Interview with Carroll Schempp, January 29, 2001

Caroll Schempp: Sure.

Tracy K'Meyer: When and where were you born?

CS: Baltimore, Maryland. February 18th, '41.

TK: So you did not grow up in Louisville?

CS: No.

TK: Just for the record, could you tell me about your educational training?

CS: Let's see. I have a BS degree Business [inaudible 00:00:25] Loyola College, Baltimore, Maryland. I grew up in the Kennedy area, where people were interested in doing something for the country. Became a social worker, this was during to Vietnam conflict. I was 1-Y, it's when you had to... It was mandatory to apply for the draft. The war was really heating up, and I was trying to figure out really, what to do. I was against the war. It really wasn't my cup of tea. I thought it was wrong morally. The bottom line is that I thought that everyone 1:00should do something for the country, so I joined a organization called Vista. I used to-

TK: Oh, you were one of the Vistas?

CS: Right.

TK: I'm sorry.

CS: What they did have is a training ground, and training ground was in Louisville. So I left Baltimore to come to Louisville and my impression of Louisville was that I'd see white cotton plantations and things like that. Back in '66, '65, somewhere in there. Anyway, they had a training site here and what I wanted to do, or what I applied for was that I was going to work on an Indian reservation. That was kind of my interest. I thought they were really on the short end of the order and they got the bad end of the stick on just about everything. They had the highest, and probably still do, rate of suicide. It just seemed to me that that would be the thing for me to do, is work with that group and try my very best.

So when I got to Louisville, it was corporation, Westing Learning House Corporation was in charge of the training site.

TK: What was the name of it?

CS: Westinghouse Learning Corporation.

TK: Learning Corporation.

CS: They were the people that did the Peace Corps training as well. Vista came after the Peace Corps issue in any event. So I was here and they trained me for urban setting and at the very end of the... It was three month training period. And very honestly, I had been a social worker for three years, but anyway, bottom line is they were short-staffed and were using me as a trainer during some of this time, which was fun. But at any rate, at the very end of all this stuff, they wanted to place me in the hills of... Oh, heck. North Carolina or someplace like that, and do obviously non urban type stuff. I thought about it and it just didn't appeal to me, and I said, "Fellows, three months we've done 3:00this urban training. So you're going to have to place me in an urban setting. I'm not going to go."

They were a little bit startled because no one had ever confronted them like that and said no. We had been doing work. There was a whole group of us, maybe about eight to 10 of us at the West End Community Council and other organizations as well. We wound up there, and so they said, "Well, they'd know what to do." And the fellow who was in charge of the West End Community Council was Hulbert James at the time. He says, "Well, I will take him," and so that's how I got to stay here.

There was a break, and I went back home to Baltimore and rode back in of the Westinghouse trainer's car and got the car. She lived in Washington, got the car with her, took the car, got to Baltimore, got my car. And we had another guy 4:00with us. She'd already flown on. But anyway, the bottom line is, I got my car brought back here and that was attached to the West End Community Council. That's when the open housing issue started to heat up. That was January is when you were, you were attached to a place and your length of time was one year. Okay. They've changed it since, but the bottom line is you're supposed to be one year and then you were out. And there was an awful lot of interest, and this open housing became the forefront issue here for the civil rights group.

The Open Housing Law was quite simply that you put your house on the market and whoever came along, bought it. Up till that point, there could be blockbusting and things like this, where a real estate guy could buy a house and then sell to a buyer. That happened to the Bradens.

TK: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

CS: That's right. But at any rate, there was an awful lot of resistance to that. 5:00So they started having these open housing marches, and it seems to me the open housing marches start to take real effect in February or March or something like that. And they were on a continuous basis, just about.

TK: Is that '66?

CS: Yeah.

TK: Yeah. That's what I thought.

CS: And all of this is where... And some of us, for a while that's all we did. We just marched. Every night, we went out and marched and I got me a pretty big thing. And there's AD King, who was Martin Luther King's brother, had a parish here or a church down in the West End. So he got Martin Luther King's ear, and he brought his people in. Southern Congress... what are they? Leadership.

TK: Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

CS: Yeah, that's it. They brought those and they started organized marches and 6:00such. And so it was a law thing. TV cameras were out there. And the bottom line is there is always this hardcore people were totally against this. Rednecks. But at any rate, they were always there and they were trying to start up something, and as I recall, King was in the car and a rock was thrown at him. Martin Luther, that is. And he got whacked in the eye. I think his brother got his arm twisted or something, at one of these... They were real scuffles at times.

TK: Ah!

CS: But then the whole thing, there was a lot of energy and influence and well, this was always a night time thing, and there wasn't much to do during the day. I thought that I should be doing something else and I liked the idea of theater, and had been active semi-professional in college theater stuff.

TK: Oh, okay.

CS: And it was a Summer, and there was a church down the West End, Holy 7:00Redeemer, which was a Episcopalian church that Charles... He was very active. He was on the board of directors of the West End Community Council... told me about, and there was a social hall that had a stage. So we used to, we went down there and we rehearsed, and there was just a group of kids who didn't have anything to do. It was probably about 50/50 white and black. We did three, one act plays. Area... No, it wasn't Area, it was The Still Alarm. Kaufman play. It was a comedy. It was a blank slate thing. It didn't need a lot of props and that. And then one called Impromptu, which was a cerebral type of thing about being, and life and stuff. And there's a third. Sorry, Wrong Number. That was a melodrama.

We did all three of those things and put them on down there and didn't do a lot of publicity. Didn't know a lot of people. We were received rather well, in terms of the West End. At that point, there was an awful lot of white flight and becoming predominantly black. And they went pretty well. People liked them. We had a good time with them. I would go home twice a year, right at the end of Summer and right around Christmas. So I went back to Baltimore and I thought and pondered around a little bit. Came back, we did another play called Girls in 509. This one we did in [inaudible 00:08:56]. We did this in college.

And that was received all right. During all this we were getting support from the community. People were getting interested in it, and they sold Redeemer, so we lost our base and enough help anyway. Gilbert Schroerlucke you talked with him.

TK: I haven't talked to him, but I've seen material on him.

CS: Okay. He had a church-

TK: Is he still living?

CS: Oh yeah.

TK: Okay.

CS: He lives right down here, not too terribly far away from us.

TK: Oh, okay.

CS: But he was really in the open housing thing, and his whole family, his children were all in that, and they were in high school. And you know, he's a very bold man. But anyway, he offered to us free of charge, which was the right price, this upper second floor of the multi-purpose building that was not being used. Methodist.

TK: Of his church?

CS: Yeah.

TK: You mean? Okay.

CS: So we had this whole top floor. And again, your established religions, 10:00Methodism, Catholicism, did not have an overt appeal to the black community because they had their AME and all the rest of the things that had not excluded them. They felt more at home. So anyway, he was trying to get some sort of things going there, and tried an awful lot. Did a number of different things. But anyway, the bottom line is we used that for eight years, maybe, up there.

TK: Wow.

CS: And what we would do is we'd give the play. We would travel with it and take it around. And there was a fellow at Actor's Theater who started Actor's Theater, Richard Block. And Richard had the theater and he had a brother by the name of Steve. Now, Steve had something to do with this. I never knew exactly what.

TK: You were talking about ADC...

