Interview with David Gittleman, December 1, 1999

Tracy K'Meyer: This is an interview with David Gittleman by Tracy K'Meyer, conducted in Mr. Gittleman's home Wednesday December 1, 1999. [Pause] And this is going pretty well. Again, just to get started, I like the basic background biographical stuff starting with when and where were you born?

David Gittleman: Born in Louisville, 1927, and except for when I was in service, lived here all of my life.

TK: Could you tell me a little bit about your parents?

DG: My father was a rabbi, came here as his first job out of the seminary and retired from here.

TK: Which temple?

DG: Adath Jeshurun. And he had only one synagogue.

TK: His whole life, wow!

DG: One job in his whole life, that's all. Was in civil rights matters and color matters, a true liberal, a true believer so that his children and the family just never any question. We believed in individuals and individuals and every person was sacred. There was worth to every individual, you know that was part of home. I've commented on it a lot in recent years. I was raised in just south of downtown, an area called [unintelligible] Court between Brook and First and the entrance was on Magnolia, so it's one mile south of Broadway. Only whites 2:00lived on the street. Only blacks lived in the alleys and these were carriage houses or garages, some kind of outhouses, I didn't mean plumbing outhouses. And I was aware of that as . . . oh, before I was a teenager. We really didn't play together, as I recall. We weren't angry with each other, but it's interesting to me that for all of the liberalism that I grew up with that tradition of blacks 3:00not owning property on the streets never offended me. I saw nothing immoral in that, okay. It was, I put in quotes, tradition. [Laughter] I can remember, oh, I must have been fifty, maybe in my late forties, having a client in my office, who referred to those niggers and I listened to it for the second time or so and I finally said to the person, "You know no one uses that word in this office or in front of me and so we won't use it again." Oh, and I remember the person's 4:00response, "Oh, no problem with that at all. We don't have any problems in that area." You know it's a tradition, it's just something we say. They called me up two hours later and discharged me as their lawyer.

TK: Oh, really!

DG: But as a kid, I saw nothing wrong with that, although any different treatment I would have considered immoral. And of course, I'm trying to remember whether blacks went to grade school with us.

TK: Not at that time.

DG: No.

TK: Do you remember what schools you went to?

DG: Yeah, I went to Gavin Cochran, then to Halleck Hall, which is now Manual, 5:00for junior high.

TK: I've heard of Halleck Hall.

DG: The junior high school was integrated male and female. There were black schools. There was still a Central High School when I graduated high school. It was after I was out of school that boys and girls went to school together in the high school.

TK: So you went to an all-boy high school?

DG: Oh yes, everyone went. I went to Manual first and then I went to Louisville Male High School, which was a true Midwest institution. That was a very fine high school at one time. And women went to Atherton and Louisville Girls' High School. I don't remember when that was segregated, when that was combined.

TK: Made coed, yeah. The girls' high school must have closed because I've never heard very much about that, people don't talk about it much.

DG: Louisville Girls' High School was on the, when I went to school, was on the top floor of Halleck Hall, which is now Manual. That school was a WPA [Works Progress Administration] project; I guess late thirties, something like that. A good friend of mine in college, I went to college at age sixteen . . .

TK: Wow!

DG: And a good friend of mine, I guess this was after we got out of service, his father was chairman of the board of trustees and was president of probably the largest bank.

TK: Locally?

DG: Yeah. And we had something called leadership camp. It's funny, I knew all 7:00about it. I was one of these kids who never asked questions, I always learned things on my own. So although I probably should have gone to leadership camp, because I held about every office when I was in school, I never actually went, but I would hear about it and a lot of the kids talked to me, I remember . . . maybe it was before I went into service, I guess it was . . . about at leadership camp they discussed that some of the black kids from . . . I'm trying to think of the name of the black college . . .

TK: Here in town?

DG: College or the university . . .

TK: Yeah, Louisville Municipal College.

DG: Municipal College. We were going to come to register at liberal arts as a 8:00test, and I was discussing it with my friend and we were in his father's, in their home, his parent's home. And his father, who was president of the bank maybe, not chairman of the board of trustees at the university, turned to me and said, "David, you never have to worry about going to school with no nigger." I remember that distinctly. The father, who was president and then later chairman of the board of the bank, wanted to be president of the American Bankers' Association and as a step for that, he became very interested in civil rights, was one of the, what's the award that they give that's, I guess, B'nai Brith and 9:00a Catholic group give a fellowship award each year and he won it!

TK: Really!

DG: Yeah.

TK: This was later, I would assume?

DG: Not that many years later. As a basis of it, that was part of his foundation, he did get elected president of the American Bankers Association nationally and he never would have been if what he spoke had not changed.

TK: Now did you go to U of L for college?

DG: Absolutely.

TK: At age sixteen?

DG: Yeah.

TK: So that would have been early forties.

DG: '43, I went then went for a year and a half, then went into service, then came back to it.

TK: When did you go into the service then?

DG: Well, between the German surrender and the, I guess I went in '45.

TK: So summer of '45. And then how long were you in the service?

DG: A year and a half.

TK: Year and a half, okay. And then you came back and finished college?

DG: Finished law school.

TK: Did you go straight through to law school?

DG: Yeah.

TK: One thing about, just sort of talking about the youth, one of the questions about you, sort of as a young person before we get to your post a little bit later, is one thing I'm interested in is youth groups, or clubs, organizations. You said you didn't go to leadership camp, but what kinds of things did you participate in?

DG: Well, I was in a fraternity at the university and then I was chairman of the student body, chairman of the all-campus council, those sorts of things.

TK: Just very involved.

DG: More as . . . radical is too strong a word, but I certainly was an outspoken liberal. I mean, it was just I was raised that way.

TK: Had your father or mother been involved in any kind, you said that they had these attitudes, but had they been involved in any organizations or activity 11:00around civil rights issues?

DG: My mother wouldn't have been at all. My father was on all committees. He was part of the "Moral Side of the News," which was radio [a radio show] at that time and maybe television today. If there was a committee formed for something, he was one of the people asked to be on the committee. You know, he had been here since the last year of World War I, so that he was really part of the community and was one of those people who was in civil rights matters or similar 12:00things, because you had relations of people of different religions, you know?

TK: Yeah.

