Interview with Charles H. Parrish, December 1 and 14, 1976 and February 21, 1977

CHARLES H. PARRISH: Has some very distinguished persons who are members or who have been members of it. Trying getting them to share their experiences, I call it an inward look. The earliest recollection of interracial contacts, and the circumstances under which they were invited to become members of the Southern Regional Council, and why they accepted, and so on and so forth. And then their [?] over the last -- our organization has been around 30 years, [?] organized in 1944 and there were three fairly distinct periods in there and I'm trying to get them from various periods to assess the changes that have taken 1:00place, particularly in race relations. WILLIAM J. MORISON: Well, we appreciate your taking time out to talk with us just now. You know Dwayne Cox, and I'm Bill Morison.

CHP: I don't think I remember meeting him, but--

DWAYNE COX: I don't think I've ever met you.

WJM: Oh, well, meet Dr. Parrish.

DC: Hi.

CHP: Nice to see you.

WJM: Dr. Charles Parrish, professor of sociology. And this is December 1st, 1976. We hope you'll share some of your memories with us about various things and we hope that if we don't have enough time today to maybe get into some things we could try it again--

CHP: Well, as things come up-- if I get on a search for a particular ting, I run into everything else that I'm not looking for. And so if something comes up here, and I will run across some things that I have in my [?] but I'll put them 2:00aside so that I can get them to you. What are you interested in here?

DC: Well, we wanted to record your recollections not only about U of L, but also about the Municipal College and even Simmons University. Maybe something about your background, your family, where your family came from, would be a good place to start. Just at the beginning.

CHP: Well, my, of course you have a lot of material downstairs, over in the other building, wherever you are now, I can't keep track.

WJM: Yeah, we moved across Brook Street now.

CHP: I just have more recently become interested in my background and when Clark 3:00was here, last year, from Lexington --

WJM: Tom Clark?

CHP: Tom Clark. My father was a slave on a farm near Lexington, Kentucky and the man's name was Baron Hicks. And Clark promised to run down this section for me. It wasn't on a farm or a plantation, but it was adjacent to one of the Clay plantations. And he had some memories of being brought into Lexington [noise of microphone moving around obscures interviewee's speech]. My mother [?] Bowling 4:00Green. I know much less about her. I knew her mother and her grandmother. Her grandmother I think was Indian, full-blooded Indian, but my mother was, the pictures I have indicate she might have been Indian. I don't any of my male grandparents, grandparent. But they're both Kentuckians, and my father came here in the seventies, 1874 or 5, somewhere thereabouts.

WJM: When was your father born?

CHP: 1859.

WJM: In Kentucky, in Lexington?

CHP: Yes, on that farm near Lexington, Fayette County.

DC: He came to Louisville in the seventies.

CHP: Yes, he came to Louisville in the seventies. The-- a source which you might use is the Men of Mark. Simmons published this Men of Mark in 1887 here in Louisville. Do you have a copy of it?

WJM: I think you have shown me a copy and Dwayne, I believe we have a copy that came over from Simmons if I'm not mistaken, but I know what you're talking about.

CHP: He himself I think is, a sketch of his life is in there, and also a sketch of my father who was a very young man at that time, 30 -- well, I guess he must have been 28 I guess, 59-- I don't know how much you want to add to that, except that somewhere, my father has written a sketch of his own life, was literally-- early life was on a pamphlet and we had-- I'm trying to remember.

WJM: Do you have a copy, do you have one of those, a copy of that?

CHP: I'm not sure. There's another book called the Golden Jubilee of Kentucky Baptists. And there should be a number of those around. Simmons should have a copy of that, and that had sketches of all the major early churches and also of my father who was the head of General Baptists, in that volume. And that is available, I think.

DC: Your father came to Louisville then around the time that Simmons got started, is that right?

CHP: Yes.

DC: Did that draw him here?

CHP: Yes, that was the reason he came. I think maybe, I'm not sure about my facts here because I have not been, I've only been a little bit interested in history, I've been more interested in sociology and I have been neglectful I think in this respect, but I think that Simmons had a pastorate in Lexington, and they got him to him to be president of Simmons, or of what later became - it was known then as State University -- and he came to Louisville then. And then my father went down because Simmons was there. I think this was one of the reasons he left Lexington to come to Louisville, to go to school here. I'm not 9:00sure about that but-- They had also a little book which -- I have moved around so much that a lot of materials I have have been misplaced or lost, but there's a book on Kentucky Negroes and it must have been published around about the turn of the century. And I think it was published somewhere around Lexington, Kentucky. I don't even remember the exact title of it. I had a copy of that. [?] but your-- Simmons University materials are whatever they have I know --[?]. The 10:00story of the Eckstein Norton Institute I think needs to be gone into. It was in existence -- William J. Simmons and my father, together, organized, set up the Eckstein Norton Institute. And the, it was located 29 miles from here, Louisville, in Bullitt County, and near Springfield, a few miles from Springfield. And it was organized in 1892, and was discontinued in 1912. These 11:00events are joined, the educational history involved is important because in Kentucky, the Berea College in eastern Kentucky had from its origin admitted Negroes, and was supported by philanthropic association, I've forgotten now who, began around about 1867 or something [--?...] And then there was a law called the Day Law, which was, which originated in Berea and the Negroes had to leave 12:00Berea College. And that was about the same time that the Eckstein Norton Institute was discontinued and the sources of funds for Berea College and for Eckstein Norton came together and set up Lincoln Institute, which was near Shelbyville. It's connected to -- Young, Whitney Young was the one who had all the materials with respect to Lincoln. But the source of that was that Eckstein Norton and then the Negro part of Berea College when the law forced the Negroes to leave, Negro students to leave Berea College. This was around 1912 or 13:00something. Then it was not long after that, about that time, that my father was called to the presidency of the then State University. And he it was who got the name changed from State University to Simmons University. During all this period of time he was pastor of the Calvary Baptist Church, which was located at Fifth and York. You know about that, don't you?

DC: Yep. So you were, you were about how old, 12 years old maybe when your father came to Simmons, came to State University?

CHP: I was just about yes, I don't the exact date he took over. I know that Eckstein Norton must have closed about 1912--

WJM: Lincoln lasted until just recently, didn't it? Didn't operate classes until--? Was there any connection between, any kind of connection, genealogical connection between Lincoln and the old State University here in Louisville? Any kind of--

CHP: No.

WJM: No.

CHP: Except that the same sources of funds which set up the Eckstein Norton Institute and contributed to Berea College combined for the setting up of Lincoln. My father was on the first trustee board of Lincoln. But I think that 15:00was the only connection, because the [area?] thing was the State University as it was called, in 1873 [--?...] they had a hundredth anniversary in 1973 and the program on that should be available so you could get the [?], the documented materials that were collected for the purpose of this 100th anniversary, which was in Louisville. You should have programs of that and perhaps the lecturers 16:00and so forth. They had, the principal speaker was William J. Simmons, nephew of the William J. Simmons. He was located in Nashville, he was a minister there, he had a radio and TV ministry there in Nashville. He came and read the, delivered the major address. I think that might be right. The-- my recollections are very, quite vague on this because I guess my interests were somewhere else at the time.

DC: You yourself did or didn't ever go to Simmons University as student? CHP: 17:00No, I never did go to Simmons as a student. I went to the Central High School here, and then to Howard University in Washington. And I suspect that without my being aware of it until very recently, that the reason I went to Howard was because of the fact that Simmons himself graduated from Howard. William J. Simmons was a Howard graduate. I suspect that my father may have, it seemed that the development of my interest in Howard -- I'd always attributed it to something I'd read --my father had a pretty good library, I read Kenneth Miller, 18:00I don't know whether you've heard of him?

WJM: Yes.

CHP: Kenneth Miller had a - Race Adjustment I think was the book he had written. He was very well thought of essayist, particularly in the area of race relations. And I read his Race Adjustment. And I also during the period read DuBois' Souls of Black Folks. Anyway, and I suspect that out of that interest [carried?] over that Howard at that time, so I-- it's interesting because most of the people who were at Central High School were persons who they'd get into Fisk. This was the easy, and many of my friends and classmates went to Fisk. But 19:00there were three of I think who went to Howard. Later - now this is an interesting bit of history, too -- there was a student strike at Fisk, and many of the students from Louisville who were there transferred to Howard. Shows they straightened out the problem of their being expelled from Fisk and then being taken in at Howard. Because that was quite a problem with that. But that was in 1919 I guess. You have no particular point of interest? I'm trying to--

WJM: Oh sure. Let me ask you just one question, it borrows back on that other. You said your father changed the name of State University to Simmons.

CHP: I don't know the date, now.

WJM: Yeah. Can you retrace just a bit of that? Why that name change took place?

CHP: Well, I think it was because of the fact that Simmons was the outstanding person around whom the early graduates of State University-- See the first graduating class, the first college graduated class was one -- there were three, my father was - you saw this, was a valedictory and so forth. My mother finished from State University the next year. Then my father's association with Simmons 21:00and they set him up with Eckstein Norton -- and you know the Norton's around here, that's a pretty important family. You have the Norton Infirmary, and the Nortons set up I think WAVE, that's part of the Norton's family. And out of that relationship, when my father became president of the State University, he was the one who got it changed from State to Simmons, which was [the logical?] I suspect because it was not a state university, but it was only institution in the state at that time which offered, which qualified as a senior college. Simmons qualified as a senior college before Kentucky State College did, cause 22:00it was, the early name of Kentucky State College was KNEA, was Kentucky Negro Normal School, something, or was Normal Institute -- KNNI, I think it was. Then they had the agencies for approving of programs that counted as institutes. I know that there was some rivalry between Simmons and the Kentucky State College. I think Simmons got the, was the first qualified senior college for Negroes in the state of Kentucky. And they got that recommendation before Kentucky State 23:00College did. I remember the rivalry, the stew over that point. Was that the question?

WJM: Yes.

DC: Did you study sociology at Howard? Or did you--

CHP: My major at Howard was in mathematics. I didn't have a course in sociology until I got to Columbia. I happened to know the textbook which they used at Howard, and when they asked me at Columbia what text did they use, I knew it, I told them what the textbook was, but my major was math.

WJM: They didn't ask if you'd taken the course, they just asked you what the textbook was?

CHP: [Laughing] What the textbook was, yeah. Another classmate of mine at Howard, he and I were the first students from Howard to go to Columbia and both got out, finished Howard in 1920 with our master's and Columbia in 1921. [?] were admitted to graduate school and got masters in the one year, in the [next school year?]. Course the people I had at Howard were pretty outstanding. 25:00Wolfson was there. Alain Locke, who wrote the New Negro, was very important in the twenties. And Wesley was there, he was a historian. Although he was teaching English Lit at the time I was there. And of course Ken Miller, who I've already mentioned. There were persons who were outstanding at Howard. I was very, I'll never regret it, going to Howard, but the issues which troubled students at that 26:00time, one of the issues was World War I, and the students at Howard raised money to send delegates to visit all the Negro colleges, where they protested. Out of this protest, there was set up an officer's training school, and Negro officers, Negroes could not be officers, so that was set up at Des Moines, and the Negro officers [who] became officers in World War I were trained at Des Moines, grew 27:00out of this protest which emanated from Howard. A friend of mine, man by the name of Nelson, who was also a Kentuckian and whose mother is in that material that you have from-- Stewart Nelson was one of these officer graduates, and he came back, he was for a while the dean of the theological school at Howard. He graduated from Howard two years, later after the war, because he was involved in the war at the time, he would normally have graduated-- This doesn't hang together very well, I guess.

DC: Just curious, did or didn't [D. Lane] tell us that he was an officer in World War I?

CPH: Yes.

DC: Was. So he I guess went out to Des Moines to--

CHP: No, his background was, he actually was, his background was in Washington. As I recall it, he didn't get into the, he didn't get into the Army, during World War-- [?] I don't know very much about his [?]. He was in World War II. Then when he left the Louisville Municipal College, he went back to the Army, 29:00and had retired as a colonel, I think. I don't know very much about his early-- except he went to school in the east I think. But he was in Washington, he was born I think in Washington, and did his undergraduate work in Washington, he went to-- well he told you where he went to school.

DC: When you finished at Columbia, is that when you came, did you come right back to Louisville?

CPH: Came right back home, yes. The whole time my father was president at Simmons, so I--

DC: Did you teach math or sociology?

CHP: Well, I taught a little bit of everything, because you know at that time, we had for a while, we had the academy -- and many of the institutions had the academy along with the college -- and there students who I was teaching high school math at Simmons, and I was teaching a little bit of everything. I was teaching philosophy-- Relatively little in the way of sociology.

DC: Was Simmons a very large school in those days?

CPH: No, I think the highest number of students -- three or four hundred I think, I'm not sure.

DC: Were they mostly local people, or--

CPH: No, they were statewide. Had some from other states, too. You see it was statewide because Simmons was the Baptist school, so it drew its students from Baptists through local communities. Many of our students when-- the shift was made from Simmons to Louisville Municipal, many of them transferred to Kentucky State College. The last group that

DC: Dr. Morison and I have been doing some research on the history of U of L and 32:00one of the most interesting that we've come across about Simmons and the relationship with, between Simmons and U of L and the Louisville Municipal College -- and maybe you, I guess you were still at Columbia at this time, but I suppose would have heard about it -- was that the university's big million dollar bond issue in 1920, that supposedly, the black people in Louisville voted against it because the university was at that time segregated and really they had nothing to gain by it.

CHP: I suspect that that was true. That's the general explanation of the failure of the first bond issue. I've always been grateful for my father. He took a rather interesting position on that. He took the position that the bond issue 33:00for education was important because whoever got the education, it was in Louisville, and it would be helpful to Negroes anyway. In other words, he didn't oppose the first bond issue.

WJM: Interesting.

CHP: And he felt it was needed and so forth, so he didn't oppose it. But it is generally assumed that it was the negro vote that defeated the first bond issue.

DC: Was there organized opposition to it or was it pretty much a grassroots type of feeling?

