Interview with Sister Rose Colley, November 16, 1999

START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A

TRACY K'MEYER: This is an interview with Sister Rose Colley by Tracy K'Meyer in Sister Rose's home on November 16, 1999. Just to get started, I would like to ask some basic biographical stuff to begin with, when and where were you born? SISTER ROSE COLLEY: I was born in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1928. TK: 1928. SRC: A year or two ago. Would you like some water? TK: Not just yet, I might in a little while. So, Nashville 1928. Could you tell me a little about your parents, their names and what they did? SC: Yeah, my dad is William Hubert Colley. Mom was Mary Agnes Geist. Dad was a railroad man basically all his life. He worked both as a yard foreman and did the whole bit. He ended up with his own grain door agency. It created--(laughs) TK: You mean like for a grain elevator? SC: 1:00No, in the old days the boxcars had a big wide door, it was about six feet wide. And when they put the grain in, they would put--he created this thing, he would make a slat like this to fit in the door, there would be three or four of them going up so that they could remove one door and get the grain out and then remove the next door and get the grain out. He built those and placed them in the boxcars and took them out and cleaned the boxcars is what he did with a crew of helpers. TK: And did you live in Nashville your whole childhood? SC: Uh-huh, until I was a sophomore in high school. And then I went away to El Paso, Texas, 2:00to high school. And boarded in high school in El Paso for three years. TK: What made you go out there? SC: My sister just older than I wanted to go away to school and my dad and mom had lived out there for a couple of years because my oldest sister had consumption and they had been told to go out there and live. So he knew there was a Catholic school out there, so he wrote a Catholic girls school, El Paso, Texas. And when he heard back from them, we went out there. Because he was a railroad man he could get passes, you know, so we would go out in June and return June. I mean we would go out in September and return in June. Stayed the whole yearlong. TK: That's interesting, quite a change from Nashville, I imagine. SC: Uh-huh, right, yes. TK: One question I like to ask everyone is how and when did you become aware of racial prejudice? SC: Well, I 3:00would say basically from my father, who was extremely racist. And also growing up in Nashville in the apartheid days where we always had an African American woman working in our house. Because we were many, my mom had ten kids. And I would get on the bus or the streetcar and in order to talk to Rose Catherine who worked for us, I would have to go and sit in the last seat available because she couldn't sit in the front. So from there, I mean just that whole experience, you couldn't get away from it in Nashville. No matter where you went you had the colored and white--drinking fountains, and lavatories and everything and I just 4:00grew up knowing about it and thinking it was really, really wrong, really unjust. TK: Why do you think you thought that? SC: Because they were people like me, you know, it wasn't any more than that, it was like I couldn't believe some of the things my father said about them and I knew it wasn't right. TK: What does your mother think of the situation? SC: (Sighs) My mom didn't have as many voiced opinions. I suspect she was as racist as anybody else, but she didn't talk a lot. TK: Too busy with ten children. Did you have any other role models in terms of the way to think about race or the way to act as a young person? SC: I know--I can't say that I did. TK: So you went out to--Well I guess I should 5:00ask, before we get to your high school, how involved were you as a child in the church? SC: Umm. We went to church everyday; I went to Catholic schools all my life. We went, the whole family went every Sunday. My mother was very devout. My father was a convert and a really healthy skepticism about the church, which we all thank God for now. You know it was a little hard to take at the time, but looking back on it, it gave us enough realism that we weren't totally--we just didn't sink our teeth into everything. TK: What kind of effect did going out to El Paso have on you, do you think? SC: Well, that's where I met the community 6:00that I joined for one thing. TK: Which one was it? SC: Loretto. TK: Because I've heard of the Sisters of Charity and the Sisters of Loretto here in Louisville and I wasn't sure which. SC: Sisters of Loretto. They were light years different from the Dominican nuns that I had in Nashville. Much more liberal, much more socially conscious and so they probably educated me more than anyone else in terms of justice. And they were fun, they were lively, you know. It was also, I was the eighth of ten and we all went, there were four girls right in a row and we all went to the same school. We went out to St. Cecilia's Academy in Nashville and so I was always the baby coddling. So it was a way to get some 7:00independence, I think, it was my separation work happened out there, you know. TK: Where you living in a boarding house or with a family? SC: The school, no, I lived in the school. TK: The school was operated by the Sisters of Loretto. SC: Uh-huh. TK: How did you decide to become a nun? SC: Well, as I said they were just great people and I loved them a lot. Probably a lot of it was the influence of being in the boarding school there and being, living some what that kind of life, some what sheltered and protected. It was a matter of the--there are all different things that I say at different times. One is it was a matter of working for justice, it was also a matter of--in the forties a girl had three 8:00choices: she could get married and have lots of kids, a Catholic girl, she could be an old maid or she could be a nun. Those were-- TK: The thought of other job options never-- SC: Never occurred. TK: This would have been sort of mid to late forties. SC: '46-'47. Graduated from high school in '45. Getting a job would have been the equivalent of choosing to be an old maid. Now, I was strongly tempted, I stayed home. I left high school and stayed home for a year and went to school part time and worked Acuff-Rose Publishing Company and with Roy Acuff and Freddie Rose, the owners. So when the time came a year later in October of '46, I had a great job and they begged me. They said they would send me to run 9:00an office in California if I would just stay