Interview with Cheri Bryant Hamilton, October 23, 1999

Tracy K'Meyer: This is an interview with Cheri Bryant Hamilton by Tracy K'Meyer on Saturday October 23rd, 1999. [Tape paused] Well, like I said, I'd like to start with, I did just want to confirm, when and where were you born?

Cheri Hamilton: My name is Cheri Hamilton, well, Cheri Bryant Hamilton. I was born here in Louisville, Kentucky.

TK: Her in Louisville, okay, I wasn't sure if you were born before your mother moved here.

CH: No.

TK: And what year was that?

CH: I'd rather not say.

TK: Okay.

CH: It'll all come out in the wash.

TK: I'll figure out eventually. [Laughter] Okay, born in Louisville. Where in Louisville did you live growing up?

CH: In the West End.

TK: Did you move around in the West End or was it one particular . . .?

CH: When I was born, we lived at 2712 West Jefferson Street and then when I was six, my parents built a house at 1211 Southwestern Parkway, and then I lived there until I got out of law school.

TK: And that's the same house where your mother still lives?

CH: Yes.

TK: Where did you go to school then, which schools?

CH: Virginia Avenue Elementary, DuValle Junior High . . .

TK: And then Central?

CH: Loretto High School.

TK: Oh, okay!

CH: Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. I got my law degree at North Carolina Central University in Durham.

TK: Really? I went to Chapel Hill so.

CH: Oh, okay, right down the road.

TK: I've actually been there, yeah. One question I like to start all these interviews with is, as you were a child growing up, when were you first aware of prejudice?

CH: I'd guess I'd have to say when I was in junior high school. Junior high, high school, early high, my friends and I would go downtown, you know, take the bus like to eat at Frisch's and shop and you know just hang out on Fourth Street 2:00and we couldn't try on the clothes that we'd see in Selman's and Stewart's and Byck's. I can't remember if it was Byck's or not but at least I remember those two. So I remember that, you know, that we couldn't do that.

TK: What do you remember about, again when you were growing up, what did your parents teach you about how to respond to prejudice?

CH: I don't know if we ever actually had a conversation, I mean it was probably just watching their behavior. It wasn't anything overt that said, don't do this, don't do that, you know, I learned a lot by watching my parents.

TK: The other, just a sort of a background type question, is could you tell me about any outside of school activities, clubs, organizations, churches, anything 3:00like that you had been involved with as a young person?

CH: We attended Church of our Merciful Savior on, I believe it was Eleventh and Walnut Street, at that time it was Walnut Street. We had Jack and Jill, which is a national organization, I don't know if you're familiar with Jack and Jill but it's sixty-one years old now and it was founded by African-American mothers so that their children would have the benefit of cultural, educational, recreational activities and exposure. So I grew up in Jack and Jill, so they provided a lot of activities for the kids, exposure to things, which my parents always did anyways but then you have a group of kids who are like-minded whose parents had similar goals for their children. So I had an instant network of 4:00friends and then when I grew up in this area, there were a lot of kids around my same age whose parents were professionals so we had an instant little play group. Course, we had the Girl Scouts and we had dance lessons and piano lessons and tennis lessons and art lessons and everything else they could provide for us. Went to Camp Atwater, which was a black camp . . .

TK: Oh, I've never heard of that before.

CH: In East Brookville, Massachusetts, and then you'd meet kids from all over the, predominantly the East Coast and you'd see those same kids when you went to college. I went to a black college, Fisk University, and so I had that experience. I was very active in clubs and things like that in high school.

TK: Loretto, was that an integrated school?

CH: No, well, it was. Yes, it was a Catholic girls' high. There were sixty in my 5:00graduating class and I think about thirteen of us were black.

TK: Why did you decide to go there?

CH: My mother thought it was a good school and my older sister had gone there.

TK: Is Peggy older than you?

CH: No, Peggy's younger. I have an older sister, Vicki.

TK: Oh, I didn't know that. She's the one who was born before your parents moved here?

CH: Right. So it was in the neighborhood, I mean it's just right over here on Forty-Fifth Street, but it was a good school and my parents were always very concerned about education, providing the best educational opportunities for us, so that was it. I couldn't go anywhere else and it was okay.

TK: So you didn't have any interest in going to Central because that seems to be where most people went.

CH: No, no, I was following tradition and I guess, if I look at a lot of things I've done, I've followed traditions in my family. My grandfather, who was a physician also, went to Fisk. My father met my mother at Fisk. I went to Fisk; 6:00my older brother and sister went to Fisk, aunts and uncles, all of that, I mean it's a whole big family all of us.

TK: Yeah, whenever the sun goes behind a cloud it always seems dark in here. [Laughter] Do you remember what the first civil rights activity you were aware of was, either locally or nationally?

CH: Well, I guess getting involved with the open housing movement back in '66, '67, '68, and I was in high school at the time. And my mother was involved in the poverty movement and housing issues down in the Southwick area and issues 7:00came up about where people could live, and you know, we had I guess the nicest house on the block or on the street and the [unintelligible] house as well, but just across the street and down and around the corner was a refinery, you know. So it was kind of out of place. We'd ride on Sundays and on the weekends, all around the city, and see beautiful houses in all parts of the city and it was like "Why are we living?" And didn't know that there was restrictions at the time and that they wanted to get some land and build, this was the only area of town that was open to blacks to live in.

TK: When you say you ride around town, you mean on the bus or in the family car?

CH: No, family car.

TK: Like going for a family drive kind of thing?

CH: Right and then we'd go to eat and it would always be at black restaurants, tearooms, and things like that. I don't know, we were rather sheltered in that, it was just natural and normal. I mean I never thought about those kind of things and then we'd ride around and we'd see more that was available. And then I can remember my sister wanting to get an apartment in Old Louisville.

TK: This is Vicki?

CH: Vicki, my older sister. She couldn't get an apartment; Ormsby, I think it was around Fifth and Ormsby, because she was black. So she wound up getting an apartment over on Thirty-Fifth and Algonquin or Cypress, not Cypress, Catalpa, around that area. So just little things, just little things that you remember.

TK: So it sounds like this awareness of the open housing issue sort of filtered in through these little things. When did you first become aware of the movement 9:00about open housing then?

