Oral History Interview with Edward "Ned" Breathitt

BETSY BRINSON: Today is February twenty-third the year two thousand. This is an interview with Governor Edward Breathitt. The interviewer is Betsy Brinson and the interview takes place in Governor Breathitt’s office in Lexington, Kentucky. Governor Breathitt, can you just give me, tell me your full name, if you would and I can get a voice level.

EDWARD BREATHITT: It’s Edward Thompson Breathitt.

BRINSON: Okay, well thank you very much for agreeing to talk with me today, Governor. I have to tell you to prepare for the interview today, I have read I know, eight hundred pages at least, transcript of the interviews that Terry Birdwhistle and Jim Klotter have been doing with you. [Laughing] So, I think I know a good bit about you, even though I am a newcomer to Kentucky. And I’m going to actually skip a lot of your early history and what not, because what we want to focus on today is really, your involvement and your leadership around the Southern Civil Rights struggle, both in Kentucky and nationally. Can you help me, can you recall any early racial awareness though, that you might have had growing up?

BREATHITT: Well, I grew up in a small town, Hopkinsville, Kentucky, which at that time had about a ten thousand population. It is much larger now. But it had about a forty percent African American population, because the southern half of the county was very rich agriculturally. And there were many slaves in that county. In fact, it still has in Christian county, the highest percentage of the population of African-Americans of any county in Kentucky. Kentucky actually has a very low percentage of African-Americans statewide.

BRINSON: I think it’s about seven percent.

BREATHITT: That’s correct. But it’s about thirty percent in Christian county and at one time it was over fifty percent. And it’s, I knew those people. I did not have any great sense of the problems of segregation as I was growing up, because I just grew up in a culture. But there was a general feeling of live and let live, and get along in the community. There was no active Ku Klux Klan group or ultra rightist group, but the people felt that African-Americans had their place and they ought to stay in their place. It was typical. And we had people that worked in our home. And my mother was a gardener, and we had a person that worked for her, who was African-American. And I got to know them pretty well. And I played with a little black boy, and was one of my best friends growing up; but I never thought about it really, as to the basic issues of segregation. The first time I really thought about it, was when I was in the Air Force. And I was there with a diverse group of people in World War Two. There were no African-Americans in my cadet unit. I was training for flight training. And I went to Vanderbilt for a year to train as a meteorologist before I went into flight training, and that program was discontinued. But there were no African-Americans in our class. And my room mate was from Purdue, went to Purdue as an engineering student. And he couldn’t understand it either, because the Big Ten had been integrated in athletics and in their academic diversity, both on the faculty, staff and student body. And he couldn’t understand it. And he was from Evansville, Indiana, right across the river from Henderson, Kentucky. And I thought just that river, and just that mile between those communities made such a difference. And we had many discussions about it. And philosophically I began to see that I could not understand why we in Kentucky couldn’t see that. Now I had, I was from a family that during the Civil War was split. There were two brothers that were in the Confederate Army, and two brothers in the Union Army: they never reconciled after the war. The two in the Confederate Army were from farm families. The two that were in the Union Army were the son of a, well one of them was later Postmaster, appointed by the Republicans, and the other one was Police Chief. But they were urban, lived in Hopkinsville. And so their economic and cultural interests were diverse, just as they divided the North and South. My grandfather, my great-grandfather was a major in the Union Army, and a great--and went all the way--I didn’t talk about this when I was running for Governor--but he went all the way to Atlanta with Sherman. And he had his own unit, and was in that bitter fighting all the way. So my family, on my mother’s side were Confederate, my great-grandfather on my mother’s side rode with Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was in Colonel Woodard’s Company D, of Confederate Cavalry. So I had all that kind of background, which didn’t let me really focus on exactly my feelings.

BRINSON: Well, you mentioned World War Two, let me back up, because as I understand it you, no, I’m sorry. You graduated U. K. as an undergraduate in nineteen forty-eight and then I believe, Law school in nineteen fifty.

BREATHITT: Fifty, uh huh.

BRINSON: Which would have been the period, of course, that Lyman Johnson and the NAACP were contesting admission to the University. Do you remember any of that?

BREATHITT: Yes, I do remember it, because I was a student on campus and was active in student affairs, was President of ODK and was President...

BRINSON: ODK?

BREATHITT: ODK, yes, which is a, as you know, a leadership and scholarship honorary, both. And at that time, the first student in the Law school was admitted. And it was in Paul Oberst’s class, Professor Oberst’s class, he was teaching Constitutional Law. And I remember when he came, he sat on the back row and nobody was sitting by him. So I went back and sat by him, and I guess that was the first act that I ever did.

BRINSON: Which probably, I don’t know if you were aware of it, but violated University policy that you would do that.

BREATHITT: Probably. [Laughing]

BRINSON: I actually just found the early policies that were developed after Lyman Johnson’s admission for treating Negroes, as we called them, at the University. And one of them is that they would have separate seating, and that they would remain as far away from the white students as possible, and that the white students would not fraternize. And I think they were more concerned about the white students and possible students who might be disruptive at that point, than they were the black students. Do you remember ever hearing about those policies at all?

