Interview with Vivion Lenon Brewer, October 15, 1976.
Interview G-0012.
Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
[TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
The segregationists called their group CROSS: Committee to Retain our
Segregated Schools; the moderates called their group STOP: Stop This
Outrageous Purge.
Page 28
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
So, the men who stepped forward to head the STOP committee, came to the
Women's Emergency Committee and said, "Help us win this recall
vote."
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
If it hadn't been for our organization, they couldn't possibly have won
that election, couldn't possibly. But they did supply the equipment,
which we didn't have. And this is how we came by some very valuable
equipment.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Mimeographing machines and things like that . . .
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
And they paid for any number of phones in the office, so that we could do
phoning, you see, to the . . . And I'm sure you will remember that we
had a code. We set up a card catalog of every voter, and for every one
we had a code to say whether they'd be friendly or unfriendly or maybe,
and the unfriendly ones, of course, we left alone. The friendly ones, we
bombarded to get them out (to vote).
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Who got together that system? Was that Irene Samuel?
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Well, Irene really set up the code, but the person, I think, who really
taught her to do this was Henry Woods.
13
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Oh, is that right?
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Mm-hm.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
I never knew that. Well, that makes sense.
Page 29
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Well, he'd had lots of experience in elections, and he was one of the men
who was really friendly to us.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
And he was openly involved.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Yes, and his wife worked very hard in the Committee. She worked in the
office a great deal.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Were there very many women who worked for your Committee whose husbands
were not sympathetic?
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Quite a lot. And some of them asked us not to send mail to their homes,
because they . . . Well, unfortunately, I know of a few divorces that
came from this period. But we tried, here again, in our membership
list—which we always maintained we didn't have . . .
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
[Laughter]
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
. . . [Laughter] you know—we tried to mark
it always with whether or not we could send mail direct, or whether they
(members) would get it at another address, or whether they'd pick it up
at the office, or how it should be handled. Because we really tried
awfully hard to protect the women.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Well, now, do you think these women who were married to men who were not
sympathetic with your point of view . . . You would assume that most
people married people with similar attitudes. Were most of the women who
worked for your Committee openly integrationists, or do you think most
of them simply wanted to get the schools open?
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
In the beginning most of them simply, they were solely interested in the
schools. But they were willing to have the schools
Page 30
opened desegregated, in order to have the schools. So here was the
opening wedge. But we did a number of things, because Mrs. Terry and
Velma and I still had this original idea in the back of our heads, and
we did such things as setting up committees to entertain foreigners, who
almost always were of a different color. And this was an educational
process. And we did try very hard . . . I'm sure you know that we never
had a Negro member, so far as we knew—now we may have had some we didn't
know—but so far as we knew. We never did invite them, because we were
constantly accused of being integrationists, and if the public believed
this accusation it would have destroyed so many of our votes.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
That's right.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
And as a consequence we dared not open our membership to them, but any of
the girls who had any sympathy for the black race were used in contacts
with members of the race to reassure them that at the time we were
working for the schools, we were really working for them, too. And as a
consequence, that final survey of our own membership was a real pleasure
to me, because a vast majority of the women said that desegregation of
the schools, of the restaurants, of anything, was perfectly all right
with them, by then. So it was a growing process. So we didn't completely
lose our first aim. [Laughter]
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Yes. It's so hard for me to keep in my mind that "integrationist" was
just such a horrible word at that time.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
I don't think anyone can realize what an emotional time it was. In fact,
I look back on it and think we were all crazy. You
Page 31
know, we were just so terribly involved, and people got so excited. Our
phone would ring all night long, you know, and all day long, and our
mailbox stuffed with these really vicious letters, you know. I didn't
read many of them; I threw most of them away.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Just continuing harrassment.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Why would people feel so strongly? It was very, very difficult for me to
understand.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Well, did you ever figure it out, why they felt so strongly?
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Old, old prejudice.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
You know, I have wondered if a part of it might not have been—of course,
the root of it is racial prejudice—but I wondered if a part of it might
not have also been the old issue of the North forcing the South once
again to accept anything, but certainly to accept a way of life that the
South . . .
