Interview with Pat Delahanty, September 3, 1999

START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A TRACY K'MEYER: This is an interview with Pat Delahanty by Tracy K'Meyer in Reverend Delahanty's office on Friday September 3, 1999. Lots of stuff just to get started with, I'd like some basic biographical information like when and where were you born. REV. PAT DELAHANTY: I was born in Morganfield, Kentucky, at --there was an Army base there at the time, which is now a Job Corps center. It was April 5, 1943. TK: Was your father in the service at the time? PD: Yeah, he was there and then when he went overseas, my mother came here because that's where his family was from and so I've pretty much been here ever since. TK: Who were your parents, what were their names? PD: Richard and Madeline Delahanty. Nobody would know him as Richard; he was called Pat by 1:00everybody. TK: OK., are you a Jr.? PD: No. TK: So you said you came to Louisville fairly soon after being born, where did you go to school? PD: Most Blessed Sacrament [grade school], St. Thomas More, Trinity [High School], St. Thomas Seminary, St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore and U of L. TK: The U of L that was the program you told me about when you came back after you had already been working. PD: Right. TK: Why did you become a priest? PD: I really don't know, people ask that all the time. I'm not sure, it really is a mystery to me in some ways. I don't know exactly why. I mean there were priests that I admired, that probably had something to do with it. Parents maybe had 2:00something to do with. I always tell people I didn't want to take senior high physics. TK: That's a good reason. PD: They weren't teaching that at the seminary. TK: Do you remember when you made the decision? PD: It was, yeah, sometime during the summer after the junior year of high school. TK: You went straight into seminary then, right? PD: I just transferred to, at that time there was what they called a minor seminary here which means four years of high school and two years of college. Most of those are all gone now. I don't know if there's any left in the country. So I made--I finished senior year there, then you stay for two years of college, then you go to what they call major seminary, 3:00you finish two years of seminary of college and four years of post graduate work. That's what I did. Bad mistake on the part, the--I was just telling someone today the senior year, Trinity was such a good school and this seminary was such a bad school when I finally got there that year I had already translated the Latin [unintelligible -- Aeneid?] at Trinity so I had my translation of that. We had an English teacher who thought it was challenging to learn forty vocabulary words in a six-week period. He taught Macbeth which I already had twice at Trinity, the rest of it was religion and the rest of it was study hours because I'd had all the other courses. So it was just insane. TK: You didn't have much of a senior year? PD: Well, I read, I read, when I was at Trinity, I was in journalism class and at that time, the state allowed journalism students to get an English credit. They cycled the literature course, 4:00seniors generally took English and juniors generally took American, I had English and had never had American, so that year I just read and read and read and read and read. It was a great year for that. TK: You just read American literature. PD: Yeah, novel after novel and I read [Carl] Sandburg's entire Lincoln, that's all I had to do. I had 146 study hours a week and the courses weren't challenging because I had already done the translation and the English course was a joke. TK: Could you just again, just for the record, list your job history, then how did you end up back in Louisville after the seminary? PD: Well, when you study for diocese, as opposed to being in a religious order, you have to come back to that diocese. So, if I had studied for Indianapolis, I'd have to be somewhere in the Indianapolis diocese. But usually people end up studying for the one they live in. So that's basically how I did that. TK: I 5:00didn't know that, that's different than, like in a Protestant, like in a Presbyterian or something. You can end up anywhere. PD: Right. If you join a religious order, you can end up anywhere that order works, but if you're a diocesan priest, you're in that diocese. You can change but you have to get the bishop's permission to move and the other bishop's permission to-- TK: Take you. PD: Yeah, to take you, if he doesn't want you, or if he doesn't need people, then he says no. TK: So you sort of always knew you would be going back to Louisville when you went off to school. PD: Right. TK: One kind of question I like to ask about, so when you're growing up in school before becoming a priest, in other words, how aware were you of racial prejudice and segregation? PD: Not 6:00really too aware, although I always remember my mother very clearly teaching us--I think what happened, I must have been about seven because I can remember where we lived and my sister would have been about two and got frightened by the men who were picking up the garbage, they were black. I remember vaguely my mother saying there's nothing wrong with this, it's just the color of people's skin, they're still people or something like that. She would always--I mean she sit next to who ever she wanted to and sometimes go out of her way to make, on a bus or something, in those days that's all there was, and so I wasn't aware of the prejudice so much. I didn't even know, but I didn't know either that there was a black of --school, Catholic high school, called Colored Catholic High 7:00right down town. I didn't know that. TK: I didn't know that either. PD: It's been torn down in urban renewal. I think it was at Eight or Ninth and Broadway or what was Walnut or Chestnut, right in the area. But I didn't know that, I mean, I knew something was wrong once, when I was working at a bingo, we worked at a bingo when I was in grade school. The boys all worked in the colored section, and I don't know, I guess that didn't dawn on me that there was something wrong with that, but the girls couldn't work in there. I guess protecting white women from black people; it was all part of it at that time. That had to be--that had to be--let's see, born in '43, I would have been about twelve in the seventh or eighth grade, twelve or thirteen so it would have been 8:00'55-'56, somewhere in there. I mean that's so bizarre now to even think that that happened, but I'm sure it did. That's about the only time you'd see black people except picking garbage up or something like that. TK: Where did you live in town? PD: Out in the South End. TK: South End. PD: I lived at 22nd and Portland until I was about five, then we lived on a small street called Parthinia and then Woodruff and then, I can't think of the name of it, I can go to it but it was close to National Turnpike, can't think of the name of that street, anyway. TK: Where was your mom from, you said she wasn't from here? PD: St. Louis. I don't know much; my mother was very strange. I don't know very much about her family, we know she had a family, when she died, we found a photograph of what we suspect are her parents but she never talked about it, never ever. 9:00And we have no idea why, very strange. TK: How did they meet, do you know? PD: No. I don't know. TK: That's interesting. So you said that your mother sort of had sort of talked to you a little bit about race there, do you remember learning about race from any other source, about race relations? PD: No, not really, nothing else stands out in my mind. I mean there was--I don't remember a black child in any school that I went to except in Pewee Valley, I went St. Aloysius for a few months. But they moved out there and I was in the eighth grade and they were doing the seventh grade that year. They cycled because it 10:00was a small school and I'd had all the courses so I came back and stayed with a couple and finished over at St. Thomas More. There were a couple black guys at Trinity and that's about it in terms of school and contacts. TK: You would have been at Trinity, then, in the late '50's? PD: '58 to '60, three years. TK: Can you remember what was the first incidence of civil rights activity that you were aware of, either locally or nationally or both? PD: You mean somebody doing something? TK: Yeah. PD: No, I don't know what the first one was. My recollection comes more from working first on the opening of a halfway house in 11:00Baltimore because I went to school there and there was a priest trying to start something similar to like a Dismas House for ex-offenders. We were, the school was located at the time right in the urban renewal area and the school was so old, it had to be torn down. So we were right in the middle of the all black, primarily all black neighborhood, which was right on the edge of downtown Baltimore. So this guy wanted to open this halfway house and he came over and asked us to help him go door to door and get a petition signed. So we did and we 12:00went to the zoning meeting and piled up the room with supporters and stuff like that and won. So that was a nice little taste of victory. That had nothing to do with race so much, as I recall, but it was an introduction to the urban area in a way that was interesting to me. The clearest thing I remember was the night [Dr. Martin Luther] King was killed, standing on top of the school and watching the city burn down. TK: Which school? PD: St. Mary's. TK: That's in Baltimore still. PD: Yeah, at that time, that was the, by that time I was in post-graduate and that was in Roland Park, which is outside the downtown area but you can stand on the roof and you can see these fires and stuff. Then the next day the cardinal gave us five thousand dollars to go and buy food for--to give away to people because the people were looting and that was just incredible. You don't know how much food five thousand dollars in 1968 can buy. I mean you can buy a 13:00lot of canned food, I mean cheap canned food. It took us all day to load the truck, then we went down to Phil Berrigan's parish and unloaded the food and I presume he distributed it. It was--to see the National Guard on every corner by that time, I mean the troops were out and it was armed and it was really interesting. Maybe I--I probably had some awareness of civil rights because of [President John F.] Kennedy, which would have been earlier than this, obviously, because they were by that time talking about equality and the marches had begun and there were newspaper accounts, I just can't--I don't remember which particular one sparked any interest. I know it