DG: You had the assimilation or the fitting in of immigrants at all times. You had world problems between the wars, so that there were always some kind of charitable or human activities. You have to remember that until the active civil rights movement things, at least for Jews, were done quietly. Well, for all of the trauma of the freedom of India from British rule, it was done with 13:00non-violence, much of it behind the scenes, quiet was the way. 'Course, even the trauma of the civil rights movement was on one side non-violent.

TK: Did you feel any prejudice against you growing up, based on your religion?

DG: Of course, but that exists today. In Louisville, which I think is a community that is relatively, compared to other parts of the country, free of overt prejudice. The, maybe not quite so true today but certainly was always 14:00true, the freedom of movement ended when the sun went down. It's a different life. The Louisville Country Club today is not an integrated club. Most of the members of the Louisville Country Club probably do not see anything morally wrong. Great story doesn't belong in a book, but . . .

TK: Do you want me to turn it off?

DG: I don't care.

TK: Okay.

DG: Sam English, who was going to have Arthur Ashe here as his guest, didn't want Arthur Ashe to be embarrassed so he called the manager of the Louisville 15:00Country Club, true story, and he said, "Arthur Ashe is going to be my guest but I don't want him to be embarrassed at the club. I want to know that he's welcome there." And the manager told him; "Of course, Arthur Ashe will be welcomed here and will be welcomed to use all of the facilities as long as he doesn't go into the pool."

TK: Really! Wow!

DG: Wow. You'll find that Lee . . .

TK: Thomas, the one I mentioned in the book?

DG: Lee Thomas joined the Standard Club, which is the Jewish country club, because a black was eligible for membership there.

TK: And not at the Louisville Country Club?

DG: Not at Louisville Country Club. And of course Barry Bingham, I want to say, resigned Pendennis over that same issue or maybe because his friend Dann Byck, Jr., wasn't invited to join.

TK: Dann Byck, Jr., the one that was on the Board of Alderman or is that Dann Byck, Sr.?

DG: Senior, who probably did not accept the position as mayor of the city; he certainly could have been if wanted because he didn't want to be that Jew mayor. His son is back here in town and may know some of the background of that.

TK: People have often mentioned actually his wife as a sort of behind the scenes person.

DG: Oh well, there was a very unusual relationship. There was Barry, Sr., there was Ms. . . . oh. come on owned WAVE . . . Norton. Ms. Norton [Jane Morton Norton], and there was Mrs. Byck; they did many charitable things together. Barry would give a hundred to two hundred thousand, Ms. Norton would give twenty-five to thirty-five, and Mrs. Byck would give one to five and they'd do it together, but it was a great combination of people. Probably Barry, Sr., had 18:00as much to do with good race relations here as anyone. There were plenty of stories he killed and he was an unusual person. He was about the warmest cool person or the coolest warm person. [Laughter] Very unusual.

TK: Well, a lot of people give credit to Louisville's relations to the paper.

DG: No question.

TK: To the papers, I should say.

DG: Well, and the people that he hired. The people who worked for him, Mark Ethridge, who was a great editor of a paper, Simon Kennon, who was the financial 19:00advisor for him, Barry, Sr., very unusual person. Yeah, a lot of the credit, principal credit, is the apathy of Louisville is the biggest, I think, factor to decent race relations here.

TK: What do you mean by that?

DG: Well, there is, has always been in all my history, great apathy in this community. We don't go to the trouble to hate.

TK: I've never heard it put that way before.

DG: But I mean . . . if there's anything I've recognized here and I know it's true today because I don't touch as many people today as I used to. If there were three hundred thousand people in this community, when I was a young adult I 20:00could say hello and recognize somewhere between fifteen and thirty thousand of them. I was raised here. I was on the streets all the time. But yeah, we didn't care. If someone was doing something good or bad five miles away, didn't care, people didn't hate, at least until the sun went down, then it became different.

TK: When you say that, you mean it's more segregated after the sun went down?

DG: Yeah. It's fine for your children to go to school, but you certainly wouldn't want them to date and closeness breeds that sort of stuff.

TK: Some people just sort of went their own way?

DG: Oh yes! And you know in later years you heard Dora Rice's name, I'm trying to think of the name of the black woman in Park DuValle, very strong. If you were in a fight in an alley, you would want this woman with you, okay. But she was a real leader in Park DuValle. We were in a meeting of the Park DuValle Neighborhood Health Center and Dora Rice said something that made sense. This woman disagreed with her and said, "You know that's very nice for you. Well, when this meeting's over, you go on back to your white East End." And it's true, 22:00you know. I don't know the solution to that because, you know, where you [St. Matthews] live was very slow.

TK: It seems to be the last place to mix. You mentioned Dora Rice, I did want to make sure that we talked about that group with . . .

DG: The American Friends Service Committee.

TK: Is that what it was?

DG: Yes. See, American Friends Service Committee is a branch in the service arm of the Quaker church, okay. And they have, like, a committee in every community if they can. I guess they had a token Jew and a token Catholic on every one and maybe a token black so that there was Betty Taylor, there was me, and I'm trying 23:00to think who the Catholic would have been, but at any rate, it was a great committee of great people.

TK: Now how did you get, did someone approach you or how did you fall into this?

DG: I was in a meeting at the University of Louisville, what the organization was, I had no idea, it could have been the council on religion, and Betty Taylor maybe drove me home. I do remember this. I remember going home that night--how old was I?--it had to be about the . . . Well, when was the Vietnam War?

TK: '65, '64, '65.

DG: '64, '65 . . .

TK: For about the next decade.

DG: Yeah, but it was during the [Lyndon B.] Johnson administration that you had the real poverty programs going on. This was before then because [John F.] Kennedy was still president. What organization I don't know, but I remember being at the university, that's when she invited me to join this committee. But any rate that evening, I remember I got home and I consciously thought Betty Taylor is black, and that is the first time I've ever been in the presence--I don't think we used black then, probably used Negro--that I was not aware of color. 'Course' Betty Taylor is as races go about as white as you can get. I'm 25:00not talking about color, but she was educated and she spoke in, you know. The Taylors, she and her husband, both very unusual people. Her life could be three volumes. She's seen a lot of the world. She said to me one time that any time I had a decision to make regarding anyone that's black, use her and I know she said the same thing to Harvey Sloane. The only times we've ever gone wrong in that area is when we didn't use her, just a remarkable judgment.

