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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview G-0012, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Vivion Lenon Brewer grew up in an affluent white family, unaware of the plight of blacks in Little Rock, Arkansas. During her later tenure in Washington, D.C., she became very ill. While recovering, she drew close to a fellow employee—a black woman from whom she gained new insights about the destructive impact of racism and segregation in the United States. When she moved back to Arkansas, Brewer sought to reduce the poverty and illiteracy that plagued blacks in the South. In 1957, Governor Orval Faubus chose to close Little Rock public schools rather than integrate them. Brewer, along with several other prominent local women, including Adolphine Terry and Velma Powell, organized the Women's Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools (WEC). The group initially proposed a mission to alleviate racial tensions between blacks and whites. However, in order to garner the support of other prominent and forceful local Arkansas women, the WEC founders reconfigured the original mission to one centered on reopening the public schools. The women, unlike men, were unharmed by the Faubus machine's economic intimidation tactics; they were able to engage in effective and dedicated strategies to open the public schools. While the WEC experienced remarkable success, Brewer does recall some difficult realities the group had to address. She explains the purposeful omission of black women from the Committee, in order to permit the WEC activists and the larger white community to gradually accept racial integration. Many frustrated white segregationists viewed WEC members as disregarding their racial heritage. Brewer describes the palpable fear the women activists regularly felt. After the WEC disbanded in the early 1960s, Brewer continued her activism by organizing educational programs for black children in the low-income Scott community of Little Rock. She concludes the interview with an assessment of contemporary race relations in Little Rock.
In this interview, Vivion Lenon Brewer explains how her awareness of racial disparities caused her to support school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas. She discusses her leadership in pushing politicians to reopen the closed public schools during the 1958-1959 Little Rock school crisis.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
I wondered if you could say, first of all, what do you think were the factors in your background that prepared you to step forward and play a leadership role at the time of the Little Rock crisis?
From the standpoint of leadership or interest? From the standpoint of interest, I'm sure it was the development of my concern for the black people. This had started in Washington, because there was the beginning of a critical time there.1 But when we came back here, I was so impressed by the poverty and the illiteracy particularly, that I felt all of a sudden as though I'd walked into a new world, because I had grown up here, and I can well remember riding through the country with my father when he would come to look at property and thinking that all the Negroes looked so happy. And I think that this is the way that most of us grew up in the South, and I had never had any personal contact except with the ones in my own home. I think I told this in the manuscript.2 I had played with a little Negro girl more than with a white child, but when she went to school and I went to school nothing dawned on me that there was any difference.
What had happened to you in Washington to cause you to take a second look?
Here?
Yes.
Well, I had a long time of illness when I was in Washington,they reacted. Her son married a white
girl, and she went through the most dreadful trauma over this. It
awakened me to the fact that the Negro has his
problems, you see, and I began to be much more aware of the racial
problem.
Did you interact with her as a friend?
Oh, yes.
So that was probably the first time.
Yes, she became a very close friend. She was with us for ten years, I guess. She stayed with me all day, so often just the two of us alone, and we became very close. And then when Joe and I moved back here, we had this . . . You may have noticed the little house.
Yes.
Well it, in the beginning, during the 1920's and 1930's, was the caretaker's house when the larger house was used only for summer recreational purposes, but it had been vacant for some time. When we decided to make this our permanent home, we had to have help in planting and clearing and all sorts of ways. We had a series of couples who lived there, all of them off of the plantations,3 and it horrified me that none of them could read or write.
And you had never been aware of anything like that before.
Never. And so I began to be interested in the Negro schools and what was
happening in them. And I began to go into their
Oh.
And all of these things together, you see, made me very, very aware of the racial problem.
And also hadn't there been a black girl or some black girls at Smith?
Yes, yes. One in my class. I was the Class of 1921, and she was a brilliant girl, later became a New York attorney. And her son was prominent in the government. She has since died. But I never did know her. It just happened that we just weren't thrown together at all. In fact, she entered very little into any of the activities at Smith, and I don't know why this was true because I never did know her. I don't know whether it was her choice, or whether it was just what transpired.