with them. So that was then really tempting but I just somehow knew that I needed to do it. I talked to some friends of mine and they said basically it's OK if you go or don't go but either do one or the other, make up your mind, don't sit on the fence, so that's what I did. TK: What did your family think of your decision? SC: My father hated it. TK: Really? SC: Uh-huh. It made him sick, every time he came to see me, he'd go home sick. My mom was OK with it. Most of my brothers and sisters were OK with it. My dad constantly begged me to come back, nobody else did. TK: Was this because of his-- SC: Yeah, it was his upbringing in the rural South, he didn't 10:00trust preachers. Just categorically anybody that had to do with organized religion he didn't trust. He's heard terrible stories all of his life about Catholics. Catholics were one; I know where you are from. TK: New Jersey ??? SC: Catholics were one percent of the population in Nashville. TK: That's very different from Louisville. SC: Very, very and the whole state of Tennessee is very prejudiced against Catholics and still are, still a very small--I think Nashville has grown to be two percent, I don't really know that. TK: Because you 11:00would have been born right at the end of sort of a wave of anti-Catholicism because the twenties really saw a lot of. Your father converted, was he Protestant before or just? SC: Yeah, pretty much non-religious, pretty much non-church going. TK: Had anyone else, your brothers or sisters gone into religious vocations or you were the first one to do that? SC: No. Yeah. TK: You said that it was to work for justice, what do you mean by that and how did those ideas develop? SC: Well, I mean just to do what you can to eliminate oppression and prejudice and injustice to the poor and marginalized. I suspect they developed more in high school than anywhere else. TK: Because of the-- SC: The influence of the Sisters out there. Then of course it was a whole different culture also; oppressed people there were the Mexicans and the Mexican Americans. There were very few blacks in that culture. TK: I lived in Las Cruces 12:00for two years. I used to go down to El Paso all the time. SC: Beautiful place. We had a school in Las Cruces, too. TK: You did, what was the name of it? SC: Loretto. TK: Most of my research has been on Baptists before and so I'm not as familiar with Catholicism. What would you say is the relationship between, or how is it based on theology? The social justice teachings, could you talk about that a little bit. SC: I'll try. Actually, although you wouldn't know it, the Catholic Church has a strong and long history of working for social justice. Among documents written over the past three hundred years, at least, that talk 13:00about working for labor unions, working for against oppression. Now, the Church hasn't always lived up to its own teaching. It was against the law for example; it was against church law to own slaves but the Church owned slaves and church people owned slaves. So they didn't always live it out. But I think it would be based on the importance of every human being. The importance of the individual soul. That's how they got around it because they didn't believe that blacks had souls. My father didn't believe that blacks had souls, they weren't real human beings. It hurts to say that but that's part of where all that came from so the theology of it is the value of every human being as being a child of God. TK: 14:00Now when you say you decided then about 1947. SC: Well, '46. TK: You decided in '46. How do you end up in Louisville? SC: Well, we had, Loretto had schools all over the country. Mainly Southern half of the country: Missouri, Colorado, California, New Mexico, Kentucky, Alabama, just kind of all over and we had a system then of you were told where to go and teach. My first twelve years I went to St. Louis and taught in St. Louis. Then in 1961, I was assigned to Christ the 15:00King, that's how I got to Louisville. Christ the King is at 45th and Broadway or 44th and Broadway. TK: Is it that big white building? SC: That was our convent and high school. TK: I heard something about that. SC: We lived actually by the time I got there--we lived in there. It started out that was the high school and the residence for the sisters and then they built the high school behind it which is on 45th street. Christ the King is just in the same block but it is a little brick church right there on 44th and Broadway. TK: So Christ the King is the church? SC: It's a parish, a Catholic parish here and it had a great school and I went in there as principal of the grade school. TK: Had you gone to college? SC: In St. Louis. TK: What was the name of that school? SC: Christ the King. TK: Christ the King School. Wasn't there a Sisters of Loretto High School [Loretto High School] here as well? SC: Yeah. TK: OK. Did you live in that white 16:00building, and that's where all the sisters lived. How many Sisters of Loretto where here in Louisville? SC: Yeah. Oh lordy, I don't know, probably fifty or sixty. TK: All were working for the schools? SC: Well, we also had several parish schools: St. Benedict's at 23rd and Osage. A school on Fairdale, one out Preston Highway, one was St. Jerome's, St. Benedict's, Guardian Angels, Christ the King. I think those were the four, we taught in those four parish schools. TK: But you all lived together? SC: No. The only people who lived at the house on Broadway were people who taught at Christ the King or high school. People who taught at other schools lived in buildings near those schools. TK: I'd like to 17:00sort of shift to specifically civil rights issues for a little while and ask what was the first civil rights activity that you were aware of? The first thing that you heard about or paid attention to. SC: I guess it was things leading up to Selma. I was principal at Christ the King and when I started there, there were like six hundred and some odd children in the school and when I left three years later there were three hundred and some odd. The six hundred had been mostly white, the three hundred mostly black, so that whole thing happened between '61 and '64 and so that the whole open housing and people fleeing from the West End, you couldn't miss it. So before that, it was just what I read in 18:00the paper, the consciousness was there when I went to Christ the King and that's when I started getting involved immediately in what was going on, as soon as could anyway. TK: How did you get involved? SC: Well, started visiting the children's parents and