TK: Judge of character?

DG: Everything, of issues, of what to participate in. She took me places. She and I went to Atlanta together and she was part of branch of the Justice Department. She tell you about that?

TK: She told me a little bit about this, yeah.

DG: Oh! I mean what an unusual experience for someone to participate in. There were only a few people in this. I remember the number one hundred and sixty; today that group still exists and there are maybe two hundred or two hundred and fifty people attached to it in this country. She introduced me to a freckled 27:00white Georgian, six foot three if he was an inch, maybe two hundred fifty, two seventy five, sixty years old plus. As I recall the story, he or his family had made money in the laundry business and he had retired from that and gone to work for the federal government in the Justice Department, maybe worked in civil rights before then. But I do know this -- that he and I swapped stories, he was the one guy in this special section, his name will come to me, who, when there when cities were burning, he could go talk to a [Eldridge] Cleaver or talk to whatever was the radical group go along and sit down and talk to them and be 28:00trusted. He was the whitest looking freckled cracker there ever was, but he was straight shooting and put his life on the line. I mean, shucks, this was one weekend out of her years of experience in that organization, you know. She's really been and seen it all from all sides.

TK: So she was already involved in this Quaker group before . . .?

DG: Before I was.

TK: Before you were.

DG: Now how long, I have no idea.

TK: And so she asked you join and what did you think about that?

DG: Well, I was probably flattered. It was a very unusual group. We met and I felt most of the time it was wasted time, wrong word, time interestingly spent 29:00on things that would result in being ineffectual. I remember my reaction; Dora Rice received a letter from Harvey Sloane. Dora Rice was brought a letter that Harvey Sloane had written Worth Bingham. Worth is now dead, unfortunately. His son just died. Did you know that?

TK: No.

DG: Yeah, I should call his widow. Worth died at thirty-three or thirty-four. Worth's brother, William Bingham, [Jonathan] I think, died at around eighteen or nineteen, was electrocuted there at the home. Worth was killed driving a 30:00Volkswagen with a surfboard in the back.

TK: Now, are these all Barry Sr.'s sons?

DG: Yes.

TK: So Barry Jr. would be their . . .

DG: Brother.

TK: Brother, okay. I know the Barry Jr. side of that family.

DG: And this surfboard hit a tree or a post and the other half hit Worth in the back of the neck. It killed him at thirty-three or thirty-four and now his son just died at thirty-five.

TK: Oh my God!

DG: Yeah, it's a family of tragedy. So at any rate, Worth Bingham received a letter from Harvey Sloane. Harvey was a doctor who had done some work in the 31:00hills of Kentucky. He met Worth . . .

END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A

START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B

DG: . . . and of course anyone who was cosmopolitan and educated knew of Barry Bingham. Barry Sr. was on the board of the Rockefeller Foundation, but you know well known in the East at any rate. And Harvey is the kind of guy who would take up on that and have it back in his mind somewhere, so when he decided he wanted to do something with the health center and work in a poverty area, Worth was one 32:00of the people he contacted and he thought Louisville would be a good place to go, he'd have a paper helping him some, you know, whatever. So Worth brought that letter to Dora Rice and she read it at a committee meeting and they started discussing building a health center.

TK: And this is a meeting of this group?

DG: Yes, American Friends Service Committee and I remember my reaction was completely and I just said, you know, I just thought, "You people don't know what you're getting into!" We've been talking about education. We had a wonderful program for that called "Learn More Earn More," I'd forgotten about it and we should talk some about that, but you know we've been talking in thousands of dollars, when you get into health you're talking real money! It's just ridiculous that we should think about it. And they didn't drop it, just meeting after meeting, they'd still be discussing it rehashing this thing and finally 33:00Harvey Sloane came here, I guess, and they started laying the plans and did it and that's the Park DuValle Neighborhood Health Center, which, in its original plan, was just to be a neighborhood center. It was to have health and employment, mental health, just all the facets of poverty be attacked in this center, but I mean it just wasn't, you know, American people aren't going to pay for that and there never became enough money and we concentrated on a health center.

TK: What other groups did you work with in trying to get this established or did the committee do it on their own?

DG: Oh no, the committee did it on its own. To get money from, I guess it was the federal poverty program, would require for a health center the signature of, and I don't remember whether it was thirteen or fifteen people. It needed the mayor of the city of Louisville, the county judge, it's the county-judge executive of the county, the dean of the medical school, dean of the dental school, the president of the local chapter of the American Medical Association, 35:00president of the dental association, the black medical association, the black dental association, I guess. There were thirteen or fourteen or fifteen names, I don't remember and we cut them up. I remember that I had the president of the medical association, the mayor of the city of Louisville, the dean of the medical school, and I don't remember who else. I took a third, Worth took a third and Harvey took a third and we went out, and it took us six months, nine months, we got all these signatures. And I can't say that I had all the information.

I remember having breakfast with a pediatrician, Louisville society pediatrician, his name may come to me . . . we had breakfast at . . . hospital, it's not a hospital anymore, but any rate . . . can't think of the name, but whatever, we had breakfast seven o'clock in the morning or something. And he said to me, "If you think I'm going to . . ." I guess Worth had been killed . . . I remember him saying to me, "If you think that I'm going to put my organization's signature on the line, so Barry Bingham can give a hundred and 37:00fifty thousand dollars in honor of his son's memory, you're wrong! I'm not going to do it!" It shows me how little I knew and how naïve I was. In starting with Park DuValle Neighborhood Health Center Barry Bingham gave a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It may have been a year later, but someone knew it and someone already had the money on the line, which would have had to been Harvey, who wouldn't have told me; just he'll take care of his, I'll take care of mine, it was compartmentalized. And conceivably it took us that long that Worth was dead. I don't remember but at any rate and the guy did sign it.

TK: He did?

DG: Oh yeah, before we left that morning. He said that he was doing it because it's a good thing and it should be done and he's in favor of it, and it was, if I recall, as an afterthought, he says, "You think I'm going to do this just so Bingham can do this." And for all I know, it may not have been me who got his signature, it may well have been Mrs. Byck.

TK: She was on this . . .?

DG: She was not on that committee, but you know Harvey was one of those guys you never knew where he was and what he was going to do.

TK: He wasn't from Louisville, was he?

