Interview with Ben Shobe, August 27, 1999

TRACY K'MEYER: It's on and it's working just fine. We had a lot of, the major biographical information you told me about where you're from and stuff before, one question I didn't ask was when you were born?

BEN SHOBE: 1920, October 2.

TK: And the other question I didn't ask before is how did you meet your wife and when did you get married?

BS: Barbara and I -- Barbara was my secretary, she was my second wife -- and we got married in -- if I miss this, she'll be mad, won't she? -- in 1972. We married on January 12, 1972.

TK: Why can't men ever remember that?

BS: I don't know! [laughter]

TK: Was your first wife Norma Shobe?

BS: Norma was my first wife.

TK: Okay, because I've seen her name before.

BS: Yes, Norma and I married in 1944 and we married in September. I remember 1:00that, September 11, 1944 and we married while I was still in law school at Ann Arbor and I met her there.

TK: And she's passed away now?

BS: Yes. Norma is the mother of Deanna and Carroll and Benita and Ben.

TK: And one other quick question: did you live in Louisville at any time before you went to law school or any time before. . . ?

BS: No, I used to come back and forth to Louisville and I knew Louisvillians and I had relatives here but I had never lived in Louisville.

TK: You had never lived here before you arrived. Well, when we talked the first time you told me a little bit about your parents and your father's position and the story about moving around; one thing I was wondering about was when you were growing up, what did they teach you about how to respond to racial prejudice?

BS: I am sure that I was sheltered because my own recollection is that we 2:00generally stayed to ourselves a lot and in the mountain town of Middlesboro where we lived it was very easy not to, simply not to, come in contact with too many whites except when you went to downtown to buy something or something of that nature. I spent more time running through those mountains with other kids and occasionally with some white kids who I had no problems with and they had no problems with me apparently. I think there were little different attitudes about race up in the mountains of Kentucky. Most of those people were on the same economic level and there wasn't the competition between the races that you might find in some other areas of Kentucky, in the metropolitan areas nor in western 3:00Kentucky where slavery existed for a much longer period of time than--I don't think it ever happened up in the mountains of Kentucky. And my father was such a well-respected man in the town, he was like the black mayor, you know, and so I never, I don't recall any special problems.

TK: When do you think you first encountered racism or racial prejudice?

BS: I think I encountered some, of course, in Middlesboro; I'm not saying that I didn't encounter anything but I can't remember that I was ever affected by it in any way except that I would wonder occasionally why people would look at me the way they did. You know, there used to be a look that blacks used to think of it as the "hate" look that some whites would look at blacks as though they just 4:00really hated them. And I was a kind of a happy-go-lucky fellow and it seems to me that I felt that, it bothered me when I would see something of that nature because I was friendly and communicative and talkative and I guess people didn't really want to hear me. [laughter] But otherwise, I had a real pleasant childhood and I can't remember that I felt the real discrimination, I guess, until I came back, really until I came to college. And then I began to experience it, not because it was so prevalent at the campus at Kentucky State [University], because we were an all-black school, but because of our relationship with other schools. And I got involved in matters where we were involved in matters with particularly, say, the YMCA, and the YMCA program was 5:00involved with students from the University of Kentucky. I know that as I went to school at Kentucky State I wanted, somehow, to go the University of Kentucky for graduate school or to go to law school or something of that nature. I really wanted to go to graduate school because I thought I was going to be a teacher. My parents were teachers and it looked liked my future. Then I began to see the crosses that were burned around on the hills of Frankfort and I don't remember anything like that happening as I grew up in the mountains of Kentucky. But the crosses were burned around on the hillsides and we could see them from looking out from the campus. And I saw the [Ku Klux] Klan march downtown, in downtown Frankfort and these were things which were really just like a slap in the face, 6:00you know, a real slap in the face. And we were . . . even at that school they had a paternalistic attitude toward us and tried to keep us from being involved in anything downtown, just stay on the campus. . . . But we had to go to town to go to movie, sit in the crow's nest [balcony], but we had to go to town to see the movies or make some purchases that we couldn't get on the campus. And we recognized that the campus authorities really didn't want us to be involved too much with the town people and the town people, I guess, didn't want to be involved too much with us. So, except, say, on a football day when -- Kentucky State had great football teams back in those days and, of course everybody came, white and black, to see them play. In 1936, which is the year before I went 7:00there, the team was the black college national champions and they were in 1934 as well, '34 and '36. So in the years when I was there they had a good team, they just didn't have a national championship team.

TK: Right. But both white and blacks both went to the games. Was the seating segregated at the games or integrated at the games?

BS: No, it was integrated seating.

TK: And never any reaction to that?

BS: I don't remember any reaction to that at all.

TK: Interesting. Is that because it was at a black college?

BS: I would think so.

TK: Yeah.

BS: I don't know what might have happened otherwise but of course . . . and whites came to our basketball games as well but not as many. They came to the football games particularly because we really had a good team.

TK: Basketball not so good?

BS: Basketball not so good.

TK: Were you aware of anyone, either at the school or in the city trying to fight civil desegregation that early?

BS: I was on the Kentucky State debating team and one of our professors that we felt was trying to make some inroads into trying to get things to be better between the races was Professor Chaney. I don't know whether you've heard of him or not. Chaney is still alive and he affected a lot of us. We thought he was one of the greatest teachers in the world. He also was the faculty advisor for our debating team and I spent a lot of time with him and he was, in fact, he was a graduate of the University of Michigan where I went to law school and we talked back and forth about several things. Chaney was quite interested in trying to make things better but not through any marching or, as far as I know, filing of any law suits or anything of that nature. He was the conversationalist who 9:00wanted to increase the dialogue between whites and blacks. Over the years I think he has lectured at the University of Kentucky as well as at Kentucky State and he himself was, I think he was recognized in Kentucky as one of the great history teachers.

TK: He was a history teacher?

BS: Yes. Chaney has a wealth of knowledge. I don't know if his memory is still as good because he's older than I am, of course, that puts him up there since I'll be seventy-nine, you know, in October. Yeah, I'll be seventy-nine October 2nd; that's why I said to you I may not remember dates and things. [laughter]

TK: That's okay. You're doing pretty well so far.

BS: You know, I was asked that question when they were talking . . . Whitney 10:00Young, Jr., was my classmate and my roommate over there and I was asked the question by Dr. Wise, I believe is her name, from Princeton, who wrote a book on the life of Whitney Young, asked me whether he had shown some tendencies at Kentucky State to fight the racial question and I tried to think of it and I can't remember any such thing. We just went to school, we had a good time, we all thought we had the greatest class in the world and most of us went to graduate school somewhere or to a professional school of some type. And I don't remember any bad instances of racial prejudice. That's why I try to get that. When I went to the University of Michigan, I felt there were occasions when I 11:00knew the answer to a question and I tried to speak and I was ignored, I felt that. Maybe I had a little chip on my shoulder, I don't know. I try to rationalize some of these things. But I don't remember having particular problems there except well, I don't remember, I had plenty of white friends there so I really don't remember. My life wasn't full of a lot of racial problems.

TK: Why did you come back to Louisville, or Kentucky, I should say.

BS: I knew Charles W. Anderson, Jr., and he was, of course, the "Mr. Black Politico" of the New South and the first black state legislator in the South and a good lawyer and a friend of my family and I liked him so I wanted to come back 12:00to practice with him. Then he really began to initiate some of these things that I got subsequently involved in because it was obvious to me when I came back here that I wasn't in the same place that I was in when I was at Michigan. Even at the courthouse, it seemed to be segregated, you know, blacks sat in one section, whites in another, both in the old police court -- I started to say the district court, there wasn't any district court then--in the old police court and in the criminal divisions of the circuit court and in the civil divisions of the court there was segregated seating. I never was quite able to understand it 13:00because it was not an obvious division. No, there wasn't a rail here and everybody black sits back here and everybody white sits up there. It just seemed to be a natural division for some reason. And there were one or two people who began to protest that particular . . . Bishop Tucker, I don't know whether you . . .