BREATHITT: It didn’t really focus, because once I did it, other students did too.

BRINSON: Did too?

BREATHITT: Uh hmm. And from that time on, at the Law school....Of course Oberst was a liberal, stood strongly on Constitutional values. Oberst, I appointed to the, my, the Human Rights Commission. As I recall, he was, well he was really my conscience on the Human Rights Commission. And he’s still alive, I mean, in his nineties.

BRINSON: Yes, he’s not in good health.

BREATHITT: No he isn’t.

BRINSON: I tried to interview him.

BREATHITT: No, no, no.

BRINSON: He said no, unfortunately.

BREATHITT: No, I know, I mean. But uh, and so I then ran for the Legislature and we had an amendment to the Day Law, that was to really try to undo what the court, what that law had done, which forced Berea College to cease to be a racially diverse institution. It was fifty-fifty, it was set up to have fifty-fifty Caucasian and African-American. They had to then move over and establish Lincoln Institute. So, I had a chance to get into that debate. But we had a Governor who then was Lawrence Weatherby, and he strongly supported the amendment of the Day Law. He was from Louisville, had been a Juvenile Judge, and had a very progressive period as Juvenile Judge. And he supported it, and I was one of the legislators that voted for it. But it was not a big issue, I mean we passed it pretty easily.

BRINSON: And at that point there would not have been any black legislators.

BREATHITT: No, there were no black legislators at that time.

BRINSON: ...at that time, right.

BREATHITT: But we had a lot of liberal legislators, that were, that supported it, and--but we didn’t--you know--most of the student body in the Law school were in favor of the position that the University took--the Board took--in not appealing Judge Ford’s ruling to the Court of Appeals, the sixth circuit.

BRINSON: Do you remember the first black student at all? A name, or to know where he might be today? Or did he finish?

BREATHITT: I can’t remember, I can’t remember. I remember Lyman Johnson, because he got all the, he was the first. And of course, I remember seeing him on campus, but I never had any classes with him. And he--you know to a bunch of young students--you know, he was a hero to a lot of them that were on that side. The president of the University took a very cautious approach, never one of standing in the schoolhouse door, but never one to get way ahead of sentiment. That was Herman Lee Donovan, never one to get way ahead. And as I recall--being in Law school when Judge Ford made that, rendered that decision--the Board at the University and the Vice-Chairman of the Board, as I recall was Judge Stahl, wanted to appeal it. But I talked to Elvis Starr, who was one of my professors. And Elvis had gone over with Paul Oberst to try to teach these students at...

BRINSON: At Kentucky State.

BREATHITT: ...at Kentucky State. And Elvis thought it was ridiculous, as did Paul; said, “We can’t do a decent job of teaching over there. These students are not going to get a quality legal education.” Earl Clements in my opinion, was a realist, a pragmatist. And he saw they couldn’t, plus he saw an added expense, plus he didn’t see much, he didn’t see any sense in once the courts had made that decision. And he didn’t want to prolong it, and create a big fight in the state, which could easily have been done with demagogues running for office or others. And so he told the Board that he didn’t want to appeal it, but he didn’t have the votes. And then he talked to Judge Stahl, who was a part of the little oligarchy that ran this community; and he said I’ll get a Board--I’ll get a Board if I have to--that will support me, because I have the power of appointment. And I think it was the next meeting, and I’m not real sure about that, because I have never looked at the minutes of the Board; but this is what I understand from talking to Earl Clements about it. That at the next meeting they voted not to appeal the case. And of course, that opened it up for Lyman Johnson and the decision not to teach at KSU, but to let these people in the Graduate programs. It was only limited, it was limited to the Graduate programs that weren’t offered at KSU, as you recall. But that opened it up. And I think all of that--then when I graduated from Law school and went home, the thing that really sold me, I saw there was not an equal standard of justice under the law. If you were black and you killed a white person, there was no way you could escape getting a death penalty; death sentence and electrocution at Eddyville. If you were white and killed a black and you got a good lawyer, you usually got off Scot-free, self-defense or something, or very minimal sentence if it was real bad. If it was a black killing a black, they just kind of laughed about it, and they’d say, “Well, I’ve got to have this person, he’s the best hand I’ve got on the farm; and it’s tobacco cutting time. Judge, I really need this person.” So they’d make a bond that they could meet, and they’d get out. And at the time of the trial, they’d just call it; and I recall the words they’d use--which was very offensive to me—“Well that’s just a nigger killing.” And that was what I heard as a young lawyer. And I saw that there was a terrible injustice and a double standard under the law, which was against everything that I had been taught at the University and that I believed in. And that’s when I suddenly became active in trying to promote equal rights for our citizens: plus politically, when I ran for the legislature, it paid off, because the blacks all supported me. The black school principal at the black high school, the teachers, the preachers; and we had turned our county around back in the thirties from a Republican county to a Democratic county, when Roosevelt became President, because of his social programs. Now, Roosevelt never did anything on Civil Rights, really, because he didn’t want to lose the solid South. But he had social programs that they benefited from, and so we, the Democratic Party in the county, started registering all the blacks, which the effort had been to keep them from registering before. Except by the Republican party, they wanted to register them.

