?
They were the establishment groups. What I wanted to do was to try to build up something that was strong enough to say some things that needed to be said, but was too strong to be attacked. There were the men's service clubs, the Rotary clubs, Lions, women's groups, church groups, the PTA. I couldn't find any nucleus at that time of churches, other than the church women. The Library Association, the Georgia Press Association.
The only nucleus you could find of people, of church people interested in those issues, were women?
I could find only a church setup, a state setup, where you had a working vehicle there that was a state-run organization.
Was it the Methodists you worked with?
You could have done one denomination, but the church women represented all denominations. Then there were the farmers.
What kind of farmers?
The Farm Bureau. That was the only one we had. And the Georgia Press Association, the Library Association, and that was it.
Not the Commission on Interracial Cooperation?
No. This was establishment. We carried on the program for twelve and a half years with a rather unique setup there of a rotating chairmanship. The chairmanship rotated among the state heads of these organizations. And they came! They didn't want to be left out. That's where my art came in: we dramatized on the table at each of these meetings the subject to be taken up.
What kinds of subjects?
We divided the state into twelve areas which, we maintained,
Where did you get your funds?
Well, I had several fellowships. The one thing for me that it started was
I got a $3,000 grant from the Rosenwald Foundation which was given to me
as a grant to do what I wanted with.
Did you apply for it?
Did I apply for it! Did I apply for it! Edward R. Embree was coming to Georgia to speak out at Emory and I was present—this was back before we even started. In fact, I doubt we could have even started Fact-Finding had it not been for this. And I thought, Well, now, we ought to be able to get some money from Rosenwald, but there's a need for an angle in there. Is this wise for the League of Women Voters to take this money that the public feels this way about?
People were suspicious of Rosenwald money?
I don't know whether I would use the word "suspicious," but it was
stamped Negro, you see. And those were days when, regardless of what
your interest was in race—and of course I was just getting into
Did the League of Women Voters try to deal with racial issues at all?
No. Where was I? Oh, I was speaking about this $3,000 grant. I talked with Dr. Will Alexander; that name, I'm sure, is familiar to you. Dr. Will said, "Now, Josephine, just don't bother the man. There's no chance of your getting anything. Just don't bother the man." Then I talked with several other people, lawyers who were interested in what we were trying to do with the League, about whether they felt that it would be wise for the League at that time to take Rosenwald money. And I felt that I had covered the waterfront enough that if we got attacked in taking it that there were some pretty top names that would come forward and support us in it. And so, regardless of what Dr. Will said, I was going to see this man.
Why did he say that? Why did he discourage you?
Well, I've got my own ideas.
That was his source of money?
Yes. Anyhow, I was ill with this terrible cold when this
And you would bring in experts on different subjects?
We didn't bring them in.
Oh, you used the state heads themselves?
The state, the state. And we issued these pamphlets. They started out in
mimeograph form, and we made a policy that we would supply one copy to
anyone who asked for it. Any more than that would have to be purchased.
But we would put no one on the mailing list unless it was a definite
request for it. And we built up a mailing list of 16,000. Which was . .
. at that time I didn't realize that that was quite something, because
to me there were three million people in Georgia and
What kind of response did you get to the information and stands that you took?
Well, the very fact that we had such a mailing list would indicate
something, wouldn't it? They were received in the schools, libraries and
individuals also out of the country. Our first series was just straight
factual information. Just facts. And the next one, well, the Report to
the President on [Economic Conditions in the South]—that grew out of our
work. It was the same sort of thing. Clark Foreman made a talk out at
Emory University and said we needed the same type of thing for the whole
South. He went back to Washington, and he took this up with the
President. Well, I say it grew out of it—it just happened that we had
something going down here and it was an idea. We took the reports after
they came out and annotated them for Georgia, so as to get a picture of
Georgia in relation to the whole South. And we got the various reports
which were ultimately issued in one pamphlet. So that was the second
series. And then the third series was issued under the title, "Let's
Reason Together." And we asked the specialists to sit as one body and
collectively to consider these areas of Georgia and to tell us what they
felt could be done. And if there was a difference of opinion, that was
to go in the reports, too. Interesting in that first series, the factual
series, one man after the other would say to me—because I worked with
them on these. I know the first person who did it was the president of
the Department of Agriculture in Athens. Chapman was head of the college
faculty then. Anyhow, I was over there
Are the papers of the Georgia Fact-Finding Movement deposited somewhere, or do you have all those pamphlets and things?
