Oral History Interview with Mervin Aubespin

BETSY BRINSON: This is an interview with Mervin Aubespin, A U B E S P I N. Am I close?

MERVIN AUBESPIN: That’s it.

BRINSON: The interviewer is Betsy Brinson, and we’re doing the interview at Betsy’s residence in Lexington, Kentucky.

AUBESPIN: You have a much better tape than I do.

BRINSON: Well, may I call you Mervin?

AUBESPIN: By all means.

BRINSON: Thank you. Could you begin, first off, tell me a little bit, if you know, about the history of your last name?

AUBESPIN: It’s French.

BRINSON: It’s French.

AUBESPIN: I am from Louisiana. And there are only twenty-six Aubespins that we’ve been able to identify, and twelve of those are in France. [Laughing]

BRINSON: My goodness.

AUBESPIN: So it’s going by the wayside. I had, I was born in Appaloosas, Louisiana, which is a rather small town in Southwestern Louisiana, right in the middle of the Cajun-Creole country.

BRINSON: Would you mind spelling that?

AUBESPIN: O P E L O U S A S.

BRINSON: Okay.

AUBESPIN: Opelousas was, when I grew up was a small community of about thirty-five thousand, and that is stretching it sometimes. A rather sheltered, early childhood.

BRINSON: What year were you born?

AUBESPIN: Nineteen thirty-seven, June thirtieth. And it was an isolated place. I didn’t recognize its uniqueness until years later. But it was a rather unique place. A French dialect was the second language. People were pretty well mixed up.

BRINSON: Mixed up?

AUBESPIN: Yes.

BRINSON: Do you mean racially?

AUBESPIN: Racially, through the years there had been a lot of intermingling among the cultures. Early slaves escaped and lived with the Indians. It was a trading post for a number of years. Free men of color gathered there. And the results of liaisons between plantation owners and slaves were rather common in that part of Louisiana. Interestingly enough though an anthropologist in my family, one of my cousins, took the family on my mother’s side all the way back to the sixteenth century. And it was a unique experience, which sort of gives you a jist of that particular part of the country, that great-great-great-great-grandmother lived in Pointe Coupee Parish, which was nearby, about forty miles out of Baton Rouge, in that coastal area. And she had been the slave of a plantation owner named Paul Vallet. Unheard of at the time, there was a couple of things that Paul did. Paul was a bachelor and the slave was a member of his household staff. Their liaison resulted in the births of six daughters; and those children were sent to Paris to be educated, where Paul still had family and friends. And he brought a priest to the plantation to build a church under the guise, because most of Louisiana in that area was Catholic, under the guise of taking care of the people who worked for him. And he had the priest marry them, which was illegal at the time. Before his death, he freed her and all of the children, of course; but he did the unthinkable, he left her one third of his entire estate, and they are buried on top of each other, their tombstone is still there. They are buried in the same tombstone, at his request. And he left her a third of his estate. It took her almost three years, in order to collect on it. But that was worth about a half a million dollars, in that time, that would be considered more than all the free men of color in North Carolina owned. And so it was a sizable amount. Many of those girls, who came back--it was very difficult for this cousin. He did his Ph.D. dissertation on it, and his name was Eulis Ricard and he worked at the Anniston Center at Tulane.

BRINSON: R I C A R ?

AUBESPIN: R I C A R D, and was quite an expert on Creoles of color in Southern Louisiana, the expert, I’m told by many. And he found that they finally did collect the money, but the girls were--who came back and married, mostly to other Creoles--were the ones who set up the schools following the Civil War, because they had already been educated. And direct descendants of those families, one was Secretary of State, for the state of Louisiana during the Reconstruction. The other was the Treasurer. And another one had the first French speaking newspaper in Pointe Coupee Parrish. So it is kind of interesting. Because he, Paul Vallet, undoubtedly cared for them considerably, because he did treat her just like a wife would have been treated. And that was interesting on that side. I know less on my father’s side, because his mom and dad were both deceased at an early age for him. I know his father had been a seaman, and my father was a seaman, who had traveled around the world some five or six times. He left when I was about eight and went back, and my mother finally divorced him after those long trips he would take and come back. And I saw him again twenty-five years later, and we had a pleasant reunion, in which I picked his brains about a lot of things. He died in Houston while I was in service in Fort Hood, Texas. I had just come out of service.

BRINSON: Do you have any brothers and sisters?

AUBESPIN: I have a sister. And my mother remarried, and I have a half-brother as a result of that marriage. My sister lives in Louisville now, after thirty years in California. But we both grew up in Opelousas, which is a really strange place. Because it was very protective of the people, very leery of outsiders and very protective of the people inside. And for the most part, you knew there was segregation, but it wasn’t as intense as it would have been in Alabama, where I went to school. Mississippi, or Georgia where I traveled through during the Civil Rights Movement. I went to a Catholic School in Louisiana, small Catholic School, Holy Ghost Catholic High.

BRINSON: Holy Ghost Catholic High?

AUBESPIN: Holy Ghost Catholic High, I mean you can imagine the fights I got in with other kids from the public high school, because of the name of that school. [Laughing]

BRINSON: Right. How many in your graduating class?

AUBESPIN: Twenty-five, that was a big class, considered a big class in those days. Interestingly enough, we were taught by African-American nuns, the Holy Family Order.

BRINSON: Now was this an all black school?

AUBESPIN: Uh hmm, yeah.

BRINSON: Okay.

AUBESPIN: But we were taught by all black nuns, which was unusual, because most of those Catholic Schools were taught by white nuns. And they were an interesting group, they put a lot of emphasis on education. In my class of twenty-five, twenty-four finished college. That’s a high, high...

BRINSON: It certainly is.

AUBESPIN: And many, you know, went out and made their lives, so it was interesting. But I was fourteen years old when I graduated from school, because back in those days, when they had small schools and if you were, if they felt you were bored, they skipped you a grade.

BRINSON: And that was what year, that you graduated?

AUBESPIN: I graduated in nineteen fifty-four.

BRINSON: Fifty-four, okay.

AUBESPIN: And so here I was at the ripe, old age of fourteen. I had not even considered--we were not exactly wealthy--but my mother had married someone in Louisville at the time, and had moved to Louisville. So I had never even considered college as an option, because I didn’t think we could afford it. They appeared two or three days before graduation and said, “Yes you are going to school. You are going to Tuskegee.” To most people in my community, they went to Southern University in Baton Rouge or Xavier, which was a college in New Orleans.

BRINSON: Uh huh, Catholic.

AUBESPIN: A Catholic college in New Orleans. So, I mean I was really, here I was fourteen years old and I’m going to leave the state; and it was really an experience.

BRINSON: Why do you think they chose Tuskegee for you?

AUBESPIN: My step-father ran a trade school in Louisville. And Tuskegee had a very good Industrial Arts program at the time. As a matter of fact, part of Booker T. Washington’s philosophy, who founded it, was that irregardless of what your field of endeavor was, you took a trade too. It was just a part of his philosophy for the graduates at the turn of the century when he was there, and it carried on. You weren’t required to, but you were encouraged to have something to fall back on. So, my step-dad had hired a number of teachers for his trade school from Tuskegee; and decided that if I were going to go to college, I would go and I would come in and work for them; unfortunately the trade school closed after my second year there.

BRINSON: The trade school at Tuskegee closed, or the one in Louisville?

AUBESPIN: The trade school at Louisville, the one my step-father owned. Unfortunately it closed and I got a call from mother saying, “You’re going to have to come home.” And I said, “Oh no, I’ll make it from here.” And so I found that people at Tuskegee were accustomed to getting students who had very little financial resources, and so they had all sorts of programs that would let you work on the campus and pay you in vouchers, which would be used towards your tuition. Some great person there, in my case it was the secretary of the Dean of the Industrials Arts Department, who was an old friend of our family and she said, “Oh no Mervin, you’re going to stay, and we’ll just fix up my basement and you’ll stay there and eat with us, but you are going to stay in school.” And so we made it through school with very little money and I graduated, and was ready.

BRINSON: And you graduated and you were how old?

AUBESPIN: Eighteen.

BRINSON: And so that would have been, what nineteen fifty-eight?