BRINSON: Well, what kind of efforts were there to keep from registering the blacks, because as I understand the history of Kentucky, blacks have always had the vote, as opposed to some of the deep Southern states.

BREATHITT: Well, there were no efforts actively to get them to register, except by the Republican party, because of the Lincoln Republicans. Most of the blacks that registered, were Republican.

BRINSON: But had there ever been any poll taxes, or literacy tests?

BREATHITT: Oh, no, none of the efforts to really exclude them, but there was never any encouragement. And what the Democrats would do, even for those that were registered, and were registered Republican. They would have big barbecues out on farms, and have plenty of whiskey; and even during Prohibition would be bootleg whiskey and barbecue. And they’d have to come out when the polls opened, and stay there until the polls closed. They actually did that in Christian county. And that was their device to encourage them not to vote. Because the Lincoln Republicans that did register would vote. And we were having hotly contested races for county office in those days. The Courthouse was--used to be Republican. My grandfather was a Republican, was the county judge; and was the county clerk and later was Postmaster until he died, as a Republican. My grandfather was a Republican Attorney General of Kentucky. But they were Union and they were for Abolition. And I grew up with that tradition. My father was a Republican, changed his registration to vote for me, and he changed it back right after the Primary. My aunt...

BRINSON: What about your mother?

BREATHITT: Well, my mother was a yellow-dog Democrat. Because her grandfather had been the Confederate Cavalry man with Nathan Bedford Forrest, and grew up in an agricultural community over in Trigg county. But she had been well educated. Her mother had sent her to Brenau, to college and then to a finishing school in Washington, Moreau, which at that time was a French and International. They only spoke French in the dining room and in classes. And she wanted her--and that gave her a different perspective. And she was a very literate person, used to give book reports over the radio and that sort of thing. So she grew up with that culture and was a Democrat, but she had...

BRINSON: So you think your parents influenced you, supported you in your beliefs?

BREATHITT: I think it was--I think, yes they did. Although my father was not politically active in any way. He just thought that everybody ought to have an equal shake. And my mother, even though she was a Democrat, because of the very fine education that her parents gave her, and those opportunities; and her mother had been educated in a Catholic convent, so that helped me. But I tell you, when I got to, when I got into politics in nineteen fifty-two and ran for the House; and I got a chance to get very close to those school principals and teachers and preachers in the black community--they influenced me. And some of it was self-interest, because they were my supporters. And the other thing was when I talked to them, you know, I began to understand their point of view. Because they would talk to me frankly. And in those days, many of them were very guarded. An activist, a Civil Rights activist, was excluded from the power structure of my county. But they would talk to me, because they felt I was friendly and understanding.

BRINSON: Do you remember what kinds of issues they would talk to you about? What was a concern to them in particular?

BREATHITT: They were concerned because in their schools, they got the worn out, leftover desks that got moved out of the white schools. They got old, beat-up school books. They were interested in a free lunch program and a free breakfast program, so when those children came to school, not adequately fed at home, that they could have milk and graham crackers in the morning and a hot lunch. In some cases, it was the only real, balanced, nourishing food that they got. And so they were ( ), because they didn’t think they could teach them as well, if they were hungry. And those were issues, but the main thing was, they didn’t like the fact that they were second best schools. And they were. I know they’d get new desks. They’d move out the old desks and send them down to Dirks Avenue or Attucks.

BRINSON: What were their concerns with the nineteen fifty-four Brown decision to integrate schools?

BREATHITT: Well, I was at that time, in the Legislature. And I was the Attorney for the School Board. And I had been in the Legislature when Governor Weatherby, when asked about it, the Brown Decision. They asked him, “What he was going to do?”--because all these Southern Governors were shaking their fists and saying, “We are going to fight it”; and talking about interposition and all these doctrines. I remember the Governor of Virginia was a big interposition person. And I remember two Governors that fought it, Governor Battle and Governor Almond; two governors that consistently fought it. But they took the same position that was taken in every southern state. Even the liberal governors that I served with, who were enlightened and for it, would not take a position. Terry Sanford wouldn’t, Fulbright wouldn’t as a Senator, Carl Sanders wouldn’t. Even my heroes in the South, knew that it was political suicide to take that position. The Governor of Virginia that I admired so much and went to the Supreme Court, wouldn’t take that position. Mill Scottman wouldn’t take that position, and they were all for it privately; and encouraged me to take it. [Laughing] But back, at the Brown Decision, when they asked Governor Weatherby, he didn’t--in very eloquent words, he just says, “We’ll comply.” And you know, it was the law. And that just stopped. And then they went to the Attorney General, because he was an old pa, J. D. Buckman, called him “Jiggs”. And Jiggs without any discussions with anybody, he just said, “It’s the law of the land, I’m the Attorney General, I’m gong to enforce it.”

BRINSON: But as you know, it did take fewer years in some parts of Kentucky and a few more years in other parts of Kentucky. What about your area?