DG: No, from . . . let's see, Kathy was from Pittsburgh, Harvey was from . . . oh, Washington.

TK: And they just kind of showed up here in town?

DG: No, see that's the . . . you have to understand Harvey Sloane, that really a book should be written about. Harvey's father died young. He was master of the 39:00hounds, hunting; you know one of these clubs in Virginia. And he had, as Harvey told me or someone told me this story, close to a full-page obituary in the Washington newspaper, but the big part of it was that he was master of the hounds. And young Harvey Sloane dedicated himself that his obituary would not be that kind of an obituary. Now from there his mother who was not Perle Mesta, ah, you're too young to know Perle Mesta. [Laughter] Perle Mesta was the great 40:00political party giver of Washington, she was the dame of great parties.

TK: Sort of like Pamela Harriman?

DG: Yes, but Harriman, I guess was a Republican, but . . .

TK: Pearl was a Democrat, okay.

DG: Yeah. Well, Harvey's mother was the next rung under a Perle Mesta and when his father died a few years later, she saw to it that someone always lived with him and tutored him. When he was at college, she sought out a guy who was going to the seminary. I mean just searched and found a person who would go to school 41:00with him and guide him as he went through school. And I remember being at his wedding and meeting a lot of these guys at all ages, who at different times, had been procured by his mother to guide him into whatever his career was. And I remember picturing in my mind all these guys, who each of them told me what a principal job they had in his life, but what I saw was little Harvey up in the attic with puppet strings. [Laughter]

TK: And he was a medical doctor, right?

DG: Yes.

TK: And he sort of got his start in Louisville with this health center?

DG: His start was before here.

TK: Yeah, but in Louisville?

DG: He came to Louisville, remember, see, he met the Binghams, the Binghams controlled the paper; there was money and public support, so he would have 42:00designed his coming to Louisville for a good purpose for a good cause.

TK: Well, the Park DuValle, you're talking about you're getting all this support and stuff, was there very much sort of Park DuValle people involved in this, people who lived there?

DG: Yes that was my job.

TK: Okay, how did that work?

DG: My job was to involve them. Betty's job was probably to help involve them and so there was a constant recruitment. The organization was not designed and then put there, it was a facilitated series of meetings in which, shucks, I was a young guy. It was by nature, by instinct, by having been around my father, 43:00whatever, to see to it that everyone spoke, that everyone had all the say they wanted to have no matter what kind of screaming or whatever, and there were a lot of people did not want this. Certainly black leaders did not want this.

TK: Why's that?

DG: Because they were the spokespeople. You empower others and the spokesmen are not that powerful anymore and so. I'm certain they felt in control, but kidded us along, or tolerated us or maybe assumed we were going to fail, but in the end the black doctors, the black dentists became very involved, and I think that was part of the contribution of a Dora Rice or me or whatever. We respected that . . 44:00. we were not directors who were putting something in place, we were more catalysts. Dora Rice became a very powerful person in this community in what she accomplished but it wasn't through power that she did it because, you know?

TK: Yes, by sort of pulling people together, Dora Rice. She's since passed away.

DG: Real catalyst.

TK: She's a white woman. Do you know what religion she was?

DG: Well, good question. She was a Quaker.

TK: She was a Quaker. There had to be at least one Quaker, I guess, right.

DG: Had to be Jewish somewhere in the background I would think, but she never expressed that to me. She certainly was persecuted in Nazi Germany, but possibly 45:00as a Quaker had been persecuted. Her house, little house on the river, was with reparation money from the German government.

TK: Oh really?

DG: Yeah.

TK: Well, that's interesting. Betty did tell me that she was from Germany.

DG: Yes and she was a distance swimmer and a masseuse to the wealthy.

TK: Really!

DG: So if you drive out River Road right down side of the River Valley Club is a little blue house on stilts over the [unintelligible] this side.

TK: Yeah, yeah, yeah!

DG: That's her house.

TK: Really? I bicycle up and down there all the time.

DG: Very expensive house to build. It was bought from her by Sallie Bingham, but she got that house very close, Glenview, so she could go up and give massages to people in Glenview.

TK: Not a very big house?

DG: Well, it's not much larger than this room.

TK: Yeah, it looks like a little summer house or something.

DG: It cost a lot of money, a lot of money.

TK: Isn't that interesting, yeah. So this group this . . .

DG: American Friends Service Committee.

TK: So it was called the American Friends Service Committee, did you have any contact with the national organization?

DG: I had only one and that is that it took a stand against the Vietnam War. I was pretty naïve guy and at that stage I believed that the Vietnam War, we were over there protecting Vietnamese peasants. And here was this organization that I was a member of and it was against this war saving this Vietnamese peasants so I called the head of the American Friends Service Committee. I said, "I got a problem, I know I'm just this stinking little committee down in Louisville, 47:00Kentucky, but you're making this big public pronouncements and you're taking this national and international action and I don't think I agree with you!" And I remember him saying to me, he says, "Well, you know probably most of our members of most our committees do not agree with what we're doing." I said, "Boy, hell of a democratic organization we got going here!"" He says, "Well, that's the way it is and that's our principles." And that was the end of the conversation. It's the only contact I had. [Laughter] We didn't, Dora was the person. There is some great people on that list that you have there that are dead, Mansir Tydings, one of them.

TK: Was Mansir Tydings black or white?

DG: White.

TK: I've seen his name a lot and I . . .

DG: And deceased.

TK: I knew that.

DG: Mansir -- Quaker.

TK: Oh, I didn't know that.

DG: Oh, I think he was a Quaker . . . yes, I think he had to be. Lee Thomas -- Quaker.

TK: I didn't know that either.

DG: Yeah, Lee probably financially supported the Quaker church here.

TK: He was a businessman wasn't he?

DG: Yes, Thomas Industries is the largest manufacturer of lamps in the world. I think I'm correct, okay.

TK: He's still living.

DG: He is still living, but he didn't build the business. His father must have been a genius at it. Lee Thomas, who super bright guy, super fine person, you can't come any better and now an old man and I'm certain in pain, very difficult 49:00to deal with.

TK: This is the one who was on the committee or is father?

DG: He was not on the committee, as I recall, but a Quaker.

TK: But he was a Quaker?