AUBESPIN: Uh hmm. So I was pretty young, I made nineteen right after I got out. But it was during the time that I was at Tuskegee, that I got a tremendous education, because the location of Tuskegee was in the Bible Belt. It attracted a lot of its students from the South. So, it put me in touch with people of different regions. It put me in touch with different religions, because where I came from, just everybody was Catholic, you know. I think there was one Baptist Church in town. And my Aunt and I used to go sit in there and listen to the music every now and then, but--my great-aunt and I--but it was a really great experience, because at the time Tuskegee had a reputation for bringing in black intellectuals to talk on the campus. It was very structured. You had to go to Vesper services every Sunday, and they would send you home if you didn’t. [Laughing] But it also opened doors for us to hear and be enlightened by speakers. It was during that time that my room mate, a guy named Sam Adams had gotten an old car from his Dad. And we had fixed it up, and we would go to Montgomery, which was not very far away, about sixty-five miles away; and visit his aunt, who loved to cook for growing guys, you know. And living on campus and eating dormitory food, there is nothing greater than to have a good solid meal from someone who knows what she is doing. And she would give us wonderful boxes to take back. And we would go there and then we would ride over to Alabama State College, which was another black college in Montgomery, and look at the girls there, and meet folks, and then drive back to Tuskegee. It was a nice way occasionally to get off the campus, because there wasn’t much to do in segregated Tuskegee, the town.

BRINSON: Were you aware of what was happening in Montgomery?

AUBESPIN: Well, this is what happened. One day she insisted that we go to church with her to hear her new minister. And she was the secretary for the church, and her new minister was a guy named Martin Luther King. And so she told us, she said, “I’ve been feeding you all and what have you; and you’re going to have to hear my new minister. We’re going to put you all to work. You all are in school, you’re college boys, and I’m sure you can help us.” And this was during the time of the bus boycott. And so they drafted my room mate, who had this car. It was an old car. They drafted him to pick up passengers and take them. I didn’t even drive then, and so they gave me a clipboard, and I was the one who was helping to match people with rides. And that was my first taste. Of course, I never realized during that time that it was that significant a transition was happening. You know, to us young people, it was all an adventure. And I can remember on our way going back to Tuskegee, how there was an inordinate amount of people that the police would stop, assuming that they were coming from rallies or things of that sort. And so our big thing was how do we get back to Tuskegee without being harassed by the police department. We had very little money and needed to be in class the next day, [ Laughing] so we went through every back road we could find back there in Alabama to get back to Tuskegee; because once you got on the campus you were safe. Nobody could come on campus and bother you.

BRINSON: Tell me, back on campus though, being that close to Montgomery, was there, what level of interest was there by the people on campus?

AUBESPIN: It was considerable. But you see, it was such a new movement at the time, until we knew about it because we read about it in the Montgomery Advertiser, the newspaper, which was a very racist paper at the time. Not a very good paper. And we knew it was happening, but it hadn’t come home yet. You know the student movement hadn’t really come in full force then. We knew it was happening. We also knew that a Dean of Students there, named Doctor Germillion, had sued the city for voter registration, about that time, or shortly during that period while I was in school. We knew he was sort of a hero, but I mean, students just didn’t get involved that much. And our involvement was at the beginning, very minimal. We went over when we got time and helped out; and basically we were just around. We were around when they threw dynamite on King’s house. I remember the crowds out front. But you know, when I think back on it, it was not as spectacular as it was. It was only when my daughter asked me a few years ago, what did you do? Because I never really talked about it. And then I thought, I had never really put the package together, you know, it’s just something that sits back there. Later, when I got out of school and came back to Kentucky, which was in nineteen fifty-eight; I had met some young friends here, who were all in college, and we all graduated about the same time. I came back in fifty-eight. There was much more activity at the local level.

BRINSON: Before you talk about that though, let me ask you about Tuskegee. Was there a youth NAACP Chapter on campus, that you recall? Or were there any other student organizations that?

AUBESPIN: No, there were some student organizations, and those student organizations when they really went after later, were the basis for the demonstrations in Tuskegee proper. I don’t even remember there being an NAACP Chapter. And if I look back in my yearbook, there may or may not have been, but it wasn’t, it was--Tuskegee itself, because of the type of university it was, it wasn’t urban; it was isolated rural. And everything on the campus was built towards educating you, and making sure you were comfortable and safe there. And the businesses right around the campus were mostly black owned. And the town, itself, was mostly white owned. So, your whole life at Tuskegee was right in the periphery. It is a very large campus. It would be larger than U.K. would be. Because they had all of this, they raised--you see, it was so much a unit--they raised all the food we ate on the campus. The students from the Agricultural Department, who took out Ag, took care of the fields. We had a world renown school of Veterinary Medicine. The School of Veterinary Medicine made sure that the animals that were raised, the large animals and the small animals--my thing was, I took Industrial Arts, which included brick laying and tile setting, and plastering. My class project, the three years that I was involved in taking those courses, was to build the food processing plant, a brand new one: that processed the chickens, and the cows, and the pigs, and stuff that they raised there to feed us in the cafeteria. Later we would build the Engineering, the new Engineering Building. And that’s how we got our experience, we took classes, and then we went out in the evening and actually laid bricks, and actually built the buildings. And so they had their own power plant, they made their own bricks, they raised their own food. And so it became almost a unit that was isolated from everything else. It was done almost on purpose because of the racism out in the community and what have you. And so--and a lot of the businesses owned in the neighborhood were from retired professors, who opened up businesses, or their families opened their businesses. So it was really an isolated unit. And there wasn’t as I recall, any great movement, but students were capable of getting together. I mean, I remember clearly when students decided they no longer wanted to sit with girls on one side of chapel services and boys on the other. And we just went in and mixed up one day. And the Deans and what have you pulled their hair out, and I think that was the beginning of a sort of movement mentality on the campus. Now, I did find out that many of the young people on campus when they went back home, were involved in voter registration and things of that sort, back in their homes. Using the campus as a base? Not as early as fifty-eight.

BRINSON: I want to go back and ask you a question about your high school, because you know--preface it by saying, as I have interviewed mostly retired teachers and students who attended all black schools around Kentucky, one of the things that I’ve learned is that these schools continue to have reunions even today. And in their annual reunions, sometimes they’re held in the town, sometimes they’re held in other places around the country. And I just wondered if that happened with your school at all?

AUBESPIN: Some of the classes have reunions, but our school was so small--until what has happened, my sister’s group, which was two years behind mine, had a big reunion a couple of years ago; and they invited not only that class, but the class before them and the class after. My class was so small and got so scattered, it’s just so difficult pulling those people together. No, I think what happened was, you had a small cadre of people, who stayed in Opelousas. They went to college and they came back, and they taught school, and what have you. And then you had others like myself, who left, others who went to California, Michigan and what have you.

BRINSON: All over.

AUBESPIN: And once they left, they didn’t feel the urge to come back, because there was very little in Opelousas. It was only, in my case, I didn’t go back for twenty years, because there was nothing that I felt intellectually stimulating. And then I went back, because all of a sudden I recognized that the culture was uniquely different. Blacks who were as white as you, whites who were as brown as me, a relationship built for years on things that went on behind doors and stuff. The language was different, even the food with the jambalaya and the crawfish bisque and all of this, was different. Other cultures like the Arcadians who came down formed subcultures, and the Creoles formed subcultures, and the real dark skinned blacks formed another culture, and very seldom that the three, unless it was in Catholic school, intermingled. And it struck me that we were embarrassed because our parents insisted that we not learn French, because it was a show of ignorance; if you spoke French, you came out of the sticks. And so they encouraged us to drop all the trappings. And it was later, when I came here, and when I went to college, that I began to recognize that, that area is probably unique in America, because of the melting pot thing there. And actually in my entire family, I am the darkest one, and the only one with curly hair. The rest of us have straight hair. My mother was as fair as you are. And you know relatives, the big joke was, even in the segregated South they would get on the bus and sit on the front of the bus and the bus driver didn’t know the difference. And be afraid to insult anybody because they might be the richest man in town’s daughter, you know, something of that sort

BRINSON: Tell me when you became interested in art. How did that...