Did it strike you as unusual? Do you remember thinking that it was unusual to have a black girl at Smith?
Not that, necessarily, but the thing that struck me was how brilliant she was. This made its real impression, you see.
Yes, I think it would, coming out of your background.
I don't think you would say that you had a typical Southern childhood or grew up in a typical Southern family. Don't you think you had considerably.
No, my parents both came from Iowa, you know.
Yes.
So they were not really typical Southerners.
Yes.
And this is just one little point aside that may interest you. When I got into the Women's Emergency Committee and I was receiving so many phone calls, you know; all of them sort of amused me, except I had the strangest reaction when they would attack my parents.
Well, I guess so.
As people who were outsiders, who didn't belong here, you know.
. . . but you were still an outsider. But you had been born and grown up here.
Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
And your father was the president of the People's Bank?
Yes.
And then you went to the public schools in Little Rock . . .
Yes.
. . . and then went to Smith. Now were there very many girls from Little Rock who went away to Northern schools?4
Very few. There'd been a few. Well, of course, Mrs. Terry5 was one of the first, you know, and there was one friend of my mother's—much younger than my mother, but older than I am—who had gone to Smith, and she was really why I went to Smith. But I've always been grateful, you know.
Oh, I'm sure. I have never seen a more beautiful campus.
Well, the thing is, I believe in children going as far away from home as they can go. And you see, being that far from home, I didn't come home at Christmas.
Oh, you didn't!
I stayed with my roommate, for instance, or one of my friends, and so
here was this long period. And my parents always said that I cried all
the first year wanting to come home, and after that they couldn't get me
to come home.
And then I was terribly, terribly lucky in the business world. Of course, I would like to think I would have done as well if it hadn't been in the bank owned by my father . . .
Where did you go to law school?
In Little Rock, at night. I went to night school (Arkansas Law School) while I was working and passed the bar, so that I felt . . .
That is just most unusual, that your father encouraged you, in that day and age, to develop all these abilities and skills.
Yes. Well, this was one of the things that I look back on as very
exciting to me in those days, that when I was first elected as a vice
president of the bank, my picture was in the New York
Times.
Oh, was it?
Yes, that's right. So you had had a lot of experiences, then, which prepared you to take an independent stand and to be articulate and . . .
And let's say as an administrator, you see, because I was used to handling things, taking responsibility. Now you say "articulate"; I'm not.
Oh, you don't think so.
And this is a throwback to my father, I think. He never liked publicity. It really annoyed him when he was given publicity, and this rubbed off on me. And as a consequence, when I knew I was going to be quoted, it bothered me very much.
I used to worry and worry: "Am I saying the right thing? Am I saying something that will . . .
Oh, yes. I know what you mean.
. . . not be interpreted as I want it to be?" And so forth.
Well, what it has made me do, which was one of the things about the Committee which is rather interesting, is that I am one who needs to think a thing through. If somebody asks me to make a talk and will give me time to organize my thoughts, I enjoy doing it. But if I'm called upon as an extemporaneous, it bothers me.
Right.
The girl with whom I worked most closely in the Committee, Irene Samuel,
is just the opposite. She's impulsive, wants to get everything, right
now, done, and so there was such a contrast that we
sort of held each other.
Yes, it sounds like you made a good team.
You see, she pushed, and I pulled.
A very good combination, just by luck.
Yes, it was.
Well, probably all these experiences that you had had, which really put you outside the mold of the traditional Southern woman or Southern girl, certainly, made it more possible for you to take a different look at this taboo area of race relations and come to an independent judgment.
I'm sure that's true. And probably because I came back from being away for so long.
I didn't realize you were away for ten years.
We were gone for fifteen.6
Oh. Well, yes.
