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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-0056-2, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
This is the second interview in a series of two with Modjeska Simkins, an African American activist from South Carolina. In the first interview (G-0056-1), Simkins briefly described her family background, her childhood, and spoke about her work with the South Carolina Commission on Interracial Cooperation, primarily during the 1920s and 1930s. Here, she elaborates on her family background and upbringing before describing in great detail her work with the NAACP and the Richland County Citizens Committee. Simkins begins by describing her childhood, spent primarily in Columbia, South Carolina, although there were times when her father's reputation as an accomplished bricklayer led them to other areas in the South, including Huntsville, Alabama. Simkins explains that her family was prosperous, and she emphasizes that her parents imbued her with a sense of responsibility to help those less advantaged. Simkins attended Benedict College for her primary through post-secondary education. Following her graduation with a bachelor's degree in 1921, Simkins taught at Benedict for a year before accepting a position teaching at Booker Washington High School in Columbia. She taught at Booker until 1929. Over the course of the 1920s, Simkins became more involved in social causes, primarily via her membership in the South Carolina Commission on Interracial Cooperation and the NAACP. She continued this work into the 1930s, during which time she was employed by the South Carolina Tuberculosis Association. Until 1942, Simkins worked for the TB Association, helping to educate people about health-related issues. Increasingly, however, Simkins lamented not being able to focus more explicitly on what she saw as more pressing issues for African Americans. In 1942, she took a position with the NAACP and served as the state secretary until 1956. Simkins describes in detail her role in the NAACP's shift towards direct legal action in taking on school segregation. In addition, she describes how she helped to organize a boycott in Orangeburg County around 1956 following the Brown decision and a white backlash against it in that community. Despite her support for the NAACP's legal work, however, Simkins was becoming alienated from the NAACP by the mid-1950s. She left the NAACP to become the public relations director for the Richland County Citizens Committee. At the time of the interview, Simkins was still serving in this capacity. She spends the final portion of the interview describing her work with the Richland County Citizens Committee, focusing on their involvement in state politics, their role in efforts to desegregate the Palmetto State Hospital in 1965, and with the integration of Columbia public schools. Throughout the interview, Simkins offers telling anecdotes about the nature of racial tensions and its consequences, the inner workings of civil rights organizations like the NAACP and the Richland County Citizens Committee, and relationships between leaders of the movement and their related organizations.
African American civil rights activist Modjeska Simkins describes her upbringing in a prosperous family during the early twentieth century. She charts her work with the Tuberculosis Association, the NAACP, and the Richland County Citizens' Committee. Throughout the interview, Simkins offers telling anecdotes about racial tensions in South Carolina, the inner workings of civil rights organizations, and relationships between leaders of the movement.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
The first thing I wanted to ask you is just a little bit more about your mother and father. Your mother, you said, was a schoolteacher?
Yes, she taught before I was born.
What was her name, first of all?
Rachel Hull.
Hull?
H-u-l-l, Hull: Rachel Evelyn Hull.
And where was she educated?
Here in Columbia.
What school?
Howard High School. See, at that time you could finish high school anywhere in the state and go in as a teacher.
And where had she been teaching before she married your father?
She taught at a school called Free Hope, which is still standing; the
little building is still standing. And then she taught in Jenkinsville.
Free Hope is in Richland County, and the other school where she taught
is in Jenkinsville, South Carolina. It's in a large Negro settlement
where from freedom, from the Emancipation, the people owned their own
property, and still do. One of the largest families anywhere in the
nation is in that area, called the Martin family. They had their family
reunion here last year, and I guess there must have been, oh I don't
know, sixteen hundred of them.
Where did she grow up?
My mother was born and reared in Columbia.
Right in Columbia?
Her homestead was about, oh, five blocks from here.
What did her parents do?
Well, her mother was simply a housewife. She never worked out, as we say. Her father worked for (her father's name was George Hull) the old Railway Express Company, taking care of the horses. And my mother said that he had a remedy, or a cure rather, for lockjaw which was known to him. He must have learned it from some of his masters or something during slavery, but he never gave the secret to the children. But of course horses were very important in those days, because they pulled the ambulances and the carriages and the hacks for family transportation as well as public transportation. So they had all these horses to carry the express wagons. And he took care of them and of horses belonging in the town; if there were a case of lockjaw or if a horse stepped on a nail he knew the cure. They had one son, but somehow or other… I gathered this from their talking, that the son was … well, he was the youngest child, the only boy, I'll say. It seems like the mother had a number of children, but only four came to maturity. And this boy, being the only son they pampered him a lot. And he never cared much about being around his father, and I guess his father just thought that maybe after all he wouldn't guard the secret. And maybe he died before he gave him the secret. But they've never known what he did to cure lockjaw.
Hmm. What was your grandmother's name, your mother's mother's name?
I don't know. I never knew her name—at least, if I did I don't remember
it. I heard only back to my mother's mother. Now my mother's mother's
name was Sarah; and she was a slave. She came from
I think you did.
Well anyway, she belonged to a family of Seals, S-e-a-l-s, that owned
property in Sumter County. And my mother's mother was in some way or
some degree of Turkish ancestry. There was and still is a settlement of
Turks in Sumter County, in one section of Sumter County; they're still
there. Some years back they wouldn't permit them to go into the white
schools, and they would not attend the Negro schools. They tried to
force them into the Negro schools; they wouldn't. Well, somehow or other
my mother's mother branched off from those Turks. Her mother, she was a
house slave and her mother was a quarter slave (that is, lived in the
quarters, with what they might call the servant slaves). My mother's
mother was very fair and I would judge (although I never saw a picture
of her mother, which would be my great-grand-mother) that she was dark
skinned. And on one occasion, I understood from my mother that her
mother was very devoted to her mother, and after dark she would slip to
the quarters to see her mother. There were some rules on some
plantations that the house slaves should not associate with the slaves
in the quarters. And her mistress found that she had slipped out of the
house at night and had gone to the quarters to see her mother, and she
had her thrashed or whipped the next morning. Had her whipped, and I
understand she was undressed in the presence of some of the people on
the plantation, like overseers and like that. And she was so indignified
that she decided that she was going to run away from that area of Sumter
County and come to Columbia, where her grandmother was. Her grandmother
was in slavery (that'd be my great-great-grandmother), my
great-great-grandmother on my mother's side
Did Sarah feel that her mistress had been kinder to her than her master had been? Or why did she do this; why did she help her mistress? Why did she help her in that way?
Oh no, no; I never heard her say that she saw the master again. Evidently the old man died, and this old lady found her way to Columbia. And then she found where my grandmother was, and she'd come to see her. And evidently she was hungry and poverty-stricken.
I'm wondering if she saw any difference between her master and her
I never heard that; I never heard that. But the master did the whipping, did the thrashing. I never got any impression that the master was any more sympathetic or kindly. But I did get the impression that old lady Seals was an old heifer, and that she just told him he had to whip her; and he did. And then she made up her mind she wasn't going to take another whipping, she was going to run away to Columbia.
Do you remember any other stories that your mother told about her mother?
No, I don't remember any others. See, my mother's father's people came from Athens, Georgia. How they met up here together I don't know. You know, that's a funny thing about fate: people coming to the end of the world and meeting, and nobody knows why they did. But anyway, he was from Athens. And I've heard her tell how my father's mother was sold away from him in slavery. He was just a lad, and they sold her away. And she had—you know, the old ladies or the women in those days wore kerchiefs they tied their heads in, and sometimes they'd have one around their neck like a little cape. So we had for years (I don't know what became of it) in my mother's effects—that is, in our homestead—but I know that she kept for years this kerchief. When she was sold away from him and he was pleading and holding to her, she pulled off this kerchief and gave it to him as a memento. And then we had for the longest a pair of his little trousers that he was wearing around that time. Whatever slave caretaker, or whoever it was that took care of him, I mean, they had those: I do know that. Eventually he found his mother after freedom was declared, because she came to Columbia. And as I remember it she died here.
Do you know how he found her?
No, I don't.
Do you know the name of the people who owned him?
No, I don't. I do know that evidently when he got back to … I mean, when freedom was declared no matter where she was sold to she perhaps would come back to Athens. And when she came back to Athens perhaps he was still a lad just freed. I don't mean to say that she found him in Columbia. They evidently found each other after the Emancipation but before he came to Columbia; then she later came to Columbia.
Did he remember anything about his father?
No, never heard about him. They had a cousin by the name of Thena. I heard my mother speak often of Cousin Finia, and I've seen her picture: a very, very beautiful woman that was a very fine seamstress during slavery and even after freedom was declared. On the plantation where she lived she did all the beautiful sewing and embroidery work and all for them. But what her last name was I don't remember. I have known, but I don't remember.
Did your father have brothers and sisters?1
My father?
Yes.
My father had a brother by the name of Frank, and a sister by the name of
Bessie.
I do know that working along with him (I can't remember now just the
position, but this man had something to do with building) was a
Scotchman. He came from Paisley, Scotland, and he and my father were
very good friends. And they worked together. He was in some kind of
supervisory capacity, I
What kind of things did your mother read to you?
Well, she read current events and portions of the Bible, and children's
literature. Of course we were provided by my… See, when my mother
married she didn't teach anymore until her children were up a size; then
she went back to teaching. But during that time I had an aunt who was
teaching, another that taught a while (maybe until about the time she
married.) She married just before my mother; she was the oldest child.
And she was married to a physician, one of the first black physicians
She made particular effort to acquaint us with things as they were, no matter how cruel or atrocious they might be. She read just about all the lynchings, and how these people were mutilated or treated during lynchings. In fact, we were in Huntsville, Alabama when they had a lynching there, and my father told us how one of the lynchers came in and showed him the finger of this Negro. My father was a fearless man. He came in and showed it to my father, as though to intimidate him, I guess.
My father was noted for the backing of chimneys. You remember seeing
that, perhaps, but there's a certain way if you have a fireplace that
you lay the bricks in the chimney that makes sure that you're going to
have a draft instead of smoke blowing out. And he was noted for that.
Even in his late years here in Columbia it was well known that he just
had a kind of special skill in backing chimneys. And so when they built
these factories they'd have rows and rows of factory houses all looking
just alike. You've
Are there any differences between your mother and your father? How did they get along with each other?
Fine. They had maybe little tiffs like the average family will have. My
father never wanted her to whip us, so most of the things would come up
about that. And then my father was a very soft-hearted man. I am like
that myself; I just can hardly turn away a person that appears to be in
trouble or in need. So my father was like that. And then my father was a
very soft-hearted man. I am like that myself; I just can hardly turn
away a person that appears to be in trouble or in need. So my father was
like that. And although he had an income above average for that time he
would sometimes help a fellow, and my mother would say, "Oh that
no-good, you're helping him and you need it for your children." And she
used to tell me sometimes, "You're going to be just like your daddy; you
're going to die in the poorhouse. You give this and you give that, and
you can't turn anybody down." And I'm still the same way—I think about
it all the time—I'm very soft when it comes to need or
Was she also the disciplinarian of the children?
Yes, for the most part she took care of that. I guess that came about in
large measure because when we first were coming up… You see, before time
for me to start school they did mostly this traveling. Then when it was
time for me to be put in school, then they settled down in our homestead
that we'd had all the time. So then my father would go different places
and work, maybe two or three months at a time, or three or four weeks or
whatever it was. Sometimes he would go in a group and work a while and
maybe come back weekends or like that. So at that time she had us to
herself.
Were your parents very strict with you?
Well, I would say they were positive. Now, not strict in the sense that sometimes people think, that they've had a hard, fast rules that you were used to doing this. I've heard my mother say sometimes if you dared… Of course back then children didn't hardly ask their mothers why, you know. Your mother or father'd say thus and so, that was it; that was the law of the Medes and the Persians. But sometimes there was an occasion when she'd say, "Now listen, you do this because I said to." Sometimes you'd get to that point. Now strictly from the standpoint of being almost what you might say cruel in trying to see that something would be done, it was more being just positive. And you understood that evidently when they said that they'd thought it through.
Were there any conflicts as you were all growing up around discipline, or your wanting to do things that your parents wouldn't let you do?
I don't remember any. There might have been. You see, there weren't the
tugs on children in those days that there are now, because parents
didn't mind other people correcting their children—maybe you've heard
oldsters in your family say that. And I knew that—well, I
I know my Daddy was working in Spartanburg, and I was doing something
some old woman thought I shouldn't have done. I've never forgotten that.
I was up the street some houses from where I lived (I was just a little
kid, must have been about four or four and a half, maybe, something like
that—not more than five years old). And she grabbed me by my
little—children were wearing aprons then, little tie-around things. And
she grabbed me back there and tore me up with a brush, a hairbrush, then
turned me loose. And I flew home. And when I got home and my mother
found out I had misbehaved she gave me another spanking with a
hairbrush. So I knew that anywhere I happened to be, if I misbehaved
somebody had their eyes on me, you know.
Did you just raise food for your own use, or did you raise cotton or anything else?
We raised cotton eventually, not maybe more than five or six bales
because we had the farm largely where we could be occupied. And we
raised all our foodstuffs except perhaps rice and sugar—or coffee, but
we didn't bother with coffee much. And we made our own molasses, white
potatoes, sweet potatoes, peanuts, vegetables for canning. My mother
would corn beef and kill pork. You know, we had smokehouse arrangements;
we had our own well. So we were self-sustaining. And in addition to that
my father made enough
You had cows?
Oh yes, we had cows and pigs and chickens and turkeys.
How did you run the farm when your mother started back teaching?
Well, we had the people that came in and help, the hired hands. We had hired hands for plowing until my brothers got old enough. There were families near us that had large boys that did the plowing. Now the whole cultivation for the most part was done by the girls, and the boys when they weren't plowing, like chopping the cotton or hoeing the cotton or working in the gardens.
Were you closer to your mother or your father?
I don't see any difference.
Do you see one of them as having more influence on you, or that you would be more like one of them in some way?
Well, I think I'm more like my father, only in the way that I expressed a
while ago, that I've very tender-hearted, so to speak. My mother was
very kind too, but she wasn't … as loose with money in that kindness,
you know. Now she would work all day in the fields with us for long
hours, and if there was someone sick in the community she would say,
"Now we've got to go and see Mrs. so-and-so tonight. She is sick, and
we'll have to go see what we can do for her." And she would prepare
things for them and show them how… When we moved into that area, of
course, at that time the people were primitive. There was a lot of
pellagra and infant mortality—I mean, maternal and infant mortality
rates were high. They didn't know much about, didn't know anything about
nutrition; they ate cornbread and fatback and black molasses. And cotton
was king: the men that owned the cotton farms planted the
Were you probably much better off than most of your neighbors and the people you went to church with?
