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:
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Then, you went to Atlanta?
- GUION JOHNSON:
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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.