TK: I've come across the name.

BS: Okay. Bishop Tucker, who led some of these civil rights fights back in the '40s, the late '40s and early '50s; in fact, I believe you probably have seen some pictures of him integrating the bus station together with George Burney.

TK: George Burney's name I haven't heard.

BS: Oh George . . .

TK: Who's that?

BS: George Burney is the fellow who still has the Martin Luther King Day--what do you call it now, I'm trying to think--oh, celebration, memorials and when the cars go up and down the road, what do you call it?

TK: Rally, parade?

BS: Yeah, they have a parade. George Burney has an organization, he calls it PRIDE, and with PRIDE he sponsors the Martin Luther King Day parade and programs and he also, his organization has a Christmas party for kids and that sort of thing. They do a pretty good job but George is a very visible character around.

TK: Sounds like someone I should interview.

BS: You probably should. He's in Seattle right now but he'll be back shortly.

TK: And he was around with Bishop Tucker way back in the. . . ?

BS: Yes. In fact, George and Bishop Tucker are the two blacks on the picture which you might see, I don't know whether you've seen it or not . . .

TK: Yes, it's in the Kentucky Black Heritage book.

BS: Yes. The little black fellow is George Burney. He's seventy-two so he's . . .

TK: Okay. I'll definitely try to look him up.

BS: In fact, George won't be back until, his wife lives in Seattle and he lives here. He stays here until about this time of year and he'll stay in Seattle until December probably.

TK: Oh, so I can't get him for awhile.

BS: It'll be around December.

TK: Okay. You were talking about the courtrooms, but outside the courtrooms what was Louisville like when you were here?

BS: A very segregated city. Blacks didn't come below about Twenty-sixth street 16:00and didn't go, this whole West End was white, you know, below Twenty-sixth Street. You remember the old Buchanan versus Warley case? Actually, segregation was a matter of fact in this city except on public buses which weren't segregated or anything. The bus system, that was an unusual thing; except for that bus system everything, it just was a segregated city.

TK: I know you got here right after the war but do you know if World War II had any effect on any of that at all?

BS: Not as much as some of the other cities where perhaps more of the returning veterans stopped. I was thinking about Whitney Young, for example, he didn't 17:00come back here even though this was his area, he left this area and he had developed some feeling for fighting for racial justice while he was in the service apparently. But he didn't come back to Louisville; he came to Omaha, Nebraska is where he went and subsequently down to Atlanta or somewhere. A lot of the other returning veterans didn't come back to Louisville, they stopped in other cities. I guess they felt they had better opportunities. So we didn't feel that so much. Now, of course, Fort Knox was right out here and we had soldiers coming in here a lot but they were hustled in and out of town, believe me.

TK: Oh really?

BS: Yes, they were. [laughter] Protected, I think against themselves and against townspeople. The early '40s--I got here in 1946--and in those days the NAACP was 18:00a pretty strong organization around here, so were political clubs . . . there was a Black Democratic Club and there was a Third Ward Republican Club, they called it, but it had people who were involved in trying to change things politically like Charlie Anderson and like Jessie Waters--I don't know whether 19:00you've heard of Jessie Waters. He was given a pretty good spot in the housing area through Marlow Cook. Like Joe Ray who was--you've heard of Joe Ray--who was a real estate man; and all these people were, and the NAACP with the lawyers who were involved like James Crumlin and Alfred Carroll; and Carroll and Crumlin filed some of the first law suits which were filed around here. I joined them. See, they had already, for example, the Sweeney case against the city of Louisville to open up the public parks, Carroll and Crumlin had filed that action, the NAACP asked me to join them. See, I'm supposed to be the sharp, 20:00little new man on the block so they asked me to join to help them. Since that time, since I became so active in it that I got more publicity out of it than they did because I was the active mover in that case and in the Lyman Johnson case except for the fact that, of course, I couldn't move beyond the Thurgood Marshalls and those folks who came down from New York and Washington. But I was local counsel in the Lyman Johnson case too, Lyman Johnson versus the University of Kentucky.

TK: Can I ask you to tell me a little bit more about, well, I guess I want to hear about [unintelligible] but first maybe those black political clubs; what kind of things did they do?

BS: Okay. The Third Ward Republican Club was composed largely of precinct captains and the legislative district chairman in the black areas. They also 21:00would call upon any people who had political jobs who happened to be members of that particular party. And they met monthly, they would meet monthly and discuss what areas they thought they could help themselves in. Now, politically, and they weren't part of this filing lawsuits and so forth, they were just people who thought they could prevail upon the mayor or prevail upon the county judge or prevail upon the people in charge of the main political parties, you know. Like we had political bosses back in those days; I remember the Democratic Party particularly had strong political bosses and they ran everything. Johnny Crimmons and Miss Lenny McLaughlin, if you've heard the name . . .

TK: I've heard the name Crimmons.

BS: Miss Lenny could tell you, if you asked her for something and she said she'd do it, she'd do it. That was it and she called this judge, that judge, that mayor.

TK: Was this person white or black, Lenny?

BS: White.

TK: These bosses were all white.

BS: Right. But the clubs, the black clubs would try to impress upon people in that position like Miss Lenny and Johnny Crimmons their need for whatever, you know, jobs or opportunities, business opportunities that could be advanced and so forth. They were pretty active. The Republican Club, I'm sure, was started by Charles Anderson and that club propelled him into the state legislature because, of course, there always were the votes in that legislative district but they had never elected a black legislator before. But Charlie organized it and as the 23:00organizer he soon became its leader and they elected him to the state legislature. After that he kept it alive. I knew more about that Republican Club at the time than I knew about what the Democrats were doing because I was not political at the time; I was simply around here trying to practice law, that was my idea at first. But I realized after awhile that it could help to be involved as a politician. And once I started I couldn't stop. [laughter]

TK: And were you Republican or a Democrat?

BS: I was a Republican, then I changed and became a Democrat.

TK: When did that happen?

BS: Let's see, I was a Republican when Harry Truman beat [Thomas] Dewey but right after that I became . . . and when was that, do you know?

TK: That was '48.

BS: Okay, it must have been right after that, about '50 or something, I became a Democrat.

TK: I think I remember reading in the Defender a few articles about a group of black leaders switching parties because of being disgruntled with . . .

BS: Yes.

TK: Were you in that group?

BS: No, I really wasn't in that group; I probably should have been but that was when, that was about housing. The housing was the issue and the then mayor was Mayor [Charles] Farnsley and the issue was a Fair Housing Ordinance. Mayor 25:00Farnsley had said, no, it was not Farnsley . . .

TK: Open Housing, that would have been . . .

BS: It wasn't Farnsley.

TK: [William] Cowger and then [Kenneth] Schmied?

BS: Yes, on the Republican side. They were elected on those issues. Cowger said that if the Board of Aldermen passed the Housing Ordinance he would support it and that got all the black votes. The Democratic candidate at the time said under no circumstances would he support it or sign it and that's when there was a shift of some of the black leaders from the Democratic party into the Republican party who supported Cowger and Cook and I guess that's it, Cowger and Cook and Louie Nunn at the time, who was governor.

TK: So that's much later than your switch because that's in the '60s.

BS: Yes. I'm trying to remember when it was exactly.

TK: One last question about these political clubs. You said that people were working through political means, pressuring the political leaders and stuff; were they trying to work to improve conditions within segregation or were they trying to get rid of segregation?

BS: I think they were really trying to improve conditions within segregation because there was not a big effort to get rid of segregation at that time. And I don't know when that push came. It looks like it was all of a sudden it was just here. [laughter] I think individuals like Bishop Tucker and George Burney and James Crumlin did more toward pushing to rid the city of segregation directly, and Alfred Carroll.

TK: So, the lawyers.

BS: The lawyers, yes. Subsequently Ben Shobe. [laughter] I joined them.

TK: Are you a little younger than. . . ?