Yes, always we were. And I think that our moving into that—in fact, I
know our moving into that community, we were the leavening influence. We
had to go to Sunday school, and we could read and most of the little
children and their parents couldn't. They were going to school three
months, and we were going to paid schools over at Benedict College. And
we were able to make our little talks and read and do a lot of things
that inspired the children of the area.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
So they were at the mercy of the power structure where we were not. My father was able to send us to… See, living in the country we couldn't go to the city schools like the city children because we were living in the rural area. So we went to where we had started, where I had started school before moving to the country which was Benedict College, which at that time had the classes from the primer on up through college. So that's where I went to school from the first day I went to school until I finished college, there at Benedict.
Where is Benedict?
Right here in town, just a half a block away from where I work every day. The older children started at Benedict. Later a brother and two sisters who started in the neighborhood rural school entered city schools when they were improved.
How did you get into school from the country?
What school?
Benedict.
We had a horse and carriage, and then in later years usually we walked. It was just about five miles, and we walked it. And then we had streetcars available; we used streetcars too, and we were about a mile from the streetcar line. So we used those three modes of travel.
What was Benedict like as a school? What were the teachers or the quality of education like?
Well, the school offered a very, very fine type of education. You see,
Benedict was founded by northerners, what were called Yankees, for the
benefit of the freedmen, the children of the slaves. And many of the
people that came in were great scholars; in fact most of them were. And
we had the very finest of training and example.
Were the teachers mostly unmarried white women at Benedict? Were the teachers mostly white?
Some of them were couples, married couples, and some of them were widows
and some were unmarried. People came down with missionary zeal, and all
of them were highly religious. We had to study the Bible every day just
like we studied everything else, and we got credits in Bible just like
we did in arithmetic or geometry or whatever. And we had to attend
chapel today. And they told us that anything that was worth doing was
worth doing well. And of course as far as my mother's children were
concerned, we didn't have study hall. When we got through with our
chores, our supper and our chores we had to get our books and sit around
in the room where she was around the fire, where my
Were there any black teachers in the school?
Yes. Most of them were white, but as some of them were trained and came
to graduation… I remember one Miss Cecilia Gary who's still living in
Chicago: quite elderly, taught Latin for years. She eventually married a
man by the name of Mr. McWhorter and she moved to Chicago. There was a
Miss Lula Johnson; there was a Miss Alberta Boykin who is still living
(she's living in Chicago too). She was one. In a few more years there
were two or three others. But in the beginning … well, there was one
that taught mathmatics, a Professor Pegues who taught mathmatics. But
for the most part they were white, because they had to be; there weren't
enough Negroes trained up to that far for college work at that early
time. See, that was just thirty-five to fifty years after slavery. And
when they started off they started off mostly training for teachers and
preachers. That's what Benedict's, I think its charter or it's plan
called for, preparation of ministers and teachers. And of course when
they started it took a good while for them, for the slaves to become
financially able and keenly conscious of the need of education—that is
as a whole—to get them into the spirit of sending their children to
college. Then many of them even sent their children empty-handed since
they had little or nothing, but they wanted them to learn. And they'd
just come in wagons and bring them, maybe with one or two pieces of
clothing and some potatoes or something like that. But at that time the
school took them in. They didn't turn back any children because they
didn't have money. They took them in, and the buildings and grounds were
kept up by these people Up From Slavery.
That Booker Washington just went. Man, they just came, but they were
never turned down. Never!
And you got no feeling of paternalism or racism at all from your teachers?
No, I didn't see any. I don't remember any earmarks of racism, none. You
might call it paternalism if there was extreme interest in their
well-being, which I don't think would have been paternalism as we know
it today. You see, I've known some whites that have found themselves
working with us in the interracial field that showed stronger earmarks
of paternalism, that talk about "what we want to do for the Negroes,"
you know, and that type of thing. But these people served as a Christian
duty. They were dedicated to this, almost as a Christian missionary
going to the foreign field. Now I know a lot of them have become
mercinaries in the power structure, as you perhaps know; many of them
that we thought in the beginning were missionaries of burning zeal were
tools of the power structure of imperialism, we know that. But there was
nothing like that in these people here, because most of them worked for
nothing. They came down and they had housing and they had food.
Were any of the teachers at Benedict… ? How did they respond after World War I and even more after World War II when blacks started trying to take action in behalf of their own lives and so on? Were Benedict teachers supportive of this?
I finished Benedict in 1921. I think by the time that was coming in that
a good many of the whites that I am talking about had died out, had
either died or were old enough to have retired. There were very few of
them there. The only ones that I know very much about were working here
at Benedict and at Allen University in the fifties. And they entered
into the civil rights movement, and they were thoroughly persecuted by
the State. And some of the black teachers kind of bypassed them through
fear of being red-smeared, because the only tool with which the
political power structure fought them, the political education in the
power structure, was to red-smear them. And the average person, whether
he's black or white, particularly black, doesn't want to be called a
red, you see. That's the way they tried to destroy me, just calling me a
Communist fellow traveler and all that stuff. But I didn't pay any
attention because I beheld earlier
Did any of your teachers have any special influence on you?
I don't think so. I think I loved them all. I don't think of any. I guess I liked them because they were thorough, because my mother had taught us to be thorough. I don't think that there was any … I can't think of any that I was more greatly impressed with than another.
You graduated, then, in 1921?
Yes.
And started teaching.
Yes.
Right away?
Yes. I taught at Benedict one year; then I went into the city schools.
To Booker T. Washington?
Yes.
I see. What was that experience like in teaching? What were quality of education and the teaching conditions like?
At Booker?
Yes.
Well, Booker, the city schools in Columbia have always been described as being perhaps the most outstanding in South Carolina. The system has always been well recognized and highly touted. So I couldn't have taught in a better-regulated system——I don't mean that there weren't better ones, but I mean so far as South Carolina was concerned. And they had good schools and outstanding principals.
Who was the principal when you were there?
Cornell Johnson, Cornell A. Johnson. We had a superintendent that was a very fine man, one Dr. Hand, that was very much, in a way, like some of the teachers that I had at Benedict. He was straight-shooting and thorough and respected people for what they were and what they could produce. And so I would say that sofar as being a schoolman, he was a big inspiration, because I never saw any earmark of racism in him, although I don't know where Hand came from. But I do know he was superintendent of schools here, and I do know that during his tenure he tried to do the best he could for all the schools so far as he could with what he had and with what the structure would let him do. And his death was a great loss. I remember him very kindly.
How did you happen to become a math teacher? That was your father's influence perhaps?
I don't know. I always liked mathematics anyway. And when I went into the
schools they didn't have an opening for that. I think one year I taught
in the elementary school, around the sixth grade I guess it was. But as
soon as they could they put me in a mathematics position. I always liked
that; I liked mathematics and I liked medieval history. One of the
subjects I taught at Benedict was medieval history. And they tried
Did you know Wil Lou Gray?
Oh yes, I've known her for years.
What did you think of her adult literacy program and of her as a person?
I think Miss Wil Lou Gray was a product of her time. I've never forgiven her for calling her school the Opportunity School and opening it only to whites. I came near clashing with her on one occasion. And I have nothing against her. I think she has done a good work as she saw it. As I said, a person can be the product of his time and his environment, you know. And so she was moving along those guidelines. And Miss Wil Lou opened night schools … was instrumental in opening a night school at my mother's school, and they had night sessions there for several years. And she saw that they had materials; but so far as the Opportunity School was concerned … it seemed to me that she should have felt that black youth needed opportunity as well as white youth. And I've never forgiven her for not being able to see that.
When did the Opportunity School open?
I don't know. You'll have to look in the Manual to find out. I don't know. All of those things, those dates are listed in the Legislative Manual.
Did you try to do anything about that at the time, or have any clashes with her at the time?
No, no I didn't. Once when she was kind of… We were in some meeting where
a friend of mine was, and Miss Will Lou was doing a whole lot of talking
or heaping accolades upon herself and what she had done. And I leaned
over to a friend of mine and said, "I ought to get this old sister right
now, because she doesn't need all that praise, because she couldn't see
that opportunity was needed by all the youth in South Carolina." And she
said, "Let her alone. Don't bother her." She said, "Poor soul, she might
have been doing the best she could with the vision she had. Just don't
bother her"—because she knew that I'd run roughshod, you know. And so
she asked me please
When did you first get involved in, when did you first join the NAACP? I know your mother enrolled you in the Niagara movement when you were a child.
Well, you see, my mother at night when she used to read me all those old magazines about how they treated the gold diggers in the African Congo and all like that, the gold miners in Africa and different atrocities particularly on the African continent, I learned about those before I ever started to school. She'd show me the pictures, you know, as I told you before.
The NAACP's first chapter was organized here, I think, about 1916. But
now I guess it was maybe in the early twenties that I became really
When you got involved in the NAACP, did you sense any kind of generation conflict or generation gap between the people of your age, the younger members of the organization, and the older… ?
Well, all of them were old folks.
They were all old?
Yes. They didn't have any youth chapters as they have now. They were all older folks. And, of course, I guess I was perhaps the youngest of the group, because I would go with my mother. My sister who passed in 1926 and I were about the youngest that were going. Of course, you see, being the oldest child in the family and being around grown people most of the time I was just kind of … more adult in my thinking, I guess. So I think a lot of the oldsters that were in the group didn't think of me as the youngster so much as somebody, a young person with exceptional back-ground that could—you know, reading and knowing all these things. And they would listen about it; it was more of a deference than there was a difference. That's the way I see it. But I never sensed anything like that.
As the oldest child, did you have any special role in the family? What kind of relationship did you have with your brothers and sisters?
They were supposed to listen to me just as they would to my mother. My
mother had the idea that somehow or other her health wasn't so good. I
didn't know as much about babies and having babies as children
That must have made you grow up very fast.
Yes, in a way. By my father being out of town and my mother bearing
children, sometimes I'd have to get in the road and get to the carline,
and come downtown and look after whatever little business there was to
look after. I learned early how to take care of some little family
business, and go down and carry messages to my aunt that lived far on
the other end of town. While we lived beyond the other end of town and
out in the country, I knew how to get the streetcar and go down to their
place, or purchase certain things, or maybe pay… I don't remember any
bills we had to pay, except sometimes we had a furniture bill. If there
were farm implements my father took care of such payments as that. But
there may have been furniture bills. The only thing I can remember bills
maybe where we bought some furniture, especially after our home was
destroyed by fire. And I can remember having to do that, because my
father never allowed us to run charge accounts. I don't run them today.
We never, we never ran charge accounts, so it wasn't that type of
thing—although we could have. You know, like people used to get
groceries and pay for them at a certain time and all like that, but we
never had that. I can remember my mother saying on one occasion (as she
said on other occasions), "Now this is all we owe the man now. This is
the last I have to pay, so you
I've never forgotten that.
Did your mother have her babies at home?
Yes.
With a midwife or with a doctor?
Yes, midwife.
With a midwife?
Yes.
Somebody that lived around there?
Yes.
Do you remember that? What did you kids do when your mother… ?
I remember it. They always sent us to a friend's home.
Did you know what was going on?
No, didn't know anything about it.
How did you learn about the birthing of babies?
I don't know, but I was grown enough to be a mother myself before I knew.
Really?
No, they kept us close to cloistered on that type of thing.
Were your brothers treated any differently than the girls?
I don't know that they were. All of us had to work, and had to go to bed when we got through working. As I told somebody the other day, I told them about vacation. I said, "My mother and father didn't know how to spell vacation." I said, "God made the world so you tear your body down working in the day; you recreate it resting at night." I said, "But your trouble is you work in the day and then you raise the devil half the night and sleep about four hours. Then the next day you can't half work." See, a lot of people don't realize that. If we treat our bodies like the Lord intended us to treat them we wouldn't need vacations. I'm tired today when I get through work; I take my bath and go to bed, and my body recreates itself overnight. Then next morning I'm fresh to go, unless I cut it one way or the other.
Tell me the names of your brothers and sisters and when they were born, if you remember.
Oh, I don't know when all of them were born.
You don't know when they were born?
I don't know when all of them were born. I had a sister that died in infancy. Her name was Sarah Clyde. She died when she was about fourteen months old. And then I had a sister that came to maturity and died in 1926. She was teaching in the Columbia city schools when she died. She had a ruptured appendix and peritonitis.
That sister's name was Rovena Lucile. Then my brother who is a practicing
physician and a surgeon here was the fourth
What was his name?
His name was Henry Dobbins; he was named Dobbins after my grandfather and great-grandfather.
Now is he the brother that integrated the university?
No.
Didn't one of your brothers?
No, that was a sister. Then my brother's name is Henry Dobbins. Then I
have another brother whose name is Frank Hull; he carries my mother's
maiden name, Frank Hull. Then my next brother's name was Charles Walton;
he has passed. And then I had a sister Rebecca, Rachel Rebecca, who
integrated the University of South Carolina. Now she was married to a
Mr. Roberts, and by that union there were two children. She divorced him
and legally applied to take back her maiden name and to change the
children's names into the family name. So they go by Montieth.
I thought that I read that one of the first three black students in the university was a Henri Montieth.
Well, that's my sister's child.
I see, I see.
She's named Henri. They called it Henri, the French for Henry. She's really named for my brother.
I see. So she brought the suit.
My sister Rebecca brought it in the name of her daughter Henri.
Oh, Henri is a girl.
Yes.
I see, I see.
Yes.
How did you meet your husband? [Andrew Simkins]
Oh, he was here in Columbia in business, and I just ran into him, that's all
What did he do?
He was a businessman: a filling station and state liquor store, and in real estate. He did a lot of business in real estate.
He had been a wheelwright before this in Columbia?
No. He taught wheelwrighting at South Carolina State College in the time, you know, when they were having buggies and carriages and wagons and all like that, farm implements. But he taught that there. He was also a very good carpenter. He laid all these floors in this house.
He built this house?
No, no. Lord, this house was built before he was born. No, he laid the floors after we came here. These floors were worn and he laid these. This house has a double floor. And then when he left South Carolina State College he worked in insurance awhile with the North Carolina Mutual. And then he went into business here in Columbia. And that's where I met him, after he came to Columbia.
How long did you know each other before you were married?
Hmm. Oh, I guess about six or nine months, something like
And he had six children?
Five.
He had five children?
Yes.
What was it like, suddenly finding yourself the mother of five children?