CHP: Well at the time there were the Negro papers, newspapers here. The 34:00Louisville Leader, the editor was I. Willis Cole, and I think that he was one of the ones who was-- I remember when he came to Louisville. This is rather shadowy in my mind, but the back files of the Louisville Leader would probably clear some things about that first bond issue. Also there was an election in which 35:00Negroes in Louisville had a slate for mayor and all the offices. Called the Lincoln Party. I asked nobody in my files and interviews, but one of the principals of the Lincoln Party -- I was doing the research a little later, in the 1930s -- I was doing some research on the negro community and my anti-[?] party story of the Lincoln Party. I have this one account, it's a couple of 36:00pages. But I'm trying to think of the, where this would be reported. Somehow the files of the early Negro newspapers have not, I think they may have been destroyed. For a while, they were available. There's a woman in town, Mrs. I. Willis Cole, who was by the way a high school classmate of mine --

DC: This is the editor's wife?

CHP: Yes. She may know where the files of the newspaper are.

WJM: Do you know anything that? The Leader?

DC: I know that they have a pretty much a full run of the Leader at Kentucky 37:00State that's in awfully bad shape. If you look at it, it's gone. And I know that George Wright is--

CHP: Well, she lives on [Long?] Street and she has a telephone, she has--

WJM: We really ought to check into that and see what we can find.

CHP: Yes, see if she knows anything about that, the files of the paper. The editor of the other paper -- and the interesting part about this, there was a considerable rivalry between the Baptists and the Methodists -- I. Willis Cole was a Methodist, and there was a feeling that there should be a newspaper which would be published and would not gear things in a Methodist direction. So some 38:00people backed another paper called the Louisville News. There was the Louisville Leader and then this Negro [?] Louisville News. And the Louisville News was edited by William Warley. William Warley became, I guess his leadership in civil rights was outstanding. He was one of the first protestors. He took pictures of Negroes going up to the so-called pigeon roost in one of the theaters here. [--?...] Patronized the segregated theaters and he was one of the principals in 39:00the housing protests. It was he who broke down the housing segregation in Louisville. You know the ordinance, ordinances --

DC: Cannon versus Warley, the court case. I know what you're talking about.

CHP: That's it. Well, Warley was the editor of this paper, the Louisville News.

DC: It just came to me. I'm sorry I interrupted you.

CHP: That's alright, really, I'd forgotten he was associated with that. See my 40:00father was president of the NAACP at the time that the case went to the Supreme Court and he got the lawyer, a man from Chicago who represented the Louisville [?] in this case, in Warley, became the Warley situation. As you can see from this valedictory, he was very much interested in what we referred to as civil rights. He was very active in this area. He also was a very strong advocate of 41:00education, went to Frankfort to, with the protest group which eventually got the establishment of the Kentucky State College. He was this protest group, too. [Laughs.]

WJM: I was going to say, there in your twenties you were teaching at Simmons University and your father was president of Simmons, and you were teaching many different courses, a number of different courses --

CHP: Yeah, I probably [--?..] I was doing as much as I could in sociology, but you see you had to have students who were prepared for college -- early, in the early period, I was teaching in the, most of the students were below college 42:00level. I guess that the first clear-cut division which I was able to bring about was in athletics. We had, used to have a big game with Central High School, and when I, I think it must have been my second or third year of coaching --

WJM: Coaching?

CHP: Coaching, yes. I used to coach football, basketball --

WJM: For Simmons?

CHP: Yes. And for Louisville Municipal College, too, later. I insisted that only the high school students play against Central High School. It was [?] high 43:00school versus Simmons Academy, we used only high school students in the --

WJM: So Simmons had a preparatory department as part of its educational offerings. And you called it Simmons Academy to distinguish from the, from Simmons University.

CHP: Yes. To distinguish it, yes.

WJM: So here you are, you have your master's from Columbia, and you're a young man, and you're teaching various things and you're coaching football and basketball. You'll then come to, well at Louisville Municipal College -- when was the scholar in you born? When did you kind of, I don't know, it's an unfair question, but I mean, when did you sort of, is there a watershed time you can look back and --

CHP: Well I suspect that I was always interested in research. When I came back, I did considerable local research, but most of this was done after I, after the beginning of the Louisville Municipal College. I've always been interested in research, it happens that a lot of the stuff that I've done--

WJM: Well, I guess the scholar in you was born at Howard if not before, I mean that was the, that would be your --

CHP: Probably, yes.

WJM: Sort of your formative period in your, your growth toward adulthood and scholarship.

CHP: Well I participated in the, there were national surveys. The study of negro youth, which appeared in several volumes. The one had to with, one was devoted 45:00to Louisville and Washington, DC and that was Negro Youth at the Crossways. Frazier was the author of the book, and that was the one in which I was a co-researcher. Negro Youth at the Crossways.

DC: E. Franklin Frazier?

CHP: E. Franklin Frazier, yes. Also there was a study of Negro white collar and skilled workers and I was state director of it. That was Louisville and Lexington.

WJM: Was that during the --

CHP: Not this early period.

WJM: This was later.

CHP: Later. I took leaves of absence at the time I was doing this, from the Louisville Municipal College. Might be interesting to know that one of the men who I brought to Louisville later became very prominent: Oliver C. Cox, wrote Caste, Class and Race. And so he taught here in Louisville Municipal College during one of the times I took off for research.

WJM: When were you married?

CHP: The second time I was married in 1938. I was married before in 1928, 27 -- 28, sometime then.

WJM: While you were teaching at Simmons, then.

CHP: Yes.

DC: Did-- do you recall -- it may have been such an everyday thing that there's nothing about it worth recalling, but -- some of the things that I run across in looking back at the history of the origins of the Municipal College and as you've talked about earlier the 1920 bond issue, was that the university apparently made an agreement with some of the black leaders that they would do something for black higher education in Louisville if they'd vote for the next bond issue. The original fruits of this agreement were that the University of Louisville taught some extension classes.

CHP: Courses, that's right. And one of the men was a historian who retired at the same I did. I can't think of his name.

WJM: Lawrence Howe?

CHP: No.

WJM: Mallalieu?

CHP: Mallalieu! Yeah. He taught at Simmons, one of the extension courses and I think a person in English took on one of the extension courses at Simmons. That was a part of this, came out of this bond issue.

WJM: I think you must surely mean, that word retired in quotation marks, you must put the word retired in quotation marks when you talk about yourself having retired.

CHP: Well, officially. Officially I have retired. You were asking about the 49:00early -- I have tried in the last few years --

WJM: That just means they don't pay you as much as they used to, that's about the only difference isn't it?

CHP: I've been trying the last few years to pinpoint my own interests and to think about scholarly pursuits, but I [?] that in the period before the Municipal College, I got [?] a physician here in Louisville, friend of mine, and we did an analysis of the Negro vitality statistics for Louisville. This must have been about 1928. And I learned a lot from that. This was never published. But they used to have a Negro health week, the two of us, this physician and I 50:00[?] all the death certificates for that year. We made an analysis of the causes of death, and one of the interesting points that came out of that was that this year, we took this study, before the official study came out, nobody would believe that the infant mortality rate was low as we found it to be. And then on the later, our research was not only found that it had a deep decline to the point that it was lower than it ever had been before. But the vital statistics 51:00were in bad shape until, it was much later than that. The city authorities asked if I could get my students to knock on doors and find out, has there been a child born in this house this last year? [Laughs.] I never did do it, because I, you know, I didn't try to get my students to do it because there didn't seem to be any, they were not offering any, it wasn't done for free. And there was a, they missed a lot of births in the Negro population was not counted at that time.

WJM: Again, are you talking about the time you were teaching at Simmons?

CHP: Yes.

WJM: When somebody brought up the idea of having you knock on doors?

CHP: Well, that may have been later, that may have been later, the knocking on doors. They weren't that much interested earlier.

WJM: At your earlier research into the mortality?

CHP: That was 1928 I guess-- and then I, now let's see, 1940-- Yeah, I guess. Anyway, a graduate student might still be around here who first, who worked together and set up the first census tracts for Louisville. Because I sent to Washington to get the original data on--[?] The federal census, divided Louisville into 177 enumeration districts, and I made a deal with the zoning and 53:00planning commissioner that he would provide me with the maps and I let him have the stuff I sent for from the census department. He set up the first census tract division for the SMSA. [I remember the one hundred --] I've got them around here somewhere, the 177 enumeration districts for the, must have been the census of 1930, I guess. I was rather fresh out my Chicago interests then. And we did some studies of juvenile delinquency at some point.

DC: So this was kind of off you having studied sociology with at Chicago, is that?

CHP: Well, I had come out -- of course I had studied sociology at Columbia. I 54:00did a study of a New Jersey town when I was at Columbia. [--?...]

WJM: Was this your thesis?

CHP: My master's at Columbia. And then I guess one of the reasons I went to Chicago was because of the fact that one of my teachers at Columbia, interested me very much, his name was Ogburn, William F. Ogburn, and he went to Chicago, and so when I decided to go back, I found out he had moved to Chicago, so that's why I selected Chicago. But I went back to Columbia in the summer of 1926 and took a few courses. I guess I've always been interested in research.

WJM: Did you -- let's get you to Chicago for a minute -- did you, you say you went back to Columbia in 1926 for some summer work.

CHP: Yeah, took a summer--

WJM: Can you look back and say were you, did you have in mind probably while you were teaching at Simmons eventually to go on back to school? Or was going to Chicago sort of a late development, a late decision?

CHP: Well I guess there are two things to attribute it to, and one was the, the first was when I went to Chicago was the time when the shift from Simmons. And so I was not teaching anywhere for that semester. See the semester of, first semester of 30 -- 31, see the actual transfer was in the what do you call it, 56:00spring semester 1931. I went to Chicago in the fall of 1930. For the whole year I was at Chicago, then I came to Louisville Municipal in the fall of 1931. Then I went to Chicago for a second year in 1943.

WJM: So you were here two years teaching at Municipal, about two years teaching at Municipal, and then back to Chicago --

CHP: Yes. Back to Chicago to complete my coursework --

WJM: Thirty-three -- '34. Fall semester '33, then spring '34.

CHP: I finished all my work for my doctorate except my dissertation and I got that approved. And for some reason I delayed writing. [Laughs.] Writing my dissertation.

WJM: But your coursework you completed in two years.

CHP: Yeah.

WJM: But the years were separated by two years of teaching at Municipal College.

CHP: That's right.

WJM: That's interesting. That's interesting. How did you get to Municipal College then, let's get you there. What were the circumstances I mean, under which you began teaching there?

CHP: Well, the man who became the first dean was Rufus Clement, whom I had known. He had recently got his, he got his degree, just about, just a little bit before he was, came here. Kent! Was president of the University of Louisville was from Northwestern, which was Clement's school, so Kent selected him to be the new dean of the Louisville Municipal College. I guess that my interests, my 58:00scholarly interests were not necessarily tied to the earning of a degree, I just thought of whatever I thought interested me and tried to do something about it. But when you recognize that I never had to look for a job, [--?...] I just came over here automatically. And that's where I was, I never was under any kind of pressure particularly. And then when the transition came, when it was forecast, I thought this was a good time to go on back to the university. And that was the 59:00reason I did that.

DC: I've got two questions that are tied with that. One, they'd been teaching these extension courses that we talked about earlier, the U of L teaching these courses, in a way through Simmons, in the twenties. Do you have any knowledge about why they stopped that and what made them start a separate division for blacks, and just how much of it --

CHP: Well, I think you can find this possibly in the coming of Kent to be the president of the University of Louisville. I don't know what the date of his, whether he was [?] remember offhand?

DC: Twenty-nine.

CHP: What's that?

DC: Twenty-nine.

CHP: Well, you see that was, you've suggested that the first bond issue was considerably before that. And the second, too. Well they'd made this commitment after the, part of the second bond issue, which succeeded. And the period where these persons were here must have been just a kind of a transition period prior to the setting up of the Louisville Municipal College. Kent probably engineered that, setting up a whole separate college instead of the, the commitment in use of the bond issue for the purchase of the grounds of the Simmons University, I guess that's the way it went out. I would guess that there might be some information which never became available to me about the actions of the board of 61:00trustees in approving the setting up of the Louisville Municipal College. I suspect that this would be available [under conditions?]. and also we might run down the actions in the board of trustees which approved of the teaching of - there must have been some comment in the board of trustees the teaching of, on the part of two persons at the Simmons University. This would seem to be something that would come to the attention of the trustees at the University of Louisville. Might be [?] to look over the minutes to find out when this occurred.

DC: Just how much of the -- they bought the Simmons property, but just how much of [?] the goodwill of Simmons University passed on to the Municipal College? 62:00Did you have any feel for that? CHP: Well, there were some students who stayed on. But you see there was a semester break, which meant that many students in the fall of 1930 would have no way to continue their education unless they went somewhere else. And I'm trying to remember what students were in the last class of Simmons and also came to the Louisville Municipal College. Now this might be available, again, 'cause the first Municipal College students, all their records are here at the university. And you probably could get the last Simmons students 63:00from the records that Simmons has and see if there are any overlapping. I did research on the first group of students here because they needed to know that there were 226 Negro students and I had to identify them by where they lived. CHP: -- something for the Journal of Negro Education-- in 1952, that was when I came over here, over to this campus, but what I was talking about a moment ago 64:00was the shift from Simmons to the Louisville Municipal College and I was trying to find out a way, a way by names, of getting the last students who were at Simmons, and the first students who were at Municipal and see if there were any names that would indicate how many went to the Municipal College.

DC: Did people identify any connection at all, did someone who went to Simmons say, well we might as well to go LMC, it's the same thing, or?

CHP: Not to my knowledge. There was a strong attractiveness to the role of Municipal College because of the bond issues, because this was new, because it 65:00was, it was supported in a way in which the Simmons University hadn't been supported. And so, you would get some idea of this in terms of the number attending in the first, Municipal College, in the number attending the college classes of the last year of the Simmons University. I hadn't thought about that in that way yet. I was told, or did I tell you, that the Louisville Municipal College students are planning to have a reunion?