AUBESPIN: That was interesting, because when I came here--I’ve always wanted to--but never dared. You know how people want to do something and never dare because of the possibility of failure. Coming from an environment where my dad left when I was eight, missing a male role model. I was raised by aunts, grandmothers and mother. I was raised in an environment of all women. It has made me much more sensitive about a number of things, but you just had this fear of failure. Being the youngest on the block also created that fear too. I’ve always wanted to, but never did. And when I came here, after I was teaching school and I decided to try industry for a while. This is during the Civil Rights Movement when we opened up some jobs in industry. I went into industry and got drafted, because I lost my teacher’s deferment. I had even thought about that, got drafted into the military. I said well, I’m going to be in the military for two years. Now I can go in here and be the great soldier, which is not my cup of tea, or I can use this time of isolation to learn something that I didn’t have when I came in. And so I went to the bookstore when I got finally at Fort Hood, Texas, my base that I was going to be stationed at, and I got every book I could find on art. And I spent a hundred dollars, I’ll never forget it, on art supplies. And I decided instead of going out in the evenings, clubs and chasing girls, I would teach myself. And being a minority coming from a small town, I’ve always had to be innovative; and I knew I had some talent, because I used to carve, I used to whittle all the time. I loved the outdoors. And you would find me, on a typical Sunday, I would be tromping through the swamps by myself, you know. And I would sit there and watch the birds and alligators and everything else and whittle. I would whittle all sorts of little things, so I knew I might have had some talent. And I said, “I’ll do that.” Well, next thing you know, I started doing some rather good representations.

BRINSON: Were you painting?

AUBESPIN: Uh hmm.

BRINSON: Okay.

AUBESPIN: I have my first one, it was a small landscape. And I started doing charcoals, and I would do all the officer’s daughters and stuff. I would get me a big, opaque projector, and I would blow it up. And I could get the facial movements and then I could cut it off and just work, work, work. But the real thing, where the nose is, and where the mouth is and where the eyes are, get that lined up right quick. And I would sit there sometimes all night long, because when they brought me into the service, I worked with special, the G-2 section, which is the sneaky Pete guys. And so there wasn’t that much that you had to have your uniform and spit and polish. I worked as a topographer using, because having gone to Industrial Arts, I had taken architectural drawing.

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE ONE

BEGIN TAPE ONE SIDE TWO

AUBESPIN: ...paintbrushes and I started working on charcoals at night. And I would sit in that office sometimes all night on weekends doing drawings and matting them and giving them to the officers. I enjoyed that. When I came out.

BRINSON: And you came out when?

AUBESPIN: Hmm, let’s see I went in, in sixty-two...sixty-four.

BRINSON: Okay. And I moved you ahead quickly, you said you had been a teacher before you went in?

AUBESPIN: Uh huh.

BRINSON: And you lost your teaching...?

AUBESPIN: I taught at, when I got here, they decided I was too young to teach. And so what they did was, they made me sub for a year, just to see if I could handle it. I was a tiny, little thing, weighed about a hundred and twenty pounds. And I handled it quite well and they hired me.

BRINSON: At what level were you teaching?

AUBESPIN: They hired me--the job opened--I was a teacher--they had a general shop opening; I had never taught shop before, but I took the job. And once more, I got me some books. And I would make the projects at home and then I would go to school the next day and we’d work on those projects. It was a junior high school in the middle of the projects called Duvall Junior High School. It was located in the middle of the Park Duvall area, Cotter Homes and South Wake was the projects. And the majority of the students came right out of those projects. And it didn’t take me long to recognize the fact that these kids did not want to make dust pans or trash baskets, when they didn’t have a room to put it in most of the time. And so I put my innovative juices to work again, and I would go to these scrap metal places and beg pieces of copper and brass and stainless steel. And I took the same tools that they had in the place, and we made things that those kids could use. Like, we made bracelets and earrings and rings that they could give their mothers. We made tools to work on leather. And I’d go to the Tandy Company and get soiled leather, and they could make wallets, you know, we were just being innovative. Instead of making lamps, we made yo-yos, and had yo-yo contests on the wood turning machine, that, they could use, that was something. I see students now, who still laugh about that. I could take a piece of copper pipe and cut it down the center and flatten it out, and then take a piece of stainless steel and we could solder the two together and make beautiful jewelry. And so kids who didn’t have any money to buy mom a present for Christmas, could make it in the shop. We’d have little displays in the lobby at the junior high school. I would help on making the stage stuff for the big plays and productions, and we got a big kick out of that. But the key to that, I enjoyed it, but they just didn’t pay much in those days. And it was a separate city system at the time.

BRINSON: How did you come to lose your teacher’s certificate?

AUBESPIN: My friend, I had a very good friend named Frank Stanley, Jr.--I’m digressing in order to put it into context, whose father owned the local Defender newspaper, which was a black paper. And he was one of the first persons that I had met here. And we were, they were negotiating with industry at the time, to open up jobs to African Americans. In Western Louisville, way in the corner of Western Louisville, are a number of plants, B.F. Goodrich, American Synthetic and the Dupont Plant, which were chemical plants at the time, most of them making plastics, synthetic rubbers; but hardly no blacks worked there, not even in the kitchen, not even as janitors. And negotiations had been going on to open up some of those jobs. And they said of course--when they finally opened up a limited amount--they were looking for the most highly qualified African Americans they could find, because their chance of survival would be great. It was only after we took those jobs, that we recognized that our supervisors, many of them had only eighth grade educations. But the point was most of the guys who went in the first wave had some college background. I was teaching school and they were paying about three hundred and sixty dollars a month, which isn’t very much. Here was industry and they were going to pay me on a swing shift, and then all the overtime you could get. So the money looked really good for catching up. And so I resigned from the school system and went into industry.

BRINSON: And this would have been about nineteen sixty...?

AUBESPIN: Sixty-one.

BRINSON: Sixty-one, okay.

AUBESPIN: Yeah, about sixty-one. Not realizing that the only thing that kept me from being drafted like most of the people my age, was the fact that I was teaching school and it was considered a necessary vocation, and you were, you didn’t have to, you were given a....

BRINSON: A deferment, right?

AUBESPIN: A deferment. I wasn’t thinking when I took the job and I had been working on the job all of two months, when I got my notice, congratulations Uncle Sam wants you. And so here I am February at Fort Knox in training, overweight and slow as sin. [Laughing] I tell you, and the only thing...

BRINSON: ( )

AUBESPIN: No, this is fine. The only thing that saved me, was I had had ROTC in college, and they were looking for leaders, and so I became a squad leader. And being squad leader, I didn’t have to run as much as the other guys; [Laughing] and that’s why they sent me to school.

BRINSON: Ok. So you were in Louisville in sixty, sixty-one, when the sit-ins and the demonstrations and whatnot?

AUBESPIN: Yes, uh huh.

BRINSON: Uh, what can you tell me about that?

AUBESPIN: Frank Stanley Jr. was a young man who had graduated from the University of Illinois, and he like myself, we were anxious to do something else, create change; but he had the connection, I was the stranger in town so to speak, you know. Louisville like many Southern cities has its built in social clique. Because his father owned a black newspaper, and had been very vocal in the Civil Rights Movement: he always found, as a pattern, African Americans who had businesses of their own were usually in the forefront. Because it was--you had less pressure, than if you worked for someone in the--someone white who didn’t like what you were doing, could easily fire you or put you in a less meaningful job or something of that sort. You had pressures on you. So him having the black newspaper gave him a platform. And so he was pretty well known in the community, as well as most of the old Civil Rights Folks, like the Lyman Johnsons and the Anderson, who was a judge, not a judge, an attorney, and McAlpins and what have you, had been there a long time before.

BRINSON: What about Doctor Peaos, he died in nineteen sixty.

AUBESPIN: Uh huh, but he had been one of the early ones. He was one of the people that tested the golfing and I know his son quite well. So Frank was back on the scene, back home. And he and I, we had great social lives together, because I had found somebody locally, you know, that I really liked; and we had five or six other friends. But Frank decided that he could be very effective--he was extremely bright at the time--because what you had in the Louisville community was, you had NAACP here, you had this new group called CORE here, you had the Baptist Churches always had an organization where the ministers got together. So there was a coalition of ministers here. You had all these groups here, so when one group would be looking at something here, another group would be doing something else. And they got the idea that if they brought all these groups together, and selected the leadership out of this group, then they wouldn’t have them tripping over each other; and that the egos could be controlled a little better. Because you know all of these folks have got these massive egos. And so his role was interesting, because him being young, nobody saw him as a threat. And so they would call meetings at The Defender, which was a neutral place. Because even the ministers, if you went to this one’s church or to that one’s church, you had all of these little innuendoes. And they did form this coalition where there was selective leadership.