talking to them and hearing what was going on and then I don't remember the exact year that--it must have been '62 or '63 when I heard about the West End Community Council and went over to a meeting. That was the first real involvement I ever had. They met right across the street, up about a block. I guess you heard that at the old Fontain House. TK: No. SC: It was a big old Victorian house that belonged to Vernon Robinson who was a priest in the diocese, you've heard of him? TK: Yes I have. He was Episcopal or Catholic? SC: He was both. He converted, he was an Episcopal priest and then he was ordained a 19:00Catholic priest later. TK: He owned this Fontain House? SC: Yes. TK: He was white? SC: Yes. TK: He has passed away now? SC: Yeah. TK: How did you hear about the West End Community Council? SC: I haven't got a clue. TK: You don't remember. You just kind of knew they were there. SC: I just kind of knew, Yeah, I don't remember at all. I don't remember how we heard about it. I just heard about it and heard that they were meeting and decided to go to a meeting. It turned out they asked for somebody to take notes that night and I volunteered (Laughed). TK: Could you describe that first meeting? SC: Yeah, I don't know how 20:00much. I don't know what we talked about it was smallish group and I remember Ken--Ken--I can't think of his last name, was chairing. TK: Ken Phillips. SC: Yeah. As I said, they asked--I think we must have shocked them to death because we had on the full habit still. TK: Were you still in habits then? SC: Uh-huh. I just remember they asked if there was somebody--the secretary hadn't shown and could somebody take notes and I said yes. What we talked about I don't know, I just know it went on for a long time. TK: Do you remember what relative mix of white to black at the first meeting was?SC: I feel like there were more whites 21:00than blacks, I just feel like that. I remember it wasn't a large crowd. I don't think it was even, I don't think it was half-and-half. TK: Well, remembering the first meeting is a little specific. How about just in general what were meetings like? SC: They were long. (laughs)--but interesting because we were dealing with strategies. How to get the city fathers to change their mind. They were redlining. How to get them and who to talk to and then organizing? I remember when Dr. [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] was coming to town we spent a lot of time 22:00organizing around that. Just who could we talk to; who could we get involved that kind of thing pretty much. TK: What were the--besides the open housing were there other goals or was that the main goal? SC: That was the main one. Open housing was the main goal. Then once the War on Poverty started it was also getting involved with getting people engaged in working against poverty. TK: I was going to ask about that in a minute. Do you remember any particular events that you participated in or any particular activities? SC: I remember marching downtown, particularly the march when Dr. King was there. I remember going to visit people at City Hall. I remember going to visit with women in particular 23:00who lived in Cotter and Lang homes. I remember people trying to throw Anne [Braden] out of the West End Community Council. Have you heard that story? TK: She actually asked me--she suggested that I ask you to tell that story because she said that when she suggested you, she said, "Have her tell you that story." So why don't you tell me that story? SC: As well as I remember it. I just remember that because of Carl's arrest and the work that they had done and his being accused of sedition everyone--the question came up, was Anne Communist? And if she was Communist, were we being duped? And made to act in that way and 24:00made to act as Communists. I remember we had an executive committee meeting that went on until about three in the morning debating. I am not a night person and I never have been. Just hearing people's concerns about Anne and Anne was there. I finally said, I said all along, it didn't matter to me whether she was or not. She said she was a practicing Episcopalian. I believed that she couldn't be that and a Communist at the same time. Whether she was or not, she was the most important person in the West End Community Council. If they decided to put her off the executive committee, they would lose me also, that I just would not stand for it. That seemed to turn them around, either that or it's two o'clock 25:00in the morning.(laughs) But then it just died, nothing ever happened after that. I remember that one. Anne has always been a very, very precious and important person. TK: Why do you think she was so important to the council? You said she was very important. SC: She's the one who really pushed it al the time. I saw her as the organizer as the committed person who kept it together. She's an incredible woman. TK: There's somebody else writing her biography. SC: Really, good. TK: You mentioned the executive committee, is that what you called it? What was that? SC: It was the president, vice president and secretary. TK: Had you become secretary at that point? You said you were actually. SC: Uh huh. TK: 26:00You were fairly involved then. How did local people respond to your involvement? SC: Do you mean me, particularly? TK: Yeah. SC: No different than anybody else. Nobody ever reprimanded me for being involved. People were pleased, I think, but church leaders and nuns and priests were very active in the civil rights movement nationally. So I think it was an acceptable thing to do. TK: How about in Louisville, were there Catholic leaders and other people very involved in Louisville? SC: A few. Rich Grenough, have you heard of him? TK: I just tried to 27:00leave him a phone message. SC: There was a group, he was the Council on Race and Religion. I don't remember a lot of other people being really active. Several of us were, two or three other sisters and I were. TK: In the West End Community house? SC: Uh huh. TK: I was going to ask if other nuns had gotten involved in that as well. What were their names? SC: Carol Dunphy is the primary one who went to the meeting with me and later on Sarah Concannon. TK: I've heard that name. SC: But I think she--I think the West End Community Council ceased to exist by the time she moved to town. Which was around '68 or '69. TK: She would 28:00have been much later? What was Carol's last name? SC: Dunphy. TK: These were people who--it seems to me, didn't names change as some point? Yours was? SC: Mine was John Martin. TK: