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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-0058, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Thelma Stevens was a lifelong advocate of social justice and spent much of her career working to better race relations for African Americans in the South. She begins the interview with a discussion of her formative years in rural Mississippi. One of her earliest memories was of the inhumane treatment of African American prisoners who worked on a nearby farm. Her childhood was also shaped by limited economic means and a strong sense of social responsibility. Following the death of her parents, Stevens—who was ten at the time—went to live with her older sister. She describes her struggles in school and her career as a teacher following her graduation from high school in 1919. In 1922, Stevens left her job as a teacher to pursue a degree at the State Teachers College (now the University of Southern Mississippi at Hattiesburg). While there, Stevens was active in the YWCA. Despite opposition from the college administration, she worked to develop better communication between the college and the community and to alleviate racial tensions and discrimination. After graduating, Stevens continued her education at Scarritt College for Christian Workers. Stevens outlines the history of Scarritt College and describes her own experiences there. Although she was hesitant to work for the Methodist Church, which she feared did not do enough to improve race relations, Stevens ultimately found employment with the Women's Division of the Methodist Church, accepting the position of director of the Bethlehem Center, a community center for African Americans, in Augusta, Georgia. Stevens describes the history of the Bethlehem Center, originally founded in 1911, in great detail and provides vivid anecdotes about her own work there. She describes the center's work in the African American community, which included service activities and leadership development. In addition, she describes how the dictates of Jim Crow segregation sometimes shaped the nature of the center's work. Stevens offers her observations of other social justice organizations and activities of the era. She discusses the relationship of radical politics to social justice movements of the 1930s; the role of women like Jessie Daniel Ames and Dorothy Tilly in organizing southern women; and the purpose of groups like the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching and the Fellowship of the Concerned. The interview concludes with a discussion of her promotion to the post of Superintendent of Christian Social Relations of the Women's Missionary Council for the Methodist Episcopal Church. Stevens describes her efforts to promote more interaction between white and black women in the North and the South during her brief interim in Nashville, and she concludes with a brief discussion of her work in New York beginning in 1940. Her work with the Methodist Church continued until her retirement in 1968.
NOTE: Audio for this interview is not available.
Thelma Stevens was the director of the Bethlehem Center in Augusta, Georgia, and the Superintendent of Christian Social Relations of the Women's Missionary Council for the Methodist Episcopal Church. In this interview, she describes her childhood in rural Mississippi, her education, and her work with the Methodist Church, all in relationship to her lifelong devotion to improving race relations in the South.
NOTE: Audio for this interview is not available.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Well, of course, I grew up on a farm in Mississippi, and my mother died
when I was six.1 And I lived on the
farm, then until I was about ten. And I think one of the things that I
remember with great agony of spirit, even as a child, since I was a
child, was some of the things that happened around in the county where I
grew up. I grew up in Montgomery County. And our farm house was about
three quarters of a mile from the farm house of the farm that was used
for prisoners. It was called a county farm in those days, as I recall.
And black men - no women, as I recall - black men were brought to that
farm to work. They wore suits with stripes, you know. And for a child to
see that was frightening. And it happened that the man who ran the farm
was named Mr. Jim Reed, and he had a daughter whose name was Ruby. And
she was one of my closest friends. We were little tykes together, you
know, three years, four years, five years old. Together, you know. And I
visited her, she visited me. And when I would go to her house, one of
the things that would just haunt me, even in the night I'd have
nightmares over it, was the way the prisoners
I've heard of it, but I've never eaten it.
Well, that's practically all they had. I don't know what else they had. Maybe they had black-eyed peas and cabbage and things like that too, but it was a very sad kind of thing. And they were whipped with a rawhide whip, and when they were sent out to the fields to work, to plow, or work on the roads, or whatever it was they did, they always had men around with guns, you know, to guard them. That kind of thing. And that was one of the things that haunted me, as much as anything else, as I grew up. What in the world makes people treat people like that, you know, and I . . .
When your friend's father was . . .
My friend's father was the man who did it, you see. My friend's father
was the man who did it. Well, now, I think your life is made up, as you
grow up, of instances or incidents that make an impression on you, one
way or another. And the kind of school we had was a little one room
school across the branch from where we lived, about a half a mile from
our house. And we went to school, oh, maybe . . . maybe I went to school
four months, sometimes three months in a year, until I was about ten
years old. And it was a very poor school, and the people who came to
school, some of them were a lot poorer than we were. We were poor
enough, God knows. But some of them
What kind of background did your parents come from?
I know very little about their background. My mother came from Alabama. Her father came over to the United States from England, and he built up his business in Alabama. And I am told . . . I've been told this since I was a little child, so I suppose it's true. I'm told that he built, the first lumber house in the city of Montgomery. He owned hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of acres of land in Alabama and in north Mississippi. And he had I don't know how many hundreds of slaves. And when the war ended - he died pretty shortly after the war ended, the War Between the States, I'm talking about . . .
What was his name?
The name was Palmer. Mr. Aurelius - A-U-R-E-L-I-U-S - Aurelius Palmer, P-A-L-M-E-R. And he married four times, and . . .
That was not unusual in those days, because women died early.
Had eleven children, and my mother was the youngest of eleven. And he
died when she was just a little tyke, and her mother died . . . when she
was born, I think, or shortly thereafter. And so my mother was brought
up by her cousin, whom I never knew. See, I never knew any of the
family, but when my grandfather died, his oldest son was his executor. I
mean, the man responsible for all of his estate. And he was evidently a
cheat and everything else that was bad, and so he
Did she remember being the daughter of a slave owner? Did she remember having . . . ?
No, see, she was born in 1861. And, you see, the war ended in 1865. She wasn't old enough to remember much about the thing. And so she didn't remember anything about it. But my father was born in Florida. He was the oldest of four children, I believe four. Three sisters, and he was the boy, the oldest one. And his father was killed in the war. And at the age of twelve, my father . . . twelve, wasn't it? Yes. Maybe he was thirteen. Between twelve and fourteen, right in there somewhere, when his father was killed. And then he went and joined the Confederate Army as a waterboy. And he was about fourteen, I guess, 'cause he was born in '49. Yeah, he was thirteen or fourteen.
Do you know what his father had done?
No. No, I don't have the faintest idea. But I judge he must have been a
farmer in Florida, maybe up in northern Florida. And my father had never
been to school a day in his life. Couldn't read or write. And yet, I
don't know of anybody who was any more alert to and concerned with the
issues of the day than he was. And when I was a youngster growing up,
seven or eight years old, I can remember sitting down and listening to
my
Your father never went to school?
Never went to school a day in his life. Couldn't even write his name. He voted, he'd make his mark. Whatever he had to do, he'd make his mark, you know. He could neither read nor write. Now, Mama could write, read, and she had a . . . I would judge . . . in those days you wouldn't say elementary grade education or high school education or anything like that, but she was . . . she had a very limited education, shall I say? And the time passed, and . . .
How many brothers and sisters did you have?
Well, there were nine in our family, but three of them had died before I was born. I was the youngest of nine. And six . . . I really knew . . . I only knew six. There were three brothers, and there were three girls. My oldest sister was the person who probably meant more to me in my family life, because my parents had died when I was about six.
Well, my mother had died when I was about six. And when I was ten, I went
to live with my oldest sister. Because my father had married again, and
various circumstances seemed to make it necessary for me to go and live
with my sister, where I had a greater opportunity to do the things that
any child needed to do. And so . . . My father died very shortly
Revived you.
. . . brought me to, and told me to rest a little bit. And so I did, and went on about my business. And had a wonderful year, enjoyed it very much. And so I taught for three years, and in the spring of the third year I had a letter one day from a man by the name of Mr. Paul Murphy, of Lexington, Mississippi. Never will forget it as long as I live. And he said, "Dear Thelma . . . " He'd never heard of me in his life. He said, "You have been recommended to the Field Cooperative Association as one of the young women in Mississippi who needs to go to college. And we have a scholarship waiting for you for your full four years in college, if you want it." I don't know who recommended me, I don't know anything about it.
And where did this come from?
The Field Cooperative Association was an association inaugurated, or
initiated, by the Jones brothers. Mr. Bernard Jones and his brothers,
who were from Mississippi. He'd struck oil in Oklahoma and had made
millions of dollars. And he said that he wanted to establish this fund
in memory of his mother, who had never had any opportunities in life.
