BETSY BRINSON: 1999, this is an unrehearsed interview with Wesley Acton in Owensboro, Kentucky. The interview is taking place at the Executive Inn Rivermont and the interviewer is Betsy Brinson. Today’s date is May 5, 1999. Thank you, Mr. Acton for agreeing to talk with me today. I want to begin, if we may, with you telling me a little bit about where you were born and the date and a little bit about your growing up. Are you from Owensboro?
WESLEY ACTON: I’m not from Owensboro. I’m from an adjoining county from Daviess County over here at Ohio County. I was born in Hartford, Kentucky on June 10, 1937 on a farm. I have--I grew up on a farm. And so, and I received my education in the Daviess County and Owensboro public schools.
BRINSON: And I’m going to ask you a little bit more specific about your education as we move on.
ACTON: All right.
BRINSON: Tell me about your family. How many children were there and where were you in the order?
ACTON: I’m out of a family of eleven children and I am the eighth child. And I have three sisters, who have passed on and three brothers, who have passed. And now there is five of us left and all of us live here in Daviess County.
BRINSON: How did your family come to be in Daviess County?
ACTON: My father was a sharecropper and he had an opportunity to move to Daviess County and to farm for an elderly lady at Pleasant Ridge. Her name was Mrs. Kate Shively, a well-noted family in this area.
BRINSON: Did your grandparents live in this area?
ACTON: My grandparents, my mother’s parents lived in Hartford. See that’s where I’m originally from and my father’s parents, or his mother. I didn’t see his father, he died before I was born. His mother lived in Indianapolis with her daughter.
BRINSON: Help me a little bit with the history of the county if you will because the African American community in Owensboro is very small, presently about five percent, I believe. Has it always been that way?
ACTON: Yes. It’s been small in comparison to the overall population. And I don’t know why, you know, it’s so small. I would imagine job opportunities were not easy to come by and many of the people moved away what few that it had, a lot of them moved away.
BRINSON: How far back do you know, how old is Owensboro or the community? When was it settled? In the late 1800’s, or…?
ACTON: I don’t know exactly but I would say the early 1800’s. It was, when it was established it was known as Yellow Banks, Kentucky. And I can’t give you much history on that other than it was called Yellow Banks.
BRINSON: Was there an African American presence here from the beginning that you are aware of?
ACTON: I’m aware that there were some but I don’t know. I’m not familiar with the history of the black community. I mean I know some things, but I don’t know that.
BRINSON: Talk with me, if you would, a little bit about your schooling here. You went to a segregated school, an all black school.
ACTON: Yes, I did.
BRINSON: And you graduated in, I believe, in 1959?
ACTON: `55.
BRINSON: `55, from which school?
ACTON: Western High School, of course, that school is no longer in existence. I attended George Washington Carver School the first three grades, first through the third grade. It was a county school, a consolidated county school where all the black children were bussed into that particular school. When the population of that school was so low the county closed the school and paid tuition to the Owensboro City Schools to educate the black children.
BRINSON: Okay and you would have graduated, I believe with the last class of the all black school.
ACTON: No. The last class was 1960, I think.
BRINSON: Okay. How many students were in your graduating class?
ACTON: About thirty-three, thirty-five, somewhere along in there, thirty-one, somewhere along in there.
BRINSON: How did the black school compare with the white schools in terms of facilities or textbooks or? Do you have any sense of that while you were going through?
ACTON: No, I don’t have a whole lot. The school, one of the things that happened while I was in high school, they did build a new high school, well, it was a grade school through high school for the black school, black community. And we seemingly, from my perspective as a student, we seemed to have had, what textbooks and things like that, we seemed that we had them. One of the things that I was impressed with especially after I went to college and started teaching, I was impressed looking backwards at the dedication of the black teachers. We, somehow, the black community felt that the black teachers didn’t know anything and they didn’t know as much as the white teachers. But I found out that they were very well prepared. You know, hindsight seems like it is better than foresight sometimes. And I have learned to appreciate them very much for their hard work and their dedication and making the best use of what materials that they did have.
BRINSON: Do you have any sense that these teachers went away in the summer time and worked on graduate degrees and where they might have gone?
ACTON: Yes. A lot of them did. All of the teachers, the best I came remember, maybe in the elementary schools some teachers may not have had their degree, they were working on the them. But from seventh grade on through, all of the teachers that I had had their degrees; you know back there a lot of teachers were working on emergency certificates. But in this particular town as far as I know all of the teachers had a degree. Some of them had masters degrees and perhaps beyond in the high school that I went to.
BRINSON: Do you recall where they would have gone to work on?
ACTON: Many of the teachers went to--out of state to where the schools were integrated for the most part back there in the fifties. Some of them to the University of Evansville and I know one that went to the University of Cincinnati. And that’s…
BRINSON: Evansville is about how far from here?
ACTON: It’s about thirty-five miles.
BRINSON: Thirty-five miles, so it’s close.
ACTON: It’s reasonably close.
BRINSON: Did you as a child growing up ever have reason to go back and forth to Evansville?
ACTON: No, I was a grown man, I guess, before I went to Evansville. My situation is a little bit different from the kids who lived here in Owensboro. I was out there in the country, no way to get around. And I grew up at a very slow pace not having any opportunity to really come to Owensboro except on the school bus.
BRINSON: Okay. May I call you Wesley?
ACTON: Wesley, fine.
BRINSON: Tell me what your favorite subjects were in school.
ACTON: When I was in high school I guess my favorite subject was English and history. And I went on to college and majored in history and minored in English.
BRINSON: Okay. Is there a particular kind of history that you liked better than other kinds of history?
ACTON: Generally speaking, I liked, I liked American history, but once I started teaching, I sort of liked world history better after I started teaching. Because I guess because it was more to it; and American history, you know, we spend most of our time on what happened years ago. And we very seldom got up to where we are today.
BRINSON: I’m curious because in 1955 I went to an all white school in North Carolina and we didn’t have any African American history in the U.S. history curriculum.
ACTON: Well we didn’t either. We didn’t have it in the curriculum. By having, by having black teachers many of them would talk about some of the outstanding blacks, especially in the literature class. I had a wonderful English and literature teacher. She taught a lot of American history in her literature. And we gained as much from American history in our literature class as we did the history classes.
BRINSON: Do you remember any particular authors that you studied in that class?
ACTON: Well, during the, we studied in American literature, the colonial period William Cullen Bryant and I think he was during that period. I’d have to go back who is in which period. And Wordsworth, I think he was, that’s an English writer, isn’t it?
BRINSON: Uh-hmm.
ACTON: Okay. Alfred Lloyd Tennyson and Shakespeare and some of those people.
BRINSON: Do you remember any of the African Americans that they worked into the curriculum?