CH: My mother was, I guess, part of a group of people, Georgia Davis Powers and A.B. King, Reverend [W.J.] Hodge and a lot of other people that were concerned, Neville Tucker, and they wanted to do something about the open housing movement so they started having meetings. And we'd go to the meetings and we'd go to the rallies and then it just started picking up steam, I mean it was like the adults were always in one room plotting strategy and the kids were another room and we were talking or doing homework or getting things together. I was very good friends with Reverend A.B. King's daughter, Alveda. We were around the same age and they just lived down the street, so we just kind of naturally fell into, you 10:00know, being with our mother. I could have been home doing whatever else I would normally do at that time. You just started realizing that there was a place for kids and young people in this cause, so my sister and I, and she's four years younger than I, I guess we must have asked if we could go or be involved and we were enjoying it. It was a good cause and I think it has determined the rest of the scope of my life and colored everything I've done since then and my decisions I make professionally and personally. But you know, being at that age, 11:00I'm not sure if I can say . . . I don't know I just kind of fell into it and it was the right thing to fall into.

TK: So these meetings you went to with your mother, you went there because your mother was there, you went with her sort of?

CH: Initially, but then I mean the kids, we were making signs and having marches and my parents, I remember, went out of town and we had baby-sitters, I think they went out of the country. [Phone rings -- tape paused]

TK: We were just talking about you'd be making the signs and things like that.

CH: So it was exciting because the technicians, which is what they called them from SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference], came in town. And there was another friend of mine, Renelda Meeks, and her brother is now an alderman, Renelda and I were classmates in school, in elementary. She was involved and 12:00Andre Skouls, who is now a dentist. We all went to junior high school together. I mean it was just a lot of us that were out there marching every night almost it seemed like sometimes. Then people would come in town. I remember Muhammad Ali came in town and Martin Luther King came in several times and we'd be down to the house, down to A.B.'s house, and like I said, they'd be in another room, they'd be plotting strategy and they'd say, "Oh, we're going to have a rally Wednesday night, or we're going to have a rally Friday night we're going to have a rally at this church." So they'd be setting up the arrangements and we'd be making signs.

TK: So did you meet Martin Luther King yourself?

CH: Yes.

TK: What was that like?

CH: He was very nice, very nice, very warm. I was in his daughter; I mean, his 13:00niece's wedding when Alveda got married in Atlanta. They had us over to dinner at their house and he played violin, you know, so I met his kids and then Alveda's brothers and sisters, I mean brothers and younger sister, you know, so I met all the King kids and they were all pretty friendly at the time.

TK: So that I get this right, how do you spell Alveda?

CH: A-L-V-E-D-A.

TK: Okay.

CH: And she was a state legislator.

TK: In Georgia?

CH: Yes.

TK: Someone gave me her mother's name recently as someone I could maybe call when I might go out of town soon.

CH: Naomi?

TK: Yeah. Could you, these rallies that you're talking about, could you describe them a little bit for me?

CH: Oh, it was exciting! Because they'd have speakers, they'd have singing, they'd talk about what was going on, they'd talk about strategy, they'd talk about trying to get an open housing law in Louisville and the Board of Alderman 14:00was not in favor of that so we marched on the alderman's houses. We'd go out there and we'd march on the police chief's house or we'd march on whoever the alderman was. We did a lot of marching out in south Louisville. For a long time, I didn't have a good feel about south Louisville, you know, the Preston Highway, Taylor Boulevard, Third Street, Southern Parkway, that area out that way. It was just the right thing to do; it was the cause and it was just in me by that time that this was all very unfair. We marched on Fourth Street. We had sit-ins in the middle of Sixth Street between City Hall and county courthouse; I think I've 15:00got a picture of that, locking arms, singing songs, and marching on City Hall. I find it so ironic that during one of those open housing demonstrations we got thrown out of City Hall, you know, like down those steps and I'm working in the same City Hall in the same Board of Alderman where I got thrown out of thirty years ago. [Laughter] So I've gone back and read the record, which was kind of spotty, but they don't take minutes like I take minutes, you know, for the record, and didn't find out until years later that my grandfather on my mother's side was involved in politics. So it's just been a natural progression because 16:00it was a matter of things shouldn't be this way and finding out that you could make a difference that you could change the laws. Those people that were in there got voted out and you got people that were more sympathetic or some of the people may have even changed their minds. But it just, it was very exciting.

TK: This might be hard to do but can you describe what does it feel like to be at one of these marches?

CH: Well . . . you're getting pumped up because you're being reminded. . . . I mean, if you go to see Reverend [Louis] Coleman on the street now or Reverend [Charles] Elliott and he's talking about the gay rights thing now and you know the ministers really led the movement, really fueled the passion, and the way 17:00the black church is set up, you know, they're very good at that, you know, and they can get you going and get you fired up and then we'd leave from there, "Let's go out and do something about it!" So then you'd leave right from the church and go to hit the streets, you know, and you're singing songs, and you're singing freedom songs and then you come back and get, I guess, dismissed, you know, prayed over and then you go home. So you were in the church, you were right there. There were a lot of ministers that were very involved. There were a lot of people that were not involved in the movement, I mean they thought we were shaking things up and should leave things well enough alone and "What are you all doing out there?" and "These kids shouldn't be out there!" There was one 18:00time my sister and I were out there and we had begged the baby-sitter to let us go.

TK: When your parents were out of town?

CH: My parents were out of the country and we wound up that night, I think we were on, I don't know if it was Bardstown Road or . . . we were down by Memorial Auditorium and we were having a sit-in out there in the street. And the cops came and, you know they're trying to get you to disperse and you don't disperse and you keep singing songs and we wound up getting arrested and we had to go to Children's Center, they took us to Children's Center. And my parents were coming back in town that night and they had to come down and get me out of there. And then we marched and demonstrated out by Central Avenue by Churchill Downs and I can recall my mother getting thrown in the paddy wagon and watching that and 19:00we're still locking arms and singing. I didn't get arrested that night. I think I only got arrested one time, but my father was "Oh, I leave town and here you all go," you know.

TK: Did your dad participate in all this?

CH: No, no.

TK: I think your mother told me the story about that particular march when she got arrested because she was saying that she was worried that I guess that you were going to get hurt and so she started sort of making a fuss, so then she got carted off and then your dad saw it on the TV. [Laughter]

CH: Yeah, yeah. [Laughter]

TK: That must have gone over well. Were you ever afraid during one of these marches?

CH: Yes, because even though we were fueled with the passion that what we doing was right, we were meeting hecklers out there wherever we'd go and they'd throw eggs, they'd throw rocks, they'd throw barbs at you, so they were heckling you, and we just hung together and locked arms and sang. So you were afraid of 20:00physical violence, that's why the police were always out there. You didn't know whether they were -- protect you or whatever but they wound up trying to keep things from getting out of hand.