CS: Actor's Theater, [Steven 00:10:58] Block. Well, Steve. I don't know what 11:00Steve did. He did something in Washington, but for some reason was always back here. Steve was really a very nervous fellow. Bottom line is, he wanted to introduce me to Richard because I was doing these things with this Vista, with kids. And Steve, very often what he did, he got us season tickets to Actor's Theater and he paid for him himself. He never told me how he did this, but he got season tickets and we'd take the group to Actor's Theater once a month. And we're having to go. But anyway, on this one particular occasion we were down there and he wanted me to introduce me to Richard. Richard was a grumpy old guy. He was always just grumpy. At any rate, he was going through finals in the dress rehearsal. And that's all, I was kind of a real difficult time.

So anyway, Steve showed up a good 45 minutes late, and I should have left long before then. But anyway, for some reason I stuck around. I was on my way out and 12:00damn if he didn't come through the door. So I was caught. So I couldn't get out. By this point, I was really exasperated. It was late and I was hungry. We've been there since five or so, it's a quarter of six and I just want to get home. And it was cold it was October, or something. So anyway, old Steve, he asked me to see Richard. I said, "I really want to go. I'm tired." He said, "No, no. Don't go. Don't go." So I stay. He said, "Let me go talk to Richard." So I stay.

We go back, Richard says, "Under no circumstances am I going to do this!" And "Argh, argh, argh!"

I say, "Oh, great. I'm out of here." So I started to leave. He said, "No, no, no. Wait a second, wait a second, wait. He'll talk to you. Don't worry. He's just..." You just have to know Steve's and he's got this nervous, idle all this energy going through. Feel sorry for the guy after this.

All right, I'm waiting and he goes back up. "I told you, we're not going to..." 13:00Da-da-da, went on to this thing, well this went on about 15 or 20 minutes. In the process of all this, there was a book there. They have this book section, and one of the plays was In White America. And In White America was a black historical play. It was done from documents that the fellow by the Martin Duberman, the author, put together. And it was on the segmental thing. It was rather easy to do. I mean, you didn't need a lot of scenery. We don't have any money. And you can use as many people as you want in this thing. The original Actor's Theater had done it, and that's probably why they had the book there. And I think the original called for maybe four to six actors, half white, half black.

So, through all this stuff of waiting, and him finding out, I started to read this thing. Found it fascinating. So, I put it aside. I took it back. Actually, 14:00I pilfered it, but don't...

TK: Who would say if that happened?

CS: So when I got home, this made sense to do something like that. And it just seemed reasonably, you can cast as many peoples as you want. Okay? The only thing that was difficult for me would be securing that many white kids because by now we'd gone into [inaudible 00:14:33] about 9th, 10th month or so. The white flight really...

TK: It's progressing on this whole time, right?

CS: Pretty soon. And besides, it seemed to me that's what investors should be about. Working with black kids in Louisville. And demonstrations were still going, but they were of secondary interest to me at this point. So we got this group together and we did the play In White America. And at the same time, 15:00because of the open housing thing, there was a need, there are a number of organizations that were interested in dialogue with whites and blacks. Okay? So we'd be rehearsing In White America, and the way we did In White America is that, with the exception of Gil Schroerlucke's son, who's obviously white, all the rest of the cast was black. So for the white parts, we were going to need a white mask or white glasses. I think we use a mask first, and then we went to glasses to do the white parts.

And it was a historical thing. It started slave time up until '63. And this was '66, '67. We was starting to do it, and the gap was pretty wide at this point about what was going on the civil rights movement. But we interspersed it. We 16:00had a guy who could play guitar, so we put in a number of folk songs. If I Had a Hammer, it was [inaudible 00:16:07], because it's right after the slave time. A number of other things. Another Dylan song, Blowing in the Wind. Things like this. The girl who did my paper was a singer. She was really good. She had an extremely good voice. And that worked really well. I think 16 or 17 people tried out, and we gave them all parts. And we just get one person who wasn't very gifted, just give him a small part, for [inaudible 00:16:36] two, three. And that's how we worked it out.

But at the same time there was having this dialogue thing of people, and we got this thing called social drama going. And social drama was an idea that you presented a social topic in a dramatic setting and worked it out. And we started this racially, and we got a lot of calls. There was a lot of input. Richard 17:00Grenough. I don't know if you came across him.

TK: I actually interviewed him.

CS: Okay. He was in charge of religion and race or something.

TK: Yeah, [Lovell Area Council on Religion and Race 00:17:13].

CS: And he, for some reason called and said, "Can you do something? We're having these retreats." And that was the thing to do back then. You have retreats with blacks and whites. So I said, "Sure, we'll do something like that." And I had no idea what we were going to do, but we used to do these these things. People would call us up and ask us. Well, somehow we got on TV once or twice...

TK: Oh, wow.

CS: ... and did some of the stuff. But to do the race relations, I really wasn't too certain exactly what we would do. So it was always bedlam at rehearsal. You get in there, and then they'd be on stage joining this or that, whatever they wanted to do. And you go, "Yeah, that's good." Now, the way the protagonist of this particular segment over here, of the play, you need to try to bring it back again.

By the way, why in the world... I got there late, and they were all up on stage. 18:00And the girls, these girls were 15, 16, 17, and they were doing this cheerleader routine. And the way the cheerleader routine was "snotty nose" and something or other. "That's the way the nigger goes. Up and down the Ohio River." Or something like that. "Snotty nose..." I forgot. I was just... They were doing this in a cheerleading fashion that you would see in a football game. "Snotty nose, [inaudible 00:18:38] clothes, that's where the nigger goes. Up and down..." I don't know.

TK: Oh, wow.

CS: Absolutely astonished. And then all of a sudden, from out of nowhere these two guys come on, they start yelling. "Here comes the band." And these guys come marching, this is our band. They do this little quick step turn, and face the 19:00audience. And they looked at me and said, "God made the nigger, maybe the night, and in his hurry forgot to paint him white." And I was just absolutely astounded. I had no idea where this came from. It was just a moment of creativity, and I talked to all of them, said, "Where this coming from?" They said, "These are actual things that have been said in Louisville." These were actual racial epitaphs, type of thing.

So I said, "All right. We're going to do this thing this week, and what else can we do?" And so we did this interracial skit and they really liked us because we didn't have any white guys around. My first name's Carroll. So the players did this. I was dating this black girl. And one of the great lines is, "Carroll. Oh, so he's one of those, eh?" They just roared about that.

So we were just off and...

Excuse me.

... and running with this thing. And then we threw some other things in. And then if there was a slow moment, then we'd take a segment out of In White 20:00America because you could do that, the way it was designed. So we had about a 45 minute show, and then we have one section there, we got this idea from [inaudible 00:20:17] with the audience, that we'd have slave auction. Okay? And this guy was screaming, "Please don't take me." So they're selling him, and sold, he'd run out in the audience and they'd grab him and haul him back up on stage, and all this kind of thing.

So if you put them all together, there was a theme. And I forgot somehow or other, along with the many things was Pavlov's dogs. You keep on telling people, although there's a great big emphasis on black at this time. Black, rather than being bad, it was good. So therefore, blacks. We are a proud black race, and that was part of it. And so we did all that. And then we see, "Well, this fellow was out in the audience. And he was in this auction. Why'd you help him?" You know, we'd try to get discussion going. And it went really well. And we started 21:00getting calls, which was something that no one else was doing. It was an original, creative thing we did. And we took that thing all over the place.

TK: All over Louisville, you mean?

CS: Louisville. We got up into Indianapolis.

TK: Oh, my!

