Decision to leave Huntingdon College
Stone describes her decision to leave Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama. According to Stone her decision was in part fueled by the potentially negative impact her involvement in radical politics could have on the school. Although she was not asked to leave, she suggests that her interest in issues of social justice necessitated a career change. In addition, she was intent upon continuing her field research and trying to find funding for the Committee for People's Rights, which she was trying to organize.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Olive Stone, August 13, 1975. Interview G-0059-4. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- SHERNA GLUCK:
-
Well Olive, when did you decide to make the move and leave Huntingdon?
What was the motivation behind it?
- OLIVE STONE:
-
Well, first of all the fact that I felt that Dr. Agnew was having to take
extra precautions to try to prevent any harm to Huntingdon. He didn't
ever tell me that some of the D.A.R.-type people would come out and
protest that I was the "Red Dean," you know. Perfectly
ridiculous but people kept asking me to talk about Russia. And by the
way, I explained the attitude that Russians had
towards red as a color; that red was beautiful and they used
"red and black", instead of "white and
black". But that still didn't assuage the critics. I also was
feeling that I would have to suppress myself if I stayed on and honored
the needs that I felt Huntingdon justifiably had. President Agnew never
would have fired me.
- SHERNA GLUCK:
-
And by this time you were becoming more involved in some of these racial
things and more progressive …
- OLIVE STONE:
-
Yes. I don't think that the sharecroppers would have been any special
issue, because I didn't feel that I needed to do any more than I did for
a very brief time there when the organizers were seeking financial aid.
But a good many people were coming into the South or writing that they
would like to come into the South and get progressive programs going.
While I was sympathetic, I didn't feel that I would help their causes if
I became known as the radical at Huntingdon. So it was a conscious
decision, I think, also I had gotten just a little restive at
Huntingdon; I felt it was rather parochial
[laughter]
in many ways. Some of the people weren't; we had professors
there from many parts of the country: one from Evanston, Illinois; and
others from, you know, various places. And there was this lovely man
from Copenhagen
[laughter]
. But it was a provincial place, and I was spreading myself too
thin.
- SHERNA GLUCK:
-
Now had you already decided, then, to go ahead with your Doctorate at
that point?
- OLIVE STONE:
-
No. I had felt, as I wrote Dr. Agnew (and it's in the correspondence
here) that I was reluctant to go to a university for fear it would
cripple what I wanted to do in research by having me conform to certain
forms of the dissertation, and I wanted to do more field work. What I
had decided on was to use this historical study I had done on Alabama as
background for research on modern times. Through the TVA's beneficence I
had hired people to research the newspapers in
the Ala Archives, I had obtained some perfectly magnificent data from
that early period; what some of the newly-freed blacks were trying to
do. They got suppressed, but they were trying to do things! At any rate,
I wanted to use that and I wanted to make a field study, which later the
University of N.C. encouraged. I went to Chapel Hill in January 1935,
and in the first half of the summer did my field research in
Alabama.
- SHERNA GLUCK:
-
But when you left Huntingdon, then, you had no intention of going for
Doctoral study?
- OLIVE STONE:
-
Not really or perhaps I should say not a settled intention. I held it in
the back of my mind, but I wanted to combine research with civil rights
work. I wanted to do it on my own if I could get a foundation, but I
didn't manage to do that.
- SHERNA GLUCK:
-
I see. So in other words, that summer you were looking for foundation
support both for the Committee for People's Rights and for your own
sociological research?
- OLIVE STONE:
-
Yes. I got hospitality, such as being made a "Visiting
Scholar" at Brookings Institution, where I could use their
library and where I met interesting people. And I had a small grant for
research at the Library of Congress. I don't know what else I was living
on in this time; I must have saved a little money
[laughter]