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
That never occurred to me, Betsy, because actually, the most of our women
were Southern women. Of course, there were . . . Well, I suppose
hundreds of them really had moved in here from the North, but I don't
think this had anything to do with it. I really think it was purely
racial prejudice. Of course, in your generation it hasn't been anything
like it was in mine, but in my generation we never knew blacks at all
unless it was a cook or a maid, somebody of whom you were very fond, you
know, but this was a great unknown, and people are afraid of things they
don't know.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Very frightening; very true. Well, I have read time and again, I've read
people describe Little Rock as being surrounded by a
Page 32 climate of fear during that whole period. And I remember—I didn't
understand what was happening or what the issues were—but I did
understand the fear.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Well, there are two stories about that. I've often wondered why I didn't
have trouble, because I drove from here to the Heights,
14 and of course we didn't have the freeway then
and it took me across a very isolated country road. And I don't know why
something didn't happen during all that time, because . . . Well, to go
back to the other story, when the first picture—you probably found it in
the papers—I said, "Harry, you're no friend of mine to let a picture
like that get in the paper" . . .
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
[Laughter]
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
. . . and he said, "well, I just didn't want anybody to recognize
you."
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
[Laughter]
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Which I think he meant.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Yes.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
In all sincerity, I think he meant it. Because the husbands of the women
who did work in the Committee were frightened.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
I wondered if they were.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
They were, because when we first had our office, it was in the old
Capitol Hotel building, right on the main floor. And pickets would walk
up and down outside, you know, and stare in at us. And our husbands
absolutely refused to let us stay there over Sunday. They were
Page 33 just afraid, with so few people around, we would
have trouble. And finally we moved that office, because it was just too
public a place.
It's hard to know why people hate like this, but I think I can see that,
after all, I was "a Southern lady," and if something had happened to me,
my martyrdom would have done more harm to their cause than just letting
me struggle along. It seems to me that's the only explanation for not
having . . .
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
That's probably also a part of the explanation for why they felt such
hostility toward you, because you were breaking the faith.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Mm-hm.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
You were supposed to know better. [Laughter]
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Well, I think I've quoted in the manuscript my favorite letter—I did keep
it, and I think it's at Smith, if I remember correctly—that someone over
in Lonoke wrote—at least the postmark was Lonoke—that "I've seen your
picture, and you look as if you're half Negro—‘nigger,’ I'm sure they
said—and half-Jew." [Laughter]
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Oh, heavens. [Laughter] Well, you
don't.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
[Laughter]
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Oh, heavens. Well, did you feel like you had very much support from the
community for your activities?
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Oh, it was wonderful to be surrounded by those women. You can't imagine
how they worked, Betsy.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
How large was your membership?
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Well, I would guess within the Little Rock area, about
Page 34 eight hundred, but we were over the state, and I think in the end had
about two thousand names on our record.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Oh, my.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
But women came in, you know, babies in their arms, came to see what they
could take home to do, because they couldn't stay in the office but they
were so eager to help. And in the earliest days we sent so much of the
work out. You know, we sent out innumerable flyers, and this meant
addressing envelopes, stamping, mailing, so forth, folding. And I think
they made a mark. I feel sure that they did, although I still think the
Little Rock Report was by far the most important.
But I think those flyers gradually got to people.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
And you sent those out very regularly.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Yes, and to tremendous lists, because we got lists of all the service
clubs, all the social clubs, the Chamber of Commerce, you know, every
list we could put our hands on, compiled them and sent flyers out. And
it always interested us when they came back, you know, with scathing
remarks.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Oh, yes.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Because then we could tell we had made a point.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Yes. [Laughter]
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
You see. [Laughter]
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
You made 'em mad enough to go to the trouble to send it back. [Laughter]
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
[Laughter]
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Well, you also had quite a telephone relay system, didn't you?