She'd been brought up in poverty. And he wanted to establish this fund
so that young women in Mississippi would never have to face what his
mother had to face. And so he started the fund. Every year during my
years in college, he had about eighty young women in various colleges in
Mississippi. There were about . . . seems to me he had about thirty-five
at our college. I was at Hattiesburg, at what was then State Teacher's
College. It later became the University of Southern Mississippi. Well,
anyway, it bowled me
And you'd been trying to save money hoping to go to college?
Yes, I'd been trying to save money, but I didn't have much saved, because you don't save much money. You didn't save much money. First year I taught school, I started out at fifty-five dollars a month, and I'd been teaching a month and I had a letter from a friend of mine over in another county saying, "An opening has just developed. If you'd like to come over here to teach, you can get ninety-five dollars a month." So I went to the chairman of the board of trustees, and I said that I wanted to talk this over with him. And he said, "Well, now, Miss Thelma, let me tell you something. I hope you won't do it, but I can understand how you feel. I hope you won't do it, because this is your first year teaching. You don't want a bad reputation." I said, "No, I don't." He said, "Well, why don't you take my advice and just stay on here." And I said, "All right. I'll stay." And then he said, "And we'll give you a raise." He told me that after I said I'd stay. He gave me a raise to sixty-five dollars, which was pretty good. I didn't have to pay but ten dollars a month room and board, so that wasn't so bad.
You weren't living with your sister any more? You had to . . .
No, I was teaching then, away from home. My sister was in Chester, Mississippi. I always went home on vacation, you see. So I, as I said, I taught those three years.
The third year I taught was out in Crystal Springs, Mississippi. And I
suppose the event that happened that year was maybe the second most
devastating thing that ever happened to me in my growing up days. See, I
was still just nineteen years old then, at the end of my third year of
teaching. Still
The girls had jumped out of the bus before we stopped, and then I just went out and just made them . . . you know, I just really just . . .
And had the principal of the school known where they wanted to go?
I don't know. To this day I don't know whether he did or not.
What kind of relationship or contact with black people had you had before that time, growing up, you know?
Very wonderful contacts.
Had you had black people working on your farm where you . . . ?
No. We were not that wealthy. We were just ordinary, what you call poor white farmers. But there were neighbors, there were black people living in the community, and a lot of people in those days called them aunts and uncles. And I always worried about that. I said why do we call them aunts and uncles? Why don't you say Mr. and Mrs, you know. I mean, just as a child it always worried me. They were people to me. I don't know how I got that way, 'cause my family certainly didn't feel that way.
Your family didn't feel that way?
No.
Including your older sister?
Well, my older sister did, after a while. But at first, in the beginning,
she didn't. But later she did. See, I didn't know enough. I didn't have
enough help, to understand it, in my childhood days, what was going on,
see? You see, I think it's good to keep in mind that every individual
came out of a different kind of background, to some degree. And yet
across the board there was a common base, a common culture pattern, that
gave me the feeling . . . I mean, gave you a sense of acceptance, on the
part of most people, without questioning the kind of pattern where you
lived — — — you lived with the whites. And your friend that you played
with out in the back yard, that was black, and lived in a little house
that was a little smaller than yours, although not always was this true.
There were plenty of white people who lived in little houses too. Ours
didn't happen to be, at that minute. It happened to have seven rooms
instead of two, but then that wasn't anything to our credit. It just
happened to be the case. But there were some people, I'm sure, in that
community . . . (Interruption for telephone call.)
There were some people . . .
I'm sure there were some people in that community who felt differently
about it. But I can remember years later, oh, long years later, maybe
ten, fifteen years ago, I was driving through that county where I grew
up and where my sister grew up, with my sister in the car with me. And I
said, "Big Sister . . . " I always called her Big Sister. I said, "Big
Sister, why does this countryside look so devastated?" And she said,
"Well, I don't know whether you know what I'm saying or not, but I think
the Bible is proving true here." She said, "The sins of the fathers are
going to be visited upon the children unto the third
Had she gone off to college before you did?
We didn't have high schools in Mississippi in those days — at least not
very many. We had what were called agricultural high schools in my day,
thirty years later. But in her day we had none. But she went to Highland
Home Academy, in Alabama, not very far from Montgomery. There's no such
place any more as far as I know. And she had that training above what we
would call elementary school education I suppose. Anyway, she had that
kind of experience, away from home training. And
. . . I'm sure she knew more about it. See, I didn't have to worry about the budget, and she did. But it was a good life. I had a lot of things to be grateful for. Even when I was in high school, I had some good teachers, who meant a lot to me. And, I don't know, in college, oh, it was great. I had people that meant so much to me. Helped me do so much. I mean, helped mme understand so much.
When the lynching took place, would you have known anything about it, even though it was only three miles away . . . ?
The afternoon before, late the afternoon before, somebody - I don't
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
But I suppose that was one of the deciding factors. Then when I went to
college that fall, I became deeply involved in the student YWCA, and in
those days, the student YWCA and the student YMCA were real
organizations. They really had something for students. And in more
recent years, the churches have had student activities, more or less, on
college campuses. I doubt if when you were in college, either
Then it was the Westminster Fellowship and that kind of thing . . .
That's what I mean.
MYF.
Campus ministry of denominations, Wesley Foundation, Westminster Fellowship, and whatever the Baptists are called, I don't know for sure.
And when did you go to college?
I went to college in 1922. I finished high school in '19. Went to college in '22. And I stayed through summer school, and I finished in '25. Did four years in three by staying the summers.
Where was this? Where did you go?
I went to college in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, which was then called
State Teachers College, because I planned to be a teacher. But it's now
called University of Southern Mississippi at Hattiesburg. And then I got
a job and I finished college, got a job in a junior college in
Perkinston, Mississippi. But one of the things that happened, in my
junior year in college, that probably changed my decision, or influenced
my decision. The personnel worker of the Board of Missions in the
Southern church, at that time, was out on college campuses all over
trying to recruit young people for full time work under the offices of
the church. Missionary work, they called it in those days. And so she
(Oscie Sanders) came to our campus and stayed a week on the campus. And
she said, "Thelma, why don't you work for the church?" And I said,
"Well, the church doesn't have anything for me. The church wouldn't be
interested in anything that I'm interested in, and so I can't work for
the church." I said, "I made up my mind a year ago that when I finished
college I was going to apply to
Tell me something about the kinds of things that the YWCA and the student branch of the YWCA was doing.
Well, one of the things they were doing that just hit me right in the eye was alerting us to concern for race relations. And this was when it was almost unheard of. A friend of mine and I - she was president of the YWCA on campus and I was one of the officers in the Y - the president of the college called us in one day. We'd had a series of Wednesday evening discussion sessions. We'd invited some black schoolteachers from the town, from Hattiesburg, to come out and discuss, you know, . . . be a part of our YWCA meeting that evening. And they spoke to us about black people and what their problems were and what their needs were, and we had questions.
They were women?
Women, yes. Women schoolteachers from the black school there in
Hattiesburg. And we had about a hundred of the girls sitting down on the
floor in the lobby of one of the dorms. We stayed till . . . oh, well,
maybe a couple of hours. And the next day the president called us in to
his office. And he said, "Well, I called you two
But, I don't know . . . And then when I went to teach, the first (Laughter.)
Why had you decided not to go to work for the YWCA? You had . . .
Well, at that point, at that point, I couldn't. I had to go to work to
make some money as a schoolteacher, because I'd just left college, you
see. I didn't have a thing to go on, you see. And I
Why did you not want to go work for the church?
What I told you just now. I didn't want to work for the church, because I
didn't think the church would give me a chance to do what I wanted to
do. See, my experience with the church had been sort of isolated from
life. I mean, it had been a sort of . . . well, I hardly know how to say
it, but the church was isolated from life. It was a place where you go
on Sunday morning and listen to the sermon that didn't mean a thing to
you. You'd sing the old gospel hymns and people would shout or people
would amen or people would do this or that. But the church didn't give a
darn about those kids out there in that black school, that they got
three dollars a year for their education, and the white children got
from nine to twelve dollars, in that generation. Of course, now, a lot
more than that for both of them, and they're on an equal basis now, but
they sure weren't then. I mean, moneywise. And, you see, the church
wasn't interested in that kind of thing. The church was highly
evangelistic, you know. Argued about whether you were going
Mrs. Downs, who was in charge, said how sorry she was. She really was
deeply sorry and sympathetic with me. So I said, "All right." So Miss
Louise Young sent for me, and said, "Thelma, the church won't have you
and you want to work in the field of race relations. I can get you a
job." And so she called a friend of hers, who was the principal of
Hampton Institute High School, up in Virginia. In those days they had a
high school and a college. I don't know whether they do now or not. So
she talked to this man, and she said, "I have a student who is
interested in teaching
Miss Young was a teacher at Scarritt?
