BETSY BRINSON: This is an interview with Fanny Rose Rosenbaum. The interview
takes place in her home in Louisville, Kentucky and the interviewer is Betsy Brinson. Ms. Rosenbaum, could you just say a word or two for me, so…FANNY ROSENBAUM: Yes, how many people are you interviewing?
BRINSON: Well, so far…, okay, well, thank you very much for meeting with me
today. What I want to just share with you about this project is that this is an effort of the Kentucky Historical Society through their new Civil Rights Project to document the, uhmm, experiences, the issues in, of the effort to eliminate legal segregation in Kentucky from the period 1930 to 1970. And as part of that we are interviewing the early leadership of the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights of which you were a member. Uhmm, so does that help before we kind of start in?ROSENBAUM: That’s fine. I just, I didn’t realize it had anything to do with the
Historical Commission. It doesn’t make any difference.BRINSON: Okay.
ROSENBAUM: I just wondered.
BRINSON: And of course the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights is getting ready
next year to celebrate its fortieth anniversary.ROSENBAUM: Whatever I sent you indicated when I was on it. I don’t remember when
the commission began.BRINSON: Right. I have the early information.
ROSENBAUM: You have.
BRINSON: If we could just start with a little background information about you,
like where and when you were born.ROSENBAUM: I was born in Louisville in 1919, just barely, December the 28th. And
my parents were both born in Louisville.BRINSON: Okay.
ROSENBAUM: And that’s, one of my grandparents was born in this country. The
other three were born in Europe.BRINSON: Do you know anything much about their immigration into this country?
ROSENBAUM: I know about one grandfather who came from Malava, Poland. He was
sent here when he was nine years old. He was put on a boat with a hunk of cheese in steerage, and sent to an uncle who was in this country, all by himself. And how he got to Louisville I don’t know. Obviously he arrived in New York and he ended up in Louisville in the real estate business when I knew him. And the other two who came from Europe, one was from Alsace and was brought over as a child. And the other one came from Germany and also came when he was a very young man.BRINSON: And this would have been 19th century?
ROSENBAUM: Yeah. Yeah. And my grandmother who was born in this country was born
in Portland, Maine. So that’s about all I know for backgroundBRINSON: Okay. That’s good. That’s good. Tell me how your family earned their
living here in Louisville when you were young.ROSENBAUM: My grandfather opened a grocery, which my father ultimately took
over. And during my entire life my father ran the grocery. That was his means of support. It was an unusual one for those times. It was where the library is now just off Third and Broadway. It was called the Julia Strauss Grocery Company.BRINSON: Julia Strauss.
ROSENBAUM: Julia Strauss Grocery Company. And they had very few people who
dropped in at least during my lifetime. They had a telephone and delivery business. I remember my father operated six trucks, and they used to make several runs a day to the highlands. He had a very fancy clientele. I remember as a delight as a child they used to let me ride along on the backend of the truck. And we went to some very fancy estates to deliver food. And I remember that when, I think it was Queen Marie of Romania visited here. The Brown Hotel got whatever food they needed from him. It was an exclusive kind of grocery. My grandfather was in the real estate business. And those are the only financial enterprises that had anything to do with our family.BRINSON: Tell me about your education.
ROSENBAUM: I went to the University of Louisville. I graduated from Atherton
High School.BRINSON: Atherton?
ROSENBAUM: Yeah. I went to the University of Louisville for two years. I
transferred to Goucher College in Baltimore. It is now in Towson, Maryland and after one term there I became extremely ill with diphtheria and thyroid problems, and all kinds of things and I was ill for well over a year. And when I recovered we got married and I never went back to school.BRINSON: Uh-hmm. How did you meet your husband?
ROSENBAUM: Well that’s of some interest, I think. I have pictures of my mother
and his mother rolling us in baby buggies together.BRINSON: Oh.
ROSENBAUM: When he was nine months old and I was three months old.
BRINSON: So he grew up here too.
ROSENBAUM: Our parents were friends, and we went to school together. We always
were together. We had our first official date when I was twelve and he was thirteen.BRINSON: I see.
ROSENBAUM: And I remember that date very definitely. We went to the Uptown
Theater on Bardstown Road and Eastern Parkway. We went to the Model Drugstore for refreshments afterwards. And I remember asking my mother if it would be too forward if I took a Coke.BRINSON: [Laughing] And what did she say?
ROSENBAUM: She said she thought that would be all right. Different times.
[Laughter] Also they had at the Model on the weekends--we used to go very frequently after that--nine cent specials, sundaes or banana splits or sodas for nine cents; [laughter] and the movie was fifteen cents.BRINSON: And this was about when?
ROSENBAUM: Well, let’s see I was, it was about 1932, 3. I was twelve or thirteen.
BRINSON: Do you have any recollection of the Depression here in Louisville?
ROSENBAUM: Vaguely. I remember that my grandfather lost a lot of income, and I
think died during the Depression. And my grandmother moved in with us because it was too difficult for her to manage alone. We lived in a duplex. Then she took in boarders and moved back down to her apartment, and was able to manage with the boarders and with my father helping her. Now we personally suffered minimal deprivation but a lot of my father and mother’s friends had difficulty. And I remember lots of conversations about how they would try to help as best they could, finding jobs doing, whatever they could. But that, it really didn’t touch us personally too much.BRINSON: Right.