ACTON: They worked in Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver were mentioned quite a bit. George Washington Carver visited this area many years ago and he spent the night at the lady whose farm I grew up on out at Pleasant Ridge.
BRINSON: What did you hear about that?
ACTON: Well, mainly, the excitement and the fact that a celebrity had been in our community. He was trying to teach the farmers new methods of raising crops.
BRINSON: You don’t remember what decade that was.
ACTON: No. That was probably in the forties. I’m pretty sure it was during the forties.
BRINSON: So you graduated high school in 1955 and then tell me about, you mentioned college. Where did you go to college?
ACTON: Yes. I went to Brescia College here in Owensboro. I had received a small, a very small scholarship to attend Kentucky State College in Frankfort. And I didn’t have the money to go to Frankfort. And so, the, I wanted to go to college. So I went to Brescia College because it was here close and I would have the financial assistance from my parents. They did not have the money to send me to college so I went to Brescia. And they put me under their wings and told me that I would never have to drop out of college because of finance. They gave me work to do on the campus and they said as long as I wanted an education I could get one.
BRINSON: Tell me about the college. It’s a Catholic college.
ACTON: It is a Catholic college.
BRINSON: And it’s been here a while.
ACTON: I would say, with the college, it was a junior college. I think I’m correct. The junior college was out at Maple Mountain, Kentucky and they had an extension of it, the best I can remember, over here in Owensboro. And then during the fifties, I would think it was during the fifties or late forties they began to or they made it a full-fledged college, four-year college. And I found it to be a very interesting place to go to school. I was highly respected among the faculty and student body.
BRINSON: But going there for you must have been an unusual experience because you were a black person in what I would guess was a predominant white student body.
ACTON: Predominant white but they did admit, they admitted black students. I was not among the first to be there.
BRINSON: Now Owensboro during that period, how was it in terms of segregated facilities? For example, if you were black would you go to the restaurants, go to the movie?
ACTON: No. As far as the restaurants were concerned, some of the restaurants had little rooms in the back that would serve black people or African Americans. And some of the restaurants would only serve you if you would get what you wanted and take it out. They wouldn’t, they would honor you if you stood at the counter and waited for them to fix it and you could take it out. And buses, we rode in the back on the buses and the bus station had separate waiting rooms and separate restrooms and we rode in the back of the bus. Now, during, I wasn’t, you remember I was out of the country and a lot of these things I didn’t face because I wasn’t over here to do a bunch of the things but I was just going by what I know that people said happened. But now the street buses, the city buses that, they honored blacks sitting anywhere they wanted to much sooner than these others, like the Greyhound companies did.
BRINSON: What about parks and recreational facilities?
ACTON: Parks and recreational facilities was a no-no for most of them around here before the days of integration. Black people were not allowed to use the recreational facilities in the park.
BRINSON: Was there swimming pools that came under the recreational facilities?
ACTON: Yes, yes. And there was a black park here in Owensboro called the Douglas Park. It’s called Kendall Perkins Park today. So that’s where most of the black people went if they went to a park.
BRINSON: Named after Frederick Douglas?
ACTON: Douglas, yes, and then they changed the name of it to recognize two outstanding educators in Owensboro. It’s called the Kendall Perkins Park. Joe B. Perkins and Jane Kendall, it was jointly named to honor both of those people.
BRINSON: Okay. I don’t know who they were.
ACTON: No. They both taught at the high school. Kendall was a football coach and basketball coach, and Perkins was a math teacher.
BRINSON: I understand that there was a small business community, a black business community here with a few restaurants.
ACTON: Restaurants, taverns and it wasn’t a whole lot, a blacksmith shop existed on West Fifth Street a couple of years ago.
BRINSON: Was there a barbershop?
ACTON: Yes, a barbershop. I had a paper that I could have brought that had some of those listed in it that one of the ladies wrote but I didn’t think to bring it with me.
BRINSON: What about using the library?
ACTON: Now, as far, when we were in high school our librarian would go out there and get books and bring them to the library in her school. I think she was the only one that could go out there and get them and bring them to the school to us.
BRINSON: So when you got to college you majored in history.
ACTON: History and minored in English.
BRINSON: And you graduated college in what year?
ACTON: I graduated in sixty, June of 1960.
BRINSON: Quite a year. I want to ask you because it occurs to me also, tell me was there a black church here while you were growing up?
ACTON: Yes, it’s a lot of black churches in Owensboro.
BRINSON: Okay. And they are of what denominations?
ACTON: Well, just about all you can name, Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, Pentecostal.
BRINSON: Is there an A.M.E.?
ACTON: Yes, an A.M.E. Church is here and it’s also a United Methodist Church here among the blacks.
BRINSON: Did you grow up in a church?
ACTON: I grew up in the Baptist Church. Later I switched religion. [Laughter]
BRINSON: Did you become a Catholic?
ACTON: No. I’m a member of the Church of Christ. [Laughter]
BRINSON: Okay. So what happened when you finished college for you personally?
ACTON: When I finished college I applied for a job in a teaching position anywhere I thought there was a possibility. I applied in Owensboro. I applied in Daviess County schools and I applied in Ohio. I just made sure I was going to get a job in Ohio. They had me come to Hebron Ohio. Do you know where that little community is near Columbus? I went there and the superintendent was very friendly. He asked professional questions. You know a lot of places don’t ask professional questions. He asked me why I was interested in teaching. What was the purpose of an education and things like that and I was, I was impressed with him. Because most of the time when somebody said there’s an opening they don’t talk professionally. But I think they are doing more professional talk now than they used to. Uhmm, I began substituting in Owensboro schools. I did not get a job until the second semester of my first year of college, out of college. And that was, that wasn’t too long to wait. I started, I substituted in Owensboro public schools that first semester. And then a teacher at the Catholic school out at Knoxville, which is about eight, ten miles east of Owensboro, was ill and they said, “We need a teacher, a substitute teacher for about two weeks. And would you be available to come?” And I told them I would. And I went and when the two weeks were up they said, “Well, the sister will be back Monday and we won’t need you after this week.” This was on about a Wednesday, and I was so sorry to hear that. And they could read those expressions in me, so the next day they came, the principal came back to say, “We have decided to make you the fifth teacher in the high school.” It was about a hundred and twenty students. “We have decided to make you the fifth teacher in the high school and we are going to let you keep the same classes you already have. And we are going to give the nun that was out, we are going to give her one of each of our classes and that will give each of us a planning period.” They were working all day without a planning period. And they were glad to have me. She taught all of the religion classes. They gave her all of the religion classes to teach. And I taught there for two and a half years. Those two weeks ended up two and a half years.
BRINSON: Now was this an integrated school system or was it a black school?
ACTON: This was a, no, it was in the parochial school. This was 1961. It’s when I went there. So there, most of the schools had some form of integration during the early sixties.