was--by that time we were talking about it in school at the college level and everything and the war was going on, 14:00or beginning to heat up the Vietnam thing, it was all tied together. TK: Yeah, one of the first things you learned either of formally in lectures or informally in discussions with your classmates at seminary about race relations in particular but social issues and what you should do about them. PD: It was a great time -- I mean looking at them it's pretty depressing, where we are, because everybody had such hopes that it would be so different and that we were actually at a place where it was going to be different. People were going to be treated fairly, treated equally and --"Hair" was out, it was the Age of Aquarius and everyone was popping pills and doing dope and all that-- it was that whole period was just a fantastic ride. To look back and know that it didn't ultimately end up happening the way you thought it might can be depressing. TK: 15:00So just to clarify, you were out of Louisville then from 19--? PD: 1963 to '69. TK: '69. Before you left were you involved with or aware of or pay much attention to the open accommodations campaign, because that would have been just before you left? PD: I knew it was going because my uncle was involved in it. He was arrested several times. TK: What was his name? PD: Bob Delahanty. TK: That's Dolores's husband? PD: Yeah, but he's dead, though. He was involved, for years he was involved with stuff like that. He was the kind of guy that didn't make any money practicing law. He took cases that, you know, longhair cases in 16:00E-town, I believe, and you win the right to wear your hair the way you want to and the school can't tell how. There was just a whole slew of these kind of things that went on that he participated in. He and Neville Tucker and Tom Hogan eventually, who's dead, Darryl-- TK: Owen [Owens]? PD: Owen. TK: Yeah, tell me why that was? PD: He was involved, don't put that on tape. TK: OK. What was the rest of the family's reaction to your Uncle Bob's? Involvement in all this stuff? PD: Well, I don't know what he--Dolores was, I'm sure-- TK: She was out there, too, wasn't she? PD: Oh yeah, my mother was not involved in politics in any way. Her goal in life was to keep your name out of the newspapers, 17:00she's--and daddy drank so much that his name had been in the paper occasionally. TK: [unintelligible] PD: And he wrote for the paper also, he was a sports reporter. She would avoid, she would never get involved in a political thing. TK: So you were aware of the open accommodation thing? PD: But I wasn't involved in it, I mean I was-- TK: You would have been in high school? PD: I was sixteen or seventeen years old and lived in Pewee Valley at that point. So I'm so far away from downtown Louisville or any other part of Louisville. You read about it but you driving to Trinity and drive back there and because of the distance, I didn't really participate in after-school kinds of things, so I wasn't in touch 18:00with that stuff at that time. TK: So coming back in 1969 when you would have, what was going on when you got back here in town? PD: Well actually I spent the summer of, when I came back in 1968 by that time I knew I wanted to work in an urban area and there was this team of priests had just been appointed to a parish, which at that time had the name of St. Charles Borromeo. TK: Could you spell that please? PD: Borromeo. TK: OK. PD: It's closed now but these four priests: Tony Heitzman, Vernon Robinson, Paul Dabbin and Charles Mackin. Tony worked for the Community Action Agency, Vernon took care of the pastoral aspects of the parish, Charlie taught at Flaget and I'm not sure what Paul did, I can't 19:00remember. It seems to me he was a writer or something but I don't remember what Paul did. So I asked to go there for the summer as a deacon and I was sent there. TK: Where was that? PD: It's at 27th and Chestnut. Vernon was leaving for Africa for a month to recruit African priests with the idea that by at least having somebody around who was a priest and black, there would be some at least people would see you could do that and so-- TK: Vernon was white as well? PD: Yeah. TK: I knew the rest of them were but he the one I didn't know. PD: In some ways that worked and others ways it didn't because the Africans didn't identify with American black people in fact, they just didn't. They didn't do anybody any 20:00harm, they just didn't do anybody any good especially. I mean they're nice guys but they're, they didn't have the history of slavery and all this other kind of stuff and they just didn't identify with it. TK: Were you able to bring some here though? PD: Yeah, we brought three and then two came back later for further studies. Joseph Balakadembi and Father Francis and I can't remember the third guy lived at Christ the King, I can't remember his name. So, that summer was fascinating, it was right after the riots here and it was still hot and tense and people were trying to do the right thing and figure out what to do and there 21:00were meetings and things like that. Vernon had a lot of money and had bought a place on Broadway around 38th, I think, 37th or 38th called, he named it "The Happening" and he promoted, he tried to promote talent of young black kids, that could come there during the day and learn to do sculpting or dance or sing or play and then Fridays and I think Saturdays it would be open to the public for a quarter or fifty cents you could get in and somehow I don't know if that's the West Side Players or somehow grew out of that, I don't think that's exactly the case but they--a lot of the kids who were in the players would hang out in there and do their thing. A place to hang out and drink some coffee and coke whatever. 22:00That was interesting. TK: What age group kids was it aimed at? PD: The kids that I saw in there, they'd be like high school to young adult, early college something like that and then maybe some younger kids during the day. I never really was down there during the day when Laura was teaching art or anything because I was doing other things during the day. I was kind of because I was not going, nobody knew that I would be coming back there I was just going to be a deacon for a summer, I'd kind of work with some of the kids in the neighborhood and that kind of stuff. You always stick the young priest with kids, you know. Did some of that, forget exactly what activities, we had some activities and there was a nun, a black nun named Pat Haley who lives in, I think, Philadelphia now. Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, she's a Charity, Sister of Charity, Nazareth 23:00and she was, I don't think--I'm not sure she must have just been finishing fully entering the order or something like that. TK: Was she from Louisville? PD: Alabama, can't remember the town but Alabama. She'd seen a lot of stuff; she'd been very active in marches and all that kind of stuff. Then I went back to school for the final year and then I asked to--Davin left the priesthood during--not long after that summer. He--so there was a space there in a sense for somebody and so I asked if I could be on that team and it happened. By that time Heitzman and I--Tony had already done a year and then I entered U of L in 24:00this program in political science, I think, the degree is in community development, the degree's in political science and it was a community development program by Joe Maloney. Interesting concept to be a generalist and to have this was geared for working people and then they would use wherever they were working to do their work, their research and stuff like that. Heitzman and I wrote the book, a book on--at that time there were either fifteen or thirteen parishes left in the West End, we just did an assessment on you know what conditions the buildings were in, how much savings they had with the 25:00Archdiocese, what was the make-up of the community, the demographic make-up, if they're all seventy and they wouldn't be eighty, how long will there be a parish. Did that analysis and one of the main things that came up, we said that what we really need is a, what ended up being called the West End Catholic Council and these parishes working together. TK: I need to ask about what that was, because I heard it mentioned before. PD: He became the first coordinator for that and was paid to coordinate and help the parishes work together. Then when he took over Sacred Heart parish he and Mac took that over, Vernon and I stayed at St. Charles and we tried to work those parishes together. We shared, we helped each other, we'd go down and help their bingo and do different things. Well, finally, it became clear that because the roof at that parish became so bad and they could not afford to repair it, they closed it and that's where, the 26:00house is still there and a group of nuns live there. Kathleen Sheehan, the woman who does the St. John's, she stills lives at 17th and Broadway. TK: Someone just suggested that I interview her actually. PD: Yeah, she'd be worth it, well, they were really involved in demonstrations and stuff like that. Not only civil rights though but in housing and stuff like that. They got arrested for, I don't know, doing stuff. TK: No, I heard this. PD: I can't remember. Well, the house was so dilapidated, some slum lord they were protesting about, I can't think of why they got arrested, I don't know if they chained themselves, they may have chained themselves to the house or something, I don't know what they did. But it was fun and so then Mackin and Heitzman moved to Immaculate Heart because that had been operated by a group of priests who belonged to an order and they gave 27:00up the parish and gave it back to the diocese and it's a key black parish so they took that. Then we, we didn't work together that much as a team as we had, because that was--there's really, there's an amazing division Broadway creates if you're on one side and the other in terms of working and how, where you and how you did things. It was fascinating how that works and the next division was between it was either Market or Main and you get Portland and --and you cross that boundary and you're just in a different world and --in terms of the West End Catholic Council, the members would show up for meetings. The only meeting each year that most people would attend was one where there was money was distributed. The rest of the time it ended up being the parishes that primarily had black population meeting, the white parishes never seriously participated. St. George didn't participate; St. Ann's withdrew from the region and went to 28:00the South End. There was some really bad leadership. They were just older