TK: Were there very many other young in the marches or a better way to ask that might be, how would you describe the marches in terms of age and gender and that sort of thing?

CH: There were a lot of young people. There were a lot of people around my mother's age, but I think predominantly the majority of the people were young, probably college age, high school. The leaders and a few of the people from the community, they were a lot of warriors and people that would be out there, but then a lot of people, they thought it was just too dangerous to be out on the 21:00streets. There were other people that supported in other ways, if you got arrested they made bail, you know, lawyers may have helped you out things like that, but it was really the leaders led it and then the young people were the predominant force.

TK: When you say old warriors, what do you mean by that?

CH: I think of people like Reverend Hodge would be out there and his son Philip Hodge. I know I'm going to forget a lot of names but Lois Morris, Georgia Davis Powers, Denise Bentley's mother, Ella Weathers.

TK: Oh, I've heard that name before and I can't find her, but I've heard of her.

CH: She's in Pennsylvania.

TK: Okay, that's why.

CH: They were all very very dedicated, very serious about this and a lot of people I have a lot of respect for.

TK: Were these led by any particular organization or just an ad hoc sort of thing?

CH: There was an organization that was formed here at the time called BULK, B-U-L-K, the Black Unity League of Kentucky and so they had technicians, you know, we all joined and got involved in that. Then the SCLC came in, I'm not sure whether A.D. King was president of or was an officer with the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People], but the NAACP was very active and we were active in the youth part.

TK: I was going to ask that. Had you been involved with that before the open housing or did you get involved in it as a result of open housing?

CH: I think it was all around the same time.

TK: What kinds of things did the NAACP Youth Council do?

CH: Well, we had a lot of leadership training workshops and I was part of a 23:00group, the state council, and we met and everything just kind of fueled into what was going on at the time. I can remember boycotts of Fourth Street businesses, you know, "Don't buy anything for Easter!" That kind of thing. "Don't shop downtown!" And so we'd be active in those kind of things through the NAACP.

TK: Do you remember who some of the leaders of the youth council were?

CH: What is this guy's name? He was from, well, he wasn't from here, the one I'm thinking of, he was from northern Kentucky. James Embry was like the state president and he'd come in. I'd have to look at some pictures maybe to remember 24:00some of those other folks.

TK: Because I know a slightly earlier generation, the people would have been leaders just before the sit-ins, like Raoul . . .

CH: Raoul Cunningham, yeah.

TK: I interviewed him, but there sort of seems to be a generation gap then, after that group is gone, who comes in to replace them. Okay, you're going to look at some pictures. What have you got there?

CH: Let me see. . . .

TK: Oh, you know what, you started to tell me a story and then that was right when the phone rang with your mother going out of town?

CH: That's when I got arrested.

TK: Oh, okay.

CH: That's when I got arrested that night.

TK: Oh, that's the story you were going to tell.

CH: Now this was . . .

TK: Now she says when she came back, you insisted that she go to a march.

CH: I did.

TK: How did that come up?

CH: I don't remember, but I can remember that. I just wanted to show you this picture. This is me here and this is the paddy wagon and these are some other young people that were out there. He's old; he was from the SCLC.

TK: Local or . . .?

CH: Yes, this is all local, this is Courier-Journal. Now he wasn't local; he was one of the technicians brought in.

TK: [unintelligible], I've seen that name before.

CH: He was one of the SCLC . . .

TK: SCLC people, okay.

CH: Yeah, Robert Sims, Samuel Hawkins, Hulbert James. This was on Taylor Boulevard and Central Avenue.

TK: What's the article there? "Fire bombs hit stores." What, that related to this stuff?

CH: Yeah, that was over in the Parkland neighborhood.

TK: Wow!

CH: And "Demonstration [unintelligible] are scolded by King," this is March 21st, '67. There were a lot of people who were afraid and that's what they're saying. There should be adults out demonstrating, for so long in this movement, the kids have got to carry the whole load.

TK: And that was in the open housing, too! Of course, I've always read that in the sit-ins, the open accommodations sit-ins, were mostly young people, but I didn't know that was also true of open housing, that's really interesting. One 26:00of the pictures raises a question. One of the things that Louisville is often noted for is a supposedly high percentage of white involvement in open housing. What would you say was the . . .?

CH: Anne Braden was always there. Anne and her kids, her son was the only white boy in my school when we were growing up, at Virginia Avenue. They lived in the neighborhood. He was super smart intelligent. There were always good white people there, you know, they weren't the majority but they were there. I can't remember this lady's name. I have it written on here, but . . .

TK: Can't read the writing.

CH: That's Ella Weathers there. There's Bob . . .

TK: Bob Sims, okay.

CH: There's my sister, Peggy.

TK: Boy, she must have been really young!

CH: Yeah, she was around twelve, I think.

TK: Wow, really!

CH: Yeah, and Florian Meeks, there's another Meeks. This girl went to high school with me; we're right on Central Avenue and she's getting lowered into the . . .

TK: So was there any long term ramifications of you having been arrested, any way it affected your long term record?

CH: Well, I believe so! When I left and went to college and went on to law school. When I came back from law school and took the bar, you have to have this personal fitness interview. You know my mother wound up suing [Kenneth] Schmied, who was the mayor, and the police chief and all these people. I guess she's told you the story about the Black Six and all of that?

TK: Right.

CH: And so, you know, they had her accused of conspiring to blow up the refinery across the street from our house.

TK: Which would make lots of sense.

CH: Exactly. So anyway she was just kind of blackballed, you know, around this community for a long time, so our names were kind of like mud. I got very close in passing the bar, I think seventy-five was passing, and I'd get 74.997 and you know that kind of thing, and I just, I could never pass the bar. [Phone rings-tape paused]

TK: The bar.

CH: Yeah, so it's a hard thing to prove, but they were still in the appeals process at the time. She'd win a part, they'd appeal, she'd appeal. It was still a lot of tension, a lot [of] tension in this city at that time.

TK: About what year was this?

CH: This was early seventies, early to mid-seventies.

TK: So it lasted a while, because the Black Six trial itself lasted until '71 or 29:00something like that. Were you in town for that or were you out of town when that was happening?

CH: I was still in college, but I'd come home because you know Tennessee, Nashville is just two and half hours. I can remember they moved, they had a change of venue and they moved the trial to, I believe it was, Munfordville.

END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A

START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B

CH: I can remember they had part of the trial here and then they got a change of venue and they moved the trial to Munfordville. I believe I had to testify here! So I supported my mother and went with her down there to Hart County and it just dragged on for a long time.