Yes, Miss Young was a professor at Scarritt from
And that's what the settlement house . . .
Yes, community center, was what we liked to call it. it is the same thing as a settlement house, except I think it's . . . at least, my concept of what we did was not like my concept of what people used to do in settlement houses.
How was it different? What kind of things did you do . . . ?
Well, you see, I always thought of settlement houses, the ones I read about and studied about, as more or less a charity operation to a great degree. By charity I mean you had just a bunch of poverty ridden people, for whom you're providing some of the necessities of life and some of the activities that were important. But you didn't have a long term leadership development process. It was not my concept of development, of community development. I'm talking about community development, not just community organization.
And to me a community center doesn't have the same connotation in the minds of people in the community, as I thought . . . as I used to think - maybe I didn't understand the settlement houses. I had read a lot about them. But anyway, it was called a community center. It was, I suppose, in a way, most of them were the same things that the settlement houses were, but ours was a little different.
And were you director of the Bethlehem center?
Yes, I was.
It was already in existence when you went there?
Yes, that's another story.
I'd like to hear something about the background of the center.
Yes. Well, . . . I can give you that story. Would you mind if I go and turn on my oven before I start in on that?
No. (Interruption in recording.)
. . . telling you a lot of stuff you don't need to know.
Oh, that's not true.
Well, I would like to know something about what kind of place Scarritt College is or was.
Well, I'd love to tell you about Scarritt.
I've always had the impression . . . I've started coming across the name of Scarritt College an awful lot, in turning out women who went into these kinds of professions.
Yes, well, Scarritt College had its original home in Kansas City. It was
started back in 1892, if my dates are correct. Yeah, I think I'm right.
1892, in Kansas City. Because the Woman's Home Missionary Society
It was always co-ed, though?
No. In those early days, when I was there . . . well, when I
Were the teachers primarily women?
Oh, no. Oh, no. We had . . . well, let's see. My major professor was Dr. Albert Barnett, who was a New Testament man. Strangely enough, I wrote my master's thesis in the New Testament field. had two sociology professors. Both of them were great people, Miss Louise Young was a sociology professor, and Dr. Duncan was a sociology professor. I had all the work that they gave.
Was there an orientation toward social consciousness in those days here?
Oh, mercy, yes. Oh, mercy, yes. You couldn't take a course in New Testament without being alerted to the whole world in which you lived. It was . . .
Do you think more so at Scarritt than at other . . . ?
Well, you see, the purpose of Scarritt was to stimulate you to understand the world in which you lived. In those days, Scarritt was really geared to the issues in the world. Of course, I . . . there were some of the professors that were not quite so much so as others, but by and large it was socially oriented.
And did the women's division of the Methodist Church cooperate? They financed it . . .
They paid your . . .
. . . and did they have control over it?
Yes, yes. Up until the women requested the General Conference to make Scarritt a General Conference school. But even through the years since then, the Woman's Division made the greatest financial contribution. The Board of Missions as such, I mean, the other divisions of the Board, paid little to Scarritt until 1964. I think at the present time the Women's Division makes its contribution to Scarritt through the National division. But Scarritt was a child of the women. I mean by that it was . . . it was born for a purpose, see. And they still support it, and still supported it. And I remember when Mrs. Bragg retired as president of the Woman's Division after having served eight years, the Woman's Division gave the money for this Bragg Dormitory. That's where the continuing education is housed today. And then when Mrs. Laskey retired as president of the Woman's Division, four years ago, they gave most of the money for that new library that's there. The Virginia K. Laskey Library. And then, many years earlier, when Rankin Hall was built, it was named for a long time missionary, Miss Lochie Rankin. Well, anyway the women have built buildings over the years.
Was it the women in the church who saw the need for that kind of institution, or was it . . . was that a need that . . . I mean, that implies, in a sense, the women of the church were the ones that were staffing and taking a lot of responsibility for the community centers and for making sure that those things were going on, the church had that kind of outreach.
Well, you see, up until 1964, the women had full responsibility for a program of home missions and a program of overseas missions, you see. And they recruited and staffed the programs in overseas ministries and in home ministries, including community centers, [USA] colleges, and all kinds of programs overseas. But there was a cooperative . . . there was a coordinated program in the overseas spots at many points, but not until 1964 did the Woman's Division transfer its home missions administration and its foreign missions administration to the World Division and the National Division. And then, after that, the Woman's Division put into the budget of the National Division the money that they had previously used in the home mission programs, which approximated anywhere between five and six million dollars a year, in home missions. And into the foreign program they gave the same approximate amount, somewhere between five and six million dollars. So that since 1964, the program has been administered in the World Division and in the National Division.
So now, the women . . . the program that the women have responsibility
for is primarily an education and action program, geared to the issues
of the hour to a great degree. And this is why that it's possible for
certain programs to be underwritten on the spur of the moment. For
instance, this conference over the weekend here. You see, the Women's
Division put some money into this, into this conference, although there
was a grant made by the Board of Christian Social Concerns, which
provided some.
This is one reason why Joyce Hamlin of the Women's Devision came down here. You know Joyce? Joyce Hamlim, who led one of the groups today?
I haven't met her, but I . . .
She is the legislative staff person of the Women's Division in Washington. Quite a woman. And so this is what has happened, you see. The Women's Division is able to do a lot of things, like making available funds for the Delta Ministry down in Mississippi, like making a contribution of a good many thousand dollars to the theological education of women in seminaries. Like giving some money to some of these craft programs for the poor in Georgia . . .
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
But let me say, in the twenties and thirties the women's organization of
the church had two clearly defined concepts, and ne'er the twain shall
meet. See, it wasn't that the concepts were different, it was that the
understanding of the concepts was different. Unfortunately, when you
talked about a community center to the mission minded people, you talked
about something that you were going to do for the
Negroes. You notice that word "for the Negroes." On the other hand,
there were people who saw that not as something you were going to do for
the Negro, but as something you were going to do in community
development with Negroes, you see, or with the people in the
communities.
And this difference existed, you're saying, back in the twenties?
The twenties and thirties, yes. They were even . . .
That's very interesting, because a lot of people will say that that
Well, you see, this is what I was trying to say a while ago, when I was trying to contrast a community center with a settlement house. See, when I went to Bethlehem Center, I went with the full grown concept that I'd gathered from my training by Miss Louise Young. She's a great woman. And in the twenties, when she helped me - and not just me. She helped hundreds of young women get new concepts of the meaning of working with people.
She was talking about race relations?
Well, she was talking about race relations, but she was also . . .
Other things too, but, I mean, that was part of her sociology courses.
Human beings. See, her pride . . . she ought to tell you this herself, but, you see, her first job was - I think she was dean of women at Hampton Institute. And then her second job, she was dean of women at Paine College in Augusta, Georgia. And she did it in times, the late teens and early twenties, when things were not as easy to do. When I went into this kind of work, even in the late twenties, well . . . I had lived in Augusta for three years before any white people ever invited me into their homes, you see. But then black people did, so it didn't make any difference to me except I was sorry about it, because there was a wall. The different philosophy of "for"and "with" has been going on a long time. The only thing about it was that there were so many more people who knew the meaning of "for" who didn't even know there was a preposition "with." So that made a difference.
Was there any criticism or opposition to the kinds of things that were being taught at Scarritt? From either the community or any part of the church or . . . ?
Yes, there was opposition within the framework of the Scarritt administration itself, lots of times. Because there were some professors at Scarritt . . . See, I was at Scarritt in the days when Dr. J. D. Matthews was there. I had my Old Testament under him. Do you know who he is?
No.