and they just didn't get it. TK: Did the priest at those, at those-- PD: That's who I am talking about. TK: O.K. PD: Obviously the leadership-- TK: So the members who were in the West End Catholic Council were the priests, not the rank and file. PD: No, no it was made up of-- the way I think each parish had three people, you'd have the pastor and two lay people, but they just didn't come. St. Cecilia's didn't come. They had a priest; they had a priest there at the time who still used the word nigger. I mean you knew where he was coming from. And 29:00Our Lady's, St. Colombo's, St. Colombo participated some, not much, but it was one this side of Market which is, I mean, it was still in a way, that's why they participated some, they weren't in that block. The chief participants were Christ the King, Immaculate Heart, St. Charles, Holy Cross, St. Benedict's, somewhat, St. William's to some extent but mostly when there was money. I think St. William's at that time was the parish that was really up to date after Vatican II. They did the liturgy and the whole business and they were socially minded and they started that center way, way back. They got into housing issues way early. At the same, but--I don't know how you do it, I don't want to fault 30:00anybody, I just don't -- in terms their actual attendance at church, there were probably two black people in an all-black neighborhood that went there. But it wasn't traditionally a black church, so at that time, most black people were still going to St. Augustine, Immaculate Heart, and St. Peter Claver. Those were the three churches, they would go to others, eventually that would happened, so there would be no reason to go to St. William's, it would be going out of your way. Anyway, it was interesting and participated somewhat. The council did start, they had some good activities--this funding, they would submit the grants to the coordinator and a couple of people would read through these and see, if they met some of our goals and stuff like that and then we would approve or not approve. TK: So where does the money for the West End--? PD: Came from the diocese. TK: Came from the diocese. PD: Fifty or sixty thousand a year, I forget what it was. So they --grants would be five and ten thousand dollar grants to 31:00run small programs in parishes, or two or three parishes working together to provide-- TK: What kind of program? PD: I ran summer reading program for ten years where we had, and they didn't fund it all ten years, but some of the funding came through there. We had eight and ninth grade kids who started out, whose parents made just enough money that they couldn't work in the summer jobs, 'cause they weren't eligible. So these kids would volunteer and we would teach first, second and third graders how to read. Because the theory being that you don't read during the summer, your retention diminishes. We had kids advance like a grade level and it was correlated directly to whether you were there every day or not. And to get people there every day, if you were there every day you got to go to an overnight camping trip every week. But it was not just reading, it was art, dance, West Side Players did drama, there was a real nice 32:00little program. So it was that kind of stuff. TK: These parishes that actually participated were mostly black parishes. PD: At that --By that time they were. They still had white parishioners though. They were traditionally white parishes but white people had moved. The Vernon always tells the story about that he was not a Catholic but an Episcopal priest at first and wandering around in his own way he went to St. Charles to talk to a priest there. And the priest said, well, this parish is pretty dead, nobody lives here anymore. It struck Vernon, nobody lives here anymore, 100,000 people lived in the neighborhood, but in that guy's 33:00mind and in most people's mind, they did not see black people as potential members. They would go to the black church or the African American Baptist church or wherever they went, but you wouldn't go recruit them, crazy to try to do that. That's what the guy meant, Vernon thought that was nuts. When he got ordained in the Catholic Church, he wanted to go do this team ministry kind of thing, in that neighborhood to see what you could do. Not necessarily to convert everybody to Catholicism or anything like that, but just to let them know that the church had an interest in their lives and opened up the doors to them--that kind of thing. One of the things -- one way we did, we did, we built a geodesic dome inside St. Charles, that was the worship space and we could use the rest of 34:00it and Vernon opened up the Montessori school which has become Urban Montessori. In a room half the size of this has become the first classroom. The house next door to the church, had been owned, by the Raffo family and Father Charles Raffo was the first pastor and his family gave the money for this house. As the school expanded, we turned that whole house into a Montessori school, and it was great. It was for the community. That was part of the whole team thing we'd meet every week and try to get ideas and stuff. What do we do and what's going on and that kind of stuff. The Sister Visitors came out of that -- TK: What Sister Visitors? PD: That's a program that now operates out of Catholic Charities. It was meant to be and what generally happens to this day, many Catholic charities have what is called the St. Vincent De Paul Society. What members of that group would do 35:00was if someone came to the door and said, "Father, I can't pay the rent," the priest would call up one of these guys and they would go visit the family and see if that was true, are they poor or just somebody that wants a check or something. One Sunday a month they would stand at the door and take up a collection from people as they left and that would be the money used to pay rent and buy medicine and that sort of stuff. The parishes, in the West End, had gotten so small, or the men, at that time I think they only had men in it, now they have men and women. The group was gone, so if someone came to the door, it was the priest who was going to do this, and you do have people who come and they're just con artists and you give them some money and then they go to the next parish and they so--what we did, Charlie Macon actually had this idea, 36:00let's get a couple nuns, and pay them to do some of this direct aid and they can clear it, which is all these parishes, if somebody comes to your door, you go over to Sister Visitors and they'll take care of you. And then the parishes would kick in to some money to pay the nuns and then the CSA, that same thing through the West End cabinet council, there was money. I think, I may be wrong on that. But in the beginning I think there was. TK: CSA stands for? PD: Catholic Services Appeal drive, that's the source of the funds. Then we hired one or two people at the time. The main thing Mackin wanted to see happen was to have somebody advocating for the poor to change policies and to cut red tape and to do these kinds of things. But it ended up, to this day, it's primarily a direct aid thing, it's one of the largest in the whole West End. Thousands of 37:00dollars paying LG&E and it's the kind of things Catholics like to do in terms of giving and probably other people, too. It's so concrete, they can send their dollar down there and not worry about freezing to death and it makes them feel good. Advocacy is not something they want to pay for. It ends up being direct services. It has undergone changes, it is bigger, and they do have self-esteem courses and the, with the welfare law changes, there are a bunch of things that happened, which would never have happened in the early seventies. That's why it got started so people could be sent to a common place, and you knew they were going to get some help if they deserved, not deserved, but needed help as opposed to ripping off every parish within a four and a half blocks. You give 38:00somebody food and they go and sell it on the streets, it's the same as giving them money. TK: What order were the nuns from? PD: Sisters of Charity, Janet Daugherty, I think was the first. TK: I have a background question. You talk about this team ministry that was that established? How was it organized? PD: That was happening in different parts of the country. And at that time there was a "let's see how this works" type of thing. Vernon read about it and Heitzman had been teaching at Trinity, wanted --he had been there for years and wanted a change. Dab in the same way. Macklin, they were all teachers at Trinity and they saw these needs because of race issues and poverty, not just race, it was both 39:00race and poverty. They said, let's go see how that works. [Thomas] McDonough was bishop by then; he must have just become bishop. He was new-- TK: So they just go to him with this idea? PD: They must have, yeah--I really don't remember hearing them talk about it much. I remember reading about it in the Record. 'Cause we would get the Record at school, it's a Catholic newspaper. TK: Is that a local, like Kentucky diocese paper? PD: This diocese, Louisville--Yeah. TK: What was the official title of this little program, Team Ministry? PD: Yeah, I think they called it Team Ministry, St. Charles--Team Ministry. TK: What about it appealed to you, wanted you to participate in it? PD: Well, because--first of 40:00all, where it was and the concept is, you didn't have, in most places you had a pastor and associates and this was more of a peer relationship where there were specific responsibilities an that just appealed to me more. The other didn't appeal to me at all. Still doesn't appeal to me, and I'm the pastor. TK: So when you went, this team issue, was it funded as a regular minister would be or was it funded through some kind of special-- PD: They were working like-- Vernon's salary was paid by the parish, because he was taking care of the pastoral stuff, Heitzman was working for the Community Action Agency, so they would pay his 41:00salary. I think Davin had to be working somewhere, I can't remember where though, for the life of me, I really can't and Mackin was a teacher at Flaget. So they were funding their salaries from different sources like that. The parish itself, the way parishes operated in those days, and still do, is that if you have extra money in a parish, rather than put in a bank, you are suppose to send it to the chancery office and they invest it. And they give the parish interest on that money and the parish can have that money if they need it for something, so it doesn't stay with the diocese. St. Charles, and those West End parishes, because they were old parishes, had tons of money that they could use and we would get into that, if we had to. That would help fund some parish activities and stuff like that. The parish was small, I mean, it was 125-150 members. Now people would say you had four priests working in that parish with 150 people and I'm out here with 1200 people by myself. You'd be hard pressed to talk anybody 42:00into doing that. But that time it still had priest--that was also a couple of years of really big losses in the diocese--lots of guys left. TK: Ministers, priests-- PD: On that team ministry, everybody left but Vernon and me, eventually. TK: What was the demographics of that parish that you were sent to? PD: It was still about, I'm going to guess, it was about attendance half white who eventually, these were people who didn't move, they eventually died. And people got along well, the people who were there, they were nice people. They were people who worked together and, at least I didn't sense that they cared whether someone was black or not, and they seemed to be as welcoming of black 43:00parishioners and vice versa. I think the people who thought differently had already moved. For the most part, these weren't people who got stuck, they all had houses, they could all sell them and move if they wanted to, they just decided to stay. I can't think of any one who was really weird. TK: What was the--if you were going to characterize, what were the problems you were sent there to address? PD: It was primarily race and poverty, housing, slum landlords, city services, bad cops, no youth programs. Here is a great story. 