Page 35
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Marvelous, just marvelous. Jane Mendel set that up. And she is an
indefatigable worker. She organized that whole group so that we could
reach every member by phone within just minutes.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Isn't that amazing.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
She broke it down, you see, into just, say, ten people, and out of that
each one called ten people and so forth, so that I really think if
anyone deserves the credit in that recall election she does, because
that telephone chain was just marvelous.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
It sounds like a marvelous system. And I think Pat House said in her
interview that Jane Mendel's husband was not sympathetic, and she had a
telephone installed in her closet in her upstairs bedroom. [Laughter]
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Well, she can say this about him, but you know, I remember being at a
dinner party with them after that and his being so proud of what she'd
done.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Oh, really? Well, I'm glad to hear that.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
So either he wasn't antagonistic, or he saw the light [Laughter] later; I don't know which it was,
but he really was. He spoke so proudly of what she'd done.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
I think there are a lot of people who have seen the light later, and who
[Laughter] . . .
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
[Laughter]
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
. . . want to remember their part in a little bit different terms.
Page 36
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Yes, I've even been told—and I would certainly love to hear it—that the
interview, the tape that Faubus made, is so full of fantasies, the one
that's at the University. Have you . . .
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Yes, I read that.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Is this true?
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Well, I am trying to reserve judgment.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
[Laughter]
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
You know, I'm trying to keep myself completely open to all different
points of view. There certainly is very much in that interview that
surprised me. [Laughter]
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
[Laughter] Well, this is what I've been
told. In fact, it came secondhand, but I understand that Harry's the one
who heard it or read it and said, well, he had certainly had a lot of
dreams since those days. [Laughter]
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Yes. I'm sure Harry Ashmore would say that, would feel that way. It's
really fascinating to read all those interviews with people from very,
very different points of view, because you do get very different
interpretation.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Oh, I'm sure. And you know, as with all of us, memories fade.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
That's right.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
And unless something is very vivid to you, you're apt to have a little
different slant over the years.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
That's right. And, too, as your understanding of the issues
Page 37 changes with time, that affects your memory.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Yes.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
So I'm sure that that's been true. Did you feel like the Committee was a
close-knit group? Was there . . .
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Very.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
. . . a lot of camaraderie within . . .
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Oh, very. Yes. As for myself, I would say eighty percent of the women, I
never knew their names.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Oh?
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
You know, I simply didn't have time for this, because I spent so much of
my time trying to hound men [Laughter]
into doing something, going to see as many as I could when they'd let
me, which wasn't always, and in forming policy, writing policy letters,
trying to keep in touch with people I thought we should, not only here
but out over the United States. And as a consequence, a lot of the women
came and went, and I never knew who they were. Their faces were
familiar, but I couldn't have called their names, except for the ones
that worked in the office regularly, . . .
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
As you were driving back and forth then from here into Little Rock,
weren't you composing letters in your mind all the time?
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Not only in my mind. I had a pad like that which I kept on the seat of
the car.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
At stoplights you . . . [Laughter]
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
At stoplights I wrote. [Laughter]
Page 38
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Oh, that's amazing. And didn't you say that you would stop at phone
booths?
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Oh, I wish I had the money I spent in phone booths.
[Laughter] Because gradually I'd find that they'd been
tapped. Of course, we knew our phone was tapped.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
But even the phone booths had been . . .
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
And lots of the phone booths were tapped.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Oh, heavens.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
And so I would move from one to another, you see, trying not to be
overheard, because here again, we tried very, very hard to protect the
women. I didn't ever want it known—my name was known, so this is all
right—but I didn't want that woman's name brought out. And I think you
know, we took that membership list to a different home every night, so
that nobody ever knew where it was. And it never was made public.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
That was quite an undertaking.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Well, here again, it was a part of the emotional time, you know.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
What caused this fear, this emotionalism? What was it that people were
afraid of?
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Having to associate with Negroes. What else could it be?
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Well, I get the feeling that the Faubus machine was so powerful and so
strong that people were really afraid of the economic reprisals.
Page 39
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Well, this is certainly true, because a vote was never secret, you see.
He could easily tell how the people on the state payroll voted, and any
number were fired. Oh, it was nothing to have a letter say, "I want to
contribute the enclosed, but I can't sign my name."
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Because . . .
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
They were just terrified. And at one time, when the City Directors were
trying to get our lists and particularly wanted a list of our
contributors, the men who had given us money became panicky. And I spent
a long time trying to pacify [Laughter]
them, tell them that we would never . . . We didn't keep a list of that;
we never kept a list. We had kept books, of course, but no contribution
was ever identified.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Were you ever taken into court?