Who he was? He's dead now. He later, after he left Scarritt, joined the Communist Party and worked with the Communist Party quite a while. I don't remember how many years. Then he left the Communist Party and became one of the key figures in the McCarthy era, you know, on the McCarthy side. And some of the things that I have read, that I read in the fifties, that J.D. Matthews wrote, just made my blood run cold, because I had sat in his class for two years, and I'd never known a Bible instructor as great. He taught Old Testament - he was a brilliant man. He was superb. And what little that I know about the Old Testament - it isn't much, but it isn't his fault - what little I know I got out of the inspiration of sitting under the leadership of Dr. J.D. Matthews. And then, of course, he left . . . even while he was on the Scarritt campus, he eventually had to . . . because of his leftist leanings. That is, because he was . . . he was a . . . well, he later joined the Communist Party. I don't know whether he was a communist . . .
But even while he was president of Scarritt . . .
No, he wasn't president. He was professor. The president of Scarritt was
Dr. Cunninggim at that time. And Dr. Cunninggim was a very
Pages 32 B through 36 have been deleted at the request of Thelma Stevens. The interview is continued on page 36.
Did you know Bishop McConnell?
Oh, yes. He worked with the labor organizers, and he worked with the people who were trying to get a chance to organize the coal miners and the steel workers in Pittsburgh, back in the "teens". He was the bishop of the Pittsburgh area at that particular time.
Would he help them finacially?
Well, I don't know whether he helped them financially. I don't suppose he had to. I suppose they had money, financially, to operate it. But he worked with them in terms of helping them get off the ground on the whole question of organized labor. You see, we had the Social Creed, which was created in 1908, and the Social Creed said explicitly that labor shall have the right to collective bargaining with the management.
In 1908?
In 1908. In 1908. And, see, this was . . . this was ten years later, you
see, that Bishop McConnell was in Pittsburgh, working to make it a
reality at that point. And, of course, it wasn't until the late teens
and the twenties and the thirties that the labor movement gained much
power, you see. See, in the thirties, early thirties, the CIO was
formed, and split off from the AFL and formed a separate labor
organization. The CIO was
I've been surprised, in gathering names for this oral history project, how many people in the thirties and forties went from very . . . an involvement with the church and Christianity to become socialists or communists. A lot of people, who didn't see a conflict, easily moved out of a kind of social gospel Christianity into socialism or communism. I think before the McCarthy era that wasn't such a scandalous thing to do. Does that seem right to you?
Probably so. Buy I doubt if you can document this with more than a score
of people who were really involved in the Church. In the thirties, for
instance, I was not involved . . . you see, I was in Augusta, Georgia.
In Augusta, Georgia fascism and communism were not our chief problems.
(Laughter.)Congressional Record. And people who were not
involved. For instance, I was a member . . . I was at the organizing
meeting of the Southern Conference on Human Welfare in Birmingham in 19
. . . when was it? '35?
'38?
Was it '38? No. Before then. Must have been before '38, because I left Augusta in '39. Wasn't it about '36, '37, more or less.
I'm sure it was '38.
/ Anyway, I was there. And when I came to New York in '40, I was on the
executive committee of the Southern Conference on Human Welfare, that
met regularly. And then, all of a sudden, the whole thing keeled over,
and the Southern Conference on Human Welfare, began to be listed in the
Congressional Record as a communist organization.
And there were volumes, in the McCarthy era, about it, you know. So I
suppose we all were active in one spot or another, because of the issues
involved, you see, without any tie with the communists or any other kind
of philosophy. Just a matter of being concerned about an issue and
trying to get hold of a channel that would help make it . . . help
resolve it.
About Scarritt also, I . . . still, the major purpose was to train missionaries?
That's right.
Either for foreign missions, or . . .
Home missions.
What would they call people who would be turning to the home . . .
Deaconesses and home missionaries.
Deaconesses? And that's what you were called?
Deaconesses and home missionaries. No, I was neither a deaconess or a home missionary.
So people . . .
I was what was called an employed worker. See, they couldn't consecrate
me as a deaconess, because I wasn't physically able to stand up to being
a deaconess. (Laughter.)
I would imagine that a lot of young women at that time became missionaries, who today would become . . . the same kind of woman with the same kind of motivations would become a lot of different things than that. Women who wanted to do something in the world. To become a missionary was one of the few things a woman could do, to have the assurance to go out in the world.
Well, I would put it another way, myself. I would think that those same
women, ones that I know - and I knew an awful lot of them - today would
have gone as a missionary with quite a different motive. I mean by that
that the paternalism would no longer be in their minds, because they
went out with a concept of mission that was all they knew, you see. I
mean, they . . . the whole meaning of "missions" with an "-s" on it, was
different . . . forty years ago, thirty years ago, from what it is
today. And, of course, the whole training program, the whole . . .
tests. I mean, when you were examined to see if you were the type of
person who needs to go, and your philosophy is looked at to see if
you're the type of person who could fit in to a situation in a given
area. You see, your concepts would be different today from what they
were thirty years ago, forty years ago. But I think you're quite right
that there were not as many professions open to women thirty, forty
years ago as there are now, but . . . and today the need is for a
different type of person. Now, you . . . people who go as so-called
missionaries to India or someplace, anyplace. They go because they have
certain skills that are needed at that particular point. They don't go
because they had a Christian motivation to go. They go because they've
got the Christian motivation, but it's rooted in the contribution that
they can (Interruption in recording.)
. . . and I know we have to move along, but if you remember . . . were there any other teachers there besides Miss Young that you especially remember as being . . .
Oh, yes. There were several . . .
Are any still around?
Umm-umm. No. No. None of the other teachers are around, but I knew . . . that I had in those days. See, Dr . . . I gave you the run-down on Dr. Matthews. Dr. Albert Barnett was one of my very favorites. He eventually went to teach in the seminary at Emory, and died about three years ago. And Dr. Batten, who was church history professor, also died five or six years ago.
Were there any others that got very involved in the left like Matthews did?
Well, Dr. Duval, who was teacher of religious education in those days didn't get involved in the same direction that Dr. Matthews did. He and his wife were, in those days, very far out on the point of sex education and that sort of thing.
In that day, for a man and his wife to write their
How do you spell the last name?
Duvall. D-U-V-A-L-L. Duvall.
It sounds familiar, but I can't remember.
He was a professor at Willimas University . . . or Willimas College, I guess it is, in Chicago, for years and years after he left Scarritt. See, he left Scarritt, not because of any leftist problem that he had.
What kind of course did he teach?
Well, he taught religious education. Of course, I had several of his courses. It was just that they weren't adequate . . . at least, he wasn't adequate for the needs of young women who were going out to the mission field or who were going to be deaconesses. They needed some help to become Christian education leaders, and to help wherever they were needed, and not . . .
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
When did they begin Community centers?
Well, the Bethlehem Center in Augusta is the oldest of the Centers for Negroes.
It is the oldest?
Yes. It had its beginning in 1911. The story goes, that in 1910 down in
southern Alabama a young woman by the name of Miss Mary DeBardeleben had
the idea. (Laughs.)
What?
Mary is her name. You can spell that, I'm sure. (Chuckles.)
De Bardeleben. I don't know what background it is. Anyway, Miss Mary
DeBardeleben lived on a big plantation down in southern Alabama. And one
day she came in and told her father - maybe her mother too. I don't know
that. I just know that . . . she came in and told her parents, maybe,
that she was going to Africa as a missionary. That was in 1909 or '10
that she told them. And her father said, "Why are you going to Africa as
a missionary when you're needed right here? Look at all the Negro people
around in this country that need your help. Why are you going to
Africa?" And so she started thinking about it, so she decided she'd work
with black . . . with Negro people in this country. And so she told the
Woman's Missionary Council, . . . which was the administrative agency in
the southern church for Methodist women, that she would like to be
appointed to a job to work with black people. It was the first time that
any white woman had ever worked . . . either volunteered or been
appointed to work with black people. Just was unheard of to send a poor,
innocent white girl into a black community. Lawsy me, that was just
beyond any comprehension anybody could have. So Miss Mary said to this
power structure of this Woman's (Laughter.)
So when I came we were in that old barny place.
And you were the only person?
No. I was the director of the Center. But there were . . . two black workers, two women black workers on Brown Street when I arrived.
And was that in the same house?
In that same old house, yes. And we stayed there a year, until we
(Portions of pages 46 and 47 have been omitted by Thelma Stevens. This is her revised version.)
have the kids come over for some of the things they'd like to do, have a party for them. So, in one way, we broke the ice. It was something unheard of, you see, that we would bring our Negro friends to our home!
How did that family react to what . . .