DG: A leader of the Quaker group here. Mansir called me and that's why I think I know that Mansir was a Quaker, told me that they wanted to buy the slave quarters of . . . oh, what's the Speed home at the corner of Bardstown Road?

TK: Farmington.

DG: Farmington, okay, so as their meeting house. They thought it was quite appropriate that they have their meeting in what was at one time slave quarters. So he wanted me to arrange the deed and the closing and all that and I took care of that, but it was Mansir Tydings so that he was a Quaker. He also was 50:00executive director of Lincoln Foundation, 'course, Sam Robinson is now and can tell you a great deal about that, but he was also chairman of the Louisville and Jefferson County Human Relations.

TK: Yeah, that's where I've seen his name.

DG: And I probably met him there because I was counsel to that commission.

TK: Oh really! No how did you get that position?

DG: I think for years I did it free, I may be wrong, then . . . thirty years ago, about thirty years ago, I became the assistant or deputy director of law of 51:00the city and as such I represented several organizations, one of which was the Louisville and Jefferson County Human Relations Commission and Mansir Tydings and I started working together then. You know the timing of all that, I just absolutely forgot. Following that, I was on the board of Lincoln Foundation and counsel to it for years.

TK: Well, those are the kind of dates that I can easily check.

DG: Mansir was quite a guy.

TK: Was he from Louisville?

DG: I don't know.

TK: But he had been around and doing stuff, sort of interracial committees of 52:00various sorts for quite some time, because I've seen his name going back I think into the fifties.

DG: Mansir was very interesting and he knew basically one technique in how to work with people and I always saw the same formula over and over again and it was not a formula for success. He could have designed the original pyramid club. He'd form a committee, get half a dozen or a dozen people involved, and then work with each one of those members and get them interested in something to where they'd form a sub-committee and they'd get eight or ten or twelve people involved in that sub-committee and by the time six months or a year had gone by there were five layers, there were thousand people involved in five layers of something that may not be doing anything, but he sure had people involved! He 53:00did a lot of that in civil rights to where people were exposed to each other, to where they knew each other. He was just great at that and that probably contributed a lot, you know, just people being involved. You know you say you're for civil rights. There were things that did get done. We got, you know, the Board of Alderman adopted . . .

TK: Open accommodations.

DG: Public accommodations, equal employment.

TK: Open housing, eventually.

DG: Well, a lot of it is a little tough for me to bring out of the cobwebs 54:00because so much of it is so mixed up. The integration of the schools and I'm trying to remember the name of the superintendent of schools.

TK: [Omer] Carmichael. I've been reading about it today, so it's right there.

DG: Very interesting. [President Dwight D.] Eisenhower invited Carmichael to come to the White House and talk about the integration of schools in Louisville. And I dare say that Carmichael was probably dragged into integrating the schools in Louisville.

TK: Why do you say that?

DG: Because it was either that or he was going to be fighting Barry Bingham. I really think so. There were troubles during that first year that never made the newspapers.

TK: Really!

DG: Oh sure!

TK: What kind of troubles?

DG: I mean physical violence never made the newspapers. That was Barry Bingham's 55:00benevolent manipulation, which that's not the only area. The area of we never had organized crime here. Gee, the gangs of Chicago and Detroit and St. Louis, they hit all the other cities. They were Cincinnati and Nashville and Memphis, they didn't come to Louisville and Barry Bingham's probably the strongest element in that.

TK: Where were you during the school integration stuff? Were you a lawyer by that point?

DG: What year was it?

TK: '56, 1956.

DG: Oh sure.

TK: So you would have been here as a lawyer?

DG: As a lawyer.

TK: Do you remember anything about the process of school integration?

DG: Of the school integration?

TK: Yeah, public school.

DG: Not really. I remember it wasn't forced on the community. It was done voluntarily by the school board. And what made it possible, my finger says apathy. No one is going to go to the trouble to fight it. It was probably decided in, a back room is the wrong word, in a corporate office with, you know, a banker and Barry and I guess maybe Mr. Norton was still alive, George Norton, 57:00and we common folk never would have seen that; it just smoothly happened.

TK: Did you have kids in school at the time?

DG: Let's see, my oldest is now forty . . . well, he was born in '54.

TK: So he wouldn't have been in school yet.

DG: So he wouldn't be in school, no.

TK: Would have been a couple more years. I mean he wouldn't have been in kindergarten yet.

DG: But the busing thing was a big problem here and a real problem and it's still a problem. The big problem is it's tougher on blacks than it is on whites.

TK: So, I'm curious between the time say, you get out of law school and your participation in this Quaker, you gave the impression that you went to meetings 58:00and stuff, but were you very active in social issues during that time or were you mostly doing the career and family?

DG: Yes. I remember those years and not so much in what I was doing, but as the doubts that I had with myself as to what why I was spending time in that area.

TK: In what area?

DG: In civil rights sort of things. What was my motivation? Was it really so pure because I felt that there were wrongs that needed to be righted or was it, I remember the evenings that I would think about it, or was it that I was surrendering to my feelings lack of self-worth, and so this gave me some worth 59:00that I was accomplishing good things or things I believed in. And then I finally remembered, because I really wrestled with it as a young adult for a long time, I finally said who gives a damn what the motivation is, it's good work. Well, part of it was I had a family, and I had a wife and I had a kid coming up and a lot of this work was legal work and it was not for money. You know I'm rolling around.

TK: What kind of groups or issues did you work on?

DG: It could be anything. I certainly helped draft some of the local 60:00legislation. I certainly met, went to Frankfort and talked to some legislators. I can't remember law suits, the only one really of any real substance that was a big investment for me was Beau against Colgate which opened the Colgate plant across the river for women.

TK: Oh really!

DG: Now I know for years I worked with blacks and employment but I have no recollection of particular things. [Laughter] I remember an incident and this 61:00might be of some value to you although how it would come out, I don't know, and the labor matters. A young lawyer had to be in the mid-fifties. It was in Paducah. I met my client there, my client took me down there and when we finished our labor matter he said, "David, I'm staying down here, but the guys from the Teamsters will drive you back to Louisville." They were on the other side of this labor matter. These Teamsters had this young lawyer and he was, I guess, middle, late twenties, something like that and they were going to have fun with him. So they started discussing all their stories of when they unionized the coal mines in Illinois before they unionized the coal mines in Kentucky and all these violent stories. . . .