ROSENBAUM: I also remember stock market crashing. My husband’s family had some
problem with that. But my father, typical German hardworking guy, never had any money to put in the stock market. He just worked, and anything else he had he put back in the business.BRINSON: Well, that was actually good thinking.
ROSENBAUM: Well, I don’t think it was foresight, yeah. [Laughter]
BRINSON: But, right, it worked out well. I believe you told me that you are Jewish?
ROSENBAUM: Yes.
BRINSON: What was it like, were you active in the synagogue growing up?
ROSENBAUM: Yes.
BRINSON: Was your family active in the Jewish community.
ROSENBAUM: Yes, very, a reformed temple.
BRINSON: Okay. And compared to New York or other areas of the state Louisville
doesn’t have a particularly large Jewish population.ROSENBAUM: No. It has a small Jewish population actually. It is around ten
thousand, which is certainly not large. It is probably a little less than that, and it has been pretty stable, as far as I know, my whole life. It has not gotten bigger or littler, maybe a thousand here or there. But I don’t believe it has ever gone over ten thousand, to my knowledge.BRINSON: So there hasn’t been a period say where a lot of the community moved out.
ROSENBAUM: No. Now we have, Louisville has accepted lots of refugees from
Germany and from Europe during Hitler’s time. And is now and has been, as are all churches and everything else, accepting people from Russia or from wherever they need to come from to get here. I think the Jewish community works with the State Department or whatever to come up with whatever number we should have in Louisville. Now in my own family we signed affidavits for a number of extremely distant relatives. We didn’t even know they existed who came here under Hitler. And it’s--they’ve been very successful and we’ve remained in touch.BRINSON: There is actually a project going on that is funded by the Oral History
Commission of the Kentucky Historical Society in partnership with the Holocaust Museum in Washington. But what this project is doing is interviewing people who moved to Louisville after the Holocaust. And it’s not really so much to determine what the Holocaust experience was like but what the settlement has been like.ROSENBAUM: It’s interesting, a friend of mine who is on the board of the
Holocaust Museum, her name is Gerta Kline; and you may have heard of her because a documentary that was done with her in it won both an Oscar and an Emmy. And she and her husband--I just had a note from her yesterday—she and her husband have written a book. I believe it’s The Hours Between which is taken from correspondence from the time her husband met her, saved her actually from an escape from a concentration camp, until they were able to go through all the red tape they went through to enable them to get married. He was in the United States Army. She had no citizenship anyplace, and the Army wouldn’t permit him to marry. He had to leave her in Europe, go to the United States, do whatever he had to do and then go back to Paris and marry her; and then they came to this country. That correspondence is over a period of a little more than a year, and it’s excerpts of that that are going to appear in this book which is her second book. The first one was called All But My Life. And it’s a remarkable story. It’s interesting that I just heard that yesterday that the book will be out. I read some of the excerpts from it when we were last out in Scotsdale.BRINSON: Well, the, there is a lot of good work that is beginning to come out of
that whole experience and that’s good.ROSENBAUM: Oh, the adjustment that people make is unbelievable. It’s incredible
to me when I think about her. She was fifteen or sixteen when she was taken by the Nazis, she was in Poland. And she never saw her mother or father or brother again. She was totally alone when she was discovered by the American Army unit of which her husband was the lieutenant in command. I think her hair was white, she weighed something like sixty pounds, you know, was just emaciated and on the verge of absolute destruction. They now have three wonderful kids, eight or ten grandchildren. She and her husband travel all over the world speaking about intolerance. Have a foundation to help fight it. She has honorary doctorates from almost every place. She’s done suicide counseling, drug counseling. At one point in her own life she wanted to kill herself, and she remembered that her father said that was not a good thing to do. And when she counsels people now she says that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. And she’s extremely effective.BRINSON: Yeah. That’s good.
ROSENBAUM: Yeah.
BRINSON: Certainly in most communities where there is a Jewish population there
is a history of discrimination, of anti-Semitism. Can you talk with me a little bit about that experience here in Louisville?ROSENBAUM: You’re going to think that I grew up in a vacuum. I wasn’t touched by
the Depression. If I was touched too much by anti-Semitism, I’m not aware of that either.BRINSON: Okay.
ROSENBAUM: There are little things that I remember. I remember that we were not
welcome at the Pendennis Club which was very obvious. And when I was on the board of Red Cross, and they were going to have meetings there, I said, “that I would not attend.” I mean if I weren’t wanted any time then I wouldn’t have cared to go to a meeting. And they changed the meetings. That I remember. I remember in school we read the Bible every morning and frequently…BRINSON: In public school?
ROSENBAUM: In public school. And frequently we got to, we read from the New
Testament or the Old Testament whatever, and when they got around to me they were always careful to see that it was from the Old Testament. But it made me feel a little different than anybody else. I was a good student. I never could get an award for, ah, what did they call this? Never being absent, because Jewish holidays were not considered holidays. And I never went, so that was the only time I missed, but I still couldn’t get an award and I didn’t think that was right. Now if that is my major problem with anti-Semitism, you can see that it was not a very big factor in my life. I was aware of it but it didn’t really bother me.BRINSON: I wonder, I believe your husband is a family physician?