BRINSON: I’m interested in the fact that it took you, even though you said it was a short time, that it took you a semester to find a job. And I’m wondering why you think that was.
ACTON: It was because, ah, they were, if Owensboro schools had had an opening it would have been in a black school and that was before they integrated the teachers or the students. The Owensboro schools tried their integration from top to bottom and several of the kids, in the high school would go out there and spend one period taking a class that was not offered at the black school. That’s the way they started it, and then they’d come back to their school. And the county schools started from the first and they’d say, well, integrate the first two or three grades and they moved it up. Where the high, city schools moved down, both of them worked smoothly. I don’t guess there was any one correct way to do that just other than the way they chose to do it. But it went smoothly as far as I could tell, it went smoothly.
BRINSON: I read an article actually in the local historical quarterly that talked a little bit about school integration and the point that you just made that I believe for about a year students in the black school could go to the white school to take a course if it wasn’t offered in their school.
ACTON: Yes, uh-hmm.
BRINSON: What kinds of courses would they have gone to take?
ACTON: One was ROTC and some advanced science and math classes that the black school did not offer.
BRINSON: Did you ever think about leaving Owensboro or the area?
ACTON: I tried. [Laughing] I don’t guess I was independent enough to just go off without knowing where I was going, and knowing how I was going to make it. I was hoping to find something by making contacts and then come back home and wait for it to come. But I find if you want a job you’ll have to go where you’re interested in going and stay and plant yourself there. ‘Cause when they see, well, here’s somebody way in Kentucky and I can get somebody right here in this town, I’m just, that was my observation.
BRINSON: Do you have a family now or did you when you started your teaching?
ACTON: No. I’m still single. [Laughing] I help my mother a lot and I help my niece. I have a niece and nephew that I helped raise. Their mother died early and my mother took the children, and she didn’t quite live long enough to finish them completely. She got them up to where the boy was in high school, was in the twelfth grade when she died. The girl was a year in college. So she saw them most of the way through.
BRINSON: You taught, I believe in the parochial school for, you said, two and a half years.
ACTON: Yes.
BRINSON: And then what happened for you?
ACTON: Then I was employed by the Daviess County schools and I worked in the Daviess County schools for thirty years. And enjoyed, I enjoyed teaching.
BRINSON: And did you teach high school?
ACTON: No, when I was in the parochial schools high school, but when I started teaching in the county schools it was middle school. It wasn’t called middle school then but I’m going to phrase it to be middle school. It was seventh grade and I taught the seventh grade for thirty years. Stayed in the same grade.
BRINSON: And what did you teach?
ACTON: I taught English, language arts and social studies. It was world geography for the social studies.
BRINSON: It would be interesting to talk to you about curriculum changes that you may have seen over the years. At what point did you retire?
ACTON: I retired as the KERA was beginning to take effect. I worked two years in that and I saw the changes coming. And some of them I thought were good and some of them I didn’t think a whole lot of. But I’ve, from my observation, I think the overall intent of the KERA program has been for the improvement of schools.
BRINSON: For any readers who are listening, KERA is Kentucky Education Reform Act.
ACTON: Kentucky Education Reform Act, yes.
BRINSON: And it was, I believe about 1990.
ACTON: Ninety, I think. It was passed in the ninety legislature and they got busy with that right away. A lot of times they pass these things it will take a year for them to get taken off but this thing took off as soon as they passed it.
BRINSON: How did you become involved with the NAACP?
ACTON: When I was a youngster in high school I lived in the community with a man, a strong NAACP man and he encouraged. His name was Jim Tinsley, James Tinsley, Sr. He encouraged me to get involved in the civil rights movement. And I did get involved, and I was president of a youth group and we did some demonstrations. I don’t like the word demonstrations, but we did go out and sit in some of the restaurants to test out their policies and all. One particular restaurant here in town, they served us but we had to make them serve us. But the waitress would just walk by and never stop and we’d have to say, “I want a hamburger.” And she’d fix that. “I want a Coke.” She wouldn’t be, she wasn’t polite at all. But she…
BRINSON: She wouldn’t come and ask you your order.
ACTON: No. I’d just have to say, we just decided, well, they’re going to ignore us, so, we’ll just tell them what we want as they’re passing by. And they, they served us but they weren’t courteous with it.
BRINSON: So there was a youth chapter of the NAACP as well as the adult chapter.
ACTON: Yes.
BRINSON: And you said in high school so in the early fifties.
ACTON: Yeah, middle fifties, uh-hmm.
BRINSON: I want to ask you some questions about the chapter. Uhmm, first off how big is your recollection that the youth chapter was?
ACTON: Oh, it was about twenty-five or thirty kids with about ten of them in, actively involved.
BRINSON: And did the chapter ever go to conferences in other areas of the state of youth in NAACP?
ACTON: Now the senior chapter went and I guess the youth were invited but I don’t remember going as a youth. I was president of the adult branch later on and we attended our state convention. And I never did go to the national convention but it was, it was available to me but for some reason I never did attend.
BRINSON: At what point did you become an officer in the adult NAACP?
ACTON: I think it was about 1958 or `59, somewhere along in there I became the president. A lot of people were hesitant to accept that position. I reluctantly accepted because at that time, you know, they found out all the members of the NAACP and they would fire them, or not give them a job. And a lot of people said, “Oh, that man has pushed him into that and he’ll never get a job teaching here.” But that didn’t bother me. I mean it didn’t bother me and evidently it didn’t bother the ones who hired me to work.
BRINSON: That’s good. Can you think back to the adult chapter and tell me about how many people were active?
ACTON: It was just a very few active…
END OF SIDE A, TAPE ONE
BEGIN SIDE TWO TAPE ONE
ACTON: People because see, during that time pressure was on the white people and black people too, because the NAACP was known as a trouble making group. They made trouble. And a lot of people did not want to be associated with it. And I watch people now, I said, “Now look here, it’s so easy now for them to come downtown and march on Martin Luther King Day.” I said, “Where were they? Where were those people when I was taking a real hard chance of not ever getting a job?” ‘Cause you were branded if you were associated with it back there in those years.
BRINSON: Can you think about the people who were active in the NAACP and tell me do you think there were more men, more women, was it about even number?
ACTON: It was about an even number here in Owensboro of men and women. I know we, we’d attend meetings and there’d be about ten or twelve people there and it’d be about equal.
BRINSON:And can you recall the names of any of the people who were active?
ACTON: Yes. Mrs. Estell Moss was very active. Donald Owsley, Mr. James Tinsley, Sr. and his son, Joseph Tinsley were very active and very strong. Suberta Boyd…
BRINSON: Suberta.
ACTON: Uh-hmm, or just say Sue Boyd. Mrs. Gertrude Talbot was active.
BRINSON: Gertrude Talbot.