BREATHITT: Well, we had no problem, because we had a county school system and a city school system. I represented them both at that time, until they got into a fight and I had to take the county system. But the two Superintendents went right along with it, and we had an integration plan and integrated. We did it step by step, year by year. I mean we started out and did it that way on a gradual integration program; but we immediately did it. And after a couple of years, they just went along there great. [Laughing] They found out it would work. Now there was grumbling, I mean people in Christian county that when we--when I was Governor, I sponsored and we passed the Civil Rights Bill--were politically opposed to me forever. They were not for it.

BRINSON: But how about in the black community itself around the Brown Decision? Did you sense that they supported it?

BREATHITT: Oh yes.

BRINSON: Were they concerned about losing black schools? How many teachers lost jobs?

BREATHITT: Not as much, not as much, because they felt that they would be integrated schools, which they were. I mean, we bussed them over to Attucks, which was the black high school. And we bussed them into Dirks Avenue, which was the black grade school.

BRINSON: What were those names again?

BREATHITT: Attucks named for Crispus Attucks, and Dirks, for Dirks Avenue, but Crispus Attucks was named for one of the great black leaders. And it had a high school that had a famous band, and they had excellent basketball teams. And when we went to integrated, they did well in basketball, I mean once they were able to play in the State Tournament and stuff like that.

BRINSON: You know in many areas with the school integration, black teachers lost their jobs, or they were demoted to other positions with, you know, less prestige and whatnot. Do you have a sense if that happened at all in your area at this stage?

BREATHITT: I can really only speak for Christian county. See, we maintained Attucks High School up into the sixties, and then it became a middle school. But it was maintained and we had an excellent principal, Frank Simpson, who was a diplomat and he knew how to deal with the white establishment in the community. And so initially, it was almost maintained as a black school student body, but as we started this integration program; and then when the bussing decisions came down, we pretty well left it on a voluntary basis, initially. And anybody that was at Attucks that lived really in an area that was closer to a white school, they’d be admitted to the white school, traditionally white school. When they started bussing them across town, then that aroused the community. I mean when I came back from Frankfort as Governor, my daughter was bussed to Attucks. And I certainly wasn’t about to raise an objection, after I had led that fight. [Laughing] But there were really people that got very upset about bussing, that had gone along with the voluntary--people went to schools in their district. Well, Attucks was sitting right in the middle of where most of the African Americans lived. So most of them went there, because that was in their area. But there was an underlying current of opposition in our community, that bussing, really brought it out. And bussing was what created most of the problem in, within our citizens.

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE ONE

BEGIN TAPE ONE SIDE YWO

BREATHITT: ...and the great advantage is that we had two school Superintendents that asked me as a lawyer, to draft an integration plan, that would comply into the law, immediately. They didn’t ask me to figure out ways to evade it. They asked me, and I have to give credit to Gladstone Coffman, who was the Superintendent in Hopkinsville Independent School District.

BRINSON: Coffman is K...

BREATHITT: K A U, no, K O F F M A N.

BRINSON: Okay.

BREATHITT: And he was from Mississippi, but he was a very decent man. I put it that he was a decent man. And the other one was Barton Phiser, who was the county school Superintendent, and he just didn’t want to get embroiled in a big thing. And it was the law, and he just said, “Draw up a plan and let’s do it gradually, so we can get acceptance.” But after we got through a couple of years, then they accelerated it.

BRINSON: When you set about to draw this plan, did you look to any outside resources?

BREATHITT: Yes.

BRINSON: Models?

BREATHITT: Yes, the first plan was in Louisville, Carmichael, as I recall. And I got their plan. Then I got the State Department of Education to send me some models of legislation that courts had approved, but was where we could do it with a degree of gradualism, so that we could get acceptance. But I drafted it, and it was adopted in both school systems; and we implemented it pretty quickly. So it kept anybody from suing us. And we learned a lot from it. But I talked also, and our two school Superintendents talked to the leadership of the black community, the ministers and the educators and the insurance agents. Because we had such a large African-American population, there were in Kentucky some African-American owned insurance companies. And those agents were well known in their community. Real estate agents, funeral directors, the funeral director there sent two of the outstanding, young African-Americans to Howard University every year.

BRINSON: You mean they had scholarships?

BREATHITT: Scholarships and the doctor there had to set up a separate hospital. And he had a hospital, and he sent, I don’t know how many students, the best ones to Howard. And so we had a group of young, bright students that were supported in their own community with scholarships to Howard. But of course, the doctor and the funeral director had more money than anybody in that community.

BRINSON: Did those students ever come back?

BREATHITT: Some did, some didn’t. The ones that came back, usually came back in the school system. But a lot of them didn’t. They saw their opportunities were greater. And if they excelled at Howard, you know, went on and got advanced degrees, they usually then taught at some college or university or in some school system, some public school system that would accept them.

BRINSON: One of the things that I’ve found in interviewing people for this project, that has been a little surprising, is that while they initially supported integration, now that they look back, many people, many blacks feel that they really lost out with school integration. And the reason they give me usually is, yes they got better facilities, they got better textbooks, but they lost the rapport that black teachers have with black children. And that a teacher was a disciplinarian, the schools tended to be community centers where other activities went on. They feel like that didn’t happen so much with integration and white teachers.