44:00The Catholic School Athletic Association is an organization that is primarily met to provide opportunities for kids to engage in sports. I don't what they run exactly, but I know they run football, basketball, maybe volleyball and they are considered, their basketball league is still considered one of the best in the city. TK: I've heard that. PD: We put together a team of kids in the neighborhood and we played and we were winning and somehow, I don't know exactly what happened to trigger this, but we were told that our team couldn't participate anymore. And why is that? You are supposed to be either Catholic or 45:00attending a Catholic school. I said, but our parish doesn't have a school, it was closed. Well that didn't matter, you can't play them. You don't seem to understand what Catholic means. What they thought we were doing, I guess they presumed we would walk over to the local basketball court and pick the five best players and put them on a team and enter in this league. They would say things like, "Why do you want to play in this league?" Well, it's the best league in the city, why wouldn't we want to play in it? They'd say why don't you play in Y league or Baptist league or something. We took them to mediation and we almost won. We had a lawyer, we did the whole thing, the guy works next door was helping the parish. I forget what year this was. It was because they were black, 46:00I'm almost positive. There's going to be black players here and there among these kids, but for the most part, those schools are pretty white--and we were winning. Some of the kids were Catholic and came to church there and these other kids were their friends. But because we didn't have a school, they couldn't play because they didn't have a Catholic school to go to. 'Cause the Catholics had closed the school. Therefore, they can't play. Bizarre. These guys had run this program for years, I don't know if they still do or not. That was my last contact with them. That was one incident I'll never forget. I should have taken them to court. TK: What happened to the -- you mentioned there was a black, colored Catholic high school or something. I never heard of that before, what 47:00happened to it? What can you tell me about it? PD: I don't know anything about it. I don't remember ever seeing it. I'm sure I rode past it on a bus and just didn't know what it was. I don't know. TK: This was before you became a priest. PD: Oh, yeah. I think it closed in the early 60s. I think it was that long. I just--I wasn't going to go there, you know. That was already a given --nobody would even mention it to you. That was not-- that was the bizarre thing, you know, nobody came to your class and said are you going to go to Colored Catholic High. It was presumed, if you were at Thomas More, you were going to go to DeSales, you lived in the neighborhood. The main reason I went to Trinity, it was the closest school to Pewee Valley. That's how it was done. But for them it wasn't done that way at all. They could live in Pewee Valley and then go to Colored Catholic High, although like I said, there were kids that lived in Pewee that didn't go to Trinity. But if you lived in town, I don't think, the thought 48:00was maybe I'll go --the DeSales or Flaget. I think everybody's thought was I'm going to go to Colored Catholic High or Central. That was the choice. Not necessarily a bad choice, I don't know anything about the school and people do speak favorably of it. But I mean that was-- the church played into that whole myth and--and that's the way it was. TK: Was there an official policy in terms of segregation or integration for church parishes or institutions. PD: No. I'm sure there was no official policy, but at the same time, at St. Charles a black person wouldn't have been told to leave, but there was a sign on the back pew that said, "For Colored Only." And that's where they sat and if you wanted go to 49:00Communion, you wait until everyone else goes. So that kind of customs were there. I often wondered why anyone black would want to be Catholic. TK: Why's that? PD: Well, to be treated --you can come to Communion last and you can sit in the back pew. Well, why in the hell--at a white church. You do anything you wanted at St. Augustine, that's where their church is. TK: How large was the black Catholic population in Louisville? PD: I don't know. It's --I'd have to go to that book to find out. TK: The book that you wrote. PD: We have population figures there and they are probably broken down by race, is my guess. It's not large. Personally the estimates they make now are way out of line. I don't believe them at all. TK: A little inflated? PD: I have a feeling they are little 50:00inflated. TK: You had mentioned some church with a majority black or black only Catholic Church? PD: Yeah, St. Peter Claver, St. Augustine and Immaculate Heart were formed to serve to black population of Catholics. TK: Formed by the diocese? PD: Yeah, I mean-- this goes back over a hundred years. Immaculate Heart is the newest one. It's probably been in place about thirty-five years. It was built to serve people who lived in the project area. Out near, the place they tore down recently, Park DuValle. Agustine was there to serve anybody and 51:00then Peter Claver was Smoketown was one of the earliest developments for black people, so the church had a small parish there. They wanted to serve them, plus in those days, when these things were founded, you didn't have cars and stuff. It had to locate somewhere near people, so that was how that would develop. It was clear, I mean, this is for black people I don't know enough to be sure--I can't say white people never went there, but it was highly unlikely. TK: Were there any, when you were first back in town and in the 70s, were there any black Catholic priests? PD: Ed Branch, he was a Xavierian Brother teaching at Flaget 52:00and he went to seminary, and just this week he celebrated twenty-five years. But there were other black priest from this diocese, but not working in the diocese, because of the way they were meant to feel. It was clear,-- if you can get hold of Giles Conwell, he can give you his whole story about how rejected he felt. TK: What's his name? PD: Giles Conwell. He's in San Francisco, I think. His mother's name is Louella Stiff, I think that's in the phone book here. TK: So he left town because of this? PD: Well he had to join another diocese, because he wasn't particularly welcome here. And he's a genius. That whole family is incredible. His sister teaches at Hunter, another brother is an internationally 53:00known African American artist. One brother is a psychiatrist, Giles and this brother, who is a psychiatrist got arrested by the cops here one night, not knowing they were arresting a priest and a psychiatrist, thinking they were black and they were in a car, the cops ended up having to apologize and eat that one. We thought they were to two robbers-- crazy. Giles would have an interesting story. Ed Branch, I mean, he was--twenty-five years ago was when he got ordained, so that puts it 5-4-74 right, yeah. He's in Atlanta. He's coming 54:00back to the diocese sometime soon. He has not lived here much; he's from Washington, D.C., originally. He's not going to know anything much prior to when he came. I guess he taught at Flaget for the last two or three years it was open, and then he was away at school. And then he was here for awhile at St. Benedict, which is the parish which closed, and then he's been at Emory, or somewhere, not Emory. Yeah, maybe Emory ever since. But he will have experiences; he's on the black priest speaking circuit and things like that. The other guy, there is another black priest from here, but he's a Benedictine, his name is Boniface Hardin. He would be very interesting to talk to 'cause he grew up here. His brother is John Hardin, and I think he's in the book. Boniface can be found, he's Benedictine out of St. Meinrad's, but he works in Indianapolis. 