BS: I'm younger than Carroll and younger than Crumlin.

TK: I'm interviewing Crumlin next week.

BS: Crumlin's about eighty, let's see, I did know, eighty-three.

TK: You're sort of a little bit of a generation behind.

BS: Right.

TK: Not quite.

BS: But we came here almost, they were here about two years before I came and . . .

TK: Already established in law practices.

BS: Already established.

TK: One other set of questions before we get into more your personal story is about the NAACP at the time; you said it was very active and very strong. Can you tell me a little bit about it when you first arrived in the city?

BS: Yes. The lawyers were heading the NAACP at the time. It was fellows like Carroll, Alfred Carroll and James Crumlin and some of the educators like Dr. C.H. Parrish and a few of the local ministers who were very active as NAACP 28:00members--and we don't see that anymore, we don't see that now, I guess they don't think we have the problem we used to have--so we had support of the larger black churches and they helped to fund whatever programs we needed to fund.

TK: Which churches would those have been?

BS: Quinn Chapel, AME Zion Church, the Zion Baptist Church at Twenty-second and Ali, Muhammad Ali; not the big churches of today because they didn't exist. The one at Eighteenth and Chestnut where Mackey Daniels is now but he was not there then.

TK: Right, he wasn't there until much later.

BS: No.

TK: So those were the leaders. Who's in the membership? Who's the regular rank and file membership?

BS: Rank and file membership. School teachers, black school teachers and largely black professionals. We did have others but black professionals and black poll workers. Of course, that would include the black job holders.

TK: So that's people who have political jobs?

BS: Yes. And it was, I think the membership was much, much stronger, much larger than it ever has been since those days when really there was something, I guess, that people felt they had to accomplish that they don't really feel as strong about today as they did then. With the walls of segregation torn down, it's a 30:00question more or less of individuals trying to accomplish something on their own, even though the NAACP exists and is needed. Well, there were some other ministers and other folks but I think I named the ones who were important to me.

TK: What kinds of things was it doing at the time?

BS: They were attacking more than one front; we were concerned about public housing, of course, and to eliminate segregation in housing; we were concerned about education; we were more thinking in terms not so much of the whole school 31:00system then as we were in thinking about in terms of higher education, we wanted to integrate the institutions of higher education; the other schools came later; we were concerned that . . . they had political movements too. We were concerned that we had candidates to run for public office who would support integration of all facilities; and let's see, housing, education, politics, job opportunities. . . . But the Urban League did more along those lines than the NAACP but the NAACP was concerned about job opportunities. Now what did they do? We met. [laughter] We talked. Occasionally we prepared a law suit, you know, and we 32:00filed some law suits. We would also try to bring in the national officers of the NAACP for support. We held seminars and brought in speakers.

TK: What kind of speakers?

BS: Some who would talk to us about what's being done on the national scene. I remember we had Archibald Cochran who was, he was in the federal government, now let's see what it was he . . . [laughter]

TK: I remember the name.

BS: I remember it so well I'm saying it now, I'm calling it off just like I ought to know exactly what he did, and I should. I think he was in the Labor 33:00Department. We had Archibald Cochran, we had, oh, we used to get, I can remember Thurgood Marshall being here several times. I don't know why, I know he was here on our cases and so forth but I think he was here otherwise too, just to talk strategy; Roy Wilkins was here occasionally.

TK: How was the attendance at these meetings when you had speakers?

BS: Oh, very good, very good. We had substantial participation. But after the meeting a lot of times nothing happened. [laughter] And I think we were sort of 34:00waiting, everybody was waiting for somebody else to take the lead. Of course, any time you start something, you'd have some money . . . getting money was one thing we always had a problem with, trying to raise money.

TK: How would you raise money?

BS: Usually through the churches, hm-hm, through the churches. That was a big source of support.

TK: Like a special offering type thing?

BS: Yeah, special offering.

TK: I've heard of that sort of thing, actually.

BS: Yeah, that was the best way we had to raise money. Oh, membership drives, you didn't do too much with membership drives because membership was cheap. [laughter]

TK: Yeah, very, like two dollars or something.

BS: Well, that's all right, you had to have members but it was so cheap that you couldn't run a program with it.

TK: Right. I've read membership lists actually from the '30s and '40s and I saw how cheap it was.

BS: Yeah.

TK: How do you get involved in all this? When you first. . . ?

BS: Came down--how did I happen to start?

TK: How did you happen to start getting involved in these NAACP meetings?

BS: I guess it's because when I came back to Louisville I went in the law office of Charles W. Anderson, Jr., and he was already active. Now, with Charlie already active and I just naturally fell into it, I think, and then became quite interested after falling into it. I don't think I was that concerned as when I was up in Michigan going to law school; I was concerned more with getting out of law school than anything else. I don't think I was thinking too much about anything else until I got down here and got in the office with Anderson. And he was wrapped up in both the political area and in the racial justice area and so 36:00it got me immediately involved and I became friends with Crumlin and Alfred Carroll. They were younger than Anderson but a little older than I am so I was a young guy on the block. I started attending meetings and meeting others who were involved like Lyman Johnson who I knew because Johnson had come to Michigan in graduate school while I was in law school up there and we met, I had met him there. But getting closer to Lyman and Joe Ray and, it just got me involved. All of a sudden they're telling me, "You've got to do this for us," and I'd say, "Okay, I'll do it." [laughter]

TK: So can you tell me about some of the cases you worked on then?

BS: Well, you know about the case, Lyman Johnson vs. University of Kentucky.

TK: That's '49, '50, in there?

BS: It's before '54 so I. . . . [laughter]

TK: I'll double check but I think it's right around there. What happened with that?

BS: Sweeney vs. the City of Louisville, the park case, that's also mine. I was supposed to be the local counsel with Crumlin and Carroll also assisted me in those and in the University of Kentucky case; those are the two big ones really because we spent a lot of time on both of those cases.

TK: Well, the park case seems very, it's in the Defender almost every week; you know, when you're reading the Defender through this time period there's a mention of the park cases almost every week on what was going on so it seems fairly complicated. Could you explain the legal strategy there or the process?

BS: Sure. We started in the state courts, we hoped we could accomplish what we wanted to accomplish in the state courts. So the law suit was filed in the Jefferson Circuit Court to eliminate segregation. Not to eliminate segregation because we didn't do it that way; we talked about discrimination, that the city of Louisville has these facilities for people generally, they have certain parks set aside for blacks and certain parks for whites. The parks for whites contained so much more that you can't find in the black parks such as the fishing lake, such as a golf course, the theatrical association, you know, out at Iroquois Park, and some certain facilities which Chickasaw Park simply didn't have, and that's the sole park set aside for use by blacks. Chickasaw Park didn't have these facilities and so we could go at it directly on the basis of a 39:00discrimination that my tax dollars are being paid as anybody else's tax dollars but you're discriminating against me because you're making available to white citizens things that you're not making available to blacks. We weren't talking about segregation, eliminating segregation; we were talking strictly about a discrimination.

TK: Why not?

BS: Well, because, Plessy vs. Ferguson stood in our way and we understood that Plessy vs. Ferguson stood in our way and we didn't expect a Kentucky court to change Plessy vs. Ferguson. But we threw it in. Now you'll find that's part of our . . . we threw it in even though we didn't expect to win on it, we always threw in the fact that we said segregation in and of itself is illegal, unconstitutional. We'd throw that in but we never did develop a strategy to win on that part, we couldn't get by Plessy vs. Ferguson and no state court was going to handle it but the state of Kentucky, they weren't going to handle it, 40:00going to say Plessy vs. Ferguson, the federal decision was wrong, they're not going to say that even though states had the right to give their citizens more protection if they chose to. They were not bound, they couldn't give any less than the federal constitution provided but they could give more. But they didn't do it. And we didn't expect them to but we'd throw it in anyway. [laughter] And until the Brown vs. The Board of Education when they really organized and got the expert witnesses to testify about the effects of segregation and to prove that segregation in and of itself was a discrimination, and we didn't have that kind of evidence to present so we just, we took the broad sweep. Discriminated 41:00against because you've got something out here that we don't have. [laughter] And we want part of what you have. So on that basis we went through the state courts and the reason you saw a lot of it was we didn't win in the state court. We went through the state court and then went back to the federal court. And then, see, when we went to the federal court, the state wanted to argue, I mean, the lawyers for the city wanted to argue and all that's . . . you can't do that; you had to appeal from the state court, the highest court in the state to the Supreme Court of the United States. You can't branch off into the district court. It just happened that that case, there was a decision which said you could . . . [laughter] where civil rights were involved and that was an issue that had been determined by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, the United States Court of Appeals.