BREATHITT: I saw that when I was appointed by Governor Wilkinson to the KSU Board. At KSU, the Alumni Association is almost all African-American. The student body, the resident student body is largely African-American. The day students or the state employees are largely Caucasian, there just because it’s convenient and they can get a degree, which advances them with their jobs in state government or wherever. They kind of looked on it as a community college and a day program. The student body, the resident student body controlled the Student Government Association and elected always an African-American onto the Board. The faculty was nearly all white, because the schools that had to meet their Federal guidelines were raiding the traditional black colleges and universities for good faculty.

BRINSON: Now this was a different period Governor.

BREATHITT: And the staff--Oh this is in the eighties. This was late eighties when I was on the KSU Board. And uh, the staff was all black, because the university and colleges would not take staff from these colleges. They would get the faculty. But the Administrative leadership still remained basically white and Caucasian. So that had a tendency to really divide the campus into groups. Now a lot of the white faculty fell in two categories at KSU, those that didn’t quite measure up and wanted a job or those that felt a sense of mission, like Richard Taylor. Do you know Richard?

BRINSON: No.

BREATHITT: He’s the State Laureate. He’s a poet.

BRINSON: Oh, I do know who you mean.

BREATHITT: And he has that little...

BRINSON: Coffee, little bookstore...

BREATHITT: Coffee Shop, yeah. “ Poor Richard’s” or something isn’t it? Yeah, that’s it. Well I served on a Board with him. He was the faculty representative. And you know he is outstanding. But he sees it as a sense of mission, like a missionary. So you had those two qualities of faculty members that were white. A lot of them got their appointments and then looked to go somewhere else. Or those that really were maybe not quite up to standards, that had a Ph.D., or were working on a Ph.D., that couldn’t get an appointment. I saw that at KSU. But the big thing among the alumni, and the resident student body was this sense of identity. They wanted a black President, they wanted a black Vice-President for Student Affairs. They wanted as many blacks with the culture of the African-American history as you could get at that institution; because they did not feel it was theirs. And the alumni had deep feelings, because that school accepted them and got them their degrees. And they were intensely loyal to that institution. Homecoming, they flooded the campus. And I saw that, and when we got into a squabble over the Presidency, they rallied around this President, who was in trouble. Because the Board that Governor Wilkinson appointed was almost all white. And they didn’t feel that they were going to understand, couldn’t understand their feelings about that institution. So, I saw that these traditionally black institutions, how important they are to the African-Americans in this country. They, unless you are an athlete or an outstanding scholar, really outstanding, that can only get what maybe, Ohio State offers them--they don’t have the same feeling. And I don’t know that they--maybe the athletes do, because they are glorified and put up on a pedestal.

BRINSON: Well, I’ve certainly talked to a lot of teachers, who got their education, undergraduate education at Kentucky State, and then went on and did Master’s at Indiana and Columbia Teacher’s College, and places outside of Kentucky; before they could do graduate work at Kentucky. And you are right, they are intensely loyal, and appreciative to Kentucky State, for having given them the first opportunity.

BREATHITT: They had two outstanding Presidents, Doctor Atwood, who was during the segregation period, who was a very strong leader. And he knew how to work the white system--Legislature, Governors, you know--he made them think he kept his place, but he was shrewd. [Laughing] He was smarter than most of them were, and he got a lot for that school. But he identified. And then the other one was Doctor Hill, who then later went back to Hampton Roads and Virginia, Carl Hill, who I worked with when he was President. And he was a wonderful man. And he is the one that, he and I organized and set up that curriculum for state government employees.

BRINSON: Oh, okay.

BREATHITT: Whereby they could work toward a Public Administration degree, undergraduate and graduate; but undergraduate is what we initially had. And Carl Hill was a higher education President that I had great respect for, and he’d come over quite often; and we’d have dinner and we’d talk about our higher education, and some of the problems between--the fight between the regionals and the University of Kentucky. Louisville wasn’t in the system then. And there was no Northern Kentucky University. But those four very strong regional Presidents, that had such power in the Legislature. Adron Doran had been Speaker of the House, went to Morehead. And Bob Martin, who had been elected State School Superintendent of the Public, head of the KEA, President of the KEA, who was Governor Combs’ campaign chairman. Combs appointed him as Commissioner of Finance, which is like the Secretary of Finance today. And he knew all the levers of how to work the system, and he got money, against everything that your husband stands for, but having the clout. It was just a battle of, it was like throwing red meat out there and let--whoever was the strongest got the biggest chunk of red meat.

BRINSON: Got their share, right.

BREATHITT: And then Ralph Woods was strong, down at Murray. And Kelly Thompson was strong at Western. Kelly was smoother, and he had such a strong alumni. Western was looked upon as the strongest of the regionals academically and alumni.

BRINSON: I got you off track. I’m sorry.

BREATHITT: I get on divergences, go ahead.