John Martin, that's what I thought. SC: You'd heard that one? TK: Yeah, I'd seen it in some written records. At what point, did you change?SC: '66. TK: Why was that? SC: Actually I always hated having a negative male name. We had begun our whole process of renewal. I might have changed in '65. I know I took off the habit in '66. As soon the thought occurred, and as I said, our whole structure was loosening up. It just began to float around that 29:00this was a thing to do so I immediately did it. TK: Yeah, I had read that something about the habit also--not wearing the habits anymore. END OF SIDE A, TAPE 1 START OF SIDE B, TAPE 1 TK: If you had to characterize the West Side Community Council, would you call it a religious organization or a secular organization or a community organization? SC: I think it was a community organization. There were ministers who were part of it, like Charlie Tachau and several African American ministers, Gil Schroerlucke. TK: He was in there, too, OK, I didn't know that. SC: Uh huh. But it was not religious; it was not a religious organization. TK: Did it change over time? SC: Yes, it did. We got money from the United Church of Christ and hired an executive director. It's 30:00fascinating, if you watch community organizations, once they get money and staff. People are less involved. They let the staff do more and they do less. Hobart James was our executive director. But I think our goals never changed. We were for integration and everything we did was for that. Fair housing and open housing and integration, wanted to keep the West End integrated. Wanted to keep the city of Louisville integrated. Didn't, failed. TK: Yeah, unfortunately. Let me ask a few specific questions about the--you mentioned something's that you remembered that were related to the open housing and you mentioned some of the marches and stuff. Could you describe a march for me? Any march, it doesn't have 31:00to be a particular one. SC: Yeah, we were going down Fourth Street and Jefferson Street and singing, clapping, chanting rhythm. I think I mainly remember the one where Dr. King was there because I remember at that time, a group started to also protest the Vietnam War and that was my first experience of a protest against the Vietnam War. I wasn't aware--I think I probably wasn't aware of the war yet because this was early on. I remember being startled and thinking I wish they wouldn't do that because this battle is so important, I wish they wouldn't confuse it with other things. That happens all the time, people tack on, it happened to the women's movement and people would get distracted from the women's movement because they would be tacking on other things to protests. Then 32:00I went up to [President Richard M.] Nixon's inauguration and marched, so I did grow, I mean I did grow. That's all. TK: I heard this story, I don't know which nun this was but someone told me this story about a group of nuns who helped pull down a dilapidated old house that was in the West End that was falling apart and they had told the city that it was a hazard and had not gotten any action on it, was that? So you know anything about that? Bob Cunningham told me that story? SC: I don't remember, no. Who did? TK: Bob Cunningham. SC: I don't remember, I don't remember, it might have been--later. I left, that's not true; I left in '75 and then came back in '87. TK: Toward the end of my story when you 33:00left. What was the--because there were also the Sisters of Charity in Louisville, aren't they? What the relationship or the difference or they help each other? SC: Yeah. We're friendly but we don't belong to the same, they are a totally separate organization. TK: Do you know if they were involved in any kind? I might look up. SC: They might have been, I don't remember any of them in the West End Community Council because by and large, they didn't have any schools in the West End. The Urusuline Sisters had some near my schools and the Mercys. But I don't think the Charities had any in the West End. TK: OK. You had mentioned the War on Poverty, so I would like to ask a couple questions about that. How did the West End Community Council get involved in the War on Poverty? 34:00SC: [Pause] Somebody told us about it.(laughs) I remember that it was at the West End Community Council that I heard Head Start, the War on Poverty money starting this Head Start program. But who told us, where it came from I don't know. By that time I was working at the Catholic School Office. I was a supervisor of schools; I left Christ the King in '64 for supervisor of schools. Working downtown at the Catholic School Office. I took the word to them about the Head Start program and we applied and I directed the first summer in '65 of the Head Start program. I know it was through the West End Community Council that I heard about it. TK: How did you accept the program or run it? SC: There 35:00was a national guideline and Beth Taylor, who taught at the university in the early childhood. She's not there now, she's retired, was the director of training for Head Start. We were told how many centers we could have and I had to recruit the teachers and purchase the supplies and give them the curriculum and Beth trained them in the program. She trained all the Head Start teachers. The public schools had one and the Catholic schools had one. At that time there were two and I think that happened the next summer also and after that there was just one. TK: How did you recruit teachers? SC: Just called teachers that I knew. TK: People who were already teachers? SC: Yes. TK: Not just mothers or others? SC: No, they were teachers from our schools from the parochial schools. 