55:00He has run community programs there for years. He did a major sickle cell anemia thing and other stuff. Boniface is a great guy to talk to. TK: He's from here? Became a priest and then -- PD: He joined the Benedictine Order. And so he's working up there. He should have some memories; Boniface has got to be near sixty-five, seventy, maybe. As a child he should have some of the early memories that you're thinking of, where they lived and that kind of thing. TK: Was the church--I don't know how to phrase this question. Was the church hierarchy integrated at all and if it became so, when? PD: The hierarchy? TK: The local 56:00church, the diocese leadership and stuff. PD: You mean the bishop? TK: Yeah. PD: No, his office. TK: Now I know that in other churches like most of my work has been on Presbyterians and Baptists and they have a lot of, within the church they have different social action agencies and organizations like that. Does the Catholic Church have similar things? What's that like here, kind of different social action stuff do they have here? PD: Yeah, well, it used to be--this doesn't exist right now as it used to, there was an organization, an archdiocesan agency called the Peace and Justice Commission. Have you, did anybody tell you to interview Father [Alfred] Horrigan? TK: I was under the impression he passes away. PD: Did he die? TK: No, I just assumed because he must be kind of old. PD: He's in a nursing home, but I think his mind is still good. You need to talk, this guy was a major leader and I think his mind is still where--well, I'm told, if he died it had to be while I was out of the country. TK: I would love to talk to him. I have just assumed because he would be quite elderly. PD: He is elderly.TK: He's been head of Bellarmine? PD: He was 57:00the head of Bellarmine, then he was also the first director of this Peace and Justice Commission and he was also on the Louisville-Jefferson County Human Rights Commission during some really interesting times. Horrigan is just a giant, I mean he is just incredible. This commission got established not long before or shortly after the busing decision and we tried to do everything we could to craft something to make sure that Catholic schools did not become havens. We had parishes, I mean suddenly, they just needed this extra classroom. We got so many kids now and they're all, and they were, they were just little Catholic kids that had been going to public schools. I forget what the regulations were that we came up with, but we put a real dent in that effort, I 58:00think we pretty well stopped at least we made it clear this would not be a good thing to do as far as a Catholic is concerned. Horrigan and I forget who else, I was on the first one, he was on it, he was the chair and director, there were a bunch of good people on there. Then that commission continued for years--then two or three years ago, it was--it had gotten to be kind of just a group of people getting together and meeting, I mean that how it was seen, anyway it was closed. What it was supposed to be doing, the advocacy and that kind of stuff was shifted into the parish social ministry at Catholic Charities. It's still there, there's a legislative action network, there are people who go into 59:00parishes and show them how, when they talk about needs, they're not talking about just their need but the community needs and things of that sort and now they have reassembled a committee of people who are gonna--who will be asked about social justice issues, as they, they'll be a consulting group of some kind. I'm not clear because I'm not tied into it anymore but that still exists. Then in parishes you have service committees which are not meant to be only these direct needs kinds of things they're meant to be broader than that and so in those ways they try to address some of these issues. One of the things they've been doing lately, for example, is that every year there is usually a meeting in Washington, in February, the U.S. Catholic Conference with the 60:00emphasis on the-- END SIDE A TAPE 2 BEGIN SIDE B TAPE 2 TK: I've heard of that PD: This meeting takes place in Washington, this year they didn't because they went to this big meeting in LA. When they were Washington, we would go up on the Hill and lobby on specific issues that we had interests in. Land mines and some of the various social justice stuff. What they did this year, since they didn't have that meeting, they are doing what they call scatterings. The office here at Catholic Charities, they are bringing people together from parishes and then they are meeting with the Kentucky members of Congress. About three or four issues of social justice: minimum wage, a fair minimum wage. I forget what the other ones are. They are pulling that together so that kind of thing does go on. 61:00It may go on differently than it does in other denominations but that's how-- In this diocese, that's the way this diocese does it. Others will do it differently. Back in the days of '68, none of that existed, until the Commission of Peace and Justice was put in place. TK: That's what I was going to ask is there any history? PD: Not that I know of. I'm not aware of any. No, I don't think so. TK; So before Peace and Justice thing which is just before busing, it would be early mid-70's. No official organization history. Was there any history of either particular Catholic leaders or individuals--? PD: Yeah, you had people like Horrigan and then you had Rich Grenough, you familiar-- TK: I have heard the name, why have I heard the name? PD: He headed something, he's very important actually. Rich Grenough, I don't remember the name of the 62:00organization, but he had this bi-racial organization of some kind that can't remember the name of that. He was arrested a lot of times. He was a strong leader, and his brother too, his brother was teaching at Trinity, John was. But Rich as more that activist at that time. He really did a good job. I'm pretty sure he's in the book if not, he works for Humana, he's a trainer. Writes programs for them, training people, whatever they do. TK: Was he--so he was a lay Catholic? PD: He was a priest, all of the Grenoughs, almost all of the Grenoughs were in religious life. John, Richard and Vincent were priests and 63:00then there was one woman who still is a nun. I don't know if there was another one. They all eventually married. TK: That's interesting. So he would be one I need to get in touch with. PD: I think so. He would have a whole world of things to talk about that I wasn't even here in town when he was doing some of his stuff. But he's good. TK: I occasionally heard mention either the Sisters of Charity or the Sisters of Loretto, in terms of their activities. First, I want to confirm that there are two different separate things. PD: Right, two orders. They are both Kentucky-founded orders. Back in the 1812, 14,16 somewhere. They go way back. TK: I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't getting that confused. Then, can you tell me anything about either of them, what they did or-- PD: The Sisters of Charity were quite active, a lot of them purposely lived in the West 64:00End and like Kathleen Sheehan and some that still live there--they probably gave money to different things to help and they were interested in the housing issues and this was the time when nuns were leaving classrooms. It was primarily a teaching order and a hospital. They had hospitals; they still have some by the way. They were getting out of it, Vatican II was over, The church was going out to the people and you had groups like that. Loretto nuns are considered the far left in people's minds, I can't remember, they may have been the first to not wear habits and stuff like that. They operated a high school in the West End called Loretto High School. It was a very good high school. They tried to keep it open and the money just wasn't there. But it was fully open to the black community, and they recruited black kids and tried hard, there may be some that say they didn't try so hard. I think they did. Flaget closed, too, there was a 65:00long battle to keep it open and it stayed open a couple of years after it began to look like it was closing, it didn't make it. I don't know--I guess some people would contend well, the diocese should have put more money it and just kept the school open. Maybe they should have, the bishop at the time, who is now deceased, told me privately one day, he said, the Xavierian Brothers wanted out. He said if they had stayed we would still have a high school. TK: What was the name of the order? PD: Xavierian Brothers. TK: How do you spell that? PD: Xavier--. As in St. X High School. They kept St. X High School open. Some brothers were so mad, they actually went and taught in non-Xavierian high 66:00schools. Main Xavierian Brothers said they wouldn't teach in one those schools. TK: Flaget was--? PD: A high school. TK: OK. Didn't close that long ago, did it? PD: Oh, it closed-- TK: Was it just the building is still there. PD: The building is still there. It's housing-- TK: I bicycle past it. PD: It's housing now. That was one of a major battle there, we--a couple of people came to me and they wanted to open a halfway house for ex-offenders, Ross Jessup and Jeff Ellis. They wanted to put it originally at what was the old Allen Hotel, I think 67:00that burned or something, so then they came and said do you have any buildings? I said we have the brother's house at Flaget. Bishop McDonough was very supportive but we had to get a zoning change and the neighborhoods--I mean they just--some people were up in arms. Jeff and I and a few others, we went to almost every home in that neighborhood and we got a ton of signatures supporting. We eventually we had a good lawyer, Ollie Barber, and eventually we won the zoning thing. People lived there for a year or two and it had to close because the state just quit funding them. Funding all halfway houses. A man across the street, Mr. Boykin, who had been very adamant, but always a 68:00gentleman, not like some people, he actually told me afterwards he was sorry it closed because he had been wrong. He experienced no problems from it and that the property was kept nicely and all that stuff. It was real interesting. That was an interesting battle. That was an interesting battle because it wasn't a white-black issue, it was middle class black-poor black issue. It was the middle class--Jeff used to say, these people are the people who taught me at Central to do things for people and I'm trying to do something for people, and why are you fighting me? What is this all about? It was a class issue. Which is interesting how that plays out. TK: One of the things I'm interested in is, what is the connection, if any, between some of the stuff you were doing like with this West End Team Ministry, with the West End Catholic Council, some of these other 69:00things. Your relationship to the War on Poverty. Was there a connective, officially or unofficially? PD: A lot of the money that came into the Community Action Agency that was all the War on Poverty money. One of the reasons that we were where we were was people and one of the reasons for the housing problems were people were poor. They couldn't afford more and they had no power, and landlords didn't care. Part of the battle was to fight that kind of attitude. They were connected, to some degree. Isolated parts weren't but -- but that who we ended up working with the most. Community activist began to demand more, or more quality or fairness, whatever. TK: Did you work with any other groups or 70:00organizations? PD: The Alliance has been around a lot of years. I'm sure there was some involvement there. The NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] was quite active in those days. Much different than it is now. TK: OK, my