Well, you make me feel very guilty here, because Emory has spoken of
wanting the things. I think they really ought to go to the University of
Georgia. I have them in storage. But this was quite a little period. And
the fact that it was done so—it was good, you see.
Were you still involved with the League while you were doing the Fact-Finding Movement?
Well, I started the Fact-Finding Movement in 1937—until '40. Well, of
course, this was good for the League, too. The League was being
accepted—with the top establishment organizations. Now, remember, this
is way back, way back. This was good. The national office had some
raising of eyebrows. I was in Washington at one time and Miss Marguerite
Wells
Off the record?
"And I want sometime to have a talk with you, and I'm seeking the interview"—which I thought was pretty nice.
The Southern Conference for Human Welfare was organized in 1938. So that was when you were still president of the Fact-Finding Movement?
I was never president of the Fact-Finding. I tried to stay in the background just as much as possible. I was administrator.
How did you get involved in the Southern Conference? Have you read Thomas Krueger's book about the Southern Conference?
I've got it, but I have not read it. I was away at the time; there was no
conference with me in regard to it. The man who wrote Forty
Acres and a Steel Mule, H.C. Nixon, had been through here. And
I had a telephone call long distance from Alabama a few days later from
someone who identified himself as Joe Gelders, saying that they were
having a meeting and they wanted very much for me to come over. At the
Tutwiler in Birmingham. And they wanted to talk about a southwide
meeting. Why, I didn't know Joe Gelders from Adam's house cat. I was
floundering. And H.C. Nixon got on the phone and said, "Josephine, I
want you to come over. I know all about this and I want you to come. Try
to make a point of coming." I went. And H.C. and myself were the only
people outside of Alabama who were there. It was a small group. The
people who were there were, most of them, active in something called . .
.
Was it the Southern Policy Committee?
That's right.
Who were some of the people there?
Joseph Gelders and Judge Charlton. I don't know about the people who were
there, but they were toying with having a meeting, a southwide meeting.
Well, I happened through Clark Foreman who had come down to Atlanta and
headed up a national emergency, I think the thing was called the
National Emergency Committee, that got out the report on the South.
Isn't that right? That's it. Anyhow, Clark was here and I happened to
know through him that this report was coming out on the South. So
instead of going on and having the southwide meeting that they wanted to
have, I urged them to delay that meeting until the report came out
But you weren't officially a member of the board?
We worked at night on their by-laws over there and from then on . . .
How much support came from the federal government, from FDR, for what the Southern Conference was trying to do? Was there any real support from Washington that helped the Conference, like in the antipoll tax campaign. Was there an expectation that support or help would come?
Not that I know of, and I think I would have known. What happened was—this tremendous outpouring of people in Birmingham.
Were you surprised to find so many liberal people in the South?
Everybody was surprised. W.T. Couch and I were on the program as "program chairmen" for the called meeting.
You set up the speakers and the agenda?
Supposedly. Joe Gelders did most of that. I helped, but he
When did that happen?
This was after the meeting.
After that very first meeting? The FBI came to see you?
Yes. Oh, my heavens, of course they did.
At the very beginning, the FBI . . . ?
Well, they . . . I can't tell you the very beginning, because . . . I know at the very beginning the power structure over in Alabama became very concerned over this. I know that. Because here was this great outpouring . . . and of course the thing was labelled "the left."
How did you manage the attacks that were made on you, personally? How did you feel when the Conference came to be so attacked?