36:00TK: Where did you have the Head Start? SC: A number--we had three or four sites. We were at St. Vincent DePaul, which is at Shelby Street, Oak and Shelby, St. George's which is at Oak and about 28th. TK: St. George's, I thought that was Episcopalian? SC: There's an Episcopalian and a Catholic, they're neighbors. They're very close to each other, as a matter of fact. I think we had one at Christ the King and we had one at St. Benedict's, and I think there might have been one other. TK: That was sort of run through the West Side Community Council or involved with? SC: No, no, it was run through the Catholic [archdiocese] diocese, through the Catholic schools. I'm just saying that that's how I heard 37:00about it because I heard about the War on Poverty through the West End Community Council. I heard about Head Start program through the West End Community Council and there were some programs that we were trying to work with, I think that's what took us into Cotter Lang. TK: Well, I heard some about the development of the Park Duvalle Center and things like that. Do you remember anything about, I saw this in writing a couple of times, but only in sort of formal bureaucraticese language that is something called Operation Brotherhood, that the West End Community Council put together. Do you have any recollection of what that was? SC: (Sighs) Sorry about that. TK: That's OK, they have this in their records, they have about ten copies of proposal called Operation Brotherhood but then it doesn't say whether it was ever funded. It's a grant proposal for Operation Brotherhood. Then they have like ten copies of the proposal but I haven't been able to find out if it was actually enacted or-- SC: I don't--the only grant money I remember our getting was from the United Church of Christ. TK: What was the guy's name, Daniels, something Daniels? SC: Yeah, 38:00Daniels was his last name. Yeah. TK: I've seen his name on some things. In your mind, was there a connection between the anti-poverty work and the civil rights work? SC: Uh-huh. TK: What's the connection? SC: Because of much of the oppression there was an inequality of schools, an inequality of education and lack of jobs. Same we still see today. People not able to earn inadequate amount of money because of a lack of good education. In the South, in this place anyway was racist because of the segregated schools. TK: Was the Catholic Church 39:00involved in other way in the War on Poverty? Besides through Head Start. SC: Not to my knowledge, but it could have been and I just didn't know about it. TK: What were the strengths and weaknesses of the War on Poverty program? SC: Well, one of the things that happened, I think, is that some people who got jobs through the War on Poverty program forgot where they came from. They just took it and ran, in other words took the money and ran. I think it did some good things, it certainly more money went into bureaucracy than into people's pockets. That's always a problem. That would be the strength and the weakness. TK: I've heard that before. I know we talked about open housing a little bit, 40:00your main participation there would have been demonstrating, do you think? SC: Uh-huh. TK: You also said that you visited officials? SC: We would call and meet with aldermen and meet with city, anybody we could to talk to them about it. TK: What do you think eventually led to the resolution of that issue? SC: I think it was the national civil rights law. I don't think Louisville did it. TK: So Louisville had to be sort of pushed. SC: Uh-huh. TK: All of this is about marches, we already talked about marches. These are questions, I think, I am going to ask and then people usually answer them before I get around to asking them. Where you involved at all in the organization around the Poor People's Campaign? It came through Louisville in the late '60s. OK. I guess in addition to the West Side Community Council and the Head Start you mentioned and the open housing, were you personally involved in any other kinds of --any other issues 41:00around race relations or justice campaigns? SC: There was another organization that I'm trying to--it was a Catholic organization, it was a national group and I can't think of the name of it. I wish I had looked it up, but I wouldn't know where to look for it. I went to those meetings and participated both locally and nationally with that group. TK: Really. SC: Went to a couple of national meetings. What, where, that's terrible, I'm sorry, I hope somebody remembers it. Rich will remember it, I think. TK: So ask him about local and national-- SC: National organization that was against racism, racial justice or something, I forget. TK: It's not the council on religion and race that you mentioned before? SC: No, that was local. TK: That a local and that's not just Catholic, right? SC: No, that right, not just Catholic. But Rich was the chair of that group or 42:00executive director for that group for a while. TK: Well then, I hope the phone number I have for him is accurate. SC: You hope what? TK: I hope the phone number I have for him is accurate, the answering machine is a woman's voice. SC: That well could be--they moved recently and you've got the new one. TK: Yes. Actually I called the one that was in the book; you know the telephone company message so they did move recently so it probably is accurate. Well, you mentioned before, being exposed to the anti-war stuff as well, were there other things you got involved in either with the war or you mentioned the women's movement, anything else like that? SC: Well, much later I worked with the women's ordination conference. Which is a national. No, and I worked with St. William's parish, which was also very active and did a lot administration work 43:00over there. In 1968 started the masters degree in community development at the Institute-- TK: Urban, at U of L. Pat Delahanty did one of those programs, too. SC: Yeah, at U of L. I don't think he did the--he might have done the same year as I did. A lot of the clergy in the West End by then were getting together to talk about what to do about the schools and parishes because the population was moving out. I crashed a couple of their meetings, and Joe Maloney was there talking at one of them and he talked about the program and so I signed up for it. Carol Dumphry and I both did it, '68. That got me engaged in a lot of 44:00different activities because we had to do a project every semester. I don't know how they do it now; it's out of the business school now, isn't it? Public affairs, I think it's called. It was an interdisciplinary program we met all weekend. Like Friday night and Saturday and we had to come up with in groups with a interdisciplinary project that we worked with several other people on to try to pull all the issues together. So that got me involved in a number of different things and I can't tell you what any of them were.