BRINSON: And it had a name too, something Allied...

AUBESPIN: I couldn’t think. I was trying to think the other day of the name and I went back and looked at some old newspapers. It was a Coalition, but I don’t remember what they called it. It will come back to me, but it just escaped me, and I was trying to read through some old clips I had, but they refer to it as a coalition. Back in those days, papers didn’t really...

BRINSON: Is this the coalition though that Georgia Davis Powers and Lou Key Ward actually started out providing office assistance to?

AUBESPIN: No, that was later.

BRINSON: That was later. Okay.

AUBESPIN: That was later. This was an early coalition. And I may have pulled some clips from that. Georgia Davis was always there, now mind you. Let’s see [ searching papers] I had some clips. I may have given them to a colleague, but I can always pull them back. One of the great things about working at the paper is you have access, you get access to the library and you can pull a lot of things. But this is, this group decided to focus specifically on public accommodations. It is ironic, but when I came back to Louisville in nineteen fifty-eight, I couldn’t try on clothes, with the exception of maybe at Levy Brother’s store. There was no place on Fourth Street, which was the main shopping area, I couldn’t even get, go into an Orange Bar and get an orange drink. White Castle, the cheapest of all had a window in the back, you couldn’t even go in the White Castle to get a White Castle; and so it was kind of a bad scene. And they decided to focus strictly on public accommodations. And the unique thing was, the movies in the South, throughout the South where I had been, whether it were in Mississippi, Alabama or Louisiana, always had at least a loft or balcony for African Americans, but these didn’t.

BRINSON: Oh, they didn’t. So there was really no...

AUBESPIN: So if I wanted to go to a movie, I could go to the two black movies in town, the Lyric Grill and the other, the Grand, which didn’t show first run movies, or I could go across the river to New Albany to the Twin Drive-In. And at least I could park a car and watch a movie with some friends, other than that, that was it. And I found that interesting--there was no place--even in the South, you know, there was a place that you could go. So they decided to focus on it. The interesting thing here was, most movements have always focused on having a college base, because many of the marches came out of college. There wasn’t that large an enrollment at the University of Louisville at that time, because it had just opened up. And so this movement was staffed by some of the kids I was teaching at the junior high and the high schools. High school students did much of the marching. And adults, I was one of the teachers, Lyman Johnson was another, and maybe one other teacher that I can’t remember off the top of my head; knew we would get in trouble. They worried a lot about me.

BRINSON: Sounds like it was mostly the male teachers. Were there women that were?

AUBESPIN: Yeah, there were women involved.

BRINSON: Women teachers though?

AUBESPIN: Not many though, oh no, no, not many. Like I said, if I can recall--.you know the funny thing is when you start telling these stories, if everybody who says they were in it, were in it, there were a million people marching. It’s not necessarily that way. [Laughing] You know, everybody’s memory, well we did this and we did that and I say to myself, we did? I don’t remember. [Laughing] But as a teacher I tried not to get arrested, until finally I said, “Well there was a badge and I would get arrested.” Fortunately for me, black police officers were often, and I think they did this on purpose, were often the ones who they made make the arrest. It was to add insult to injury. And a lot of them knew...

BRINSON: I’m actually surprised that there were black police officers.

AUBESPIN: There were a few, yeah, there were a few. But they made them do the arresting. And I wrote some stories about that when I became a journalist at The Courier, that it created some real psychological problems, because sometimes they were arresting their own children, their own wives, or their own nieces and nephews. But fortunately for me, a number of black police officers knew that I was a school teacher, and they would arrest me and go down the street and open the door and make me go out, get out of the paddy wagon, because they knew that, that would create some problems, and it did. Because one day my supervisor from the Board of Education just crossed through our line to go to Blue Boar, which was one of the restaurants we focused on. But basically what I did was, they would break the kids up into small groups, and I would take a group and another adult would take another group. And we would have to focus on one particular place. But it was interesting...

BRINSON: So they would pick you up, put you in the paddy wagon, but they wouldn’t actually book you.

AUBESPIN: They’d go three blocks down the street...

BRINSON: And let you out.

AUBESPIN: And they would say, Mervin, “Get out of here.” They knew me and they’d say, “Get out of here.” Because look, they placed a value on having teachers in their community. And Louisville...

BRINSON: Did they do that for any others? No?

AUBESPIN: Uh uh.

BRINSON: I was also interested, was there, how did the school administration handle your involvement and the student involvement?

AUBESPIN: I tried to keep myself from being as obvious as possible when I was on the street marching. The school administration had some real problems with it, but you couldn’t do anything. What the kids did, was after school. You see after school was out, was a horse of another color. Now, the administration when they found out I was involved, leaned on me pretty heavy, but that didn’t bother me. You know when you’re young, you get a little arrogant.

BRINSON: But you didn’t lose your job.

AUBESPIN: Almost.

BRINSON: Almost?

AUBESPIN: Almost. Had not people like Woodford Porter...

BRINSON: Whitman Porter?

AUBESPIN: Woodford Porter, who ran for Board of Education and was quite active in the Civil Rights Movement. His wife would be there; and you know, Woodford was the first black elected to the local Board of Education. Had not there been people like that, who I knew--my step-father had a rather high profile here, because he had this trade school, and was considered rather wealthy at the time. By the time I came out of school, he had lost the trade school, but everybody knew him. A lot of the police officers I met, I knew them from they’re being around Duvall when I was teaching there. Or I met them in social circles, because teachers and police officers were considered, you know, or you had your own business, were considered part of a society, and so you met them at different levels: they knew who you were. Mr. Johnson, who became a Major and was one of the highest ranking blacks before he died. And Jesse Taylor who was a legend. I’ve written about both of those in another venue for the paper. But he’d say, “Aubespin, come here.” [Whispering and Laughing] And he’d open the door, “Now you get on out of here.” And I’d go right back and get arrested again. But you know, it wasn’t a big thing, because you didn’t want to make you the star. But I found some--most of them--see here--I’ve found some great pictures. You see how young? And they were not all black.

BRINSON: Right, right, being helped into the paddy wagon here. Right. And there are the two black police officers. This was out in front of the theater? Looks like.

AUBESPIN: Uh huh.

BRINSON: Do you happen to know who that woman is?

AUBESPIN: Yes, I think that is Henry Wallace’s daughter. I think that is who that is. Henry Wallace is a long time liberal, who lives out at Anchorage and his daughter has become a very famous playwright.

BRINSON: Tell me about the students, I’m interested in knowing whether there were more boys than girls, more girls than boys, whether it was pretty even. How did that fall?

AUBESPIN: It was pretty even, if you look, there was a group.

BRINSON: Oh yes, now this is a photo of young people in a cafeteria, right?

AUBESPIN: When they were served, when they were finally served, and that’s nineteen sixty-one. This is a group of marchers, walking up on Broadway.

BRINSON: Yes, I think I’ve actually seen this photo. I’ve pulled some of the early big stories.

AUBESPIN: This is my friend Frank, and the Police Chief at the time. My friend Frank, and they’re getting ready to arrest him again. Here is in front of the Blue Boar, you can see it is about even.

BRINSON: And these look like predominantly high school students?

AUBESPIN: Uh hmm, you can see how young they are. This is Fountain Ferry, which was an amusement park. It was one of the roughest places we tried to--wait, this is in front of Blue Boar. You can see these are really young people. This guy here, is Sam Gilliam, who has become one of the premier artists in America.

BRINSON: G I L L I A M?

AUBESPIN: Uh hmm, Gilliam.

BRINSON: What’s his medium?

AUBESPIN: Everything. Sam was the guy, who took the canvas off the stretcher and is represented in every major museum in the country. His paintings sell in the neighborhood of eighty to a hundred thousand dollars a piece. He’s in every major museum in and out of the country, and was listed as one of the twenty top artists in America. He’s...

BRINSON: He’s from Louisville?

AUBESPIN: Yeah and he marched. He was in college at the University of Louisville at the time. And he took the canvas off the stretcher and draped them. And it became a whole new movement. And he’s been everywhere.

BRINSON: I’ll have to look him up.