TK: Were you here when the actual riot happened?

CH: Yes.

TK: Could you tell me about that?

CH: That was the year I was graduating from high school. My grandmother was here from Oklahoma and we were about to have a big party, you know, with a lot of friends invited in, this was the end of May, at Stouffer's [Inn] down on Broadway. We had a demonstration and we were at Twenty-Eighth and Greenwood and they kept saying that Stokley Carmichael couldn't land! He was supposed to come in and be the speaker at the rally. The speakers kept saying, "The police won't let him land. The police won't let him land!" You know, "His plane is out there circling! They won't let him land!" People were getting upset and they were getting fired up and things just got out of hand. I believe a car got overturned or something happened and people started rioting. It just kind of happened! So 31:00my mother, my grandmother and I, poor grandmother, we're taking off down the alley, you know, just trying to get away! And one thing just led to another, but we got out of there.

TK: How old is your grandmother? I'm just curious.

CH: At that time?

TK: Yeah.

CH: She was probably in her sixties.

TK: Wow, interesting for her. So you just left the premises. Then how did your mother end up getting arrested then or was it right the same day or was it . . .?

CH: No, no. We had this guy that was in here, Cortez, James Cortez, and he claimed to have been sent in here by . . . I'm not sure who he worked with. He 32:00wasn't SCLC . . . he was working with Stokley and SNCC. He was with SNCC. And so my mother being very open, "Oh, you didn't have a place to stay. Well you can stay at our house, stay in my son's room." Because you know there was discrimination, you couldn't stay in hotels, you had to stay with people. So Cortez came back and must have said something, you know, made up a whole bunch of bull and he wound up getting arrested and so Cortez probably just started . . . I don't know. He claims he never did, but I don't know. So it was, I guess, that year or the next right after that they came up with this "Oh, they were 33:00going to blow up the. . . .!" Mamma said, "Blow up, I never!" We were all in the movement but that was just, I don't know if that was a way to try to get back at people or what.

TK: So you went off to college then when that whole case was going on?

CH: Yes.

TK: So Fisk because of family, is that why you went to Fisk?

CH: Yes.

TK: Were you involved in any civil rights activity while you were at college?

CH: Not really, no, I mean it was the sixties and I had my activism for a while. I was trying to get my education at that point.

TK: Let me just check real quick so to make sure there's no other questions I want to ask you about this stuff before we go on to post-college. I asked you that, chronology of events . . . oh, were they ever any, I mean I know that even by looking at a newspapers, you can tell that the main focus in town is on open housing at that time, were there any other civil rights issues going on at the 34:00same time, any other focuses or anything at the same time?

CH: Not for me, I mean there could have been. . . . The other things had already been taken care of, the public accommodations, being able to eat on Fourth Street and, you know, the people [unintelligible] and all of them have marched for those things and we had gotten that. Open housing was really like the last vestige then. So if there was something else, I don't recall it.

TK: Not that you were involved with?

CH: Right.

TK: In the lead up to the Board of Alderman elections when people get voted in and out and that leads up to the election, were you involved in the political aspects leading up before that, voter registration or campaigns or anything like that?

CH: No, I was still in school.

TK: Yeah, because you would have been probably too young. Okay, one other question is right around the time, sort of, spring of '68 nationally, there is a lot more discussion about Black Power and Black Power ideology, were you influenced by that at all at that point?

CH: I guess I'd have to say yes, because those speakers were on the circuit and things would happen in one city. I mean that's when the riots were going on in Detroit and Martin Luther King assassinated, you know, all of those things were happening, Compton and Watts, Detroit. It was just happening all over, I mean it wasn't like each one was fueling the other but it was just united pain and explosion at the time. So it wasn't like anything that was planned, it was just 36:00what happens to a dream deferred, explodes so there was explosion.

TK: You had mentioned BULK before how did that get organized or to what extent were you involved with it?

CH: I believe Robert Sims and Sam Hawkins formed BULK. I just remember for a couple of years and I don't even hardly recall what we did. We got together and we'd have meetings and BULK would participate in the movement. I even have a card, I believe, that says I'm a BULK member.

TK: Yeah, somebody gave me a copy of their card to keep.

CH: Well, you know and you'd have your buttons on. We had a little button, open housing buttons.

TK: One impression I get from people is that the lines between all these different organizations are pretty permeable. It's like really you're just in 37:00the movement and which group you're a part of seems to not matter that much.

CH: Exactly.

TK: One other question about high school and this relates to your perspective of your mother's involvement. She starts getting involved in West End Community Council and the Southwick stuff. What did you think of all that as a young person and how did it affect you?

CH: I thought it was the right thing to do. I mean I was surprised that my mother would risk so much, you know when she could be living a life of leisure. You know, that she was concerned about the people who were less fortunate and underprivileged, whatever you want to call it; that she was so much concerned about making life better not just for herself but for others. So that was a great influence on me because she didn't have to do that; she didn't have to be 38:00out there; she didn't have to be concerned and so involved, but she was very committed. I mean she'd have meetings, there'd be people over to the house and they'd be planning and she'd be over to Park DuValle and there'd be meetings. You know, I just watched. I wasn't invited to go to those; I didn't need to go. She was doing her thing, and that kind of led into other things. Lois Morris would always be talking about how you have to know the history, so before we'd ever start anything, she'd be able to tell you who, what, when, why, and you know she and her husband were very very supportive and out there. But I can remember in high school, I guess because of a lot of the things that I had done, 39:00I was awarded the Daughters of the American Revolution Good Citizen Award.

TK: You're kidding!

CH: When I graduated and it was funny because my father tells a story, they're describing this individual that they're giving this award to and the things they've done and been involved in. And my father's sitting there and he's fuming, he said, 'Well, that's sounds like Cheri! They ought to give that to Cheri, but I know they're not going to give it to Cheri, the DAR wouldn't give that to Cheri!" And then when they called my name, he said, "Oh wow!" I mean he was just like floored and so happy. And I said, "I don't think they knew that they were giving it to a black person."

TK: Oh really.

CH: Yeah, I think the nuns made that selection, but that meant a lot to me at the time. I got involved in, attorney general Robert Matthews had a leadership 40:00thing for kids statewide and Mike Ward, who went on to be a congressman was there, Alveda, Seretha Summers Tinsley, her father was on the radio station.

TK: Bill Summers.

CH: Bill Summers. So you know we got groomed for assuming leadership as teenagers and the causes and things like that.

TK: That's interesting because I really do hear the same names a lot. I mean this is the second time this week I've heard the Tinsley name; I had never heard it before until this past week. So were most of the people you were friendly with then involved in things?