END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B

START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A

DG: . . . is that after they had their fun scaring me about the bodies they buried, then out of the blue, one them says to the other, "You know, it's time for us to integrate the Kroger warehouses." One white Teamster official talking to another white Teamster official and saying it's time for us to get blacks working in the Kroger warehouse. That's a big deal when you think about it and I have to tell you I've thought about that evening and that incidence and those guys deciding that hundreds of times since then. They were white; it had to be an unpopular thing with, you know, but they knew it was right. It's pretty neat 63:00when you think about it.

TK: I read some stuff about the unions here and some of them in particularly, the Teamsters and the Farm Equipment Workers out at Harvester, were both very active in various civil rights things.

DG: This was Local 89.

TK: That's the one, yeah yeah.

DG: Okay, it had a horrible reputation.

TK: Horrible for . . . ?

DG: Violence, oh, oh, yeah, I have friends that they just I mean really beat up, guys in the management, they just go out and beat them up.

TK: Yikes!

DG: Well, yeah, but in this I just . . . the unions had a substantial part in it. I'm trying to rack to think of other organizations. You might be interested in part of the history of Lincoln Institute. [unintelligible] for a while, not today, it's a vocational school. There was a time when it was a brilliant idea, 64:00a brilliant institution for overly bright poor kids.

TK: From all over the state, right?

DG: Yeah, from all over the state. Originally founded when they were forced to, I think I've got my history right, when the Day Law was passed and black and white kids couldn't go to school together, so black kids couldn't go to Berea and Berea became the white school and Lincoln Institute was founded. But when I was on the board there, Mansir Tydings, it brought musicians, brought lecturers 65:00from around the country to teach these kids just as if they were going to a fine Eastern academy. It was a wonderful school.

TK: When did it stop being a school?

DG: When people in Shelbyville had enough of black and white kids walking hand in hand in Shelbyville and they got the legislature to cut off funding, so it had to find other places for money. The federal government was the place. The federal government wanted to know that there were would be vocational trade. It's unfortunate.

TK: And now the Lincoln Foundation basically fund raises for it?

DG: Originally a hunk of money was put together, the state must have supplied a 66:00big part of it. I think Thruston Morton, who was a U.S. senator, I vaguely recall him saying that his mother or grandmother put money in there, so there may be Morton or Ballard, you don't hear that name so much anymore, money that went into that foundation, but Sam would have the history of that really. It would be documented.

TK: He's on my list to call eventually.

DG: Lovely guy. Is Art Walters still alive?

TK: Yeah, I interviewed him about two weeks ago. He's had a little bit of health problems, but he's basically okay.

DG: He's quite a guy.

TK: He's a great guy and very interesting interviewee, you know, because he really had good detail stories. He had really thought about it a lot and written up a list of stuff for me.

DG: He's just remarkable and it was in later years but he certainly accomplished a lot in this community.

TK: Urban League seems to me to have sort of, seems to have a constant presence almost always in the background though, you know. There seemed to have been in the forties and fifties a fairly high level of Jewish participation in the Urban League. I don't know if your father would have been involved in that or?

DG: He would have been some, not as much as a Lewis Cole.

TK: I've seen the name and Arthur Kling is the other name I see all the time.

DG: Arthur Kling is a very, very unusual man, I assume he's dead.

TK: I assume so, too.

DG: He was a radical; I would assume a socialist, socialist millionaire we'd 68:00say, very outspoken, no tolerance for intolerance, no tolerance for stupidity. You disagreed with him, he knew it and you knew it and he let you know it; wonderful wonderful person, but very strong and wise.

TK: Well, the library has an interview with him on record from a couple of years ago, so I'm hoping to read it.

DG: Just a remarkable person. If Lewis Cole is alive, if he is, you should seek him out.

TK: Lewis Cole?

DG: C-O-L-E. This is a person born with a silver spoon in his mouth but a remarkable citizen who was chairman of everything, Jewish things, at one time or another. The Jewish community had a lot of people who [unintelligible].

TK: I heard or actually I just read something where, was it today, last couple of days, Young Men's Hebrew Association, YMHA. I guess they're going to be correspondents . . .

DG: Out at the Jewish Community Center.

TK: Is it really?

DG: Yeah.

TK: Okay, I didn't know that, that there was a connection between the two.

DG: The YMHA, in my day, was on Second Street a block south of Broadway. Did they tear the building down lately for a parking lot? I guess they did. It was 70:00part of the parking lot for that motel that's now on Broadway between First and Second.

TK: The Holiday Inn; it's where I got married! [Laughter]

DG: Did you really! Well now, it's a landmark! [Laughter]

TK: It's a landmark now!

DG: But it was there on the corner, very unusual place.

TK: Well, the rumor I read was that blacks were allowed to eat there but not sleep there.

DG: Well, I didn't know they had any, they didn't have any sleeping quarters.

TK: Someone was talking in an interview.

DG: And they didn't serve any food in there.

TK: So okay, it was just a rumor.

DG: I don't remember any blacks or non-, I mean as a kid, or non-Jews for that matter. It was just, you know.

TK: Just Jewish.

DG: What you heard was not the YMHA, but the YMCA and you're right. The YMCA was 71:00on the corner of Third and Broadway and could eat in the cafeteria there, but my recollection is, could not sleep there.

TK: Oh, that's interesting so they [unintelligible] have the two organizations.

DG: And of course, there was a black YMCA.

TK: Down in the West End.

DG: At Tenth and Chestnut. It was important, really important part of the community as was Louisville's Central High School that was down there. Hell, those churches, they were really an important factor in the black community and in the civil rights movement.

TK: What about the white churches? Did they have any influence or contribution?

DG: Not that I remember.

TK: Not that you remember. I haven't heard that. Individuals, I've heard of individuals, individual minister here, individual minister there.