And we've laughed about this, because it wasn't too long after we came
back that all this happened, you know—ten years or so—and we've always
said we came back to get into trouble.
One person has never been given the credit she should have been given.
She is Velma Powell, who is the wife of J. O. Powell, who was the Dean
of Men at Central High School. She had lived for a year in the Terry
home. At the time all of this trouble arose, she was the secretary for
the Arkansas Council on Human Relations. The year 1957-58, when black
children were in Central for the first time, she, of course, had
firsthand knowledge of all the dreadful things that happened. And
. . . and decided she'd do something.
She was so concerned about the community, the curfews . . .
And about the blacks, you see, because her interest had always been in racial problems. Everything else—all kinds of problems—but very much so concerned in racial problems. And so her first thought was that we might organize a group of women such as the group that had fought lynching and finally brought the antilynching laws into being.
Now hadn't Mrs. Terry been a member of that earlier group?
She had known them. Now whether she actually belonged or not I don't
know, but they had had a meeting in Hot Springs at one time, and I know
she attended that. I'm assuming she was a member, but I don't really
know. But this was her thought. And I had known her ever since I came
home from college, because I had joined the American University Women's
group, one of the earliest ones in Arkansas Gazette dinner.7
Oh, that's right.
At that time, Joe and I were really the ones that said,
Now the story behind that was that someone (Mrs. Terry) had suggested,
"Let's have a dinner for Harry Ashmore," and someone had said, "No one
would come"?
And her idea had been that maybe have a dozen people at the Country Club, you know, and Joe and I said, "No, if we're going to do it, let's have it at the Marion,8 and we will wager three hundred would come," and we had eight hundred.
Eight hundred? Oh, my word, I didn't . . .
The place was crowded. People stood out in the lobby and couldn't get in, up in the balcony.
This was after he had been awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
That's right. And it was for that reason the dinner was given, to honor him.
So I had had a very close relationship with Adolphine (Terry) during that
time, you see. So when she began to think, "Now, what can we do?" she
talked to Velma about calling me. And I had met Velma—I didn't know her
well at that time, but I had met her—and discussed the racial problems,
and we agreed. And so she said she felt sure I'd be interested, so
Adolphine called me, and Velma and Adolphine and I met and decided we
would call what friends we thought would work with us, for a meeting,
and spent some time on the telephone and were very pleased when we had
the initial meeting.9 Far more (58)
came than we ever thought would. But it just didn't work as
Why? What happened?
Mrs. Terry had said, "Now look, you've got to take hold of this and be Chairman," so I'd spent the weekend planning committees and thinking what we could do. I remember one thing, I wanted very much to ask Marian Anderson to come here for a concert. Just a lot of things. And I began to see the whole group just flutter. And finally one woman who had two children out of school (by that time you see, Faubus had closed the schools) rose and cried out, "But what do we do about the schools?"
Now the chronology on this is that you all called this initial meeting very soon after Faubus closed the schools.
The very next week.
Yes.
And she said, "My boys are out of school, and that's what I'm interested in. This is what I want to do." And it immediately dawned on me that we couldn't hope to do what we first thought we wanted to do.
That's right. You couldn't be that straightforward.
That's right, and we had to go around the mountain.
Yes.
So then we changed all of our tactics and organized the Women's Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools.
And so the full title was Women's Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools.
Which was a terribly cumbersome name.
Yes.
But it said . . .
It said what you were about.
Yes. And lots of people later advised us to change that name, but I felt, when you have a momentum, if you start changing things you're going to lose a lot of it. So I kept insisting we stick with it, and in the end we were known as the WEC. It lost all that long name anyway.
Are these crop dusters that we're hearing out over the lake?
They're probably defoliating. They're getting ready to pick the cotton.
Yes. Is cotton picked in various stages? I seemed to notice a number of cotton plants as I drove by that seemed to have a lot of cotton left on them, but they had . . .