impression was that they had slowed down even in the mid-60s, but-- PD: Well, I don't know I thought--Rev. [W. J.] Hodge-- I should say the NAACP Ministerial Coalition maybe, Inter-denomination Ministerial Coalition. Maybe it wasn't NAACP itself, but at that time they were linked, they're not linked right now, but they were then. TK: What was the name of that? PD: Inter-denominational Ministerial Coalition, NAACP. TK: That was part of the NAACP. PD: Yeah. It was the active part of the NAACP. It wasn't until Shelby 71:00Lanier became president of NAACP, that the ministers withdrew. Shelby didn't want them in there for some reason and, but Jeff Ellis, if you are going to talk to him at all-- he's got a pretty good remembrance of some of that. Rev. Hodge, who I guess, is still alive-- TK: Can't be interviewed--too ill. PD: What about A.J. Elmore? TK: I've left a message twice--trying to get in touch with him. PD: He was the head of that group, he was-- TK: OK, yeah, I've left messages on his answering machine, so--I want to get in touch with him. PD: Did you leave my name on there? TK: Well, maybe it will help. PD: Do that. TK: O.K. PD: Tell him I think he needs to call you back. TK: Jeff Ellis, could you tell who-- PD: 72:00Jeff, he works for the city--but he also has been active in the community, he ran this halfway house for years. TK: Is he a minister? PD: He is now, he wasn't then. He's got a small church, I forget where it is, I think on Olive. TK: A lot of these are new names. This Inter-denomination Ministerial Coalition, you were saying you worked with them? PD: Yeah, they were active at the time, they would--I forget--there was, I forget what the issue was, I remember one of the last things we did we threatened a boycott of the school system or something, I don't know what it was about now. Everybody got in a room and pushed the press outside and they used all these different tactics that were fascinating. I just don't remember the issue. Then, what was the civil rights organization--it 73:00wasn't CORE [Congress of Racial Equality], it may have been SNCC [Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee], may have had a chapter here. TK: Or? PD: No. TK: In [unintelligible], no. PD: It wasn't that group. Although we worked, I mean SCEF; I'm familiar with SCEF. I can see the man's face, I can't think of his name, he--if he's able to be interviewed, and I know that he probably is, 'cause I just saw him recently. What is his name? He's a minister and he's older than me, he's getting up there and he was very active in this--throughout this whole period, I can't remember his name. TK: Was it a white or black? PD: Black 74:00guy. It's not going to come. TK: It's not the West End Community Council that would have been almost done, wrapped up by the time you were back? PD: Well, I knew about that, that was, who ran that? TK: Various people, Charles Tachau were involved with it but it was sort of wrapping up by '68-'69. PD: Yeah, Charles. No, this guy had a church and he was just active. I mean he was everybody else, I can't think of his name, he'd be a good person to interview, I can't think of his name. My aunt would know his name, the key word there is he does upholstery and she would remember his name. TK: Upholstery. PD: I may think of it--Charles-- TK: Charles Elliot or Charles Kirby? PD: Charles Kirby. TK: Charles Kirby is on my list. PD: Good, OK, Kirby. TK: KCLC he was involved in, I think. PD: That's it, SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference]. TK: SCLC but the Kentucky. PD: The Kentucky version. TK: Kentucky branch, right, right. PD: He'd be worth it and we worked together. He's a good guy. TK: So your West 75:00End Catholic Council is working with some of these other-- PD: Well, in a way the council was, but it was more individuals who would be involved in these other things, or I would be there as the council coordinator actual members of the council they may or may not be--kind of, I can't remember some topic, Heitzman, I'm sure, continued to do some things. TK: He's still around, isn't he? PD: Oh yeah. TK: Going into the--a lot of this is the early '70s that were talking about, what would you say were the main issues in terms of race relations or the social issues in town and the early mid-'70s era? PD: It's hard to tell, I can't, I don't have a specific thing in mind. What's always stands 76:00out is going to be the busing growing and that kind of thing, that was one of the main issues. TK: A focus issue. PD: But again it would be employment probably, access to jobs, transportation, rebuilding areas of the West End, the economic--the riots really created some bad situations economically. Businesses that were burned and never came back and that whole corner at 28th and Greenwood, which is still difficult, I think. I don't think there even now renewed, I don't think it's--it was really the heart. Some things that led to some of the problems was urban renewal clearing out the black community. So you have now a non-vital downtown, you know so that I think led, continued by the 77:00'70s, it was just--it put people--it dispersed people, it destroyed a community in some sense but I've heard interesting they're--I was with Dr. [John] Walls one night and Merv Aubespin, who is at the Courier-- TK: He's on my list. PD: And a man who I can't remember who was from Louisville but lives in Majorca, Spain, a journalist. There was a discussion of the effects of urban renewal, Dr. Walls thought it was great because the disease and stuff that existed within that community because of the condition of the housing and the lack of attention that government would pay to that community that changed. Better housing was available then it was then, whereas Merv, I think it was Merv, or it was the other journalist maybe their whole take on it was yeah, but we lost a community, 78:00we don't have any clubs, we don't have a cultural life that we had there, the same people don't come to town anymore, we don't have this anymore and so there's some truth to that. Now I don't know what that means by the '70s and what the issues were but the-- TK: The rebuilding seems to be-- PD: The rebuilding is needed to be done. TK: Were you here for the riot or did you arrive right after that? PD: It was after, I was in school. The riot was in like, King was killed in April so it was-- TK: It was May of '68 was the riot. PD: Yeah, I was back in June. TK: OK so you came right after. So what were the effects of the riot from what you could tell coming into town right after it was over. PD: It was tense in the West End. I mean, you know you wondered, you know, you're a white guy, you don't know any black people and you got to go down to the West End and work all summer. I wasn't afraid, I just didn't know how it was 79:00going to go. I went over to the Masonic Lodge one night at 28th and Dumesnil, my aunt was there at some kind of community meeting and they had just discovered that there was an undercover cop dressed as a priest and they asked him to leave. So it was kind of interesting you know. I'm coming in there with my little collar on, so it's crazy but it was tense, there were moments, you know, in the community, a lot of people were rightfully angry. I think a kid was killed and others had been harmed and plus the whole things with King being killed and when are we going to get treated properly and fairly. TK: Did you pay much attention to the court cases that came out of--the Black Six trials? PD: My 80:00uncle was the, yeah, I did, he was the attorney for the Black Six. TK: Oh, he was? PD: He and Darryl Owens and Neville Tucker. We had, when we won, when he won, Bob used to own a house up here at 3rd and Lee. Nobody lived in it, they were going to fix it up eventually, but we had a Black Six victory party in there. My cousin T.J. at the time was ten, he was the bartender, there was one light that worked, it was a great party, a hell of a victory. Yeah, that was fascinating and interesting to follow those. That was such a stupid thing, they weren't going through the West End up, it's just all this trumped-up stuff, it was the judge, I can't think of his name--judge-- TK: [unintelligible] PD: Oh was it? TK: I can't remember, either, I can see it even but I can't remember. I 81:00read some of the newspaper articles and I'm interviewing with Bryant in a few weeks, in two weeks. PD: Oh really, Ruth will be fun. TK: Should I interview your aunt, do you think? PD: Well, she'll have an interesting, yeah, I think be worth interviewing and she was--I don't exactly the time sequence, one or her first things that she did after graduating from Kent was, I think, she and Newton MacCravy, Sr., began a program in Park Duvalle, juvenile program of some kind to try to. I think that was the first thing she did after getting out of school, I just can't remember. TK: Kent School of Social Work, you mean, here in town. PD: Yeah. TK: At U of L? PD: Yeah. There was a record, I remember, and she 82:00has, I think she still has it in her basement, she still has quite a few of them, a record made of conversations interviews they did with people: parents, and kids I think. It's been so long since I listened to it, I know I don't have it anymore, but that had to be in the early '60's. TK: Wow. PD: She has a long history and then there's the whole history of Harvey Sloane. There was another figure the [unintelligible] That was a major issue was health, I'm forgetting that because that became a real issue with the community, [unintelligible] Russell Area Community Action Agency and I'll never forget this because it was so crazy, they wanted to, you know, ensure that people had access to health service and they wanted a clinic. On 28th Street there was a building available 83:00for a clinic and U of L was willing, if I recall correctly, to provide medical students there. The issue became well, are they going to be black or white? TK: The students? PD: Yeah, well, they were white so the Russell Neighborhood Council said we don't want them. So they opened it up in the South End, there's just sometimes when people just--Heitzman and I and Mackin especially, Charlie Mackin said, "God, I don't get it." TK: When about was that? Late 60s, early 70s? PD: Yeah, it had to be in that--I was a priest by then. So it had to be in that time frame. TK: It had to have been after '69 then. Was there much, you know, 'cause you came back into town right at sort of time when there was, nationally anyway, a lot of Black Power, separatism, nationalism, stuff like that. Was there much of that in Louisville? Did it affect your work at all? PD: It didn't affect my work, but there was some of it. Everybody was wearing Afros 84:00and dashikis