AUBESPIN: But he was one who was involved with the NAACP Youth Chapter. And …

BRINSON: And was the Youth Chapter active in the demonstrations?

AUBESPIN: Yes, they actually forced some of the adults to take notice, because the Youth Chapter of the NAACP decided to protest that they couldn’t see Porgy and Bess at the Brown Theater. And I think Sam was president of the Youth Chapter at the time.

BRINSON: I was actually going to ask you about photos, because I’m looking for one right now to put on the flyer, to promote the Civil Rights Symposium. And I know that there, I mean I pulled some of my articles from the Louisville Courier.

AUBESPIN: Here’s the only one I found with me getting arrested.

BRINSON: Oh look at that. How did your family feel about your involvement?

AUBESPIN: [Laughing] I’ll tell you what happened. We played the darnedest trick. Our families urged us to be cautious. But, well--a bit proud of it. There was a time when we were using the Blue Boar. A guy named Johnson owned the Blue Boar chain, and there were about three restaurants local. But there was one at Fourth and Chestnut Street. He was also president of the Restaurant Association, and a member of the Board of Education. And it was a fast place, it was a cafeteria like place that was quite popular at noon. We focused on it, because it was the type of place that all economic levels felt comfortable in, but blacks were not allowed in there. And one day, in order to show how ironic it was, and he was a hard egg to crack, we sat my mother, and a number of members of the African American community, who were extremely fair and you couldn’t tell the difference. People like Marjorie Miles, who was a white as this cup with straight hair and others, but then you know, we’ve just got that whole rainbow thing. And there were a number of them, who were that fair, that you couldn’t tell. And we had them to go, they went, and not in a group, two at a time, three here, just like they were going in. And they were seated all over the place. And then their husbands arrived to meet them. And of course, they stopped them at the door. And it made the point so beautifully: it was interesting that I never saw anything in The Courier-Journal about it.

BRINSON: Well I wanted to talk with you about that, because I’ve found material back from the early sixties in The Louisville Courier. I haven’t found much in the Lexington paper.

AUBESPIN: Because the papers couldn’t--you know it is difficult--I’m an expert on the media and racism in the media. It’s difficult to get people to understand, that although journalists are normally a little more liberal than anybody, for the most part, newspapers are populated by the same people who populate the rest of the community. And so, although the Binghams were, who owned the paper at the time, were considered the epitome of the elite liberal. I’m still there and I was the first black they hired. So, they preached one thing, but they practiced another. And one has to assume, when I go back and read the stories, that’s not the same rally I went to, because it’s from another perspective. And that’s why much of my efforts has been to get newsrooms to diversify so that you’re able to get more than one perspective. And I am reasonably sure that a lot of the white journalists who covered these, may have seen it as a threat too, and so felt the same way that some of the opposition felt. Or didn’t make it as gigantic a thing as we thought it was. You know, it took a lot of guts for high school kids, students of mine, junior high school kids to allow themselves to get arrested. That’s a frightening experience when they close the door. Although usually, you know, the lawyers and others were right there to get them out. And many times the people who made available the cash that was sometimes needed, were white businessmen who did business in the African American community and who were very favorable to our causes. A number of those, those stories don’t get told as much.

BRINSON: Do you remember any of them?

AUBESPIN: Sure, sure, there were, there was Zegarts. Mr. Zegarts had a drugstore at Cecil and Greenwood in Western Louisville. And there were others, but he was one I recalled.

BRINSON: And is it Z I G...?

AUBESPIN: Z E G A R T S, I can always go back and get that. But he had a drugstore in Western Louisville for a number of years. It was not only that, you know they needed cash, but you had a lot of African Americans who, well known doctors and stuff, whose role was putting together quick cash when you needed it. But I remember the uniqueness was that ah …

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE TWO

BEGIN TAPE TWO SIDE ONE

AUBESPIN: ....Sixty-eight.

BRINSON: Okay, so you had done your time in the service.

AUBESPIN: Done my time in the service, I was back working in Industry, and working with a group of artists, doing street shows and things of that sort. And I took a job in nineteen sixty-eight.

BRINSON: And what was the position?

AUBESPIN: It was staff artist. And my job then was to do maps and charts, and illustrations--all sorts of things--the gamut of things. I was doing that and I hadn’t been there that long; there was--.must have been there since sixty-seven—yeah--it gets fuzzy, but I can always double check it. It was sixty-seven I think, and King was killed. I remember I was at work when that happened. I was working at The Courier when that happened. I was working nights, as a matter of fact, and the cities like Watts and Chicago and Detroit and Washington were on fire. Louisville wasn’t. It was tense, but it wasn’t. But Louisville has always had its temperament of being a bit slow. And it wasn’t until a little bit later, nineteen sixty-eight I think it was: the police relations had been very strained in the Louisville African American community. All this time incidentally, we had gone through two movements, one that I was very active in, which was the one on the public accommodations. The other was the one on open housing, which I didn’t participate in as much, because I had another agenda. But by now, the police department has got a real strained relationship, and blacks are feeling a bit harassed. I think the straw broke when they were having a street corner rally following the arrest of a well known black businessman named Milford Reed, who was a real estate agent. The police stopped him and arrested him on Broadway. I don’t know what it was for, but it wasn’t him they were looking for. If I recall at the time, I think something happened and a black man was described as being medium height with a short Afro and a goatee. And that would have described a considerable number. People were angry in my neighborhood and were going to have this street rally. They were going to have speakers, and talk about the issues, and what we were going to do about these issues. I had a funny feeling about that, because they weren’t having the rallies inside. Traditionally we used to have our Civil Rights rallies before we went out to march, were always in a church. There was a demeanor in the church, because it was a church. It was emotional yet controlled, and then you walked out and you took care of what you had to do. This rally was being held outside, and I had heard about it. And I told some of the editors, I was in the Art Department, and I told some of the editors, I said, “You know, you ought to send somebody down to cover this, because it will probably be a good story, and it is a significant story.” And they said, “Okay.” And about fifteen minutes later, the editor walked back to me and he said, “Would you mind going with the reporter?” And I said, “Yeah.” I said, “You really want me to take care of him.” And he said, “Yeah. [Laughing] if something happened out there, at least I would be glad to know that you are there, and you know the neighborhood.” I said, “Okay.” And so I went out with the reporter. And we got to Twenty-eighth and Greenwood in Western Louisville, and crowds are milling. I had a friend named Kenneth Clay, who is Director of Special Constituencies at the Center for the Performing Arts, who at the time had a small, little business that was a record shop, bookstore and had a lot of African American paraphernalia, the T-shirts and you know, posters and stuff. And we could get some of the books that we were looking for there; and it was right there on the corner, so I went in and saw Ken, and what have you. And came back out, and the crowd was getting rather big, and people were sitting on the top of the restaurant there. Georgia Davis had a little restaurant right across the street called The Senators, and ah …

BRINSON: She had a restaurant?

AUBESPIN: Uh hmm, called The Senators. And milling around and they were talking about Stokely Carmichael was supposed to be coming in. Well I didn’t know, know why Stokely would be coming in, or what have you. A couple of people, who were younger people, got up, said that, He’s trying to land and they won’t even let the plane down.” It was a bit of an overkill. Another guy who was new to the community, with a beret and a leather jacket, who said he worked with Stokely, got up and preached about, you know, the need to get ourselves together and what have you.

BRINSON: And Stokely at that point was with Student’s SNCC, was there an active group of SNCC in Louisville?

AUBESPIN: No, there was CORE, SCLC. And CORE had just about fizzled out, but you had SCLC, that still is here in Louisville. And you had the NAACP, which was ( ) . And then you had a younger group that called themselves--.and I will tell you in a minute. They were the ones doing the firing.

BRINSON: But then you also had a group, I think, called the Fellowship for Reconciliation? No? Maybe they came later.