Well, it wasn't… Well, three of the children were living with a relative
down in Dorchester County, one of them was with one of his sisters and
one with a sister of his mother. So it didn't seem… We didn't have the
three younger children with us for quite a while. And then when they did
come the lady that had kept them for several years came with them; so
she was … a second cousin in this way, that she was the child of the
oldest sister of a family of ten or eleven children. And these
children's mother was the child of the baby of those children. So these
little children were very much … she was almost like a grandmother to
them, you see. So she had virtual oversight of them, because I was out
working with the TB Association at that time. She had virtual over-sight
of them. And then I had a housekeeper too, because I was on the road all
the time. I had a very good housekeeper that was with me about sixteen
years. So that really after all there wasn't a whole lot that I had to
do from the standpoint of actual care, because with the younger ones
this elderly cousin was just about like a mother or a grandmother to
them—and she was almost like a mother to me, in a way. And then by that
time the two older boys were getting on into college age, so that so far
as being bumfuzzled by having a bunch of children to be responsible for
all at one
Was your husband a good bit older than you?
Sixteen years.
How did you happen to marry an older man?
Well, how do people happen to marry? They just happen to marry! I don't
know why it happened, I just happened to marry, that's all.
Was he involved in the kinds of civic activity?
He wasn't that much interested. He would give, but so far as being
involved in the way that I was and to the extent that I was… He wanted
to see changes, and every now and then he'd write a letter. He said, "I
want you to write a letter about something I read in the paper this
morning," or something like that. "Write a letter to the paper about
that." And he would say some things he'd like said in the letter, and he
But he liked social life; I never did, but he did. So he went to all the parties. He liked to play whist and poker; he came from a large family that were very skillful in cards——their father taught them that. He was a great card player. So he liked those things. He would go to card parties and receptions and things. All those things were boring to me. So it was just understood by our friends that "You see him here, but she just doesn't care for it much." You know, like you might see a husband somewhere and not a wife, you say, "There must be something wrong with them. They must be mad." But my friends understand even today there's no need to invite me to certain things because I wouldn't be there. I just don't care for them, and I don't feel like being bored to give somebody the pleasure of my company.
Did he mind your being on the road all the time and so involved in everything?
No, no, he didn't mind at all. And he was a man that loved company. Very
often I'd come home and find people put up here because there wasn't
anyplace for Negroes to stay here (you know, like they have now motels
and all). And they'd come in. All he had to do it to know that
You had to quit teaching when you got married.
Yes, the Columbia city schools didn't hire any married teachers. So, when you married, if it was in the middle of the school year, you got out.
What did you think about that?
Well, I didn't think anything of it. I just accepted that that was their
rule, and that was what I had to go by, just like anybody
That was in 1929, is that right?
Yes.
And then you went to work for the TB Association?
Yes. I didn't go to work for them, oh, for about two years. Oh, I don't
know, about two years: '31, I guess it was. '31 or
What was that job like?
Well, they were looking for somebody to do health education instruction in the schools, teaching health instruction to teachers. The TB Association was entering into a public health instruction—school health instruction, I should say—and we were to put on a state-wide program of that. They were looking for somebody that had the type of educational background like I had. Somebody recommended me; I don't know who. I finally took the job. They sent me away to school. I went up to Ypsilanti and took some courses at the University of Michigan at Ypsilanti. A few years later, they sent me up to the University of Michigan … that school is noted for its work in public health, as you know perhaps. Then, a part of my work was to promote the sale of Christmas seals to help pay for the tuberculosis program.
Did they get any money from the state, or was it all from…
It was private. The money came from Christmas seals.
Who ran the Tuberculosis Association?
It was run by the South Carolina Tuberculosis Association, which was a private …
Was there a board?
Yes, it had a board.
Was it mostly women or men?
Well, about equal, I guess.
And they had what, a colored division?
Yes, they had what they called a Negro program.
Were there any blacks on the board?
No, not on the board. This Negro group was kind of an advisory group. For instance, when they had the annual meetings, they'd hardly have a Negro there. If they did, they'd put him a way over in the corner somewhere. I never would bother with going to them because I didn't let anybody sit me in a corner. I'd just sit in my own corner in my house. But after I worked my program up quite a while, I had so many volunteers, scores and scores of them, that on several occasions I called my workers together and I'd always have a reception for them here during the State Teachers Association. Many of them were teachers. That irritated me, I mean just angered me because they were always telling me that tuberculosis is the greatest threat to blacks, and yet when they'd have these state meetings and they'd bring these authorities in on tuberculosis, case-finding and all that type of thing, the Negroes weren't there. They had them, and then they would kind of do like a pigeon: eat something and regurgitate it to the little pigeons. Well, that's the kind of thing that was.
I really had to tell my boss off one day when she was trying to make some kind of excuse about these separate things. You know, I knew why they were separate 'cause I knew what these segregation things were in these hotels and things. I said, "Well, one thing is boiled down to this. You all are concerned more about eating an old cold piece of chicken and a few little ol' green peas sitting up in the top of a pile of potatoes than you are about actually fighting tuberculosis." Oh, all that stuff just got on my nerves. Every now and then I'd have to boil it over.
Who was your boss?
A woman named Chauncey MacDonald—C-H-A-U-N-C-E-Y Blackburn. She came from a family of Blackburns, Chauncey Blackburn MacDonald. A highly religious family. I didn't say Christian; I said religious.
How did she respond to your …
Oh, she thought it was awful that I would think like that. She thought quite often that I was an awful creature.
What other conflicts did you have?
Well, I had several … one that I think of. Well, there were two other
outstanding. One was that she did not want me to work with NAACP, didn't
want to hear about me being connected with NAACP in any way. And she
called me in one day … which, I wasn't taking any time from my job
working with NAACP. But she didn't want to hear of me bothering … at
that time, the ferment had started in the state. The NAACP conference
was organized in 1940, state conference. She heard about that, and the
man who was president was a firebrand in a way. And she—I think some of
the Negroes on that board had something to do with it—but she said that
she thought that I ought to let somebody else take on the fight like
that, and I tend to what I was doing. I said, "Well, I'm not doing it on
the time." I said, "I can belong to NAACP, and it doesn't affect my
work. You ask me, you say, you want production. Am I bringing
production?" She said, "Yes." I said, "Well, what's the gripe?" Well,
she just thought that I ought not be in it. This man Hinton was an awful
man and I shouldn't be connected, and she would prefer that I shouldn't.
I said, "Well, if
That was one. And then around in that time, they made a picture down in Tuskegee about … some picture to help fight tuberculosis called "Let My People Live." And they premiered that picture in Camden. I mean, so far as South Carolina was concerned, they premiered it in Camden. I don't know where I saw it. I guess I saw it … I don't know where I saw it, but I saw it before she saw it. And some old woman in Camden saw it before she saw it. So she told me that Miss So-and-So in Camden said that they said that they were making "Let My People Live" as a picture by Negroes to help fight tuberculosis among Negroes. But it looks like they had more fair Negroes in it than they had actual showing of black Negroes. I said, "I saw ‘Let My People Live’." I said, "That old woman doesn't know what she's talking about." I said, "She either didn't see the picture or she didn't try to see it through because she got too shook up before she saw all of it." I said, "The preacher they got in there's as black as any ink I ever saw." I said, "And they've got the choir of Tuskegee in it, and I know there's no white people on that. And if there's any yellow ones on that, they didn't make themselves yellow."
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
I was just going to ask you why you quit working for the Association in 1942, for the Tuberculosis Association. Isn't that right?
Yes. I quit working for them because the conditions became untenable,
because of certain of these, you know, restrictions that were there
because of the NAACP. My boss told me that he thought I would have to
resign. I told her that I was not going to resign, that she would have
to fire me because I hadn't done anything to resign for, and my work
(according to what she said to me) had been productive and satisfactory
and that I had no reason to resign, and she could just fire me, which
she did not want to do. She told me I built up my program on
personality, not want me to enter into any
work in connection with venereal diseases—that is, in my public health
education program. So I refused to conform there, because I knew that
the venereal diseases were a problem. And since at that time we didn't
have anything but 606 (and it was a long-time treatment) we had to work
even harder in preventive programs than you have to today when you have
a kind of quick cure, you know. So that was another one of the kind of
endemic frictions, her feeling about anybody who had venereal disease
not worth bothering with—they'd been sinning, you know.
So anyway, at the time that I left there was a woman by the name of Mrs.
Parler. She has a PhD. Well, I guess she's retired from State College
now, but her husband was principal of one of the schools in Orangeburg
and she was teaching, as I remember, at State College or in one of the
city schools. But it was suggested that she be my successor. And the
people,
Were the funds that you raised used in the black community? And was that the limit of the funds that were used there, or did they divide equitably over all?
They were put into the general fund. We had really a
I wanted to ask you before we go on into the thirties just a couple of things back in about the twenties. In the old Interracial Commission, did you know or work with Mrs. Marion Birnie Wilkinson?
Yes. She was the wife of the president of State College.
Right. Can you tell me something about her, what she was like and what kind of role she played in things?
I never worked with her directly in the Interracial set-up. I know that she did belong to the state Interracial. But she lived in Orangeburg. She was a most gracious lady, queenly in her carriage and all, very, very refined. And she organized or was one of the organizers of the Colored Federation of Women's Clubs. I never have joined the clubs myself; I've never been a joiner, I'm more of a lone wolf type of person. But I do know the good work that it did. And I knew her quite well, especially since I worked at State College eleven summers. We also carried this program into the summer school at State College. So I knew her quite well, her husband and her children.
What did you think of his administration at State?
Well, he was president, I think, only … He wasn't there very long after I
got there. I've forgotten what year he died. Anyway, I was at State
College when he died, because I'd be down there every summer. But I
guess I just have to say that he was about as much as you could expect
for the time. All those people largely worked at the whims of the power
structure. They didn't always fight for all the money they should have
for the school; they didn't demand black participation on the boards. We
still don't have any black participant on the boards of the
But at that time you didn't feel extremely critical of the State administration?
State College administration?
Yes. That they could have done much more than they did?
Well, I guess being the people they were they couldn't have. If I had
been there I'd have done it different; I mean, being the person I am I
would have had perhaps a greater degree of concentration—because after
all, I would have compared what a pittance State College was getting
when it was the only source of higher education for Negroes in the state
(that is, tax supported) and what these other schools were getting. And
I would have been demanding more money. And I would have tried to build
the school up to where if a person went, say, through sophomore at State
College he would be accepted at the University of South Carolina, which
they refused to do because they knew that the advantages were not
equivalent, to say
I know the Federation of Women's Clubs supported a home for delinquent girls.
Yes, it was called the Farwald School, later Wilkenson Home—now an orphanage.
Did they involve themselves in any kind of protest or civil rights action at all?
No, no. Now I wasn't close enough to them to go to their annual meetings. I didn't have anything against them, and I thought they were doing good work, and from time to time I contributed financially. But it's just not my kind of program. I'm glad they did it, but I was doing something they wouldn't have done, you see. And I felt that since I had the philosophy that I did the best thing to do was to let them have their little thing and I'd take my little thing, you see. But I think whatever they did, it all came and converged into a purpose. But I wasn't close enough to know all of the details.
You mentioned when you first joined the Columbia NAACP going to meetings with your mother. Was your mother a member?
Yes, she was a member.
But not your father?
No. My father, as I remember I don't remember him ever having gone. In fact, my father didn't go to very many places. On the weekends he usually stayed at home with the children or around the farm, and relaxed himself, and often oiled and polished his guns (kept for home protection).
It wasn't due to any difference in …
No, no.
… philosophy or anything between them?
No, no. He was 100 percent for that.
Now during the thirties, then, during the period of the Depression, you told when we talked the first time about your efforts to get the WPA to hire black white collar workers, black professionals to teach. Were you involved in any other efforts to try to make the New Deal more responsive to blacks?
That was about perhaps the only thing there, with the exception of how it tied in with the work that I was doing with the Health Department. You see, I worked closely at that time… There were certain things that we'd get through the Health Department like literature and maybe film slides or … cottonseed meal to use for pellagra, because yeast ran short. And they fed yeast a lot to people who were malnourished to the point of developing pellagra.
But now other than this particular thing of publicizing the advantages of
NYA and WPA and getting as many people, blacks into white collar
positions as we could (where they were hiring white collar people of
that degree of training), the main thing was that certain things that
were done in the school health programs easily tied in with the
nutrition processes and all they were trying to get through in the
recovery period.
Why did you stay in the Republican party for so long?
Well, for the simple reason that I always believed that we ought to have
a two-party state. And then too, there was a time that the only way you
could show any evidence of party interest—that is that Negroes could—was
in the so-called Republican party. I did not belong to what was called
the Joe Tolbert faction of the party. Old Joe Tolbert, they called him
"tieless Joe;" he never wore a tie and his shoes were dared to be called Republicans ran out of the
party like a bunch of drowning rats, or rats scared to drown, and came
over into the Dixicrat party, which fed again into the South Carolina
Republican party. They were not people that were Republicans because
they wanted to be Republicans or because they admired the actions of
Lincoln or anything like that. They just didn't, could not tolerate the
idea of the Civil Rights Report and Truman's actions in that connection.
So then when in 1952, that is when Adlai Stevenson was running and when
the platform of the… I mean, I left the party at a meeting where I saw a
lot of these people that had come in and had never been in the movement
like I was with some other young white Republicans, particularly young
men who were anxious, as I was, to see a real sort of party-building,
not on emotions but just on actual strategy, because we thought there
should be eventually a checks and balances process in the political
system, you see. So the last meeting that I attended was in Jefferson
Hotel here in Columbia. The hotel is no more; it's where Jefferson
Square is now. And I saw all
[Summary of omission concerning involvement in the Southern Conference
for Human Welfare: She learned of the organization from Seymour Carol
How would you compare the Southern Conference with the Southern Regional Council when it was organized then a few years later?
Well, I would say that I had never quite thought of that. But I would say
that the Southern Conference for Human Welfare was organized as a direct
outcome of the Roosevelt recovery program, and that I believe it was
perhaps closer to the desire to provide absolute human necessities,
because the people were on bread lines. My husband didn't have work; he
worked on the bread line serving soup and apples to people here that
were on the bread line. And the people were just on their knees. People
were marching on Washington, being driven into on the horseback—you
know, you've read about that, those things. And the people, many of them
were in abject poverty. I've ridden into certain sections of this state
where I wondered if South Carolina would ever come
back. (Of course that wasn't only South Carolina but I was working in
South Carolina.) I've seen pot-bellied children eaten up with hookworm,
rickets, impetigo, scabies, every earmark of malnutrition, and nothing
to look forward to, nothing. You'd walk in some houses
and you wouldn't see anything, nothing. So I would say
that ERA started out to administer to the abject human needs, if that's
any way to express it. I mean, just a need that was so cruel that it
would be hard for the average person to realize. I realized it because I
saw it in my job. And I've always said that the most pitiful
But now, coming to the Southern Regional, the Southern Regional
approached more on a philosophical plane. They appealed to the
conditioning of the minds of the people to reach these needs, or merely
to raise them to a higher plane of social and political involvement. But
this other program I see as one of absolute necessity. You couldn't
think about improving the person's mind when he had an empty belly.