ACTON: Uh-hmm. That’s all I can think of the, you know the active ones and Mrs., Mr. and Mrs. Julian Valentine. Now her name was, I know when you say Mr. and Mrs. in a thing like this you want her name. I can’t think of her name.
BRINSON: We’ll come back to it if you do.
ACTON: Yeah, I’ll mention it later on. It will come to me.
BRINSON: So there were demonstrations against what, tell me about the demonstrations.
ACTON: We were just sitting in at the restaurants and…
BRINSON: Do you remember the names of any of the restaurants?
ACTON: Yes, the one that I went to was Newberry’s. You’ve heard of the Newberry Five & Ten Cent Store, well, it was Newberry’s store. That particular one was. Now theaters, blacks were not admitted to theaters. I remember taking five or six students to see “To Kill a Mockingbird”, and see they didn’t want to let me in. But when I said I was with a school group, well, they let me in. [Laughing]
BRINSON: So they were going to let your students in but not you.
ACTON: They were not going to let me in. And that was back, that was 1960, 61.
BRINSON: Well, I think for you at that period to take anybody to see “To Kill a Mockingbird” given the content of that story is pretty brave. [Laughing]
ACTON: Yes, they wanted to see it and they wanted to know if I would take them. So it was about five kids that I took.
BRINSON: Tell me Owensboro at least in the history books has at least several major episodes of racial violence here. One I believe as recently as 1938 was basically a lynching. Took a black man out of jail and hung him.
ACTON Uh-hmm, uh-hmm.
BRINSON: Pretty vivid example. Does that, what does that say about Owensboro as a community?
ACTON: Well, I don’t know of Owensboro any more than just the atmosphere of the nation, and it is believed that this man did not commit that crime. And it was committed somewhere along in here where this hotel is.
BRINSON: Oh really, here at the Rivermont?
ACTON: [Laughing] uh-hmm, here in this region somewhere. I don’t know exactly where but it was somewhere in this area.
BRINSON: I think I said 1938, it was actually 1936 and the gentleman’s name was Rainie Bathia.
ACTON: Uh-hmm, I have a newspaper article on that at home that the paper published a few years ago on it. I don’t know why they keep re, bringing it up over and over and over. But the atmosphere is that he did not do that.
BRINSON: But that seems to be in some of the history reading material about, it sort of is the event that is identified out of Owensboro.
ACTON: Out of Owensboro, the last public hanging, I think in the United States was done in Owensboro.
BRINSON: Was there ever any Klan activity or White Citizen Council?
ACTON: Not, I’m sure they have the council but they have not been active. They’ve been active in, now, when I say active I mean out in the street. I haven’t seen or heard of any of them demonstrating out in the streets. Now in nearby counties and some places in Indiana they are visible. But I have not seen any visible signs of them here.
BRINSON: When you and other members of the NAACP were demonstrating was there any harassment of you for that?
ACTON: No. No, probably because we were in such small numbers, you know. I used the word demonstrating but I don’t, sit-ins was what it was. I mean if they asked us to leave we left. We didn’t stay. We just brought, I guess, brought it to their attention.
BRINSON: Tell me a little bit more about Estell Moss if you would, please. She’s deceased now.
ACTON: Yes, she is deceased. She was one of the outstanding leaders in this community. She was former NAACP president and she was involved in a lot of civic activities. She was instrumental in helping to get the West End Day Care Center established and she was an outstanding worker in her church. She was a seamstress. She did quite a bit of work for a lot of people.
BRINSON: You said the West End Day Care Center and that makes me ask, was that a predominantly black day care center?
ACTON: Yes, it was predominantly black but there were white children. It was federally funded.
BRINSON: But so, Owensboro as a town has some separate black communities in terms of housing and facilities and what not.
ACTON: Yes, yeah, predominantly it’s been about four sections of town. Maybe more than four that were predominantly black, with of course, not a whole lot of black people. And the community that is called Baptist Town, I don’t know whether you’ve heard of that or not, which is near here is where most of the black people lived during the fifties and sixties. I believe most of the black people as a black community live in the community called Mechanicsville now. ‘Cause they developed new housing and several of them moved to that section.
ACTON: I believe you told me you live out in the country. Do you still live on your farm?
ACTON: Yes, I do. I lived in Owensboro for awhile, ‘cause as I told you my father was a sharecropper. And when he died: he was killed in a car wreck. A drunk man hit him, and he and I were on the road. The car was stalled in our driveway and we were out there trying to help them get the car to going, and here comes a drunk man and hits the car and knocks him out of the--knocks him in the ditch--he was leaning over the hood, the motor. So…
BRINSON: That’s tragic.
ACTON: Yes, it was.
BRINSON: How old was he?
ACTON: Sixty-four.
BRINSON: Talk to me a little bit about healthcare here and the availability of it before integration there were hospitals for example that wouldn’t treat you if you were black. What was the case here in Owensboro?
ACTON: Well, ever since I have known about the hospital they have been treating blacks. But I understand they had a certain section during the forties and fifties, a certain little section of the hospital that when you went there you automatically went to, to that section of the hospital. And I don’t know whether they received good service or not but I understand that that’s what they would do. And then during the sixties maybe before the sixties, they integrated the hospital completely where you were placed wherever in the section of the hospital where you were needing that particular care was provided.
BRINSON: Were there black physicians here?
ACTON: I grew up with only one physician here in town. There were two that I remember but one was sort of semi-retired. Dr. Neblett was one of those physicians here.
BRINSON: I’ve heard about a Neblett Community Center is that the same family?
ACTON: That’s the same family. Mrs. Neblett when she came to Owensboro she found that, she was very heartbroken over the fact that there were no facilities in Owensboro where black children could engage in wholesome recreation. And she provided recreation in her basement for awhile and she saw that was not adequate. So she went on a mission to purchase a building for that, for the purpose of providing indoor, wholesome recreation for the children in the black community. Mrs. Neblett was a very compassionate person. She was a loving person and she cared a lot about the young people. Her mission was to do something for the young people. As far as I am concerned she has left a legacy that no one, no other black person in Owensboro in the past, compares to. Even though there have been some very outstanding people. She has left a legacy that tops all of them in my opinion.
BRINSON: Where is the Neblett Center located?
ACTON: It is not far from here about five blocks on the corner of Fifth and Elm Street.
BRINSON: Okay. Is that technically in Baptist Town?
ACTON: That’s in Baptist Town. [Laughing]
BRINSON: Okay, Fifth and Elm.
ACTON: Fifth and Elm Street.
BRINSON: I’ll go by there.