AUBESPIN: They came later. They came later. This was a young Turk group, this other group and oh, they loved to wear the big medallion fist and all this. And they were out there talking and then all of a sudden I heard a bottle smash. And it seemed like seconds, police cars were in, because police had really stationed themselves around the perimeter. Next thing I know, bottles were being thrown. I looked up and I saw a police car being turned over and set on fire. Shots were being fired, people were ducking and running. And I said, “We’ve got a problem here.” And I saw a kid that I used to teach, who was riding in a big, old Cadillac like a pimp would, red chrome on the front, you know. And I flagged him down and I said, “Would you do me a favor and take this young man back to the newspaper?” Because he was in a phone booth and folks looked and saw him and somebody said, “There’s one right there!’ And I said, uh oh, I got to get him out of here right now. Nobody was coming, but the potential was there, because he stood out like a sore thumb; and so I sent him back to the paper. I called the paper and they said, ‘Well Mervin.” I said, “I will stay and I will describe what is going on. I’ll call you and let you know what is happening.” And they said, “Well we need some photographs, and so they said they were sending their photographer down.” I said, “ I don’t know.” And they sent their photographer down. He was an award winning photographer.

BRINSON: A white photographer?

AUBESPIN: They didn’t have any black ones then. And he got there, and I looked up and his cab had been turned over; and he was sprinting back towards The Courier-Journal. And so I called them back and I said, “Look, there’s a friend of mine out here, who makes pictures in nightclubs.” You know the guys with the Polaroid, put it in a little case, sell it back to you for five dollars? He’s here, and my kid brother’s here”--who had his camera and was taking photography in high school. I said, “Why don’t you just send me some film? Call a black cab company and send me some film, and I’ll take it from here.” And for two days and two nights, I covered the riots, and they stayed in the safety of the newsroom and wrote the stories. See what I look like, I’m standing on the corner about two minutes before the first rock was thrown, the first bottle broke. That’s about two minutes before bedlam.

BRINSON: Now you’re on the left, or are you on the right? I can’t tell. That’s you, okay. And who’s this on the left?

AUBESPIN: It was a guy who was working with the Louisville Time, named David Diaz, who was Puerto Rican; and he and I were talking. And this is what, I’d say these were the proofs, these were the actual proofs. And this is what it looked like before it was over with.

BRINSON: Oh my.

AUBESPIN: These are proofs, that’s why they are banned.

BRINSON: And this is the National Guard they called in to...

AUBESPIN: Yeah. And this bad picture is of A. D. King, Martin’s brother. And the guy on the right, who claimed to have been a field representative for SNCC, turned out to be an F.B.I. informant. His name was James Cortez, and this is what it looked like. That’s the corner.

BRINSON: Now did you take these photos?

AUBESPIN: No. If you notice the guy took them was Jay Thomas.

BRINSON: Jay Thomas.

AUBESPIN: C. Thomas Harding was the regular photographer. Jay Thomas was my friend who shot...

BRINSON: Who did the nightclubs.

AUBESPIN: So what they did was, they would scratch out his name here and just put J. Thomas there like that.

BRINSON: Hmm. Okay. Well you know one of the things that we want...

AUBESPIN: This is the looting. And these are some of the people that were trying to keep it--this is Leo Lesser, who was a minister...

BRINSON: ( ) name

AUBESPIN: Who died. This is Hugh McGill, who was a State Representative. He died, his wife took over. This is Milford Reed, the guy who was arrested. They were walking the place, trying to cool down the community. This was a picture in the headquarters, showing the city officials, and I have a great picture of...

BRINSON: Generally how would you evaluate the police action during all of this?

AUBESPIN: Well, I think the police were waiting on something to happen. And after Watts and Washington, you know, they were anticipating. And so they had all the tear gas and stuff they wanted, see.

BRINSON: What about city officials?

AUBESPIN: I think city officials were caught completely off guard with the exception of the police preparing itself.

BRINSON: They just weren’t expecting this to happen in Louisville or...?

AUBESPIN: Louisville. ( ) I mean, they’re turning over a police car there. [Showing photo]

BRINSON: You know we want to do...

AUBESPIN: Now this is one of the young men, this is Lyle Cunningham. When we were doing the marches in the sixties, early sixties, was still in high school. I kept these because they were just the proofs. They were trying to pick pictures out everyday to show what was going on.

BRINSON: Then the actual riot, I guess you would call it a riot, would you? Or disturbance?

AUBESPIN: Well, when you had all these police cars converging and everybody running. People started doing this and then you had a real...

BRINSON: Riot.

AUBESPIN: ...problem on your hands. See. And that’s it. And look. Then you had a riot on your hands.

BRINSON: A little looting of stores. That’s a lot of lampshades there, isn’t it, he’s got. He must have eight in his hands.

AUBESPIN: See here, coming out of, coming out of stores. But a...

BRINSON: The people who protested, how would you break them down by gender? Do you think there were more men, more women?

AUBESPIN: In this protest, this was a hastily organized protest that had none of the real identifiable leadership in it. This is more men, more males. And it was almost like an event rather than a riot.

BRINSON: But people were arrested.

AUBESPIN: Oh yes, yes. I can get you the clips on all of those.

BRINSON: Went to trial.

AUBESPIN: Uh hmm.

BRINSON: Did any of them end up serving time?

AUBESPIN: Not really, no. They tried to, while this was all going on, they tried to--you had a lot of neighbors, who just didn’t know what the hell was going on, who lived in this area. You notice a woman here, I mean she, what are you all doing? She lived right on the street. You know this is my neighborhood. And you had people like King and them, who showed up to quell the thing. Because the young Turks--see the car?

BRINSON: Car turned over.

AUBESPIN: I was trying to—the young—I--just keep those, I use them all the time when I am teaching. The young Turks who called this, you know, were not masters at strategies, and so most of those leaders appeared after it started. Anyway...

BRINSON: You have quite a collection. Let me ask you, because one of the things that we want to do in another year or so, is have an exhibit at the new history center on the Civil Rights Movement. Only we’re not finding many artifacts, and you’ve got the best photo collection I’ve seen. Uh, at some point in time can we perhaps talk to you about using a few of these?

AUBESPIN: Now these belong to The Courier, but I could probably, without any real problem, get you permission to use these. The reason I pulled those, because like I told you, if you talk to people, everybody was there. And the funny thing is, I haven’t been able to find most folks who said they were there. You know what I’m saying? It bothers me, because what it does, as a journalist--I’m also in the middle of a book about my life.

BRINSON: You’re writing a book? Oh. Let me ask you, I know you mentioned your daughter. Where did you meet your wife in all of this?

AUBESPIN: I have been married three times.

BRINSON: Oh, okay.

AUBESPIN: At this time, I was married to my daughter’s mother. I met her while I was in service. She was from Houston, the Houston area and was going to school at a college in Austin, Texas, which was near Fort Hood. I met her there. We got married right after I left service. So, when I started at The Courier Journal, I was married to her. And my daughter was just a tiny toddler.

BRINSON: How did she feel about your involvement? Even as a employee of The Courier. Was she concerned about your being in dangerous situations?

AUBESPIN: One of the reasons our marriage didn’t work out, is because she was much more comfortable with someone with a traditional job. She would have preferred that I stayed at B. F. Goodrich. And I went to work every day in the chemical plant, and cooked barbecue in the backyard, and went to church on Sunday, and an occasional movie. I found that not intellectually stimulating at all. And so the marriage just didn’t work. As a matter of fact, she didn’t want me to go to The Courier Journal. And we were seven years apart, age-wise.

BRINSON: In age.

AUBESPIN: You know to me, I had spent much of my life preparing for things to happen that didn’t exist when I went in to college. Going to an historical black college there is one thing that stands out, they not only teach you your calculus and your sciences and what have you. There is an underlying message that things are going to get better, and you have to be prepared for them. And so a lot of those professors and even in high school, always instilled in you that you don’t know what’s going to happen. And if the door cracks and you have an opportunity to step in, because I was the first black at The Courier, even in the newsroom. Now they had hired a black a long time before, but he was never a part of the newsroom. And he didn’t last at all, you know.

BRINSON: I wanted to ask you, since you went in because of your art experience, at what point did you start writing?