ROSENBAUM: Right. He was.
BRINSON: Was there ever a situation where he had difficulties in being allowed…
ROSENBAUM: Yes.
BRINSON: …in hospitals?
ROSENBAUM: Yes, in the beginning, now, I’m not sure if this was in his time or
before his time. But Jewish doctors could not be on the staffs of other hospitals, which is one of the basic reasons the Jewish Hospital was started.BRINSON: Right.
ROSENBAUM: I really don’t remember whether it was within his lifetime. He was on
the staff at Jewish and at St. Mary’s and Elizabeth and at Methodist. That I know. So obviously he was accepted every place by then. But that was not true before. When he went to medical school there still was a Jewish quota.BRINSON: And where did he go do that?
ROSENBAUM: In the University of Louisville.
BRINSON: Okay.
ROSENBAUM: And that was still a quota and lots of Jewish boys from New York came
here. I believe the class was about a hundred people and they took a ten percent of Jewish students.BRINSON: And that would have been approximately when would he have been in
medical school?ROSENBAUM: Well, he graduated high school in `36. So it would have been `36 to
`40, something like that.BRINSON: Okay, okay.
ROSENBAUM: It’s funny I, you know, look back: I guess there were some incidences
like that but they, I must have had a very secure family or something because it didn’t seem to bother us. [Sound of doorbell or chime of some sort.] And our social group--excuse me a minute. [Audio goes off and then back on.]BRINSON: Uhmm, I’m reminded actually, you talked about how you weren’t always
aware of things that may have been happening in the community. I’m reminded that that sounds very familiar in terms of other people I’ve interviewed, even within the black community. You know they say they grew up in their own little world.ROSENBAUM: Secure and happy.
BRINSON: It was secure and happy and they really weren’t aware, you know, too
much of what was going on out beyond that or it didn’t seem to affect them personally.ROSENBAUM: Something, something crossed my mind a minute ago that I knew also…
Oh, in high school I was very active and I got a lot of awards, and I was head of things, and I had a lot of non-Jewish friends, and you know everything was fine. When I went to the University of Louisville they suddenly disappeared. They all joined sororities, and there were no Jewish sororities; and none of the other sororities took Jews. They may have taken some but I mean it was generally they did not, and I guess had we been asked we wouldn’t have joined anyway. But we weren’t asked and I remember feeling very alone at that moment in time. There was one other time that I--I noticed something about being Jewish where I was kept apart. It has slipped my mind. I’ll try to think of it in a minute. I should get a pencil or take yours because if I don’t write these things down I’m not going to remember them. [Sound of tape going off and back on.] What I was trying to think--ell, it will come back as we talk.BRINSON: Uhmm, I want to move ahead to the fifties and the sixties in Louisville
and particularly the efforts within the black community to eliminate segregation but which had support certainly from members within the white community, too. And I wonder if you have any recollection of what was happening?ROSENBAUM: I remember that we knew a number of black doctors, and one of them,
Dr. Rabb who was an anesthesiologist.BRINSON: Rabb?
ROSENBAUM: Rabb.
BRINSON: R A B B.
ROSENBAUM: R, yeah, I think.
BRINSON: I’m asking for the spelling so when they transcribe the tape.
ROSENBAUM: Right. He’s no longer living but his wife, Julia Rabb still is. He
was an anesthesiologist who worked at Red Cross Hospital. This, again, starts another train of thought. Black patients were not admitted to other hospitals. They only could go to the Red Cross Hospital. My husband used to deliver--he had a lot of black patients--he delivered them at Red Cross, and Dr. Rabb asked him to become a life member of the NAACP and he did. He and Arthur Kling were the only two Jewish life members that I can remember at that time.BRINSON: Who is Arthur Kling?
ROSENBAUM: Arthur Kling is probably one of the outstanding liberal Jews who ever
frequented Louisville. He lived in Louisville. Do you know the name Susie Post?BRINSON: Yes.
ROSENBAUM: That’s his daughter.
BRINSON: I do.
ROSENBAUM: So she got it directly from…
BRINSON: Okay.
ROSENBAUM: No, she’s not his daughter. She’s his niece. She’s Morris Kling’s
daughter. Arthur was her uncle.BRINSON: Okay. And there’s a center named after Arthur Kling here in town.
ROSENBAUM: Yes, a geriatric center down on Ormsby or someplace.
BRINSON: A community center. Right. Actually I belong to an organization whose
board meets there occasionally.ROSENBAUM: He was an extremely generous man and, ah, he…
BRINSON: But Arthur and your husband were both lifetime members of the NAACP.