CH: Yes.

TK: Was there social pressure to be involved?

CH: No, no.

TK: So it wasn't a peer pressure type thing?

CH: No, I don't think so.

TK: Your older siblings, were they involved in anything before they left for college?

CH: I think my sister Vicki was involved around the time with Raoul and Deanna and all of that and Lyman Johnson. Yeah, because she's five years older than me and then my brother was off in military school, so he didn't have an opportunity to . . .

TK: He wasn't here.

CH: To get involved in any of that.

TK: Not in military school! [Laughter] Yeah, I just wondered because I figured when you said before that she would have been. Now your mother told a story about having a daughter who was in the hospital maybe with appendicitis, was that her?

CH: That was her, yeah.

TK: Okay because she said that when she was in the hospital, they brought in some kids who had been hurt in a demonstration and that that was an important moment for her. So just to let me make sure I have the chronology right, you go 42:00to college then in fall of '68?

CH: Yeah.

TK: Okay, to Fisk and then straight to law school?

CH: Yeah.

TK: So when does that get you graduating law school?

CH: '75.

TK: So you're out of the city that whole time?

CH: Yeah, in and out.

TK: Home for vacations but basically living elsewhere?

CH: Yeah.

TK: Well then, one of the questions I was going to ask, you may not have been back I time. I was going to say were you involved in any way in the busing issue?

CH: No.

TK: Okay and especially if you didn't have kids by that time. Okay, why did you come back to Louisville?

CH: I don't know. There's a strong pull; I mean Louisville's a nice city to live in. I intended to come back here and pass the bar and then leave and then that kind of dragged on a year, another year, three years. And at that time you could only take it three times and then you couldn't take it anymore. Well they've since changed that that you can take it but I'd started . . . one of my first 43:00jobs back was I worked for Neville Tucker and I worked for Darryl Owens, you know I worked for Darryl. He was a lawyer and you know, I did like internships during the summer when I'd come back and learned a lot. And then I got a job working for the city, working for the director of law and so I was dealing with labor type issues.

Then the next year I helped write the city's first Affirmative Action plan with Johann Burk and Janette Krebee. So then we set up the office and Johann became the Affirmative Action monitor and I became the equal opportunity coordinator. So I was working on discrimination issues for city employees and then training 44:00other people in the city on aspects of the plan and working with coordinators in each department. And so then from the city I left, I mean I was involved in other things going on, voter registration; I was NAACP political action chair, and I worked with Joe Hammond and Charlie Roberts and Leonard Gray and Clarence Yancy and Bill Gatewood on issues in government and in the city.

TK: As part of your job or was that volunteer activity outside of work?

CH: Volunteer activities and so I've just kind of been involved and then more political involvement; getting people registered to vote and I've worked with young people in projects and in Smoketown and Beecher Terrace as part of my 45:00NAACP hat. Maurice Sweeney was president during a lot of that time with the NAACP and his father had helped integrate the golf courses in the parks.

TK: Is that P.O. Sweeney's?

CH: Right. I just happened to see Maurice yesterday, and so he's still, you know you kind of go through these spurts, but now he's trying to set up something for young people in the trades; trying to get more African-American youth in that. So anyway after I left there, left city government, I went to work for Martha Layne Collins. She was governor and I'd been in involved in political campaigns and worked at the Kentucky Commission on Women. So then I went around the state talking with women trying to get women . . .

TK: Still living in Louisville or . . . ?

CH: Yeah, I was making that commute. And what else happened around that time? So I got involved, through Leonard and Charlie Roberts, I got involved in the Democratic party, this was 1976, and I got elected to the Jefferson County Democratic Executive Committee as an at-large member under thirty. So in 1980 I went to my first convention.

TK: National convention?

CH: Yeah. I had worked with the Carter/Mondale campaign. I mean I had worked for [Harvey] Sloane and [William] Stansbury and you know just getting people elected and working in campaigns, and there were other blacks here that were running and we'd work in their campaign. Gerry Neal was running for alderman and you know we just carried that activism over into the political arena trying to get people 47:00elected and then people that were elected, trying to get them re-elected, so voter registration fit into that. And you're doing political education as you're doing voter registration, and that required us to go door to door or set up tents, and you know as a young person, that's exciting trying to get other people involved.

TK: A lot of that would have been when you were home on breaks, wouldn't it?

CH: No.

TK: No, this is okay after you got back.

CH: This is like '75 on so I've been back here.

TK: Couple of questions about things that you mentioned as you went along. One thing is a general question is what is the extent of opportunities for blacks in politics in Louisville in the late seventies?

CH: Well, we had blacks, like Ben Shobe was a judge. We had other judges; we had 48:00blacks on the Board of Alderman. Lois Morris was running for mayor.

TK: She did!

CH: Yeah, she ran for mayor. It wasn't well supported! Everybody thought oh, it's not time, but she wanted to show that these are things that are attainable. So things were opening up but you had to press them to open, which we had learned from the open housing movement is you know, power concedes nothing, so you have to just keep pressing. So that's what we did.

TK: What were the main issues that black political leaders were focusing on at that time?

CH: Economic issues, jobs, that's basically it! Economics would determine a lot of things.

TK: Because even talking to Kirby about the KCLC he said that's what they were 49:00focusing on in the seventies, too, was jobs, so that's interesting. Which brings me to the Affirmative Action thing. Could you tell me a little bit about writing that Affirmative Action plan?

CH: We researched from other cities to see what they had or what would be needed and the mayor was very supportive.

TK: Who was mayor at the time?

CH: I'm trying to remember if it was Stansbury or Sloane. It must have been Stansbury because one of them was in, Sloane was in and Stansbury came in and one went out and Sloane was mayor twice.

TK: Oh, okay.

CH: I can't remember too much. But after that, I mean it took a while, and then I'd help other cities and we'd have conferences, you know we knew that that was 50:00the area that people would get jobs and then find discrimination on the job. So we had to do training for supervisors and people to try to, I guess, overcome their attitudes and then try to get other people how to adjust on the job, how to have a grievance, and try to get things resolved. It was out of the mayor's office and then we got moved to the personnel department. When it was under the mayor's office, it had a lot more power and influence because it was closer to that, and then you get over to personnel and then it's kind of like oh, you're just a paper pusher. I was hoping that one day we wouldn't need an Affirmative Action office and that that would kind of be phased out so I said well, I'm not going to make a career in Affirmative Action because meanwhile I'm still trying to pass the bar. I'm still taking the bar and all, so I stay aligned closely to legal type things, you know, like writing that and using my writing skills and 51:00things like that.