ACTON: I had, during the Black History Month one of the local schools asked me to come out and talk about myself. Well, I told them, I said, if you don’t mind I would like to talk about Mrs. Neblett. And they wanted me to talk about myself and the Greenwood Cemetery. I was working on cleaning up an African American cemetery. I took that on and I’ve had some volunteers a lot of volunteers to come and help. And they wanted me to talk about my project. So that project that I talked about has turned into part of a play that they are going to, that school’s going to conduct next week. I’ve got to get myself busy and learn what I’m supposed to do. [Laughing]
BRINSON: Are you part of the play?
ACTON: I’m part of the play to describe the things about Mrs. Neblett and the center and say a few words about the cemetery.
BRINSON: Were any of the Nebletts ever members of the NAACP?
ACTON: Yes, I think they were.
BRINSON: Were they active though?
ACTON: No. They were not among the active few.
BRINSON: I wonder how many people are buried in Greenwood Cemetery? What size is it?
ACTON: It’s--approximately five to six hundred people are buried there.
BRINSON: That’s a good number.
ACTON: It may be more than that. The cemetery had been neglected for years. And I always felt it was a disgrace to not do something about it. For twenty years I walked around here asking people--let’s clean--we need to clean up that cemetery. They all agreed but they wouldn’t take any steps to do it. So I looked after one of my high school teacher’s, Mary Fisher Morris. I looked after her in her olden years. She asked me to do this when she and her husband got where one of them, well, whichever one outlived the other. They asked me would I see after that one and I agreed to do it. Her parents and a few relatives were buried there. And I would go out every Memorial Day and clean around her graves. And I told her, I said, “I, if I’m going to do this I have to come out here every month. I can’t wait once a year to clean up, make a hard job every year.” So I cleaned up a space about the size of this room in her area, even though her lot wasn’t that big, but I wanted it to be noticeable that somebody had cleaned up the spot. So from that she and I wrote letters to the people we thought were in direct charge of the cemetery. No one responded. And for twenty years I kept saying that. And finally I said, “Well, if it is going to be done I’m going to have to do it myself.” So I saw one of the county commissioners on the street and asked him, Gary Boswell, and asked him if he would be on the committee if I formed it. And he said he would. And Donald Owsley, I asked him, this is ninety-six.
BRINSON: Tell me who Donald Owsley is?
ACTON: Donald Owsley, he was one of the, he’s a former NAACP president and he has relatives buried in the cemetery. I don’t have any buried in that cemetery.
BRINSON: Okay. How old is the cemetery and where is it located?
ACTON: It is located on the Leitchfield Road near East Eighteenth and Leitchfield Road. It is not on that corner but it is near that corner. And it was established in 1906 as the Greenwood Association, Greenwood Cemetery Association.
BRINSON: Tell me, in so many other southern communities the black cemeteries have been neglected for years and years, and again it’s a case where there are usually sort of semi-public and they haven’t received the same attention or funding that the white cemetery may have. Is that what happened here?
ACTON: This cemetery is owned by shareholders. The shareholders, it was established to last fifty years, and after the fifty years; I don’t know why anything was set up that way but that’s the way it was set up. In fifty years they did not renew the corporation and the heirs to the corporation didn’t seem to know that they were heirs to it. And therefore they did nothing. We have been contacting the heirs to the cemetery, the ones that we could find. They didn’t know anything about it. They didn’t know that they had inherited part ownership in the cemetery. And we are trying to reestablish the cemetery, and give it and give back its dignity and respect that it should have. And right now I have been told that the cemetery looks better right now than it has ever looked in the history of that cemetery. So, I talked about it for twenty years and finally I just threw my hat in the ring and went out there and started working and we got the help of many groups in Owensboro. The Daviess County detention center came out and sent their work crew and helped us and Boy Scouts, Catholic High School, College View Middle School and a very few individuals came out to help.
BRINSON: And where do you get the money that you need just to pay for whatever equipment or…?
ACTON: We advertised that we needed donations and we got, so far we’ve had enough donations to buy the gas and a few of the equipment. Some of the churches gave us small donations and several individuals have given us something.
BRINSON: Have you taken any photographs?
ACTON: Oh, yes, now I left all of them out at the school where I went today. Cause they, they wanted some pictures of it. I have a collection of things in this book that you might be interested in.
BRINSON: Ok, fine. Let me go back to the NAACP because we were talking about Estell Moss and I wanted to also ask you about, I think her name was Ellen Valentine. Julian and Ellen Valentine.
ACTON: Ella.
BRINSON: Ella.
ACTON: Yes, that’s her name.
BRINSON: Can you tell me about the Valentines? Were they both active?
ACTON: Yes. Well, he was active in the NAACP and she was very active with the Neblett Center. He was a past president of the NAACP, Julian Valentine was. And his wife was more active with the Neblett Center. And she lived to be about a hundred years old and she’s got a daughter that is ninety-five right now. [Laughing]
BRINSON: Oh, my, okay. What, do you remember what year, when were you president of the NAACP?
ACTON: I would say about fifty-eight and fifty-nine.
BRINSON: Okay. And then you stepped down after a couple of years.
ACTON: Yes. Yeah, after the two years I just rotated off.
BRINSON: Is there still a NAACP chapter?
ACTON: Yes, it’s still here. They’re still going on.
BRINSON: What are the issues that they are concerned about today?
ACTON: I’m not actively involved with them right now. I’m a member but I’m not actively involved. I think they’re concerned about job opportunities as one of their main thrusts right now.
BRINSON: That makes sense.
ACTON: I’m sort of wearing down.
BRINSON: That’s okay. I have questions. There’s, I believe a woman named Leslie Smith.
ACTON: Leslie Shively Smith.
BRINSON: And tell me about her.
ACTON: She was one of the best friends I ever had. She was one of my mentors. She gave me advice on being a teacher and being professional. And she gave me some good suggestions and I tried to follow all of them.
BRINSON: Was she a teacher?
ACTON: She was a teacher. She, now, it was her mother’s farm that I mentioned a few minutes ago I grew up on. Kate Shively, the Shively Farm out at Pleasant Ridge, it was her mother. She taught over in Muhlenberg County and we were just good friends, just family good friends. And she…
BRINSON: So did you know her growing up?
ACTON: Yes. She gave me advice. See I raised a little tobacco crop and she, when I started teaching she told me to stop raising that tobacco. She said you let those farmers do the farming and the teachers do the teaching and you stay in school and keep up with these changes that are taking place. Now I didn’t immediately drop my farming but over a period of time I knew she was right and I did stay in school. And I kept on going to school. I received my masters degree and then I received my thirty hours above my masters. So I, I did follow her advice.
BRINSON: And you gave up the tobacco just because you didn’t have enough time to do everything?
ACTON: Well, the main reason I gave it up because I couldn’t do it by myself. My brother was helping me, he got tired and he quit. So I quit ‘cause I needed the help and so I just quit fooling with it.
BRINSON: Where did you do your graduate work?
ACTON: At Western Kentucky at Bowling Green.
BRINSON: How far is that from here?