WJM: You mentioned it to me at lunch the other day.

CHP: and I told the persons who were planning it to make contact with you, because I thought you'd be interested in knowing about it and meeting some of the people--

WJM: Yeah, yeah.

CHP: But they plan to have it. Now Simmons has been having regularly a get-together, every year since they--

WJM: Well, the Simmons -- how strong is the religious aspect of Simmons. That is to say, I guess it was, it was a Baptist school, and there was that time when students in addition to the --

CHP: Well, it was-- it was not very strong. We had chapel every day. But, my father was not a denominationalist. He was and then again he wasn't. I know he 67:00once asked me, Son, why are you a Baptist? And I hesitated a minute, "Because you are." Which was the exact truth. He had written a little book called What Baptists Believe and Teach, which I had never read, I knew he'd printed it, but I was a Baptist because he was. But there was always this-- you know the Baptists are sort of conservative about various things, and I know that some of the trustees complained because I went out to the racetrack. But my uncle was from Lexington, he had horses and he was very prominent in the state fair and colored fair in Lexington, so I do know about racehorses those times. And then 68:00another little occasion, indicates my father's-- they used to complain about the, going to the shows, the movies. So what my father did was to chaperone the girls to the movies himself. He took them all to movies.

WJM: And went with them? Went with them?

CHP: Went out with them. And then another occasion --

WJM: By girls do you mean the college girls?

CHP: College girls, yes. You know they were living in the dormitory there, and so forth, and... Another thing, we had a very famous -- a man who later became rather famous -- used to be [absent rather?] than talk for a while, he said, and that was Todd Duncan. If the name doesn't ring a bell, then you don't remember Porgy and Bess. He was the star of Porgy and Bess, in its first Broadway 69:00presentation. But he taught at Simmons, and he -- we were always trying to raise money, so he gave, he prepared and gave two shows. The Marriage of Nannette was the second one, and he had a pretty good quartet. They sang around and so forth. You remember the [?], the year the Simmons Singers? [?] Singers [?] Judge Hughes home, so when we had The Marriage of Nannette it was given down in one of the downtown Negro theaters at Sixth and Walnut. There'd been some grumbling about 70:00it because of the fact that we had a chorus line and the girls were dancing and so forth. This was against Baptist principles, so my father did a real cute thing. He invited, he-- [gave?] tickets to the leading Baptist ministers and they were there at the theater, and nobody knew what was going to happen. And just before the orchestra went into the, just before the store began, he called the theater to order and asked one of the prominent Baptist ministers to give an invocation. And when the last gal kicked up her heels, why asked another one to give the benediction. So, what the Lord starts and ends, there's got to alright in between. [Laughter.] He had ways of getting around, of getting around these criticisms, you know, and it was very interesting because I, I guess my lack of 71:00orthodoxy stems primarily from him.

He did a preaching mission in Germany back in 1904, with a singer and they claimed they had 600 converts in Germany during that period. Also about that time, he, on his way to the Holy Land, he rode upon horseback, he and a Methodist minister, over the Holy Land, and he had an audience with Pope Pious X, and [laughs]. And a picture of Pope Pious X is in our hallway, in a Baptist minister's home. I always think that's a rather interesting thing. But I never felt very strongly orthodox in my religious -- I know it may have been a 72:00disappointment to my father that I didn't become a minister, but he never pressured me about it. I travelled with him to the World's Baptist Alliance in Sweden in 1923. He was a good friend of E.Y. Mullins, who was for a long time president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and the location of the church, Calvary Church, at 5th and York was right across the street from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, so there was a lot of interplay that -- students, seminary students were in our church every Sunday, some of them, some of them were teaching Sunday school and so forth.

The innovations of my father were recognizable in another way, and that is that his Sunday service started with Sunday school at 10:00 and church was out at noon and his sermons were never longer than 15 minutes. He had the whole church, Sunday school and church, he preached on the Sunday school lesson every Sunday, so that the children would come in at 10:00, parents and so on, everybody knew what the sermon was going to be about, in 15 minutes. And of course that, I have never gotten to be a churchgoer, which-- in church that lets out at 1:00 and 2:00 on Sundays -- I was spoiled by my father's early innovations. [Laughs.] He used to do the -- what do you call it -- the "Oriental Lights." He had travelled 74:00in the Holy Land, so he would give comments on the Sunday school lesson in terms of his visit to the Palestine.

WJM: Well let's get you -- excuse me, I didn't want to cut you off--

CHP: Well, I was just rambling.

WJM: No, not at all, we might want to go back to some of this another time. I'm glad you've talked so much about your father, and I think we might really want to go back to that and ask you more questions about your father and your memories of him. Wonder for the moment, let's just sort of think about that, as we talk about things today. I know you might be--

CHP: How much time do I have?

WJM: Well, it's almost 2:30, we might ought to break off real soon. But if we can prevail on you to let us do it again, we can hit some things in more detail 75:00later. We want to get you into the Municipal College of course, and naturally we want to talk to you at length on the final days of LMC, and your coming over to the University of Louisville. We sure don't have time to go into the minor detail today. What's your time schedule look like right now? Do you have a few more minutes or do you need to go now or--?

CHP: I can take a few more minutes, I guess I won't--

WJM: We've really been at this for an hour and a half.

CHP: Won't finish what I -- I've got to do a little more things down in the office. I can stay here until, not later than, oh about 15 minutes more--

DC: In 15 minutes or less, what do you remember, what do you recall, what are your feelings about Kent? Raymond E. Kent.

CHP: My contacts with him were not very close.

WJM: Not very close, is that what you said?

CHP: No, I didn't know him very well, and of course he had died before the 76:00Municipal College was discontinued, you see. I'm trying to recall, the only contact I had with him-- when Clement left the Louisville Municipal College in approximately 1938, I guess. He was there in 1937, in the flood, but I think it was after that -- when did Lane say he came? Lane must have come here in '38.

WJM: Must have. He -- '38 to '42 or '43, something like that.

CHP: Well, Kent I think the --

WJM: Was he, Lane left before Kent died, didn't he?

DC: Yeah, I guess so.

WJM: Kent died in '43?

CHP: Now, when-- there was just something I overhead, the Municipal College was something of a burden, I guess, because there were problems arising, and some problems arose I suspect because Lane was a much more, what I would call militant than Clement. And I suspect that Kent and Lane did not get along quite 78:00as well as-- As I told you Kent was from Evanston, and that was where he knew Clement, and so Clement was a person he knew and brought there. But Lane was another, and coming into this community, Lane, he would make remarks that were not altogether in the Southern segregationist style and so forth. All this, I guess had -- I know on one of those occasions, the few occasions when Kent came out to the campus, and I happened to be in the office, I heard him make a remark about the, about the "white man's burden." [Laughs.] A remark of that sort. I 79:00mean, he was not -- not any public remark, but just something he made. But I don't, as I said, I had very little in way of personal contact with him. I think he was obviously a good president I think, as far as the university is concerned. I don't know what comments would be made by persons who were here on campus with him. But he was, he had a very difficult time, I guess the first time I came out to the campus, why we were told we would have a reduction in salary. And salaries at that time were very low. Any reduction and you wonder 80:00how a reduction would be survived. But of course the dollar was a lot more then than it is now. I don't know, I'll have to think about this, I guess. But [there's] not very much with respect to Kent that I can recall.

I wonder about the attitude of the community, and I think the men, that the persons who come here to, as presidents of the university from the outside, and particularly coming from North to South, may have had a viewpoint with respect 81:00to the community and what is expected in a Southern community. And one of the surprising, I guess, things, but also comforting things, I know about the president who was here when I came to the campus, was that he said some things on television that upset some people, but when I was to come out here, he said on television that the University of Louisville doesn't need a dean of Negro students because we don't have any. We just have students. You know the proposal was that I come out here as Dean of Negro Students or something of that sort. 82:00The trustees were talking in those terms, and one trustee member, I don't know who it was, I know it was [?] said he had received a thousand letters from parents who said they would take their students, children out of school, and didn't want any Negroes to teach out here.

WJM: One of the U of L trustees said he had letters from a thousand parents --

CHP: --Parents, yes. I knew this was --

WJM: saying they were going to take their children out of school if--

CHP: I --

WJM: Who was that? Who made that

CHP: I don't know, but the Courier-Journal has a pretty continuous--

WJM: Was the person identified --

CHP: -- commentary. I don't think the person was identified by name. But the newspapers of that period were full of this, and actually the TV programs there 83:00should be available. When they shifted over from the Municipal College to the University, when the Negro students were taken in. All I was trying to observe, and I was just ruminating about this, that there was a pretty strong segregationist, pretty strong segregationist trend in Louisville. And it was probably that the persons who came from the outside were trying to be extra careful not to upset any apple carts [?] and so they ruled rather cautiously. 84:00But Lane came, he probably didn't move so cautiously, and this might have been a source of friction between him and Kent. -- I was trying to think of something else that happened -- this jumps way ahead, of course, but the time when I came out here, and the Courier-Journal, we played down the event, and hoped that it would not be noticed particularly in the papers and so on. Well, the newspaper reporters were out here, and nobody gave them any interviews, and they didn't 85:00have anything to report about the first days, and so I -- I felt that this was the best way to do it, not to -- as long as students were not thinking about the presence of Negro students, they would just go [?] what normally went on, and go to their classes. And not really bring the matter up. Because things like that I think sometimes if you talk about them, why it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

WJM: Yeah.

CHP: Something I had in mind to say, and it slipped my mind. We're talking about presidents, [?] Kent was succeeded by --

WJM: Brown, for acting.

CHP: Brown, acting. And the -

DC: Jacobsen was in there somewhere

CHP: And the military man,

WJM: Taylor.

CHP: Taylor, and then another interim. No, the interim, we've gone through two or three people --

WJM: Well, I was jumping on ahead to the closing of LMC when I mentioned Brown, but you're talking about the earlier period.

WHP: Yes, I was talking about the earlier ones that came along. Taylor was the one that was here when the -- it started, then he left, then Brown came.

WJM: Then Brown, then Davidson. Dwayne mentioned Kent, you would have had associations with, well, with a number of university presidents throughout your 87:00life here, but starting backwards-- Well let's don't get into, let's don't start at Brown, let's start at Taylor and going backwards, let's see, can you give us five minutes or less of just in general, your --

CHP: I had no contact, I had no contact with any of them. None with Taylor until they began the negotiations and everything, about the transfer.

WJM: We can get into that later.

CHP: But we had no, there was no reason for any particular contact.

WJM: You said Kent went out to the campus on this occasion, maybe on other occasions --

CHP: Well, this was one of the occasions, when we were-- When Lane left, a matter of selecting another dean. And this was the only time when the persons on campus were consulted. And I had known Doyle, whose name was brought up; I 88:00recommended him and so forth, and they were trying to make a decision, and I think it must have been in conjunction with the appointment of Doyle that this remark that I overheard -- I don't think he was talking to me particularly -- heard this remark made by Kent. And then --

DC: Did he meant that Lane was the burden, or did he mean that the LMC was the burden, or?

CHP: I think perhaps it was the LMC, I don't know. You see in a situation like that, there are so many things to be, can't try to satisfy, what kind of a person do you want, you see, and I think that possibly Lane was a little bit too militant. And Doyle was much less, but I had recommended him because I had known 89:00him before. He was a Chicago sociologist, too.

WJM: Well you're, well I guess we ought to get into LMC in general later on, but where you're-- Well let me -- I had a couple of questions, let just wrap -- you said you couched football and basketball at Simmons, and then also at LMC?

CHP: Yeah.

WJM: Alright, when you were coaching football and basketball at Simmons, was it the preparatory students, or the college?

CHP: No, the college.

WJM: It was the college.

CHP: That preparatory student thing was just this-- thing I inherited was this game between Central High School and Simmons [?] converted it into a game between Central High School and the preparatory segment of Simmons.

WJM: What was your won-lost record?

CHP: [Laughs.] Well, I tell you, this much -- during the days when I was a stu - some of the days when I was at Simmons, I know at one time I had 17 men on a squad. You couldn't have a scrimmage. We didn't have enough to have a scrimmage. And we had some fantastic scores, in 60s to nothing, and so on. But we won a game.

WJM: You mean you got beat by 60 --

CHP: Oh, yes.

WJM: You were getting beat by these fantastic scores.

CHP: We beat one of our outstanding rivals who had I guess, about -- the size of squad about three or four times ours -- West Virginia was very... We beat them 91:00seven to three, I think, seven to three or something like that. There were high points like that and then [laughs].

WJM: Did you beat Central?

CHP: We didn't play them. That was just a game that we played that time. During Clements, when Clements first came to the Municipal College, we organized a university athletics association, which included Wilberforce, West Virginia, and Tennessee State, and later a college at Little Rock, Arkansas, and later Lincoln; Midwestern Athletics Association. That's when the athletics situation 92:00was very strictly segregated. I know we had -- I played basketball, altogether, I guess for, including high school, for 19 seasons. We had a [?] travelled a little. We once played the all-stars, white all-stars, at the armory. They won, but the point of it was, that they were, the white fellows who participated were barred from playing anybody, playing anymore, so they played against us.

DC: Do you, can you put an approximate date on that?

CHP: Well, that's a little bit hard. It must have been in the very late 20s, I guess. Latter days of the Simmons--

WJM: Well, maybe we can ask you some more questions about your grid iron/hard court roles as well as in general about the Louisville Municipal college next time when we get together again. Thank you very much.

CHP: Okay.

PARRISH: The integration of the schools was--The Supreme Court decision came, there were a lot of persons who wanted to write up what was happening. And a friend of mine who was a journalist gave me the key to what they do. People from the [?] already had a notion of what happened, and they talked to, they talked to people, but they selected the persons whose views concurred with they already 94:00had, or the story they had. And those were the only ones they quoted. They didn't quote any contrary opinions. And then the other thing they did, they came down, for instance, they came down to Birmingham when Autherine Lucy, attempted to actually register at the University of Alabama. And they got that story from the persons in Birmingham who had a column, you know, the news reporters on the Birmingham papers. They never did talk to the principals that were involved, but they talked primarily to the reporters. How are you doing today?