AUBESPIN: Well, I was going to finish that story. When the riots were over and I reported back to the executive editor, who ran the entire newsroom. He asked me, “What could I do? And what could he do?” And my first inclination was give me a big needed raise, but I told him, “Why don’t you hire Jay Thomas, the photographer, make him part of your staff. And why don’t you train my brother, who was in high school, let him work in the lab. And let me help you to find some minority journalists.” Of course, at that time, you could put them all in this room, across the nation. And he said, “Okay.” Shortly thereafter, he called me back, and it was about a few months later, and he said, “Look we need you more as a journalist than as an artist.” I said, “My art’s not good?” He said, “No your art’s fine, but we need you more.” He said, “Why don’t you consider--there was a special program that had been developed at Columbia University under the auspices of the Ford Foundation and major newspapers, following the riots, when all newspapers across the country realized they were in the same situation that Louisville was in. And so it was a special program that was a four month program, that would take people, who had degrees in other areas, but were interested, with the sponsorship of their paper, that would make a class. And they would teach you as quickly as they could, how to be a journalist. I thought about it and I said, “Why not?” Here’s another door opening. And so I had never prepared myself to be a writer. I didn’t even know how to type. I still type with two fingers. I’m much faster now, but I still type with two fingers. And I applied for the program. Their deal was that we will put your check in the bank so that your wife and family can be fed and taken care of, and we will give you an allotment to attend this program if you make the cut. Well, I made the cut and I went to the program.

BRINSON: And it was how long?

AUBESPIN: It was four months.

BRINSON: Four months.

AUBESPIN: At Columbia. It was put together by the school, the Graduate School of Journalism. It was unique in that, what it did was, it taught you the very basics, quickly, writing, reporting skills. Because it was at Columbia and in New York, it had access to some of the big guns, so they would bring in Walter Cronkite, Howard K. Smith, Roger Mudd, Ben Bradley to the campus; and they would sit you down in that fourth floor room, you know, lecture room and they would tell you how to do it.

BRINSON: How many others in the program with you?

AUBESPIN: There were twelve...

BRINSON: That was small.

AUBESPIN: ...in the newspaper, and about fourteen in the television section. And we were separated. We lived in the same dorm, and you know we ate together and some things overlapped when lecturers would come in. But basically they put the T.V. people out here and put us over here.

BRINSON: Had you ever spent any time to speak, in New York before?

AUBESPIN: I hadn’t been to New York before. I hadn’t even been on an airplane before. So when I accepted, when I applied and they accepted me, it was a real big thing in my community. They threw this big party, the church and oh God.

BRINSON: Well, it’s certainly a well respected School of Journalism.

AUBESPIN: Yeah. But I mean it was important, because I was going to go back, I was going to go there and get trained, and I was going to be my community’s person at the newspaper. Somebody they could call and make sure their voices were heard. And so it was just a great experience. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I met some friends there, who became my dearest friends, who are really some of the big boys, and we’re still dear friends. And others have died. But people like Earl Caldwell and Gerald Frazier, Charlene Hunter Gault were my teachers there; and these people are still dear friends. Jack White with Time magazine; and all of these folks, and it was just a marvelous experience--because we had to absorb a lot quickly. What I mean, you know, I was a little, country boy from Opelousas in New York City. And when the program was over, they sent my wife up, gave us a week’s vacation on their dime. And she hated New York. She just wanted to get back to Texas.

BRINSON: To Texas?

AUBESPIN: Uh hmm. She was from Texas, I met her while there. So she came back. We came back early actually. And I started writing. I always kept my pulse on writing, I started writing on purpose the minority community. I covered the NAACP, the Urban League, the Commission on Human Rights. It was easy...

END OF TAPE TWO SIDE ONE

BEGIN TAPE TWO SIDE TWO

AUBESPIN: Sometimes they would call me before they did something, because they trusted me, and that proved okay. That was all right.

BRINSON: I’m actually starting now to interview the early leadership of the State Commission on Human Rights, nineteen sixty, though. You probably weren’t following them ‘til the seventies.

AUBESPIN: Well, yeah, I wasn’t following them until the seventies, but I remember ( ) Tidings was one the first heads and what have you. His daughter used to paint with us, when we had that painting group. But I started covering them when Galen Martin was heading it, and it was quite active.

BRINSON: How about Reverend Estill, the Episcopal Bishop who was their first Chair? Now that would have been in the...

AUBESPIN: I don’t remember him much.

BRINSON: I think he was Chair in the early sixties.

AUBESPIN: Yeah, but you see the Chair of the Human Rights Commission, or the Commission on Human Rights, was not the person, he chaired meetings. The Executive Director was the person you would always find on the line.

BRINSON: Right.

AUBESPIN: So you would see ( ) Tiding or Galen Martin would be the news maker in that. And you know, their meetings, the Chair would just call a meeting, but the Executive Director gave the report that ended up with the bulk of the news. So I couldn’t tell you who was the Chairman of the Commission when Galen was in it, because Galen gave the report. The news story was in there. But when I got to the paper, you know, it was interesting because I could get out and cover those things and bring that element. I also held the position to suggest strongly to my colleagues that they talk to members of my community when they were doing stories that were about anything, to include them in there. And I tried to use my relationships with other journalists that I had met, those I had gone to Columbia with. Every time there was a job opening, I’d call. I got pretty good at that.

BRINSON: Well, I can see from your resume.

AUBESPIN: I got very good at that. [Laughing]

BRINSON: Yes, made that very good.

AUBESPIN: And so what happened is, we got the numbers up. And they promoted me, finally, first as assistant to the Executive Editor, which nobody wants to be an assistant to anything. And at my suggestion, to Associate Editor. So I became the first black on the masthead of the paper. Now the Executive Editor of the newspaper is African American, and is a friend of mine of twenty-five years, because when we were all in the trenches, I remembered him. I like what I do now, because it allows me--I’ve become sort of a national expert on minorities in the media, whether it’s coverage or whether it’s employment. And I get a lot of calls, being President of the National Association of Black Journalists has opened doors. Because what I did was, before that the organization was basically an organization of minority journalists who got together and raised hell about how the media was treating them awful. When I became President, I invited in the power structure, and let them become members and brought them to our conferences.

BRINSON: The power structure being predominantly white?

AUBESPIN: Being Donny Graham from the Washington Post, and Schauberg up from the New York Times, and Gene Roberts from the Philadelphia Enquirer, and Norman Pearlstream, the people who controlled America’s media. I invited them to come to our conventions to answer our questions and to participate. And once they saw, then the media began to change significantly. And that’s kind of--I was looking at something. I found my old Selma March pictures.

BRINSON: Your Selma March pictures, now you didn’t tell me about that.

AUBESPIN: Well sometimes when you’re as old as I am, you get caught into it. [Laughing] I forgot to tell you about that. Right after I got back, when Frank and I were doing the other demonstrations, we went down to Selma. That was in sixty-five. And can you find me on there? [Laughing]

BRINSON: Well no, I don’t know that I can.

AUBESPIN: Let me show you.

BRINSON: You’re probably right--I was going to say, yeah. That’s who I was...

AUBESPIN: There it is. And like I said, when you listen to all the people who say they were here and there. And I say, well where in the hell were they? But a...

BRINSON: Did you--go ahead.

AUBESPIN: That was, we were back here, we were involved in demonstrations of our own here, and Frank said let’s go. So three of us, we rented a car and drove all the way down.

BRINSON: Long trip.

AUBESPIN: Oh yeah. And, but I was in familiar territory remember, I went to school down there; and so we went down, there’s Frank, my friend. Look, see that’s me with the white shirt on, and we are coming into Montgomery at the end of the march. I was a bit thinner then. [Laughing]

BRINSON: We’ve all gained a little weight with age. There you are.

AUBESPIN: There’s Georgia Davis.

BRINSON: Right.

AUBESPIN: And Reverend Sampson.

BRINSON: Now Reverend Sampson, tell me about him.

AUBESPIN: He was pastor of one of the Baptist Churches in Louisville. He is now in Detroit. He was a marvelous orator.

BRINSON: Orator?

AUBESPIN: Oh yes, he could speak, he spoke like people sing. It’s considered one of the best pictures in America. It was just recently featured...

BRINSON: His first name? Reverend?

AUBESPIN: What was Sampson’s first name? He used two initials, and I can find it because, I think he is in one of these early pictures.

BRINSON: I wanted to ask you if you were involved in the march on Frankfort, although this is sixty-three.

AUBESPIN: I was--my sister and all my family was in it. And I’ve got a great picture somewhere at home of it. I was out of the city at the time.

BRINSON: Right, right, that’s what I thought.

AUBESPIN: But I have a picture of Sampson somewhere.