BRINSON: I want to move to the period where you served as Governor of Kentucky, nineteen sixty-three to nineteen sixty-seven. And you were a young Governor, you were age thirty-nine?

BREATHITT: Yeah, I was thirty-eight when I ran, but I was thirty-nine when I was inaugurated. And I could not have been elected without the support of Governor Bert Combs, who was a very enlightened and education Governor; who was able to finagle and get a sales tax passed, to underscore our budget. By tying a Veteran’s bonus to the sales tax, of course that got it passed. [Laughing] And once it paid the bonus, then we had the sales tax. But he, his mother had been a school teacher in Clay county. His Uncle was Dean of Men at the University of Kentucky, used to call him “T Square” Jones. And he was educated undergraduate University and Law school University. But he was a man who read. He read intensely, history, biographies of famous men, leaders and historians, and about history. He loved those kind of books. We’d go on a fishing trip, and he’d take three of four of them with him. And he’d fish, about half the time, you’d find him holed up in the cabin reading. He was a man that I greatly admired, and he was my political mentor and best friend. But I developed during that time, the three terms I was in the Legislature, fifty-two, fifty-four and fifty-six, a strong identity with the problems of segregation in Kentucky. And having gone through the discipline of developing the integration plan for our two county school super-, county and city school systems, made me much more aware. Plus as I said, when I became a lawyer and was sworn in, in nineteen fifty in my bar, and I saw the injustice of our Criminal Justice system; I think that was the thing that really propelled me in that direction.

BRINSON: But now Governor Combs issued an Executive Order that...

BREATHITT: That nearly beat me.

BRINSON: ...which, tell me about that. [Laughter]

BREATHITT: Governor Combs--excuse me, I’m going to go to the restroom.

BRINSON: Okay.

[Tape resumes]

BRINSON: We were talking about the Executive Order and how it impacted your...

BREATHITT: Oh yes. During the Primary, even though the African-American vote was not a major factor in the Primary, Governor Chandler and I were both trying to maximize that vote for us. And so he talked about how he integrated baseball with Jackie Robinson.

BRINSON: But now did he really? Because I’ve read that some historians argue that he really took more credit for that than actually happened.

BREATHITT: Well, I think that is accurate, but that is beside the point. He used that, and he was great before a crowd that was sympathetic to that cause of saying that. And of course, I was talking about that student that came to the Law school class and I sat by him, and that I had voted for the amendment of the Day Law. And we were, and I had drawn the integration plans in my county. And it was never an issue, other than we both were on the same side, officially in that race, that took it out of being an issue. Governor Combs had been very supportive of his Human Rights Commission, Galen Martin and Bobby Estill, who was on it, was Chairman of it, the Episcopal Rector here.

BRINSON: I’ve interviewed both of those men.

BREATHITT: Oh, you have? Okay. Did you, let’s see.

BRINSON: What do you remember? Well let me, not to get you off track.

BREATHITT: Well, I remember about this, about this, Combs had worked with that, but I think that he wanted to make a statement and do something other than just to support this group, which put him on that side. But it was mainly rhetoric that they did, and around the edges. And I don’t know who he talked to, or if he talked to anybody. But he concluded right after the Primary, he didn’t want to raise it during the Primary because it would have been--he was smart enough to realize it was going to create a reaction. Because when he then came out with his Executive Order, he never consulted me about it. Because I would have urged caution, wait until after the November election and then do it. But he...

BRINSON: Do you think he knew you would have urged caution?