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
I thought we were going to be, and one of the friendly men in the
community thought I ought to go to jail. He thought that if I'd do this
that it would wake up the community. He wanted . . .
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Nice for him to suggest that you go to jail. [Laughter]
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
[Laughter] Well, I was perfectly willing,
but Joe didn't like the idea much. [Laughter]
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
[Laughter] That would have been a very
dramatic . . .
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Well, it would have.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
. . . event.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Take us back to the old suffragettes. [Laughter]
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
That's right. Well, there's the story about Dottie Morris
Page 40 opening the door one night to these plainclothesmen who . .
. What, they were subpoenaing the membership . . .
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Mm-hm. She was terrified, of course.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
My feeling, just so far, has been that it's that kind of tactic that made
people so frightened.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
But this was fear on both sides. This was a fear more on our side. You
see, we were the ones that could be afraid of this sort of thing, but
the general public, whom we were fighting, whom we were trying to
convince, were not the ones that were persecuted this way.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
No, no, no. But a lot of people who might have been sympathetic with your
point of view stayed quiet.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Might have, mm-hm.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
This is what has just been a major question of mine, and I'm really
fascinated to know, to be able to figure out why so many of the leading
men of the community just did not step forward and assume leadership
roles. And I think a lot of it is because the issues were very
confused.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Partly, probably, although as far as we were concerned, they were
not.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Right.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
It was one issue.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Yes.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
And this was something we couldn't understand, that the men wouldn't see
that this was an issue. What does it do to a city if it
Page 41 doesn't have schools? And why they couldn't see this was
beyond me. But I'm sure the Governor has a great deal of power, and many
of the men were very afraid of reprisals. It's the same sort of thing,
Betsy, that happened among the ministers.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Exactly.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
You see, they were told if they didn't remain quiet that they'd either be
moved, or something.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
And they were.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Yes. Many were. Many were.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Many lost their churches.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Mm-hm. And when we tried at one point to get a very simple statement in
favor of public education, we were able to get so few ministers to sign
it, it was incredible. But this was all a part: they dared not take a
stand if they were going to stay here. A few, of course, did.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
But most of those who spoke out in a very strong way have since moved
on.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Mm-hm. Well, at the moment the one I think of is Dale Cowling, who is
still here, and he was one of the first to speak very strongly.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Colbert Cartwright lasted for a while.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Yes, he did, and he worked very hard through the Arkansas Council on
Human Relations.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Were you ever involved with that?
Page 42
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
I became President of it after I left the Committee.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
I didn't realize that.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
[Laughter]
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
I guess you were involved with that. [Laughter]
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
[Laughter]
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
What other activities have you been involved with since that time?
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Well, my chief interests in this vein have been in the Scott community.
In the first place, I found that there were two Negro schools, and this
little point may interest you, that I asked white friends in the
community about the schools and they would say, "I don't know. Where are
they?" And they were not even aware of where these Negro schools were. I
think the first thing I did was to try to get some books, because I
discovered that the schools had no books at all. And so I collected a
lot through a friend out at the Little Rock high school and the
elementary schools.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
What were they doing out there if they didn't have any books?
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
How do you think they learned? Why don't they know anything?
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Yes. Why can't they read?
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
And the next thing I did was to get some volunteers, friends of mine, to
come down and work in the schools. The teachers they had, they were
dedicated, but they weren't, you know, really trained. And
Page 43 this was an attempt to give the children something more
than they were getting. And at the end of the first year of doing this,
the County Superintendent told me that Washington didn't want us to do
it anymore.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Washington!
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
So we had to quit that. And I've thought since, you know, the new thing now is volunteers in the schools. [Laughter]
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
That's right. You've always been ahead of your time. [Laughter]
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
And then I went to a graduation exercise at one of the Negro schools—this
was the sixth grade—and I sat there appalled that I understood so little
they said. And this was the year the Scott white school was to be
integrated. And I thought, "What will these children do? They'll go into
that school. The teacher won't understand them. They won't understand
the teacher. It's not only going to be a fact that
they won't learn a thing, but they'll hold the whole class back."