TK: Right around the same time?

BS: No, it had been earlier. And it wasn't from Kentucky, it wasn't a case from 42:00Kentucky; I think it was maybe . . .

TK: But you could use that.

BS: You could use it. It was the authority for covering this matter in the United States District Court here. So Judge Shelbourne, who was the judge at the time--and again the United States District Court followed it right down the line--said, well, the burden of proof is on the city to prove that you give equal facilities. If you said separate but equal, prove it to me that Chickasaw Park is equal to Iroquois and Cherokee; [laughter] and they couldn't do it, of course. So naturally we won that case real handily. But even what is little known is that Judge Shelbourne did not include in his order the Louisville Park Theatrical Association; he did not include the programs presented out at Iroquois. He separated that somehow. But when they appealed this matter to the United States Court of Appeals in Cincinnati we got it all. [laughter]

TK: Oh really? For the court?

BS: Yes. Got it all. In fact, Judge Shelbourne ruled in our favor but he didn't rule in our favor on the Park Theatrical . . .

TK: Right. On Iroquois.

BS: On the amphitheater. He said parks but he said, "The amphitheater was run by a private organization." It might have been but it was on the public park and I guess it was by a private group of people but that didn't keep it from being, from having its public purpose and being supported by public taxes and so forth. So therefore, Judge Shelbourne, even though he wouldn't go that far, he went as far, I guess, as he thought he ought to. But then Cincinnati, they carried us all the way.

TK: Were there any other, while you're doing this legal work, were there any other efforts going on to desegregate the park? Any other groups or 44:00organizations working on it?

BS: If there were, I don't know it. I don't know of any, no.

TK: Okay. One question I have is it did seem to take a long time . . .

BS: It did, it did take a long time.

TK: Why did the parks seem important to you all?

BS: I think we were observing things nationally and it seemed to me that what we did was to take things that we thought we could handle that were so obvious where we could make an inroad without, you know, if we jumped on a separate education at the time it might have been very difficult. They really had to work hard to get all their evidence together to show that segregated schools were definitely inferior and so forth and so on. They had to have evidence. We didn't 45:00have to have too much evidence to show that Chickasaw Park has a fishing lake and all you do is go out there and see it. Or that Iroquois has a golf course and we don't have any golf course in Chickasaw Park, you know, and all that sort of thing; it was easy. And so I guess we were really taking an easy route but at the same . . . and we were watching what was happening nationally with NAACP, how they were handling cases in other jurisdictions. And we said, "We'll get around to education," but fortunately after Brown vs. Board of Education it set things up for everybody and we didn't have to do anything special. Except that Jim Crumlin did have to see that it was implemented. Crumlin would, Crumlin traveled--have you ever interviewed him?

TK: I'm going to next week.

BS: I hope he'll be, he's getting a little senile but Crumlin went throughout Kentucky to make sure that the education issues were settled and that's what happened down at Sturgis; do you remember . . . ?

TK: I've seen the newspaper articles.

BS: Okay, he was there, Sturgis and other areas of Kentucky where he became well known around Kentucky as a man who was seeing to it that segregation in education was abolished. Just a follow up to Brown vs. Board of Education. But still it was resisted, you know.

TK: Yeah. I do want to ask some questions about the school stuff here but before, I just want to make sure I have everything on the parks so you basically do it then because it was something you could do, it was possible.

BS: Yes. It seemed to be one of the, well, you say, "Why the parks?" Actually there was a demand for the use of golfing facilities. We had no golf course, for 47:00example. There were blacks who went to Ft. Knox to play golf; there were blacks who traveled to other areas to play golf because they couldn't play in Louisville. I guess that's the big example. Of course, there was no similar entertainment to that presented at the Louisville Amphitheater, the Park Theatrical Association's Amphitheater, so there were no similar places for blacks. In area alone those parks, of course, were much, much bigger, much larger. Shawnee had, I believe, a baseball diamond; Chickasaw didn't have the area for baseball diamonds.

TK: I've been down there, it's not a very big park.

BS: Yes, you're right. They had nice tennis courts. [laughter]

TK: Oh yeah? Even back then they did?

BS: Yeah, they had nice tennis courts, exactly. They were probably as good as any in town back then.

TK: Why do you think whites resisted integrated parks so much?

BS: Well, I really blame it on the politicians. I don't really think the people were as determined to maintain segregation as some of the city leaders at the time were. I think they felt that their political strength lay in continuing segregation but I think they were wrong; I don't believe that people . . . people never gave us that kind of trouble. You know, you had the Ku Klux Klan to march a time or two but they had very few members and when they started 49:00organizing the White Citizens' Councils in the South, we didn't have that much trouble around here with the White Citizen's Council trying to oppose integration. And except for a little problem out Dixie Highway, and I can't remember, you may know what I'm talking about there, when schools were integrated . . .

TK: I think it's from busing though, isn't it?

BS: Busing. Yeah, they had some problems then, but that didn't last very long.

TK: Right. I haven't gotten to that yet because it's more recent.

BS: Right.

TK: I haven't gotten that far but I have heard that from various people.

BS: But I don't recall that there was any particular . . . I think it was just that Louisville leadership felt that we were still the old Southern city and we needed segregation of the races and I think that that's the position that, their position was not absolutely correct; I think it was a mistake. In all the 50:00relationships I knew between people around here, whites and blacks got along pretty good.

TK: Your personal experience, maybe?

BS: My personal experiences, yes. We got along pretty good. I don't remember any bad experiences really. I wish I could tell you some. [laughter] I remember one up in the mountains of Kentucky.

TK: But that's not Louisville. That's interesting. So when you're having . . . I know that in the early part of the '50s Louisville had a number of, we integrated the public libraries, the parks, the amphitheater eventually; what was the public reaction to these or the media and the public reaction?

BS: I think the media supported the moves toward integration everywhere and the 51:00general public, except for a few individuals, we had no, I don't remember any special problems. When I became judge of the old Louisville police court and when I won that election I remember some FBI agents came by and told me that some Ku Klux Klan members were going to be at our rally that we held afterwards which was at the Galt House, and they were concerned about it. And some of the Klan members did come. A fellow named Boyd Smallwood used to be the head of the local Klan, I believe, but he came up and congratulated me and I remember that very well, that he came up. . . . [laughter] Perhaps he had something else in mind, I don't know, but he came and congratulated me and that's all he said and 52:00he left.

TK: When was that?

BS: That's later, 1970, yeah.

TK: So after you've done some other things. So we'll get to that.

BS: We're going back now to . . . you're talking about the parks, weren't you?

TK: I was just wondering what the reaction was to, when they do have these decisions that these successes leading up to, you know, in the early '50s. . . ?

BS: The way I remember it, we had no problems. Now I do recall that there were some problems over here at Shawnee Park and I'm trying to remember when that was because that problem, and I think that problem was caused by some black thugs, 53:00just to tell you the truth about it, who came over and started trouble. You know, they had to close down, what was it they had over here?

TK: Fontaine Ferry?

BS: Fontaine Ferry, closed down Fontaine Ferry. That may have been both white and black thugs, I suppose, you might say, I'll put it that way. But I don't think that was the general population that caused that.