Christ knew that; Christ didn't preach to people that had an empty
stomach. He said, "Feed them. Sit them down and feed them; then I'll
preach to them, I'll teach them." And so we used to say in school, we
used to tell our teachers that. An empty bag won't stand up; you have to
see that the children get food some way. They didn't have school lunchs;
a lot of the children didn't have any lunch to bring to school. So I
think that although both of them were moving in the same direction, one
was where you had to just answer the basic physical, the basic, naked
physical needs of the people, and the other was conditioned to a plane
of people that could sympathize, and provide and perhaps plan
And then you were involved in the Council several years?
What Council?
The Southern Regional Council.
Oh yes, I've always belonged and always worked in it.
Remember when the Council first came out in 1951 with a public statement against segregation?
I don't remember it coming out. I remember that the Southern Conference for Human Welfare did.
Earlier than that.
Yes.
Yes.
[Summary of omission concerning the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF): Discussion of red-baiting, Richard Nixon, and her recent resignation from the SCEF board.]
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
How would you assess the role that interracial organizations like SCEF and the Southern Regional Council have played in the movement in the South?
I can't fully assess it. I could just say that I don't think the South
would be the same without what they did, because they opened the eyes of
a number of people. The thing that the political power structure had
against the organizations of that kind was the fear that they would
bring the black and white mass together. And the power structure has
always feared the combining of the forces of
So that was their affair. Why do they have to worry about Negro men and
their women? If they hadn't power enough to hold their women, if
somebody could take their women from 'em,, why, they ought to take 'em.
You see? Just like I hear people say sometimes if a woman can't hold her
husband
So, they use that sex thing. And they have used it as a social equality angle. They wanted to keep those forces apart, and they wanted to see that Negroes wouldn't take your job. When the unions come in, they try to tell whites if you get a union, the Negroes will take your jobs. They'll be making much as you make, or they'll bring your salary down to theirs, and all that kind of stuff. It's to divide the forces. They have always done that, and that's the reason a white Populist is not able to get anywhere much in the South. You see, the old Populist movement was killed, killed and almost died being born, because certain people who were Populists, not long after Reconstruction, would have destroyed their scheme.
Did you hear or know anything about the Populist movement when you were growing up?
No. My father used to talk about some of those … I used to hear him talk
a lot about Tom Watson in Georgia and his, you know, the effect that,
you know … he always spoke pleasantly of Tom
But the fact is, they are not interested in the masses or the people coming together. And they realize … I mean, history has repeated itself that you can't pressure the mass but so much before it revolts. I thought, I still think, I think things are a little easier now. But I would say six months ago, I believed fervently that we were moving toward a revolution in this country.
Six months ago?
Yes.
Why?
Well, the people were pressured with obligations and, you know,
disillusioned by Watergate, disillusioned particularly by the fact that
a shoplifter around here might be sent to prison for taking a loaf of
bread for his hungry children and Nixon's over there having protection.
You hear all the men off the street talking about that coming in here,
people on the street. You know, they say, "Why should we behave, why do
they put us in jail for thus-and-so, and they're taxing on us to let
Nixon sit down and give him protection by the Secret Service
You see, there were some very, very highly intelligent young men who organized the Southern Negro Youth Congress, some of the most brilliant men I've ever known.
Who were the …
Well, there was Louis Bernham, who's now dead; James Jackson, who's still living and works for the Communist Party; and a fellow named Strong. I've forgotten Strong's first name. And then there was Esther Jackson, James Jackson's wife, now with Freedomways.
Is she living?
She's living—a brilliant young woman. You know, you perhaps read that James went into hiding for a number of years. Where he went, I don't know, but he was in hiding for a number of years.
Why?
Well, they intended to persecute him like they did some other people who they said had communist leanings. Paul Robeson was closely connected with the Southern Negro Youth Congress. W. E. B. DuBois was an adherer. I don't remember the others. I have some programs from their meetings. I'm hoping, oh, about the next year to get all that stuff out.
Did the leaders of the Southern Negro Youth Congress go on to become key people in the civil rights movement twenty years later, or did they leave the South, or what happened to those people?
Well, they are connected with various interests. Whenever I go to New York, I see them. I was in New York to a dinner there for … I can't remember his name now, but anyway, I saw a number of them there. They're still interested in some phase of the movement.
Was the leadership southern?
I would say it was mixed. I guess the strongest element was perhaps the black students from northern universities.
Who came down to the South?
Yes.
How would you compare the Congress with SNCC?
I would say it was similar organizations, similar in ideals. It so happened at the time the Congress was on, we didn't have the vote in the South.
Were there white students in the organization?
In the Negro Youth Congress? Yes, there were some. There were, in '46, there were a number of them at Birmingham. Some of them were arrested and persecuted by Bull Connor and his crowd in Birmingham. I was down in Birmingham at the time.
The Congress was accused of being a communist front organization, of course.
Yes.
What would you say that the role of the Communist Party in the
I don't know. I'm not able to discuss that. I always heard a lot about Communists trying to influence Negroes and organizing them into certain movements and all like that, but I never saw any effect of it. The main effect I saw of the Communist Party in the South—and I didn't see that—but I do know that they were highly instrumental in the Scottsboro case. But other than that, I know after the Scottsboro case, Ben Davis, who became an outstanding Communist and served as a Communist Party member of the New York City Council, he lived in Atlanta, born and reared in Atlanta. But I never saw this thing they were talking about, that the Communists were always trying to influence and build a whole phalanx of activities among blacks. I never saw evidences of that. Now, I don't say that it wasn't, but I never saw it. And I got about as sharp eyes as anybody I think. I know none ever approached me. I know that. I never had anybody ask me to belong to the Communist Party or to belong to an organization that could be truthfully said to be communist. Now, I belonged to all kind of things that were called communist fronts, so that I've been Red-smeared up and down South Carolina.
Were you ever called before HUAC?
Never. I wanted to be, but they never called me. I wanted to get before them. I thought once kind of during the Henry Wallace campaign that I might be, but I wasn't. I think Clark Foreman was hoping that he would, too, but I don't think they ever called Clark before them.
From '42 to '56 then, you were a freelance person, right?
Yes.
Did you do some writing, some journalism during that time?
I did some writing. I did some writing for the Norfolk Journal and Guide for, I guess, about two years.
You were a correspondent?
It was just feature writing on activities in South Carolina. Other than that, I didn't do anything. Mainly during that period I was working with NAACP as a state secretary.
How did the state conference of the NAACP get organized? That was during that early, early period.
Well, a man came into this state from North Carolina. He was a plumber by trade, and he organized the branch in Cheraw, which is up near the North Carolina line.
What was his name?
Levi G. Byrd; still living, quite elderly. I think he and I are the only
two survivors of the founding group. And he had the vision that the
branches that were working autonomously in the state should be called
together in a conference. And so that's the reason why it was called
together, called together at Benedict, I think, in 1940 I believe
And you were elected state secretary at that time?
No, I wasn't secretary then. The lady who was secretary of the Cheraw branch was secretary for the first year. And it was at her request, her urging that they give me the position, since in the first place whatever we could call the headquarters of the state conference was to be in Columbia. And then she felt that I had had the wider experience in NAACP activities; and then from the standpoint of newswriting and all that kind of thing she said that she would prefer to become the assistant secretary and that I should be secretary. And so then for the next fifteen years I was.
Why didn't you ever become chairman of the organization?
Oh, I didn't want to be chairman of that organization. I didn't want to be secretary. I did it because I saw the need, and they asked me to. I have never wanted to be a front officer in anything, and I've never been. In fact, I'd rather not be prominently connected; I've always preferred to be a kind of behind-scene person.
Why is that?
That's just my make-up. I'd rather get behind there and pull strings,
like you play with these little puppets, then see the action take place.
I'm not particular about being a front person; I never have wanted to
be. Sometimes when you're on the outside you can be more effective than
when you're on the inside; a lot of people don't realize that. For
instance, what good would it be for me to be president of something (all
I can do is to preside and break the tie) when I can get over there on
the
You said when we talked the first time that the NAACP court cases during this early period were mapped out in your home. Can you tell me about these major cases?
I wouldn't say they were mapped out there. What we did on this end was handled there. You see, naturally a deal of that work sofar as laying the legal groundwork was done in the legal offices at NAACP. But there were some things that had to be done on the local scale. And then they had to come in maybe and contact people who had had experiences with these inequities and take their depositions and stuff like that. You know, there are a lot of things you don't learn in lawbooks. A lot of law is common sense, which a lot of lawyers don't have a lot of common sense. But a lot of law itself is just basic common sense. And so they had to come into the area where these things were happening and talk to a number of people. Of course, on this end the lawyers, Thurgood always stayed in my home. Thurgood Marshall always stayed in my home, as did the others as far as my home could accommodate. We had two extra bedrooms; some lawyers stayed there and the others stayed across the street from me. But they would have their meals and jam sessions around the table in my home.
And what were the major cases that the Association was pursuing?
Well, they pursued the Clarendon case against segregation
The Briggs vs. Elliott case?
Yes. And then there was the Elmore case against the primary (Elmore vs. Baskin), and then the Brown vs. somebody. You see, after we got the ballot, got the right to vote in the primary under the [J. Waties] Waring decision, then they said that we could vote in the primary but we could not participate in party or club activities. And that's when Waring had to go back and pass out this decision, you know, where you could go in at the precinct level. Blacks could belong to precinct organizations and move on up to the state convention. Then there was a teachers' salary case that was done at that time—and some smaller cases, but those were the four major ones. Transportation case: there was a transportation case.
What was that about? I don't remember that.
But transportation. All this you hear raised about busing now, well white
people had been fussing all the time—I mean when I say all the time,
from the time they had buses they'd had it. And they used to come along…
I've known times, I've heard my mother talk about how they'd come by and
deliberately run you in mud puddles and splash the water and mud on her
children, and she'd have to dry them off when they got to school, and
spit at them out of the windows and all like that. But they were riding
the buses and riding past the no-good black schools to get to the white
schools that were better than the black schools. They didn't worry about
that; they didn't worry about bussing then. All this mess they're
talking about bussing is a bunch of junk. They just don't want them
there. They're concerned about integration in the schools, but busing!
Was there a court case around the issue for blacks?
A court case to make them provide buses for black children.
What case was that, do you know?
That came out of Clarendon too. Yes, that came out of Clarendon, because there were buses. You see, some counties had a few buses. I remember in the Clarendon case, when they won that bus case coming out of Clarendon then they sent some buses down to Clarendon, some new buses. And they gave the old buses to the Negroes and took the new buses that were sent down as a result of this case for the whites. And the Negroes made them take them back; they were not going to have them. They were going to have the new buses that were sent down here. So that case, that bus case, as I remember it, had its initiation in Clarendon County.
What was your role exactly in all this?
Well, I knew conditions in various parts of the state because I traveled
all over the state at that time. And then in the case of the—well, with
the primary case, there was no precedent on which to base the voting
case in this state. And they had a slew of law students and lawyers
trying to find something on which to hook the primary case, because, you
see, in 1944 Olin D. Johnston (then the governor) called the special
session of the legislature and fine-combed the code of laws to take out
anything that they felt would be a point on which they could hang the
primary case. And so in that case we just had to start from scratch. I
can remember on one or two occasions when we went to federal court
Thurgood would say, "Well, you come up here and sit right by this rail"
(you know the rail that divides the lawyers from the observers). He'd
say, "You sit right up at the rail, because there might be something
we'll have to ask, something
Yes, right.
Of course in the salary case I knew a lot of things because I had worked
under the inequities of salary right here in the city schools. My sister
was one of those salary cases, the one that sued the university. She was
always ready to sue somebody.
There was something else I meant to tell you about those cases, but I've forgotten. It doesn't come to me now, but there was another important point I meant to give you about that.
How do you account for this? It seems to me that this was a real increase in the willingness of the NAACP to take direct court action. The organization grew during this time right after World War II. How do you account for that take-off?
Of that what?
It seemed like a real take-off point for the organization.
I think the type of leadership we got into the conference at the
beginning, a different type of leadership, a different type of president
we had and the determination of people who had been begging these
different… You know they had these little Democratic clubs, just like
they have these private clubs and they don't let Negroes and Jews come
in. Well, they had these little political clubs running the same ways.
The Negroes had just gotten tired of begging and appealing and asking
for a
What happened to the older leadership? Was it a take-over of the organization by different leaders at this point?
There was what might have been called a volatile state leadership. So
when the state organization was founded there was a small core of
determined people, and those people in the various areas who were
weak-kneed, they just had to fall by the wayside. As Truman said, "If
you can't stand the heat, get the hell out of the damned kitchen," see.
So that's what some of them did: they got out of the kitchen. And we let
it be known and said it broadly over all the state that we were not
going to have anybody to jeopardize their positions or their lifestyles
as they wanted to live it to join the movement, but we
would try to annihilate them if they got in the way. All we'd say, in
the words of the old spiritual, is "Just get out of the way and let the
church roll on." And we handled some of them in a very cruel manner.
How is that?
Well, we'd get up and talk about them, saying that they were people that
were working against their own people, either were working against or
were not interested; called theirnames, saying "There they are. They
call themselves your leaders; and now we've got a chance to do something
about this thing, where is he? What's your pastor doing? You
What kind of role do you think the preachers have played in the movement, generally?
Well, I think in some places they've done salient service. Around Columbia here they gave little or no assistance; we never got very much out of them here in early times. We still don't. Every now and then one of them would light up kind of like you see a lightning bug light up at night, and that's it.
Do you think they've been a really negative, conservative force for the most part?
I think they just don't give a damn. I don't think they're negative; I
think they're just thinking about self. You see, the church as I know it
(I'm talking about the black church here as I know it) has become
mercenary. It's a racket; religion is a racket. They build churches,
they have anniversaries, they have revivals this time of the year. They
have revivals: one preacher'll go and preach there and get a big
rake-off, he'll exchange with somebody else. And they become
mercenaries, a kind of a religious mafia with no socio-community
out-reach. Now I know they'll want to kill me for saying that, but
that's just what I believe. And they know the way I think about
How long have you been alienated from the church in that way?