CS: And the shows were good because we were one of the few traveling groups around. In White America, we went to the University of Notre Dame, University of Michigan. We got to Hot Springs, Arkansas. Where else did we get? Of course, all the schools and Kentucky University. Kentucky, Kentucky State. And we even did a tour of that that Summer, which is interesting. But we were the only ones that did this kind of thing back then. And we did some TV work and got some good reviews. Matter of fact, we got a little askance from racial issues. We did a TV 22:00program on juvenile delinquency. And we were hitting the areas of a problem of a young fellow who didn't have a male role to identify with.

And the bottom line is, this thing we did has won a national award from San Francisco State College. They put on some sort of contest out there, and I got a little folder that said. We were traveling quite a bit, and all they know this whole thing at that point was without any underwriting of any money from anybody.

TK: Wow.

CS: What we did is, we'd work out an arrangement with a college, and they would put us up somewhere or other, pay for our busing because you'd have to get a bus 23:00up there.

CS: Pay for our busing, because you have to get a bus up there, and for our lodging and our food and stuff.

TK: Were you still at Vista all this time?

CS: Oh yeah, all this time. And of course, during the Vista thing. If you travel outside of the state, you were supposed to tell them and got those forms they made you sign, I just never said anything to anyone, we just did these things. It started off, I had a friend who was up in Bowling Green, Ohio that was a first major. And I'd go up and visit him every now and then. And he knew the fellow who was in charge of the student who was the president of the body. So we literally kidnapped him on night. We were driving down the street. He said, "That's the guy that can get you up here." So Pete pulled the car over and he said, "Get in." And he says, "Why?" I said, "We're going to get some beers." So with that, got in.

So we went to some tavern, had about two pitchers of beer and he was hot to trot and we were talking about what it meant to these kids, because most of them had 24:00never been out of the West End of Louisville. And he got us up there and they really did a fantastic show. I mean, it was just amazing. We used to have people that would do lights and we'd never timed it. We'd had a pretty fair idea, but to the exact second, we never. So they had these arc lights with these special bulbs and they would only last 45 minutes. So if you were a play was longer than 45, blackout.

TK: Oh my goodness.

CS: So we had this large crowd there and this girl was working the lights, going on and watching the clock and the clock's getting pretty close. And we're having to crawl underneath the stage till I got someone to touch him and say, "We've got five minutes, so we've got to wrap it up." Or it's all over.

And you know, it worked, and it worked well. We got a really good review from there. So I took that and with the other letters and stuff that we got from 25:00people and pieced it all together, and I started to do mail outs. And it's helped. Schools who started picking us up and, University of Notre Dame did. We traveled all over the goddamn place.

So we were really cooking and we tried to get some support here locally. And we were a hybrid, no one knew what really to do with us. We'd go to the community chest people whoever the social... And everyone wanted to do this, that, or the other. And I thought we had a pretty successful thing and I didn't want to tinker with it, to define it to these other needs. So that didn't work. So finally, somehow we got into, again, the Louisville Fund for the Arts picked us up because we were a black group and they were trying to reach out. The Kentucky 26:00State Council for the Arts, picked us up and the National Endowment for the Arts they had us picked up. I suppose, they probably wanted... Expansion Arts Program, they put us in.

So we were just doing all this stuff. And we were running it simultaneous, and we'd visit churches and do these social dramas, get a good dialogue going back and forth. We'd perform at schools and we did some TV programs. And it ran up until 1980, and we were just doing a whole bunch of different things. And I thought, well, it got to the point where we had a number of kids in there, and some kids couldn't even read. And what they would do, they're really dedicated 27:00and take their script home and have someone recite it to them until they memorized it. That's how they would do things.

And we had some kids who were really good and really could act, but with the limitations that they had, you really didn't know what they were going to do. Or ask if you were being fair to them. Because they weren't going to get any opportunity in theater. If you can't read then you're just finished. At the same time, you're getting good exposure. So it kept some kids in school.

And we did get some kids opportunities. We got one girl up in Goodman Theater for the Arts. There's an Ebony Fashion Fair that came to town. I think it still comes. But anyway, receipts they would give us for a scholarship fund and we 28:00could give it to members of the group for school endeavors. So that was a nice little kind of additive to it. And there was a CETA program...

TK: CETA?

CS: Yeah, Comprehensive Employment Training Act.

TK: Right.

CS: And we got, I guess, six or seven job slots for that. And basically what that did is allow me to get a full-time staff. And we used to tour the schools. And when we started touring school, we started doing black folk tales. And then we did the African folk tales, a lot of interesting stuff. And the point was just to give the schools the opportunity, the populace. to see black artists on 29:00stage. And that worked out pretty well. And that was experience and a half. We started White America and we took that to one school, and the school just didn't have any discipline at all. And I forget, this black school.

And at the very end, it was very poignant seeing the integration of Little Rock. We had two or three girls do this. Little girl would come out in this very plain white dress. And she said this real innocent recitation about going to school and how this angry mob then. This got them really good they had the white-

TK: I'm going to turn this over.

CS: Sure.

TK: Okay.

CS: And then they had this white mass with some black kids would roll in. And they would really, "Hey [inaudible 00:30:09]" and yell and scream all the worst racial slurs that you'd ever want to hear. And this poor little girl, she was right in the middle. And we'd do it in a V. And so she was kind of right there and she's holding her hands rather innocently behind her back and just going with this recitation. And she's getting hell, oh, sorry, from all these people. And then they spit at her everything. God, it was just unbelievable. It was just real visceral type thing. And these kids were just unbelievably unbehaved. And one kid started laughing at this poor little girl.

Then we had one guy, real pussycat, but he thought... And this is the Black Power Movement time too. But he was feeling himself as a militant and he was a 31:00tall guy, really messy looking, he used to do Nat Turner which was real...

But anyway, he just broke rank and he went down and he stared at the audience. And he said, "Is this a black school or is this a colored school?" And he just looked at them and hey man, he was hot. And I thought it was absolutely the proper thing to do. Well that got us in the wheel of a problem.

TK: Oh really?

CS: Oh my God yeah. Because the guy who was the principal was white, and he said, "You guys could have caused a riot here today." And I said, "Well, look, there was no control." "Well it's blah, blah, blah." I guess if I'd have been smart I would have gone to the paper, but I just thought it wasn't worth the time to do anything about. Just let it kind of ride. But invariably, we get 32:00those kinds of thing. We go to a school and something like that would happen, that you get some off-color response and then we'd get...

And then one time we did go to the paper and that thing, oh boy, they sent down a reporter who botched it up even worse. He printed an article that didn't explain what it was all about.

We did another thing, it was a black folk tale. At that point we had this black cigar smoking guy on stage and that really offended people. And I never understood that. The bottom line is it got into the paper and some schools canceled our play dates. And I called and said, "Can't you do [inaudible 00:32:49] papers?" "Yeah, I'll come." So when he wrote the story, it was worse than anything because he never explained it.

And then we got a call, my wife and I, some Saturday morning, we're just about 33:00up, and from the Ku Klux Klan. And this guy was going on about, "We're always looking for people here who are causing trouble." And [inaudible 00:33:14] she's rather disordered and said, "Well, look we're always looking for different points of view. Why don't you write us a script?" Well, this guy couldn't put down a verb together to save his life. And she said, "Why don't you write us a script? And we'll entertain the idea of performing it." To calm him down.

But at any rate, we were always kind of caught and stuff like that. And it was over nothing honestly, the black cigar smoking guy. And it was always interesting if you talked to people about what their problem was with it. Because they'd say, "Well, this, that, and..." and I say, "Well, I don't understand why." But it always got down to racial matters.