BREATHITT: I’m sure he would, because he was smart enough to know that it would create a reaction. But he thought we had enough to beat Louie Nunn, handily. And he did not think that Louie would be able to capitalize on it. And that was the issue that nearly defeated me. And I had a telephone call very early in the morning from the Louisville Times, trying to make their eleven o’clock edition. Connie Catro, I can remember her name, was the writer, the reporter. And she called me, and she said, “Are you aware that Governor Combs, late yesterday issued an Executive Order which said that any place, public accommodation that has a state license, would lose their license if they practiced discrimination?” And I said, “No.” Said, “Well, Mayor of Louisville, Bill ( ) and the County Judge, Bill C( ) was later Congressman, and Marlowe Cook, the County Judge of Louisville, both were very favorable in their response to Governor Combs’ action”--which they were. “What is your comment?” Well, I was sleepy, my wife had handed the phone over to me. The phone was on her side of the bed. [Laughing] And I said, “Well, I wasn’t aware of it, but I certainly want to read it, before I give any--see what it is--before I give any comment. But in general, I support what he is trying to do, as a principle.” Well, that got out, and all three of us supporting it. Louie Nunn went on television that night or the next night in a statewide hook-up, American flag behind him; and a Kentucky flag and a big bible. Biggest bible I nearly ever saw, and the statutes of Kentucky. And he says, “My fellow Kentuckians, this is a very dark day. We have an example of dictatorship by the Governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.” And he went through how terrible it was that this was done by Executive Order. It’s going to create a lot of turmoil in Kentucky because he had not had a chance to discuss it with the people of Kentucky, or the Legislature of Kentucky. And he says, “My first act as Governor will be to rescind that Executive Order, which is a usurpation of the power of a Legislative body”. And says, “I will submit this matter to the Legislature of the Commonwealth of Kentucky and you and I know”--and he’s pointing his finger—“You and I know, they’ll know how to deal with this issue.” I got a knot in the pit of my stomach. My campaign chairman was sitting there with me, Foster Rockland. And we both knew what this meant. It was a whole new ball game. And he and his brother, Lee Nunn, who was very active in the Republican party nationally, ran a vicious campaign on that issue. It was an undercover one, in which they faked a picture of me walking across the bridge with Martin Luther King, marching with him down in Alabama, Mississippi. And came out with quotes that I said the way to solve, which was, of course, totally improper. Not that they say it, but these were passed out; that I felt, that the only solution to the racial issue was intermarriage. And that, and they, and then Louie would go around to a restaurant and say, “You know if you like that other fella, you’d going to have to serve”--and he’d use the “N” word. And says, “You know what that’s going to do to your business.” And he’d go to a barber and said, “Have you ever cut a nigger’s hair?” Now he was saying that to them. And said, “Are you going to comb all the lice out of it?” I mean he’d use terrible things that he would say as he went around the state. He went to bars, he went to restaurants, he went to motels, particularly rural motels, rural barbers, and every place of public accommodation. And he inflamed that issue. It became a big issue in that campaign. Well, I couldn’t back up. I just had to tough it out. And then I had to try to attack these scurrilous things that they were handing out. They would go to county fairs and hand stuff out to the rural population. And Governor Chandler actively supported--publicly ( ) me--and supported Louie Nunn. And I never did catch him using the racial issue, but he did attack Combs for the way he did it.

BRINSON: Did he support Nunn because of the racial issue?

BREATHITT: No, he supported Nunn because he lost, and I beat him. And Nunn agreed to appoint him to the U. K. Board. And it was a--see in those days we had a bitter factional division in our state, the Chandler crowd and the anti-Chandler crowd. The Republicans were not a major factor in statewide politics, and usually the Republicans would side with one or the other Democratic candidates. Usually sided with the Chandler side. He had pretty good ties with the Republican party. And he backed, for example, he backed Thurston Morton and John Sherman Cupler against Earl Clements and Lawrence Weatherby for the Senate. They both ran the same year because of a death, when Alben Barkley died, to fill a vacancy. And he publicly supported the two of them against Chandler, I mean against Weatherby and Clements. Clements had been the acting Majority Leader when Lemon got sick and was a very great power in the Senate. And he had never had any problem about publicly supporting a Republican. And usually if they didn’t have a candidate with a chance to win, which they never did in a statewide race until Louie came along. And of course, Happy saw that this fellow might win it, and he jumped right on board, and went all over the state campaigning for him.

BRINSON: So you won by I think, about thirteen thousand votes?

BREATHITT: Correct. And--now I had the advantage of having Harry Lee Waterfield, who had run with Chandler, who was nominated as Lieutenant Governor. In those days Lieutenant Governor ran on a separate ticket. And Harry Lee and I met, and he supported me. And I don’t think I could have won without his support, because that made it okay for Chandler supporters, Chandler-Waterfield supporters, a lot of them that were really Democrats, to support me, that weren’t overridden by the racial issue. Of course, the racial issue cut across party lines.

BRINSON: What did you offer to do in your campaign around the whole racial issue?

BREATHITT: My position was this, I said, “This is a matter, I agree with Governor Nunn, this is a matter that we should have the Legislature indorse. My first act will be to rescind the Executive Order, but I will sponsor a Civil Rights Bill that will accomplish everything that is in the Executive Order by legislation. And I will indorse it and fight for it.” And because of that commitment, I got the Black vote. Now they didn’t like it that I was going to rescind the Executive Order. But all of us decided that we could defuse it a little bit. Now, Louie of course, wouldn’t say that he was for it. He’d tell them on the side, says we’ll kill it. And Lee Nunn, his brother, was the one that orchestrated all the underground, unsigned stuff against me, the scurrilous stuff. And they were very shrewd.

BRINSON: Let me stop...

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE TWO

BEGIN TAPE TWO SIDE ONE

BREATHITT: He did not, he did not demagogue that issue and try to undo the Civil Rights Bill that I was able to get--I couldn’t pass it the first term of the Legislature, because Harry Lee Waterfield was in the Senate presiding. The Majority Leader of the Senate was against me, was a Chandler-Waterfield man.

BRINSON: Who did you have introduce it the first time around?

BREATHITT: Well yes, I had, from Louisville, the Labor leader....

BRINSON: The second time I believe it was a gentleman named Jesse Barters?

BREATHITT: What?

BRINSON: Jesse Barters?

BREATHITT: Yes. Uh huh. And the Senate, one of the, I had two people, strong leaders for Governor Weatherby. I got him to run for the Senate in nineteen sixty-six, he was elected. And he supported it, and Shelby Kincaid, the Senator from Lexington was one of the people who sided in the Senate. They were the two people that carried the load for me in the Senate, and the Majority Leader, J. D. Buckman, who had been Attorney General under the Brown Decision. Also the President Pro Tem from Northern Kentucky supported it, Jim Ware.