Years; it's been years. I don't mean by that that I don't believe in the
philosophy as given us by Christ. And I believe in living by that. But
now I don't believe in the Christ that's preached to us, and I don't
listen to it. You know, a long time ago when a noted missionary went
into India, I don't remember now who it was but I remember the saying
that one of the prominent people in India said: "We will accept your
Christ but not your Christianity." Now that's what I mean. So I have
lost faith in the institutionalized black church. Now I can't say what
the white church is doing, but I do believe that on the whole, from what
I can hear… Now I know they got those movements, you know, like old Moon
and that bunch, you know (that's another mafia), but on the whole I
think that, from what I can gather from what comes over the radio and
TV, there must be a much more rounded program of church activities and
all like that in the general white church. Most of the black churches
are shut all the week. They go
You started working at the Victory Savings Bank in 1956, didn't you?
Yes.
When did your brother become president of the bank?
1948.
1948?
Yes.
He was a physician?
Yes.
How did he come to be president of the bank?
Well, he was on the board, and the board pressed him into service as president. They needed a good president, a younger man, and they pressed him into service. And he was supposed to have kept it for a little while. He had a very large practice, which he finally laid aside—well, in fact, he took the bank over in '48 and they had a heavy embezzlement in 1952 that they had to work out of. So where he might have gone back to his full strength of practice, it took some years to move out of that.
Now what was his name?
Henry Dobbins Montieth.
Can you tell me a little bit about the bank? Has it always been a black-owned and run bank?
Yes.
When was it founded?
1921.
1921?
Yes.
What kind of role has it played in the movement?
Well, it's a general commercial banking institution, you see.
Well, the control of white banks and white landlords over loans has been a real repressive force.
Yes.
Has the Victory been open to making loans to blacks when they couldn't get them because of discriminations?
Many times, many times they have. And during the stress period following the Waring decision when the NAACP was asking us to push forward for integration in the schools, economic pressures were put on blacks in those areas. And from various parts of the country, the money was pooled into this bank to help save crops and lands, farms. Many foundations place money here. And many homes and farms were saved at that time.
What was your position when you came to work here?
I came here as a public relations person, but I was told that I must
learn the banking system from the bottom up. So I started just as what
you might call a plain apprentice. And then I came to the point where I
worked on into the banking system and became a head of the bookkeeping
department. And then when the Hardan Street branch was built in 1962, I
was sent out here as one of the tellers, and eventually became manager.
After about a year, perhaps a year and a half, I was made head of the
bookkeeping department. And then in '62, I became connected with this
set-up. And
Has there been any pressure on you in your job because of your civil rights activities?
No, no. Not any.
No sense of your activities bringing bad publicity to the bank?
No, I never have. Not from stockholders or directors. In fact, being a black bank and with those activities, you popularize yourself in the black community.
After the '54 decision came down, the Orangeburg and Elloree parents petitioned the school board to try to integrate the schools, and economic pressure was brought on them, and a boycott was organized, and so on. Were you involved in that?
I organized the boycott.
You organized the boycott?
Yes.
Tell me how that all came about.
I'll have to show you some literature on that. I'm too tired to tell you
about it now. But anyway, we did organize … we didn't call it a boycott.
You know, there's a law against boycotting in
We did that. That was one thing we did. I ran across the other day the
list that we had, the boycott list. I remember another thing we did was
to list articles that we wanted the people not to buy. I mimeographed
them on my machine, and we cut them in little strips about like this,
and we stuck them under all the windshields at the big football games
down at Orangeburg. Then too, we knew that people had to trade
somewhere. So then we boycotted certain products. For instance, we'd say
… well, you see, the person who had the Coca Cola franchise in
Orangeburg refused to sell Coca Cola to blacks or to service the Coca
Cola vending machines in black businesses. So then we boycotted Coca
Cola. The national representative, black representative of Coca Cola,
Moss Kendrick, was sent in here to try to placate us. And it was about
that time—you
Oh yes, yes.
But about that time, we got a picture in Jet magazine
of a Coca Cola machine, brand-new vending machine, sitting unused in an
outstanding Exxon station … it was not Exxon, Standard Oil station in
Orangeburg, not being able to make any money on it because this
franchise wouldn't sell to them. So that got all over the country, and
Negroes everywhere started to boycott Coca Cola. It was at that time
that Pepsi Cola really caught a foothold and moved out from that point.
I don't think that it's nationally recognized, but I know that it did.
And then we boycotted certain products. For instance, say for instance, if they had National Biscuit Peanut Wafers and Tom's Peanut Wafers, we would just take one, you know? And then tell them to leave the other on the shelf. Or if it was a certain type of bread, we would say, buy this bread and not that bread. And maybe we'd take the type of bread that was sold principally in some of the main grocery stores because we knew people had to buy bread. We knew they had to have milk. So the man in Orangeburg who had the Coca Cola franchise had the franchise for Sunbeam bread. He also had the franchise for Paradise ice cream. So we boycotted those three things. We knew people wanted ice cream, they wanted bread, they needed milk for their children, so we just made them on the list to boycott. So it was a lot of strategic action.
How effective was the boycott?
Most effective, child. We closed one big apparel store down there. Those people were glad through that area when that thing let up, when they found out they couldn't just take those people's property and couldn't just bring them to their knees. A lot of those colored people that were pressured had been … if you were reared on a farm, you know about the lien thing where you buy things altogether, and your crop comes in, and you pay. And there wasn't anything wrong with their credit record, but they just cut 'em off—dap! You don't get fertilizer, you don't get seeds, you know, that type of thing. But we sent in fertilizer; we fixed it so we could get seed. After about two years of that, the banks and the merchants down there were glad to come back in.
How was it settled finally?
It was settled by them just telling one or two, why, everything's all right. You know, well, we got back in, kind of like you and your husband have a fuss. And every now and then, he'll say, "Well baby, I didn't mean it." You say, "You did mean it." And after a while, he says, "Well, I'm not going to tell you anything else. You can keep on loving me if you want," or something like that. They just kind of made love and got back together, you know.
I saw a truck farmer come in … he raised butter beans and snap beans, I
remember that, down in the Elloree area. I saw that man come in one
afternoon and pay $4,000 truck farm money to Victory bank at one time.
Well now, you know, if many of them pull that out, pulled that kind of
trade out of one of those little white banks down there, they felt it,
you see? Now he was just one. I saw that. And he was proud as he could
Who worked with you to organized that boycott?
The director of NAACP, executive director. You see, I was still state secretary of NAACP.
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
We were talking about the Orangeburg boycott and the squeeze and the
black reaction in '66 yesterday, and you said that it ended in a kind
No, I didn't say… Well, it ended in a truce sofar as maybe… No, it wasn't a truce, because in a truce you come together and make an agreement. It just ground down.
What were the results? What did it accomplish?
Well, the one thing about it, it prevented a widespread organization of
Citizens' Councils. We just about stopped them in their tracks. The
hotbed of them was Orangeburg, and it's still in that area, but they're
not a telling force. I will send you a copy of the statement we issued
in '56: that was the Citizens' Committee, the Richland County Citizens'
Committee issued in '56 which we sent widely over the state. And as I
told you the other day, we said that we would take action against—when I
say take action against, we would try to pull trade from any business
where we found some official of the Citizens' Council was connected. And
of course the almighty dollar is the almighty God of the power
structure, so that's where you draw blood.
Were you working mainly in your capacity as secretary of the NAACP, or through the Richland County Citizens' Committee?
Mainly through NAACP. But now I had a clash, and it was also in the mind
of the man who was the executive director at that time. NAACP through
the national office had asked us to get these petitions signed for
school desegregation. Then when the power structure stepped down on the
necks of the signers and on Negroes generally in those areas, denying
them of certain opportunities and privileges and conveniences, any
kindnesses, for instance, like liens and lending money on short term and
all like that, then we entered into a situation where we actually
And Simeon Booker of Jet and another fellow (I've
forgotten the second fellow, another fellow from Jet
or Ebony, I don't know which—they're all in the same
company) and our executive director Albert Redd (R-e-d-d) and Mr. L.A.
Blackman (who was NAACP president in Elloree where this fight was also
hot—that's in Orangeburg County—and where the Klan threatened him and
ordered him out of town, but he never left), Mr. Blackman and I don't
remember who else, but at least five men went into the area. They
disguised themselves in poor farming area attire and went into the area
after DeLaine's church was burned to investigate, and happened to get
out just in time to protect their lives from attack. They didn't finally
end until about sunset; it was a winter evening. So they came back to
Columbia and they were staying at the motel that I was running at that
time. And we were sitting around talking when Simeon Booker said, "I
just wish there was something we could do about this thing, how we could
help these people better being pressured this way." Jet, just a little enclosure and tell people to send
assistance into this area." He said, "Now, you would have to have a
place if goods come in to store them until you could get them
distributed." I said, "Well, I have a vacant store, a good-sized place
that we could use, and my brother has a vacant space in one of his
buildings. And I believe the space would not be a problem." So he put
this little box in Jet magazine, and in the course of
a week or ten days money, canned foods by the ton and clothing started
coming in. At the same time Adam Clayton Powell saw this little thing in
Jet, and he invited me up to talk at Abyssinian
Church. And his church sent scads of relief materials.
One Sunday I had a telephone call. My mother and I had been to some kind of thing, and we were sitting eating dinner that one Sunday once I had gotten home. And I went to the phone; it was Roy Wilkins. Wilkins said he heard of this program we had down here, that money was being sent in and other parts of this program that we had, and that "NAACP was not a relief organization." Those were his words: "NAACP is not a relief organization, and we just won't have it. And any money that you have, you send it back, every penny of it, to whoever sent it."
How was it named in the box? Was it NAACP?
No. It just asked for relief for NAACP pressured people, you see. No, it didn't go out under an appeal for NAACP.
How did people make their checks out, though, when they sent money?
We asked them to send them to some kind of relief fund; I've forgotten
what we had down, because, you see, we didn't intend for
So we went on with that program. And it was not well thought of even by
Hinton, who was president of this conference here. He said that we
shouldn't do this program. But I just took it on myself. And we had,
even at that time, to maneuver the restrictive buying campaign in a way
that it appeared that it wasn't directly NAACP, because NAACP was in a
very dangerous spot at that time—I say dangerous to the effect that they
said they weren't chartered in the state. And they once under Governor
James Byrnes's administration threatened to put a $7200. a day fine on
the organization.
One of the churches up North sent this two hundred pounds of hard candy.
So, we got the oranges and the apples and some tangerines, and I told
him to go down by a liquor store we had and get some two pound bags. I
told Blackman to call back, and I told him to get three or four women
and have them prepared so that when Mr. Redd got there with these
materials they could just bag this stuff. And so the children had their
party. So Mr. Blackman told me that one of the Negro mothers was working
in a white home. And after school her little boy would go by where his
mother was
Now I could go on and tell you other experiences I've had with NAACP that have alienated me, especially since the program has ground down—it's milk and water now from the national office down. I pay my member-ship every year, as I told you the other day, under protest. And I send them a little note: "I'm paying this under protest, but I want my member-ship in because when I get ready to raise hell, I don't want to raise it free of charge", see.
What were their explanations to you about why NAACP couldn't be involved in that kind of program? How did they see their position?
Well, in the first place, they weren't a relief program. They didn't have a relief department in the set-up. "It wasn't a relief program": now those were his words. Now what he meant by that I don't know.
Did it involve how they raised money themselves, or what kind of friction
it would stir up, or who their
I don't know. I don't know that. I didn't go into it. I thought only of the feelings of the children.
What was the NAACP's strategy during this time after the Supreme Court decision came down in '54, before the sit-ins started? What was the state association trying to do? What was their focus?
Well, with the exception of what Mr. Redd and I tried to do there was nothing. For some reason that we have never known the state president, who had been quite a fighter up until about 1956, quieted down. We've never known why he did. We have our ideas, but we've never known. It seems like some kind of pressure was put on him from some element in the power structure that caused him to … not push the program as he had.
Now was he a minister?
Yes.
What kind of pressure would he be vulnerable to? Economic?
Well now, I don't know. Well, he wasn't a minister that had a church. He
called himself a minister but he didn't have a church. He worked with
the Pilgrim Life Insurance Company. But we have never known why he acted
as he did, because he had been a great fighter. The only thing we could
do was to surmise. It was reported to us that one of his sons who was
working in some part of the government between schooltime or
And this was what, '55 to '57?
Roughly so; I'd have to look back in the files to say that. But as quickly as he could, not only did he get out of the presidency, but he worked some sort of plan so that I would get out of the secretaryship. It was reported to me by one of the members from South Carolina who were in a national annual meeting being held that year, I think either in Albany or Rochester, that Mr. Hinton said that he was going to get rid of me as secretary. And the question was asked, "Well, how can you do that, with the program she's doing? The people are not going to stand for it. How can you do it?" And his reply, as reported to me, was that, "You will see that I will."
So this man who came and brought me the message was Mr. L. G. Byrd, who I
told you the other day was probably along with myself the oldest two
living members of the founders of the state conference of the NAACP. So
he said, when he got back to South Carolina he came immediately to my
home and told me he thought that I should resign, after what he had
heard at the
The other officers were up on the stage or up in front?
Well see, Hinton had gotten out a new slate of officers, and I don't remember whether they were on the stage or not. But anyway, I don't think he even read who the officers were; he just kind of skidded by it.
If he had elected the officers of the state conference, how were they chosen?
By a nominating committee that he named, I guess.
Not by vote of the membership?
Very likely. Well, you know, they have all kinds of ways of doing things
like that. They'll have the nominating committee brought in when the
crowd is tired. You've been in meetings when they tire people out; then
everybody wants to come in there and give a resolution or a motion and
put it through quickly or something like that. In fact, in answer to
your question, he told the people at that meeting that I wanted to leave
the position, you see. And so there was no question to them, because he
gave them that impression. But when I got back to Columbia and knew by
that time he'd gotten back, I called him and told him he had lied to the
But anyway, from that day on I never was in a meeting with Hinton anywhere until they had some kind of meeting in Manning, where they were honoring the people who had been with NAACP twenty-five or more years, or in the civil rights fight twenty-five or more years, or something like that. And I was there on the rostrum with him that day. But we never held a conversation after that; I lost all respect and regard for him, and never bothered with him anymore.