COX: Fine, how are you?

MORISON: Thank you for resuming our discussion of a couple of weeks ago--

CHP: Well, I'm a little bit abashed because I have not tried to run down leads 96:0095:00and get some documentation of some ideas that might have been useful.

WJM: Maybe that will just be a good excuse to have a third session later on, then. This is December the 14th, 1976. The same people who were here two weeks ago -- Dr. Parrish and Dwayne Cox, Bill Morison. Dwayne, about where did we stop?

DC: Well, I think--

CHP: Getting up close to LMC.

DC: I think we covered the origins, maybe, of LMC in the extension courses that were offered through U of L and Simmons, and a couple of things-- I listened to the tapes we recorded last time, before coming back, and a couple of things that, three things in fact, that I wanted to be sure that we picked up on: one 98:0097:00maybe something that we could do later, would be just to have you recollect a little bit about your father, because you told us a lot of interesting things about him last time, and I'm sure that you have more things to say, and also maybe about some of the, recollect about some of the presidents and other top administrative people that you've been associated with, like Dr. Davidson. And one thing definitely of course, the closing of the Municipal College, and the integration of U of L, which maybe would be a good point to pick up here, if--

CHP: I've got one very good lead for you about the closing, and that is Dr. G.D. Wilson, who is in the city, and I told him that the Archives are interested in 99:00this. And he and I were two of the five persons who administered the college during the last year.

WJM: Was he the biologist?

CHP: No --

WJM: The chemist?

CHP: Education, education.

WJM: Was there another Dr. Wilson?

CHP: Yes, in Chemistry. He is around town, too. What I'm trying to say is, that I think it would be helpful for you to talk to him. I know he'd be glad to talk to you, and he was directly involved in the transition period. And he's in the telephone book, George D. Wilson. Lives on Grand, I think. And I guess Henry Wilson, also, the other, the chemist, is available, too.

WJM: Henry Wilson.

CHP: There are two Wilsons and they were part of the committee that administered the college during the last year. You see, the decision to merge was delayed for a year. The Municipal College operated for a full year after the decision was made. In other words, the decision was made in March 1950, but LMC continued through the end of the second semester, 1951. So that it was not until September 1951 that the transition took place. Graduate schools over the summer I think, summer school may have --[?] but the regular scheduled classes opening in the 101:00fall of 1951--

WJM: So there was a period of more than a year--

CHP: Yeah, and instead of a dean, we had an administrative committee, of which I was chairman and G.D. Wilson, Henry Wilson, and the manager was in the -- I keep on forgetting his name who was in the office and handled the financial affairs--[?]

WJM: The two Wilsons and yourself-- and the financial manager?

CHP: Yeah, I think that was, there may have been four of us, I thought there were five, I'm trying to remember now. I'm pretty sure, there maybe -- [?]

DC: That's how I came to think that Dr. -- I at one time thought that you had 102:00been the last dean of LMC.

CHP: No. I officiated.

WJM: Were you the chairman of this committee, or was there a--

CHP: Yes, I acted as chairman, and when commencement came, I gave out the diplomas, and so forth.

WJM: Oh, in the spring of '51?

CHP: Yes.

WJM: In the spring of '51. So you took the place of the, you filled the role of the dean then.

CHP: Well --

WJM: When commencement--

CHP: The actual title was "chairman of the administrative committee."--[?]

WJM: And that was a period of about a year, or maybe counting up to the fall of '51, more than a year. Are we talking about--?

CHP: No, we're talking about through the commencement, 1951, which would be latter part of May or June 1951.

WJM: And then that committee, did that committee cease to function about that 103:00time, then?

CHP: Yes, it just went through that school year.

WJM: Didn't function in the summer --

CHP: No.

WJM: -- of '51 going up right to the time of --

CHP: No.

WJM: I see. Let me ask a question. When did it seem to you that the Louisville Municipal College's days were numbered? When did it occur to you that the school was not going to last indefinitely?

CHP: I think I in common with many others operated without thinking too much of the discontinuance. This was triggered, you know, by the court decision where there had been some pressure put on the University of Kentucky. Lyman Johnson of 104:00this city, one of the principals, who was making application to the University of Kentucky. So in 1949, the case was heard in Lexington, and the decision was taken to admit him to the University of Kentucky. In the legislative session after that action was taken, the governor was Clements. Jesse Lawrence of this city was a member of the state legislature. Clements approached him and said 105:00that he was very much disturbed by the fact that by legislative decision, I mean by judicial decision, the University of Kentucky had to admit Negroes, but the state law was every day being violated by the attendance of Negroes at the University of Kentucky. That's the Day Law, the famous Day Law. And he felt that some revision of the Day Law was necessary. Jesse Lawrence, as soon as he had this conversation with Clements, came by my house in the afternoon, and I suggested -- Lawrence was a Republican and Clements of course was a Democrat -- so I suggested to Lawrence that he get persons in the city who were prominent 106:00Democrats, and that they get together and make a suggestion to the governor about this revision, the way this revision should take place. So, the upshot of it was that, R.B. Atwood, president of State College, Kentucky State College; Frank Stanley, who was editor of the newspaper here: Dr. J.A.C. Lattimore, who was a prominent Democrat; and A.E. Meyzeek, who was also here, they were on the committee that Lawrence got together, and they went and had this conference with the governor, about what should be suggested on revision. And, the interesting part of that is, R.B. Atwood, who was at that time president of State College, 107:00wanted the -- the action taken was that the board of trustees of any institution of higher learning could decide to admit Negroes. Atwood got into that by having a provision that, "to any course which was not offered at the Kentucky State College." Well -- any institution, which is, so it wouldn't conflict with Kentucky State College. But it turned out that in the spring, early spring of 1950, early April 1950, all the Catholic colleges in the state, said that since 108:00their institutions were religious-oriented, there was no conflict between what their institutions offered, and the Kentucky State College. So they came out with a blanket admission policy to Negroes in early April, 1950. And then a couple of weeks later, maybe longer than that, a decision was taken by the U of L board of trustees. The problem I think was primarily a financial one. University of Louisville was in pretty serious financial straits at the time, and with, operating a full arts and science colleges with less than three 109:00hundred students was -- didn't make any sense! Actually. And so, they took the lead of the Catholic colleges [?]. Now that occurred at a time when the University of Louisville did not have a president; an acting president, Brown, was the acting president. And so the coincidence of the coming to the University of Davidson was with the admission of Negroes in 1951. He took charge in 1951, and that was the same year the Municipal College students were admitted.

DC: We've interviewed a couple of other people about this same episode, and one 110:00of them you mentioned, Lyman Johnson, said that -- I don't want to misquote him, but I think what he was saying was that he at least in his mind, had been considering for some time the possibility of bringing a test case against the University of Louisville but finally decided on UK because it was a state school. Maybe this is just a repeat of what Dr. Morison has already asked, but do you recall anything about that through the '40s?

CHP: Well, there were a number of things going. There were cases against the board of recreation on swimming and golf and so forth, you know the local-- But 111:00he's probably right, he probably was considering, and he made the decision to bring it against the state. I think it was a wise decision, because the excuse always could be given, by the University of Louisville, that we have no recourse, because of the fact of the state, because of the state law.

DC: How strong was that, as far as convincing U of L to integrate, how strong was the argument, the precedent from Johnson vs. UK?

CHP: It seems to me that there wasn't. It probably was not... How did I state it before?

DC: Financial?

CHP: My point was that the University of Louisville was in financial straits, 112:00and the Day Law had been operating, but they had made no effort to challenge the Day Law themselves. But once the Day Law was challenged, and once the Catholic institutions took the lead, then it put them in a pretty, almost an impossible position, because you had a college, a Catholic college here, Nazareth -- Spalding wasn't in existence then, it didn't have that name -- Nazareth College -- and they admitted Negroes, and it made it pretty difficult for the University of Louisville to-- they didn't-- there was obviously some discussion, but the decision by the Catholic institutions and the decision by the University of 113:00Louisville was only a few weeks apart. Both in April, I think. DC: We have -- interesting what different conflicting accounts you pick up when you interview people, but -- and they may not be conflicting at all, if we got the two men together -- but when we talked to Mr. Johnson, he, if I recall, said that, well he felt that the U of L was trying to stall him. That it was trying to stall the integration, and that he had to bring quite a bit of pressure and had to threaten a lawsuit, which they did, they were preparing for a, to bring a suit against U of L, and he maintains that this pressure that he was able to bring, partially through the argument that U of L was in part funded by the city, was a 114:00big factor. And then we went down and talked to Wilson Wyatt, who was on the board of trustees at the time, who said that actually, that the University, for financial or whatever reasons, wanted to integrate, but that they thought that community reaction would be so strong against it that they were hesitant. But that the thing that finally pushed them toward the decision to integrate was, they called a meeting of all the deans, and simply went around the table and said, "Is your school ready for integration?" and all the deans answered, "Yes." And that this was the, this was the final push.

CHP: Well, this may have been. Well, what I'm saying, I don't sense any conflict 115:00there, but the suit was not brought -- you know against the University of Louisville, and it would have been, it would have been very difficult to establish that. There was a lot of pressure I guess on the University of Louisville. I think essentially the pressure was the immediate action of the Catholic institutions. You know, it just didn't make any sense to have Negroes attending the Catholic colleges and not the University of Louisville. And then, what made this more readily possible was that when it appeared, when we were trying to get a new president, you know and he had just been decided upon, and 116:00so-- I think that those were the factors. I don't think any particular-- And the interesting thing is, I've never talked to Lyman Johnson about this, interestingly enough. There's a document which I think maybe you might be, it appears in the Journal of Negro Education, Summer 1952, in which there was a discussion of the next steps in the national battle, leading up to the Supreme Court decision. And in this [--?...] there was a paper by Atwood, the president 117:00of Kentucky State College, in which he reviewed the action by the University of Louisville. And I have never quite been able to understand the position which he took about this. But he felt it was injurious to his. In other words, he was actually in favor of keeping segregation because he feared that it would jeopardize the role of the Kentucky State College. Contrarily, as soon as this was done, state employees in Frankfort, where Kentucky State College is, began to flood the Kentucky State College, because they wanted to get, enhance their 118:00positions, and to get, take extra courses and so forth, so they immediately, almost immediately began to get almost half of their students from the Frankfort area. And it had just the opposite effect that he feared. But in this paper, and I will let you have a copy of this article, in this paper he did -- this is after the event, of course, this is 1952 -- he said that in the first year of the University of Louisville admission of Negro students, that the Negroes going 119:00to college declined by 70%. And he therefore --

WJM: In the state, did he mean the state?

CHP: He's talking about the, he was, he said he'd called the principal of Central High School --

WJM: Oh.

CHP: -- which was the only school to which Negroes were, could go for high school in this area. And the principal told him that the decline -- this was in April -- told him that the decline over the previous year, in high school [students] planning to go to college, was 70%. Well, I was on the same program in Washington, that this meeting was held, at which this paper was read, and I knew this was an error. But I had no proof of it. And I came back and asked the 120:00principal, Atwood Wilson at the time, and he said that, Rufus Atwood called him on the telephone and asked him about this. And he said that as he looked at the intentions of his seniors, at the time it seemed that there would be a decline of 17%. Later, when decisions were firmed up, it turned out that the youngsters going to college from Central High School, [?] an increase of 8%. So there was a -- the case which was begin built up against desegregation fell, I think of its 121:00own weight. But he never did, he never, he refused to change it, he refused to change--

WJM: To correct it.

CHP: So he puts the blame on the principal of the high school here.

WJM: So the error was published, it was published as 70% in the Journal of Negro Education?

CHP: Yes. It was published as 70%. And, the man who was working on his doctorate, he was teaching at Murray State and working on doctorate somewhere, used this in his dissertation. And I-- [--] and I mention how things of that sort get into the literature. And I guess that years from now, you'll pick up that journal, and see well, one of the bad results of desegregation is that you have a decline of high school graduates going to college.

DC: Could there have been a -- let me put it another way. Following up maybe on what Atwood's argument was, were there to your knowledge any students at Central High School, or students at LMC, who actually didn't want to see the integration, who didn't want to go to school with the white people, who would just as soon kept--

CHP: The students I talked to didn't. They never did have any-- Now I know that a number of students who were going to Municipal College changed and went to Kentucky State College. A number went to Nazareth. I have a, I did a report for President Davidson on the first year of the students, and gave him the feeling that I had on where the students went and so forth in the first year. I don't 123:00know if I ever copied that or not, but I did that. But-- I never -- 226, my count was 226 Negroes in the first year here at the University of Louisville. About 100 in Nazareth, and then I don't know how many what [?] proportion went to Kentucky State. Now, a person who would be very familiar with this would be [J. DeVos?], because he has all these numbers, and he also later became chairman of the Department of Education at Kentucky State. So he has a pretty good notion 124:00about this aspect of it. But this is documented in materials so that you won't have--[?] Except there was no retraction on the basis of-- and then of course there are tapes, there are TV tapes, and I'm sure that WHAS would let you see them. There were some programs after, well, there were some programs after the Supreme Court decision, there were no programs at the time of the shift or change, except that there was an interview with President Davidson that was taped. When he came in, and he was asked about the Municipal College discontinuance, and so forth. And the prevailing idea was that I would come in 125:00as the Dean of Negro Students. And he -- I didn't hear the particular tape, I'm not sure [...?...] or not, but he I think said that we don't have any Negro students at the University of Louisville. He said--

WJM: Just students.

CHP: Just students.

WJM: Was that a radio, a radio or a television..?

CHP: I think it was-- Radio? I think it may have been radio. You could find out. I think that must have been some--

DC: That's, I think--

WJM: Davidson mentioned it.