TK: Yeah, I've read about that. One thing I wanted to ask about on this general subject is in your first interview you had mentioned that in a lot of the work you did there in the '50s there was, as you put it, some good white people that you could work with.

BS: Absolutely.

TK: Who? And how would you work with them?

BS: Well, Frank Haddad is a good example. Frank and I were close over the years and he was always willing to give advise and to discuss a problem. I was trying 54:00to think of the lawyers now that you mentioned it. Oh, he became judge . . .

TK: Triplett?

BS: Henry Triplett didn't become judge but Henry was always available. Even though Henry was on the opposite side of some of our cases, but he was always available for friendship and for conversation and for discussion about what the problems were. I'm trying my best to think about . . . I told you my memory's going. [laughter]

TK: It might come back to you.

BS: Maybe so. I can see them but can't recall their names.

TK: That's okay, there's people that I know and I can't remember their names. [laughter]

BS: I liked Loraine Mix who was the judge of the criminal court at the time. 55:00Loraine Mix, he seemed like to me his head and shoulders was above everybody else at the time. He was really there as an advisor and he used to be . . . I remember Judge Mix one time told me, you know, I was very unhappy about a jury verdict and he said to me, he said, "Did you ever stop to think that the jury might be right?" [laughter] He stopped me dead in my tracks. [laughter] I used that once or twice myself since then.

TK: So these were people in the legal system that you were friendly with and you could talk to.

BS: Yes, to go to them and talk to and get advice and who supported the cause of integration.

TK: What was the spelling of Loraine Mix's name?

BS: Mix is the last name. There was a Loraine Mix, Jr., but I'm talking about the father. And Judge Mix died about, he probably died in the early '70s.

TK: I just want to make sure I have people's names spelled correctly.

BS: So you have the right . . . Judge Mix.

TK: I have one question, there's a couple of incidents that I want to ask about; I once saw a reference to an issue involving the desegregation of U of L and Louisville Municipal College. Were you involved in that at all?

BS: Yes.

TK: Okay. Could you talk about your role in that?

BS: Well, we didn't really have to file a law suit. We prepared it, we were ready to file the law suit and let me see, what happened? We talked to, and I'll tell you who was active with us at that time and who was a good white source, I 57:00say Father Tachau.

TK: Charles?

BS: Yeah, Charles. He was active with us in that matter.

TK: Oh really? He didn't talk about that.

BS: Yes. And he also was active, did he tell you about his role in helping to integrate the bar association?

TK: That's the next thing I want to ask you about. He did mention that but I wanted to get your perspective on that.

BS: Absolutely. We were prepared, he was one who was really forward in both these matters, both with the bar association and with the medical association. END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B

BS: Even the medical society, it was the Jefferson County Medical Society, headed by, the executive director was a man whose last name was Close and our 58:00discussions were with I think his first name was Gene; now I may be wrong there Close. And we prepared the law suit, we were ready to sue the Jefferson County Medical Society because black doctors could not belong to the Jefferson County Medical Society, therefore, they could not practice in any of the hospitals except for the Red Cross Hospital, which was the black segregated hospital out on Shelby Street. We were prepared to prove that all these hospitals were supported by public money and that black doctors ought to be able to go into any of them. So we were getting our law suit ready and they decided, once we had informed them that we were going to do this, they decided that they would go 59:00ahead and take action on their own. And they did. They announced that all of the hospitals were open . . .

TK: To black doctors?

BS: To black doctors. But they were already open to black patients.

TK: Really?

BS: Some of them.

TK: So that was after. . . ?

BS: That was after some of them had already been open to black patients. But now . . .

TK: But now the black doctors would lose their patients.

BS: That's right. Not all of them may not have been open to black patients; my memory isn't as perfect on that. I know that the University Hospital the city hospital had to be open to black patients, I'm sure of that and I think the Jewish Hospital was open to black patients. There was no Day Law that prohibited 60:00it, you know, as they did in education; that was one of the problems, you know, we had to overcome in education. So the bar association sort of followed suit because the newspaper wrote some articles about what the medical society had done and I think it didn't take much for the law bar association to follow suit after that. Because of course, the Louisville Bar Association occupied and owned the Louisville Bar Library and there was no library facility equal to it for black lawyers; black lawyers had their own little books but they couldn't compete with the Louisville Bar Association's law library. So we didn't have the facilities that we could use and couldn't belong to the Louisville Bar Association even though we were members of the Kentucky Bar. Kentucky Bar, you had to be members of the Kentucky Bar but could not be members of the Louisville Bar until the Louisville Bar decided that they could not be a private organization. After the medical society integrated the Bar Association came 61:00along rapidly.

TK: So you didn't even have to prepare a suit against them.

BS: No. We were ready to but we didn't have to.

TK: Were you able to use the U of L law school library at that time?

BS: Yes. We could use U of L.

TK: So with U of L then you prepared a suit but you didn't have to . . .

BS: Didn't have to file it.

TK: Follow it up. Okay. Was there any issue with the Louisville Municipal College faculty? Were you involved with that at all?

BS: Oh, oh, oh. Well, the NAACP was and I as a member and as one of the lawyers, I guess, I was sort of a go-along fellow but I know that there were issues but not that we handled from a legal viewpoint. They took Dr. Parrish and they took 62:00Dr. Wilson and one or two other good professors and the rest of them went somewhere else. [laughter]

TK: Speaking of the hospitals, I've read a few articles, a few flyers really, about something called the Inter-racial Hospital Movement; it was a effort to get the hospitals integrated. Were you involved in that or do you remember that at all?

BS: I don't remember exactly what that was. I wonder who put out those flyers?

TK: Well, I saw them in the Braden papers. It was something that I know Ann Braden and a woman whose name I don't remember Barnett, something Barnett had organized. But it was a statewide thing.

BS: Oh all right. Well, they were active on a lot of fronts and when you asked me that a minute ago whether there were others involved, I don't know that I . . . I should have mentioned some of them. There were groups of course, working for integration, the Braden group particularly.

TK: Okay. I already asked about the legal strategy so . . . all this leading up to what about school segregation in Louisville? Once Brown happened what did the 63:00local NAACP do at that point? What was their reaction to Brown and what did they plan to do about that?

BS: Well, of course, you know what happened was that they filed the action in the federal district court here and Judge Gordon's orders were those that were followed here and he's the one who determined the what's Judge Gordon's first name? I can't remember but Judge . . . [laughter] [here interviewee is referring to the 1970s school cases and busing]

TK: I should now that.

BS: Hm-hm.

TK: Okay.

BS: It was Judge Gordon's orders that had to be followed around here. He determined the percentages of how many blacks would have to be bused and all that sort of thing. The burden of busing fell on blacks, of course.

TK: Right. I don't know very much about busing yet.

BS: No. I think busing was fairly successful. There are some complaints now about some of these people who say, "Well, why can't more of us go to Central High School?" and that sort of thing and I don't know how they can work that out but Central has a good program. Have you been over there?

TK: I've seen it.

BS: They have an excellent program and they're working in the downtown . . .

TK: Nice building.

BS: Well, see, they're working with the business community, the legal community, the medical community and these kids are getting all kinds of exposure as little summer internships and they have the business on the school campus, they got a Kentucky Fried Chicken there that they run.

TK: Oh really? I didn't know that.

BS: Yeah. And one or two other businesses which they actually run and with their connection with the downtown business it's a wonder to me that there aren't more whites who want to go to that school. There were earlier; I don't know, maybe it's . . . I'm just surprised. But because more whites don't go we can't get the blacks in who would like to go because it would upset the balance. [laughter]

TK: Right, the percentages. I know, I've been trying to follow all that now. All the stuff that's going on now. One thing I needed to clarify from the last interview that we did is the positions you've had. So in the early '50s you're doing this legal work for the NAACP. When does that stop?

BS: Probably when I became an assistant commonwealth attorney.

TK: Which was. . . ? Here's a benchmark, was it before the Wade House incident?

BS: No.

TK: It was after that. When you became assistant commonwealth attorney . . .