And for some years past that he was, as old folks say, "pulling kiver" with the local power structure. They praised him and got him on various kinds of committees, just like they do what we call their "good niggers." Oh, the city council or something or other, the Chamber of Commerce gave this big dinner for him, a testimonial. They invited me to it, and I wrote that I could not come because I didn't respect the position that Hinton was now holding, and being as I am I couldn't take part in it. I have copies of those letters.
Did you write to the local branches?
Yes, I did.
And who took your place as secretary?
A fellow named I. DeQuincey Newman.
What was the upshot of it? Were you out of office from then on, or were you reinstated at some point?
I was out of office from then on. I didn't try to be reinstated because
in that type of atmosphere I couldn't work. I'm not the
After that I never was told, I never was called in; with all the experience I had, fifteen years' experience and knowing the NAACP program and working in what were the most noted federal cases and all in the history of the NAACP, I never was asked in as a consultant or told about the meetings. I think I was put on a program once, where there was to be a panel of Hinton, myself and John McCray (another man that hasn't come into the discussion that we had). And I told them that I refused to be in the same session with those two people, that either I would appear individually somewhere on the program or I wouldn't be on it. So they put me on a separate section of the program.
McCray was involved in the early period too,
Yes.
And what happened to him?
He's out at Talladega in Alabama.
But how did you become alienated from him? Was he a close ally of Hinson?
No, I became alienated in another way there with some of his
You don't mean the Progressive party in '48?
The Progressive Democratic party in South Carolina. He organized that because they didn't want us to participate in the National Democratic convention. That's between the cases of Elmore vs. Baskin and somebody else vs. Brown. But anyway, inbetween that they didn't want us to participate in party functions, as I told you the other day. And that meant you couldn't get into the national convention as a delegate. So that was organized to try to make a way into the national Democratic convention.
Very much like the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party?
Something like that, yes.
So when did this happen, that you went out of NAACP?
It must have been '57, I guess.
And since then you have never worked closely with the state association?
No. I saw that I could do a lot more otherwise.
What kind of things were you involved in then, in those years after you got out of the Association?
Well, my activities have been altogether with the Richland County Citizens' Committee.
Tell me about the organization of that.
I don't feel like talking about all that. I'll send you some material on
it. But anyway, I will tell you how it had its beginning.
You had a radio program?
Yes, for about seven years: a paid program. We never would accept public relations time, because we didn't want any kind of squeeze put on us. So we got on a continuing contract, paid.
We wanted to be in a position that we could say anything we wanted to short of trespassing on FCC regulations.
So that gives you a bird's eye view of the Citizens' Committee. And I think if you look at that copy I gave you you'll see a part of our objective on the bottom of that sheet—well maybe so, I don't know.
The sit-ins, in fact, started in Rock Hill. Weren't those the first sit-ins, in 1960?
I think in South Carolina they were.
Did you know that that strategy was about to be implemented there? Were you involved in that?
I wasn't involved in that. We didn't become involved until it moved into Columbia—which didn't take it long to move in here.
What kind of relationship did the Citizens' Committee have with the students that were leading sit-ins?
We counseled with them. A number of our members walked with them as they
went into these efforts. Then we raised funds or even gave
How did the NAACP respond at the beginning of the sit-in movement? Did they support the students, or did they hold back? Was Hinton still…? When did Hinton go out?
I don't remember, but he must have gone out in about 1960, I guess. I don't remember.
We used to have huge mass meetings here about the sit-ins; NAACP inspired
those, along with Citizens' Committee. Sometimes the local branch of
NAACP—very seldom, but sometimes the Citizens' Committee would work up a
community meeting, as a kind of coordination meeting where we would ask
other groups to be co-sponsors. We always gave the NAACP invitations to
do that, whether they did or not. But after I went out as secretary and
this new gentleman I DeQuincey Newman was in, sometimes they didn't seem
interested in any movement unless they started it. That's one of the
characteristics of NAACP: if they can't spearhead a movement they just
don't like to bother with it much, because they want the credit for
everything that's done. I talked to Roy Wilkins after the—there's
something there that I can't quite perhaps explain to you, but it would
be found, I'm almost sure, in the Waring papers—that after the—first
stage in the Clarendon case some other phase of that case was to be
brought, some type of appeal or something or another step in that case.
And the NAACP dragged its feet a long time during that period. Thurgood
Marshall was apparently fighting hard to get on the federal court; it
seems like he became obsessed with getting on the federal court. Now
this was Waring's opinion, as I understood it on one occasion when I was
visiting them. So he was so
So then the next thing we heard was the name of Martin Luther King. That
was about 1960; I imagine that was 1959 or '60 I called Roy. But I do
know that just after King was first heard of in Montgomery he was
invited to Columbia by, I think, Mr. I.S. Leevy, a businessman here who
worked early in the effort like I did to try to get the two party
system, as I explained to you the other day. And Martin Luther King came
through here and spoke in Columbia. He was just barely known at that
time, but Mr. Leevyhad heard of him and he said, "I want that man to
come to Columbia." And he invited him here and, I think, paid all his
expenses. And he stopped up at the motel that I owned.
I've wondered why. In the other Deep South states SOLC just moved into that vacuum.
They did.
Why didn't it happen in South Carolina as much?
Well, as I told you the other day, this state is different. I told you
the other day this state is very different—not the power structure. The
power structure has a velvet-covered nailed fist, and I think they felt,
you see… They did have the primary case in Texas, but it never got the
hot fight that we had. You see, this thing got so hot here that Judge
Waring told the Democratic Party on one occasion that he was going to
jail them if they trespassed on his decision concerning participation in
the party functions. His words were that he'd "put them in jail." And
the power structure knew that we would move out towards the federal
courts. We never had anybody whipped and shot at in this state except
they shot in Hinton's house out here; they shot at his home. They shot
in my motel. But now this widespread… I think when my sister was …
running the case against Carolina they threw a bomb in my brother's
yard. She said they used to put rotten eggs and body wastes in her
mailbox. But they didn't start up the road to our home out in the
country because they knew she had that .38 up there,
But now this wholesale nightriding and all that mess, we didn't have it in South Carolina. Now the stuff is right down, it's right there under the surface a little bit, but they knew we would go to court. I remember sending out a directive to our branches when we first got to register. And some of them were talking about how they weren't going to do this and weren't going to do that on these little registration committees. I wrote this thing out, and then I put a P.S. on there and said, "Be sure you go to register. Take two people with you so that you will be prepared to make an affadavit"—and some other big-talking stuff I put on there. And then I sent a copy to each of the counties where the registration would take place, to the registration boards. And they knew we were ready to move, see. We were using Hitler's old fear technique too. We learned how to use that: you know, just get your bluff in first. A lot of it was bluff, but it worked. It's just like when a pack of them go to march on a home or something or other. If you shoot one of them they all run like a pack of dogs. They shot in our home in Eldorado, (Ark.) and my Daddy hit one of them and that was the end of that, see.
Why didn't black activists turn to SCLC after the NAACP became
[END OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE B]
Well, you see, NAACP was still carrying on a type of program in South
Carolina under I. DeQuincey Newman. It was carrying on a type of
program, but it was one of these programs that maybe you've heard about
where you just every now and then send out a news release—it was what I
call a headline program, you know, getting articles and headlines from
the papers. And it kept the people kind of bamboozled. They thought the
NAACP was still doing something. And then the ministerial leadership of
the state never really as a whole accepted King. I remember about four
years ago they wanted Abernathy to come here to the South Carolina State
Baptist Convention. Some of them said they wanted him, but Abernathy
told them that they were going to send him an invitation before he came.
And we couldn't find out when Abernathy was coming. People would call
here at the bank, "When is Reverend Abernathy going to speak? Somebody
said it was ten o'clock, somebody said it was eleven o'clock, somebody
else said it was two o'clock." And one of our members who is still
working with the company here delivering auto parts called here, and
then he said, "Well, I'm going down there and run by every now and then
on my trips and see if I can find out." Well, eventually we found out
that this man was going to speak about two o'clock. A man was head
teller here then, and I asked him if I could get off and go down there.
And Abernathy did come. But the leaders in the convention weren't so
sure they wanted Abernathy here, because I don't remember that they ever
asked King here. The only time that I remember King was brought here he
was brought by Leevy, as I told you a while ago. But Abernathy knew
that the leadership in that convention wasn't particular about him being
there. He knew that.
Well, SCLC did come into the Charleston Hospital strike.
Yes, that's right.
But I believe that was the only big campaign that they staged in the state.
That's right.
I was talking to a journalist about the South Carolina movement, who said that, in talking about the pecularity of Columbia being that there's never been a coherent black movement here, that there've been real strongly warring factions all along. Do you think that that's true?
Warring in Columbia?
Yes.
I don't think so.
That the movement's been splintered always.
I don't they're warring factions. I think maybe some people have become
disgusted with some of the leaders that have been appointed by the power
structure, and the power structure has a way of knowing who the Negro
leaders ought to be. And they throw them into those positions
politically and educationally, and the people just refuse, or they've
made up their minds they're not going to follow the …
Who was this fellow, this young minister?
His name was William Henderson. This town is peculiar, but I can't say
they're warring factions. They're not that; they're just do-nothing
factions. One of the reasons, I think, is this town has grown
How would you characterize the different groupings, the different factions?
I don't say they're factions.
You wouldn't call…?
No, I wouldn't call them factions. They're not that type of thing;
they're not factions. They're either "do" or "don't do," but there's no
such thing as warring factions. Now I know that report has been put out.
I know a man came here once to interview me, from I think they called it
the Tampa Bulletin (I think there's some paper down
there by that name), and he told me that the mayor then told him that
there were warring factions here, and that I was a person that had some
kind of bad influence. I mean, I guess he was talking about my supposed
Communist influence or something like that. But he said that that's the
reason—the same thing you're telling me. I know that was told to a man
from the Tampa Bulletin. But it isn't that. It's just
that I think the town has just grown so fast it hasn't had time to catch
hands.
Who have your main allies been that have been consistent over the years, have worked with you and been out front in all the different…?
Well, mostly … there's nobody. There might be … I can't say that
consistently we've had the cooperation (with whatever movement we say we
have here), or constant cooperation of one minister. Now when you
request cooperation, they bless you in what you're trying to do, and
they think it's a good thing, and you may be able if you're
Well, if not the ministers, then who have been the backbone of the movement in South Carolina, or the leadership?
The leadership, whatever leadership there has been, has been largely through whatever type of leadership that NAACP has given. But it's kept itself in the limelight somewhat by what they call semi-annual conferences, or mini conferences we call it, and the annual conference. But in such meetings they have a very poor attendance, and the impact on the state itself is poor because all of the people in the high echelons of the political set-up know that NAACP hasn't any bite in it anymore. But then they get good coverage; they get on TV and make these statements, and they get good coverage. The press is good to them. So then the masses of people don't know, they don't know how to make the analysis I'm making this morning, you see.
But the movement in South Carolina didn't produce leaders from the grass roots?
No, not of state-wide impact.
Then it had been throughout the period an NAACP, primarily professional middle-class leadership?
Not primarily. Some branches produced strong spirits, few of whom generated state-wide public notice.
What about people like Victoria DeLee?
Victoria DeLee made a good fight. I don't know; you know, we think they framed her son down there in the trouble that they have had there where they claimed he did something or other, that the car was out of order so those children were killed. Then her daughter ran for magistrate down there, and I think she won. But they had quieted her; she has gotten quiet. I don't know. I haven't been down to see her and I don't want to talk on the telephone to her. It's my intention to go down and see her one Sunday or something like that.
DeLee spoke in one of our meetings, one of our annual Martin Luther King, Jr. memorials, and was most effective. And she did a very good fight down there. But in some way she appears to have been neutralized. Now we have one or two people in there, well, I'll say maybe three blacks in the legislature that are pretty good fighters.
So many of the youngsters have become disillusioned with NAACP; they're not developing a new crop.
What individuals have worked with you most closely?
Well, the main individuals—and that's about scarce as hen's teeth…
Sometimes it's a case, you just get in a situation where if
Now we are at a great disadvantage because we do not have legal aid—
How many members do you have?
We don't have a definite membership from the standpoint of … Our membership is one where they're not members unless they're registered to vote. We do not have a membership fee, so we can't say how many members we have. It's a loose membership. But we do have the cooperation of the mass. I mean, if a problem arises, say … well, just say a brutality case or some other thing where they need community action we can call a meeting and have a highly appreciative audience.
You're the real guiding spirit behind the organization?
Well, from the standpoint of publicity and public relations I am.
Are there other officers on there?
Oh yes; yes, we have officers just like every other organization. We're chartered by the state.
Were some of them people that you had worked with, like in the last twenty years or so, something like that?
Some of them more than that, yes. See, the organization, as I told you, it was a parallel organization to NAACP in order that funds might be paid into it so that we could send it over to NAACP and we'd have an interlaced board (some of the officers in state office of NAACP were in certain positions with Citizens' Committee and vice-versa). It was really the NAACP riding under another name, just like many organizations have set-ups for channeling their funds through.
How did you get involved in the state mental hospital situation
That developed because we found out the conditions under which the people were living at what they called Palmetto Sanitorium.
How did you find out about the situation?
Well, we knew it all the time. Our homestead is in that area. But we
didn't know it as well as we knew it until I went up in that area in
business. And my sister who is now dead, the one who sued the University
of South Carolina, was very friendly with a woman who lived on the
premises of the state hospital. And this woman worked with us as a
helper at the motel. And she would often tell us how these people had no
shoes, and the women lacked underwear and gowns and things like that.
And we kept talking about it, and finally we did the same type of thing
that was done with the DeLaine case. We had people to go in disguise as
though they were visiting the patients. And they slipped in cameras and
took pictures of the situation there. Now they've often told me that I
should have seen how my sister looked the Sunday they went in. But they
looked like people that came from a little old town way off somewhere
that didn't know they ought to be dressed up when they get to the state
hospital. So they got into some of the buildings, some of the buildings
that the folks (when I say the folks I mean the workers, nurses or
whatever were in charge) weren't too particular about them getting in.
So they did get into two of the worst buildings: some of them were
leaking, dirty, unscreened and all like that. So then when we got that
information—we had a lot of information by mouth, but then we got these
pictures—then we asked for an audience with the governor, who was
Russell at that time, Governor Donald Russell. Oh, we wrote a letter to
the legislature (I ran across a copy of that letter the other day); we
wrote a
Anyway, with my sister's assistance we found out a lot of these things.