They'll pick again. They defoliate first, and of course they all use machinery now, which is the basis for so much of our poverty, you see. And this usually will get the top part of the cotton, and then they'll come in again. And once in a while they still use human hands to pick, but not very often; it's usually machine.
Oh, I can smell the stuff now. So you're confronted down here every day with the problems of poverty and illiteracy.
Oh, yes, we live right in the middle of it. After I left the Women's Emergency Committee10 I began to work in the Negro schools in the Scott community . . .
Oh, you did.
. . . because I felt this was where I could do more good. I'm sure you
know—I think I made it clear in the manuscript—why I did leave. It was
not only for Joe, who needed me very much, but it was because I could
see that we were becoming nothing on earth but a political pressure
group. And I'm just not interested in that . . .
Soon after you left, didn't the Women's Emergency Committee then disband?
Not immediately. It just sort of wavered. There were still meetings, but nothing really was being done.
And you left in '62?
In '60.
'60. And then I believe they disbanded in '63.
Yes. Was it '2 or '3? It may have been '63, because it did just sort of linger along and really was a political arm. Both Irene Samuel and Pat House, who headed it at that time, loved politics, and this was great to them . . .
Well, this whole experience had politicized a lot of women, hadn't it?
There's no doubt about it.
Like you were saying a little while ago, you had been somewhat naive about the workings of the government11 up until your experience; I'm sure that this was a wrenching experience which caused many WEC members to take a new view of the world around them, too.
I'm sure it was the awakening of many women, not only politically but to all of the just causes in a community.
That's right.
And it's been very thrilling to me that . . . I don't know many of the women in the WEC, and of course we ended with hundreds and hundreds of them, who have not been active one way or another.
That's been my impression. As I've looked around the community today and seen the women who are really committed and actively involved in the important issues of our time, they had their beginnings in the Women's Emergency Committee.
That's very true.
And they seem to have proliferated out all over the community . . .
Mm-hm, it's very true.
. . . into all kinds of things.
I was told that Sarah Murphy—have you talked with her?
Not yet; I will.
She, I'm told, did an article on this very subject. I never did see it. But I'm sure she would have it.
Yes, I'll have to ask her for that and be sure to include that.
Yes.
The Embattled Ladies of Little Rock?
Yes, and also it's at Columbia.
Oh, it's at Columbia, too.
Also. Because I felt that I wanted it where scholars could see it.
Yes.
And if I felt it wouldn't be talked about here, you know, I'd be glad to publish it.
But it would be.
Yes, it would be.
I ran across a number of things this summer, just small details, that I
could tell would create some consternation
Yes.
. . . in Little Rock. And also, you've had a number of interviews other than this one. You had an interview with the Columbia Oral History, the Eisenhower Administration Project, and have you had others?
At Smith, of course. I'm sure you saw the one from which they took an
excerpt to include in the book called College.
No, I did not see that, and I didn't . . .
Well, it's a very small excerpt, and I was embarrassed
Oh, I remember that story. Yes.
Well, of course, it was the effect of college; there's no doubt about that. And I think that's what they were trying to bring out.
Would you like to tell that story
Well, I had grown up . . . My mother was a staunch Baptist, and I went to church every time the doors opened, and I was really a leader in the young group at the church, in what they called the Baptist Young People's Union. I taught Sunday school; I went to church. When I was twelve years old, a minister came and stayed at our home, had a revival. And through pressure from him, I joined the church and was baptized, and I've often thought of what happens to young people in religious organizations, because I am convinced I had what amounted to a sort of fit.
Oh?
You know, you lose your own mental powers. You're completely under [unclear]
And so the members of the church learned that I was enjoying the Bible as
literature (laughed)
You know what happens when you send girls off to those schools.
What a shame. Isn't that silly?
I'm not sure I ever put it into these words. There was a good deal of
pressure for me to make a debut, and I wouldn't do that.
Well, you were being given options in your life that you weren't being
forced to be the Southern lady, anyway, so that
probably wasn't such a big issue.