Perfectly all right. Anything we wanted to do, they were just as happy about it as they could be. They wouldn't have done it themselves, but that was our business. So they were very . . . we were very free to do what we pleased about it, and . . .
What kind of things did you do in the Center?
Well, we had the usual activities. And I say the usual ones. We had
kindergarten. We had two sessions of kindergarten every day because we
had so many children. We had maybe about a hundred children in
kindergarten and, of course, you couldn't have that many in one session.
So we had kindergarten. And we had . . . for a long time we had a day
nursery. And then we had various groups for women, for young mothers. We
had clinics. We had clubs for younger boys, older boys. We had a big
athletic program in the gymnasium. We had a playground. Then we had a
lot of . . . we had Saturday morning . . . all days, well, mostly
Saturday, we had what we called Bible School. It was really . . . it was
when the kids would come and we'd have stories and we'd have just a good
time together for a half a day, you see. And one of the things, among
the many things, we had clubs for older women, clubs for various types
of younger mothers with help in child care, and diet and . . . we had a
big kitchen. We had some home ec groups, you know. It was just a
miscellaneous community service center, you see, of one kind and
another. Of course, we had a big visitation program. And I had
Would you ever get doctors or nurses to work in that project?
Yes, but rarely.
White doctors?
No! We used black doctors. We used black doctors in our clinic at the
Center in the city too, all the time. No we didn't use white doctors.
Dorothy and I went to Dr. Josey's office once for medical service. He
was our clinic doctor at the Center. He serviced us. Then we asked if he
would be our doctor. He said "No, that would not be wise except in an
emergency. I'll help any way I can then."
The doctor went, oh, maybe twice a month or something like that. We had the health classes in between and then had county nurses, you know, county health nurses that would come to work with us on some of these things. And had sewing classes and discussion groups and, you know, we . . . just all kinds of things. Whatever the group needed, whatever they wanted, see, we'd try to provide.
Did you get any other help from New Deal agencies?
No, we didn't. Except for that kind of thing.
Now, what years was this that you're talking about?
I went there in '28, and I left in '39.
So you were there right through the depression.
Umm-hmm. (Yes.) And, boy, was it a depression.
What was it like?
Well, if you think . . . if you can imagine living in the heart of 35,000 people, with the vast majority of them, maybe three fourths of them, out of a job and on relief. And . . .
Where did the money for relief come from?
Well, it was government. It was a county . . .
The federal government?
Well, no. It was a county . . . I don't know where . . . it probably came from the state and the county taxes, but . . .
It must have been just a very small . . .
It was just measly. Just measly. Nothing. I've known women, during that depression period, to work for a full week as a maid or in some capacity for somebody else - up on the hill, as we called it, where the rich people lived - and maybe get as little as two dollars a week. Fifty cents a day, sometimes not that much. But that was the only income the family would have, see. That was what the depression was like, you see. That wasn't an exception. That was what it was like all over.
Was the Center used to distribute food?
No. It was never a distribution center. They got their food . . . they did get groceries and things through the welfare office. But they'd go downtown to get it. No, it never . . . we never did . . . in fact, we had no facilities for that sort of thing, you see. Of course, we could have turned the gymnasium into a warehouse to store food, but we would have had two handicaps. One, it would have taken the space we needed for the kids to play, and for the kind of recreation that the community needed. And, for me, at least, that was more important than turning it into a distribution center for groceries when they could get them . . . it'd be a little distance to go, but the kids needed a place to play, see. They needed it. So we didn't do that.
What was your relationship like with the black community? Did you have any problems . . . I mean, suspicion?
You mean did they have suspicion of me?
Uh huh.
Took a couple of years to get to where they trusted me, and then, I suppose . . . at least, I feel that I don't have any friends anywhere in the world that are any more real than friends I have there. And when I went to New York to live in 1940, all through the years, especially the first ten or fifteen years I was there, not many weeks passed that some of the kids didn't come . . . you know, that had gone to New York, that some of them didn't come up to see me in the office, you see. And even all through the years I was there sometimes grown men that were forty years old or so would come by and say, "I was in New York and I came by to see you." I mean, it was . . . they were . . . they trusted us and we were friends and they were friends. And we depended on one another, and it was a good life. I had a real decision to make when I left there, as to whether I wanted to stay where my roots were down and where I already had enough entree so that I could do things . . . I think I could . . . I don't mean I could do them, but I could get things done with the people and by the people that needed to be done, and I could get people at headquarters to provide money to finance programs that needed to be financed. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that maybe because I had had ten years of experience, that I would be in a better position to try to do some of the things on a more . . . on a broad base, on a wide geographical area. So it's awful hard. You never know whether you make the right decisions or not. So . . . one other thing.
As I recall, and as we planned all of us together, black and white,
planned our goals at that center, we had a three-pronged goal, a
Did you have a sense of success in developing leadership?
You can't measure success. Well, I didn't worry about success. The thing
that seemed evident was that there was a changing climate in
relationships with the local churches to the Center. And if you needed .
. . if the Center needed some men to do something, if we
So, it was . . . it was a very much used facility.
What about your relationship with the white local government and the white churches, and white people in Augusta? At first, you were completely in isolation . . . ?
Well, yes. We were completely isolated as persons, at first. But we were . . . we went to church, and we were asked to teach classes in the church school and that kind of thing. But after the first two or three years, we became a real part of the total community, both white and black, you see. We . . . there were some things we did . . . of course, most of our time we spent in the black community because that was our job. I mean, that was part of our life, the biggest part of our life was in that particular community.
But we were invited to be a member of the Quota Club, which is a club for
professional women, supposedly only one woman from any one profession.
And I was invited as the director of the Center, and my friend was
invited as the director of girls' club work in the Center. And so we got
. . . made some
Did you get involved in trying to mediate between the things that the black community needed and what the white power structure could provide?
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
You know what a shotgun house is? It's a little old house where the rooms one behind the other, you see.
Yes.
And usually it's about three rooms, you know. The front room, the second
room, and the back room. And then you usually have a little yard in the
back with a washpot, and a tub and a place where they do their laundry,
out in the back yard. And you have a little stoop on the front, maybe a
little porch. And on O'keefe's Alley there were thirteen houses there,
with big families in each house. And most of the children were
illegitimate children. I know one woman who lived in that alley had five
children, and she didn't know . . . I mean, none of them had the same
father, you see. You had that kind of family life on that alley. And you
looked at the houses, you looked at the alley, there were two outdoor
toilets, for thirteen families on that alley. There were maybe three
hydrants. You know what a hydrant is? It's where they go with their
buckets and tubs, and get their water out of the hydrant. No running
water in the houses at all. Just think of having two outdoor toilets for
thirteen families. Well, we went to work on the man who owned that alley
property.
(Laughter.)
No, he's been dead years, but he might have some family living there. But we won the battle so that he came to my office and two or three of us sat down . . .
You called him up?
Yes. I called him up and asked if he'd like to come out and talk with us. And he did and we pointed out the problem to him and took him on a little stroll. And then he began rehabilitating the place, and put some toilets in the houses. Did a few things like that. He didn't make it perfect by any manner of means, but it helped a great deal.
And one of the things that I think that we did that was about as
disturbing as anything that I participated in while I was there was at
the University hospital, they had two sets of nurses in training, one
black group one white group, you see. And once an intern, a white
intern, slapped a black nurse. And all the black nurses walked off the
job. And so one of the black nurses . . . we knew most of them, you see,
at the Center, but one of the black nurses went to a telephone as soon
as they walked off the job and called us at the Center and asked me if
I'd come over there. And told me what had happened. So I went over there
and talked to the girls. There were, oh, I suppose fifteen or twenty of
them. I don't remember. A good group. And so they were just as angry as
they could possibly be, and rightly so. And they said they would never .
. . they couldn't continue their training, they just couldn't do it.
They just couldn't work under those circumstances. And they were right,
absolutely right. And so I
There was a superintendant of nurses, but then she couldn't do a thing
about this. And so we went to this man's office, and I told him what the
young women had told me. And then John Hines picked up on it, and he
just really . . . it was wonderful the way he helped the man to see what
ought to be done. The man said, well, he thought the only thing that
could save the situation was for him to call the young man in, that had
done the slapping, and persuade the young man to apologize to these
black women publicly. And I said, "Well, let me go and talk to the young
women and see what they will say, if they'd be willing to accept this
kind of . . . this kind of solution to the question." So I went and told
them what he suggested, and they said, yes, they would. If he apologized
to them and if they could have some assurance from the superintendant
that nothing like this would ever
Were you involved in any other organizations, while you were working at Bethlehem Center?