TK: But you said there weren't that many white students. So was it that they 34:00didn't like that there were white and black students mixing? Or just like this was-

CS: But this was back when you had two separate systems. You had the Louisville system, which was predominantly black. And you had-

TK: Jefferson County.

CS: The Jefferson County which was predominantly white. We used to play in both.

TK: So you've taken the black kids into the white school.

CS: So you'd get that response, and then you'd get another response when you took them to black schools. And part of it was that there should have been, I guess, some sort of introductionary work before we got there. About what the play was about. And we started after a bit to send out materials and stuff and sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.

So then we'd switch off and do some non-controversial things like black folk tales. We did that one the time. And one time we were just trying to get some employment for some players. It was before the [inaudible 00:34:59] thing, we 35:00did, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. And took that around.

TK: That's interesting.

CS: Yeah. And that worked really well. But then again, we had ties then with the Legal Fund for the Arts and other groups. So you tried to do something non-controversial, but they would say, "Hey, that's good and fine, dandy." And keep them happy. Keep that stream of income in. And then you'd do some of the other stuff.

But I really do think the basic problem that we had more than anything was that didn't have a... I didn't want to get us boxed in any particular bag in terms of what we did. I wanted to do a variety of different types of things so that we couldn't be stereotyped as doing street theater, or doing black theater. Because in essence we were a black theater group.

And then there was always the problem in that I was a white director. And when 36:00we got right around the 70s and that, it really became a touchy issue. We were doing a play and... We were always getting good publicity, this, that, the other. And that created a little bit of jealousy within the community organizations because they'd been here for years, had been doing stuff. And here along comes this white guy and he starts getting money and stuff like that.

TK: As you probably noticed, I've been jotting down questions as we go along.

CS: Sure, all right.

TK: And there are a couple of things you said that I'd like to clarify and then a couple sort of added questions.

CS: Right.

TK: One thing, when you were a social worker and you were against Vietnam War and stuff. And one of the questions I'd like to ask people is how do you think you've got your ideas about social issues or racial issues?

CS: Huh, that's interesting. I'll tell you an incident that struck in my mind 37:00when I was a young kid, I guess I was about eight or nine. My father had tavern. That's how he supported us, was [inaudible 00:37:18] Tavern. And he was always very strict man, very moral man, there's a right and there's a wrong. And I can remember the first racial thing that ever came up... Well, I know it's not the first racial. The second racial thing that came to mind is that there was a black fellow, it's an all white, blue collar area. Black fellow came into the bar and sat down on a stool. And I didn't know exactly what was going on because I used to wander in and out.

But I could tell there tension. And these people were kind of baiting my father, 38:00things like that. And all of a sudden I kind of was puzzled as what was happening. On one hand, I knew that this was wrong. Whatever, here's this black guy, my father, because he always would come down and take care of your drink order right away. And I couldn't understand these other people who I liked, they were kind of going through this harrumphing thing and this kind of nasty undertone thing. So finally the standoff was ended when the guy got off his stool and my father came down and gave him carryout, I guess, because the fellow wouldn't want to stay in that place with that kind of nonsense going on. But it encouraged me to hear my dad, we were dependent upon this income from his clientele. And he had strong feelings pretty obviously about what he could or 39:00could not do. And how this kind of impasse was broken, whether this mediation, not mediation, but this kind of a middle ground where...

That's one of the first things that I can recall. And I don't know, it just... I took some aptitude tests in grade school. And they said I was cut out for social type of endeavor, work, that sort of thing. And evidently that's where interests have always been. In terms of civil rights, until I got to Louisville, I was just a social worker. I was always for the downtrodden. And again, that goes back to the Kennedy thing. Cause I saw that speech, and I was always very cynical about politics. My father was, so I guess inherited it from him, but 40:00that was such an invigorating thing that kind of transcended the Baltimore local cronyism thing. Which I found rather distasteful.

But anyway, I guess that's what kind of... And in social work, majority of the people are black. And you got to talk with them. So you kind of got their perspective about things and you could understand social or civil rights issues. And when I got here in the open, I couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. Didn't make any sense to me. You put your house up for sale. You want money for it and that's it. And you hear all this nonsense about, "I want to be able to pick and choose who I sell it." That's not the issue, it never was. And how contrived though, that is. It didn't make any sense.

And then stumbling around defiant. What would the kids could do now? You have to remember their ages. They were young, they're very innocent and they were very photogenic. So that when they got on the stage, they ruled that stage. So then when they talked, I would say "We did this because of this." And I knew you could talk to them. And I'd have a list of things. And if any of the questions were unfair, and there were a couple of them, I would intervene. But in the majority of places we went to, one of them here, the message we had...

TK: That's why they invited you.

CS: Yeah. So it was normally a pretty positive thing. And we used to get all kind of, really pleasantries from people saying, "We're glad you came because we're much further along and trying to work out these discussions." And we 42:00always had more fun. I don't know if you ever heard of the Black Manifesto.

TK: Yeah.

CS: The Unitarians were always at the forefront of this and trying to talk things through. They invite us there and I said, "All right." What we're going to do this, we're going to start off with this show. Then one of our guy is going to come in and he's going to do this Black Manifesto deal. And I said, "We're not going to explain to the pastor, director, whoever it was. But we're not going to say whether this is real or not. It's going to be for the audience to determine what it is." So they were up on stage and they got this thing and they got this is real black guy, the guy that's built, Nat Turner boy. He come bursting in and he's yelling and screaming, "[inaudible 00:00:42:51] no, this is wrong. This is wrong."

Then he goes out, he's just goes marching out. He goes, marching, marching out. And people are flabbergasted. They don't know what the hell is going on. And 43:00then all of a sudden this guy on the side, he goes, "I don't know. I don't know if we should go with this play outside." And I'm just emotionally drained. I said, "We try to do things that are really positive. And you always go, 'Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it.'" He said, "I don't know if we can do that."

And boy he was hamming it up. But anyway, that one's one. So at the end they asked the question, "Was this real or not?" We just kind of said, "Well, it doesn't make any difference. We were here to make you think about it. And what if we told you no, would that make more of an impression upon you if we said yes?" So finally, the next day I called. I waited the first time we did it. I called to get some sort of reaction to what happened. And I said, "You know, it really worked well because they were up all night trying to figure out whether or not it real or not." And they got all sorts of other discussions about the whole, all these issues. The following next day, they woke up and they figured they'd been had. So we used to like to do stuff like that.

TK: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

CS: But anyways, sorry I didn't mean to...

TK: Yeah. I wanted to ask a couple questions about you coming to Louisville. One 44:00of the things is you said that Louisville was a training ground for Vista? Do you know how that happened? How did it?

CS: No, I guess-

TK: It wasn't the only one was it?

CS: No.

TK: No, okay.

CS: No, we used to move around. And I just think what happened is that we trained at the Catalpa Baptist Fellowship Center down there, at Catalpa. Which is now [inaudible 00:44:22]. I just think what they had is this was a regional hub. This was kind of the midpoint where people came and got together. Because I was only supposed to be here for a year. And then they asked me to stay for another year and a whole bunch of people sent in letters, and then busts. I was three years. They always had to send in letters. But the actual 30 years when became independent and we got money.

TK: Well, the other thing I was curious about when you said you came to 45:00Louisville. You're from Baltimore, but when you were coming to Louisville, your vision was of this sort of plantation system.

CS: Oh yeah, I had no idea.