That's right.
What kind of a woman was Mrs. Terry? How would you describe her?
I think one thing that has never been said about her is that she had the
most marvelous sense of humor. She let us have all of our meetings (WEC)
at her house, you know, and she always sat in on them. She never went to
the office. She had nothing to do with the administration of the
Committee. But she always sat there, and as we would discuss what we
ought to do, we'd get a little despondent about the way things were not happening, and she always had something funny and
cheerful to say that would get us laughing and get us over the hump. She
had a wonderful mind, and certainly there never was a more dedicated
humanitarian. Until her final days her main interest was the racial
problem. Of course, she did all sorts of things for the city and the
state, but this was her central interest.
Did you know that a black child grew up in her family?
Mm-hm.
That surprised me. I went to see her a few years ago, and she told me the story about how her mother had been independent enough to bring a black child into their home and raise it.
I remember she said, "She is a member of the household."
I think that's great. That explains a lot . . .
It does.
. . . about her concern and her willingness to abandon the traditional Southern racial attitude.
Mm-hm.
Well, she seems to have been a great moral influence who was able to use her influence without expending all of her energies in administrative details.
This was partly because she had a knack of getting other people to do things.
She really did. As I travelled around this summer, I found letters from Mrs. Terry in every collection, lighting a fire under somebody saying . . .
And if some problem would arise, she'd go right to the phone and call
someone, you know. "Let's get them to do something."
And I remember a few times—not too many, but a few times—when she
entertained people in her home during the time of all this crisis,
anybody saying to her, "Why, Adolphine, I wouldn't want them in my
house." She said, "You use everybody you can."
Oh, is that amazing. Somebody in one of the interviews I
That's great, that she was able to do that and have such influence. How about Harry Ashmore? How would you describe him? What kind of a man is he?
Well, of course, I am very fond of Harry. We disagreed strongly at one time.
Oh?
I think you read that in the manuscript. I've never said this to Harry except the night it happened, and I've never brought it up again, but it was our feeling about Bill Fulbright.
Oh, yes.
Because I felt that Bill could have helped us enormously if he had just come down and said anything. He didn't need to stay. If he'd just made a strong statement. But he stayed out of it entirely, and Harry said he'd advised him to. He said, "If you just stay out of things, you can be the Secretary of State." And I remember saying to Harry I didn't agree with him one bit.
Those priorities were not in line.
Mnm-mm. I just didn't think so. So occasionally we didn't agree. But
Harry has the most wonderful gift for words. I envy him tremendously,
the way he expresses himself. I'm very interested that
Yes, I'm delighted.
. . . and particularly interested because the last time I saw him he
said, "Why, I'm not doing a chronological history." He said, "I'm trying
to paint the image of the state." This was a little curious to me.
He's doing an essay, I think, on Arkansas.
I'll be very intrigued to see what our image is.
Well, apparently he's getting close to finishing now. It's supposed to be
done by the end of the year or so. We'll see what happens to that.
Only through his editorials. I think actually . . . Maybe this says something: the night he was notified that he received the Pulitzer Prize, mutual friends of ours went to see him, and they were the only ones there, which says that while Harry had a lot of friends—I don't mean to imply anything else—and certainly there were many of us who admired him very, very much, I couldn't say that he really led except with his writing.
Well, the position of the Gazette was always ten paces
ahead of the community. And that, I think, says a lot about Mr.
Heiskell, that he was willing . . .
Definitely.
. . . to allow Ashmore to take that position.
It does.
Okay. What were the primary activities of the Women's Emergency Committee? What did you all do?
It became absolutely necessary that we win elections. There was just no
other way we could control anything, because Faubus was constantly
trying to get the legislature to pass new laws and get the wrong people
on the school board. That first election, which we lost, said we had to
either integrate all the schools or not integrate any of the schools. Even the way it was on the
ballot,12 of course, was so
rigged that it was impossible to fight it.