BS: I was there . . .

TK: Okay, so before that.

BS: When the Wades, I was an assistant commonwealth attorney . . .

TK: So you're already in the job by then.

BS: Yes, when the Wade incident occurred. and I think I hadn't been there more than maybe a year or two. I was assistant commonwealth attorney about seven years.

TK: Wow.

BS: Hm-hm. Under . . .

TK: Hamilton?

BS: Hamilton and Larry . . .

TK: I don't know who comes after Hamilton.

BS: Larry Higgins.

TK: Larry Higgins.

BS: Hamilton and Higgins.

TK: Okay. So that would have been then, if you were in the job . . .

BS: Now, not at the beginning of Hamilton's but Hamilton was, I think did Hamilton have two terms?

TK: He must have, he was in there awful long.

BS: He was there a long time. He may have had two terms but I was not with him in the beginning but I was there during the entire period of Larry Higgins. I 67:00guess that's a six year term, four or six years.

TK: How did you get that job?

BS: Through political activity and they recognized that I was a pretty good trial lawyer. Truthfully, I handled some pretty good cases and then I got through Johnny Crimmons and Mrs. Lenny McLaughlin and working in the Democratic party I got recommended and it was automatic when they said it. That's why I said they had political bosses; the boss said, "You'll do so-and-so, Scott Hamilton. You'll hire Ben Shobe." And he did. [laughter]

TK: And what were your responsibilities in that job?

BS: Well, they were general. I was not put in to a segregated I was their prosecutor, I prosecuted cases generally and under Larry Higgins I prosecuted more serious cases. Under Scott Hamilton before, as I was developing into see I 68:00became Higgins' chief prosecutor but I was not chief prosecutor when Hamilton was there. But I developed, by the time Higgins came along I was really a hotshot. [laughter] I prosecuted some murder cases and his . . .¡¡

TK: Really?

BS: Yeah, that he didn't try himself. Now, he liked to try cases, Higgins did; Hamilton didn't. But I would try his serious cases.

TK: Did you enjoy that job?

BS: Yeah, I did. I really did enjoy it.

TK: What did you do next?

BS: Ran for judge. [laughter] Became judge of the old Louisville Police Court. First of all, I accepted an appointment as trial commissioner when Neville Tucker was the judge of Police Court and I accepted a position of trial commissioner and then when he got in trouble and left I ran for and became the 69:00judge of the Louisville Police Court. That's in 1973. I can pinpoint that date. And then in 19 , about three or four years later I was appointed to the circuit court bench. Was it three of four or two or three? [laughter]

TK: So that's an appointed position.

BS: Appointed.

TK: The circuit court is appointed.

BS: I was appointed to fill a vacancy and then had to run. I had to run at the next election so I ran Judge Hayes, Judge Hayes became a judge in the new court of appeals which was established in 1975 and when he took that position I was appointed to fill the vacancy after which I had to run the next year and for the balance of his term and then ran again for an additional . . .

TK: For your own term.

BS: A term of my own. So let's see, that would be 19 , hm, '75 I guess. No, it wasn't '75, it must have been '76.

Barbara Shobe: '83.

BS: Wait a minute, Barbara. When I first, well, I was judge of Police Court in '73, right? Come here, your memory's better than mine. '73.

Barbara Shobe: Neville ran in '67, you stayed with him and you were the first Louisville Police Court Judge in the Hall of Justice; you ran in 19 . . .

BS: '75 for the Circuit Court bench. No.

TK: Her memory's better, let her talk. [chuckle]

Barbara Shobe: I believe it was '73 or '74. Ann was born in '73 and . . .

BS: Okay. Every time there's an election Barbara . . .

Barbara Shobe: She was a baby, she was a baby. And that election was either '74 or '75. That's when you ran the first time. Then you ran again for the eight-year term.

BS: But you forget, I didn't have to run originally because I was appointed to a vacancy.

Barbara Shobe: No, I know you were appointed to fill the vacancy and you . . .

BS: Then I had to run for the balance of Mr. Hayes' term.

TK: Of the term. Hm-hm.

BS: See, when they were . . .

Barbara Shobe: You came out in '91.

BS: '92.

Barbara Shobe: That was an eight year term. So go backwards.

BS: That was January of '82 so I guess you could call it '80, I mean, '92. So eight years before that would be '84, right?

TK: Yes. '84, okay.

Barbara Shobe: So you ran in '83, see.

BS: Okay. Before that it was John Hayes's six years before that. Six years before '80 what did we go back to, '83?

TK: '83. So six years would be '76.

BS: '76, that's right. Hayes ran in '76. He left when they established a new court and I became a judge over there in '77. I was appointed to the bench.

Barbara Shobe: Charlene was a little girl.

BS: I was appointed to the bench in '77.

Barbara Shobe: ( ) keep up with the kids.

BS: I'm glad you remember.

TK: So these are a series of first appointed under the Scotty Hamilton and then elected judge positions.

BS: That's right. All the judge positions are elected but you get, they fill a vacancy by an appointment.¡¡

TK: Hm-hm. And then you have to run to keep it. And in these positions . . . so when we talked before it was my sense that after you became under Scotty Hamilton that your role in the legal work for the NAACP had to end or was supposed to end or. . . ?

BS: Yeah, well, I guess I could retain a membership, you know, and was consulted 73:00but as a lawyer I was no longer available to sue the city or sue the state, you know, I couldn't do that.

TK: You couldn't do that. It would be a conflict of interest.

BS: Right. So that ended my . . .

TK: So were you able to stay involved in civil rights work on any level after that?

BS: Only as a member, a supporting member and that's about all. That's about all. I was consulted by lawyers when they were going to do something but other than that . . .

TK: You were supposed to be . . .¡¡

BS: They picked me up and I was out of it. [laughter]

TK: Well, then I want to ask you some questions that are sort of reflections on the movement as a whole type questions; first I did want to ask, I know about Deanna obviously because I interviewed her, but was there anyone else in your family involved in civil rights activity, either spouses or children?

BS: Not as much. Deanna was, let's see, I think, and I'm trying to wonder why 74:00Carroll wasn't, why my daughter who is a police officer was not involved. I can only think that she was probably away in school because it seems to me that she would have been and then the others were probably too young.

TK: Yeah, because Deanna's first thing, she was in high school and Carroll's younger than her, right?

BS: Carroll's younger and all the others are younger.

TK: Yeah.

BS: So I think it's the age. And I'm sure that Norma was not involved. So that's it.

TK: Just you. You and Deanna. [laughter] Okay. Just wanted to make sure about that. One general question is, if you were writing this book and someone said, 75:00"When did the movement start? When did civil rights activities start and when did it end in Louisville? Or when did the movement start and end in Louisville?" What would you say?

BS: Well, you know, I'd say that the movement has more than one beginning because we probably have to go back to the days of the I. Willis Coles and the days of Buchanan vs. Warley and the things that people were doing before I was thought of. But if you talk about the latter day movement, I think it began with the push for fair housing.

TK: Public Housing in the '50s or Open Housing in the '60s?

BS: Open Housing in the '60s. Well, that's too late. You'd have to go back to integration of schools because you have to go back into the '50s.

TK: So maybe waves of it.

BS: Waves, I think it's waves. I think it dies down for awhile and then somebody says, "Well, we're not doing this."

TK: What about when did it end?

BS: It's not over. It's still going on. To a lesser degree, of course, because we're still not satisfied that we have equal employment opportunities. Those things are difficult to judge. Any problems that we have today are very subtle and there are no outrageous, outright public discriminations and, of course, you can't gauge what individual action is; usually there's a gauge of public action. 77:00Equality of opportunity depends more upon attitudes, I believe; and attitudes, I believe, are being changed as we have integrated education and other activities. I believe people are beginning to know each other and when you know folks you like them better. I think that's really to our advantage and in the long run I think that's what will help us more than anything else. We become appreciative of our neighbors as we get to know them, not as we stand apart from them. But there's still some work to do.