ACTON: That’s about seventy miles south of here.
BRINSON: So it’s a good, good ride over.
ACTON: They had extension classes here.
BRINSON: Oh they did. Well, that made it…
ACTON: And most of the time I would go during the summer over there. I had a friend that we rode to school with. He did not like to take classes by traveling down there only if it was over here we took them. And so, he was thinking about the bad weather, we’d get caught down there in a snowstorm and couldn’t get back home. So I just went along with him. So we went over there on Saturdays a lot of times and during the summer. I preferred going during the week. I hated to, it seemed like I didn’t have a weekend when I’d go over there to school on Saturdays.
BRINSON: Can we go back to again some of the early sixties and the demonstrations and sit-ins and whatnot? How, were the black churches involved in any way?
ACTON: As a church I don’t think they were. Now some of the churches, now I’m speaking of Owensboro. I do know some of the churches in others places, we’ve had preachers that were active. They may have pulled their congregation into it. But I don’t know of any church here that was active; that had a preacher that active that where he said his church as a group was going to come. I don’t know of any that participated that way. They probably participated in being outspoken in their congregations.
BRINSON: Outspoken in that they supported or did not support?
ACTON: That they would support the demonstrations, yes. Now Leslie Shively Smith, I feel like I need to say a little bit more about her, ‘cause she is one of the most outstanding ladies in this area or was. She wrote a book called Around Muhlenberg County. Have you read that?
BRINSON: No I haven’t.
ACTON: She wrote a book that’s a black history of Muhlenberg County. After she retired she wrote that and she’s written several little articles and little pamphlet like things that nobody would know anything about if she hadn’t left some of those things behind. I think she had--at least she gave them some up here at this little school. They moved the black school, the little one room school to Yellow Creek Park. Do you know where Yellow Creek Park is?
BRINSON: No.
ACTON: It’s up on the east end of Daviess County.
BRINSON: One of the things that I’m beginning to look for are sort of artifacts or objects that can be used in museum exhibits, maybe at the new History Center in Frankfort.
ACTON: Yes, uh-hmm.
BRINSON: Do you think there would be copies of her articles or pamphlets?
ACTON: I have a copy of most of the things she wrote.
BRINSON: Okay. What about, do you have any idea where all the NAACP records might be?
ACTON: No, that’s one of the problems of the black community. They kept everything at home and when they died out nobody could find anything. And that’s one of things that we tried with this cemetery to find records but we couldn’t find them. We can’t find them.
BRINSON: When, I wanted to ask you about some of the faculty and staff at Brescia. Am I saying that right?
ACTON: Yes, Brescia.
BRINSON: Were any of them involved with you in the early sixties in sit-ins or anything?
ACTON: No, no.
BRINSON: Did you have any, uhmm, well again in the same way I asked you about the role of the minister. Do you have any sense of where people at the college, what they felt about all of this?
ACTON: I think they were supportive. At least one of the teachers that I talked to quite a bit there, she was very supportive. As, when it comes to saying that in this area, she would say, “You know, people said black children could not learn.” And she disputed that idea. She said, “The problem is they have not had the opportunity to learn like the white children.” She said, “They have the ability to learn but they just have not been provided the opportunity as open to the white children.” One of my history teachers used to say, “The white people have no excuse for being poor because the opportunities have been there for them all the time.” And she didn’t have any sympathy for any white poor people. [Laughing]
BRINSON: Do you remember the name of the woman at the college?
ACTON: Sister Eugenia.
BRINSON: Okay. So she was a Catholic Sister. And what did she teach?
ACTON: She taught American history.
BRINSON: Okay. How about Kentucky Wesleyan—was there anybody there--I don’t know how old Kentucky Wesleyan College is.
ACTON: Kentucky Wesleyan moved to Owensboro, you know they used to be in Winchester, Kentucky. They moved to Owensboro about the late forties, early fifties. I was in high school and I would say early fifties. I don’t know how much they were, but that’s about when they moved here. They moved here from Winchester, Kentucky.
BRINSON: Do you know of any faculty there, for example, that supported or came out with you or …?
ACTON: No, I don’t know of any.
BRINSON: Were there any white people at all that supported?
ACTON: Yes. Now there was a Catholic priest. His name was Clark Field.
BRINSON: Spell that for me?
ACTON: Clark, C L A R K. He was a Catholic priest but I don’t think he is a priest anymore because he was so liberal. He was too liberal for them and I think he got out of the priesthood.
BRINSON: So he was with the Catholic diocese?
ACTON: Uh-hmm. And then I think he moved to Morganfield and best I can remember now, he’s not a priest now. He was very active. And there was a Mrs., I don’t remember her first name, Bouvier was very active.
BRINSON: How do you spell that?
ACTON: B O U V I E R, French, I can’t think of her first name.
BRINSON: And how was she supportive?
ACTON: She was a member of the NAACP and she came to the meetings and she encouraged me to take the presidency when I took it. She said, “I’ll work with you. We’ll all help you.”
BRINSON: Had she grown up here in Owensboro?
ACTON: No.
BRINSON: So she had moved in at some point.
ACTON: Yes.
BRINSON: Do you know where she came from?
ACTON: No, I don’t. Her son was the outgoing sheriff of Daviess County. He lives, he did not rerun. He was sheriff for several years, but he did not rerun when his term expired this time.
BRINSON: In 1963 when they had the rally over in Frankfort and Martin Luther King came, did anyone from Owensboro go that you know of?
ACTON: Yes. Some went but I didn’t go. I have an article in this book that says I went but I didn’t. [Laughter]
BRINSON: Was that a newspaper article?
ACTON: No I think this is just a paper that Mrs. Estell Moss wrote.
BRINSON: Oh, okay. She just had it confused.
ACTON: Yes, uh-hmm.
BRINSON: I understand that in 1968 there were some riots here. Do you remember that at all by, in Baptist Town? I believe something about an ice cream parlor at Tenth and Crabtree.
ACTON: Yeah, that’s not in Baptist Town. That’s in Mechanicsville.
BRINSON: Mechanicsville. What was that all about?
ACTON: You know, I tell you, I don’t really know what it was all about.
END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE TWO
BEGIN TAPE TWO, SIDE ONE
BRINSON: Nineteen sixty-eight riot and wondering what that was all about.
ACTON: You know, I remember the riot quite clearly but I can’t put my finger on what the problem was. Sorry. [Laughing]
BRINSON: That’s okay, that’s okay. Oh, I know, one other thing I wanted to ask you about the black school, because I’m finding as I move around the state and I talk to people who either attended the black school or in some cases teachers from black schools. In some, in many towns now, particularly in eastern Kentucky the schools still till today have reunions. And they may have them in the particular town where the school was or they may take them to, you know, Chicago, San Francisco and the families go and they meet in a hotel and whatnot. Is there anything like that here?