Were they, uhmm, were they active in terms of attending meetings?ROSENBAUM: No, they were not. When there were speakers here, I remember that we
went to a black church, and were among very few white people in the audience but we were there. And we probably met some black people through that. But the other doctors that we met we became pretty friendly with. And, I guess it was in the sixties. I don’t remember exactly the date but we socialized considerably. They invited us to their homes, and we invited them to ours; and we had a boat on the river. And I remember we took some of them overnight up to Madison, Indiana, and things were edgy enough so that we called the place where we docked and asked before we came if there was going to be any problem because we didn’t want anybody to be embarrassed. And I also remember that we took them to the Standard Country Club for dinner and, ah, that created a lot of negative comments not about them but about us.BRINSON: For having invited them there.
ROSENBAUM: Yeah. They were remarkable people and their stories are really
remarkable. One of them, John Bell, John Walls, I mean, who is dead now. His wife died not too long ago, Murray Walls had twelve sisters. His father had been a slave, and he said, “He was a teenager before he ever got anything other than a dress to wear because it was only hand me downs.” And he got himself through medical school and was a wonderful doctor. And Murray was a teacher. And I remember the marches for the right to eat at lunch counters and Murray who was an extremely dignified lady, always had on white gloves and so on. And Murray marched in those and she really felt that it was perhaps not the most polite thing to do but it needed to be done. And she explained it to me. The other doctor was John Bell whose wife just yesterday was ninety-four. I just talked to her, Geneva, she’s still living. And Geneva was much more fiery than Murray was. And Murray justified going on the marches by saying she had to go along to keep Geneva out of trouble. [Laughter] So, which probably was true, like I mean I can see that happening.BRINSON: Geneva was fiery in the sense that she would be what? Much more assertive?
ROSENBAUM: If anybody were nasty to her she would not have slunk away. She
wouldn’t have just accepted it. She was not aggressive. But if anybody did anything to her she would have stood up for her rights. She was a schoolteacher.BRINSON: It’s been interesting to me to look at photographs that the Louisville
Courier took of the demonstrations and how many women there were in them, black women for the most part but a few white women.ROSENBAUM: That’s interesting. I wonder if the men were afraid for their jobs?
BRINSON: Possible.
ROSENBAUM: I mean that could well have been. I remember that our family went on
some of the marches for open housing. I remember Rabbi Pearlie was with us at one point. He became ultimately head of the Louisville Jefferson County Human Relation Commission, I think. And I remember our daughter and son-in-law and we--I don’t know who all in our family were marching--there was considerable abuse as we walked through some neighborhoods. [Laughing] I remember my son-in-law, who is a psychiatrist, said, “The family that marches together, stays together.” [Laughter]BRINSON: That must have been in the sixties with the whole effort for open housing.
ROSENBAUM: Yes, yes. That’s right.
BRINSON: I think the state actually enacted a law for open housing in 1968. I
have that…ROSENBAUM: I’m not sure. The federal law was 1964.
BRINSON: Right, right, the Civil Rights Act. Uhmm, Kentucky is actually a very
interesting place in terms of the whole Civil Rights Movement because in the fifties Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP actually saw Louisville as being a very pivotal state in terms of some of the litigation that was happening, and also because it was a border state. But Kentucky doesn’t get picked up in the textbooks or the books about the Civil Rights because it wasn’t violent the way it was in Alabama and Mississippi.ROSENBAUM: No, there were not those kinds of confrontations. They were little
confrontations. I remember though when I think back on changing attitudes, my father was the most tolerant, kindest man I ever knew. He had many black employees, truck drivers, various people. And in those days people used to go to work when they were kids and they were there my whole life. I mean, no, people didn’t change jobs. They were there. And he got very involved in their lives, helping them. There are a number of kids that are named after him. Ah, he was there when they had deliveries. He was as close as you could possibly be, as supportive as you could possible be. But the idea of sitting down to eat at a table with a black person was not in his time. I can remember that they used to eat separately. And I know that he would have changed because it was not like him. But I mentioned that only because that’s the way we grew up. And that was the way things were. And, ah, it would have, you know, would have been a big change for him to …[sound of phone ringing].END OF SIDE ONE, TAPE ONE
BEGIN SIDE TWO, TAPE ONE
BRINSON: …In a number of community activities but today I want to actually focus
on the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights which you were appointed to first in 1966 and then again in 1970. So, until `75, so, basically you served almost nine years.ROSENBAUM: If you say I did. [Laughter]
BRINSON: I’m taking that from your resume.
ROSENBAUM: Well, that’s probably accurate. I don’t remember.
BRINSON: Well, tell me what led up to, which governor first appointed you? Do
you remember that?ROSENBAUM: Governor won’t be happy.
BRINSON: Sixty-six, was that Governor Breathitt?
ROSENBAUM: I honestly don’t know. I could look it up someplace I’ve got an
appointment--but I don’t know. And then I think the second commission was another governor. I’m not positive. But I think it was.BRINSON: It would have been.
ROSENBAUM: Yeah.
BRINSON: Okay. What led up to your, how did you get appointed?
ROSENBAUM: I haven’t the vaguest notion. I, ah, I was on the board of the Urban
League at one time. I don’t know if that’s down or not.BRINSON: Yes, yes.
ROSENBAUM: I was active in United Way, Red Cross, then it was Community Chest
and Red Cross before it was United Way. I guess if you, your name becomes known in the community, and I guess, if ultimately, if you ask for, give me a name of a Jewish person then they pick someone that’s been doing something. I don’t know how those things go. It certainly had nothing to do with any particular merit or background, maybe background. I don’t know what they looked at.BRINSON: Sounds like your background the way you describe it.