The governor, we asked him if he would go, and he said he would. We got
outside in this kind of sleety cold day, and we sent back in and asked
him if he would go a certain Saturday which would have been about ten
days off. And he said he would write and let us know, which he did. Now
the press somehow or other found out that we were having this meeting
that day, and several members of the press appeared. One of them was
from the Charleston News and Courier; his name is Hugh
Gibson. I never had met Hugh before, and I never understood why we got
such cooperation through their Columbia man, Columbia reporter, because
the Charleston News and Courier had always fought me
viciously as a Communist sympathizer. But anyway, they cooperated with
us in this effort. And Hugh Gibson came out on the steps of the capitol
and was talking to me about it; and he said, "Are you that Mrs.
Simkins?" I said, "Yes, I am." He said, "I sat there looking at you." He
said, going to do thus-and-so.
And so he had all these plans; you know, some of them were tissue paper
and some of them were stiff paper. And it was a roll about this long,
and when you opened it out it would be as long as this table here, or
maybe longer if you opened the whole thing out. So he kept talking about
this was going to be this and this was going to be that. So finally I
said, "I am not concerned about the buildings you're going to build.
When are you going to get some shoes and some underwear and some gowns
for these people, and fix those buildings up?" And that's when I started
to raise all hell. And so Hall stammers a little; he's very slow in
talking and then he kind of stammers a little bit. And Hall couldn't get
off the ground.
So we went on this visit. They arranged buses connected with the … you
know they had buses to carry the patients around in. So the governor and
his wife and two or three others, trustees of the state hospital, and a
number of the Citizens' Committee members and others who desired to go
went in these buses. We went and visited the one uptown here, and then
we went on out to this other. And you would have to go through the
literature to find out the differences in this and in that. They had
psychiatrists down here at this place; they had no psychiatrists up at
the other place—I mean, all these things are outlined in this
literature. And after we got through visiting around at what they called
the "Upstate" (the colored folks called it "Upstate") we had a gathering
in the little chapel space, the
So then we disclosed all of that. And the next thing we knew they started
those buildings there. There are beautiful buildings up there now. And
they did it quickly too! There was one old soul up here at the S.C.
State that was real shaken up about all the hell we were raising about
the segregated state hospitals. She was crazy about cats, and she had
these cats up there. And when the cats had kittens some of them were
white and some were black and some were black and white. I was told that
Miss Phipps (the cat lover) said that she bet Modjeska Simkins would
have commendation for these black and white kittens being
together—something in that order. Well,
They also had a way of sending some of the women patients from Palmetto
down there to bathe and help to dress the white patients up here at the
S.C. (main) Hospital. And one of the old women's stomach got scalded
very badly. And so we found out about it. We'd get all kind of news,
from both white and colored informers. Sometimes they would bring the
news and tell you, and sometimes if they didn't want their names
recorded, they'd bring it here and push it through the slot and it'd
fall down in the vault over there. So we said that this woman's stomach
had been scalded while she was being bathed by one of these black
patients, and we didn't know whether it was deliberate or not. Then
they'd bring the black male patients from
The Anderson Independent attacked me on it—now when I
say attacked me, they always go back. Instead of saying "The Citizens'
Committee did thus-and-so" they'll say "The black activist in Columbia
did thus-and-so or said thus-and-so". The "black activist" Modjeska
Simkins, which is all right with me. But they always focus that
attention, you know. Now it's all right; I mean to say I don't mind it
except that I think the whole organization ought to have the credit.
Does the Citizens' Committee endorse candidates and take stands in political campaigns?
Yes we do, we do. That's a tacit endorsement.
Looking at the papers, it seems that one of your more controvertial stands was your opposition to Fritz Hollings. I think the NAACP supported him?
Yes, they did; they did.
What had been the basis of your…? You've maintained your opposition to him all…
Still oppose him. Well, the stand that he took in the first Orangeburg
uprising. You might find—if you didn't see in the Citizens' Committee
stuff I can find it and send it to you—where Hollings, when they had
that first strike at State College they arrested a lot of those
students, scads of them. They didn't have enough space in the jail; they
put them in an enclosure, a wired-in enclosure around the jail. It was a
Why?
Money. The money didn't go to the NAACP itself; it went in the pockets of some of the NAACP big wig people that collaborated.
Now was he running for the U.S. Senate then?
He was, right. Running against Olin D. Johnston, I think.
When? In sixty-…?
It must have been sixty-four, I guess; I guess it was sixty-four.
How did that work? Where did the money come from?
Well, it came from political forces,
From Hollings's supporters?
Yes. They'd pay it over to certain wheelers and dealers who say they can
control the black vote. That doesn't happen only in South Carolina, but
we know about it here. For instance, we had another organization in
South Carolina called the Palmetto State Voters' Association, and they
and the NAACP worked together. I mean, there was nothing wrong with
that; it was just two organizations. The Palmetto State Voters put on a
great effort to get people registered. In fact, there were several major
efforts to get people registered right after we got the vote. And the
Palmetto State Voters called their meeting—I guess it's Palmetto State
Voters—and the NAACP called their meeting in Florence. I knew the
meeting was to be. I
All right. They got in there and they started to—I don't know whether you all want to hear all this mess or not—deliberations.
Yes.
And then towards the afternoon session they decided they were going to
talk about candidates. All the Charleston group was there. A lot of them
as little boys, I reckon as little boys played with Fritz Hollings. And
they were there strong, 100 percent strong. So they started talking
about it. And they said they thought they'd better declare an executive
session, and all the news people should be put out. There were about two
or three poor little pitiful boking white reporters there coming from
those little county papers, you know, and I guess the correspondents by
wire for the state; so they got out. Somebody said, "That colored man
sitting back there, he's a newspaper man too." Somebody said, "Well,
he's colored; maybe…" "No, he's got to get out of there too." They put
him out. Well, I was sitting over there; and they didn't know it, but I
was a correspondent for the Associated Negro Press. I had gotten so at
that time I wasn't as active as I had been, but I could have sent them
anything I wanted to send them. They didn't know anything about my media
connections, so I stayed on in there. So then they started talking about
the candidates. So I told them that I didn't think they ought to name
candidates that day. I said, "Any candidate you name today will have his
position jeopardized as a candidate.
Now who was Hollings running against?
Olin D. Johnston, as I remember. So then when I had left Columbia I had
already gotten out my little slate; and my sister and the other girls at
the place, and my niece and nephew were working on folding and stuffing
the letters I had. I was getting out three thousand letters over South
Carolina—at my own expense: I never allowed anybody to give me any money
on those kind of things. Then I called Hunter. I said, "Hunter, I
thought…" No, I got a call from Mr. Blackman in Elloree—the one that I
told you about the Christmas party—and he said he'd gotten a letter from
Newman, who was the executive director then of NAACP, bringing this
little ballot in that they had used. I said, "Well, they haven't said
Was that true? Did you know all that?
Yes, I knew all of that; I knew it every bit. I said, "Now, you've got
the money; dadblamit, you spend it. I dare you to spend it." And that's
when I hung up the phone. That's one of the things that you tell them
and then you don't give them a chance to answer; you hang up the phone.
But brother, there's been some hot times in strategy in this state. It's
just had to be a cool, underground strategy a lot of the times. It's not
so much in this type of thing, it's not so much what a person can do as
what kind of strategy he can use to do it. But Humphrey spoke here a few
months back; Hunter came over for the thing, and he came around to speak
to me. We are good friends. But I don't know what Hunter ever did with
that money.
Hollings ran against John Bolt Culbertson in '66.
What about it?
Didn't Hollings run against Culbertson in '66?
Culbertson run against Hollings.
Yes; right. Who is he?
Who?
Culbertson.
Culbertson's a well-known character in this state. He's kind of like Waring. He used to belong to that old muck-de-muck aristocracy, and he turned towards the civil rights movement, handled a lot of the civil rights cases and was ostracized by whites and the legal profession.
He was an attorney in Greenville?
He's an attorney still in Greenville. He was a member of the legislature
at one time. The first time I remember anything about John Bolt was when
Thurmond was going out as governor. Thurmond wanted to take his desk and
chair with him. And I was reading the State one
morning, and it said that John Bolt Culbertson said if giving Strom
Thurmond the desk and chair would get rid of him, give it to him! I
said, well, that's sure a man I would like to know.
And then we had an organization here called the Columbia Women's Council,
who brought in one of the first black congressmen. I've forgotten his
name. He came out of Virginia. We brought him in here as
He was on the SCEF board?
At one time, yes. You would enjoy talking to Culbertson. He has a great big old house up there. He has a place where you can stay. He's a remarkable person.
How did Fritz Hollings manage to get such a reputation for liberalism?
I don't know. I've never known him to have … I guess, well, he was pleasantly known by the Charleston Negroes and I guess, you know, when the support came out on Dr. Fatch … the physician in Beaufort County, S.C. that brought out about the worms and the malnutrition in local children, and they tried to kill him off down there. Hollings eventually entered into the food fight, as you remember. I think it was after he entered the nutrition thing that they wanted to give him this doctorate over there at Benedict.
You don't think Hollings has had a change of heart?
I don't think any of them change their hearts. They're that kind-'till they get ready to die.
Have you read Jack Bass and Jack Nelson's book, The
Orangeville Massacre?
No, I've read reviews on it, but I've never read the book entirely.
I just wondered what you thought about it, as somebody who'd followed it closely and been involved.
I didn't read the book. I don't get a chance now to read many books
through and through. Every day when you say tonight, "I'll do this
tomorrow," something else comes up. I don't get a chance. I read short
articles and reviews. I know Jack Bass well. He used to be on the Charlotte Observer here, and I know him real well.
We've been on numbers of situations together. I know all about that
Orangeburg situation. Now about what the book is concerned, I don't know
what I would think about that. Knowing him as I do, I guess I'd be
pleased with it.
He told me a story about your calling him up and telling him about the conditions in the mental hospital, and they sounded so bad, he didn't believe they could be true. When he found out they were true, that's when he started keeping his ears open for what the Citizens' Committee had to say.
Well, a lot of times they don't believe those things. Just like a lot of
these officials you have, public officials, you know. They live in the
muck-de-muck neighborhoods and when they go home, they don't even pass
the blighted areas. They don't know what's going on. A lot of them don't
know. They ought to know. You don't excuse them because they don't know.
You blame them because they ought to know. No, they wouldn't have
believed. The governor didn't know about this thing up there at the
Palmetto hospital. I do know that the next Sunday, Saturday or Sunday
after we brought out these earlier disclosures, somebody went up there
and they had one of these long vans. I tell you why they went up. We got
the intelligence in some way that some people from some noted mental
institution up around Baltimore were coming in here. The governor had
invited them in here for consultation about the situation, and we heard
that they were going to be up there that Sunday. And so we sent somebody
up there. And this big van was up there unloading underwear and things
for these people. Said it was one of the longest vans they ever saw. And
they had all this apparel, shoes and all that. But the same week that
I'm telling you about, when they had this sleet storm, we had the
intelligence that a lot of those women didn't even have shoes when they
What was your involvement in the events that led up to the Orangeburg …
I can't say I was involved in the events that led up there. I made this
shortly before that … I think I made this address—in fact, it's on that
green sheet on that copy I gave you—and I talked to the youth NAACP down
there. But I wasn't involved in what actually happened. The Sunday that
I was down there … how that thing started involving that thing at
Orangeburg was some of the fellows that came back from the Korean War
and went to ROTC or something down there, I mean, were connected with
the student body down there, were dissatisfied coming back finding the
same situations. And they started that ferment. They'd already marched
to downtown the week before I was asked to be speaker at the youth
NAACP. So the thing happened the next Tuesday or Thursday night, or
something like that. I know they got a little old piece of a black paper
down there called … I've
We discussed with him the conditions at State College. We had, by that time, organized what was called the Task Force for Quality Education because we were getting ready to run away Turner, who was the president down there. We didn't think we were going to run him away so fast, but it got so hot he left the scene at the end of that school term, which was way out in the school term when these events started to happening.
This wasn't the same Turner that was involved in the Hollings situation, was it?
President of State College?
Yes.
Yes, we ran that rascal away from here—at high speed. I wouldn't say he was involved in the Hollings situation. He was there when Hollings was governor. He catered altogether to the whites in Orangeburg. He hardly moved around to any social functions or anything with Negroes. I don't mean to say he went to white functions.
[END OF TAPE 3, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 4, SIDE A]
We were talking about Orangeburg.
Oh, we were in Mr. Cauthen's office, and Billy Fleming of Clarendon, and
a fellow who by that time had been a black trustee of State College was
there (I've forgotten his name), and another black trustee named I.P.
Stanback was there, and a student from Orangeburg and I. And this
student was very much upset, in that he made the statement that they
needed relief at Orangeburg. If something did not happen to cool the
situation, he felt there was going to be bloodshed. That was on in the
afternoon about four o'clock. So Mr. Cauthen, we finished having our
meeting about the Orangeburg situation, and Mr. Cauthen and Governor
Robert E. McNair by that time had had a serious difference about the
higher education program in the state. Hollings was governor during the
first strike; this was the second strike. Mr. Cauthen and McNair had had
serious differences about the way education should be handled in the
higher institutions. So Cauthen said, "I don't know whether there's much
that I can do with Bob, but I'll tell you what you all do. I have a
brother who is ill, and if anything happens so that you need me you call
me at my home. And if I'm not there, you call me at my brother's home.
And if I'm not at my brother's home I'll be between the two, and they
will give me the message."
So we had a member of our organization down at Orangeburg; he's a
photographer and newsman, freelance. So we had him down there. After we
left Cauthen's office we came into this office, and two men from
Orangeburg met here with Billy Fleming and myself, and we were talking
about the Orangeburg situation. The phone rang, and our representative
at Orangeburg
In the meantime, when we got a hold to Cauthen we had already called the
governor's mansion. Some nitwit they had up there (who seemed to be a
retard of about second-grade intelligence) kept telling us (we didn't
get his name) that "The governor's not here; the governor's not here."
So when we got Mr. Cauthen he said, "Bob is there, and
I will call him." So he called, and called back.
Billy and I stayed here. He called back and said, "Bob said that the
students were threatening to burn down a white lady's house there by the
campus, and her property has got to be protected." That's all the answer
he got from McNair.
So then (I guess it's torn down now) there was an old two-story house
there that looked worse than my house, all dilapidated. My house is not
To show you the stripe of the NAACP leadership. That was in February when
the massacre happened. The national convention was held that year in
June, as I remember, in Chicago—well anyway, it was held in June. And
every high exponent of the NAACP was with McNair
and those in Chicago.3
Was what?
