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JACQUELYN HALL:

Since you had been involved in the Interracial Commission, I wonder how you happened not to be involved in that transition from the Commission to the SRC.

MARION WRIGHT:

Dr. Odum, speaking for whites, and Dr. Gordon B. Hancock, speaking for blacks, invited a group of people to Atlanta which formed the Southern Regional Council. I assume I was not invited; I certainly did not attend. But I think probably the next year I was there. I was President of the South Carolina Council (it was not then known as Council on Human Relations, but I've forgotten the precise name) when Guy Johnson was Executive Director of the Southern Regional Council. There was no relationship at all between the Southern Regional Council and these little things scattered around over the South. So I prepared a kind of treaty between the South Carolina group and Guy Johnson's group which was approved by both organizations, and that established really an organic connection between the two. It was a very simple kind of thing; it just agreed that our members would pay so much to us, and the rest would go to the Southern Regional Council. There was a division of membership fees. The Council at that time had established a little paper that was called Southern Frontier. So in exchange for our sending in a portion of the fees or dues which we collected, we got subscriptions to the Southern Frontier. And if we wanted to write for information or assistance, we were free to do so.

JACQUELYN HALL:

In the thirties and forties, then, had there been very little relationship between the South Carolina Commission on Interracial Cooperation and the Atlanta office of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation?

MARION WRIGHT:

It would have been a very tenuous thing. The Atlanta office probably had two people in its employ, Guy Johnson and a secretary would be my idea, so they were not in a position to render a very large amount of service. And the other little groups could depend on a few local people to keep them going.