ROSENBAUM: I really don’t know.
BRINSON: But it’s also true, unfortunately with some appointments they are made
because they’re, you know, friends of the governor at the time.ROSENBAUM: No. I had no, nothing like that, nothing that I’m aware of. Now there
may have been friends of mine who had some influence but if so they didn’t say anything to me about it. So I don’t know anything about it. I think it was sort of random.BRINSON: Uhmm, what do you remember about? Do you remember your first meeting or
just impressions of the commission in `66?ROSENBAUM: No, honestly, you know, as I told you on the telephone, I don’t
remember a lot. I remember that Paul Oberst was the chairman and was extremely impressive. And Galen Martin was the executive. And the things that came to us were discrimination and housing. We did a lot of testing for housing discrimination. The first really big case I remember was a job discrimination with L & N.BRINSON: L & N is the railroad?
ROSENBAUM: The Louisville and Nashville Railroad. And there were some
wheelwrights that were black and were traditionally held in that position. And there was a big hearing about that. L & N sent a group of, I think, nine attorneys down from New York. And we had hearings for a long time here. And as I recall we found in favor of the wheelwrights, and L & N made some adjustments. We, I don’t know how much legal weight we had.BRINSON: Tell me, what is a wheelwright?
ROSENBAUM: Don’t ask me. They do something with the wheels on the locomotives.
BRINSON: Wheels on the train.
ROSENBAUM: But I don’t know what they do. I think it was a factory job. I don’t
really remember the details. What I remember at that time Reverend Frederick Samson, a black man, was Head of the Board. Now, turn your tape off and I’ll tell you what happened. [Sound of tape going off and back on.]BRINSON: …discomfort here. But that’s okay. We’re not.
ROSENBAUM: All right, I’ll go back and explain something that occurred during
the hearing with L & N. A new member of the commission, Bell Smith who was from someplace near Ashland, Kentucky a small town, and was very active in the Democratic Party in the state.BRINSON: This is a white woman.
ROSENBAUM: Oh, definitely, a white woman, was appointed to the commission, and
the first time she attended a meeting was during the hearing and she happened to sit next to me. The hearing was conducted by Reverend Frederick Samson, a black man, whom I think was head of the commission at that time. I’m not positive that he was head of the commission but he definitely was conducting the hearing, and he was a brilliant man and did a wonderful job. And at one point Bell nudged me and said, “That nigger is pretty smart.” When I recovered my breath, I came home and told my husband that I don’t know how this could occur that anybody who had that kind of a viewpoint could be on a human relations commission. Well, it turned out as time went on that the word had no meaning for her. It was just what she was brought up with. She was a close friend of Frederick Samson’s. She was a, I’d say one of the most helpful members of the commission. As far as I could tell didn’t have an intolerant bone in her body, and was willing to take on the world to do what she felt was right whether it was for someone black or white or whatever. It made no difference to her. And her use of the word was actually meaningless but it certainly startled me to have her on the commission.BRINSON: Right, right.
ROSENBAUM: I remember another hearing we had where the attorney was attempting
to impeach the motives of the commission. And he asked what organizations we--each member belonged to. And you know it was the American Civil Liberties Union, it was every kind of liberal kind of organization you could think. Then he got hold of Bell Smith [laughing], and she ruined his whole case. I’ll never forget that day either. She belonged to, I think the DAR, certainly the Future Gardeners of America, Garden Club of America, any number of things that just, he could not shut her up and she knew it. And he tried to say, “That’s enough, that’s fine.’ And she just kept going with a list of things that totally sank his whole approach. She was, that was one of her effective moments as an example of how she became effective. I remember that, yeah.BRINSON: Were the most of the cases that the commission presented at that point
were they around racial discrimination or do you recall any other?ROSENBAUM: Almost all of them. All that I recall were around racial
discrimination at that time it seemed to me that the black issue was what the commission was all about. There may have been some religious discrimination. I know that there was no handicapped or gay or anything like that. And I don’t think that we really heard anything much about religious discrimination. I’m not positive about that.BRINSON: How about gender discrimination?
ROSENBAUM: I don’t remember anything. I think that all came a little later.
Mostly it was a situation of blacks not being able to get apartments, not being treated fairly in work situations, not being able to enter certain restaurants and clubs and so on. There was a big to-do about what was a private club and what was not and you know, who’s rules would control.BRINSON: Do you remember how often the commission met? Did it meet during a
weekday or an evening?ROSENBAUM: It met during a weekday. It met in Frankfort largely. I think maybe
in the end it had some meetings in Louisville. I think its headquarters moved to Louisville ultimately.BRINSON: That’s right.
ROSENBAUM: Yeah.
BRINSON: At the end of the sixties.
ROSENBAUM: But in the beginning we used to go up to Frankfort, and I think it
was about once a month. And then we had meetings in Louisville.BRINSON: And generally how long would a meeting last?