But you had just organized at that time.
Yes. We had only a couple of weeks. In fact, he moved the election up,
and he moved it to a day when there was a football game in Fayetteville.
Also, didn't you feel that you made a very good showing,
Well, yes, but the vote was decidedly against it. But the very fact that we were doing something, you know, because those of us who felt so strongly about this had really been ill with worry over what was going on. And if you can get up and tackle a problem, then you feel better.
That's right. It had been a whole year now that Little Rock had been just in complete chaos, and now you were taking the bull by the horns.
No body doing anything.
Why? Why did the men remain silent?
Afraid. I'm sure they were all afraid. And in the end, I think the most
important thing we did was to write that Little Rock
Report.
Yes.
Because it's a sad thing that it's true, but it's when the pocketbook is hit that you get some reaction. And we really, for the first time, proved to the men that they were losing business, that the state was losing its best citizens, that we weren't getting any new people in, that the industries were all going down, that the whole picture was of the city and probably the whole state just being destroyed.
And the WEC ladies went out and interviewed businessmen all over the community, and compiled all this information.
And it was a tremendous job, just a tremendous . . . And even putting the thing together was. Wasn't there a copy at Smith?
Yes.
It took you can't imagine how many hours. We would work not only at the office, but we'd take material to the homes, to make the graphs, you know, to get the percentages, work this out. One of the things that really tells something about the emotional spirit of that time is that when we did send girls, we had to be very careful to send girls with Southern accents.
Oh, is that right?
Yes. If we sent anyone who sounded at all an outsider, they were not received.
Isn't that silly?
But that's not too hard to believe.
Now that came out in the spring of '59?
Mm-hm, in '59.
I believe it did come out just a little bit before the purge of the teachers, didn't it? And it kind of really . . .
I don't believe it was completed, Betsy, until after that. I think we were working on it, but I don't believe it was really in shape to mail out until after that. Because that recall election was . . . Wasn't it May?
May.
It seemed to me it was. And I think it was later that we finally got the whole thing together. The first run of it I wouldn't let go out to school libraries, especially outside Arkansas. The girls thought I was crazy, that we ought to send it, but I didn't want it in the libraries when it was incomplete, incorrect. There were mistakes in it, and I just felt it was worth holding on to, so we used the first run locally among our own members.
Oh.
And had no trouble, of course, using it, getting it out. But corrected, we sent the later editions to every university in the country, the libraries, and many foreign countries sent for it. It was just wonderful.
The demand for it really surprised you, didn't it? And then didn't the Southern Regional Council publish a shorter one?
Yes, they did, and we used that a great deal, because a lot of people would read a shorter version when they wouldn't read the whole report.
I have wondered about this: I may be mistaken, but when I was reading the newspaper accounts from that period, the first announcement that I found of the findings of your group was in a Nashville newspaper. And it was then quoted in Little Rock as having been announced in Nashville. And I wondered if that was a ploy, or if that was just the way the information came . . .
What was that about, it was our report?
Yes, your charts and graphs.
No, that couldn't be true. You must have missed some of the early part of it, because the first thing, before we ever completed the report, we had a section of it that we thought was important enough to give to the press.
Oh, you did?
And I remember this very definitely, because Joe and I at that point felt we had to get away for a little bit, and we were taking a train to Chicago when the paper was brought to the train, and I said it was the best going-away present I ever had . . .
. . .
I must have. But I had the feeling in my mind that by the time of the recall election, the community had become pretty well aware of the economic impact of the Little Rock crisis.
Somewhat, but I think they had also become aware of what was happening to the schools.
Oh, yes.
You see, up until then it startled me that men didn't seem to think it
made any difference that the schools were closed. "Well, let the kids
stay out for a year or so; it's not going to hurt them, you know." So
that there was this feeling that was really behind that recall election.
And it's also interesting that the group of men who decided to be active
in this particular election didn't want us at
Now we should clarify that. They didn't want you to publicly be a part of their group
That's certainly true.