and the whole thing. Hand signals and this stuff, but I don't remember it affecting. Kuyo Sims was a guy who was one of the Black Six and he was one of the people and we were friends. I never felt hampered by it. TK: Whatever happened to him? PD: I don't know where Kuyo is. I think he went South, but I'm not sure. I was talking to somebody the other night, have no idea where he is. Just don't know. TK: How about Sam Hawkins? PD: He's here. TK: He's here in town? Problem is that there are four or five Sam Hawkins. PD: Dolores can tell you. Sam stayed, he stayed close to the family, she knows how to get him. 85:00Sam's a nice guy. TK: How was the reaction to your work in general, from the people in the neighborhood, or-- PD: I'm not sure, nobody came up to you everyday and said you're doing a great job or thank you very much or anything like that, but I guess it was positive, I still have still a lot of friends that I'm in touch with who come out of those two parishes and out of the work in the area. I mean I guess for the most part, I'm sure I made some enemies, somewhere along the line you have to, but I don't know who they are necessarily. TK: What 86:00happened to those programs, like the West End Catholic Council? PD: Catholic Council, that folded as the parishes, what happened was places got smaller. Vernon and I ended up with two parishes, Holy Cross and St. Charles, then Vernon ended up at St. Martin's and I've got two parishes. You try to develop leadership, there are some deacons as a result of all this, there's two more just got ordained and so there is some black leadership but it didn't exist, I don't--I wouldn't say it's because of what we did necessarily because of a lot of things that happened and changes that take place. The Montessori schools are still going, that's the best thing that happened, it's not that one is, I think 87:00there's one at Christ the King, I haven't kept up with them, yeah, there's still one at Christ the King and one over here at St.--. Philip Neri, old property which is kind of still in the center. That continues the church which is now called Martin De Porres is the combination of St. Charles, Holy Cross and St. Benedict and that's from what I gathered that's a pretty strong Catholic parish still, which I mean they may be in a smaller, they may be in one place together and there may be less churches but in a sense we almost have too many churches anyway in some ways. I mean I tend to think now as I look back now, it would not bother me to see a couple more parishes in that area closes and bring people as long you still brought people together so that you built a stronger place. You 88:00can take the parish I'm in now, it's at a point where there's sixty-five or seventy people demographically, many of them are older, now there's also a lot of younger people, but I don't know if it will survive because I'm very part-time. I'm there on weekends, maybe if you put in a full time person and dedicated outreach, you can build a parish of that type up but there's a certain point at which you just need a certain number of people for something to really work and I don't know what that point is, it's kind of you got to be there and you feel it and know it. You can't, even with lay leadership at least with my experience in Catholic Church is that there still has to be some pastor there, 89:00that's there rather than just comes in and doesn't have enough time and has another full time job and that kind of thing. But that place is open because the diocese is interested when they closed all these parishes that was not ever on the list, it was because of the historical nature of it. If it closes, it will be because the people finally see, you know, we can't do this and so that may happen. TK: Is it mostly a black parish? PD: It's all black, except me. And the other part of that is people sit around wondering where are all those people that used to come here. Well, they are at other churches. When you are forced, practically, to go to St. Peter Claver or St. Augustine or Immaculate Heart, there are a lot of people. But when you can also now go Christ the King, Martin De Porres, and any other church you want to go to, that's what people do. The need that was there is no longer there. The church's whole attitude has changed. You've got people, got people at Barnabas and other parishes. TK: These are 90:00blacks going into churches that have been formerly all white? PD: Yeah, yeah. That mean that churches that were just for black people aren't as needed and some hang on but your not going to have the numbers, it's interesting. Again in some ways, it's the urban renewal thing again, although it's not purposeful in that sense, one you have the opening up then you lose something, but you gain something over here, too. Gain a better version of what the church ought to look like. TK: But not too many whites come into these black congregations? PD: Well, 91:00because they don't live in the neighborhoods. TK: They don't live there. PD: I think if there were whites living in the neighborhood, they would come, I think, at least I think they would. A lot of the people, not all of the black people live in the neighborhood, 'cause they always had to travel. TK: I asked about Catholic Church institutions, but also individuals. What kind of impact, would you say Catholics in Louisville have had on race relations or property issue as a church or as a group? PD; Well, I don't know. I don't know how to assess that, I don't know-- TK: What types of ways did it --have that Catholics been involved. Is that an easier way? PD: You have Horrigan involved and out front and speaking very clearly early on. Rich Grenough and the stuff that they did. Direct effect on civil rights, I just don't know. The black church was the 92:00leadership in that game. But in that open housing thing, there were a lot of white people involved in that. Tim Hogan was arrested during that kind of stuff. He's over at St. Boniface now. His first assignment was at [Most] Blessed Sacrament, he got arrested, he got blasted by that parish. He worked at St. Augustine also. From that point of view, there were a lot of individuals that had impact. The church--McDonough was very supportive of every bit of this. I could go to him and get him to say yes to anything we wanted to do. I'll talk a little about why I say that in relationship to the Angela Davis thing. What I think happened there, and I can't be sure, one of the reasons there was this reaction was Ed Branch didn't inform the Chancery what he was doing. I never had 93:00a problem doing any of the crazy stuff that I've done, because I would call the bishop and I'd say this is what we're thinking of doing. Vernon-- the Team, we would ask ahead of time, get their support so that when some crazy person calls says, "Do you know what's going on down there at that church? They're bringing in that Communist, blah, blah, blah." The Chancery was taken back suddenly, boom. They react and they say, no. I don't think they would have said no. I could have brought Angela Davis here, I think without that kind of flap. I just think it was an information thing. TK: Was she originally suppose to come into a Catholic Church? PD: Yeah and then it was said, no and she ended up at Schroerlucke's place, I think and that was the reason. Ed was bringing her, but he didn't inform anybody, and you just can't do that. At least that's my experience; you can do a lot, if you inform people. One thing I did that has nothing to do with civil rights, except clean the neighborhood up a little bit. There was a doctor, 34th and Broadway. Philip Kirk. And when we got Holy Cross 94:00and St. Charles together, Vernon and I moved out of the rectory at St. Charles because we didn't want people to say we were favoring St. Charles. Vernon owned a house on West Broadway. We moved down there and it was in between. He began to notice all these kids hanging out on this doctor's porch. And he thought that this guy practicing abortions, but then he looked twice and said guys don't go with the girls when they go get the abortion. He called somebody and found that they suspected the doctor was a drug pusher. And he was a drug pusher and was convicted of pushing drugs. I was the government's chief witness. But I told the people at the Chancery that I was going to do this thing and go in undercover with various aliases and all that kind of stuff, and be the government witness. Take this guy off the street. They didn't give me any flack over there. I don't know what they thought but OK. Took one of the city's major drug dealers out of 95:00the community, and he wouldn't see black people. Real patients would come in and they would apologize to us, but the doctor has to see a real patient. Go right ahead. And then a black woman came in one day and wanted assistance and they said the doctor's not taking patients. There was a room full of drug addicts. TK: So as long as you kept the hierarchy above you informed, in other words, the leadership-- PD: Yeah, I found them easy to work with, in that way. I can't be sure that they wouldn't have said you can't do it. I can't be sure. But I have a feeling that had they been informed and not gotten surprise phone calls that, that would not happen. It's the surprise. They don't know what is going to happen, they don't want bad press, you know. They just don't know. TK: So you are saying that Archbishop McDonough was pretty supportive. PD: Yeah, he was 96:00here during that whole thing, he was very supportive. On busing, he was firm. He got behind a piece of justice and he said, "This is going to be the policy." Some schools did open extra classrooms, they met whatever we had in there, I'm not sure what we ended up with, now probably wasn't as strong as we probably started out, I'm sure, but we ended up having to-- TK: Were they going to [unintelligible] Bishop McDonough? PD: Yeah, he was, I think he was pretty firm and parishes had to, if they were going to do something, they had to do it according to the guidelines that were issued and I don't remember what those were but it was a real attempt to make sure that people couldn't run. They were things like if you already have one child in school, you can place other 97:00children in school, you have to have some history, connection with the parish, I don't know what they all were but it could have been disastrous, I mean, we could have just filled up our schools. We could open them, we could open schools back up probably and it wasn't just, wasn't just white people, black people, too. Oh yeah, we had schools in the West End, several of them they were combined and we were--all of a sudden we had a lot of requests for people to get into our