TK: Okay. How would you say over the time that you've been either participating on your own in the legal work or observing it as a judge and as a father, how would you say that the movement has changed over time?

BS: Okay, oh yeah, it changed. The public, I mean, the official, official 78:00attitude has changed because the official attitude was segregation now, segregation forever, you know. But the official attitude has changed completely to a point where you can really expect most mayors and governors and county judges to support advantages for all people. We don't have the opposition in the leadership roles that we used to have. We can expect that most big corporations realize that they can be more productive if their work force is diversified and 79:00that there is a market for their goods among all people so that over the years these acknowledgements have caused a great change to where there is no longer a question of whether it's just right or wrong but a question of why not? In other words, we look to see if there are any disadvantages rather than to see what are the advantages of segregation, but are there any disadvantages to integration? And we're not really finding any. There are certain things that bother us. We 80:00worried about the number of blacks, young blacks who are disenfranchised by virtue of the fact that they've gotten into some sort of trouble and Kentucky is one of the states where you can be permanently disenfranchised for committing a felony so that my latest reading is that about . . . there is a procedure by which your civil rights can be restored but it's not just an automatic thing. And since the black population has had its share of trouble and blacks have perhaps disproportionately been convicted of crime, the disenfranchisement is a 81:00very serious problem. Particularly when we only have a few people who want to vote anyway and then the few who want to vote, if a great number of them are disenfranchised because of having been convicted, we have, I've forgotten what that figure is but there is a figure, at least fifteen percent, of black eligible men cannot vote. That's a big percentage.

TK: Yeah, it is. I didn't know that.

BS: And my understanding is that that's not a very big percentage when compared to some of the other states. That the figure goes up almost to fifty percent in some states. So when we talk about just being unable to vote, this is something 82:00that I think future generations of people are going to have to give their attention to. At least some of these people, I've seen people who have changed; they say, well, you can't be rehabilitated, once a criminal, always. . . . But I've seen too many people who have been, maybe they've just gotten too old and don't want to commit crime any more but for one reason or another they become rehabilitated to an extent and we're still making efforts to rehabilitate people so to an extent that I think we ought to do something about it.

TK: That's interesting because one of my questions is what are our continuing issues?

BS: That's one that's important.

TK: And the jobs that you were saying before is another one.

BS: Right, jobs. And drugs. I don't know where we go with that. I don't know 83:00where we go with that drug problem. Any time a kid can get out here on the street and make $150.00 a day or $200.00 or $300.00 a day . . .

TK: There's an attraction there.

BS: There's an attraction.

TK: So those are issues that . . .

BS: Well, they're issues within the black community . . .

TK: Within the black community.

BS: Which the black community needs to address as well as addressing it from a community-wide viewpoint.

TK: One question I have, and these are again, sort of kind of reflective questions, in the past or over the time period from when you got here, what do you consider to be the most significant moments or breakthroughs in terms of civil rights activities in Louisville? What would you say are the highlights of the civil rights activities in Louisville?

BS: Of course, it would be statewide, but I'd say the victory in the Lyman Johnson case of integrating higher education and as well as the integration of the elementary and secondary schools. I think that's one of the real highlights. Politically, the election of a third of the members of the Board of Aldermen who are black, that's a big thing. They influence city policy.

TK: Have there been blacks on the board of Aldermen since the '30s?

BS: Yes, there have been.

TK: Always, continually at least one?

BS: I don't remember a time that there wasn't one. Ed Clayton's father was the first one. Clayton was the first that I remember. He was here, he was on the 85:00Board when I came. He was a Republican. Edward Clayton, Sr., I believe was his name. And then after that you had, most of them were Republicans, you had Louise Reynolds and you had.

END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B

TK: Somebody had the name wrong and told me it was Russell Lee so it's George . . .

BS: No, no, no. Wait a minute.

TK: Separate people?

BS: Yeah, they are separate people but Russell is the right one. George was his brother.

TK: So it is Russell Lee.

BS: Russell Lee was Russell Lee.

TK: On the Board of Aldermen.

BS: On the Board of Aldermen, right.

TK: So there have always been blacks on the Board of Aldermen.

BS: At least one.

TK: I think someone asked me this the other day and I didn't know the answer; has there ever been a poll tax in Louisville?

BS: Yes, but not in my time.

TK: Okay, it was gone by the time you got here.

BS: By the time I got here the poll tax was gone.

TK: I need to find out when it went out.

BS: Kentucky had a poll tax.

TK: Okay, gone by, so that would be gone by 1946.

BS: Yes, indeed.

TK: What role do you think black political activity played in civil rights 86:00activity here?

BS: Oh I think without blacks actively spearheading the movement things would have probably just sort of languished and perhaps someday something would have occurred but blacks had to have the activists who stirred things up and keep it going. And blacks were prominent in that area; they had their white supporters and without the white supporters they probably couldn't have gotten very far.

TK: What was the extent of white support here in Louisville?

BS: I think primarily I really give great credit to the newspaper.

TK: Really? Why's that?

BS: I think we had a very liberal newspaper which kept things before the people and editorial positions were taken which were favorable to black progress. I think that was extremely important. And also, I think the fact that we had a black press which at that time was well read among blacks not as much now as it was then and black press with very good writers and active NAACP and an active Urban League which really didn't come into the civil rights area as much as NAACP until later.

TK: Any other organizations that you can think of that were important even for a short period of time?

BS: Well, PRIDE, George Burney's PRIDE group; Eubanks Tucker had a group, he 88:00called it the Kentucky . . .

TK: I was going to ask you about it. The Kentucky Bureau for Negro Affairs. What was that all about? What do you know about them?

BS: Well, I think it was more a paper organization more than anything else but it was Eubanks Tucker's way to express himself. [laughter] Now he probably had a few associates but I think it was largely his organization. As I think PRIDE is largely George Burney's organization. I don't think they had a lot of people working with them but I think they used the vehicle.

TK: Because I've seen the name occasionally.

BS: Yeah, that was Eubanks Tucker. Now he may, and I'm speaking of the time that I . . . he was here before I was here so if he had more activity earlier I don't know; but since I've been here that was Eubanks Tucker.

TK: It seems to me it was founded at one point and then nothing for years and 89:00then sort of revived or started showing up in the papers. And it would have been founded before you were here because it seems like it was '41 or '42 but then revived about '53 seems to be where I find a lot of stuff so that would make sense. These aren't in any particular order, just things that come into my head, but the relationship between the Louisville movement and activists and national or regional? What kind of connections did you have between, say, with the national organization or with the national movement?

BS: Well, in each instance when we prepared cases that the NAACP was involved in; we brought in the national, at least if we didn't bring them we consulted with national NAACP headquarters and their lawyers; Thurgood Marshall, of course, was here; and Frank Williams; and Bob Carter who later became a federal 90:00judge up in New York; and Constance Motley who is now, I believe a federal judge in New York if she has not retired; and some of the professors from Howard University Law School so that we had a pretty good network as far as bringing the legal cases were concerned. And we had the advantage of their experience as well as some of their failures, some of their successes and failures and perhaps the reasons for their failures. And it helped us to prepare our matters here. 91:00And on occasion they actually appeared with us, you know, they would come and appear.

TK: In the courtroom.

BS: In the courtroom, hm-hm. So that, you say you have local council, but you also have national support. And that did not cost the local chapter. That was paid for by national support of NAACP so it didn't cost the local chapter. That was really a big help. You get the guy down who's been teaching civil rights at Howard to be one of your lawyers and he doesn't cost you anything, that's . . . [laughter]

TK: How did the judges react to that?

BS: Federal judges didn't seem to look upon outsiders as troublemakers but the state court judge did. Oh, you could tell the state court judges didn't like it. [laughter] You could really tell that.

TK: Bring in the big guns.¡¡

BS: Bringing in the big guns, oh yeah. State court judges did not like it.

TK: Do you think it affected the outcome that you had these other people there?

