Full Text of the Excerpt

CLARK FOREMAN:

I went to the Phelps-Stokes Fund and worked there for two years. After I'd worked there for two years I'd got my M.A. at Columbia. The Julius Rosenwald Fund, Edward Embree, president of the Julius Rosenwald Fund, wrote and offered me a job to come and work with them. He asked Jesse Jones for a recommendation or his opinion. And Jesse Jones wrote a long letter, three page letter, you know, telling really what a son-of-a-bitch I was but on the whole saying at the end take him.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What had you done to . . . ?

CLARK FOREMAN:

I believe I had thought W.E.B. Dubois was right and that political activity was the real answer. I hadn't done anything otherwise. It was just that he thought I was a dangerous radical.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you try to push Phelps-Stokes in that direction?

CLARK FOREMAN:

I tried to push him but he wasn't pushable. He was a Welshman. Jesse Jones. I remember I was working in his office at the time that Lindbergh flew to Paris. He came in and said "Oh, isn't this wonderful, wonderful. Only a Nordic could have done this." I was horrified. Here was a blackish Cephalic Welshman with a long head, as un-Nordic as you could be and still be white. I said "Nonsense." Well, I guess that was another thing that probably made him think I was a little radical.