What kind of other organizations?
Well, like when did you become involved in the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching?
Oh, honey, I never was involved in that.
You weren't involved in it at all?
Uh uh, uh uh. (No.) I went to two or three of the meetings, but, you see,
that started . . . the Association for Southern Women for the Prevention
of Lynching was started a good bit before my day, in that part of the
country. And before my day of really active work in the field. It was
started very shortly after the incident . . . not too long after the
incident I told you this afternoon, about the women . . . about Dr. Will
Alexander.2 See, Dr. Will Alexander
was also instrumental in helping to get this Association of Southern
Women off the ground, too, see. And when it was organized, Mrs. (Jessie
Daniel) Ames
Late twenties.
Late twenties. Somewhere along there. And when I went to work at Bethlehem Center, when the Association would have its annual meeting, they usually would have it in Atlanta in the Piedmont Hotel. And they had a luncheon. They'd get a room way off in the back of the hotel somewhere so nobody'd see it, and then they'd have some black women there. They'd invite the black women to come to the luncheon. There were a few black women that were related to it in a general sort of way, but the problem was not the problem of the black women. This was . . . the major problem was the problem of the whites. But the women - Mrs. Ames and her associates - would invite some black women, usually to the luncheon that they had. And two or three of us from Augusta would come. Sometimes we'd bring one of the black women in our community with us, to come to that luncheon, and hear the report and be a part of the discussion and that kind of thing. But we never did actually . . . we were never actually active participants. I was never an active participant in the program. But I was awfully close to it. You see, Mrs. Ames was the head of the program. Mrs. Tilly became deeply involved in it, and she and Mrs. Ames together did a very, almost unbelievable job enlisting women all over the South in this whole process. And it really was almost unbelievable. Now, let me ask you a question.
Okay.
Have you, in your conversations with the people at the Southern Regional Council, gathered the data or had the data on the Fellowship of the Concerned?
Not very much, really.
Well, this is one of the most significant programs of involvement of
women that took place, that has taken place in the South. Mrs. Tilly
initiated it. I think it started about . . . around 1950, although I'm
not sure. First . . . its first major program dealt with getting women
to sit in the courts to be present in every community across the South
where there was a court . . . where there was a courthouse or where
there was a court, to hear the cases. Women were asked to get themselves
organized into teams of two, three, four, however many they could spare,
and go to court at the times . . . especially at the times when any
black people were going to be on trial, just to go and sit. By their
very presence, demand that justice be done. And if perchance anything
happened that indicated there was not a fair trail, then it was their
business to enlist the whole community to join them in protest to the
court and put it on the line the things that had happened that were not
in keeping with the principles of justice that should permeate the life
of the court. And this . . . this spread like hotcakes all across the
South, and hundreds, literally hundreds, of women participated in this
program. Now, this was particulary focused on the courts. Then in 1954
when the Supreme Court decision was made on the school desegregation,
then Mrs. Tilly began a program of education and guidelines for action
on desegregation. I mean, to carry out the Supreme Court decision. Once
every year, usually in the fall of the year, about October or November,
Mrs. Tilly would have what she called an annual meeting of the
Fellowship of the Concerned, where women from various denominations,
Jews, Catholics, blacks, whites, from all over the South, would sent
their representative - their top official, usually. In the case of The
Methodist Church, it would be the president of the conference or the
Christian Social Relations secretary of the conference, or, you know,
people in places where they could have channels to alert people to
Now, for instance, when this voter registration started in the Southern Regional Council, back in the . . . I guess in the late fifties or early sixties. I can't remember which year.
Well, the voter registration project started about 1965, but I guess they were probably doing voter registration before that.
Well, see the voter registration project that now is going is not in the Southern Regional Council.
Yes, it's separate.
But John Lewis was in the Southern Regional Council at the time that the voter registration project started in the Regional Council, and I don't remember the date. Maybe it was in the early sixties. Seems to me it was before '65. But it may not have been. I can't remember exactly what year it was. But, anyway, it was in the early sixties . . .
And I can remember the first time he wrote a report to this annual
meeting. It was a report of the data that had been gathered on the voter
registration process in all the states, you know. And brought that and
gave it to these women and indicated, "Now in this particular section of
this state
When did you first know her? First get acquainted with her?
Oh, well . . . well, the first time I really got acquainted with her was about 1930. When I knew her in 1930, she was a conference officer in the north Georgia conference when I went to work in Augusta in 1928, but I didn't really get to know her until 1930. Because I was away on sick leave during the whole year of 1929. Had major surgery and didn't get back to work for ayear. So I didn't get to really know her until 1930.
What was she like?
Well, she . . .
As a person?
As a person?
How would you describe her?
Well, just let me tell you this story. In the first place, she was a very
dainty, ladylike, attractive, beautifully dressed, just perfectly
groomed all the time. No matter when or where. She had a husband she
always called Mr. Tilly. And he was a great guy. He was not a front man
in any sense of the word. Whatever Dorothy - that was her name - wanted
to do, he wanted her to have a chance to do it. And she used to tell
this story, which I think is one of the great stories. She said that
several years before she got involved so deeply in these things, that
Mr. Tilly would get up every morning and he'd say, "Now Dorothy, let's
go for a ride before we have breakfast this morning." And she'd say,
"Now, why
"Tell me Eben, why is it that every morning when we come driving you always bring me through these awful places? Why don't we go out in the Druid Hills, or why don't we go out the Ponce deLeon or the Peachtree Road or someplace. Why don't we go where things are beautiful?" And he said, "Well, Dorothy, I'll tell you why." He said, "I believe that if anybody sees people hurt long enough, that they'll do something about it. I've been bringing you through here because I know you know how to do something about it." He said, "I've been worried about these people an awfully long time, and I just thought if I just brought you through here enough times, that you . . . at last you'd come through and go to work on it." And she said after that she began rubbing her brain to see if she couldn't find some way to go to work at it.
That was before she got involved with the ASWPL?
You mean the Association for the Prevention of Lynching?
Yes.
It was all in that part of the whole process.
What did he do . . . ?
Pardon?
What did he do for a living?
He was a chemist, a manufacturer of perfumes. He was not a . . . not what you'd call a very wealthy man, but he had ample funds for her to do anything she wanted to do, see, and not have to worry about it. Mrs. Tilly was a woman who could always get the thing done that needed to be done. She was one of two woman named by President Truman in 1947 on that Commission on Civil Rights, you see. There were nine members of the commission, as I recall. I think I'm right. And Mrs. Tilly and Dr. Sadie Alexander, a lawyer, a black woman lawyer from Philadelphia, was the other one. And then there was one black man, Dr. Channing Tobias.
I don't recall but one. But anyway, Mrs. Tilly said one night, late at
night, her telephone rang, and she answered the phone and somebody said,
"Is this Mrs. Tilly?" And she said, "Yes, it is." Said, "Well, just hold
the line a minute. President Truman wants to speak to you." (Laughter.)
I guess so.
Said in a few minutes President Truman came on with that raspy voice of
his, and he said, "Mrs. Tilly, I want you to do something." She said,
"What is that, President Truman?" He said, "I want you to be on on my
commission to study civil rights in the nation." And she said, "There's
nothing that would make me happier." And so she was a member of that
commission on civil rights. The report came out in November of '47, if I
remember correctly, and in November of '57 the Woman's Division of the
Methodist Church asked Mrs. Tilly to come to the annual meeting of our
Board of Missions, Woman's Division. And Mrs. Tilly came. We had a
little job we wanted her to do, just wanted her to come. And so we had
planned a citation for her,
Were you a personal friend of Jessie Daniel Ames, or did you mostly just know her in . . . ?
Well, I suppose I was about as personal a friend of hers as she had. She did not make friends easily.
That's the impression I get.
She was not a warm person. You didn't get a note from her sometimes when things were going badly saying "Don't forget I'm thinking about you." You know. I mean, she wasn't that kind of person. Mrs. Ames is dead now, isn't she?
No. She's still living.
Is she still living? She's in North Carolina?
Mmm-hmm. (Yes.)
Where in North Carolina does she live?
Tyron?
Tryon?
Tryon.