It just made me know that I couldn't continue to operate as I was operating in Georgia and at the same time do that over there, too. I just couldn't do it.
But you did work in both. But it was hard to do? Were people in the League or in the Fact-Finding Committee unhappy about your working with the Southern Conference? Did you get pressure?
My help for the Southern Conference was more a personal contact help, you
see. I don't think there is any question about the fact there was some
communist influence there. Those were days when there was the
collaboration, you know. I had great respect for that Southern
Conference effort and concern for its ongoing. And I
It seems to me from what I've read about the Southern Conference that it was a unique kind of thing in the South. I don't know of anything like it down to the present that has tried to unite such a broad spectrum of people. Trying to bring in the labor movement, bring in the black people, and really get to the root of problems. I can't think of anything comparable to that. Can you?
I am unwilling at this time to . . . I have not read, what is his name . . .
Krueger.
Krueger. I have not read it. I don't know just how he . . . have you read it recently?
Fairly recently.
Do you recall his explanations for the folding of the Southern Conference?
I don't know of any one explanation. The final blow, I think, was Henry
Wallace's campaign for president. A lot of people who were the remnants
of the Southern Conference got involved in the campaign. And I think
that was when it finally fell apart. Before that, I guess the
combination of the Dyes Committee attacks—and their liberal members and
supporters were beginning to fall away. And the financial base got
There are some angles in there that I really would prefer not to discuss right now. Clark was down in Ajunta, which is just a short distance from San Juan. He is living there now, he and Margaret. And I'm going down there. I had a card from him Christmas in which he said, "I dreamt last night that you arrived as a visitor on foot." I just have an open invitation to come down, and I really covet a long talk with Clark, about as much as anybody. And there are some angles there.
Have you been in touch with him?
Oh, yes.
And he has been pretty much retired from everything?
Clark had several hard attacks. He is now the head of, you've heard of
this organization, the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee. He is the
director emeritus of that. I had profound admiration for that man, as I
said to him a long time ago. I said, "I love you and I will always love
you, but by golly, some of your methods I just can't go along with
whatsoever." Clark could get things in trouble. He was pretty much right
if he would just go about it a little differently, you know. He had
quite a little inheritance from his parents. He's just put it into the
things that he felt were worthwhile. And I know one time—this goes back
to what I said initially, of what it means for a human being to have the
approval of the people close to them. It gives them something
What about the friction between him and Jim Dombrowski? Was that one of the things that weakened the Conference—when SCEF was created and split off from the Conference?
When SCEF was created, it wasn't a split-off. I drew up those by-laws.
The initial by-laws of the old Southern Conference, we all did that
together, a small group of us at night. There was a revision of the
by-laws that I worked on—in this little room that I showed you a picture
of. The Conference was giving up its tax-exemption. They were to try to
carry the load down here; nothing else was being organized,
Did they remain friends?
I don't know how much contact they've had. Clark was never a person to keep a chip on his shoulder.
When individuals within the Conference were being accused of being Communists and the conference was trying to protect itself—like, for example, I think at one point a policy decision was made, in 1940, to prohibit Communist Party members from being a part of this conference or just to prevent them from holding office—was that a split within the leadership of the Conference over what to do about the attacks that were being made?
It was an effort to meet a public situation in a way that you could still function as an organization. Those were the McCarthy days. It was hard going.
Was there a fear on the part of Conference members themselves that the Communist Party really was infiltrating the Conference and really was trying to take it over? Or was it mostly just trying to protect the organization from illegitimate attacks?
There was a certain amount of communist activity, but that was perfectly natural, perfectly natural.
And people weren't afraid of that?
Well, when you say people, maybe some of them were. But there was concern
on the part of people like Dr. Frank Graham to make
Make sure what didn't happen?
That it was not taken over. Not taken over by anybody or any group. I think that the Southern Conference Educational Fund has done a good job.
Have you kept up your relationship with them?
Yes.
Have you been on their board?