ROSENBAUM: Oh, probably a couple of hours. It would shoot the day by the time we
went up there and came back.BRINSON: Uhmm, was Reverend Estill the, was he…?
ROSENBAUM: Was he head of the Episcopal Church?
BRINSON: Yes, he was.
ROSENBAUM: But--and I knew him. As a matter of fact when he went to Washington
we corresponded for a while. He was a wonderful man. I don’t remember him on the commission.BRINSON: He was, well, he actually was the first chair.
ROSENBAUM: Well, then that’s why I don’t remember.
BRINSON: In `60 and he may have gone, certainly he would have gone off, I guess,
by the time you came on.ROSENBAUM: Yeah, I don’t believe he was on the commission.
BRINSON: I just interviewed him about a month ago, and he’s in Raleigh now.
ROSENBAUM: You did. Is he?
BRINSON: North Carolina. And he’s the retired bishop of the Episcopal Church for
North Carolina.ROSENBAUM: That’s remarkable.
BRINSON: He’s really a lovely man.
ROSENBAUM: Oh, he was a lovely man, here he was a young man. I remember him. A
very attractive guy, and very nice.BRINSON: Right.
ROSENBAUM: But I don’t think that he was a part of the commission in my memory.
BRINSON: I think that was earlier.
ROSENBAUM: Yeah.
BRINSON: I want to ask you about some of the members that we’re having trouble
just finding any descriptive information about or whether they are even, you know, are living or what not. But I need to do that… [sound of audio going off and back on] Before I ask you that though are there other incidences that you recall from the commission? For example how many people were normally there at a meeting? Did most of the commissioners attend regularly?ROSENBAUM: My reaction that almost all of the commissioners attended the
meetings. The meetings were full. Ah, this was a major issue of our times then, and I don’t think anybody that accepted the appointment ignored the obligation to show up. It’s probably different than it would be now when it’s a more accepted thing, but this was all pretty unique then.BRINSON: Uhmm, I know from looking at some of the early records there was not a
large operating budget. I wonder if you recall whether the commissioners were at least reimbursed their travel or anything of that sort or was it really a volunteer?ROSENBAUM: I really don’t know. I only came from Louisville to Frankfort and I
drove. So I didn’t have any expense. Bell, by the way, was from Catlettsburg, I remember that. And I, I never heard any discussion about being reimbursed for anything. I think people just took care of their expenses. I really can’t be sure of that but if there were anything like that, I don’t remember it. And I really don’t remember anything about the budget. It was as I got older and more advanced in community work that I began to look at budgets. That was not something I was very good at, at that time.BRINSON: Just looking, Reverend Estill was on from 1960 till 1966. So you must
have just come on when he went off maybe.ROSENBAUM: Missed, yeah.
BRINSON: I wanted to ask you about, of course, in this time period too many of
the women’s names are listed by their husbands’ first name because that’s just the way it was.ROSENBAUM: That’s the way it was done.
BRINSON: And we don’t even have the original name of the women. But there was a
Mrs. Dan Byck.ROSENBAUM: Byck, Mary Helen Byck who is deceased.
BRINSON: Right. What can you tell me about her?
ROSENBAUM: Well, Mary Helen was one of the outstanding women leaders in
Louisville. There wasn’t anything that she wasn’t involved in. She, her husband was a candidate for mayor at one time. He died and she ran a lady’s store on Fourth Street, Byck Brothers. And I remember she was among the first stores that permitted black people to try on clothing, and that was another big thing in those days. Mary Helen was involved in the arts, in everything and was totally, ah, secular, interdenominational in her interests and in her activities in Louisville.BRINSON: Okay. Are there any living children?
ROSENBAUM: Yes. She had three children, Dan Byck who no longer lives here. He
lives out west. And is, I think, a film producer. Betty Byck and Lucy Byck, Lucy is married to somebody named Shapiro. Do you want me to actually look up, ah, ‘cause I can look up her husband’s name?BRINSON: No, we can do that afterwards, maybe.
ROSENBAUM: All right. And Betty is married, ah, well, I can look up her name,
too. I don’t remember.BRINSON: Also, again with a little overlap of about a year, Frank Stanley, Sr.
with the Louisville…ROSENBAUM: Yes.
BRINSON: The Defender.
ROSENBAUM: The Defender, right.
BRINSON: And he actually went off in 1967.
ROSENBAUM: I was not on with him but of course everybody in the community knew
who Frank Stanley was. And he had a son that we knew even better who became an ophthalmologist. I think he practices in Chicago.BRINSON: And there was from Louisville a gentleman named Charles Steel who again
when off in 1967.ROSENBAUM: Charlie Steel, God, I had forgotten him. But he was also, what was he
associated with? Was it Urban League, what was it?BRINSON: Was he the Director of Urban League?
ROSENBAUM: I don’t remember. I don’t remember anybody until we got to Mr.
Walters, Art Walters who was Director of the Urban League. But Charles Steel could have been. I know it’s a name I know, and I knew him.BRINSON: Then from Henderson, Kentucky there was a fellow there, Elmer Korth, K
O R T H. He served from 1967 till 1971.ROSENBAUM: I should have known him but I don’t remember him.
BRINSON: And also during that same period there was a Mrs. Robert Page from Middlesboro.
