Documenting the American South Logo
Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Guion Griffis Johnson, April 24, 1974. Interview G-0029-1. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) See Entire Interview >>

Johnson travels to raise support for the Southern Regional Council

Johnson volunteered as a spokesperson for the Georgia Conference on Southern Welfare to help raise support for her husband and other members of the Southern Regional Council. She knew how tiring organizational work could be, but she had succeeded in organizing journalism groups in the past.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Guion Griffis Johnson, April 24, 1974. Interview G-0029-1. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Text of the Excerpt

JACQUELYN HALL:
Then, you went to Atlanta?
GUION JOHNSON:
Went to Atlanta, yes, and immediately [after a few months] began working with the Georgia Conference on Social Welfare, which was an active action-program. I did it so that I would go all over Georgia and meet people and hopefully build good will for Guy and the Southern Regional Council. Because, you see, the Klan was after him. hey rented an office just across from him so that they could watch his activities. And Eugene Talmadge was rampaging. I didn't want to do the Georgia Conference Work. I know how fatiguing organizational work is, because I had had it in organizing the Department of Journalism and I organized the Texas High School Press Association in 1923. (And last year we went to Texas for the 50th anniversary and they gave me a big Trailblazer Award, a medal. I didn't know that anybody remembered that I had organized it. Guess how many youngsters were there? We're doing well in North Carolina to get three hundred and there were about three thousand in Texas I never saw so many. And Wayne Daniels on, who left here to go to Texas to head the department of journalism there, was at the meeting, and said, "I just want to thank you for organizing the Texas High School Press Association and for the excellent press that we have in Texas. And the students that we have." I said, "I was with it only one year. Don't give me any credit at all." But it was a lot of fun, I had forgotten about that.