DC: He mentioned that, and didn't he get himself into a little bit of trouble 126:00about that, with that interview? He --

WJM: Yeah, he seemed to think he did.

DC: Yeah.

CHP: Well, a trustee -- a member the board of trustees, whose name I have never seen mentioned, there was a letter to editor in which it was said that a member of the board of trustees said that he had received a thousand letters from parents who were going to remove their children from the University of Louisville in case, I think it may have been in case I came there, in case, [--?...]. Also, Farnsley was around at that time, too, I don't know whether you've talked to him about it or not.

DC: No, we've not talked to him about that, was he active in the--?

CHP: No, he was the mayor of the city and he was out here on registration day, 127:00he had a long talk [--?...]. I was talking about Triangle Park over here, and why it wasn't desegregated. And actually the --

CHP: Fifty-- I'm trying to figure out when he was, he became mayor. I know he was around about the Supreme Court decision, and when the decision was made to desegregate the Louisville public schools, as of 1956, he made an announcement to all public employees that he had ordered that the parks and recreational centers to be completely open. No public announcement was made of this, but he said if Negroes come, why, they would be serviced in these facilities. He said it doesn't make any sense to have the schools open in the fall, and parks and recreations closed, denied to Negroes. So this was quiet. But he also announced in his inaugural that all city offices, without discrimination, would be open to Negroes. So I think he, his role is sometimes overlooked in the general idea about desegregation in Louisville-- So you might, this is not, it's only in the sense connected because of the fact that the whole issue of desegregation and the succeeding things that happened, Omer Carmichael, was, became a national figure [?] Sometimes the role of Broaddus has been overlooked, and that's-- Swimming pools were segregated. My wife was in the recreational division, at that time and she desegregated the swimming pools, and she had Negroes in charge of swimming pools, and parks, and white pools, and so forth. It was quite an exciting time. That was later, that was 1955-56. But we got off the subject there a little bit, I suspect.

WJM: This administrative committee, of which you were chairman, served during the last year, last academic year, of LMC, up through the commencement in the spring, April or May, whatever it was --

CHP: 1951.

WJM: -- of '51. Then the committee ceased to function through the summer --

CHP: It didn't function through the summer.

WJM: -- because there was no more LMC?

CHP: I have, somewhere I have my letter to the president, it's a kind of a [?]. If I find it, I'll turn it over to you.

WJM: Okay, thank you. When did the can of worms open up about the fate of the professors at LMC? CHP: Oh, that period was during that last year. You see, when the decision was made in April, by the University board of trustees -- this was April 1950 -- Doyle resigned as dean, and of course [he was no longer an obstacle?] and in the fall we had communications from Taylor about this. And there then were, you have the minutes, I think of the AAUP on campus, because the issue was raised, "What happens to the faculty of the Municipal College, particularly to those who had tenure?" And so I -- as I say, I do not remember the dates, but there are dates with the announcement of certain offers made to the University faculty, there are dates for the discussions of this in the University AAUP and the proposals made by the AAUP, and the matters of severance pay for the LMC faculty, and then they also, [?] of the hearing. You should have a copy of the hearing before the board of trustees on this matter. I got the -- a friend of mine in Washington who was at that time the president of Howard University was James Nabritt. He was an attorney. He was an NAACP attorney before he became president of the university, Howard University. So I wrote him, and he got a -- he developed a brief, which we used in our hearing before the trustees. We turned the brief over to our lawyers, who presented it to the board as action for, was anticipatory discrimination. Then -- did you ever talk to Wilson Wyatt about the hearing before the board of trustees?

DC: That was where Mr. McAlpin --

CHP: Yes.

DC: -- argued your case. What you're saying is that McAlpin didn't actually, it wasn't his argument alone, with this, that Nabritt had--

CHP: I secured from Nabritt the-- you know the AAUP has national offices in Washington, and so Nabritt went to Washington, got the AAUP position on this, and then we came back and got the lawyer, got McAlpin and Anderson, Anderson and McAlpin, and turned this over to them. It was an interesting arrangement with Mr. Wyatt, because everyday, right after board of trustees meeting, I would have a conversation with Wyatt, to find out what went on. And he was a little bit put out because we chose to hire an outside attorney, said you already have an attorney on the board of trustees. [Two of them?] But by that time we had already hired an attorney. He was a little bit miffed about getting an outside attorney, but one of the things -- I don't know whether this is, should go into -- but he was talking about the lack of knowledge on the part of the board of trustees at what is meant by tenure. You have business people who don't understand this at all.

WJM: Sure.

CHP: He would report how the board of trustees didn't understand what it was all about. They couldn't understand why they couldn't do just like business operation, hire and fire, without any particular grievance procedures or anything.

DC: Was Mr. Wyatt a -- did he advocate the position of the LMC professors who wanted to be transitioned? Or did you know exactly how the board broke down on this?

CHP: The meeting after the board meeting, the meeting was between our attorney, McAlpin, and the University attorney. I don't know of any vote. I don't know of the nature of the vote, or anything, sorry to say because all that was reported to us was that the attorney for the University and the attorney -- McAlpin -- talked over this compromise [?] to put to [?]. In which they would take one person, and give options to the others. And our attorney said, well someone had to take this job, whatever it was, so that everybody else would be free to take whatever [?] they chose. And that's [?]

WJM: Were you -- talk a bit more about the, what led up to your being selected as the one faculty member from LMC who came to the faculty here.

CHP: Well, I don't know that there was any--

WJM: Were you elected or?

CHP: We had a meeting of the LMC faculty, at which meeting McAlpin announced the judgment of the University of Louisville, his conversation with the attorney. He said one post will be allotted to University of Louisville faculty person, chosen by the faculty. There was some reluctance to accept this, and then McAlpin pointed out, he said, what will happen, if everybody turns this down, they'll go from one to the other to the other, everybody turns it down, then if it comes to the court and they'll say, "Were you offered a job?" you have to say, "Yes." You turned it down, so you lose. So he suggested, he suggested, "Suppose you do this by lot."

WJM: By lot?

CHP: By lot. So he, what he did was to distribute papers to each of us, and asked us to write the name of the person who should accept this job. And I was selected. And I think I wrote G.D. Wilson's name on my paper, and I think I got [?]. And then --

WJM: Now there was still hope that, I suppose there was still hope among you that the board would change its mind, or that legal action would result in still more LMC professors?

CHP: Well, no, I think the idea was that, that McAlpin gave us, was that this was the final offer. But he said this would leave any one of you free to sue.

WJM: Oh. So there wasn't much hope that the board would change its mind, but there was the legal avenue --

CHP: You had the legal option to the persons who did not have -- on that basis, G.D. Wilson and Henry Wilson threatened legal action. And they were -- a settlement was made out of court. I think they were given a flat one year's salary. Something of that sort.

WJM: There was that, those earlier offers were for two months' severance pay, was that it?

CHP: Yes. Something like that.

WJM: Two months' severance pay, and then it came down to accepting one LMC professor, which, who was you --

CHP: The rest --

WJM: -- and the two Wilsons received, did you say one year's --

CHP: Well, what you'll find out from G.D. Wilson, the conversations on that basis, but at the time, there were two possibilities: you'd get two months' severance pay and then also for moving toward a degree in a year of --

WJM: Fellowship?

CHP: Yes.

WJM: Was that Ford Foundation?

CHP: Yes.

DC: Eventually they were.

WJM: Was that, didn't Davidson have a hand in that?

DC: I think so.

CHP: Yes, I'm sure he did.

DC: Was this final, just to say it again: what was Dr. Davidson's role in this final settlement? Did his coming help matters along as far as reaching a settlement?

CHP: Well, I never got an account of his-- With relation to the threatened suit or the settlement. That summer, when this was done, I was teaching summer school at Lincoln, in Missouri, and I got the news about this, and I came home for a couple of days to get the straight of it. I found I was to start teaching in September and I didn't get the information about the settlement, except just from the Wilsons. And some of them had accepted the year's graduate work and so forth. [?] I don't know details of the arrangements with the individuals. WJM: Well now, were these discussions that you were having, well, with the attorney McAlpin and among yourselves, were these fairly tense times?

CHP: No--

WJM: Here I'm trying to -- I want you to describe just the atmosphere of these discussions. Was there bitterness, recrimination? Or was there resignation?

CHP: You've got copies of letters, haven't you?

WJM: Yes, some, yes. What we probably need to do is get those out and --

CHP: Each one, each one --

WJM: Find out which ones we have and don't have.

CHP: Each one of the persons involved wrote --

WJM: Yes.

CHP: -- refusing, or indicating that the arrangement suggested by the University was not satisfactory. Then the other tense period was the -- might be called tense -- was the hearing by counsel. At that hearing by counsel, there were only two of the faculty persons present: G.D. Wilson and I. We were there, along with the two attorneys, McAlpin and Anderson. Anderson had nothing to say -- nobody had anything to say except McAlpin, and the trustees, who questioned him about this. And then there was of course this meeting in which the--I was selected. I was notified of the acceptance of my appointment when I was in Lincoln.

WJM: Summer school?

CHP: Yes. Teaching [?]. All of it was, I guess, was tense, we didn't know what was coming up the next year. We had discussion [?] interchange of letters and so forth. [?] I don't know of any particular thing that--

WJM: What about Eli Brown? He was acting president, of course, through much of this transition period, before Philip Davidson arrived on the scene -- what role did you see him playing?

CHP: Well, you see, in most of these discussions, Taylor was the president. Eli Brown was around when we had the hearing by counsel, he was [?]. But the earlier negotiations were with, and the proposals, were Taylor. [?] I don't know when the actual shift from Taylor to Eli Brown-- See while they were making decisions in April 1951 about Davidson's coming --

WJM: Dwayne has a chronology here of November of 1950, Taylor resigned, and the board appointed Eli Brown as acting president. So that's November of '50.

CHP: Yes.

WJM: And as you say, discussion had already commenced by that time.

CHP: Yes.

WJM: So we are talking about three presidents, counting Brown, the acting. Is there any sense in which any one of them or two of them or all of them played significant roles in the negotiations or final agreement? Or how did you see it?

CHP: Well, Taylor was the one who announced the year's, he announced the year, the offer of a year's fellowship for graduate study. I think he made that announcement. Now, I don't know who got the Ford Foundation into it, that may have been later, but I think the decision, most of these decisions, were made before Davidson came on. When did he take over? He was selected in April, wasn't it? Or May? There was an announcement when he was selected.

WJM: In April of '51. That's when he was, that was when he was named, or selected.

CHP: Named, yes! And there must have been some time, some date, when he was to take over.

DC: I think he took over the next academic year, because he came to the commencement that year, and that's when he says that, Keller whispered behind his back when he was recognized, and--

WJM: Must have come in August or September of that year.

CHP: Who did?

DC: Oh, President Davidson says that Charles Farnsley and Billy Keller didn't think that he was the right man for the job, and that whole incident, he came up for the commencement, I think in '51, and he says that Mayor Farnsley and Dr. Keller let it be known at the commencement that they didn't think that Phillip Davidson was the right man to be president of U of L.

CHP: Isn't that interesting, that's the first time I've heard about that. Our conversations --

WJM: I think it's fair to point out, too, that Mayor Farnsley doesn't --

DC: Yeah, he doesn't remember --

WJM: He doesn't remember that incident, that Phillip Davidson recounts, so--

CHP: Well, as I told you, I heard about the -- I got the blow-by-blow account of the trustees meeting the next day when I talked to Wyatt. And he said, he was saying that Davidson is, he was convinced that Davidson was a good man, and so on and so forth, and the decision had been made. But I have never really talked to Farnsley about this. At that time I wasn't on that kind of conversational [?] with Keller. We got to know each other pretty well after that, but at that time my closest [?] with Farnsley and with Wyatt. [?] about recreation [?] and so forth, but not about the University.

WJM: Well, did you see Wyatt and Farnsley as supporters?

CHP: I didn't think of Farnsley one way or the other. He, I don't think he was on the board of trustees by then.

DC: No, because he was mayor.

CHP: He was mayor, you see.

DC: He resigned after he became mayor.

CHP: And I just thought, I was told that Davidson was going to be selected and so forth.

DC: President Davidson, when we interviewed him, talked about, maybe about the good old days when he was president at U of L, and how whenever he wanted to do something, that there were a handful of people, maybe no more than you could get in this room, that he would go to see, and whose approval he would seek for this or that, and he also mentioned that there were just a few people, couple people, in the black community who he would always touch base with for whatever project he thought he needed their advice on. And speculated that when he first came to U of L, maybe about the time that the integration, the dissolution of LMC, that the black community in Louisville was a lot more unified than it is today. Do you agree with that? Do you see that unity that he saw as an element in the successful integration?

CHP: Well, I've-- Why, I'm trying to sift through my memory and see evidences of either unity or disunity. I think that -- when President Davidson is talking about "now" what "now" is he referring to? What I'm trying to say is, he left -- eight, nine?

COX/WJM: Sixty-eight, sixty-eight.

CHP: Sixty-eight. Eight years ago, you see. So, it's difficult to, he's talking about now, you had new leaders in the community, I suspect.

WJM: He was surely talking about the "now" of eight years ago.

DC: Yeah, sure.

CHP: I'm trying to get the evidences of unity or disunity in those two times. But you see, all over the country there's been a transition with respect to the whole issue of black power, for instance black power dates to 1966. And the drive for black studies and so forth, 1967-68-69-70, and so on. So you did have kind of a division in the black communities all over. Negroes were referred to as Uncle Toms. And even the matter of the [?] of 1969, there was a Courier-Journal poll that was taken, did you see that? On Negro attitudes [?]. And one of the observations which came out of that poll was to the effect that the white community was of the opinion, for example, that most Negroes preferred to be referred to as "black." But that among Negroes only 8% felt, preferred "black" to "Negro." And the observation had been made that the effect of the newspaper's policy in using "black" wherever Negroes were referred to were looked at by the white community as reflecting the Negro opinion, and the poll showed that this was not true. So that what you might actually get, you see, is a sense of division which was more evident by the more vocal militants in the black community, which made it appear -- I know that during this period I was asked by WHAS if I wanted to do a weekly thing for [?]. I told them no, I told them they ought to get some of the more active young people around who have a flair for this type of thing to do this. So I suspect that it might have been in the white community, a different kind of attitude, depending upon those who were at that time more vocal. If you look at the, under 30 at that time, in taking polls, well you have a difference between the under 30 and the over 30. Under 30 appear to be more militant.

