White Louisville leaders assumed that inequal race relations were "good enough"
Though Louisville had more signs of racial progress than most other southern cities, it was difficult to accomplish further advances in racial equality because white leaders felt that enough had already been done. For example, the Louisville school superintendent assumed that paying black teachers 85% of what white teachers earn was fair considering other cities paid less.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Lyman Johnson, July 12, 1990. Interview A-0351. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
But here's the point that I find hard to
understand. Here is Louisville, Kentucky, in 1946-47-48. It doesn't have
a Talmadge for a governor. It doesn't have a Bull Conner for a police
commissioner or any of these racist segs for mayors and whatnot. It's
got Wilson Wyatt. It's got Barry Bingham. It's got Mark Ethridge and
Tarleton Collier. It's got Lyman Johnson. It's got Frank Stanley with a
newspaper that had been there since the '30s. It's got Central High
School that's been-Central High School started in 1888.
Atlanta didn't even get it's first black high school until the '40s.
Atlanta didn't get a single black policeman until 1948, and Louisville
had a black representative in the state legislature in '36. And I'm
saying, this must had been accomplished. Why didn't this city go ahead
and do the rest of it? Why didn't it become the national model of a real
integrated city?
- LYMAN JOHNSON:
-
The only answer I can give is
[pause]
, "Why aren't you Negroes satisfied? Look how good we
are to you. Now, don't bug us too much." That was the attitude.
"Don't bug us anymore." And then they'd do all that
you just mentioned. "Just look around, look around."
What did the superintendent tell me when I was asking him-I
was leading a committee of black teachers, fussing and scuffling and
trying to get equal pay with white teachers back in 1939, '40, and '41.
We were getting 15% less pay. When we were given a job, we'd be put on
the schedule with white teachers and then clipped 15% for no other
reason than the fact that we were black. The
superintendent called me out one day. He brought in five Negro
principals and five Negro counselors and me. He had eleven of us Negroes
out there at his board of education, and for an hour and a half
practically every statement he made was, "Mr. Johnson, don't
you see how nice Louisville is in comparison with Birmingham and
Atlanta?" I said, "Mr. Superintendent, right out of
your office upstairs I've already gotten the information. Your
statistics department furnished me with the information, and I think at
one of the cities, I think Birmingham, I'd be getting 56% of what the
white teachers made. Over in Atlanta, I think it was 64%." He
said, "And you're not satisfied with 85%?" I said,
"Hell, no, I want 100%. That's your trouble, Mr.
Superintendent. I got a master's degree from the University of Michigan,
and you've got a man teaching in the white high school who has a
master's degree from the University of Alabama, and he's making 15% more
money than I do. He teaches the same number of students. He teaches out
of the same textbook. We have the same number of classes, and the same
number of days per week, same number of hours per week, and he gets 15%
more. I've got a master's degree from a school that doesn't recognize
the school that the other man got his masters from." I said,
"How do you square that with fairness?" He said,
"If you're not satisfied with the way we treat Negroes, why
don't you quit?" "Because I don't want to quit. You're
going to have to fire me, man." See?
- JOHN EGERTON:
-
Yeah, I see what you're saying.
- LYMAN JOHNSON:
-
He was trying to show me I ought to "behave," in
quotation marks.
- JOHN EGERTON:
-
You ought to be satisfied?
- LYMAN JOHNSON:
-
I ought to be. He said, he used the word, "Aren't you satisfied?
You're making 85%. Look, look, you show that you know what's going on.
If you lose your job here, where else in the state of Kentucky will you
get as much as you get here?" Well, I guess at Bowling Green I
would have gotten about 65%. I'd have gotten about 65% down in
Hopkinsville.
- JOHN EGERTON:
-
So the very fact that you were ahead of other people was used as an
excuse not to go any farther.
- LYMAN JOHNSON:
-
They were, oh, shall I use the word, kind of smug, sacrosanct. They were
sort of feeling like we're so much better Birmingham. Oh my goodness!
Mobile, Alabama, you might not get 50%. In my hometown in Columbia,
Tennessee, they offered me $55.00 a month, Columbia,
Tennessee, $55.00 a month with a year beyond a master's
degree. And I said, "Well, Mr. Superintendent, if a young white
teacher started out with no experience-I admit I have no
experience as a teacher, but I do have a heck of a lot of academic
credit-if a white teacher comes in with a master's degree and
a year beyond a master's, in your field, not in education courses, but
in your field, how much would you give him?" He said,
"$110.00." I said, "You'd give him
$110 and give me $55! How you square
that." He said, "You see, that's the schedule. You get
50% of what the white people get." I said, "You can
take the job and stick it up your ass." And my father
said, "Son, I didn't teach you, that
isn't the language I taught you." I said, "Papa, this
is a new day. This is a new day."