TK: So why did you think Louisville was more southern than Baltimore?

I thought Baltimore was kind of cosmopolitan myself. Baltimore Colts were my team, Baltimore Royals were my team. There certainly wasn't a Louisville team. There certainly wasn't that I'd ever heard of. I never followed college basketball. So I didn't know about the thing here with the teams and such. But I'd never really heard much about Louisville one way or another. And when I first came here, there was only eight to ten movie houses, total, in the whole area. And maybe as many restaurants. It was a very small city. It wasn't backwards as I thought it would be. Certainly there weren't any plantations or 46:00mint juleps, but I wasn't.

CS: Certainly there weren't any plantations or mint juleps, but I wasn't the only one that had that idea because I talked with the other Vistas and such and they all had similar type of ideas. Again, if you think back then you had three major TV channels, you didn't have cable. Black and white TV basically, color was starting to come in. But you didn't have the internet where you can look up ... I came from a very blue collar, hardworking area of the city. I had never gotten to New York or gotten to Mexico. But basically, it's all been in Highlandtown, that's where I came from. Most of these other people in Vista had limited experiences with the outside world and they were all from their own 47:00little enclave.

TK: I want to ask you a little bit more about the Vista experience. Do you remember who some of the other Vistas were that came here?

CS: I've got an idea. Bill McAvinue was one. He's from Philadelphia, he's still here. Let's see, who else was ... A fellow by the name of John Long, I never knew whatever happened. There's a great story about John Long. As you know, they had the personal Vista came in and they were doing this exploratory thing to see what you were doing. John Long, he was ... This is when things were really getting bad and people were thinking that there might be a revolution in the United States. This guy, he came in and he said, "I know things are bad. I've been to places where they've got guns and they're storing guns. I've been to places ..."

TK: John Long said this?

CS: No.

TK: No, the Vista guy said this.

CS: No, the Vista guy said it. He said, "I want to know what you guys are doing 48:00because this is a serious time." Everyone had their own little say, but there were lots of guys who really weren't doing anything that could screw it up, but that's the way it was. John Long was one of the screw-offs and he got in a little trouble. He goes, "I do this and ... God damn it!" He smashed his hand down on the table and said, "What we need is some grassroots organizations. We need to ... What I'm doing is wrong. We've got to do this and we've got to get people organized and we've got to get the issues out there!" The next day he jumped on his motorcycle and went to Philadelphia for about two weeks. But that's a great John Long story.

I'm trying to think who else. There's a girl who I think she's still there, Charlie T. would know her, who does some sort of statistical analysis for the state of Kentucky, some social agency. Who else? McAvinue. There's a fellow by 49:00the name of Stegman and he's over at ... Stegman, I don't know what he ever did. He was a roommate of mine for a while and what we did was, we got this $80 ... Our utility department was really nice and we always used to pitch in to afford the thing. He was around for a little bit and he, I think, is over at ... I've seen his name ... I'm pretty sure I saw his name over at St. Agnes church, that's where we go. I think he's there. I wouldn't even know him if I tripped over him these days.

There was a guy by the name of Harold Hopkins. Harold was a ballsy guy. When they had the riots here they had curfew and you could not go on the streets after a certain time. Anne Braden gave everyone passes if you were an associate. 50:00We rode all around the place. That's when they were locking people up and we got downtown. They had this one prisoner one time and he broke loose and the cop races and goes, "If you don't stop! Halt, I'm going to fire!" Man, we all dove. But we used to ride all around. But Harold, right through all this time, Harold Hopkins was over Charlie T's gym. The reason they had Charlie T. there is because ...

TK: You mean Charlie Tachau when you say Charlie T., right?

CS: Right.

TK: Okay, just making sure.

CS: The reason he got 20 through St. George is because that church has been closed down for quite some time and they want someone to try ... And it had been broken into, some kids wanted to use the gym. They thought Charlie could be the enterprising individual to get it back going. He got this one guy, Harold, and 51:00Harold was in charge of the gym, that's what his Vista thing was. He had these basketball games and these leagues and stuff. But one day, and this was right after the riots. I don't know where he got the guts to do this, someone stole the basketball so Harold, the only white guy in this gym, said, "The gym is closed. You all go home, and no one comes back here until we get the basketball back." He ushered them all out. He had a good sense of humor and he could do it, that's the only way you could do it. They all left and about a half hour or so later, here comes the guy back with the basketball, so the place opened up. But I thought that was one of the more gutsy things, and he was absolutely right.

TK: Could you tell me a little bit more about the riot, your perspective of that.

CS: That was interesting, that really was. My understanding of things at that 52:00time is that they would have people ... I remember Stokely Carmichael, Rap Brown, SNCC. All this was going on. Burn baby burn, there was violence. Somehow or another there was some organization, but they would go around and there were some people here locally who thought that the city of Louisville was on the verge of a potential riot. After Martin Luther King's death there were riots all over the place and there were riots here and there about poverty and things like that.

But at any rate, some fellow came into town and he would assess the situation to see if, in fact, a riot could break out. It was really interesting, he said, "No, the people here are too content. You don't have the conditions that would exacerbate the ..." But some people would spread rumors. There was a rumor that Stokely Carmichael or somebody was at Standiford Airport circling and they wouldn't let him land, just trying to get ... And none of the stuff would ever really rouse people. But there was a meeting, and this was during the summer. We were having a rehearsal at the same time down on the west end. Despite all the observations that there couldn't be a riot, that the conditions weren't ... At this meeting, there was some kid up on the top floor and there were police 54:00there. There's always been antagonism with the inner city and the police department now and then.

We as the Westside Players, we used to do these social dramas before the police to try to get them to be more sensitive, sensitivity training is what it was. We did these for years, and the first one we did was right around then. Man, it was something else. They were just ... I guess the open housing thing, when they got these guys going, but they were just ... My god, they just didn't want to hear anything that we did. They acted like a group of high school retards. They're doing cat calls and stuff when we were up on stage, I saw police ... But any rate, you had this atmosphere with the police. I don't want to stereotype, but it was not conducive to community betterment.

But anyway, they were there at this meeting and there was a kid up on the top floor and he let go with a bottle, threw it from the top of the roof and it hit the thing and popped. Some cop pulled his gun out and wheeled around and that's when all hell broke loose because it was just the spark, the right moment, it was just bedlam. We were down rehearsing and when we got out there was just gangs of people moving and milling about on corners. I had this carload of black kids and they were throwing rocks at me. I go, "Hey, I'm the good guy. Look, here's my proof."

But anyway, when I got home we didn't know what was going on and you couldn't call anyone, the phones were not picking up. I had this old 1955 television that 56:00just barely worked and I turned that on and they were talking about riots. That was it, it just broke. From there, up in Chicago there was something, I think there were seven or six, I forgot what it was.

TK: Chicago Seven.

CS: Chicago ... Okay. Well then here we had the Black Six because from that this Black Six thing came up that they were going to blow up some refinery on the west end. But anyway, that's ... The unfortunate part about all that stuff is some black kid was killed, gave himself a pair of shoes. Right after this the police officers just ... They kept on pushing people on both sides and there was just no backing down besides just exploding.

TK: I know this is going back in time chronologically, but I realize that I hadn't asked you and I would like to ask a little more detail on the open housing stuff.

CS: Sure. Okay, go ahead.

TK: You said it was going on when you [crosstalk 00:57:15]

CS: It was at the very beginning when I came here.

TK: Okay. You got involved because of being a Vista?