BRINSON: I also want to go back and ask you, Mervin, about the late sixties. You talked about Stokely Carmichael. But the whole sort of Black Power, but the Black Art movement, and whether the Black Arts in particular, how that affected, how that played out in Louisville. And how it played out in your own art even.

AUBESPIN: Louisville, it’s interesting. Louisville was a hotbed. Louisville was producing significant African American artists. As a group we had, these are all friends of mine, and we all painted together, Bob Thompson, who died at a very early age, I think he was about twenty-seven. They just had a couple of retrospective shows last year, and was in the Metropolitan, I think they had the last one, who was a significant artist. Sam Gilliam, who is known all over the country as a significant, not African American, a significant artist. You had G. C. Cox, who recently died in Louisville, who was kind of our godfather, and who taught all of us there. And then you had Fred Barne, who is a wonderful potter. He’s dead now, died of cancer. You had Bob Douglas, who teaches art at the University of Louisville, just completed a book on another artist and is on his second book. He is wrapping up a fifteen year project of nudes that he’s been doing--he’s a fine artist. Ed Hamilton, who just did the latest thing in Washington on the Civil War African American soldiers, good friend. We all painted together. And I remember, it was wonderful what we did, because we couldn’t find white galleries to show us. And so we showed anywhere we could, often times that would be at a bar. They’d give us a space, we’d re-decorate the bar for them; or a church basement, the YMCA. We went out to St. James Court once, Central Park actually and strung lines up and hung there. The next thing you know St. James Court is the major Art event--we were there first--and so we would talk. We finally bought an old Mom and Pop store in the African American community. We formed an official group called the Louisville Art Workshop. And Fred and his wife lived in the back of the store; and it was our gallery. And we would talk. And then you know we began to use art, well we always did, but there we had an audience ourselves to use art as a political statement. Because then everybody has always used music and art and writings to move with the times. And it was during those times that we were very busy making our statements. And we did it by creating events. We would have an open show for the community, no charge. And as part of the show we would have dance, and we would have poetry readings, and we’d have essay readings. I’ve still got some of the old programs. And those readings gave us a chance to voice our indignation at our condition, or to voice the good and the bad, the sensitive and the not so sensitive. And it was a way of expression among ourselves. It was quite active. The paper covered a lot of it. There was a woman named Sarah Lansdale, who was the Art critic. And she was a friend of ours.

BRINSON: And we’re talking about the late sixties here?

AUBESPIN: Uh hmm.

BRINSON: Okay. What about other areas of the state? Did you see similar kinds of...?

AUBESPIN: No, because the reality is that Louisville has the largest...

BRINSON: The largest black population.

AUBESPIN: ...black population. And you never saw any kind of movement like that there, not here, or anywhere else. Now, we had people that came from Lexington and Frankfort to, to go to the nightclubs there, or to go to events there or plays. We had a theater group going on, we didn’t, but there was a theater group going on.

BRINSON: Someone told me actually that the Lexington Roots and Heritage Festival came out of an earlier festival that...

AUBESPIN: That we all had.

BRINSON: These people were involved in, in Louisville.

AUBESPIN: There was a group called the West End Community Council, which was a grassroots group that was basically working out of CAC, Community Action. And it sponsored one of our festivals in a local park where we had the poetry readings, the jazz musicians and all the art. And everybody’s art with a message, be it abstract or impressionistic or what have you. That was probably the most productive time I’ve ever had in the Art scene.

BRINSON: If I wanted to read sort of a good history of that period, or just have a better sense, is there anything that you would recommend to me?

AUBESPIN: The unfortunate thing is there aren’t many people who wrote about it. That’s one of the reasons I’m writing about it, and that’s one of the reasons others are writing about it. I do have somewhere in my--I keep everything you see, I’m a pack rat. I do have a program from the one we did in Shawnee Park. And in that program are poems and prose that’s really very, quite good. And the interesting thing is, although we were in Western Louisville, we were not a black group, an all black group. We were open and we had others who joined us, our endeavors. It’s interesting how that never came across, because we were all artists, you see. So the Black Power thing didn’t come in there. We were talking about art seriously and prose seriously. And it is a very exciting period there.

BRINSON: But you said you were using art politically.

AUBESPIN: Yes, because black or white, I mean we were in the same political trenches of a better America, a system that took care of its people better.

BRINSON: So politically, would it be fair to say that you used art to sort of raise consciousness?

AUBESPIN: Of course.

BRINSON: To educate?

AUBESPIN: Oh yes, no doubt about it. Because we had photography also, exhibits there. And like I said, our readings and things of that sort, of course. Not only did we want to, but artists have always done that, you know, that was not unusual. And we were simply a product of the times, whether it was the environment, or war or racism, we struggled with it through our art. And I remember sending one of our--us pitching in to literally—to send one of our members to Honduras, to come back and paint what he saw at Honduras, because then there was a real thing going on about the caste system there; and the have-nots and the haves. And we sent Bob Douglas to the Honduras. We literally pooled our money to send one of our people there, you know. So, it was an exciting time, well we all felt a part. But this was the time we would go to the coffee shop and sip coffee and discuss philosophies of the day. And everybody had to read certain books and what have you.

BRINSON: What were some of those books?

AUBESPIN: Oh Franz Fanalley’s books and some of the leading black authors of the time, you know. We were all discovering somebody every day, you know, somebody would come in with the latest book. That was a really exciting time. I still have, I’ve got one of the largest black libraries in the state. Because fortunately working at the paper, they send in oodles of books--I’ve always collected books--but oodles of books to be reviewed and what have you. And since I’ve been a journalist, I’ve met a lot of black writers, and I’ve got signed copies of their books, that’s my legacy for my daughter, who’s also a journalist. But I keep all this books. I have a room this size, ( ) from the floor to the ceiling and it’s all books by blacks, about blacks, or for blacks.

BRINSON: I’m glad to know that, because I’m having trouble finding a few titles.

AUBESPIN: Well, I might be able to help you on those.

BRINSON: I’ll have to ask you about that too.

AUBESPIN: I might be able to help you on those. And so that’s been interesting. It never stops, you know it’s so easy. I forgot this because I get on a tangent. Life is full, there’s so many things that happen.

BRINSON: Well, I’m going to stop for now and maybe once I get this transcribed.

AUBESPIN: Recognize anybody in that one?

BRINSON: Well, I’m not sure that I do. Oh, that’s uh, who’s that? Belafonte?

AUBESPIN: Yeah, and that’s his wife Julie next to him. The woman in the white outfit is Shelley Winters.

BRINSON: Ohhh, that’s right.

AUBESPIN: And let’s see, that’s Joan Baez with her head turned--remember the folk singer?

BRINSON: Right.

AUBESPIN: And that’s James Forman, and there’s Shelley Winters and there’s Baldwin back there. That was on a march. And the funniest thing when I got--they chased us when we were on our way back from this march. A group of people waving guns behind us, chased us for miles, and my friend Elmer was driving. When I got back, and I got the paper in Nashville. Getting to Nashville was like seeing the skyline of New York City, because these folks had chased us with their Confederate flags, and waving their guns out of their car. And ( ) had just gotten killed, it had come over the radio. And I picked up the paper and there I was able to pick myself, Elmer and Frank.

BRINSON: Oh my goodness in the crowd.

AUBESPIN: And so what I had been trying to do, because that was so, it’s old, is we’ve got the archives at the paper of the AP. And I thought I had it, this is the same group, but this was taken later.

BRINSON: That looks different, yeah.

AUBESPIN: And it is different, so we’re going to make another try, because Ralph Bunch has his coat on in my picture.

BRINSON: Right.

AUBESPIN: And Abernathy, but it’s the same group. This is Bill Summers from Louisville, who is deceased now.

BRINSON: Now tell me who Bill was again.

AUBESPIN: Bill owned a radio station. He was a member of the Board of Education. He was a very active Civil Rights leader during the time we came. He owned WLOU, which was the black radio station.

BRINSON: And he was on the Board of Education, not at that time, but later.

AUBESPIN: Later he was on the Board of Education. And was a real activist, he was one of those people in that group of activists. He was also a minister. He had a church. That Reverend Sampson I was telling you about, that’s him back here.

BRINSON: Okay.

AUBESPIN: But I’m going to find it when I get a little chance to go through those archives. That will be interesting, because I want to give that to my granddaughter.

BRINSON: Well you have a wealth of material.

END OF INTERVIEW