DG: Oh yes, oh yes. The society church at the corner of [U.S.] 42 and I want to say St. Francis but it can't be St. Francis; I guess that's the name of their school, I guess it's the name of the church. St. Francis, [St. Francis in the Fields] the Episcopal church at US 42, okay, right out there near Harrods Creek, the minister, his name would be worth getting. I remember his addressing a group of parents--couple of my kids went to St. Francis--addressing parents or he and 73:00I meeting alone, I'm not certain. I was on the board of the school for a while, but at any rate, groups of parents from St. Francis would come to him and say, "We want to found a school!" And he would say, "Fine, I'll give you a hundred percent of my salary. You know, it's going to be an integrated school." He said then they'd never come back. Year after year people would come to me, parents would come and say, "We want to form a school and I'd tell them blacks are going to go to that school and they wouldn't come back." He says, "Finally you all came to me and he came back!" They still have a school downtown, which is in that YMCA building and under sixth grade or up to sixth grade is way out 42, but 74:00there was the biggest Episcopal Church. I'd say the Methodist church here took some interest.

TK: I've never heard that before.

DG: Yeah, they had their part, no question. Their ministers certainly took part.

TK: Well, I've seen a couple of names of prominent ministers here and there, particularly the Unitarian minister Robert Weston and Bishop Marmion, Episcopal church bishop, you know, here and there.

DG: And you would find the guy who was head of Bellarmine.

TK: [Monsignor Alfred] Horrigan, who is, I just found out, still living, but 75:00he's in a nursing home.

DG: That's what I understand.

TK: And I wrote him a letter just in case.

DG: He is one wonderful guy.

TK: Did you know him personally?

DG: He and I were friends. I was his lawyer for a while. Yeah he was just a person, you know one of these beautiful people that when you're with them you just know how beautiful they are inside and he really was that. You know, Bishop Marmion was an elite already, oh big whatever. Horrigan was just a wonderful beautiful person. But you know, I have to say that there wasn't that much, it was unusual leadership if it was Catholic leadership, a priest here, a priest 76:00there. Certainly a church like St. Michael's on Oak Street, I think it's St. Michael's out there, real place for people to be in a leadership sort of thing. There was a Tachau, Charles Tachau.

TK: Charles, yeah, I've interviewed him.

DG: That you know, had his church in the West End. Something that may have been part of all this is the '37 flood that shifted people around a lot and it may have had part in segregation. We had a lot of well to do families lived in the West End until the '37 flood and that may well have segregated the community.

TK: Because people got out, yeah. Well, I have heard that a lot of the flood damaged houses became converted to low income housing rather than being fixed and that's where they became more for low income blacks in there.

DG: But it permitted concentration where you would find blacks up and down every alley and here now were homes that became available.

TK: The city just commissioned a study of the history of the alleys in Louisville.

DG: Did they really?

TK: Yeah, a friend of mine just told that he's on the committee, and actually I'm on the committee, too, but this decision was made before I got put on the committee. The mayor [Dave Armstrong] set up this sort of millennial historic preservation committee and one of the potential projects for the next year is to study the history of Louisville's alleys, which I think would be kind of interesting and different.

DG: The one time I had to trace the deeds involved in the major sewer of the city, south of Broadway down to the West End and then to the river, and I mean I was in the basement of the courthouse or whatever looking through deeds. But all the prominent families, I mean there's just, you know, a lot of families have been here for a long time. [Laughter]

TK: It's kind of interesting.

DG: It is interesting when you look at it, but the alleys . . . see, there was a mixture. There had to be black kids there. When I played ball as a kid, I played 79:00in alleys and we had two alleys near my home, one that was just one vehicle wide and another that was two vehicles wide, but we played baseball. And you knew anyone from my neighborhood, they always hit the ball over second base because that's all that was fair, everything else was out! [Laughter] So you hit it straight over second base, but there were no kids playing with us, no black kids playing with us.

TK: Well, that's interesting, but they lived back there!

DG: Lived right there, I mean we hit balls right by where they [unintelligible]. I was president of the Jewish social service agency, now has another name, and it operated a home for convalescence children on South First Street between St. 80:00Catherine and Oak; big tremendous mansion. It was called the Jewish Convalescence Home and it was originally formed, I guess, for Jewish orphans, it was a Jewish orphanage, but soon there were no Jewish orphans, you know, in institutions and there was no need to convalesce Jewish kids. There were never any Jewish kids in this convalescence home, there were kids who were in trouble or sick and their parents couldn't take care of them for a short while. Black kids, five years old six years old in bed, in bed, maybe ten years old; and I'm making the rounds with the head nurse and whoever, whatever, and a kid is 81:00introduced to me and he calls me Mr. David. And I said, "Call me David." And we played for a little while and we leave and Al Irwin turns to me and he says, "David, you're going to cause this kid trouble because the next time he calls a white person without saying mister, his mother is going to be very angry with him." So there's a whole, we used to have a term for it, plantation manners.

TK: Etiquette, plantation etiquette, yeah.

DG: Kids were taught as to what they could do and yeah, that's part of the tradition. For us, it was part of the tradition, for them it was, you know a necessary thing.

TK: That person you just mentioned is the one you mentioned before?

DG: Yeah, Al Irwin.

TK: Social worker?

DG: He was the executive of that organization. Let's see what else [unintelligible] looking on here. 'Course, this is a later thing, my God, but you've got [unintelligible] Kling who was either my father's assistant. What year is this? 1970s, probably around the year of my father's death if I can even remember how old he was when he died, I don't; but [unintelligible] Kling wonderful.

TK: Is he related to Arthur?

DG: No, he was from out of town, a rabbi from out of town, but Edward Post, Eddie Post, was a young lawyer now dead, but his widow Susan Post . . .

TK: Oh okay, I know Susan Post.

DG: Well, Susie Post, I believe I'm correct, is Clayton Kling's daughter.

TK: Really! Oh okay, well, that's interesting!

DG: I think I'm right.

TK: I'll check on it because she's on my list to interview.

DG: 'Course, she's young. She can't have that much from way back then, but she would a lot of background; brilliant woman.

TK: And she was kind of involved in the busing so that's what I'm probably going to interview her mostly about.

DG: Oh, she would have been. Okay, I believe there was Bill Gatewood.

TK: He's no longer in Louisville. No, no, no, he is; I can't remember.

DG: I don't know I haven't made any contact with him. [Pause] And see, you got to have Olaf Anderson here. That's from the church on St. Andrew's.

TK: And he was also at the seminary, I think.

DG: Yes.

TK: But he's passed away quite sometime ago.

DG: Has he really?

TK: That's what George and Jean Edwards, I interviewed them and they knew him very well, I guess because they're also Presbyterians, and told me that he passed away.