TK: Was that plan for city government only?

CH: Yeah, no, it was city government.

TK: Is there an Affirmative Action plan for private businesses, too, or is that . . .?

CH: If they get federal funds, if they get any kind of federal funds. If they get city funds now they have to have an affirmative action plan. So just like Coleman says now about on the jobs with the stadium or the baseball arena, you know, hello, we're in the work force! We're out here! You know we need the jobs, too, so you know that struggle has continued.

TK: You said that you got involved with the NAACP also when you got back?

CH: Yeah.

TK: How did you get involved there?

CH: Well that was where the action was! That was where the issues were being . . . for equality, jobs, justice and equality were happening and so I couldn't just come home, I mean that was just natural for me to get drawn into that.

TK: What was the role in the city of the Human Relations Commission by that point? I know it had been set up in the sixties.

CH: It may have even been setup as an outgrowth of the new open housing law so maybe they were just dealing with that.

TK: But they weren't real prominent on the scene?

CH: Not as far as I can remember.

TK: Because no one ever mentions them that's why I wondered. Courier-Journal mentions them a lot, but nobody I've interviewed does so I'm just curious. And then you said that you've also worked for the Democratic party.

CH: I've still been involved in Democratic politics. So that was '76 I got involved and then '80 I went to my first convention and then around that time I was working for, I got hired as John Y. Brown's, he was running for governor, his West End coordinator. That was a paid position, because a lot of time we had done a lot of volunteer work and so when Lenny Lyles and Reverend Miller and all these folks are negotiating with the campaigns they was like we want some black staffers hired. We're tired of all this volunteer work, pay us! So I had worked in a lot of campaigns and I got a job working with that. I mean it wasn't like my sole job because I had another job, but I got paid for what I did and made a 54:00lot of contacts. And Vicki Smiley, I believe [unintelligible] was working for [Senator Walter D.] Huddleston at the time, you know, so I'd see blacks in there. Then I'd go to the black caucus weekends in Washington, the Congressional Black Caucus and just stayed involved.

Worked in the Carter/Mondale campaign, like I said, and worked for other campaigns, and then it was around . . . I worked with Paul Patton, who was chairman of the Democratic party at the time in the state. He was county judge in Pike County and he was chair of the state Democratic party's Affirmative Action committee and I was appointed vice-chair, so we went around the state trying to inform people about how they could get to be delegates to the 55:00convention and that whole process. So as I'm learning the process and reading the rules and Jesse Jackson is over here making noise like "I may run for president" or "I'm going to run!" And we're like "Hmmm." So I was on the Affirmative Action committee for the state and there were a couple of other black lawyers out of Lexington, Reginald Thomas and Fuzzy Berry. I can't remember what Fuzzy . . . Theodore, they called him Fuzzy. And the three of us were on the Affirmative Action committee and we sat down and we said, "Well gosh," we're reading the rules, the delegate selection, the percentage and that 56:00whole process and we said, "Well, you know, Jackson could win! You know we could get some delegates out in Kentucky for Jesse!" So we organized and we said, "Well, we need a name." We need somebody that they'll know and respect and we talked to Senator Powers and she agreed to lead the Jackson campaign in Kentucky and so we formed a statewide steering committee. Regina Thomas was very involved, Bill Allison, who is an attorney and now an alderman. He was one of my mother's attorneys back in the sixties.

TK: Really! I didn't know that.

CH: Yeah on that Black Six thing. And so we just went on. I kind of lost my thought.

TK: Talking about organizing the Jackson campaign.

CH: Oh yeah. And you know I had worked on the Geraldine Ferraro when she was 57:00going to run and Mondale/Ferraro. And everybody was like, "Well, you've been working in all these campaigns and you've done all of this." By the time I'm married, my husband said, "I'm tired of you supporting everybody else. You're just as qualified as any of the rest of them. Either you run or I don't want to hear anymore about this politics!" So I went on and filed for magistrate, and this was like the filing deadline. And you know I had been involved with the Metropolitan Louisville Women's Political Caucus, and I had given speeches all around the city and the different events about women in politics and getting involved and how you run a campaign. And then I wound up doing everything 58:00against what I always said because you know you have to plan in advance, you know, have all this ready, have your campaign and there here I am the night before filing. I wound up running against Jerome Hutchinson.

TK: Junior or senior?

CH: Senior.

TK: Senior okay.

CH: And Porter Hatcher.

TK: Now I've heard that name but I don't know anything about him.

CH: He's a state representative and he was an alderman at the time. He hadn't run for state rep yet. And so Jerome Hutchinson was my landlord and Porter was my friend and so the three of us were running and it was really interesting. Because it was an open seat, they were creating a new form of government.

TK: Who won?

CH: Well, actually the election got called off about three weeks prior to the primary because of a technical error that the clerk made.

TK: Hutchinson told me about that mess.

CH: But the guys were really respectful; they were nice. I was living in this 59:00house, Porter was living next door and I'd wake up in the morning and he'd be out there nailing yard signs. So you know, it was psychological like "Oh God, I should be doing something! I should be out there knocking on doors or something!" So you know he was making his signs. Porter probably would have won because he had a lot of name recognition, but it got called off. And then at that time I had a four-month-old daughter and so she was getting a lot more active and I was like "Shoo, I think I'm glad I didn't win!" But I've always been more of a behind the scenes type person. I'm not big on the limelight. Not looking for that, I'm just looking for things to happen.

TK: How did people locally respond to the Jackson campaign?

CH: Oh, we did well! We did really well! My sister was involved in that, my younger sister Peggy and we got headquarters up here on Broadway, somebody gave us some space. We had speakers coming in; we got donations for all kind of things. It was a real, especially in the black community and among the justice community, I'd say, you know, the Anne Bradens, the Bill Allisons; those type of people. It was a breath of fresh air. It was about time to shake up the political establishment and get somebody who would really follow through on them, you know the . . .

END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B

START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A

CH: He was a delegate to the '48 convention.

TK: Sounds like he was very important politically up there in Detroit. What else you got there, maybe we can look at some of it. [Tape paused]

CH: This is the steering committee, Georgia and . . .

TK: Hodge.

CH: Yeah, Bill Smith and some of these other people, Virginia Thomas, now works for the Democratic National Committee. I'm sure Aubrey Williams was very active.

TK: Joe McMillan, I just tried to call actually.

CH: Joe McMillan, yeah, Rainbow Coalition came out of that.

TK: Who's Aubrey Williams?