WJM: Did it ever enter your mind that maybe you shouldn't accept the appointment to this campus when you were selected by your colleagues at LMC? Did it ever enter your mind that maybe you ought to, maybe you shouldn't accept it?

CHP: No, we had agreed --

WJM: Or did it ever -- excuse me -- or did it ever enter your mind that maybe you'd rather just go someplace else and teach, rather than stay here? Go to some other school?

CHP: Listen, this was a matter primarily of -- the legal proceedings were in [being?] at the time. We had as a group [so little help?]. We had accepted the advice of the attorney. We had participated, all of us had participated in the balloting, in the secret polling. I was selected, so I had, I would seem to have no option.

WJM: Yes, I see what you are saying.

CHP: But, what I did do, I have a letter which I wrote to President Davidson, to which I offered my resignation if I could make no contribution in my field. I [have a feeling?] I have a copy of that letter, too. You see, coming here as I did, as being thrust upon the University from the outside, the department wasn't notified, wasn't conferred with about this, so the first class I taught out here was not in my field, I taught a course in adolescent psychology. [The psychology department, as usual, at odds with each other -- ]

WJM: So, you were talking about your letter to President Davidson in which you said you were in the Psychology Department, split, teaching adolescent psychology.

CHP: You know the procedure for hiring, usually goes through the department --

WJM: Sure.

CHP: -- which makes, through the dean, makes a recommendation, and generally speaking the departmental recommendation is the one which is accepted. So when I came out here, I came out here as a professor of the social sciences, which was 128:00not confined to a particular department.

WJM: So your appointment was not in Sociology, it was in the Division of Social Sciences? Is that right?

CHP: Yes, that's right. Then in the, just prior to the spring semester, Kutak said, "You belong in Sociology." So he asked for me.

WJM: Now who was he?

CHP: Kutak.

WJM: Who was he?

CHP: Head of the Department of Sociology. At the time -- have you ever heard of the name Birdwhistell?

WJM/DC: Yes.

CHP: Birdwhistell was -- is -- an anthropologist, and he was attached to the 129:00Department of Sociology, and there were some [?] matters between him and Kutak, and he wanted a separate Department of Anthropology. So he transferred to Psychology, they had a department for psychology and anthropology, kind of a queer union. But it carried the name of both. And at that time, he asked for me, and I took Birdwhistell's place in Sociology. There were two of us in Sociology until -- well, yes, three of us. Vicroy when Vicroy came in, in 1952 or something like that. My first class, as I said, was this adolescent psychology. 130:00Another man who was here at the time was Warner, who was in the social sciences. He was chairman of the Social Sciences Division, and he used to have his general course in social sciences, and he devised a class for me. He had a double section, and we all met [?] and by lot, persons came up sat in the one section or the other, and I took one section, he took the other. That's the way I got my first class in the social sciences. I had this course in adolescent psychology. And another course I had was a joint course with Birdwhistell. I've forgotten now what the name of that was, that joint course. For a couple of semesters 131:00after that I taught a course in introductory psychology.

DC: So you taught a course the first semester that you came here.

CHP: Yes, I had two.

DC: Was either --

CHP: One was a general, Social Science 101 I think they used to call it. Had a class in the social sciences. And this class in adolescent psychology, in the Psychology Department.

DC: So you taught a required class your first--

CHP: I guess. I didn't think about it at the time. One of the things was that some of the trustees didn't want me to teach any required course. That social 132:00science thing, where the students selected and so you could get around this required attendance at a required course, I don't know whether the adolescent psychology course was a required course or not. I've forgotten now whether it was or not. I had meant to look over some of the old class schedules -- my memory's not very good.

WJM: How long was it before another black professor joined the faculty?

CHP: Well, I don't know the exact date, but the University College had part-time, and in business -- I can't remember his name. But it was quite a few 133:00years later when a [?] person was selected to teach regularly in the Arts and Sciences.

DC: The university, course, has always bragged a little bit about being -- I forget exactly how they put it -- the first college, or the first university south of the Mason-Dixon Line to integrate -- did you --

WJM: First private, traditionally white university --

DC: Did you see U of L as being in the vanguard or?

CHP: Oh yes, I saw it -- you know, I've been tempted, and I still may, write an article -- I think it could be worthy of a book -- an article on tokenism, all over. I have friends in various parts of the country, and [?] getting, interviewing "tokens," persons who were the "first." For example, Jackie Robinson in baseball, and the first coach of a basketball team, or the first-- this kind of thing. And in jobs, for example, two younger men -- the city moved into -- one of them got into the Gulf Corporation, and he, I think he's retired 135:00now, but he would go around and set up filling stations with black proprietors, but he was the first in there. And another man from here is a vice president of Pepsi-Cola. His father was [H.C. Russell], who was president of, who was principal of a normal school here. But I was thinking about looking into this and trying to get the experiences of persons who were more or less tokens. [No question?] I got invited to various kinds of things that I never would have been invited to if it hadn't been for the fact that I was the first-- It's a very 136:00interesting and sometimes very uncomfortable [behavioral?] situation.

WJM: Such as?

CHP: Well, when at the end of the Eisenhower administration, this comparable period between the election and the inauguration, there was a meeting on [urban --] leading up to the setting up possibly a cabinet post for an urban minister, and there was a meeting in Washington on this. And I was the only sociologist there. There were architects and economists and so forth; I think it was an oversight of the government in not having a sociologist there, but I was the only sociologist there, and I was there primarily because I was the first black person at a university in the South. Situations as that occurred a lot. I was 137:00invited to meetings. I'd get invited to universities to talk on various occasions because of this. And then when, it was rather interesting, you know -- I would be sure to be introduced if any visitor came to the campus here.

WJM: Oh.

DC: Did you get a lot of interruptions?

CHP: Well, not really, but you know. For example, if somebody was on the campus, and they were having a little social event for him, I'd be included. Not because his field was my field, but primarily because-- So I wondered what sort of scholar I would have become if it hadn't been for this. I think it's a 138:00worthwhile topic for sociological research, it's a matter of the role of the token. Anything [?] the same thing about the first woman [?]. First woman, first Negro [?].

WJM: I asked if you ever gave much thought to rejecting the offer of the school -- and then you, well, I think you've answered that question. You ever give much thought to leaving subsequently, some later time? You've surely had opportunities, but I mean, did you ever give really much serious thought to leaving--?

CHP: No, I didn't, because I was located here, you see, I was born here and lived here all my life.

WJM: Sure.

CHP: So I never did -- and then, you see I was well along, I was in my fifties and had, was full professor and so forth. I wasn't sure-- I heard I was being talked about for the presidency -- you might say I was one of the persons who was talked about for the presidency of Hampton at one time. But no, I hadn't--

WJM: What was your rank, Dr. Parrish, when you came from LMC?

CHP: I was a full professor.

WJM: Were you a full professor at LMC at the time?

CHP: Yes.

WJM: And then you were a full professor here.

CHP: Yes.

WJM: Okay. How did you get along with the dean? Of the College of Arts Sciences here?

CHP: Oppenheimer?

WJM: Yeah.

CHP: Oh, alright, fine. I [laughs] --

WJM: Why are you laughing?

CHP: I was laughing because I was remembering my first faculty meeting.

WJM: What about it? What was it like?

CHP: Well, we were talking about advising and so forth, and Dean Oppenheimer took account of my presence by saying, "Now if --," said, "There'll be Negro students here, and if any of you need advice you might speak to Dr. Parrish." So I got up and said that, as I recall, I told them that essentially I was a 141:00sociologist, I would certainly be very happy to talk to any students who came to me, but I wouldn't like to interfere with a student who was not in my own field. He took it alright, so I guess...

WJM: Well did Dean Oppenheimer consider, did he believe that you were the person who was set aside to advise all the black students?

CHP: Well, I was trying to disabuse--

WJM: Yes.

CHP: I think the first two students I advised were two white girls, so they straightened that out immediately.

DC: I'm going to follow you up on the tokenism thing in a way, and something that we talked to President Davidson about, and he had some thoughts on. You, 142:00even though you didn't become the dean of Negro students like someone had suggested, you certainly must have talked to them. Did you get any feedback from the Negro students, or did you feel anything yourself about --

CHP: I was very scrupulous about this, because I had to a certain extent somewhat resented this suggestion about dean of Negro students. I still felt very strongly about it. So I was very careful not to -- somebody would come to my [?], "I have a student 143:00who's so and so and so and so and so and so." Somebody from Biology, let us say. I would -- I hoped, gracefully -- withdraw from the suggested conversation with this student, because I felt this was not my problem. There were persons on campus who were counseling students and I was not, and I took very great pains to make that clear. Actually, I have -- I suppose it's partly my own feeling about race relations, it's a course I teach and I've been studying racism in its various aspects. So when some friends of mine came on the campus and they were going to have a meeting, on such and such a date with the black faculty. I said there's no such thing as a "black faculty" on the University of Louisville 144:00campus. I think [?] at least not so far as I'm concerned, I never have attended a meeting of the black faculty. I have very, very -- I actually am very reluctant to give much approval to Vice President for Minority Affairs, the head of the Black Studies program--

WJM: Office of Black Affairs.

CHP: Yeah. I've always felt that this was a-- I've had a friend of mine, who's a professor sociology at Portland, I think it's Portland. And he's been doing a study -- for the last several years he's been doing a study of white professors, 145:00and particularly in the Black Studies program. We've had [?] correspondence about this and so I have, as I say I have very scrupulously attempted to avoid this kind of [tag?]. Sometimes it's been difficult, but I think that I owed it to myself to take that stance.

WJM: What have been the occasions where you've been asked to a meeting of the black professors?

CHP: Well, I guess every time they met I was asked, but I never did attend, and never knew what went on.

WJM: When were they..?

CHP: Well, I guess when Mrs. Eleanor -- she's now Love, Love. Was very active in this regard, in developing this thing, and I never did.

WJM: You mean setting up the Office of Black Affairs, back in the --

CHP: Yes, and --

WJM: Late sixties, early seventies.

CHP: Also circulating the meetings of the black faculty. They had a lunch once, 146:00in which went up and I expressed myself. I can understand a committee on black studies, but I would suspect that such a committee would be composed of blacks and whites on the campus. It would be a university committee, dealing with one of the offerings of the university. But this matter of black faculty, where you have natural scientists, social scientists, and humanities and so forth, persons involved in non-disciplinary matter, it didn't seem to me to be a university matter.

WJM: We've probably gone long enough, I'd imagine, for today.

CHP: I've got a stack of papers down there, did you see, to grade?

WJM: Yes. Have you thought of any questions that we might ask you that we haven't?

CHP: My mind hasn't really been over this too much. I don't think of any.

WJM: May we feel free to contact you again, later on?

CHP: Sure, of course. Of course, I am concerned and interested in this whole area, because of my interest race relations and in the sociological aspects of this and the opportunities for research involved in this. For example, in spite 148:00of desegregation in various places, you still have separate communal entities in every community, and your social affairs and everything else are more or less racially separated. I think that there's an ample area for research here. Young man who, a man who did his masters here, started out with some research which he was doing -- he now has his Ph.D., he's at Columbia now, I think. Anyway, he did a study of a junior high school, predominantly white, here in the city, with 14 149:00or 15 black students, and another junior high school, predominantly black, with about the same number of white students, and compared them. We have a master's thesis; I think that research of that sort is rather interesting, and the developing of -- to understand how friendships develop and how they cut across racial lines and so forth. And then I'm interested in what's going on in the communities in the last ten years, while these changes have taken place, and the extent to which they are developing new separatist organizations, or the dissolution of what were previously separatist organizations. Like we used to 150:00have the NEA and the KNEA. The KEA, the Kentucky Educational Association and the Kentucky Negro Educational Association, and you had the dissolution of the Kentucky Negro Educational Association. And you'd have the medical auxiliary or medical association, and you'd have a separate black, Negro medical society, association. The extent to which these parallel organizations persist in communities and the extent to which they are disappearing and [?] what effect the separation in school is having on friendships and this kind of thing, I think there is an ample, wide open area of research here, it's in a transition period now.

WJM: It's on the right here, in Louisville as well as -- you're talking about --

CHP: Primarily I think here.

WJM: Yes, I see what you're saying.

CHP: Some years ago I did research which I'm still pretty proud of, because -- it never has been published, really, but I took the top 6th grade students in Louisville public schools who had IQ's 120 up, and leaving out the white students -- leaving out the black students altogether, just considering at the white students -- I arranged the elementary school districts in 1950 in terms of, I worked out a socioeconomic index for each white elementary school district; I arranged them from the highest to the lowest. The top nine, I 151:00compared the top nine white elementary school districts, and the bottom nine white elementary school districts, and dealing only with the top students in each of these blocks of districts, in the top nine districts, 92% of these youngsters finished high school. In the bottom nine, only 51% finished high school. In the top nine, 71% went on to college; in the bottom nine, only 21% went on to college. Now that appealed to me as a grave and important loss to the community. Not that all these people want to go to college, but many of them, when they are asked, when did you decide whether you were going to college, they 152:00hadn't heard about it until they were about 16 years old. It's too late almost to arrange the courses to get into college. So what, this appealed to me -- in any American city, and I've talked to about dozen superintendents of, they have about the same problem here. So you have a lot of youngsters who have high potential who get caught in the inner city, and actually the community is losing in terms of early discovery and giving opportunities for a more diversified kind of career, where these persons might actually make a much bigger contribution than they actually do make in our American cities. So I have defined the issue not as between blacks and whites, but primarily between low income whites and high income whites.

