Yes, I stayed in there until, I think it was 1953 or 1954. The record
will show it if you want to tighten down on that. I can get it. The year
that I came out, the last seal sale I ran was $32,000. Now, in the
meantime, the South Carolina NAACP had already organized in South
Carolina at that time, about eleven counties I guess it was. They had
some kind of NAACP organization. They decided they would organize a
state body. So I worked with them without a salary. I just worked as
a volunteer for the organization. Then at the
same time the NAACP started up and the woman who was head of that thing
Mrs. Chauncey McDonald, and then they had a lot of old dowagers, like
the white folks. They had Negro servants moreso than they do now, and
these ladies could have their meetings at 10:00 in the morning or
whenever they wanted to. So she found maybe that I was interested not
only in TB but maybe in some of the social action in the neighborhood.
She told me that she would rather I shouldn't do that. Well, as I saw
it, our problems were and they were that, tuberculosis, syphilis,
gonorrhea—that's the venereal diseases—maternity and child care. With
the scope that I had and having worked on some social actions before, I
saw the expanse of that program and I focused my meetings—I would have
to go in these meetings on the weekends and on Sundays, nights and on
the weekends—and I focused on those [UNCLEAR] . See
somebody told her I was somewhere talking about syphilis and gonorrhea,
something like that. She called me here and told me that I was wrong and
that I shouldn't talk about those diseases. They were diseases of sin.
She said that they came from sin. So we had one or two words, I mean
right then so finally I told them I would rather them die and go to hell
with tuberculosis than live with the philosophy than she was talking
about. I reckon the fat hit the fire and she didn't say much because at
that kind of time and I guess even now there's some whites like that. If
a Negro talks to them like that it takes the breath out of them.