CH: Aubrey was a state representative for a long time. He's a practicing attorney and I believe he's also a minister now. But Aubrey would shake them up; tall, six-foot, three or four, very articulate.

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

CH: You'll love talking to him.

TK: I always ask because there's another Aubrey Williams who's a white person in Alabama who was involved in civil rights movement, so when I saw the name, I thought that can't possibly be the same person. [Laughter]

CH: So this was back in '84 when we started that. So I got to be a delegate to that and then they were upset because we didn't have enough . . . we had won a lot of precincts and legislative districts but we didn't feel like the 62:00allocation of delegates that we would have had to gone to the convention was adequate. The convention was going to be in San Francisco so we wanted Martha Layne Collins to resign as chair and Georgia really shook them up on that. We had meetings and "The Jackson campaign vows to take delegate fight to convention floor."

TK: Does that mention . . .

CH: That's Georgia.

TK: Actually Raoul Cunningham already asked her for me if she'd be interviewed and she said yes, but I'm going alphabetically so.

CH: Oh, are you?

TK: Yeah.

CH: Well, you know Mae Street Kidd died?

TK: I know but she couldn't have been interviewed anymore anyway. In fact I'm reading her autobiography now, but yeah, it was in the paper this morning. Actually I'm trying to get her book, I read it once but it was a long time, okay, and I don't remember anything in it so I'm trying to get that one, too. To 63:00what extent would you say in terms of people and themes what were the connections between the Jackson campaign and civil rights community or civil rights movement? Were they direct links in terms of the same people or just the same general ideas?

CH: Well, Jesse was part of SCLC.

TK: Had he ever been here?

CH: Yeah, he used to come in.

TK: Oh really! I didn't know that. Was he one of the technicians or just as a regular?

CH: Yeah, he was a technician under King.

TK: Had you met him before then?

CH: Yeah, back then. I mean not met, I mean, you know.

TK: You were in the same place with. [Laughter]

CH: Right, right; yeah, he came in, but Martin Luther King was always the big draw when he came in.

TK: I bet, yeah. Anything else in there you want to show me?

CH: I don't know, I should have gone through all this before you got here. Let's see, this was when we ran.

TK: Was there something called the Unity Slate, was that before you were back in town?

CH: Yes.

TK: So do you know anything about that then?

CH: No. There's Porter and Jerome [looking at pictures]

TK: Most of what you talk about is your Democratic party activism. Was there any black support for the Republican party at that time?

CH: Well, there were a few blacks that were Republicans like Louise Reynolds.

TK: Really!

CH: Louise Reynolds was Republican and she was, I believe, the first black woman to serve on the Board of Alderman. She was elected from that area. Here's one of my little cards.

TK: Your election things. So did you ever run for office again after that magistrate race?

CH: No. If you want to influence the system, be part of it and that's, you know, kind of what I've always believed. And this was a women's political skills workshop we did in '87 and Mary Margaret [Mulvihill?] and Melissa Mershon.

TK: I've heard of the first woman's name, well, obviously I've heard the second person's name, too. Then after that election, did you stay involved in politics? Obviously you must have because all this stuff is after that right?

CH: Yeah. I worked for the city.

TK: You currently work for the city, too, right?

CH: I currently work for the city. I took a little breather, I think, for awhile and started working for the Board of Education, for adult education and writing grants. I wrote a grant for Project Worth, which was homeless education and job training. It brought several millions of dollars into the school system. That's a picture, that's at the Jackson campaign.

TK: You look a lot like your mother.

CH: Thank you. All the issues just kind of were justice issue, you know, whether 66:00it was housing whether it was jobs; it was all about justice and equality.

TK: One question I always like to ask people, and it's sort of a tough question, is if you were writing a book on the movement in Louisville, when would you end it?

CH: I don't think you could end it yet. I think it would have to go to today, really.

TK: Why is that?

CH: Because it's not over yet. You know even though we're coming to the end of the millennium and we've been in this struggle forever, always the struggle continues. I think things will be better for my daughter and her age group because she's like a little United Nations. I mean when I was coming up we had the segregated schools and like I said, Jimmy Braden was the only little white 67:00boy in our class. And then I went to integrated high school where I was in the minority there. And then I went to a college and a law school where I was in the majority, a black college environment, which was necessary and needed and fueled your responsibility to the community and to do more. But my daughter coming along, her friends are Chinese, white, Hispanic, Jewish, you know, she's exposed to everybody and they're all friends. And color doesn't seem to make a bit of difference to any of them, which is the way we were hoping things were going to be and the way they should be! So maybe when she gets older, things will be better but for the older folks it's not there yet, you know.

As the white male population shrinks and the Hispanics getting larger and the angry white male in the militias out there, and you know they don't like gays and they're shooting people and they don't like Jews and you got the Klan, and there's still a lot of hate, you know, out here! And there are instances of 68:00things happening with the police, the brutality, so it's not over yet! I don't know if it will be in my lifetime but I still have hope and I still believe that people banded together can make a difference and that you get into someone's conscience and hopefully turn their head around. So I don't know when you can end it. Busing if you wanted to get up to that point.

TK: Got to go at least that far. I figure I have to go at least that far and I think through the seventies at least. And then I think, as I said on the phone the first time I called you, then maybe as far as like the Jackson campaign might be an interesting way, but with all the stuff about the police brutality and West End secession, whatever recently and the whole Central High question!

CH: Maybe that's the second book or the third book, right?

TK: [Laughter] I'm going to go ahead and turn this off.

[Tape stopped]

TK: What was your father's first name again?

CH: My father's name is Dr. Roscoe C. Bryant, Jr.

TK: Roscoe, okay.

CH: His father was a physician, but when he moved to Louisville, and they lived on Virginia Avenue and Little Africa, I said "Oh, we lived in Little Africa, I didn't know that!"

TK: Your mother told me about that.

CH: But the only place black doctors could get on staff was at [unintelligible] hospital. They couldn't get staff privileges at Jewish Hospital or at Methodist or St. Anthony's or any of the other hospitals. So they're so used to discrimination, and then I can remember he and Dr. [Ralph] Morris were involved 70:00in a lawsuit against the Jefferson County Medical Society because they were denying blacks privileges at these hospitals. And he could probably tell you about that but that's a whole other chapter, but it's all about discrimination.

TK: I think that's the case that Ben Shobe was the lawyer for that?

CH: He probably was.

TK: Yeah, okay, Ben mentioned that. I interviewed him.

CH: And Lunderman and Neville Tucker, I believe he's out in California, but you had these lawyers that weren't just about, they were civil rights lawyers basically, that's what they were!