Tryon, North Carolina. I hadn't seen her for quite a few years, and she looked like death itself the last time I saw her.
Yes, well, that's what I've heard. I mean, people have been really
You see, one of the things that happened to her, long long years ago, from the first time I ever saw her. First time I ever saw her must have been about 1930. And she was a chain smoker then. And I think she just smoked herself to death, you know.
Is that right? Did she have emphysema or some . . .
Of course, I don't really know what her problem was, but you just . . . you just . . . I never did go in a meeting, I never did go in her office, or never went anywhere, that she didn't have a cigarette in her mouth. And I always used to worry about her, and I used to say to Mrs. Tilly, "Can't you do something to stop Mrs. Ames from smoking so much?" And she said, "Nobody can stop her from smoking. She'll smoke till she dies."
About five years ago, I guess, Pat Waters,
Yes, I would think that would be a fair estimate. You see, I'm not a . .
. I'm not the right person to evaluate Mrs. Ames, because I never found
her easy to know, and, frankly, I never thought she herself did much in
the process.
Yes. They project themselves.
She was the program. I mean, she not only had the idea, but she did it, you see? And she did it . . . Her projection was of such a nature that when she as a person was no longer there, then the framework of her program had no stability. There was nothing to hold on to.
You're talking about Mrs. Tilly?
I'm talking about Mrs. Tilly. But, you see, what I'm saying is that people loved her so much they'd do it. But Mrs. Ames, it just didn't work that way, you see. No . . . I think Mrs. Ames probably had good ideas that she helped to project, but she had to have somebody who could project them for her, you see, because people just didn't enjoy her.
Yes. And do you think that . . . was that true of the Association of
No, Mrs. Ames wasn't connected with the Fellowship . . .
Yeah, that's right. I think she was retired.
She retired before that.
Mrs. Tilly was involved in the . . .
The Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching.
All along, she was . . . ?
Well, in the . . . throughout the decade of the thirties, see. I don't
think she was in the twenties. If she was I didn't . . . see, I didn't
know about much then, but Mrs. Tilly was involved in it in the thirties,
and then there were women . . . I wish I could think of the name of two
women. One was a Presbyterian, U.S.
I should know. Mrs. Newell, of course, was involved in it.
Well, Mrs. Newell was involved in it, but Mrs. Newell . . . Mrs. Newell and Mrs. Ames were very good friends. They were both of the same type. They were very professional, as you've described it. Mrs. Newell was a very brilliant woman. I think she had her doctorate . . .
[END OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE B]
There was a Mrs. Turner.
Mrs. Turner. There were two Mrs. Turners. That's it.
Mrs. W.A. Turner? Was that one of them.
I don't remember her initials, but I remember what they both looked like. And they were very good people.
(A portion omitted by Jacquelyn Hall.)
Do you know whether any of these women are still around?
Well, I know Mrs. McEachern is dead. I know Mrs. Newell is dead. I'm trying to think who would know. They should know at the . . . they should have a record of that at the Southern Regional Council, as to whether Mrs. Turner's still living. I think one of those Mrs. Turners lives in Atlanta. Well, wait, I know somebody who would know. Let me think of her name. Penelope Hardy. There's a Mrs. A. A. Hardy who lives in a town about thirty miles from Atlanta. Hardy, Hardy. Mrs. A. A. Hardy. Everybody called her Penny. And she was one of Mrs. Tilly's right-hand "men." She knew the Turners.
[END OF TAPE 4, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 4, SIDE B]
I was at the Bethlehem Center, and I went to . . . The Woman's Misoionary Council of the Southern Church met in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I was asked to go to Tulsa to make a report of the Center. And when I got there the nominating committee was waiting to interview me to see if I would take Mrs. Newell's place in the Southern Church. This was in '38, just two years before the final union of the three churches was to be consummated. And they wanted to get a younger person in this job in the Southern Church before unification, because Mrs. Newell said she could not go on at all after unification, because she was almost seventy then.
Mrs. Newell?
Mrs. Newell, I mean. I didn't mean Mrs. Ames. I said Mrs. Ames, didn't I?
Yes.
Mrs. Newell couldn't go on, and so she said she wanted to resign. And so
they accepted her resignation and asked me if I would take the job. And
I told them that I would take the job, provided . . . I mean, if they
had nobody to send to Bethlehem Center in my place at the minute, and
they said they didn't know how long it would be before they did have
somebody. Then I said I wouldn't leave the Center without a worker, so I
told them that I would take the job and carry it, since it wasn't a
full-time job anyway, supposedly at that time. It was the kind where you
got an $85 a month stipend, and $1500 a year office money. And so I told
them that I would go back to the Center for a year and still continue to
be the responsible person, but that the salary . . . my salary at the
Center was $75 a month. It would be an
A black successor?
No, they got a white successor. Got a deaconess that time. See, I was not a deaconess. And I . . . moved to Nashville and was here two years, and in 194 . . . I was here from '39, September, '39, until December of '40, I guess it was. And when the Board of Missions was organized in July of 1940, they elected me as the executive for Christian Social Relations in the new Women's Division. And I went to New York in December. So I had thirty . . . well, let's see, I went there in 1940. I had twenty-eight years in New York . . . at work, you see, and I had had eleven years at Bethlehem Center.
How did you like . . . what was your first impression of New York City? Or had you been up there so many times before?
Well, I had n't been up there but a couple of times before, before I
moved there, but . . . well, my first impression was, I suppose, was
that everybody tried to eat all the time. (Laughter.) (Laughter.)
That's right.
Oh, New York's quite a city. I liked it, though. I enjoyed my years there very much. And I miss it, but I like Nashville very much too.
Could you talk a little bit about the kind of work you did while you were in Nashville? What kind of things you were trying to do?
You mean those two years I was in Nashville.
Yes.
Well, you see, I was . . . I was responsible for the Christian Social Relations Program of the former Southern Church, and . . .
What did that involve?
Well, it involved an emphasis in the field of race relations and in the
field of citizenship education, and the field of economic relations and
rural community. I guess that's about it. Let's see. Alcohol. That was
the other one. Well, my job was to try to work to get guidelines for
mailing out suggestions to women in the local organizations across the
church, to get them involved in it. That was one type of thing. The
other type was . . . the other thing I did was I had a seminar for six
weeks at Scarritt, where forty women were brought from all over the
Southern Church. And we spent that six weeks seminar period working on
the issues in Christian social relations in terms of what type of
strategies and program plans ought to be suggested. And, boy, that was
an exciting time. We had all kinds of these sorts of people coming in,
here, there and yonder. And we had . . . that was really a liberal
education for me. I had . . . one phase of the program, I had never done
any background work on at all, and that was in the whole economic
field.
You had . . . Do you have papers and records from your work? During those years?
Well, not for those two years. I have some things, but I don't have much
for those two years. See, in the first place, I jumped from the
community center work into this transition period. And I suppose the two
most important things that we did in the two years before I went, to New
York were geared specifically toward the transition to the new program.
One was this seminar, which was a projection into the future, you see.
What is it? Now, are we going to move in 1940 into this new
relationship, with a new format for our working plan, everything. Now,
how can we utilize it to the best advantage without having a slack? We
must speed up the machine instead of making it run down while we're
making the transition, you see. That was . . . that dealt with the whole
gamut of programs, you see, including race and all the others. And then
the other thing that we did that was very exciting, to me at least. We
planned a conference, I guess you'd call it, where women from the South
could get acquainted with women from the other two denominations
involved in Union. And we had it at Paine College in Augusta. There were
about sixty of us there. And we had, out of the sixty, there must have
been fifteen blacks. And, you see, in the Southern Church we didn't have
any blacks
What were those relationships like?
Well, for instance, the women of the CME Church had leadership schools in
various places, and we . . . had leadership schools in various places.
And we would . . . we . . . our leadership . . . when I say we, I didn't
do that. I wouldn't have done it. I couldn't have done it. It wouldn't
have been me. But they encouraged women in various areas adjacent to or
within reach of those leadership schools to provide scholarships for
women, black women, to go to the leadership schools. And usually they .
. . Mrs. Jones
Yeah. You know it when you see it.
And it's just that we weren't working on a horizontal level, you see.
Were those leadership schools the main program through which . . .
Well, they were one denomination and we were another denomination, and naturally they had their own programs and we had our own programs.
Yeah, but I mean the main way that the two tried to relate to each other.
