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Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Clark Foreman, November 16, 1974. Interview B-0003. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) See Entire Interview >>

Foreman read about the Atlanta Commission on Interracial Cooperation while in London

Foreman decided to work for the Commission on Interracial Cooperation in Atlanta after being exposed to different views of race relations in London. He had black classmates and read about the Commission for the first time.

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Oral History Interview with Clark Foreman, November 16, 1974. Interview B-0003. 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

So I went to the London School of Economics and there I had a very different kind of experience. Of course there were all kinds of people there from all over the world. A great many Negro students, some of whom I got to know quite well. One of the crucial things that happened was that I was given a book to review for the school paper. The book was J. H. Oldham's Christianity and the Race Problem. Now my parents had been writing me all the time urging me to come on home and get to work, you know, don't just stay over in Europe indefinitely. But when I read Oldham's book, he told about the starting of the Interracial Commission, the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, it was called, and what a good job they were doing in Atlanta. Well, here I was from Atlanta, reading a book in London, learning about what was happening here in my own home town that I had never heard of before. So I decided to come home and go to work for the Interracial Commission. When I came home I told father that's what I wanted to do and he said "Well, I know the head of it very well, Dr Ashby Jones. He's a very close friend of mine. And I will arrange for him to see you." So he did. I went to see Dr Jones and he was very kind, but he said I should see Will Alexander, the director. I went to see Will Alexander and told him that I wanted to work with the Commission.