CS: Yeah.

TK: Okay.

CS: Hulbert James was in charge of the West End Community Council.

TK: And you were assigned to [crosstalk 00:57:27]

CS: Charlie eventually became ...

TK: Right.

CS: But anyway, he was a real proponent that this was an issue that had to be addressed. We'd have meetings of Vistas down there and he was our director and he was explaining, "We're going to have this meeting and this demonstration." What they would do in order to get press, they would go out in the south, and were the people who would all flee from the west, they were all [crosstalk 00:57:55]

TK: That's where all the white fight went.

CS: Right. They were all out there, and these were poor people just barely able 58:00to afford these houses and then all of a sudden here comes this whole crew of blacks in the neighborhood so they just left. They really didn't have ... All they did was just march up and down, they didn't do a damn thing. And then the politicians backslid because they were afraid that this racial issue would be used against them, the board of aldermen. They didn't want to be running on a platform of ... They promoted integration, is what is. They tabled until next time and said, "We'll get it through, but after the election." The black leaders here said, "No, we want this as an issue that needs to be addressed right now, we don't want to put it off."

They were right because they did halt it. They halted it right around the time of the derby. They didn't want to go up against the derby, they didn't want the bad press. But once they stopped it, then it lost its momentum and just kind of 59:00evaporated. They had a couple of more after that, but it wasn't much, and the derby was kind of a finality to that.

TK: I'm going to ...

CS: Because by the time I got to him, Martin Luther King's group was here.

TK: Okay, CLC was already here when you were ...

CS: Yeah.

TK: Okay.

CS: Matter of fact, we had a guy who stayed in our place that was in the CLC. He would let us know the strategies, so that was kind of interesting, getting somebody to ... What's going on. But they had ... The thing was interesting. The songs that they sang, they were some really nice, spiritual things. Keep Your Eye on the Prize, We Can't Be Moved.

TK: We Shall Not Be Moved.

CS: We Shall Not Be Moved. Of course, we all know the one, We Shall Overcome, at the end with the thing. It all was really an emotional thing, but they used to sing that. They used to have ... They marched two by two and they used to have 60:00these guys come along and say, "Don't pay any attention to the crows." There was this real big redneck, he would always show up to all these things and he had the bib overalls and all this stuff that you thought a redneck should wear, and he would always give you this finger thing, "Come over here," and just taunt you a little bit. If you made eye contact with him, it was kind of mesmerizing. "Come on. Come over here." He's marching and these guys would charge him and he goes, "Don't pay attention. Keep on moving. Keep your eyes right in front of you."

There was this whole energetic activity because you would meet in church in the West End to start out. We're going here to the left, please your cars here, all this organizational stuff. And then you'd have the rallies, either afterwards or 61:00sometimes before, and people would talk about their experiences when they got up on stage. If they were manhandled and they've had their hands on them. It got to that point, a guy had his hand ... I think it was A.D. King had his hand in a sling and he used that hand really effectively. He'd go to give a speech and he'd move that hand up and down with the sling on it.

You had some real honest testimonials about people who were just caught up, who just thought this was the right thing to do, and somehow or another they got involved with the legal process because the legal process of this thing really spilled out. The thought behind it all, of course, was Ghandi's theory of nonviolence where you didn't use violence. If you get picked up and put in a paddy wagon and taken down and they book you or set you free, whatever they're 62:00going to do. But when it got to court time, that's when you had the real black leaders, they had a certain legal logic. Some of the other periphery people who were just kind of caught up into it, had their own attorneys and they were going on a different venue in terms of a legalistic direction. That caused some consternation because they thought we should be going over here to tackle this issue here rather than over there.

TK: Oh, that's interesting.

CS: I remember this one poor girl, I don't know how ... Evidently she just felt it was her thing to do. We used to go to court too and watch all this stuff. She was really in tears. She was a young lady, 18 or 19 probably, a college student 63:00that got this thing. You would have students too during summertime who just wanted to see what the civil rights thing is all about. They would just come in and spend the summer and try to help out whatever they could help out with.

TK: Students from here would go?

CS: From here and from elsewhere.

TK: Oh, okay.

CS: They would just come in and ... I don't know how they ever got here. I guess we wrote to somebody or other. But anyway, they would wind up down there and they were just interested in seeing what was going on. At the same time, the West End Community Council, another thing they had there too on the bottom floor they had a coffeehouse and you'd have people mingling with that sort of thing too. And then the West End Community Council used to meet once a month on a Friday or so and then go over all this stuff, and then they had the West End Community Arts Festival.

TK: I was going to ask about that.

CS: That was all part of that. That's where we first did In White America, and 64:00we were part of that. But all of this, the hub ... It was the anchor of the hub where all this stuff rotated. But there was just all kinds of activity, one thing just fed upon the other. When we had programs, we used to skip just to go down there and somehow sneak past Anne Braden's office. She had her own agenda and was going on with stuff. I was isolated, very honestly, in what I did. And I'd go down there ...

TK: Yeah, because there's [inaudible 01:04:41] people and then there's Vista people and these are all ...

CS: Right. She was interested more on philosophical things, but I was interested more in doing things, like the theater. That was my anchor for once and it 65:00worked for me. I wasn't any good a position papers or some of the stuff that they got involved with, I just didn't have the fervor that you need to carry that through, though this other thing really turned me on, the theater.

TK: Yeah, obviously. It's interesting because you were saying how the West End Community Council is kind of like the hub because I do think they're a very interesting organization and they seem to be just kind of involved everything. How did you first encounter WECC? Did Vista automatically assign you to them or did you ...

CS: I'm trying to think about that. I was assigned to a thing called Parkland Non-Residential Juvenile Center. The deal with that was they got kids who were discipline problems in school and they had this special thing where you went to 66:00this place and what you did there, you would go to some classes, not all of them. You would go down to the library and dust books or stuff like that. Then you came back here afterwards and they would have a group and they would put you in a hot seat and this group would get a different guy every day and go over what these problems were and this stuff and try to get you to be honest to face whatever problem it is.

That's where I was ... Delores Dillingham was in charge of that. I got to know her and her nephew, Pat Dillingham. Pat was there with Vernon Robertson and Dave Dutsky and they were over at St. Charles Borromeo. But anyway, that's how I ... Vernon, he liked the arts and he was promoted to the arts. But any rate, the West End Community Council, there were a couple of people in that group, that's 67:00when we were training here. We were training here, we were attached, and we went a couple of days through that, then we went to the training, that spoke about the West End Community Council having this coffee house. We went to the coffee house and that's how we all ... Out of our group, I bet they had about 8 to 10 vistas who stayed here. There was Art and Judy Course out in California.

TK: What was that name?

CS: Art and Judy Course.

TK: Course? Okay.

CS: They were here for one year. He became a lawyer and he wanted to become a lawyer, so he went to legal aid, that's where he worked out of. I forgot what the heck she did. I don't want to call it. But any rate, they were here during that time and they trained with us at Westinghouse Learning Corporation. I'm 68:00trying to think who else was in that group. There was a girl by the name of Carmela Assalone and she was a rather meek girl. I think she's still in Louisville. There's a thing called OIC, Organizational Industrialization Committee, Johnetta Marshall was in charge of that for a long time.

But any rate, that was a new concept of finding employment where you trained them for a particular trade industry, people to a skill, they went out. Carmela worked over there and she didn't have a whole lot to do with the rights thing, but she was just in that crew. When OIC went under or whatever, but I think she's still here. I don't know what she's doing anymore. I'm trying to think who else was in that crew.