ROSENBAUM: Rings no bells.
BRINSON: A nurse. Okay. Was a Reverend F.G. Samson from Louisville.
ROSENBAUM: He’s the one I told you that conducted the hearings. I knew him well.
He was here not long ago as a matter of fact.BRINSON: Do you know where he went to?
ROSENBAUM: Yes, I believe it’s Detroit. But I know who knows if you’re interested.
BRINSON: Well, yes.
ROSENBAUM: Geneva Bell.
BRINSON: Okay.
ROSENBAUM: Mrs. J.P. Bell who lives, that’s the ninety-four year old doctor’s
wife. And he was here for her husband’s funeral, and she’s in touch with him so she knows how to reach him.BRINSON: Okay. And there was a gentleman from Lawrenceburg named Ralph Homen, H
O M E N.ROSENBAUM: I remember him.
BRINSON: He was the chair for a couple of years.
ROSENBAUM: Yeah, I remember him. He, I think he was very active politically, and
at one time he had [pause] this word always mixes me up. What’s the disease of the nerve endings that hurts a whole lot? Frequently you get in--well, whatever it was he had it in his eye and he was very uncomfortable for a long time.BRINSON: He’s deceased.
ROSENBAUM: He, I remember that he was very outspoken. I have the sense that I
thought he was not as liberal as he should be. I use that word loosely. I don’t know if liberal fits. But I guess what that means is he didn’t agree with me on a lot of occasions. [Laughter]BRINSON: Okay.
ROSENBAUM: I don’t know what he thought about me.
BRINSON: Then there was a John Resan, R E S A N, Jr. from Dry Ridge which is
northern Kentucky area.ROSENBAUM: I don’t remember.
BRINSON: Uhmm, there was a Rev. James Crumblin an attorney.
ROSENBAUM: Yes, he was from Louisville, I think. I remember him very well.
BRINSON: What can you tell me about him?
ROSENBAUM: Really not much more than that he was an attorney and that he was black.
BRINSON: Was he active at the meetings?
ROSENBAUM: Yes, he was. He was active and I think he was probably very helpful.
BRINSON: You mentioned Bell Smith. They have here Cattlesburg.
ROSENBAUM: It’s Catlettsburg.
BRINSON: You described her to me. Then from Louisville again there was a
gentleman, 1971 to `75 by the name of Fred Amhouse, A M H O U S E and from `71 to `77, I’m not sure I’m pronouncing this town right Kuttawa there was a Ewing Benberry. He was maybe a hotel owner. There was a Doctor C.L. Finch from Louisville and a Vernon Lee Johnson?ROSENBAUM: No.
BRINSON: I’m not sure where he’s from. How about a William Billingsly from Fort
Mitchell. A Glen Denham from Middlesboro, he would have actually been before you were on. But there was a Katherine Krauss from Bardstown.ROSENBAUM: I remember Katherine, Katie Krauss very well. Very attractive blond
lady [laughing].BRINSON: Okay.
ROSENBAUM: And as far as I was concerned a very concerned person in terms of
human rights.BRINSON: Uh-hmm, okay. Did you have any reason to stay in touch with her after
the two of you finished your terms?ROSENBAUM: Oh, we probably did for a year or two. I haven’t heard anything from
her for years.BRINSON: She is deceased. But I don’t know. And you mentioned Paul Oberst. Uhmm,
let’s see, from Hopkinsville there was a Dr. Robert M. Coleman.ROSENBAUM: No.
BRINSON: Okay. And from Lexington from `66 to `69 was a Zirl, Z I R L Palmer,
and from Hopkinsville a Reverend A. R. Lasley, L A S L E Y. Okay. And from Bowling Green, he was appointed 1971 a Ricardo Sisney, S I S N E Y. Or a Jimmy Stewart from `71 to `75 from Franklin but he’s moved to Louisville. And then the last one is from Somerset, Grant Wilson, 1971 to `75.ROSENBAUM: I’m sure I must have known some of these people but nothing reminds
me of them. [Phone rings] But the one you haven’t mentioned is the former mayor of Ashland who was head of the commission at some point. I think his name was David Welch. And he, I remember him very vividly. And he was a wonderful leader. Now if he was head of the commission it seems like you should have it.BRINSON: I do have him. I skipped over him. But you’re right he was `65 to `69.
Then he went off, came back `75, `76 and he was actually the chair from 1983 to 1990.ROSENBAUM: Yeah, we haven’t, we certainly aren’t friendly but we have had some
contact over the years. I don’t remember what for but probably when he became mayor I congratulated and he answered, you know, I don’t know.BRINSON: Okay. Okay. Is there anybody else you can think of that I might not
have asked?ROSENBAUM: Nobody else comes to mind, no.
BRINSON: Galen Martin…
ROSENBAUM: Yeah, Betty Fleischaker who went on later. She’s a friend of mine
from Louisville and she was on a number of years.BRINSON: How do you spell her last name?