So I was able to get a small grant, and we set up a project that summer
with four teachers, two blacks and two whites, trying to get them used
to our language, trying to get them to feel at home with us. It worked
fairly well. We tried it a second summer; it didn't work quite as well
that summer, and I began to see that I was too late, that what we needed
to do was start with the babies. And this is something I can't explain
to you. I've thought about it so often, and I have no idea why it is so.
I had an old carry-all at that time, and I went down into the heavily
populated area of the county where there are so many of the black
poverty people. And I would go from door to door
Page 44
and say, "I'm going to try to set up a day-care center to try to teach
your little ones something before they have to go into the school." And
without any question those parents would put their children in my car. I
still don't understand this: why would they trust a woman they'd never
seen before? But they did, and again I was able to get some volunteers
in town (Little Rock), and we ran a really successful day-care center.
The children, it was simply thrilling to see how they would develop. One
little boy I remember, who had never uttered a sound, it was the
greatest thrill the day we taught him to use a spoon to eat some ice
cream. And he began to talk, began to make sounds. Now he was about four
years old.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Oh, is that right?
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
And then my prize case was a little girl whom I took when she was three.
And she cried all the time; she wouldn't talk. Couldn't get anything out
of her for, oh, a couple of months. But she gradually got used to us,
gradually brightened, just developed like wildfire, and when she went
into the Scott school they didn't know what to do with her. She was so
far beyond any of the other children (white or black).
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Oh, no. That was a problem you hadn't anticipated.
[Laughter]
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
No, I certainly hadn't. But they put her in the second grade to start
with and then bounced her to the fourth.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
My heavens!
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Well, to me what it proved is that given a chance, these children can do
something. So that part of it has been very thrilling.
Page 45
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
You were proving the same kinds of things my people were trying to prove
at Penn School. [Laughter]
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Mm-hm. That's right. So it's been one project after the other over the
years.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
So most of your activities have been involved in the Scott community.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Oh, yes, almost entirely.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Do you still keep close contacts in Little Rock?
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Not a great many. I have a lot of friends there when we see them, but,
because of our isolation here, I don't go into town as often as I might.
And as I get older, I don't entertain as much as I used to, and we don't
go in at night. And as a consequence, we've begun to lead pretty
isolated lives. And this has been one of the things that's intrigued me
about the racial development, that immediately following the Committee
we had extremely close relationships with a great many of the
professional blacks in Little Rock. When they first started the Great
Decisions programs, we joined a black group instead of joining a white
one. [Laughter] And we had so many of the
black friends back and forth in our home. Well, it's partly this
isolation that's been at the base of this, I feel sure, but I think
there has been a swing away from close communication between the two
races.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Do you?
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
And I think this is a natural swing of the pendulum. They
Page 46 want their own . . . I can understand this, but I think
it's too bad, because I think what we need to do is to know each other,
and if we do then this makes for understanding. So I hope that the
pendulum will swing back. I see some of it that's in groups like the
League of Women Voters, that there are black women in, and, say, working
at the Art Center, there are. And this is good; this, I think, is just
fine. But I think it really isn't enough. I think it's too bad there
isn't more close communication, and I'm hoping the day will come when it
will swing back.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
I wanted to ask you about that. I wanted to ask you what you thought your
assessment was of racial attitudes in Little Rock from the standpoint of
the white community. Because, as we were saying a minute ago, when the
men finally came to realize the economic impact of the drift of things
on Little Rock, then things began to happen: the schools were
integrated; the schools were reopened. But always the integration was
just token.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Mm-hm.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
And I wondered if, in fact, perhaps people in Little Rock hadn't found a
way to hold on to their old racial attitudes, but accommodate themselves
just enough to have a token integration?
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
I think this is why there are all the academies and private schools. They
will tell you that they're open to both races, but I don't know of cases
where blacks have applied. I think it's probably because they're too
expensive. And it also may be a part of
Page 47 this
swinging away from communication; that may enter into it. I think the
expense is probably more important. But it does bother me, because the
churches have set up all these private schools; there are these private
academies; and these young people are not going to have had any
association that will give them any breadth of understanding.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
So from that perspective, at least that segment of Little Rock hasn't
changed.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Has not. On the other hand, I have to feel that we have come a long way,
because who gets excited if you see a black man having lunch with a
white girl?