DG: Well, they do, Presbyterians do quite a bit in this community. Isn't that funny, God, I had no idea he even knew Charles Elliot in those days. It's unfortunate that the black community has, I guess every minority community, has a lot of people who just know how to keep their prominence in names when you wonder how they go to sleep at night, you know. But then we had . . . who is the great black congressman from New York, spent more time at [unintelligible] then he did . . . oh, what was his name? He almost got re-elected. [Laughter]

TK: Well, this is something that, I almost called him Father Grenough, it's not 85:00Father anymore, but Richard Grenough gave me a whole stack of these, basically just for my information and to show to my classes and you know that sort of thing.

DG: You know, I've cleaned out too many law offices.

TK: I did want to just ask, because of the timing thing, I did want to ask whatever happened to that committee the American Friends Service Committee?

DG: Well, I wouldn't know because I probably got circulated off of it at some stage. We certainly spent so much time on the Park DuValle Neighborhood Health Center. Dora Rice was on that board, a lot of the people were on that board and 86:00it was a real time consumer in dealing with the community, dealing with the federal government, whatever. I have no idea who would have replaced me there. I'm trying to think if Lee would . . . no, I guess not . . . that he would know more.

TK: When I interviewed Betty, we talked maybe me re-interviewing her because we had cut it off very shortly because she had a lunch engagement, so we barely got started and we had to . . .

DG: Go back, go back.

TK: So maybe after Christmas I'll call her again.

DG: You need to go talk with . . . did she talk to you at all about the community out River Road where she lives.

TK: No.

DG: I can't think of the name of the street right now, but she and Jim had a large home and a substantial amount of land there. They built a nursing home out there.

TK: She did tell me that.

DG: Shirley Avenue, if I remember correctly, but Shirley Avenue and going back was a black community.

TK: That's where Art Walters lives, on Shirley Avenue.

DG: There's another avenue off of 42 almost as far out, but the people who lived in Glenview, their servants lived there and the social status there depended on the social status of who you worked for.

TK: Oh, isn't that interesting!

DG: Now I know it second hand or third hand from Betty, but there have to be people who lived there who had a substantial stake in the movement. Anytime you 88:00spend with her has to be of tremendous value.

TK: We talked about the "Learn More Earn More" program, she told me about that.

DG: Oh, did she!

TK: So that was good, yeah, she did talk about that.

DG: If there's anything in my life that I look back on as a learning experience and something I'm proud of, it was that.

TK: She even gave me some materials to look at.

DG: She had them from that, oh my God!

TK: I'm not sure it was about that. I know she gave me something to look at.

DG: How are you doing for time? I'll take three more minutes; four minutes for "Learn More Earn More" because that was really my baby as I see it. I remember going to a meeting at City Hall of an education committee. I don't know who got 89:00to convene it and Sam Noe, who was the superintendent of city schools, see, there was a merger of the city and county later, city schools, and I was making a pitch . . . I'll tell you what we learned. We learned that in 19 . . . well, ten years earlier whenever it was, I guess '47, there were 1200 blacks attending adult education in the city of Louisville; 1957, or whenever we did it, there were twenty blacks attending adult education in the city of Louisville.

TK: Oh, my gosh!

DG: Why with employment opening, would you have fewer, okay? Dora Rice, Betty, 90:00some others came up with the understanding that the reason was if you were an illiterate or uneducated black, you're not going to go cross town to be embarrassed in front of a bunch of whites in another community, you would only go to school in your own community. And by George, adult education had been community before and it had all come down to Ahrens Trade School downtown and people wouldn't come. So we decided to reverse that and I was at that meeting to talk these people and Sam Noe into it. In front of people, he turned to me and he said, "Will education really help them get jobs?" Now this is the superintendent of public education. And I started to talk and I started to 91:00respond to him and then I said, "Could we go talk alone for a while?" And Sam Noe and I went into a room and I was just a young upstart lawyer and he was this slick guy who had the right last name, Noe. And when we came out of that room, he announced to everyone he was supporting the program. The question was whether there should be GEDs in the community, and I can understand as an educator, he would want people to finish high school, not to get GEDs. And there were GEDs, it was a matter of there being more. Write down the name. . . .

END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A

START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B

TK: I think she's passed away.

DG: Oh come on!

TK: Maybe not, I'll check. Rosa . . .?

DG: Rosa Henderson.

TK: She was one of the War on Poverty folks. She had been involved in some of the War on Poverty stuff.

DG: Well, maybe. Rosa was a mother of five children who lived alone in a housing project and signed up for "Learn More Earn More."

TK: Oh really!

DG: And that's how she got her high school education, which she parlayed into a college education, and probably got a master's before she was through.

TK: That's interesting. I love stories about . . . you hear these stories and some of the people I've interviewed are people who started out . . .

DG: Physically beautiful young woman, but you take a woman in her early twenties, living in a housing project, the world's over with for that person. Not for Rosa Henderson. God, do I have the right name? Yes, its Rosa Parks that did the buses, Rosa Henderson, and you got to find her if she's alive and tell her I gave you her name because when she smiles, it's a real gorgeous smile.

TK: Well, I will look harder because she is on my list to try to find.

DG: We charged twenty-five dollars tuition. We went out and raised money as scholarships to pay the twenty-five dollars for anyone. To be eligible for scholarship, all you had to say was I don't have the twenty-five dollars. No questions, how much you make, nothing that's it. We couldn't get anyone to take the scholarships, I mean we forced them on people, but people on welfare, AFDC [Aid to Families with Dependent Children] whatever, they wanted to pay a few bucks a week. They wanted to pay their way and the mere fact of that it gave me something to use maybe a hundred times in meetings later when you know they try 94:00. . . people on welfare because they want to be on welfare, [unintelligible] bullshit and we all know it. We got up to where we had, I don't know, a thousand, two thousand students at one time.

TK: Wow! And that sort of preceded some of the . . . obviously that's an earlier program and the Park DuValle stuff came later, right?

DG: Yes, that was before.

TK: I got that impression because I guess I had known about that to ask Betty about it.

DG: That came out of that committee [unintelligible] [Laughter]

TK: Yeah, yeah, that's right she told me that it was [unintelligible].

DG: Wonderful. You have to get on your way.

TK: Yeah, let me just turn this off.

END OF INTERVIEW