(laughs) TK: I think that Pat Delahanty and maybe Tony Heitzman wrote actually a little report on the West End Catholic churches that he gave me and I haven't read yet but I can have it. I think they wrote it as part of their degree program. SC: I'm sure they 45:00did. TK: A question I forgot to ask about the West End Community Council that I just noticed in my notes. At some point in the late '60s, there's a newspaper, a series of newspaper articles about whether the West End Community Council was quote, unquote a black power organization. Do you remember any of the discussion around that? SC: I remember they saying that and we laughed. TK: Why did you laugh? SC: It wasn't all black and it didn't have a lot of power. (laughs) Whatever they were doing with that felt negative, felt pejorative, and we said just don't believe it. TK: What ever happened to the West End Community Council? SC: We finally made a decision in early '70s that we lost the battle and it wasn't any point of going on. It might have been right around 1970 but it was a 46:00hard decision to decide but the civil rights, the national law had passed, that was '68, wasn't it? TK: National housing law, yeah. SC: No, but then the civil rights act-- TK: The general one was '64 and voting '65 and housing was '68. SC: OK, so the other thing had happened. So we just decided that we didn't need to be doing it anymore. TK: Another question in terms of a benchmark event I like to ask people. What was the impact as far as you see on your work on the organization's work of the riots in '68? SC: In sixty when? TK: The local riot, the '68 one. SC: '68, is that when it was? It was scary because it was right in my neighborhood. It was in the West End, right out there, it was scary. Didn't 47:00change, it didn't change how I felt about anything, it didn't change what I was doing. Just seeing all those policemen around was scary. TK: Did you have any part--were you actually out on the streets when it happened or were you--? SC: I was not, I remember looking out and seeing and by that time I had moved and I was living over at 23rd and Osage. I could hear more than I could see. I did not go out. TK: That's good, that is close, that's like five blocks. I did finally 48:00just drive through that. SC: The Parkland area still isn't built back up right. TK: I think I even remember at least one building still boarded up. Right on that corner, the -- 28th and Greenwood. Did you personally, one other sort of big event, this would have been right before you left I think so you might have been gone already. Did you personally get involved in the busing controversy? SC: No, I was gone. TK: Because it was '75-'76. SC: I had, my checkered career I started teaching in a teacher corps program in 1970. TK: In what program? SC: Teacher corps. From '70-'74 and that was--the busing thing happened right there. I mean it started in '75, didn't it. So it was the end of our teacher corps program and I left the city and went on sabbatical. I had made the decision that 49:00I didn't want to stay at the university, they had offered me a grant position and I would have had to go ahead and get the doctorate and I wasn't interested in getting a doctorate. Because I'm not an academic person and what I was doing with teacher corps was on site work. I was out in the schools with the students. Teacher corps was a program that took college grads and gave them a M.A.T while they did a two-year internship program. They took course work and were thrown into the classroom, (laughs) literally. So I was the on site person-- TK: In schools. SC: Working with the teachers in the schools. TK: When you say the university, you mean U of L. SC: Yeah. TK: I assumed that but just clarifying. SC: U of L had program and U of K had a program but all the teachers were here in Louisville. TK: I have some general questions, well, I should update the rest of your biography, then. So where did you go in 1975? SC: I went to Denver and 50:00worked for my community from '75 to '82--'80 (sighs) then I started my own consulting business, working with groups and organizations and doing, facilitating and mediating. I got trained as a mediator in 1980 and started doing that consulting work and eventually moved to D.C. for a while. Just as a good base, a good place from which to promote a consulting business. Then I came 51:00back here in '87 and went to work for a council on peacemaking in '91. TK: Council on Peacemaking, I -- trying to remember Judy Schroeder, is Seth in her group? SC: No, she's Peace Education, Inc., her group. TK: Then when did you start with Just Solutions? SC: Just Solutions is the Council on Peacemaking. TK: Oh, it is the same thing that becomes Just Solutions. Saw some reference to Just Solutions just the other day and I can't for the life of me remember what it was. Maybe somebody else I'm interviewing might have been talking about it. SC: We're talking to the Board of Aldermen about helping them work with groups around the citizen police review board. That was in the paper, that might be what-- TK: I might have seen it in the paper then, OK. Let me ask a couple again, like I said, one of my focuses is on the different religious groups in this city and so I want to ask some general questions about the Catholic Church and see if you can help me answer any of them. One thing is--I sort of asked you this before but maybe just to go back to it. To what extent did Catholic organizations, churches, agencies, people get involved civil rights work in Louisville? SC: The only thing I remember is that council on race and religion. 52:00So Rich will know a whole lot more than I do. TK: A question real quick, you said it's a 1960s thing, not earlier? SC: I don't think so. TK: I assume it's interracial? SC: Yeah. TK: Some of the Protestant churches have particular organizations within the church, the Episcopal social action committee, Unitarian's, does the Catholic Church have something like that? SC: We had a peace and justice office for years. An office on peace and justice and they recently reorganized it and put it under the auspices of Catholic Charities. TK: 53:00So this is a local group? SC: Uh huh. TK: It's not part of-- I already asked about the differences between you and the Sisters of Charity. This is my ignorance, what effect did Vatican II have on this? SC: Tremendous, tremendous. That's what opened, it set us free. Which is why were still having a lot of trouble getting along with the present hierarchy because, in my opinion, the present Pope and people in Rome are trying to undo what was done in Vatican II. I was fortunate enough to belong to the Sisters of Loretto. Mary Luke Tobin, who 54:00you may have heard of-- TK: Say the last name again? SC: Tobin. She was our head, our president between '58 and '70, and she was also president of a national organization for religious mother superiors. She was invited to attend, the only woman observer at Vatican II. So we got a lot of first-hand information, she is also a brilliant woman and she had started the renewal process with us earlier like late '50s. TK: Vatican II was '62? SC: '61. '61 I think, '61-'63, I think. So we had been reading and talking and getting our 55:00minds opened so that when--right away started to make significant changes in how we were organized and how we-- and really took away all the controls. Began to treat us like adults, which hadn't been before. That was a most significant event. TK: What difference if any did it make, this is obviously an opinion question, in your opinion, that Louisville, unlike so place like Nashville or Birmingham, had a large Catholic population? SC: It made a difference because you felt less discriminated against. There were more people like you around. 