. . . but they wanted you to work for them.
Which we did. And after the election—which was a success, of course—they disappeared.
The men disappeared.
Mm-hm.
Now for the purpose of the tape, we probably should say that that recall election came about because three members of the school board tried to purge forty-five teachers from the Little Rock public schools, and this created an outcry in Little Rock, and an election was held to recall those three members of the school board and at the same time to recall the other three members of the school board.
Yes, and both sides worked very hard to keep their "good men" in
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
The segregationists called their group CROSS: Committee to Retain our Segregated Schools; the moderates called their group STOP: Stop This Outrageous Purge.
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."
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.
Mimeographing machines and things like that . . .
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).
Who got together that system? Was that Irene Samuel?
Well, Irene really set up the code, but the person, I think, who really taught her to do this was Henry Woods.13
Oh, is that right?
Mm-hm.
I never knew that. Well, that makes sense.
Well, he'd had lots of experience in elections, and he was one of the men who was really friendly to us.
And he was openly involved.
Yes, and his wife worked very hard in the Committee. She worked in the office a great deal.
Were there very many women who worked for your Committee whose husbands were not sympathetic?
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 . . .
. . .
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?
In the beginning most of them simply, they were solely interested in the
schools. But they were willing to have the schools
That's right.
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.
Yes. It's so hard for me to keep in my mind that "integrationist" was just such a horrible word at that time.
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
Just continuing harrassment.
Why would people feel so strongly? It was very, very difficult for me to understand.
Well, did you ever figure it out, why they felt so strongly?
Old, old prejudice.
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 . . .
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.
Very frightening; very true. Well, I have read time and again, I've read
people describe Little Rock as being surrounded by a
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" . . .
. . . and he said, "well, I just didn't want anybody to recognize you."
Which I think he meant.
Yes.
In all sincerity, I think he meant it. Because the husbands of the women who did work in the Committee were frightened.
I wondered if they were.
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
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 . . .
That's probably also a part of the explanation for why they felt such hostility toward you, because you were breaking the faith.
Mm-hm.
You were supposed to know better.
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."
Oh, heavens.
Oh, heavens. Well, did you feel like you had very much support from the community for your activities?
Oh, it was wonderful to be surrounded by those women. You can't imagine how they worked, Betsy.
How large was your membership?
Well, I would guess within the Little Rock area, about
Oh, my.
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.
And you sent those out very regularly.
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.
Oh, yes.
Because then we could tell we had made a point.
Yes.
You see.
You made 'em mad enough to go to the trouble to send it back.
Well, you also had quite a telephone relay system, didn't you?
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.
Isn't that amazing.
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.
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.
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.
Oh, really? Well, I'm glad to hear that.
So either he wasn't antagonistic, or he saw the light
I think there are a lot of people who have seen the light later, and who
. . . want to remember their part in a little bit different terms.
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 . . .
Yes, I read that.
Is this true?
Well, I am trying to reserve judgment.
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.
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.
Oh, I'm sure. And you know, as with all of us, memories fade.
That's right.
And unless something is very vivid to you, you're apt to have a little different slant over the years.
That's right. And, too, as your understanding of the issues
Yes.
So I'm sure that that's been true. Did you feel like the Committee was a close-knit group? Was there . . .
Very.
. . . a lot of camaraderie within . . .
Oh, very. Yes. As for myself, I would say eighty percent of the women, I never knew their names.
Oh?
You know, I simply didn't have time for this, because I spent so much of
my time trying to hound men
As you were driving back and forth then from here into Little Rock, weren't you composing letters in your mind all the time?
Not only in my mind. I had a pad like that which I kept on the seat of the car.
At stoplights you . . .
At stoplights I wrote.
Oh, that's amazing. And didn't you say that you would stop at phone booths?
Oh, I wish I had the money I spent in phone booths.
But even the phone booths had been . . .
And lots of the phone booths were tapped.