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Right.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
No body does anymore, you know, and, why, back in those days he'd have
been killed.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Yes. And also, all of the women who were involved in the Committee and
men who were involved in the STOP campaign were sensitized to these
problems and issues in ways that they never had been before.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Very true.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
And I think that's an important balance, that there is just much more
positive sentiment for better racial accommodation in Little Rock now,
certainly, than there was in 1957. But we certainly still have a long
way to go.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Oh, I fear so. [Laughter]
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
I'm sure that's always the case. Well, [unknown], I don't
want to tire you out and ask all my questions in one afternoon.
Page 48
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
[Laughter]
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Let me see if I . . . I think I went over everything I wanted to.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Well, then, let me tell you one story which makes me more hopeful about
the schools, and this is a local thing and a personal thing. Our nearest
neighbor is a black family. The parents are good parents. They've had
eleven children—well, they had fourteen, but some of them didn't make
it—they've had eleven at home.
As the boys in the family grew up, they have come up to help us in the
yard occasionally. And without exception, they have stuttered terribly,
and it's been very difficult to communicate with them. Now they probably
started in an integrated school when they were about the eighth grade,
someplace along there, seventh or eighth. And the boy who graduated last
year can't read and is very ill-at-ease with us, even though we've known
him all these years, you see, and see him often, but he just can't talk
to us. One of the younger boys, who is now about fourteen, I guess, has
been in an integrated school all his life. His closest little friend is
white. He is very articulate; he is very friendly; he has nice manners;
he's at ease. So this gives me hope.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Oh, yes.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
I think maybe come another generation [Laughter]
, we will have made some strides.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Yes, yes. Well, it must be very gratifying to you to be
Page 49 able to look out and see that
you have
made an impact.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Well, I hope so, but when there are so many problems . . . I won't go
into this today, because it's one of the things I've tried to make up my
mind, whether I ought to write up the whole story, or have a reporter
come down and do a really good job writing it up. But there's been just
an incredible development in the community, with so much bad luck, so
many things against the blacks, that you begin to wonder if it isn't
still persecution. You know, it's just . . . But you don't like to give
the whole story to the public until you feel that you're not working
against racial prejudice, because if you do it only increases it. So we
struggle along in this way, and this is what I'm involved in now, trying
to work out some problems for what is really a housing development,
trying to get the improverished families into decent homes and out of
the shanties.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
You're just not going to lay the burden down.
[Laughter]
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
[Laughter] Well, I don't do too much
anymore, but I try to sit in and advise when I can.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
That's marvelous.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
They need help, you know.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Oh, that's clear.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
They need help.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
That's clear. As I drove down this road, especially as I turned onto the
winding plantation road, I felt, "I am really in the South." Little Rock
is beginning to feel like Atlanta, which feels like New York or Chicago,
but Scott feels like it's in . . .
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Well, someday come down, and I'll take you down to the
Page 50 center where they're building these houses.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Oh, I would love to.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
And let you see some of the houses from which they've come.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Oh, I would love that.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
For the first time in their lives, the families who are occupying these
recently built houses have running water they hadn't had at all. Many of
them carried water for what to us would be a couple of blocks, you know.
And if they had a pump in the yard, it froze in the winter, you know,
and all of this. And yet, somehow or other, white people don't realize
what this does to a family.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
That's right. That's right. I know that from my own experience. I know
that I grew up thinking if black people wanted a better life, they would
work to have it. And I had no understanding of the . . . Well, this
shouldn't all be going on the tape [Laughter]
, but I had no understanding of what black people were up
against.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
It might be good for it to go on, because it shows that even in your
generation we have had this.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Yes. Oh, yes. And among my friends in Little Rock now. Of course, I went
away and had a series of very challenging experiences which opened my
eyes. But among my friends who have stayed here, that has not happened.
There haven't been
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
And it's been interesting to me that Scott is really an isolated
community. You can't imagine how I had to work to get anyone in Little
Rock to come down to see, even.
Page 51
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
I can imagine. I can imagine.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
My earliest help in the community, will you believe, came from New
England?