schools who never were there before. It went both ways because some people just they didn't want their kids riding buses. Some of it was because, for racial reasons others was they just didn't want the two-hour ride, that kind of stuff you know, it was interesting. TK: You were on that committee at that time? PD: 98:00Yeah, the first commission. TK: What other issues did the commission address? PD: God, I don't remember. Probably I don't know, I mean I don't know what was going on, I'd have to know what was, they would address any--it could be employment or wars or Nicaragua or whatever those things. TK: Would the Catholic Record newspaper carry articles about? PD: Yeah, they'll have a lot of articles. TK: Do you know if there's a back collection of those? PD: Oh yeah, they have those. TK: I have to look that up. PD: Call Joe Duerr. TK: At the diocese? PD: 636-0296. TK: What's the guy's name again? PD: Joe Duerr, he's the editor. TK: For back issues? PD: Yeah, they should, I mean, I presume they have every issue over at the library somehow, they've got every issue. I mean nobody throws away the newspapers. TK: Is there anything else I haven't asked about that I should 99:00ask about, anything else you can think that might be pertinent on this general topic? PD: No, not off the top of my head I would have, I'd almost have to go back and do what you're doing. Look at what was the news of that day. No, there were other things I worked on but it's not in this time frame, like '86 was the Lindsey Scott case. I don't know if you're familiar with that at all? TK: No, is this the one Jean mentioned when we were talking the other day, Jean Edwards? PD: She may have, there was the--it was in December like a Friday afternoon. This woman came to back door of the rectory with her daughter and she wanted to 100:00come in and talk about her son, he'd been convicted of attempted murder and rape, but he hadn't gotten a fair trial. She was going to go church to church and raise $20 to hire a new attorney. She had all these clippings for the Washington Post and the Virginia newspapers. It was Lindsey's mother, so I said I'll look at that, but going door to door, twenty dollars, this will never work. I said, who's the attorney, how do you know he's any good? Well we hope he's better than the first one. I can find out some things. I called Frank Haddad, who was a friend of my family. I gave him the guy's name and the firm's name and 101:00Frank said he would find out about him. He called back, like Monday or Tuesday of the following week saying that the firm had been around sixty years and they were known to be tenacious. By that time, I had read the articles and it was clear that maybe he didn't get a fair trial, it was a court martial. I called the mother and I told her, I said I'll help you raise the money for the attorney. I called the attorneys and talked to them, and we began to raise money. It took five years to get through the 2nd trial. He was in Leavenworth the whole time. He saw his child once; the child had just been born right before all of this happened. It eventually ended up on "60 Minutes" [television program] four times and this fund raising, Vernon and I threw this big party 102:00every year in the West End at the house to make sure to get people down there so they could feel safe. We used party list for the first time ever just to raise some money and told the story that he thought he didn't get a fair trial and that he's innocent and that kind of thing. Some money got raised and we sent it to John, and that was fine, finally we ended having to raise about $20,000, but it was a big effort, in terms of the both the white and black community both trying to help. The last fund-raiser was at the church at 4th and Breckinridge, pastor James Miller's church. Bill Summers III was there and he helped a lot. Reverend Elmore helped a lot. And that's where the Ministerial Coalition got 103:00involved in some ways. It was very interesting how in other ways, they did-- I asked Laken Cosby one time, I ran into Laken at a grocery store here and I said, "Why was it so hard?" I could get all of these other people involved, I couldn't get black ministers involved, except for a few friends. I said, is it because I'm white and he said no, it's because you are Catholic. There's a tremendous fear of you being Catholic, you'd get credit and they won't. I later understood that better when I read Parting the Waters, the first chapter, the first two chapters where the author's name, I'm blanking on-- TK: Taylor Branch. PD: Branch, yeah. Where he goes through the black church, the history of it. The 104:00pastors, and the-- and I began to say I know exactly what was happening. But we raised the money and Lindsey got a new trial and got out, and found innocent, or found not guilty. Nobody went into this thinking he was innocent, necessarily, it was just went into because it looked like he didn't get a fair trial. There was a woman who played a key role in this named Lori Jackson. Mrs. Scott had told me about her right away. She was the one who was able to find an alibi witness who put Lindsey somewhere else. So I called her, too, at the beginning. And said this guy's mother is here, and I don't know what the deal is and she said I have five daughters and if I thought he raped that woman, I hang the son of a bitch myself. She'd been involved in Kentucky, by chance, at Fort Campbell on a military base trying to do something down there as a black woman. I forget 105:00what it was. She'd been active in issues for a long time. She was kinda like the Mattie Jones person of that area. That was good, it was interesting. TK: That's not the case they made the TV movie about, is it? PD: Recently, yeah. TK: Didn't see it, though. PD: Bad movie. It's all lies. That guy that made that movie is a real airhead. He promised Lindsey they would make a movie a long time ago. They had a contract and all kinds of things. He wrote me asking permission to cast some character. I wrote back something about if you give the Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty $1,000, you can have my permission. I knew he wasn't going to do anything. So he wrote me completely out of the script-- TK: Oh, I 106:00was just going to see who they cast for you. PD: Oh, no. He wrote-- this guy really--that movie was --I [was] glad Lori Jackson got featured, 'cause that's what he ended up doing, 'cause she did a lot. She really did a lot. But if it hadn't been the people in Louisville, Lindsey wouldn't be seeing a new trial. Although that attorney was dedicated, I think John would have gone ahead whether he got paid or not. I mean, it got so big in Louisville, the TV people, they sent news crews to the trial. It was fascinating how big the story got, especially with "60 Minutes." Once they're involved, once you come into your house and on your tape is somebody that says this is Jeannie Smith and I'm Morley Safer's secretary and Mr. Safer would like to talk to you about Lindsey Scott. It was great, but the work--all of the work is done by the producers, 107:00these guys are just up front at the end. That case, the producer of that one was Joe Worshburn. He did all of the traveling and the interviews, all that kind of stuff. He'd go back and tell Morley, now ask them this--and Morley stands up and acts like he knows what's going on. But it's fascinating how that that happens. TK: One thing is interesting to me, for my work on that story, is the way it pulls together people again. PD: Oh, it did, it really did. It was amazing --this 20,000 was in contributions of five, ten, and fifteen and twenty dollars. There were some 100 dollars, but it was mostly, I don't know how many people ultimately gave to that. I had the whole list, I threw it away not long ago, or maybe I still have it. I just packed it away or something. TK: Are these just community people or they civil rights activists types? PD: All kinds of people that got --the first was list we had. We had about 600 names on that. They came from all over the community. TK: And was that just contacts you had from other 108:00things? PD: Yeah, Vernon and I --they were parish people, they were people Vernon worked, Dr. Walls, Murray, all these people, Vernon associated with and his friends from, meeting, he grew up here. So he had these friends, I mean his family personally wealthy so some of them had money, too. One of the interesting things I remember, I won't get the wording exactly but, Henry Wallace sent money and had a note that said, knowing what the Marines did to people in Vietnam, makes it hard for me to send this check, but I'll make an exception, or something to that effect. It was kinda interesting. He actually sent money twice, I remember. It was hundreds of people, putting that up. I think that was '86. Wait a minute, no, it was like '81 or '82, he got out in '86 or '87, or 109:00'88. It might have been '83; it was early 80s. He got out right before I was leaving, I think he got out in '87 or '88. The feeling, I couldn't go up for the whole trial, but I went right at the end, jury was out. To sit in this Quonset hut and wait, and wait, and wait and then wonder what are you going to do when you go back in there and they say guilty. 'Cause by that time, it was pretty clear to us that he wasn't guilty. You know, I mean they lived in the same apartment complex, her husband was a Marine, they saw each other in the parking 110:00lot and she couldn't give a positive ID until she got in a courtroom. She couldn't say, it was the guy in 3B? Come on. Worsburg dug all that up plus this woman security guard, put him at a Target store thirty minutes away. He couldn't have been there. She remembered him because she had arrested two shoplifters, saw him, he's black, am I going to hit again. Followed him around the store. And the nice thing was, she was black, too. That's the only reason he had an alibi, because she could go back to the arrest slip and know what day it was that that happened and she knew what time 'cause she knew they could back and look at the records on when she worked. TK: That's interesting. PD: But God, it's still the military, I mean, when you go up against the U.S. government, you are really going up. It was incredible. Then the local commonwealth attorney of Virginia, 111:00after it was all over, said, I think I'll indict him because maybe it didn't happen on the base, maybe it happened over here. I think he did it. Paul Hebert had his name in the New York Times the other day. Still prosecuting, in Virginia. It was the prosecutor where the two kids don't want the man who killed their father executed. I don't know what else to say. TK: I'm out of questions, too. END SIDE B, TAPE 2