Hey, come here [inaudible 01:08:57].

TK: One of the things I think is interesting about the West End Community Council is that they do combine the civil rights integration stuff with the ...

TK: Was that they do combine the civil rights integration stuff with the community organizing and the arts and the sort of-

CS: Well, see, Vern Robertson, he was a Catholic priest. He was Episcopalian, who was at 26 St. George Church, who went to Rome and very wealthy man. He died two, three years ago. He inherited a whole lot of money. At any rate, he was a board member of the [Wasigmia 01:09:32] Council. Now, Charles [Taca 01:09:34], I think he was Jewish.

TK: Family, but had become Episcopalian.

CS: Right, Episcopalian. He was a juvenile court judge and then became an Episcopalian minister. He went to 26 St. George's. So, they've got them both on the Westlake Community Council Board. And it was really interesting because when all this black fervor power, I mean, black power was going on, [Halder 01:10:04] 70:00had left and they elected Charles. That made the Afro-American analyze that. I can remember that [inaudible 01:10:14]. The way the story was that the Westlake Community Council adopts black power and appoints white director, so.

TK: I actually, whenever I'm talking about the mobile movement to audiences like at conferences and stuff, I always tell that story, because I think it's interesting and unusual. Did you have any real interactions with the people from [Bulk 01:10:38] at all?

CS: Bulk, yeah, sure did. Black U to leave Kentucky. Was it Sam Robinson? No, Sam, Sam-

TK: Sam Hawkins.

CS: Sam Hawkins. Well, it's the same thing. He was an imposing guy. Is he still around, by the way?

TK: People tell me he is. There are about six different S. Hawkins's in the phone book.

CS: Oh, really?

TK: And I have not yet called to figure out which one is him.

CS: Sam was a tall guy, very commanding. He made a theatrical presence guy and [inaudible 01:11:14]. Everyone said transfer. He used to try to get Volkswagen buses back, because we're in minivans. Everyone needed a Volkswagen, man. God, he used to try to get anyway big people. Mrs. [Bick's 01:11:27], she was a lot back then and everyone used to try to hit her up for a van. So, I did. But Bulk didn't have it. Charlie got the Bulk people money for a vehicle to transport people from the Episcopalian archdiocese and they gave the money for this [inaudible 01:11:49]. And they turn around, they all sit and then he bought himself a Buick or something like that, because she used a Buick. And poor old Charlie got into a little hot water about buying. But anyway, I remember them, 72:00but I could talk with them, but I was insulated with what I did. And they all liked what I did. And I said, "Why don't you come see a show or something rather?" But they were all over in this thing over in this Milton thing and I'm just not that type of person.

TK: There were a couple of clarifying things that came up when you were telling a story about the West End Players that I wanted to make sure I got.

CS: West Side.

TK: West Side Players. Oh, good thing you told me that. You said the kids were basically in high school?

CS: Started out that way. It sure did. Some started some were even younger than that. Some were in grade school, the first crew and then some stayed over some time and got through high school. And then, when we had the [Cida 01:12:55] thing, they were about 18 or 19, that did stay around. And I felt sort of an 73:00obligation to them. I really didn't know what in the heck to do with them, I'll be honest with you. So, we got the Cida thing. We started going to the Cida shows, which were black folk tales and all the rest of it, but originally just started doing it was during the summer. And the original cast was about 50/50. And then after that was one that they were all in, the majority of them were in high school then. And I used to have to write notes when we're going to have plays.

And say, "Will you please excuse so and so, because we're going to do a play over here? We're doing this black history play and it's really important." And it was good for them because they got a lot of respect. Eventually they would wear somebody out there give black turtlenecks. And we used to have red WSP kind of little things.

TK: Of players.

CS: And we had little patches at one time too. And we did do some stuff on Mohammad Ali, of all things. There's a program that they used to have during the summer. It was called Summer Scene and in order to get these kids jobs, we'd go down to the parks and do performances and the city would pay for them. Well, one of the things they had this fundraising thing with Ali, and a guy by the name of Ellis. Ellis was champion for, I don't know, three or four months. He was from Louisville too and they had this boring match. So, anyway, they asked us to do something. So, we had this little urchin. We got the smallest guy we could get. We had this big, long, flowing robe. These trunks that started up here and went down low. And I had these big boxing gloves and he had this horseshoe in here. And it was down at the convention center and it was for a month fundraiser, 75:00okay. And so, we did this bit and the referee was on to us and he got me a big deal.

He'd found the shoe and this kind of stuff, but that was electric mode. Because Ellis was in the ring and he was having a good time and he was singing and this guy. But at any rate, but the thing that was really, I remember about that is that when they started going, "Ali, Ali." This chant. And they would do that before he came in. Damn, that was just absolute mesmerized. And he came in and they were going, "Ali, Ali." And the deal was when he got into the ring, our guy just fainted. We had to carry him out. But I don't know how we got rid of it [inaudible 01:15:39] some of the stuff we did to him.

TK: Yeah. Let me see. About how big was the group at any given time?

CS: We started out at 70. I think the largest we got was about 35 or 40 and that was a pretty large crew to him. I remember we had one guy, I could never figure out what to do with him. And he'd be, "I want to do the stage manager." Because 76:00he couldn't project, dah, dah, dah. And he went over to U of L, and U of L person over there called me. And said, "What do you do with this guy?" I said, "I don't know." I said, "You tell me, because he won't project, dah, dah, dah." Worked and he can't and they tried stuff. So, anyway, I lost him. And about 10 years ago, I got a couple of letters from this guy. He had done bit parts in movies.

TK: Oh, really?

CS: Yeah and it took me. Maybe he was with a group for about a month or so and I couldn't-

TK: Try to place him.

CS: Yeah, and but he said, [inaudible 01:16:38]. Who in the world is this guy? And I'm trying to figure it out. And he was talking about he did this little part in here and this little part in here and there. They were major motion pictures. And he was on screen for 15 seconds or a minute and a half, I don't know.

TK: But still.

CS: Yeah. And this guy, so he was still going out. I could never do anything with him. I couldn't-

TK: That's well, I guess, movies you don't have to project, right?

CS: Yes.

TK: The one question you didn't answer when you were talking about the West Side Players is you said when it ended, which was about 1980. But you didn't say how.

CS: Well, we had eight people, six, eight people in Cida, okay. And that's when the Reagan revolution came along and they'd cut the program. We knew it was going to happen. So, one day I came in, we had the word. They're all severed, week, a month pay or something or other. And so, it was up to me as to what to do. I was married then, still am. We had our first little girl. And I just did the whole thing of reinventing, going back to the beginning and doing all that stuff again. It just didn't appeal to me. I lost my zest for it and I think it 78:00needed to go in a different direction. And I didn't want to take it in that direction. The direction that I liked was when we worked with these people, when you had difficulties at home or whatever it was. They needed this activity to get them through. Those were the kind of individuals I liked to work with. What you're going to have to do to go to another level of theater was a more learned person, who could probably make it in the world no matter what.

I mean, they certainly didn't need this. I mean, they could go to the [Barrette 01:18:38] where there was a performing arts school. We were originally a part of that building. I mean, that building, we were one of the groups, but that building was erected for to use it. And I just had a little bit of a problem with it or we could become a community-based theater, which was a combination of both and we tried that. We did Emperor Jones and we did that at this thing 79:00there. And that we had some success with that, but my real love was working with the individual who just needed a positive, reinforcing experience. I could select that and it was fun where they would come along and work with them and see what they could do and how far. And then, my real concern, very honestly, at the end was what I had achieved with some of these who had been with me for a long time.