No, they weren't . . . That was one of the most tangible ways, and one of
the things that we've never done was to actually work and plan
together
And that hasn't happened?
No, it hasn't happened yet.
Is that right?
Not in the same . . . not in the way that it ought to have happened. I suppose there're lots of reasons why it hasn't happened, probably. We've worked hard at it. But one of the difficulties is that each denomination has a full-fledged program, and we worked in our United Churchwomen together with all the various denominations, but it's very hard for two denominations carrying full-fledged programs of their own, and separate entities, to find enough time to have a full-fledged program together. You just can't do it that way. So the only thing . . . the only thing's that got to happen before we ever arrive at that is to come to some place where we can have another union, where the United Methodist Church and the C. M. E. Church and the A. M. E. Zion and the A. M E. can unite so that there'll be a total Methodist Church, you see, made up of all these groups.
In a sense
But some people . . .
That's what I'm wondering. How great was the awareness among some people
that it was paternalism, and, in other words, how strong were the forces
that other people had to ignore,
You mean . . . are you saying . . . are you asking, if the black people, for example, were . . . made it evident that they were aware of a paternalist . . . paternalistic attitude of the Methodists toward them . . . is this what you're saying? Is this what you're asking?
Well . . .
That's a good question.
Yeah. Yeah.
Did they have . . . ?
Well, I'm sure they knew it. But . . .
But there weren't any demands . . . pressures being brought to bear, or demands being made on the white women, that they relate differently to black women.
No. No. No. You see, . . . you see, I was the only one that ever made those . . . that ever brought those pressures. I brought it to both groups. But, you see, the point was that the C. M. E. women, for instance, were very low on funds. And the Methodist women had money. And they were very generous. They made it available, you know. It's awful easy to give a thousand dollars. But it's awful hard to sit down and plan something that you do together that makes both groups stronger, you see.
Right.
Now, as far as . . . You see, I think there were very few people on our side . . . and when I say on our side I mean in the Methodist group - that would have admitted that we were consciously - maybe we weren't consciously - being paternalistic. But we were being paternalistic. But I think there would be very few that would admit that we were. They'd say, "We're not. We're doing what they want us to do." You see. And that was true.
Black women would come to the conferences and they would report back and they would say, "Thank you, thank you. This is just what we wanted."
Oh, we stopped that. We stopped that kind of business, that scholarship business, about the second year I was in the . . . you know, as soon as I got to where I could do anything about it at all, see. I redirected them and . . .
But apparently that was something actually that went on in the Association of Southern Women. It was all white women, but in some of the annual meetings when they . . . some black women would be brought in and they would say, in a sense, things that the Association liked to hear. You know what I mean.
Well, that could be. There . . . wasn't at the meetings I attended. I didn't hear many black women speak. They just listened to what was going on. But of course the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching didn't really do any work with black women, because they . . . that was white women's job, and they didn't . . . well, the black women couldn't have helped much at this point, you see. This was something that was so terrible that white people would do it to blacks, but I don't know that black women could have been of a lot of help in doing something about it.
I'd like to hear about what you . . . the work that you did after you took the position with the Woman's Division in New York, but I'm still . . . I'm afraid you're getting awfully tired. Is your voice going to give out?
Well, you see, the kind of . . . I think the kind of work that I did, of
course, related to the overall program of Christian Social Relations.
And what we did was to help establish policies as to what we were going
to do in the program, and then we worked out the kinds of programs that
we were going to engage in. And we moved from year to year dealing with
. . . we had
I had carried that portfolio myself all those years, but my portfolio got
heavier and heavier with so many interdenominational things, and so many
inter-board and inter-agency things. We got involved in so much that you
can't give full time to what you need to. So Peggy came along and
Well, most of your work was on a national level. I mean, how much relationship did you have with what was going on in the local women's organizations?
Well, you see . . . my work was done on a national level, but the work
that was done on the national level was in terms of program planning and
promotion through Conference and districts to the locals, you see. And,
when you have 36,000 local units all over the nation, you can't deal
individually with every local unit. Our church is what we call a
connectional church. I mean by that that the national office has direct
connection with the conference channeling to them guidance and
suggestions, plans and programs. And bringing the conference officer to
some central place for training on the job, that kind of thing. The
kinds of things that conference officers ought to know if they're going
to promote the local program in their conference. Then this conference
officer would go back to her conference, and do the same with her
district officers. And then her district officers would promote the
locals, you see. So your national staff person has direct contact with
representatives of the local women's societies, when you happen to have
a chance to go to
Did you organize that process, the school of missions, set up structure?
Well, I didn't organize it myself. It had originated much earlier. I was
on the Division committee. But, you see, we have a special staff person
who's responsible for coordinating that plan, but there is a committee
that plans the schools But, the school you went to in Jackson Tennessee
was a regional school. And, in addition to the regional schools - we
have five regional schools, one in every one of the major regions - and
then we have conference schools in every conference. We have . . . how
many conferences? Seventy-three conferences, I believe. In the
conference schools and in the regional schools,
[END OF TAPE 4, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 5, SIDE A]
. . . December of 1941, the first annual meeting we had after I moved to
New York, two of the recommendations that our department brought to the
Women's Divisions were these. One was that we
Well, wasn't it printed by the
They did not use union labels. We had to have all our materials printed outside the Methodist publishing house.
That's what that resolution meant?
That's what that resolution meant.
That you wouldn't do it in the house?
That we wouldn't do it in the Methodist publishing house. See, that was in 1941. Now, if the Methodist publishing house uses a union label today, it's been done since I retired. Frankly, I haven't kept track in the last three or four years, so I don't really know. But they've got a new regime, and the man who was the head of it retired. They've always fought unions, and I don't know whether they do or not. You were going to ask me something.
What time is it?
It's ten o'clock.
Pages 88 and 89 were irrelevant to the interview and have been deleted by Jacquelyn Hall. (Conversation about meeting Miss Young.)
Miss Young is one of the really great women of the thirties and forties and fifties. Well, of course, she's still, for my money, great, but I mean in her influencing people. She . . . most of her activities, is recent years, of course, have been focussed here on Nashville, but she's been a great influence on a great many women that have gone through Scarritt College, you see, as students. And so her influence is scattered pretty well over the nation and over the world. And some of us hold her in very high regard. So . . .
Can you think of anybody else I should talk to, that you haven't mentioned? Or that I should find out about?
Well, you're going to try to see Mrs. Trimble maybe, and if you can get some . . . if you can get with Penny Hardy, she might have some information about some of the people that were close to Mrs. Tilly, you see, and close to Mrs. Ames. And I really . . .
Anybody active in the YWCA in the South?
I don't know of anybody. And if you can't talk to Mrs. Jones, or if you can talk to Dr. Willa Player, either one of them would be very good in terms of, not only Bennett College, but in terms of black women that have played an important role in the South, you see. I tell you somebody in Atlanta who might know some important black women, who's . . . she's a very important women herself. Mrs. J. W. E. Bowen. She's a black woman in Atlanta. She's the wife of Bishop Bowen. The Bishop died several years ago.
B-O . . .
B-O-W-E-N. Margaret Bowen. Mrs. J. W. E. Bowen. She lives . . . you can find her in the telephone directory. She was the president of the central jurisdiction for the first two quadrania. That is, from 1940 to 1948. And I have great appreciation for her. She's one of these people who speaks her mind with great clarity. Of course, she's not as young now as she was, but none of the rest of us are either. But I haven't seen her in a couple of years, but she's a very good person.
Okay.
Oh, I know somebody. If you ever have a chance to talk with her, it'd just be great, because she's a wonderful person herself. It's Dr. Capitola Dent Newburn. Do you have her name anywhere?
No.
She's a professor at Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee.
Is her last . . . now, what's her name again?
New burn Capitola . . . Dr. Capitola Dent Newburn. And she's teaching music and religious philosophy, I believe it is, at the C.M.E. College at Lane. At Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee. You may remember her, Bob. She was . . . she attended that school.
Oh, yes.
She's fairly stout, woman. Used to teach at Paine College for a great many years. And she's a native of Georgia. And she's very . . . she's really been a very influential person. She's got a doctorate in social work, and she's worked with the national YWCA, back in the days when Montclair, New Jersey was having such fits over the race business, she was head of the YWCA out there. She married a C.M.E. minister, and he died several years ago.
END OF INTERVIEW