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Yes. [Laughter]
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
And it was because I went back to a reunion at Smith and talked about
what I was trying to do, and some of the women got awfully excited about
it and sent all kinds of donations.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Oh. The old New England impulse. [Laughter]
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
[Laughter] So we are still struggling
against being out here where people don't come to see what's going on,
you see. They may hear the story—and it often is distorted—and they
don't actually come out and take a look.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Well, do any of the white people in the Scott community support you, or
are they involved with what you're doing?
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
No.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
What are the sources of your strength? And I wondered about this during
the time of the Little Rock crisis, when there was so much harrassment
and constantly people . . .
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
This. [Mrs. Brewer gestures toward the lake and the big cypress
trees.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Your environment. The lake and the beauty of it.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Peace and quiet. I get a great deal of strength from nature.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Yes? And this creates the opportunity for real reflection . . .
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Mm-hm.
Page 52
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
. . . and thought.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Mm-hm.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
You do feel like you're in touch with very primal sources, sitting out on
the porch, and the ducks in the distance and the birds. Did you have
time to spend hours out on this porch during the Little Rock crisis?
[Laughter]
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Oh, no. [Laughter] No, but I came home to
it every night and left . . . Well, of course we couldn't leave it
during the bad days, because the phone rang all the time. But at least I
was surrounded by it, and this really does things for me. I don't think
it would for everyone, Betsy; I don't mean to say that this is that
important to everybody. It just happens that I'm made that way, that it
does mean a lot to me.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Well, I can understand that. I certainly can. This has been fascinating,
and I am delighted to have had this opportunity to meet you and visit
with you.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Well, we'll have to do more of it.
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
I want to. I have many, many questions, specific questions that UNC
wouldn't be interested in, but I'd like to spend some time with you this
fall.
- VIVION LENON BREWER:
-
Well, do; just come.
END OF INTERVIEW
Page 53
- ELIZABETH JACOWAY:
-
Just a postscript to the Brewer interview. After I turned off the tape
recorder, Mrs. Brewer had a few comments about Daisy Bates. She said
that at the time of the development of the Women's Emergency Committee,
blacks were not allowed on the committee. And this was done for
strategic reasons. The WEC had been accused of being integrationist and
much too liberal anyway, and they believed that if they allowed blacks
to join their organization this would simply confirm the worst fears and
suspicions of their opponents, so they did not allow black members in
their organization. However, Daisy Bates did not understand this as a
strategic move. Mrs. Bates felt that the Women's Emergency Committee
ladies were showing their true colors by not allowing blacks on their
committee in their membership. So Mrs. Bates was an arch-opponent of the
Women's Emergency Committee during the years of the Little Rock crisis.
Since then, however, Mrs. Brewer feels that Mrs. Bates has become a
friend. The Brewers have entertained the Bateses at their home many
times and have developed a very friendly relationship.
1. Mr. and Mrs. Brewer were living in
Washington while Mr. Brewer was a legislative aide to his uncle, Senator
Joe T. Robinson of Arkansas.
The Embattled Ladies of Little
Rock
3. The Brewers owned five acres in the area
made up of very large plantations.
4. My father was mayor of Little Rock from
1903-08 when he resigned to give more attention to the bank business. In
1902 he had founded the Peoples Savings Bank, the forerunner of the
present First National Bank in Little Rock.
5. Mrs. David D. Terry (Adolphine Fletcher
Terry) had attended Vassar (1902).
6. October 1930 to March 1946.
7. This was a large dinner held in May 1958 to
celebrate Ashmore's receipt of the Pulitzer Prize for his editorial
leadership during the Little Rock crisis.
8. Little Rock's largest hotel and convention
center at that time—the Marion Hotel.
9. The initial meeting was held in the fall of
1958, shortly after Governor Faubus had closed the schools.
10. Mrs. Brewer resigned from the presidency
of the WEC in 1960 in order to devote more time to her husband, who was
in poor health, and also because the Committee was turning increasingly
to political activity, supporting candidates, not issues reflecting the
goal of public education. Mrs. Brewer believed this to be a mis-use of
her committee's energies and talents.
11. Particularly civil service.
FORAGAINST
13. Henry Woods was a law partner of former
governor Sid McMath, and a leader of Little Rock's liberal community.
14. W.E.C. headquarters was in the Pulaski
Heights section of Little Rock, twenty-three miles from the Brewer home.