ACTON: Yes, Ma’am. We still have our high school reunion.
BRINSON: You do? Okay so it’s just and how often do you have it?
ACTON: Every two years.
BRINSON: And it’s for everybody who went to the high school?
ACTON: Any, yes, everybody who went whether they graduated or not because eventually it’s going to die out. [Laughing]
BRINSON: Right, right. And where do you have the event? Tell me about it. Is it a weekend?
ACTON: It’s a week, it’s usually a weekend. We have, sometimes we have it here and sometimes we have it at a community center just wherever.
BRINSON And this is Western High School.
ACTON: This is Western High School reunion.
BRINSON: And how about the teachers?
ACTON: They come. They’re invited. But mostly the teachers…
BRINSON: There couldn’t be too many living anymore.
ACTON: Not many left, no, there’s not many of them. I’d say three or four.
BRINSON: Do they live in the area or?
ACTON: Yes. Now I said three or four but it’s actually more than three or four living, ‘cause I know, I’m thinking of three or four of them that I know that lives out of town. Now some of them, sometimes they come but usually it’s the ones that live here in town. It depends on how well the committee has advertised whether they come or not.
BRINSON: Who are the teachers still living today?
ACTON: Well, Harry Fields is still living. Addy Talbot, I don’t, I guess she taught there. I guess she did. Theodore Smith, she’s a sister-in-law to Leslie Smith. Mr. and Mrs. Joe Luten, he and his wife.
BRINSON: L U T E N?
ACTON: Yes. They live out of town. And there’s--it’s several people now that I’m thinking that is out of town that taught there. I’m assuming they’re still living. There is Mrs. Stokes.
BRINSON: Her first name?
ACTON: No, I don’t remember her first name.
BRINSON: Well, you probably didn’t know their, or didn’t call them by their first names.
ACTON: Well, I knew her, that’s right. I didn’t have her as a teacher either. But she was in school there when I was there. She was the first band teacher in the school.
BRINSON: Were you in the band?
ACTON: No.
BRINSON: No. Ok.
ACTON: You see, all those extra-curricula things, see, I lived out in the country. I didn’t have a way to get to things. So you can… [Laughing]
BRINSON: Right. When you have the reunion how many people usually come?
ACTON: Oh, around two hundred.
BRINSON: That’s a big group.
ACTON: Yes.
BRINSON: Wonderful. Are there any records available of the reunions or the school files?
ACTON: I’m, I don’t, the board of education would have the school records. Is that what you are speaking of?
BRINSON: Yes.
ACTON: But now the officers would have the record of the alumni association.
BRINSON: Okay. Why don’t we look at some of what you brought with you?
ACTON: Okay. Now this scrapbook it contains a lot of things and some of the things may not relate to what you want. But I brought it because it’s some pictures in here you might be interested in seeing. In 1992 I received the Kentucky Education Lucy Hart Smith-Atwood S. Wilson Award for Civil and Human Rights in Education.
BRINSON: Who is Lucy Hart Smith?
ACTON: She was a teacher in Lexington a principal. And he was a principal in …
BRINSON: Atwood S. Wilson. Ok.
ACTON I don’t know whether he was a principal or not but he was at Central High in Louisville.
BRINSON: Ok.
ACTON: If you see anything that you want to ask questions about, why don’t you turn the pages and you’ll know.
BRINSON: I did want to ask you at one point there was a black teachers state association. I don’t have the right name.
ACTON: Kentucky Negro Education Association.
BRINSON: Were you ever involved with that?
ACTON: I never did teach in, I never taught in a black school.
BRINSON: Were you active in the Kentucky Education Association?
ACTON: Yes, I was. I was president of my local here and I was president of my district, Second District Education Association which included about nine, ten school systems. And I was delegate to the state and national Education Association many times. So I have, I took Mrs. Leslie’s advice – stay involved in your profession.
BRINSON: Right, right.
ACTON: I want you to turn the pages because you know how much time.
BRINSON: Now here they’re making the award to you, right?
ACTON: Yes. And one of the requirements for this book was, I mean for me to get the award was the teacher’s association to put together this book. And when you turn this tape off I’m going to comment on that. [Laughing]
BRINSON: Okay.
ACTON: I don’t want to say that on tape.
BRINSON: Okay. And the notebook has a combination of letters from people who were…
ACTON: Yes, who saw this in the newspaper.
BRINSON: Right. And photos.
ACTON: Biographical sketch.
BRINSON: Right. Let me look at this real quick and see if there is anything here at that… [pause] Well, you have, you’ve been in many community boards, Green River Crime Council, Owensboro Area Museum, Green River Mental Health and Retardation, March of Dimes, Civil Service Commission, Council on Aging and the Audubon Center for Economic Education. And then you’ve been on the Citizens Advisory Committee to Study ways and Means of Improving Elementary and Secondary Ed. Now you didn’t tell me you’ve been the past president of the board of directors of the H.L. Neblett Community Center.
ACTON: Oh, I didn’t, did I?
BRINSON: No, we talked about that. But you’ve been on that board a long time from 1971 till 1990.
ACTON: Oh, I sure was. I served as a treasurer of it most of those years.
BRINSON: And you helped to found the Community Relations Committee in 1963.
ACTON: Yes, I received the Human Relations Commission Award.
BRINSON: Talk with me a little bit about the founding of the commission. What went into that?
ACTON: We, there was a group of citizens interested in getting this established and we had to go to the mayor. That’s what mainly it took, several meetings with the mayor to convince him to form this commission on Human Relations. And I think the mayor at that time was Haus, Ben Haus. And he finally agreed to establish the commission.
BRINSON: And of course, the state not too long before that had started the state commission.
ACTON: State commission, that’s right, that state commission gave cities and communities the idea that we need a local commission to go to.
BRINSON: Right. And do you remember some of the early activities of the commission?
ACTON: I think they heard complaints about discrimination on jobs. I think that has been one of their key complaints is on job opportunities.
BRINSON: Did they work with any other organizations in Kentucky that you are aware of?
ACTON: Well, they worked in conjunction with the other civil rights groups like the NAACP. There was another group.
BRINSON: The Kentucky Civil Liberties Union.
ACTON: Yes, I’m sure they worked with them. There’s another group that, you know …
BRINSON: The Urban League?
ACTON: Yes, the Urban League, yes, uh-hmm.
BRINSON: Okay. And as you said the Human Relations Commission awarded you Person of the Year for your service.
ACTON: And this scrapbook had to be put together in order to get it.
BRINSON: Now you stop anywhere that you want to talk about this.
ACTON: Talk about, okay.
BRINSON: Actually at some point maybe Wesley if you could give me like just a copy.
ACTON: Of them.
BRINSON: Right or you know, a resume or whatever.