Oh, heavens.
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.
That was quite an undertaking.
Well, here again, it was a part of the emotional time, you know.
What caused this fear, this emotionalism? What was it that people were afraid of?
Having to associate with Negroes. What else could it be?
Well, I get the feeling that the Faubus machine was so powerful and so strong that people were really afraid of the economic reprisals.
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."
Because . . .
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
Were you ever taken into court?
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 . . .
Nice for him to suggest that you go to jail.
Well, it would have.
. . . event.
Take us back to the old suffragettes.
That's right. Well, there's the story about Dottie Morris
Mm-hm. She was terrified, of course.
My feeling, just so far, has been that it's that kind of tactic that made people so frightened.
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.
No, no, no. But a lot of people who might have been sympathetic with your point of view stayed quiet.
Might have, mm-hm.
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.
Partly, probably, although as far as we were concerned, they were not.
Right.
It was one issue.
Yes.
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
Exactly.
You see, they were told if they didn't remain quiet that they'd either be moved, or something.
And they were.
Yes. Many were. Many were.
Many lost their churches.
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.
But most of those who spoke out in a very strong way have since moved on.
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.
Colbert Cartwright lasted for a while.
Yes, he did, and he worked very hard through the Arkansas Council on Human Relations.
Were you ever involved with that?
I became President of it after I left the Committee.
I didn't realize that.
I guess you were involved with that.
What other activities have you been involved with since that time?
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.
What were they doing out there if they didn't have any books?
How do you think they learned? Why don't they know anything?
Yes. Why can't they read?
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
Washington!
So we had to quit that. And I've thought since, you know, the new thing now is volunteers in the schools.
That's right. You've always been ahead of your time.
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
Oh, is that right?
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).
Oh, no. That was a problem you hadn't anticipated.
No, I certainly hadn't. But they put her in the second grade to start with and then bounced her to the fourth.
My heavens!
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.
You were proving the same kinds of things my people were trying to prove
at Penn School.
Mm-hm. That's right. So it's been one project after the other over the years.
So most of your activities have been involved in the Scott community.
Oh, yes, almost entirely.
Do you still keep close contacts in Little Rock?
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.
Do you?
And I think this is a natural swing of the pendulum. They
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.
Mm-hm.
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?
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
So from that perspective, at least that segment of Little Rock hasn't changed.
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?
Right.
No body does anymore, you know, and, why, back in those days he'd have been killed.
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.
Very true.
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.
Oh, I fear so.
I'm sure that's always the case. Well,
Let me see if I . . . I think I went over everything I wanted to.
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.
Oh, yes.
I think maybe come another generation
Yes, yes. Well, it must be very gratifying to you to beyou have
made an impact.
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.
You're just not going to lay the burden down.
That's marvelous.
They need help, you know.
Oh, that's clear.
They need help.
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 . . .
Well, someday come down, and I'll take you down to the
Oh, I would love to.
And let you see some of the houses from which they've come.
Oh, I would love that.
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.
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
It might be good for it to go on, because it shows that even in your generation we have had this.
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
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.
I can imagine. I can imagine.
My earliest help in the community, will you believe, came from New England?
Yes.
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.
Oh. The old New England impulse.
Well, do any of the white people in the Scott community support you, or are they involved with what you're doing?
No.
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 . . .
This. [Mrs. Brewer gestures toward the lake and the big cypress
trees.
Your environment. The lake and the beauty of it.
Peace and quiet. I get a great deal of strength from nature.
Yes? And this creates the opportunity for real reflection . . .
Mm-hm.
. . . and thought.
Mm-hm.
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?
Oh, no.
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.
Well, we'll have to do more of it.
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.
Well, do; just come.
END OF INTERVIEW
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.
The Embattled Ladies of Little
Rock, has been deposited with her papers in the Sophia Smith
Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts.
FOR
racial integration of all schools within the school district, AGAINST racial integration of all schools within the
school district.