56:00When I say that, I realize that might be where some of my focus on working against oppression came from was the amount of prejudice we experienced as Catholics growing up in Nashville. Because we were made fun of and our neighborhood was by no means all-Catholic, there were a lot of kids around. It wasn't nasty or anything but you knew that you were not popular. Coming here and knowing so many more Catholics around made a difference in how you felt. TK: How did your mother's family end up in Nashville? SC: Her father was an immigrant 57:00from Germany and his sister had come over before him so here came to find her. How she got there I'm not sure, the story is not in the family lexicon. She had married a doctor in Nashville, they were from a little town in Germany called Varingtonstadt and she had come over where she married this doctor and they immigrated, there are a lot of Germans in Nashville and Louisville. TK: In Louisville, I know. SC: Strong German immigration into those areas partly because it looks like that part of Germany. It really does. TK: I know that Louisville is very much influenced-- END SIDE B, TAPE 1 START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A TK: --which is shocking to me, they all got there as convict labor in the 1700s. 58:00The other set of questions I had can sort of help to wrap up a little bit is some general reflections on the civil rights movement in Louisville, sort of your perspective. One question I always like to ask people is if you were writing this book on the civil rights movement in Louisville, when would you start it and when would you end it? SC: Well, I wouldn't end it because it's not over (laughs). The battle's not done and personally I'd start it, I don't know anything about it before 1961. I'm sure that the roots were way back but I'd 59:00don't know anything about it. So I would have a hard time starting it before then but the battle is not done. We're not an integrated city. We still have ghettos and Africans aren't treated justly. I don't know how you--you just have to stop arbitrarily somewhere if you're writing a history. TK: This is a couple, sort of in your memory, what do you think of, in your memory, how do you think the movement changed over time from the time you got here in '61 till yesterday? SC: I think there are fewer whites involved. I don't sense any organized work 60:00outside of the Alliance and Louis Coleman. I don't sense a lot of white participation in either of those, I know that there have been whites on his vigils. I haven't done it, I haven't been because I just generally don't see well at night. Unlike Anne, I get tired and I don't get out at night, I don't do that much. I do get out but I don't. So that's a big thing, I think. It's unfocused and it doesn't have the energy. I don't sense anybody with the kind of 61:00energetic organized commitment that got killed with [President] Richard Nixon. Right on up till, by the end of the Vietnam War, any organized protest stuff was gone. It was a very exciting time, the '60s were exciting. It turned my life around. But you don't get that anywhere anymore. I think with the assassinations, people got cynical and scared. TK: That was one of my questions, was one factor the assassinations? SC: Tremendous. It just really did--and so 62:00that (sighs) it feels so immense, the problems feel so immense that you know you have keep taking one little step but it doesn't, it doesn't have the same impact. TK: One question might be, what do you think have been some of the results? SC: Of? TK: Of the movement? SC: Well, there are certainly more well educated African Americans, certainly more people, I see more of them, I sense in many ways more openness and at the same time, there's still an awful lot of 63:00prejudice and oppression. I certainly see more, this is a mildly integrated neighborhood, I'm delighted to see when I see Africans around, I'm delighted to see. Although it's still, the bulk of the population is in the West End. TK: Because of my special focus, one question I would like to ask is, what do you think has been the contribution of different religious groups in the movement? 64:00SC: I certainly think that many of the, two different stories: the African American church leaders are vital and have been contributing enormously and have worked, dedicated on the issue. The white clergy, some were and some weren't, some have been and some Protestant, a lot--that was like my first acquaintance with Protestant ministers and I loved meeting them and they were wonderful people, many of them. I haven't heard as many of the Catholic clergy involved 65:00as--I didn't--when I look around the West End in the '60s, those guys that went to the institute were the only ones really doing anything. The pastor where I was didn't do anything, most of them. TK: That group was a fairly young group, weren't they? SC: Yeah, I would say we were all in our early forties or late thirties or early forties. TK: Were you going to say something else, I cut you off. SC: Yeah, I need to go check my fruitcake. TK: OK.