BS: I think down at the University of Kentucky . . . well, it made it more dramatic but the outcome, it seems to me was, it just seems to me that there was no other outcome that could have occurred. When you go down there and you file Lyman Johnson's lawsuit against University of Kentucky and say, "Lyman Johnson wants graduate education. You don't provide it for blacks in Kentucky." Yet you want to prove under the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution that you're giving equal consideration to all your citizens. Judge 93:00H. Church Ford says, "Well, the burden is on the state to show that they do provide equal opportunity for blacks." There's nothing to be proved really. But you bring in the big wheels you get local support. [laughter] You get local support from blacks; you get local black support when you bring in the big wheels. That's when, if you need some money and you need membership, then you bring in a Thurgood Marshall or a Jim Nayword (???)who at the time was the dean of Howard Law School. You bring them down and they participate. So I guess . . . but how could the result have been any different? I don't think the result could have possibly been any different.

TK: But it makes it popular with the local . . .

BS: Absolutely.

TK: Brings in members and that kind of thing.

BS: Absolutely. We got support.

TK: How did Louisville compare to other cities in terms of civil rights activity?

BS: Louisville was not as difficult as some of the cities that were farther South, of course. We didn't have dogs attacking people and hose pipes hosing people down or any serious trouble that . . . only the marches out there. When Martin Luther King, Jr. came and they marched out in south Louisville on the housing area I understand there was perhaps a rock or two thrown; in fact, he got hit. But things were so much worse in other cities. I think Louisville was more ready to accept the fact that it was inevitable that all people were going 95:00to be equal under the law and relationships, I don't think have been bad here since that time as a result. I think we've got some more to do; I better not say we're in great shape. [laughter] I can't say that.

TK: Well, there's always better. It can always get better, right. One question I have and I meant to ask this earlier and I forgot but it's a question that I'm trying to pinpoint a lot of people on: historians talk about, you know, when you talked about the political groups trying to make things better within segregation, that you knew that you couldn't confront segregation, when does the switch come from improving things within segregation to attacking segregation itself?

BS: I have heard that discussed and I believe the push came from a white 96:00philanthropist really who told the national NAACP leaders that, "You're going about this . . .

TK: The wrong way.

BS: "The wrong way. Hit it head on." Now, let me see if I can remember who that's supposed to have been. I'm sorry.

TK: Well, do you remember when that idea gets to Louisville?

BS: Yeah. It got here really in the '50s, in our '50s cases and we included it in our lawsuits but we just didn't push it. [laughter] We included it but we didn't expect any results from it. But the fact that it could be accomplished 97:00began to be developed on the national scale when they started including historians like the doctor, John Hope Franklin, and to get expert witnesses before the court so that we could develop a case with the witnesses who would, for some reason, build a case which shows that segregation is in and of itself a discriminatory practice. When they started getting these expert witnesses together, and we had expert witnesses ready to testify in our case, in the Lyman Johnson case, but we didn't have to have it because the federal judge said the burden was on Kentucky to prove . . . so it made it much simpler for us. But 98:00when they got these expert witnesses together and a psychologist and educators, historians, who testified and there was no testimony to the contrary that these circumstances produce an inequality, inherently so, then. . . . And all of that was a part of what was, they finally came to the conclusion based upon the I wish I could really know who started that.

TK: Was that not the national . . .

BS: I can't name the individual. I know Roy Wilkins was still there and I know Thurgood Marshall was there but there were whites who said, "You are not doing it right."

TK: That would have probably been in the '30s.

BS: Probably so. Said, "You're just not hitting it hard enough. You're hitting around the edges. You're succeeding because . . .". They won all their cases because all the time it was an obvious discrimination, obvious where the state provided one thing for one group of citizens it didn't provide for others. So it was easy to win those cases. But to go to the heart of it it needed some impetus which it did not have until somebody . . .

TK: Well, I can clarify that in the book on the national level but it's the Louisville stuff that you can't find in the

books.

BS: You can't hardly find anybody who worked any harder around here than Lyman Johnson.

TK: I need to read the book about him again; I've read it once but I'll have to read it again.

BS: In fact, when I was in law school away from here I was reading about Johnson trying to equalize teachers' salaries, you know, salaries weren't equalized; I read about Johnson and something he did down in Columbia, Tennessee or somewhere, wherever he came from.

TK: That's where he was from.

BS: Yeah. And then I was glad to meet him because while I was in law school he came to Ann Arbor during the summer . . .

TK: Took summer classes, is that what he was doing up there?

BS: Yeah. He was doing some graduate work. I don't know whether I was in law school during the summer or whether I was just working but I was there and met him. In fact, I don't think I was taking summer classes that summer, I think I was just trying to get some money. Trying to survive.

TK: So he was very much a leader even by the time you got back.

BS: He certainly was.

TK: So some of the leaders you mentioned, James Crumlin, Alfred Carroll . . .¡¡

BS: They were here too.

TK: All these people were the 1940s leaders, you could say.

BS: Yeah.

TK: Because one thing is I'd like looking at how the generations of leaders changed. One similar question to the leaders changing, it seemed to me you all working on legal work in the '50s, that kind of seems to slow down. So how did tactics change?

BS: Well, I'm trying to wonder what else there was to do legally after that time.

TK: Because after Brown . . .

BS: After Brown everything else, as far as integration of public facilities, that's all done. Then you had to get into the housing, employment, education.

TK: Those seem to be the big ones. Busing would come under education.

BS: Yeah, that would be with . . . so those things were, when you cleared those things up it almost, everything else becomes a matter of private activity. I did 102:00say employment, didn't I?

TK: Yeah.

BS: Because that was a big one.

TK: How did the Human Relations Commission get set up?

BS: The local Human Relations Commission?

TK: Yeah.

BS: It was under the Cowger administration and it started as a result of the Fair Housing Ordinance was passed, I believe, first.

TK: Open Accommodations was first.

BS: Was it first?

TK: Yeah.

BS: Okay. Well, was it about the same time?

TK: Open Accommodations is like '63, Open Housing in '67.

BS: Okay. Well, it was all during that entire time Judge Cowger was the Mayor, 103:00was he not?

TK: Hm-hm.

BS: And the Aldermen Cowger was Mayor . . .

TK: I can look it up.

BS: I'm sorry, I don't remember.

TK: It was a little later and it's once you're probably in the Commonwealth Attorney's office.

BS: I'm eating at the public trough. [laughter] I don't pay attention to these things any more.

TK: So last kind of question is, these earlier years, and I'm talking from when you get here to when you become commonwealth attorney, is there anything else in that period that you think is important I should know about? Because that's really early and there's not very much written about it. Anything about the kinds of strategies used or the kinds of activities going on that I've not asked about?

BS: I told you about the political clubs, we talked about . . .

TK: They seemed real interesting. And you said you didn't know anything about the Democratic club because you were a Republican at the time.

BS: That's right.

TK: But did you join the Democratic Club once you became a Democrat?

BS: I surely did. And, in fact, with my second wife, Barbara, was a member of the, at one time she was one of the legislative district people up there so, and I was president of the Twelfth Ward Democratic Club.

TK: When was that? Must have been before you were commonwealth attorney.

BS: Yeah, it had to be before I . . . it was when I changed politics but it was before I became assistant commonwealth attorney so I wasn't there very long.

TK: So early '50s.

BS: Hm-hm. Died in the wool, lifelong . . . [laughter]

TK: I'm a lifelong Democrat; I was never a Republican! So those seem to be pretty important, those things. Did the African-American community here pay any attention to the Henry Wallace, the 1948 Progressive Party campaign at all?

BS: There were a few, not too much, really. I don't know why but not too much.

TK: Pretty much stuck with the Democrats or the Republicans?

BS: Hm-hm. I'm trying to think if they had a leader here, a local leader. I don't remember anybody leading a campaign for Henry Wallace.

TK: I know the unions were sort of interested but I don't besides that. Well, that was my last question.