DC: Next time maybe in addition to the things that we mentioned at the first, could we talk some more about maybe what might be called some of your research interests that you haven't been able to follow through as fully as you would like, would like to, and?

CHP: I'm always glad to talk about my research interests.

WJM: Good, good. Thank you.

CHP: Trying to interest my colleagues about-- [Laughs.]

WJM: Well, how about that, are you having much luck interesting your colleagues in sociology in some of your work?

CHP: Well, they are caught in the academic -- I think our universities and 153:00colleges are tied to specific disciplines, which become more and more specialized, and it means of course that very few people can get out of it. For example, you have more and more people in the academic scene -- nobody, not all of us can [?] and there's no connection between teaching in the discipline and research, because the research problem, you can't be confined to a particular discipline. You can't go into something [?] without cutting across disciplines, and I've been trying to get my colleagues interested in interdisciplinary research. There's a woman in psychology, I got a favorable response from her.

WJM: [Louise?] Miller?

CHP: [Louise?] Miller, yes [?]. My notion was that you have an interdisciplinary committee for research, then we tie it in with action groups in the city. We confine it to local research. There's a lot that can be done for example on the matter of language. I talked to Sinclair about this, the matter of language. What about "mother tongue" of the city? It would seem to me that our children in a densely populated inner city [?] early [?] youngsters of the other families? What kind of language develops? And we could do this with Head Start groups in the city, and preschoolers and so forth. [?] see what kind of language develops 154:00[?]. [?] there's all sorts of opportunities there are local, which are going to be neglected because-- [?] computers, you can do anything you need to [?].

DWAYNE COX: Again, here, this is, what, the third in a series, and this is February 21, 1977 and I'm Dwayne Cox from the University Archives and I'm again talking to Dr. C.H. Parrish, Professor of Sociology at the University of Louisville. I think we covered, in the past two times, your recollections of Simmons and then your early education, and Louisville Municipal College, and transition to U of L. Back in one of the first interviews, you reminisced a little bit about your father. I know that there's been a lot written about your father, and his connection with Simmons and so forth. I think the first time we met you told us the story about, well about him having come from Lexington and the time that they put on the vaudeville-type show and some of the Baptist preachers disapproved and your father had them invoke the Diety at the beginning and the end and gave it a stamp of divine approval, I guess. I wondered if, just to start off today, you'd like to reminisce about some other anecdotes that involve your father.

CHARLES H. PARRISH: Well, I had not anticipated that kind of thing. I guess that I just happened to think of that the last time, the last meeting. Because I think that I owe so much to my father because of the fact that he was not strongly insistent about my own career. He, although he was a minister, he didn't exert any kind of pressure for me to move in the direction that he went. My contact with him in my early years was not too frequent, because for a part 155:00of the formative years, particularly, he was, he became president of Eckstein Norton Institute, which was located about 29 miles southwest of Louisville. He commuted between the institutions. The Institute has a church which was in Louisville. So he of course would be out during all the week and be here on the weekends and then be very busy, so actually I didn't have very much continuous 156:00contact with him in this early period. It was only when I came back from my college and began teaching at Simmons and particularly in 1923, when I went with him to the meeting of the World's Baptist Convention in Stockholm. I guess that was the longest continuous association I had with him, on that trip. The interesting thing is, he never advised me about my behavior, but I found out 157:00from my mother, after his death, that late at night, when everybody else had retired, he would go downstairs and smoke. I never saw him smoke. I think he liked beer, but I never discovered that until 1923. I never saw [?]. He used to have an adage, he used to say that he would be careful that he would do nothing that would cause his brother to stumble. And I think he took that attitude with me, that he wouldn't be telling me so much what to do, but he would not allow me 158:00to see anything that might start me off on the wrong track. [Laughs.] But I grew to respect him and to value the kind of relationship which we had. I don't ever remember him reproving me about anything--

DC: Was -- of course, your father was a Baptist minister --

CHP: Yes.

DC: -- and I guess the stereotype of Baptists is that they don't smoke and they don't drink, at least Baptist ministers [?].

CHP: In that period, particularly, they didn't -- you could get put out of church for going to a dance or something of the sort, but as I said, his attitude was -- he would accompany, when he was president of Simmons, later, and 159:00they had dormitories, he would chaperone the girls going to the movies because -- he went with them, to the movies. And this was, just outraged some of the ministers, because anything of that sort was, at that day and time, forbidden. He was not strongly denominational. I know that he wrote a little pamphlet, I think I may have told you this already, "What Baptists Believe and Teach"?

DC: Yeah, I think you did mention it.

CHP: Once he asked me, he said, "Son, why are you a Baptist?" And I said, "Because you are." Which was, I guess, the real reason. He travelled in the Holy 160:00Land with a Methodist minister, and he had an audience with the Pope. So I never got the feeling of strong denominational feelings one way or the other. I guess it was more what he was and what he said than anything else that, rather than what he said, that I was impressed by. Interesting thing about the, there's a clash of opinion even now with respect to race relations, and the clash has to 161:00do with the distinction between separatism and integration, I guess, assimilation. I read his commencement oration in 1886, and in that he spoke strongly for integration. He said, that out of one blood created all the nations of men, and the same blood that courses through white veins also courses through 162:00Negro veins, so this whole idea of separation or separateness is not appropriate. He was a vigorous opponent of segregation. Locally, he was president of the NAACP and handled the arrangement for a test case for the housing ordinance for the city of Louisville, and took it to the Supreme Court and the case was won. And the ordinance was to the effect that a Negro could not purchase property in a block which was predominantly white, and a white person could not purchase property which was in a block predominantly black. He 163:00arranged, he got an attorney, and the local NAACP carried the case on up to the Supreme Court and won it. That must have been around about 1915 or 16, somewhere around thereabouts.

DC: Was your father a -- oh, I guess what I want to say -- for instance in his sermon delivery, was he, would you characterize him as having been more leaning toward the evangelistic side, or the sort of scholarly approach?

CHP: I think it was in between that. It was very systematic in a sense, because he always preached from the Sunday School lesson. You knew in advance what his 164:00sermon was going to be about. He wrote the "Oriental Lights" for the Negro Baptists' Convention, he wrote them ever since there was an international lessons. Sunday School began at 10:00 on Sunday mornings and church was out at noon. In other words, two hours, both Sunday School and church. His sermons were never longer than 15 minutes, Sunday morning. And that time it was quite unusual. Also, his church was directly across the church from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, on Fifth Street, Fifth and York. And every Sunday 165:00there were students from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary at our church service. Sometimes some of the students taught Sunday School classes and so forth. As I said, I travelled with him to the World's Baptist Alliance in Sweden, and he became a member, he was a member of the Executive Committee of the World Baptist Alliance. And he nominated E.Y. Mullins, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, to become the first Southern Baptist to become the president of the World Baptist Alliance. He nominated him for this office. So he was, to a certain extent international in that sense, and high up in Baptist councils. I don't know, I just -- it didn't occur to me as unusual at the time, but since, I began [?], at that day and time, in that day and time, this was a little bit unusual.

DC: You said he wrote for the Sunday school --

CHP: Lessons --

DC: -- lesson book.

CHP: He would give the "Oriental Lights." He would give, such things, for example, as the dust, where persons would come in and they would -- the washing of feet, because when you walk across the deserts and so forth, why, you were always dusty, you know, so this was a routine and ritual. And of course in many of the Muslim places of worship, the first thing you do is take off your shoes 166:00and wash your feet, before you go into -- this was just a custom that arose because of the conditions and the-- Things of that sort, he did. He did the what-do-you-call-it, what was called the "Oriental Lights," he would give the Oriental background for the --

DC: So he was -- Biblical exegesis, I guess.

CHP: I guess [?].

DC: Was this, did you call it an international lesson?

CHP: Well, for a long time, they've had international Sunday School lessons. In other words, all over the world, there are international lessons, so that every Sunday, this is the Sunday School lesson is the same everywhere. Among Baptists, 167:00at least. So they have this kind of, so you know sometimes two years in advance, what the subsequent lesson will be on any particular Sunday. He built his whole Sunday service around the Sunday School lesson. The tremendous teaching problem there was resolved, because the children would stay at church, and they would have the Sunday School lesson, and he would preach from some text pulling from the Sunday School lesson. And usually there would be readings from the Sunday School lesson by the congregation, and then the sermon was the very last thing on the program and it was geared to be 15 minutes long. [Laughs.]

DC: You said that, and this gets back to what you said just a moment ago, and also some things we talked about last time -- you said that your father was a strong believer in integration as opposed to separatism in his philosophy of race relations. I don't mean to put words in your mouth but I get the idea that you follow that line, too. You talked last time about meetings of the black faculty members and --

CHP: Yes, I have suspected my whole background stems from that. I have never been a separatist in my thinking. I guess that the efforts on campus to develop black this, black that or the other, has never roused any enthusiasm in my mind, because I don't think it's -- I think it's sort of a dead end. The issue here, of course, sociologically, the issue is an issue of pluralism, which is quite fashionable these days, when you talk about pluralism, 168:00where each of a number of different ethnics in the United States have their own "thing," as the saying goes. 1974, Oliver Cox, a sociologist, did an article -- I don't know whether I've mentioned this before -- on the, he called it the "Jewish Self-interest in Black Pluralism." And he was in the Sociological Quarterly, I guess it must have been 1974, earliest, 1974. And his thesis was, 169:00Cox's thesis was, that the Negroes should steer away from pluralism, and go rather toward integration, and that-- He tried to contrast the Negroes and Jews, by saying that as between the [?] peoples, the Jews tended to stay to themselves and maintained, very deliberately maintained, their very distinctive way of life. And he suggested that they were in many cases viewed with suspicion because of this. On the other hand, the opposition to Negroes stemmed primarily from the fact that persons didn't want them to mingle. So, they were moving in one direction and the Jews in another, and his complaint was that he thought that pluralism was the wrong way for blacks to move, and that if blacks became pluralistic, then that this would take some of the [onus?] off the Jews. It's a 170:00rather interesting article you might read some time.

But my, I think my point should be, that I went to Howard, and there was a very strong movement there for what is now called desegregation. They had a strong NAACP image there, back in 1920, and there were rather famous persons who were 171:00there, like Alain Locke, Carter Woodson, who founded the Negro History Week, and Kelly Miller, who was an essayist in the 'twenties. So that I moved right into this circle there, and the Howard University students raised money and sent delegations to all the black colleges and developed a protest of a lack of training for World War I officers. And out of this protest, they set up a camp for Negroes at Des Moines, for Negro officers in World War I. In other words, this whole militancy was a part of the continuation of my education at college. As a matter of fact, the students [?] provoked at Howard, because Octavus Roy 172:00Cohen, who used to write for the Saturday Evening Post, and would write these stories about Negroes eating watermelon and [?] razors and so forth, and somehow he was invited to campus. And the students were expected to sing folk songs. [Laughs.] We, some of us, inveighed against this invitation, and the whole thing more or less blew up. So the whole, this sort of militancy was a part of my upbringing, even after I left Louisville and went to college. You see at that time, Howard had a white president, and Fisk had a white president, in 173:00Nashville. And the Fisk students rebelled, and many of them were dismissed from school. We bootlegged the Fisk students into Howard University, into the dormitories, and into the cafeteria -- dining room and so froth, until they could get reinstated. Instated, reinstated at Howard, after having been expelled from Fisk. And all this was going on in the 'twenties. The objection to a white president at a black college was an issue which was raised at Fisk and later at Howard. So I guess I come by all this fairly honestly. I don't have very much sympathy with separatist movements.

As I was given an honor, and I tried to explain to the persons who were proposing this honor here on campus, to sort of straighten out the issue, because I came to the campus in 1951, and was the only black professor on the campus and so-- and this advising me about the honor which was to be given me, and the mention was made of the fact that in the beginning of integration I was the only one to whom the Negro students could turn. I felt a little bit 174:00embarrassed, because the issue which was raised at the time when the Municipal College was terminated, the issue was raised, what is to become of the black professors who had tenure with the University of Louisville when they discontinued the unit? What was the university's obligation to persons who were full professors and had tenure? And it was on that basis that, which Morison knows about, we had a hearing by counsel before the board of trustees. Those of us from Municipal College hired an attorney and had this hearing by counsel. And out of the hearing by counsel the University offered one person a job at the 175:00University, and had other arrangements for all other persons. The other arrangements would be either the one year's graduate work wherever they wanted to go, or the others who were left from that, were to be given two months' severance pay. So when our attorney came back and told us, someone would have to take this job whatever it is, which would leave everybody else free to sue the university, because otherwise, if they go from one to the other and say, "Weren't you offered a job?" and if everybody says, "Yes, I was offered a job" and you turned it down, then they said nobody would have a chance. So I was selected to accept a job out here by ballot among the faculty persons at the 176:00Municipal College. Then the attorney met with the students and asked them to name the person they thought who ought to take this job out here, whatever happened to be. There had been so much talk in the community about a dean for Negro students, that the assumption of many people in the community was that I was, that that was the nature of my appointment out here. When President Davidson, who had come to the university at about the same time -- that was his first year, too, 1951 -- he said on television, he said, "We don't need any dean for Negro students, because we just have students. We really don't, technically 177:00we don't have any Negro students and white students and so forth." Well, when he made that statement, you see, this in a sense cleared the air, but still there were a number of people who felt that my presence on the campus was primarily as an advisor to Negro students. So when I received this notice a few weeks ago about an honor which was to be given to me, I had to try to make it clear that my position was "Professor of Social Science" when I first -- in 1951, and no administrative duties at all. So it, as I said before, this matter of this stance with respect to integration and against separatism is more or less a part 178:00of my background, continuously.

DC: I think maybe we just hit on this a little bit before, but I would be interested in anything you would have to say about your recollections of this whole separatism, or pluralism versus integration thing at U of L during your time here.