Some of them were on Cida, didn't have a job. What was going to become of them? Whether had I been fair with them by letting them have the Cida job and all the rest of it? After years, I still had contact with some of them. Some of them just became survivors and that was the one skill that you're able to, hopefully, 80:00you helped them attain. One guy was one of the better actors is one of the guys that couldn't read. A fine boy, he was a good actor. The thing about the inner city life is there is so many problems, it's like a vortex keeps on sucking you in. And then, the one thing compounds and just pulls you down. And unfortunately, he got caught up in that thing, but he turned out to be a survivor. So, I'm really pleased about that. And some other ones, there was a girl who did some Broadway plays.

And there was a play, Your Arms Are Too Short to Box With God, that they toured with and she was in the touring company. And she made that, that was one. But she would have done that no matter without us. That was the license she said 81:00that for some time and certainly she helped us. I was more interested in the kid that just didn't have a break or a chance. And to push it to the next level, where I thought we had to go, which we really didn't have to go. It just wasn't my cup of tea anymore.

TK: Well, it did last long. I mean, a lot of the programs that came out of that community work from the 60s.

CS: There was lots, so.

TK: Yeah. A couple other little detail questions and then just some wrap-up questions. One thing that we didn't cover about the open housing is you talked about people getting arrested. But did you ever get arrested?

CS: I never got arrested. I don't why.

TK: Just by luck?

CS: I don't know why. I remember it was one Saturday and this was after they saw. The push was we're going to picket the Derby and that's the jewel of 82:00Louisville. And he's got in there to try to press him, to make him do something and they were all up in the guy. We're all in my apartment. And the guy who was staying with us is from southern [inaudible 01:22:30].

TK: This is SELC?

CS: Right. He was there. Well, there was two talks. I said, "Well, are we going to have to stay up there or not?" I said, "No." "I'd just like to know because it's coming here." If not, I'm getting out of town and I'm going to party with my friend on Bowling Green. And he said, he'd seen me around my place. And I said, "Yeah." I said, "No." He said, "I can't tell you, but do you think I'd be here if we really organize it?" So, I got out of town, but anyway, that stopped the whole thing. And when I came back, there wasn't any. And then, they had one 83:00big one after that, and I didn't go for some reason. They locked everybody up that night. So, I missed out on that one. And but the other ones, I don't know why because I was downtown because they had a terrible scuffle downtown one time, when we were at the [automatic 01:23:18] chambers.

And I can remember that because I got there late and these big guys were there talking for this resolution, this law to be passed. And they had a whole big group of people there and it really got nasty. And he had some guys. I got delayed. I was sitting in the back. And this one guy said, "Look, up there." So, yelled and this guy was obviously against it. So, I didn't say a word to him. Said just wait for the approval. Appropriate moment when they started to sing, clap, that's when I started to sing and clap and he went, "Oh, no." But that night was really bad because I can remember the police, one cop taking out his baton and for some reason there was a whole group of people coming up the steps. 84:00And he was going to whack somebody and the TV cameras at the right time, just focused on him. The lights went on, that's when he backed off.

TK: Wow.

CS: But there were people arrested that night. And then, I didn't get any of that. I don't know why.

TK: Would it have had ramifications for your VISTA position? Did you [crosstalk 01:24:27].

CS: Probably would have. Back then-

TK: Seems that Hawkins got arrested a bunch of times, didn't he? Was he with VISTA?

CS: I think he was at one time. I think he was.

TK: I know he got arrested at least three times that I know of.

CS: But then again, one thing too is with the rehearsal time, our rehearsal time was always in the evening. So, at first, I was available because there wasn't a thing and I marched a lot then. But then, it seems to me that I must have been rehearsing with them always arresting and stuff, because I was just-

TK: Mm-hmm (affirmative), just didn't.

CS: Yeah, I just missed out with that.

TK: Well, the main general question that I want to ask is what relationship did you see at the time, if any, I don't want to put words in your mouth, between what you were doing and the broader movement?

CS: Well, very honestly, I thought it was really imperative. Because what it did, it got people to have honest, direct communication. When we went around to the different churches and things, there was always this dialogue period. And for a lot of people, the history play in white America was chronological then of the black experience in America and it was really nicely done. It was done in an entertaining way. So, you and the [inaudible 01:25:55] were entertained. So, you could rather than going to say these are the problems that we've got, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, here. You can really make this stuff energized 86:00entertainment and get people into it. And you could have a really good dialogue you have towards. And then the people felt free and say, "I disagree." That's fine. That's your opinion. But here are people right here that are living in this experience and they can tell you and listen to them. They have a lot of good things. And lots of places, when we went up to Indianapolis this one time. They were doing something up there, and they didn't know us from Adam.

And they called and got some references around. So, we got, but I called them after. I was always interested in seeing what happened after. And they said, "You guys, we had this whole thing mapped out. And after you were here, we just dropped about a month worth of program because we're way beyond that now." And I was really pleased with that. And I'd had lots of time. And then, there was a 87:00school called in Ohio, Edgecliff. It was an all girls school. It was a Catholic house, well, Catholic college. I think it's still around and it's merged. But anyway, but we got up there and they were a very, very closed community and they were really very cautious about us. And I went up there to link the theater stuff and talk with them. And at first they thought I was a priest. I said, "No, I'm not a priest." So, then somehow they thought I was a communist from [crosstalk 01:27:36]. And they called back here and got somebody. And then, the next day I got a letter from them, Miss Carol [inaudible 01:27:45]. This going the whole gamut, so.

But anyway, I thought that was a really positive place, where it's oh, we did the play up there and we had a lot of fun with it. Then one of the best stories was that we went on tour and Edgecliff was one of the tour things. We went to 88:00Kentucky State, University of Kentucky, and it was Edgecliff and up into the theater in the park and we did the White America. And we did the song thing that we did. But anyway, we were at the University of Cincinnati the very last night of this tour. And this was the very night that the first man set foot on the Moon. At the very end of the production, man, there was some people there. I was watching the players way in the back and it was off and it just was not moving the way it should move and you knew it. And I couldn't figure out what the hell was wrong. So, intermission I went down there in the circle. I remember the kids told me, there's this white heckler. This woman was really on them.

TK: Really?

CS: And I said, "Well, you point her out, so we'll stop this." But she had left 89:00and she didn't come back. Well, this was good. So, but anyway, so I was talking to the people up there and they showed right then on TV was the guy who was on the Moon, we're just wrapping up things, getting out of town. We had this bus that we took all over, it drove us around and stuff. We got maybe 12 miles from Louisville and the bus broke down. I always thought that was so ironic. Here they can get a man on the Moon, and we can't-

TK: We can't get from Cincinnati to Louisville.

CS: We had to crawl. We had to get out of the car or bus and there was a sister who was a chaperone. And she kept them happy, the kids happy. And we hitchhiked into Louisville. It was about 2:00 to 3:00 in the morning and we're calling up people and saying, "The bus has broke down. The kids are down there. We got to get this car." We got to get these kids out of there and we did.

TK: Oh, my.

CS: What else? When I think about that, the ironic thing obviously is here they're on the Moon. We can't get from Cincinnati to Louisville.

TK: My goodness. Right, so that was, basically, that was my last question.

CS: Okay.

TK: Now, I'm going to turn this off. And actually, my light is flashing.