I have not been on their board. I have been to a lot of their board meetings. I am a trustee for the Aubrey Williams Foundation. I have on my desk right now a copy of Ann Braden's statement resigning from the board.
Why did she resign?
Well, she's tired. She's tired.
They've worked so hard for so long, haven't they.
Of course, I think they've been behind an awful lot.
Well, what do you think caused the downfall of the Southern Conference?
That's the thing that I said that I would rather not discuss right now until I talk another time with Clark.
I've wondered as I've followed that whole period what the relationship was between the people who were involved in the Interracial Commission and the Southern Conference. It is surprising to me that people like Will Alexander and Howard Odum and Jessie Daniel Ames—that group of people—don't seem to have gotten involved or been very supportive of the Southern Conference. Was there rivalry?
You don't understand the era. There are a lot of roads that lead to the same thing, as you well know. Sometimes when you are travelling one road, you can't be effective continuing to travel that road if you take up a stance on this other one. It wouldn't have done for them in that era, in that era it would not have done for them to be active in it.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
Dr. Frank was the person to do it. Dr. Frank had to
leave before the first meeting was over. I met him on the steps as he
was leaving. And I said, "Dr. Frank, you know who they want." He said,
"Well, I just can't take it." And he sent me a wire, saying to let the
nominating committee see the wire. Couch just was in a panic. I remember
he came racing to me: "Read the wire to them, read the wire!" And I
said, "I haven't got the wire." "Tell them, tell them, tell them." So I
went to the microphone and told them about the wire that had come to me
as chairman of the nominating committee. They ignored it completely. And
he had a long period there where he was uncertain. In regard to that—Dr.
Howard Odum was interested at that time in getting an organization
started.
But he had his own ideas about what sort of an organization?
Correct. Prior to the Southern Conference meeting there was a meeting of
the National Policy Committee here. And afterwards Dr. Odum came on up
to my old quarters there. And I remember sitting on the
He had been talking with Howard Odum?
I can't answer that, but it was known. Anyhow, Dr. Odum felt that the fact that Dr. Frank took that presidency stopped him from getting his southern regional organization started.
Now why, I don't understand why.
A member of his faculty, I mean his faculty president. You see, this is the president of the University of North Carolina that became president of this southwide organization.
Which the Carnegie Foundation . . .
I say Carnegie, but I'm not sure it was Carnegie. He thought that he . . .
Foundation people would not like the idea of . . . I mean, would make his ideas seem less respectable in their eyes? He wanted to set up a completely separate organization from the Southern Conference. He wasn't trying to get the Southern Conference to become what he wanted?
Oh, no.
It was a totally different plan?
Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
Why did he want to set up a rival organization to the Southern Conference instead of putting his energy into . . .
His idea of setting up an organization flowered prior to the beginning of
the Southern Conference. Now no one behind the Southern Conference
meeting knew anything about Dr. Harold Odum. It wasn't a question of
their coming in and getting something started before he did. But nothing
had gotten started and this idea that he had, he
felt was torpedoed when the president of his organization became
president of the Southern Conference. There was great bitterness there
for quite a while. Somebody was writing a biography of Howard Odum. I
felt very guilty over that thing, but actually I think in a way I'm glad
that I hadn't a talk with him about that.
You talked with the person who is writing the biography?
He asked to see me.
Someone from Vanderbilt? Well, so much went on; there was so much potential.
There was a great deal of reaching. And of course in the New Deal days there was a creative ferment. It was in many ways a wonderful period to live through. And I think since the Supreme Court decision has been pretty wonderful, too.
How would you compare those two periods: the thirties and forties with the sixties and seventies? Is there a similarity in the kinds of ideas which have come up, in the way people have been moved?
Of course I think they are reaching for the same thing. But the
leadership during this period has been taken by the Negro.
How did you become friends with Jessie Daniel Ames?
Our office, the League office, was in the Forsyth Building—and that too is a long story. It's right next to the old Dinkler Plaza, which was then the Ansley Hotel.
Is that building still there?