(cont.) You had been talking about the role of the different churches, one of the things is and this is a suggestion Pat Delahanty made to me that he thought that it was in terms of the white churches, you can talk about white religious people but not really institutions as being involved. Is that? SC: I think that's right, I think 66:00that's right. As strong--this is a concern of many of us who work with social justice issues is that its not preached, it's not taught, it's a very strong document, several strong documents but it's by and large not taught in the churches and so you don't find them involved. TK: So people have to come to it on their own sort of thing and people might happen upon it. I interviewed Jim Flynn, wow, I really enjoyed that interview. SC: [unintelligible] ? TK: No, I, just in the office, I guess, where he works now and he talked about how he came to his ideas. Then, of course, I ask everybody is what is it about Louisville story that makes it interesting? Why should people know about Louisville? SC: 67:00The answer for me is so personal that it's totally only to do with my liberation. It's the place where I got out, where I began to really pursue what I wanted to pursue. It's a place where, it's a small enough place where you can get your hands around it but it's big enough that it provides a great variety but Louisville is knowable as opposed to New York or New Jersey or other places, it's a knowable place and so I can't speak civicly about it, I don't know as a civic community why it's any different from any place else or how it's different 68:00from any place else. I just know that it's such a friendly place and the only other metropolitan area I lived as an adult was in St. Louis and I actually hate St. Louis for many of those reasons, it's so big and you don't sense of hospitality that you do in Louisville. I can't give you any other answer. TK: That's OK, actually, that a really interesting answer and something makes me think of that because I did hear these stories about the name ? of the movement and the community in Louisville is also a story about personal liberation, not 69:00just groups. I have to think about that, very interesting little idea to follow up on. SC: Have other people said the same thing? TK: I'm just thinking about a story, this one woman, who the way she puts her story, was she had had five children and a hysterectomy by age twenty-one and she didn't have a high school degree, she's an African American woman who very, she's basically talked about the War on Poverty as being this sort of life-changing experience for her and I have also interviewed a sort of middle class African American woman who worked in the War on Poverty and talked about how she watched these women come alive. So I'm starting to think about this-- SC: It's because it was that era, that's what the '60s did for the whole world. There's a wonderful novel called Women's Room, have you ever read it? TK: I've heard of it, but I've not read it. SC: It's marvelous. The story of a mother who was cloistered in her home in the suburbs in the '50s and got free. It turned out when I read the book it was like, that's me. I just didn't have a husband and kids but she was a cloistered 70:00as I was and as restricted as I was and as held down. So all women were during those '40s and '50s and so this just kind of turned the world loose, opened the doors, but society changed so dramatically right then. It's not just the civil rights movement, it was the whole societal change. TK: I do think the civil rights movement has to be understood in the context of this broader--as probably the trigger, I think personally, the trigger for some of the broader changes but in general. SC: I think so because it's one of those, which comes first. TK: That really does give me something interesting to think about, and sort of how 71:00to see this differently. Two kind of bookkeeping questions are: is there any areas or subjects that you think I should be asking people that we haven't talked about? [pause] Or any suggestions, in other words, for ways I might take my research? SC: I'm trying to think. You're ending when? TK: Probably 1980ish. Although I'm considering doing a big epilogue because schools have come up again, police brutality has come up again. Schools are obviously what triggered; teacher equalization pay case triggers the whole darn thing. Schools come back, 72:00police brutality cases in the 1930s and '40s so that's come back and really with this West End secession thing, the idea of segregation has come back. I may do an epilogue basically talking about the issues of today and how they're connected. SC: The only thing is that the Council on Peacemaking was started in 1980. An interfaith group of people started it around the time of the Gulf War because of the mistreatment of people of Arabic decent. The focus was understanding the faiths of other religions and building tolerance. When the 73:00council reorganized, they also worked on the nuclear weapons freeze campaign was a major focus of the work, then when the wall came down, they started the mediation program as a way of teaching peacemaking skills, which is what they had been doing. Many of the people who were involved in the civil rights movement were also involved in founding the Council on Peacemaking. TK: Another potential direction in what might be to look at what happens to the people who start out in the civil rights movement, where do they go. That is one thing about Louisville that the Edwards interview taught me, is there's an immense variety in terms of progressive activity in Louisville. SC: Yes. TK: More than other cities, certainly more than other cities of its size. SC: Really, yeah. There is a tremendous amount-- TK: That's another possible direction to go in, that's a very interesting idea. SC: I see it as a part of a continuum, people working for social change. TK: Did you know Fred Hicks? Anthropology professor, 74:00white, lived in West, west, west, western end of Broadway, literally where it ends. He was in open housing, not Western Community Council, but he talked about that, too, he talked about the spin off into the Central American Solidarity Campaign. SC: Sounds familiar, OK. TK: Those are very interesting ideas to think about. SC: Is Dennis Bricking on your list? TK: I interviewed him for my FOR project, but I might go back and interview him, especially since people have told me that he would be able to tell me about the tenant's rights people and the welfare rights people and people I need to find who I don't yet have. So that whole spin off I don't have yet. Any one else I should be interviewing that you would want to suggest? SC: You got Gill Schroerlucke? TK: He's on my list, I 75:00haven't-- SC: You got Tom Moffet? TK: He's on my list. I don't know how to get in touch with Schroerlucke; it is the only thing, he's not in the phone book. SC: He may be dead, I'm not sure. TK: It seems to me that there's a general sense that he isn't, but I don't know if he lives in a home or because people who live in nursing homes, there's no address for them in the phone book. SC: Yeah. I don't know. I have no idea. TK: Was it a Methodist church? SC: Uh-huh. TK: Maybe I'll check at a Methodist church. SC: They might be able to tell you. I think you have everybody. TK: That's how I get people. END TAPE 2