Was with the Democratic delegation in Chicago, every last one of them: up
there wining and dining and, you know, collaborating with the S.C.
Democratic crew that had upheld the massacre. Well, that same
convention, I've forgotten his name, some black fellow out of Washington
was nominated for president. He didn't get a quarter of a vote out of
the South Carolina delegation, which included several black delegates.
Also they were up there talking about nominating, trying to get McNair
nominated as vice-president, as perhaps you know. So the Citizens'
Committee discussed the stand they were going to take on that; of course
he never would have been nominated, but we wanted to get "a little piece
of the rock," as they say. We sent telegrams up there to Lyndon Johnson
and Humphrey, the wire services, NBC, CBS and ABC and all like that. We
sent telegrams up there about the situation in South Carolina and
against McNair. And when I got my bill on my telephone it was $136 worth
of telegrams—
You mean the Columbia paper didn't cover the Orangeburg massacre?
No, I mean they didn't cover these telegrams we sent up there. Oh yes, they covered the massacre, but they didn't cover these telegrams we sent to Chicago. But they had their effect, and McNair has never dared run for office again. We served notice from that day that any time he runs for office he's going to have to face the massacre, going to have to face it. Now I understand he wanted badly to run for office. They tried to get up enough steam for him as governor the last state convention, but they couldn't get it off the ground. I understand that he wants to run for office and his wife is very much against him making the venture.
I read an article about Redfern II. He talked about how much influence, what an influence you had been on him in the early days. I wondered if you worked, if you had close relationships with other of the student leaders of that period?
Yes, yes we did. They organized here in Columbia what they called the Blacks United for Action, and they asked me to sit in with them. Or I might tell them just like I told you all to come down here—I'm comfortable down here. And they came down here and we'd have committee meetings here. And a number of those youngsters, Redfern being in the bunch, I had very pleasant relations with, and still have.
Who were some of the other student leaders that you were close to?
Well, John Harper was one. He's run for the legislature—no, county
council. He's run for the legislature once or twice and is one of the
moving spirits in the United Citizens' Party. A number of them… A fellow
named Hemmingway: he wasn't a student here, he was an instructor at
Benedict. He was over the history department over there, and some
difference came up between him and Payton, who was president at that
time. Several of the instructors left. He's at Florida A & M
now, out in Tallahassee. Oh, I don't remember some of the others. Some
of the others are still in civil rights efforts one way or the other.
There was a bunch of them, but I do remember there was Harper,
Broadwater (whom I mentioned a while ago, who wasn't a student but
worked in the movement, in the United Citizens' Movement which grew out
of the Blacks United for Action), and a fellow by the name of Tolliver,
who was teaching at Benedict (he is now off up in northern New York
somehwere in an organization). There were a number of them whose names
don't come to me at once; then some whose names I just didn't know.
Sometimes you work in groups like that and you don't always know the
names. For instance, there was a very smart girl that worked in that
group and that helped us set up the South Carolina Task Force for
Quality Education, which had as its aim to get rid of President Turner
at Orangeburg. And we thought that it was going to take us about two
years to do it; but things got so hot he just left. And they had an
interim president the next year, and then later they made him president
of the institution. Now you get after certain of these people with
certain tactics; they don't stick long. They don't stick long when
certain forces get behind them, because, as somebody told me, one of
these white politicians said, "Don't never want that old woman [meaning
me] to get behind me, 'cause when she
This is on a completely different topic, but what did you think about the activities of the South Carolina Council on Human Relations during the civil rights movement? Did you work with them, or did you think that they played a role? What role did you see them playing in all this?
I thought they played a… They worked with us, I mean they collaborated with us in the student action movement—I mean in the fights. Alice Spearman Wright was head of the movement at that time, and she's always been a vigilent and almost radical spirit. She's living in North Carolina now, but I think she's here writing her memoirs a good bit of the while. Do you know her?
Yes.
And they exerted great influence. They exerted an influence similar to
the Southern Regional, a leavening influence. In fact, I think their
papers will show that they played a very strange role in there. You
know, they're not what you'd call a violent action group, but you don't
always need everybody in the violent action. I've never been one to
feel… You know, there are some Negroes that'll get mad with white people
because they don't say certain things or do certain things. I've always
taken a different position, that it takes more for a white man to buck
the power structure than it does for a black person to buck the power
structure. Without wanting to be personal, I think a lot of the stands
that I have taken in the state no white woman could have taken and
gotten away with it. I don't mean they'd have killed her, but she just
would have been so ostracized. She would have been like the Warings; she
wouldn't have been given any
What about Alice Spearman? What was her relationship with the white community like? Did she meet any kind of ostracism?
Well, I can't say that; well, I will say that there would have been
circles where she wouldn't have been welcomed. But Alice is a type of
person like I am; she just doesn't give a damn. But there were certain
places where she wouldn't have been welcome. As John Bolt Culbertson
used the expression all the time, "She would have been like a bastard at
a family reunion"—
What kind of things did you work with her on? Where did your paths cross?
We first became connected, I think, in the early part of the emergency program of the ERA, back in those years.
Yes, you told me about that. But then during the civil rights movement did you… ?
Yes, we worked very closely there. She has never appeared to waver; she's always held a tight line. And she's always expressed herself; she's never failed to express herself very positively about situations. She was very close to the movement all through the student marches. I've never had any reason whatsoever to suspect Alice of any wavering.
Do you know why she was replaced by Paul Matthias?
She wasn't replaced; she just bowed out. She wasn't replaced. She wanted to move out; I think she was thinking about doing writing or something like that. But for a good while she was looking for someone to take the position.
It wasn't any criticism of her leadership at all?
No, no. But people that worked in Southern Regional in this state are people that are, well, willing to take certain stands. There are not a whole lot of them that'll take certain public stands. But they didn't have any complaint against Alice; she's held in very high regard.
How can you account for somebody like her, coming from the kind of class background that she comes from?
Well, there are just certain times that God makes people to answer
certain purposes and take certain positions. It's just like he doesn't
make a Martin Luther King in every generation. I think providentially
certain people are created to take certain stands. Now I was talking to
John Bolt. I was up there one night (I was to spend the night, but I got
kind of restless about home and I came on in home late that night). But
we sat up and talked perhaps 'til about 1:30. And he tried to understand
why he was like he was. But I don't think that he knows. He told me that
his father was definitely of the old type reactionary, and that he would
ask his mother and father questions: "Why is it that—maybe some of the
boys on the farm (I'll say a boy named Jim)—why can't Jim go to school
with me every day?"—meaning the colored boys. And he said as a little
boy he asked these questions that there was no reason why he should have
asked having come from the type of background that he did. But he always
wondered about
And you just can't say; you don't know why. Like people ask me, "Why are you like that?" I say, "I don't know why I'm like I am; I just don't know." But I do think that every person is created for a purpose. It might be something that never comes to light, but he performs that purpose. It may be a mother that had twelve children and one of them becomes prominent in world activities or something, you know. And if she'd used birth control that twelfth child wouldn't have been here, or that seventh down among the twelve wouldn't have been here. So I think maybe that mother's purpose was to bring forth that child. Just like the Bible says, Mary was here to bring forth Christ. I don't know, and that's the only way I can account for it, that it's something in the scheme of things.
Well, you come from an educated family, from a class background itself that could have led you in a very different direction when you came along?
That's right. All my mother's children did. And it just so happens that in our set-up the girls, all of my sisters and I were creatures of confrontation; and my brothers would assist, but they're very quiet.
Why are the girls different from the boys?
I don't know that; that's something I don't know.
That reminds me of something I was wondering about. When we talked before you made the observation that women, black women have been able to speak out, in the early days especially, in places where men would have been lynched.
Perhaps lynched, yes.
But on the other hand, when you look… I mean, just as we've talked about the movement or when we look at what's been written about the movement, you see in the positions as public spokesman or publicly recognized leaders of the civil rights movement, almost all of them are men. How do you account for that?
Well, I account for it precisely that women have stood back and let men
play the role, just like in a lot of church work. I don't know how close
you all are to churches, but you know in the average church the leaders
are men but the actual work is done by women.
Why have women taken a back seat in that way? Why have they been willing to do the work and not get the credit?
Well, in the first place the church always taught under the philosophy of
Paul that the man is the head of the family as Christ is the head of
What surprises me is why it is that when black women played such a strong role in the community itself, why they haven't been more prominent. Of course, I think you're right that part of it is that they've been there but they haven't been written about or uncovered. We have an interview with—did you know Ella Baker?
Yes.
Did she come through South Carolina when she was NAACP field secretary in the forties? Did you know her then?
I've been knowing her a good while, but I don't remember if she came here then or not.
You worked with her?
Yes, I worked with her off and on a few years. She was on the board of the Southern Conference, you know.
She talks about her situation in the SOLO office, in which she
No, no. In the early NAACP we had branch presidents and branch officials
who were women. No, it was never raised. I don't think in this state we
ever played down any women, but lots of times it was just when they had
these elections they'd just from force of habit elect men. I don't think
they'd even take a second thought about it.
Could you tell me a little bit about how the integration of the Columbia public schools came about?
Well, it just came about that we had met with the board. Getting into the board meeting was almost like getting into the sanctum sanctorum of the temple. They had what they called Negro supervisors, supervisors of the Negro schools. They were kind of like a buffer state, and they'd tell you to see the Negro supervisors. And we finally said, "We didn't elect the supervisors; we elected board members, and we're coming to the board." When they would tell us that we would say, "We are coming to the board." And so on one occasion when we said we were coming to the board we told the colored people, we said, "Let's go down there and pack the place, 'til it's just black in there." So we had them packed on all the stairs going up there on the second floor meeting room.
When was this?
This must have been in '64, I guess. And they would listen to us. As some
of our reports on the ese meetings will show, they would listen
Then they tried to tell us that they could take only qualified students.
And we took the position that if they called themselves having legal
schools for everybody, if they was qualified in one school they were
qualified in another. So they couldn't get by on that. There was a
letter in there to that effect, the position we took at that time. So
that was the end of that. They had at that time a supervisor who was at
another meeting I went to for some other purpose. When I was leaving he
said, "I'd like to speak to you." He said, "There's not but so much that
I can say or do, but don't you all let up in the fight." And at that
time they had decided to build a big black high school way out at the
other end of the black neighborhoods. And he said, "They already have
the lagoon"—it was some term they have for a very large septic tank. State; an
article is somewhere in our papers that the Negro-black activist
Modjeska Simkins had been instrumental in preventing the city school
system from closing Booker Washington school. They didn't close it until
'74, and they wouldn't have done it then if we'd have gotten the NAACP
to move. The NAACP executive director here ordered them, according to
the youth chairman and the local chairman, to have nothing to do with
the Booker Washington school situation. If we had known that the Citizens' Committee would have moved in on a
provision in the school code that if people in a section want to use the
facilities that are closed by a school system they have to make
themselves known within so much a period of time. And when we found out…
As I asked Mr. Broadwater to look into the situation, when he looked
into it he found out that the chairman at the time was against it.
Why did they want to close the Booker T. Washington school?
They wanted to take over that for the University of South Carolina.
They've got all the Negroes, big Negro section over on the area where
the University was moving. Some of those people were living in property
that had been left them by their parents since back in slavery. Just
cleaned it out. They set up an independent land purchasing thing
When did the first black children go to the public schools in the city?
It must have been in '65, I guess it was.
How integrated are the schools now?
Well, as far as the housing patterns will allow it, I'll say they're
about integrated about as much as they can be. You see, the exponents in
the power structure have eyes like eagles; they can see way down the
road. I remember once when Thurgood Marshall was here we were talking
about
Now the other thing that we were instrumental in was integrating the
public hospital here, the tax-supported hospital. We used to have a
black unit down here; and the whites and all these big units across the
street, they moved out to a new situation right straight ahead (you can
almost see it if you stand in the middle of that street out there). And
we were able to do a lot in that direction. In that time that we were
integrating the state hospital and the Richland County hospital
situations, we had full cooperation of HEW. HEW changed a lot after the
Nixon administration opened
Were there incidents when you integrated either the schools or the hospitals that necessitated a lot of police and that sort of stuff?
The main one we had here was where it was created by the Watson forces when he was running for governor. And it didn't appear… He didn't think it was going to get out, but it got out that Albert Watson influenced them to do that.
That he had created it, you mean?
His forces. I wouldn't say that he personally, but I believe he did. He's that type of a man.
This is around school desegregation?
Yes, at one of the big white high schools here. But they didn't get far with it because we peeped the hand. Not only did we, a number of whites peeped the hand.
So weren't there the kind of anti-segregation demonstrations that there
We didn't have those in Columbia. But of course there was feeling, and there were a lot of white parents that were raising their children going to school with blacks—and vice versa. But we didn't have any demonstrations like they had in Little Rock.
Nor did you have demonstrations actually to get kids in. I mean, they just went to school.
When they went they took them in. The main thing, though: the chairman of the board said they would take qualified students. And we hit them with that statement that I made. And, you see, when you can meet a man, when you can condemn him with his own actions there isn't much he can do. There isn't much he could do. How could they say that they have a dual system that is separate but equal, and then they said, "We'll take black students that are qualified"? You see, they just opened up to attack.
The first black student in a white institution was Harvey Gantt, right, at Olemson? That was the first integration?
Yes, yes.
That was in '63, I believe; and it was in that same year that the first three black students were admitted to the University, right?
No, I don't think it was the same year; it must have been the next year or the next.
Your niece was one of those three students. What was her experience like at the University?
Just like any other student's. Nobody bothered her.
Is that right?
The president asked my sister to put her on the campus that
[END OF TAPE 4, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 4, SIDE B]
In terms of political strategy or your notion of how social change can come about, do you have a populist vision on…
I guess it's a nosy vision. I just like to be in a fight. I don't mind as long as it's a clean fight. I don't care how hot it is as long as it's clean.
In the long term, how do you think real fundamental change can be brought about?
Well, I don't think it can be brought about well in any way but through
the ballot, and through effective teaching of our people to vote on
issues and the type of candidates rather than to vote a straight ticket.
And I think until we kill off some of these old devils we've got that
are trying to sell the Negro electorate out to the Democratic party
there'll be nothing we'll be able to do very much. But we've got to keep
trying; we've got to keep fighting that issue—our organization always
does. Every election we put on a special series of programs, radio
programs, and that's our point of attack. We've just about unfrocked a
number of them. But I just like a fight. I don't feel good when I'm not
in a fight.
END OF INTERVIEW
Some History of
South Carolina.