TK: And all that's before school desegregation?

CH: Yeah, because when I started everybody, the black teachers and everybody was at Virginia Avenue or at the black schools.

TK: So by the time you went through grade school and junior high, they were already integrated or officially integrated?

CH: It happened during my elementary school years.

TK: Did you change schools to go . . .?

CH: I had to change schools. In one year, I went to the third grade at Stephen Foster. They transferred me and I don't know whether they just redrew the lines or the boundaries whatever, but I had to go to Stephen Foster and that's where there were a lot of white kids over at Stephen Foster and I was miserable. I was like "I want to go back to Virginia Avenue!" So I stayed there one year and I guess we got a transfer, hardship transfer, I don't know what but I got out of there.

TK: They actually had a pretty easy transfer plan. You could transfer back to a school of your own race, the majority your own race, very easily.

CH: That must have been what they did because I got out of there.

TK: So your parents didn't have any strong feelings, one way or another, on whether you went to an integrated school?

CH: Well, at that time, you mean elementary?

TK: Yeah.

CH: There was really no choice! I mean you had to go in your neighborhood, it was neighborhood schools and that was my neighborhood school.

TK: Virginia Avenue?

CH: Yeah. And then when they redrew the lines, Stephen Foster, which is up the street, became my neighborhood school. I guess they were trying to get some kind of balance then, even though Virginia Avenue was closer to me.

TK: Because I have heard some people, who were just slightly older than you, so would have been like in junior high when it happened, really, the children did not want to change schools but the parents sometimes made them.

CH: Just like Loretto was not my first choice. It probably wouldn't have been Central, but it probably would have been Shawnee because that's where a lot of my friends were going.

TK: Is this a movement scrapbook or a family scrapbook?

CH: Well, it's probably a combination of both but I was looking for something 73:00that you could take with you. I didn't know whether you had this piece; it might be here.

TK: Oh, is that the thing . . .?

CH: Yeah this was in the Lexington paper.

TK: No, I'm sure I don't have it if it's not from the. . . . So far I've only read the Courier-Journal and the Defender. And this is a little bit later, this is . . .?

CH: March of '99. They kind of did an article on me and Anne Braden and another woman from Lexington.

TK: Oh really! That's interesting.

CH: Yeah Women's History month addition.

TK: We're doing a state-wide oral history project as well on the civil rights movement and they are focusing for the first year on women and mostly trying not to cover Louisville since I'm basically covering Louisville but trying to interview women in small towns. That's the goal is the small town women around the state. I've heard a lot about this Jack and Jill Club as being important. Did that go all the way through high school or was that really for kid kids?

CH: Well, through high school and that Jack and Jill organization was the first African-American organization to create a foundation back in '68 and it's one of the largest foundations run by African-Americans.

TK: So they still have it; it's still an active organization?

CH: Oh yeah, I'm the local president.

TK: Really!

CH: My son had to go to DePaul school and he had to talk about something cultural or bring something in and I said "Take your Jack and Jill jacket." And he said, "What am I going to tell them?" I said, "Tell them it's a group of African-American women, mothers and their children." He said, "Oh, I don't want to do that." He's like only two blacks in his class. I said, "Why Trey, everybody knows you're black. I mean, you know, come on!"

TK: You're not going to be breaking any news to them. [Laughter]

CH: So trying to teach another generation how to be proud or not ashamed of being what you are. I said, "Okay, I've got my hands full." "Oh, I don't want to 75:00be embarrassed." I said, "That's not embarrassing." I said, "Tell them what we do. We go to museums; we go on trips; we went to New York; we went to Chicago." I said, "Okay, I have to work on him." I don't know if you ever saw this article and I don't have it all.

TK: Is this the [unintelligible] piece?

CH: Yeah, do you have that?

TK: He told me about it but I don't have it!

CH: And I don't have the front part but this was like the power pyramid.

TK: Yeah, he told me about this and then I said I'd have to try find it!

CH: Woodford Porter and Joe Hammond, who just died, Charlie Roberts was executive assistant mayor; Lenny Lyles, you've heard of Lenny?

TK: I've heard the name, athlete in high school?

CH: Right.

TK: Someone referred to him as a high school player, knew him in high school sort of thing.

CH: Yeah. Bill Summers.

TK: In fact, is he the one they're building the statue to now?

CH: Yeah.

TK: Okay, okay.

CH: Reverend Hodge was an alderman, real active; Georgia, Aubrey Williams, Mae Street, Carl Hines is a state representative.

TK: Interviewed him.

CH: Leonard Gray is still very active in politics. He's working with the governor. He was a state representative as well. Porter Hatcher, state representative.

TK: Still living?

CH: Yeah and he just had a stroke.

TK: Oh, okay.

CH: He's better, but I think it was early part of this year. Harold Howard was Ninth Ward alderman. Gerry Neal, attorney and now state representative. Bill Gatewood was director of community development.

TK: Was he the same Bill Gatewood that was in the sit-in demonstrations, Raoul's generation?

CH: Yeah.

TK: Okay, I had his name but I never was able to, get I touch with him.

CH: Yeah, he's over on Forty-Third Street. Ben Shobe and his wife Barbara. Maude Benboe was my godmother.

TK: Really!

CH: She was legislative district chairman for the Democratic party and a real good friend of the family. Joe Shipman was over Continental Bank. Raymond [unintelligible], I know you've heard of him. And then they had me.

TK: There's you.

CH: I said how did I make it here.

TK: I interviewed Ben Shobe, a great interview. She passed away, though, didn't she as did her husband?

CH: Yeah.

TK: Because you know their names come up a lot as both either being related to everybody or . . . [Laughter]

CH: Yeah, that's true, that's true.

TK: In fact, are they friends of the family or related to Carl Hines because he talked about them, too?

CH: Now that I don't know.

TK: Might have just been friends of the family.

CH: That's one thing in Louisville, you can't say anything because they say, "Oh, that's my cousin!" And see our family not being from here, you know, we don't have any other relatives here so.

TK: Oh, that's right, yeah. But it is a very interconnected community, to say the least.

CH: Yes, it is.

TK: No, he told me he had written that but I hadn't actually seen it yet and I'm supposed to get all of his articles.

CH: If you get that, I would really like to get the front part and then I guess I cut Gatewood off over there.

TK: Oh, I thought it was just folded.

CH: No.

TK: No, okay; copy of the pyramid. I don't have any other questions, I don't think. I'm going to go ahead and turn this again.

END OF INTERVIEW