ACTON: And there I received the Brescia Award.
BRINSON: Award and that was in the KEA News April 19.
ACTON: That was the KEA Award. Now this was the Brescia, Father Saffer Alumni Award which was very good. They, I got a letter about a month before saying that I had been selected to receive the award, and then about three days before the award they called me and asked me if I was going to. Said, “You know the guest speaker is the person that receives this award. You know that, don’t you?” I said, “No, I did not know it.” So it gave me an opportunity, I said, “Now, look,” that was Wednesday. Thursday I was taking a church group of people on a bus. It wasn’t a church I go to. To Indianapolis, they asked me to drive it for them. And I said, “That doesn’t give me but one day to prepare this and that’s Friday.” And it was going to be Saturday. So I sat down and started thinking. I said what does Brescia College mean to me. I sat down and sketched out what I was going to say. And the, from that point on, I think I have that in here. “What Brescia College Means to Me” You know, I read this and I cried over it. [Laughing] When I called Ms. Leslie Smith and ( ) Starks to get their advise on what they thought of what I had I couldn’t hold back the tears because I struggled so financially. And it’s brought out all the way through the speech how they had helped me to stay in school so I would not have to drop out. So that’s what Brescia means to me.
BRINSON: A very important place to you.
ACTON: Yes and I just said, surely, I hope I. And one woman said, “Go right on and cry because I have been through the same thing.” She said, “Get your cry out now and then when you get ready to give the speech you won’t cry.” [Laughter]
BRINSON: Now here’s a letter from the Bicentennial Constitution and there was an essay contest.
ACTON: Yes.
BRINSON: Tell me about that. Now the bicentennial would have been what year?
ACTON: Kentucky, that was 1987.
BRINSON: Nineteen eighty-seven.
ACTON: Okay was that bicentennial of what, oh, Daviess County? Was that the state bicentennial? What does it say there or was it our local?
BRINSON: I think it’s the local.
ACTON: Yeah, I think it was the local bicentennial. They had to write an essay. Does it tell ( ) there?
BRINSON: No.
ACTON: Well, anyway my student won the essay contest.
BRINSON: There you are you look a little younger. [Laughter] Who is this woman?
ACTON: That’s Fannie, it’s in connection with this, had to cut her off. I really probably should have cut two off. That way there would have been two over here of her. She was a retired schoolteacher. Where is, now that says continuing somewhere else. Where is the rest of it, I wonder? It may have gotten. She was a retired teacher and she came back to Owensboro to live out her retirement years.
BRINSON: You have a lot of nice news articles here.
ACTON: Now that was Apollo, no that wasn’t Apollo that was one of the KEA conventions in Louisville.
BRINSON: Then multiple letters of reference.
ACTON: These are people who wrote letters of support of my candidacy.
BRINSON: This was a big award.
ACTON: Yeah, it was. And see all this had to be done.
BRINSON: So the award was given in 1992 up in Louisville at …
ACTON: At the KEA.
BRINSON: Were you nervous about that?
ACTON: No, not really. [Laughter]
BRINSON: You were more nervous about Brescia College.
ACTON: That’s right when they said I had to speak that always gets my attention.
BRINSON: Now here’s a letter from Leslie.
ACTON: Leslie Smith.
BRINSON: Did she teach school?
ACTON: Yes.
BRINSON: And what did she teach?
ACTON: She taught high school math and English later on.
BRINSON: It’s a lovely letter.
ACTON: Uh-hmm.
BRINSON: Your superintendent wrote a letter.
ACTON: That’s my minister.
BRINSON: Right, your minister. Says you are an active member of the South Side Church of Christ. And you’re a Bible class teacher for middle school.
ACTON: Yes. The teacher at Apollo High School had the students to write letters during American Education Week to a teacher that they remember a lot about or their favorite teacher. And three students wrote to me to thank me for being their teacher.
BRINSON: That’s very nice. And this is a listing of past recipients, my goodness what wonderful company here. In 1974 Whitney Young, Sr., Lyman Johnson in `76, Ann Braydon, Gaylon Martin who was director of the first Human Relations Commission. And I don’t even know all these names but I certainly recognize a number of pretty prominent people. You have…
ACTON: Things that people wrote to me.
BRINSON: And even your senator, Mitch McConnell wrote you.
ACTON: See I added this stuff from here on back.
BRINSON: Well, that’s a nice way of keeping all of this. The president of the college, is actually or was a Catholic sister when this happened.
ACTON: Yes.
BRINSON: Who is the president now, do you know?
ACTON: Just a minute. I’ll think of her name. Oh, I know her name but it escapes me. Now there’s the article I was talking about Mrs. Moss. I don’t know who put this out.
BRINSON: It says, “the birth of Owensboro’s NAACP branch grew out of a situation in which a black man was charged with a rape of a white woman. And at that time in 1946 several blacks met at the old community center now the H.L. Neblett Center which resulted in the hiring of a black attorney from Louisville namely James Crumblin who later became state president of the NAACP. In 1947 with Julian Valentine as its president membership was one hundred thirty-seven members. In 1963 Owensboro was the host branch for the first state board meeting of the NAACP in which Roy Wilkins National NAACP Executive Director was the guest speaker.” You said it was an error about going on the march to Frankfort, was it an error about going on the march to Washington, D.C., too?
ACTON: No. I mean there were some who went but I guess she just forgot, she probably thought I went, too. [Long pause] Now there is something I have been looking for.
BRINSON: On Hattie Neblett.
ACTON: Uh-hmm.
BRINSON: Her husband was Dr. Reginald C. Neblett nearly six decades with the center, my goodness, including almost forty years as its president. “She did what needed to be done whether the job was fundraising or cleaning up.” [long pause]
ACTON: Now there was an article about the paper, had in there, about me and others that they talked to about the school.
BRINSON: “Charles Brown was one of the first black students to attend Owensboro High School as a special student. Brown said that there were no problems but said he was shocked by the lack of discipline in the school.” There had been more discipline in the black school then. [Laughter]
ACTON: Yeah. The black principals, the one we had, he did rule with an iron hand. And back there then if you didn’t move he would shove you on out of the way.
BRINSON: What did that mean specifically?
ACTON: It’s means if you didn’t do what he said do, he hit you.
BRINSON: He hit you. [Laughter] Okay. So Charles Brown at this time, at the time of the article he’s identified as a city firefighter.
ACTON: Uh-hmm, he’s retired now. Yeah, he was a firefighter. He wasn’t a disciplinarian. He was a student.
BRINSON: Right. That’s very nice. Thank you for sharing that.
ACTON: Oh, you’re welcome.
BRINSON: I wonder is there anything else that you’d like to add to this conversation?.
ACTON: I don’t know of anything unless you think of something that you’d like to ask that you haven’t asked.
END OF INTERVIEW
1:00