CHP: Well, there were a few years, the first seven to eight years, there was no organized activity on campus towards separatism. But you remember, it was in the early sixties that that began, the movement towards sit-ins and so forth. And then in '66 or '67, somewhere in thereabouts, the students took over the dean's office and so forth. And then shortly after that, there were some who talked about having a black faculty, and there was this kind of thing, and I just refrained from going to any of the black faculty meetings, [?] contended there was no such organization as that. I just did not participate in any separatist movement. I was very close in my sympathies with the Office of Black Affairs, as it was called,

DC: I think we're alright.

CHP: Well, what I was saying there was that on campus -- I wasn't here when they took over the dean's office, I was at a meeting somewhere. I didn't know very much about it. There were some people who feel that this is a necessary way to go, and I just do not agree. I have the same feeling about black caucuses in professional meetings, and there's a black caucus in the American Sociological Association and I have never been very enthusiastic about it. I have become a member, I've been a member of it, but I feel that it's not--

DC: Do you think it's, would you be sympathetic or unsympathetic towards say, the black caucus in the Congress?

CHP: Well, I think that -- who is the woman who is so high up in Democratic circles? She expressed my opinion, more or less. I think that the presence of a black caucus in the Congress is to highlight certain issues, but she pointed out 179:00-- I can't think of her name -- she pointed out that this does not mean that blacks all agree on political matters. This is a matter of maintaining independence, with respect to issues. I think that's what I would agree to. After the American Sociological Association accepted the black caucus, they would begin to hold a parallel meetings at the same day that the larger body was meeting. And of course you were pulled, you couldn't attend both meetings if they were at the same time, and that was just a little bit annoying. They didn't want to hear about it. Then the concentration of attention of the black caucus on racial issues, rather than all the issues of a particular discipline.

DC: So, and again, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you're almost 180:00saying that it's almost unscholarly, in a university atmosphere -- is that too strong? Or it can be--?

CHP: Well, I assume people who talk about "white research" and "black research" [laughs] -- and I think that research techniques and research methods, scientific research is the same whether it's white or black [?]. I'm preparing a little document for my colleagues on this matter, which stemmed from my reaction to black studies programs. I guess people always [?] when I get it finished, but 181:00a man by the name of Wilson Record, a sociologist from the University of Portland, I think, he had been studying, I think for the last four or five years, white sociologists and the black studies program, and teaching the black students and the extent to which they have been harassed by black students who won't listen to them. And then there's a [valuable?] article by Robert Merton, Giddings Professor of Sociology at Columbia, in which he talks about the insiders versus the outsiders, the contention of some black militants that only blacks can understand blacks, and only women can understand women, and only men 182:00can understand men, and he reduces this to absurdity, so that-- But this is the issue, you see, insiders versus outsiders, and this is what I do not adhere to in my own thinking. There's a book [by] Nathan Hare, who was for a while the editor of The Black Scholar, did a little book called Black Anglo-Saxons, in which he decried the, what he referred to as the imitation by blacks who tried to be like white Anglo Saxons. And Oliver Cox, the same one I mentioned a while ago, did an introduction to this Black Anglo-Saxons. He was invited to do it, even though he was unsympathetic with the tenor of the book. And he finally, after trying to get out of it, he finally did the introduction, which he gave a rebuttal to everything that Nathan Hare was saying in his book on black Anglo-Saxons. So I would say I have very little sympathy with black caucuses and the like.

DC: But it's, I guess it's ironic that you having been the first or the only LMC professor transitioned, and the first black professor here, that -- I suppose that people who didn't know exactly how you felt about these things, to them, just knowing of you, you would almost take on the mantle of being the godfather, of all these different things.

CHP: [Laughs.]

DC: Is that true?

CHP: Well, there was considerable misunderstanding about my presence here on the 183:00campus. And for obvious reasons, I think obvious reasons, no great explanation was given, because the idea we had -- those with whom I conferred, when I first came out here, agreed with me, that there should be no research, no interviews, none of those newspapers on the campus. We'd try to register and start the classes and so forth. "How do you feel about this?" and so forth. This was completely downgraded so that -- of course notice was taken of the fact -- but it was, very little interfered with the registration process and [?] attitudes. So that registration went on as if this was not a novel thing. And at the time it was a novel kind of thing. And of course what I had to put up with, even 184:00though I was not particularly sympathetic with it, that I inevitably became the token, and people who would come to the campus, why-- [Laughs.] I am on the campus, and of course, the university got a lot of commendation because of my presence here, which with the resistance that the trustees put up about my coming here was possibly not deserved, except that President Davidson was a very able advocate of the breaking down of the whole segregation pattern. And also it was the part of the token that I became chairman of the department. It is true 185:00that I had seniority at the time that the former chairman of the Department of Sociology died, taking my time with the Louisville Municipal College and my time on this campus, I had the longer tenure, and had been a professor longer than the other one person in the department, so I was appointed the chairman of the department, first acting chairman and then full chairman, in 1959. Actually, to 1964.

DC: Did President Davidson, having been a Southern boy, do you think that helped him in meeting the whole integration, all the problems that it presented? Did it give him a better idea?

CHP: Well, he is the son of an Episcopal minister, and he is not Southern born. He was born in--

DC: I don't have a -- is that right?

CHP: Yeah, and he had strong -- I would guess he had pretty strong abolition leanings, what I meant to say, in the Civil War. But he was completely, he took a very firm stand on this, and wouldn't allow the news media to put words into 186:00his mouth. Even little, small agreement to this idea of having -- I think he would have been opposed to, even to a vice president for minority affairs. I haven't written him recently, but I think there's a danger in this kind of thing. I looked and saw there's a black chorus, and I just don't know about these things, whether there should be a breakup on the campus of ethnic-- so far there are no other [?] who are following this. Course religiously, I guess, there's a Baptist Center, and a Catholic Center on campus, but I still have very strong doubts about this. I don't think it's a part of the university. I have 187:00the same feeling about black studies.

DC: You think, you would argue that what's taught in black studies should be taught within each traditional discipline, is that?

CHP: I think that in the humanities -- there's been such a bad reputation of the social sciences, and the humanities, in the matter of history and literature, and so forth, that you almost have to have black studies in those areas. But 188:00it's less justifiable in the social sciences, and not justifiable at all in the natural sciences. I don't think there's any such thing as "black political science" or "black sociology" or "black economics." I think these are [?]. You learn the principles of the discipline, not in terms of minority orientation [?], and I just have pretty strong feelings about that. Of course the social scientists have been particularly derelict in this area of race relations and there's been a very interesting revival, historically -- the whole issue of Daedulus was given over to the new views, historically, about slavery, about [?], and this whole thing has been reopened. And the sociologists with a British orientation have made greater contributions to race relations than have American sociologists. It's really interesting. Most of the people who are writing in race relations now either have a British orientation or a South African orientation.

DC: Necessity is the mother of invention, I guess.

CHP: So it's a very interesting kind of a thing. I think that the social 189:00sciences were developed during the years of Reconstruction. I think the first course in sociology was taught by William Graham Sumner in 1876, thereabouts. And the first, another pioneer in sociology was Giddings, and when I went to Columbia in [...] 1920, there was no department of sociology. It was there, but it wasn't listed. History and political science, and sociology was an adjunct to history and political science. So that the development of sociology, particularly, was during the period of Reconstruction. There was virtually no research, and the early textbooks in sociology merely reiterated the myths about Negroes and so forth which had developed in the controversy prior to the Civil War. It's rather interesting. There's a book by Gossett: Race, and the history 190:00of race, the race concept in the United States. It's rather interesting.

DC: What sort of feedback do you get from your colleagues and your students and your friends about your ideas about pluralism, which right now aren't the vogue, really, I don't suppose.

CHP: You mean pluralism is not the vogue, or--?

DC: No, your opposition to it, which is not the vogue.

CHP: Well, I think that this has not been defined very clearly, but you see the 191:00NAACP is anti-pluralistic. The National Association for the Advancement of-- the whole civil rights is just to break down segregation, you see. So I would say that the traditional movement is not toward pluralism, it's toward the breakdown of segregation. It's rather interesting that -- I do research with my classes, I taught at Dillard for two years, '72-'74, and all my classes were black and we did research on, did a scale on separatism versus integration. And they 192:00developed the scale and then distributed it. Now, we got about 200 responses to it, and we found out that the Negroes were not separatist. Even the younger ones, they were more likely to be separatist leaning than the older ones, but the older ones were very strongly integrationist. Even this matter of whether the Negroes prefer to be called blacks, or Negroes. Have you seen the Courier-Journal poll, 1969 on this point?

DC: I don't guess so.

CHP: They called in a polling outfit to do a poll on well, what do Negroes and whites think about each other. They found out that, although whites felt that 193:00Negroes preferred to be called "black," only 8% of the Negroes interviewed preferred "black." And the observation was made that the whites, getting [notes?] from the news media, which have been pressured by black militants to use "black," get the impression that most blacks prefer to use "black." I suspect there's a matter of age there. But the NAACP is strongly integrationist, you see, and not separatist. And even back in 1886, when my father taught, he was integrationist, not separatist. I think that most of the people in the community are adherents to the NAACP attack on the segregation system. What time is it?

DC: It's 2:20.

CHP: Any last things that you wanted?

DC: I was interested in the-- you talked before about some of your research interests, and some of the things that you wished you had done but you haven't done yet, and --

CHP: Well, I'm-- I try to redefine my research interests so as to make it more broadly sociological, even though most of my interests have been stimulated by the awareness of the race relations issue. But I'm concerned with the early, I make a comparison -- one of the interests would be to make a comparison of stereotyped conceptions which people have about other groups. I make a comparison with this with superstitions; that we know all the superstitions, but we don't believe in them. It's bad luck to break a mirror, step on a crack, and break your mother's back. These superstitions, you ask 194:00people about them, they know the superstitions, they know what they are, but they don't believe, or nobody believes them now. Yet, the presence of these superstitions tends to affect people's behavior. You feel uncomfortable if you do break a mirror. If you suddenly discovered that a day is Friday the 13th, then you'd be a little bit concerned, "I hope today passes and nothing happens," and so on. [?] with the present moment, which makes it a little bit unpopular to talk about ethnic groups of one kind or another, that people knew about the stereotypes, but they don't believe they're there. But I think that they're 195:00there, and they affect people's behavior in various ways. And so one of my research efforts is directed toward a very prestigious group of Southerners, the Southern Regional Council. The members of the Southern Regional Council, I've sent out some questionnaires to them, to get them to look back and try to figure out when the first time they, their experiences across racial lines, what kind of things they recall. Then later I want to ask them, "What changes do you see 196:00as having happened in the last few years?" If the Southern Regional Council membership now, which is primarily a rubber-stamping kind of group, you know, the staff does all the work, but they get distinguished persons to become members of the Council, about 140 people. Nineteen-forty, ten years, 1950, ten years, let's see, I think it was 1944 when they started, 1944 would have been -- 1944-1954, '54 to '64, and '64 to '74. I want to look at these three categories of people who were members of the Southern Regional Council. In the early members, the older persons, persons about my age; the middle group, which was the explosive decade, '54-'64; and then the newer group, would mean persons who 197:00were not in any of the civil rights activities, and see if there are differences which become apparent in these three categories of membership. Also, if these people are living in Southern communities, have them make comparisons in the social relations within their own communities and see what changes are important [?]. I think this might be instructive and helpful in that gives to persons who have been concerned with this an opportunity to look at themselves and their own activities.

Then I have an interest in, another research interest in mind, has to do with color, skin color, and discrimination on the basis of color. I made a study of this community in my doctoral dissertation, on discrimination within the black community on the matter of color.

DC: On --

CHP: Skin color.

DC: -- the Louisville community.

CHP: Yes.

DC: I didn't know that; that's interesting.

CHP: They have a copy of it at the library. It wasn't published, but they did have a copy and put it in the library. I'd like to see how that has changed. If I can get some younger students to do it [?].

Then I've got an interest in language, and particularly I'm concerned about the, what's referred to as the "mother tongue," as contrasted with peer influences on 199:00language. If you can think of 50-75 years ago when the environment of the child was probably older family or other families which were in this relatively small community, mother tongue was more or less understandable. But where you have more people living in a city block than in a small village, and where children at an early age played on playgrounds, with the variety of different languages, what happens to mother tongue? And the influence of mother tongue and the peer come into conflict. And I think this is a matter which needs investigation. I can't get any of my linguists to go into this with me, but I have some interest in that.

This whole matter of the -- I started to talk about skin color, and I shifted over to the mother tongue thing. But the skin color matter, the extent to which a child of a certain color -- there's an old theory in sociology about marginality: that the marginal individual, who is caught between two cultures, experiences a conflict between the two cultures in his own personality, and so he becomes marginal. And this was the favorite theory of Robert Park, back in 201:00the late 'twenties and 'thirties, and a book was written by a man by the name of Stonequist, on marginality. My study, which I'd like to confirm with a larger sample, is that marginality is not between light-skinned and dark-skinned, not on the basis of light-skinned, who according to Park would be the marginal, [--]. But I think I have found out that marginality can be looked at primarily from matter of color position within the family. If you think of a family as 202:00consisting in color, with respect to color, the two parents as the poles, you can think of three categories -- there's more if you discuss it a different way -- but you can think of children who are between, in color, the two parents; children who are the same color as one or the other parent; and then children whose color is outside the two parents, either darker than the darker parent, or lighter than the lighter parent. About 20% of youngsters are what I refer to as "color variants" -- outside. And I had a very small sample, a relatively small sample, but a very convincing sample, which showed that either dark color variants or light color variants were quite emotionally unstable as related to the family. And the youngsters who were between the two poles were very, 203:00emotionally very stable.

DC: Have you speculated about what causes that?

CHP: Now, well, it is a social matter, of course. For example, you have -- I know two [?] women now, two sisters, who -- and they are just as different as they can be. The one who is upset about this claims that her father always favored her sister. And she says, "You know, I was the dark one and he always liked my sister better than he did me." What would be interesting to do would be whether--