ROSENBAUM: F L E I S C H A K E R. She lives in the Commodore Apartments. Her
phone number is 483-0383, maybe. [Laughter] And she has a much better memory for this kind of stuff than I have. She could probably tell you names and dates. She was a very close friend of Frederick Samson for one thing that I know.BRINSON: Okay. During the time that you were on the commission Galen Martin
would have been the director.ROSENBAUM: Right.
BRINSON: Were there any other staff that you remember?
ROSENBAUM: Yes. He had a secretary, ah, I believe her name was Jean Horton. I
know it was Jean. A very efficient black woman, she may have since married, I don’t know. But she was a very helpful person. And there was another woman toward the end. I think her name was Sylvia Coman. I believe she was Jewish. She was white, and I think she was Galen’s assistant or something like that. And then there was…BRINSON: How do you spell Sylvia’s last name?
ROSENBAUM: C O M A N, I think. And then there was an attorney, Tom Ebbendorf who
worked with Galen. He was a staff member for a number of years. I’m trying to think: there were other members of the staff, but those were the ones that I remember. It was not a large staff, but …BRINSON: Did the commission ever get together to do planning, to have a
commission retreat?ROSENBAUM: As far as I know no retreat, and I think some of us, ah, I think had
the feeling that Galen ran things pretty much individually. He was certainly open to suggestions and conversations and he was easily approachable. I don’t mean that he dictated, but I don’t think that there was a lot of initiative that came from the commission except what occurred from the meetings as we reacted to the agenda. If there was I don’t remember.BRINSON: Okay. So you don’t recall like an executive committee that met in the
interim or sub-committees?ROSENBAUM: I’m sure that there were but I really don’t remember. I don’t think
there was an exec--there may have been an executive committee, I don’t know. But I think we met--the staff, it seems to me--my memory is that the staff did everything between our meetings which were rather frequent, and at that point we gave whatever direction seemed appropriate and that was it. I don’t think there was much creative activity on the part of the members unless somebody came to a meeting with or at least Galen had met with them privately, and they had discussed it. I didn’t feel that we were left out. I don’t want to give that impression. No.BRINSON: Uh-hmm. How as the commission viewed by the general population? When
you told people for example, if you did, or when people knew that you served on the commission, what sort of reactions did you get?ROSENBAUM: They thought I was a flaming liberal who ought to tend to my own
business and not get involved [laughing] with what could only be trouble. A different climate, maybe, I hope the commission helped change the climate.BRINSON: Was that difficult for you to have that sort of feedback?
ROSENBAUM: No. Perhaps growing up Jewish already made me sensitized to that sort
of thing.BRINSON: Right.
ROSENBAUM: I don’t know.
BRINSON: Okay.
ROSENBAUM: It never, no, it was not an issue.
BRINSON: Okay.
ROSENBAUM: But I know that it was not a popular thing which is basically what
you’re asking, at least not with most of the people that I knew. It was accepted but it was not popular.BRINSON: Were there ever any special events that you recall, dinners or celebrations?
ROSENBAUM: I’m sure there were but as I told you, I don’t remember. And another
thing that is troublesome for me is that I was involved in a number of different organizations, and as time goes on, I’m sure I get some of those events turned around in my mind. And I really wouldn’t be reliable.BRINSON: It’s okay. I understand. I have the same problem, myself. [Laughter]
ROSENBAUM: Wait.
BRINSON: Well, is there anything else you’d like to share about what the
commission meant to you?ROSENBAUM: It was important to me. I think it crystallized a lot of, ah, a lot
of issues that were probably subliminally floating around in me, and it put them together in a package that made me more aware of them. And then perhaps that influenced my life more. I can give you a total unrelated example. We have a daughter who just moved to a new job in New York, and she works for the Jewish Braille Institute. She’s only been there ten days. And she says that she has learned so much in those ten days about what it is like to be handicapped and to get along with blind people. That she doesn’t know how she lived before she was aware of these things. Uhmm, one of the things she mentioned that she spent the day, the day before yesterday with a blind woman who did not take her seeing eye dog with her around New York, and they were all over the city because taxi cabs frequently don’t stop for people with seeing eye dogs. Also she learned that you’re not supposed to pat or talk to a seeing eye dog…END OF SIDE TWO, TAPE ONE
BEGIN SIDE ONE, TAPE TWO
ROSENBAUM: …The things that she, oh, that you never take a blind person’s arm
but you let them take yours so that they can follow rather than have you control and push and, you know, pull on them.BRINSON: So your daughter’s experience, you can empathize with. Do you relate
that in some way to your experience with the commission?ROSENBAUM: I relate it to what I said before, that I think the commission
crystallized the feelings that I had, like I think my daughter now is having crystallized a sensitivity that she probably always had but it was just floating around not really focused as it now is. That’s what started me off on that tack anyway because it occurred to me that that was similar.BRINSON: Okay. Is there anything else that you can think of at this point?
ROSENBAUM: Not unless you think of it and set me off. [Laughing] Because before
you came I had been trying to think of some things and as I told you on the phone I was afraid I wasn’t going to be very helpful.BRINSON: No, I think this has been good. There’s some good material. And I would
appreciate any help you can give me in terms of trying to find some of these people.ROSENBAUM: Well, I’ll look up the Bycks for you which will be simple. Let me get…
END OF INTERVIEW
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