BRINSON: Now this was the first time? Or the second time?

BREATHITT: Second time, second time when we passed it. Weatherby wasn’t in then. And I had a hard time getting anybody that could really get the job done in the Senate, because I had Harry Lee Waterfield sitting in the chair. And I had to go out and get some people elected, like Wendell Ford and Dee Huddleston; people like that to where I had a working majority in the Senate. And I had to do the same thing—also had a fellow, that I got to run for that second session, Floyd Hayes ( ) from Bowling Green. He was a strong supporter. But Dee Huddleston and Wendell Ford, they were supporters. They weren’t in the leadership, but they were supporters of it.

BRINSON: Well, the second time that you succeeded, I think the votes in the House were like seventy-six For, and twelve Against; and in the Senate, thirty-six For and only one--so you had a good vote.

BREATHITT: Correct. I had a good vote. I tell you what I had in the House, I had--the majority leader died, I mean was defeated--Harry King Allman, who was my friend. And I had served with him in the Legislature. He was a very astute Majority Leader, but he fell out with the Combs-Wyatt people, because he had run against Wyatt for the Senate in the Primary, backed by Chandler and Clements. And they did some payback and beat him with a Republican. And then the Majority Leader, a very astute and able man; a very liberal person on Civil Rights issues, Dick Maloney, died two weeks before the session. I lost all my leadership, only had a five vote majority in the House, when I became Governor. And I lost this experienced leadership. So I went with a close friend of mine, Shelby McCallum from Benton in Western Kentucky as Speaker, and Mitchell Denim from Maysville as Majority Leader. Now they were intensely loyal to me, and very close friends, but were not as experienced as Harry King Allman and Dick Maloney. I really had a problem of leadership. Plus the Republicans were bloodied by that close race, and they thought well, we’ll take it next time, which they did. And they, with the Chandler Democrats and the anti-civil rights people, formed a coalition in the House, that kept me from getting it passed in the House. And then Harry Lee Waterfield planning to run for Governor the next time, who had lost against Combs, without demagoguing it, took the other side; as did all of the Chandler, the Majority Leader, who was Kent Gardener from Owensboro. That I got Wendell Ford to run against him, and Wendell barely beat him. And he took the other side, and the Republicans took the other side in the house; and the Chandler-Waterfield supporters. It was a split, the Senate was split. And I wanted to pass my budget in sixty-four. And I told Jim Ware, I said, “When he has to get up and go to the restroom, you go up there and take the chair and hammer my budget through.” And so they out waited him, and he finally had to leave the chair; when he walked out, Ware went right up and hammered it in. [Laughing] Legally he could do that as Pro Tem. Nobody had ever done it. And we passed it by one vote, the first session. After that I’d elected so many people to the Senate, that I had supported, that I had a strong working majority. And we stripped Harry King, I mean Waterfield of his appointed powers to the committees. Just had it a three person committee, on committees, he had one vote. But it was a, I had to get a whole new House and Senate, plus do an awful lot of missionary work for two years. Now the newspaper, The Louisville Defender, which was the African-American paper was very critical of me because I didn’t get it passed. Their position was that I should never have rescinded the Executive Order and that my efforts, at best, were unsuccessful in passing the Bill in sixty-four, and at worst, it was a halfhearted effort. That was their position.

BRINSON: What about The Louisville Courier?

BREATHITT: Well, The Courier always supported me, now. I had a very close relationship with the Binghams and the editors and all the people over there. Because they had always been anti-Chandler. And the editorial cartoonist, Hugh Faney, was very supportive. And The Courier Journal knew I had, because I had as my chairwoman, Mary Helen Beck, from...

BRINSON: A woman?

BREATHITT: She was on the Human Rights Commission.

BRINSON: She was, right.

BREATHITT: And was vice-chairman, I think, wasn’t she?

BRINSON: I believe so.

BREATHITT: Yeah, but she was--and she was a constant--and she was very close to the Binghams and all the people at The Courier, Mark Etheridge, Willie Snow and all those people. And she was my direct contact with them, in which she knew we were doing everything we knew how to do. Now during that sixty-four session, we had a Civil Rights march on Frankfort, which I co-operated with. In fact, I called Bobby Kennedy and President Johnson’s office, and I got Burke Marshall and Senator Douglas’ son, John Douglas, to come down. The Attorney General, Bobby Kennedy, sent them down, to help me in the drafting of the legislation; and to help me in the ways to handle the Civil Rights march. And what I did was welcome: set up a coordinating committee to coordinate with them. And told them if they would pick their representatives as soon as the march was over, and they made all their speeches on the Capital steps; come on in the Governor’s office and we would talk about it. That was Martin Luther King, and Jackie Robinson, and Peter, Paul and Mary. And we had a full discussion.

BRINSON: Was Harry Belafonte there too?

BREATHITT: I don’t think so. But uh, Frank Stanley, Jr. was very active with The Louisville Defender. And he was critical of me, until we passed the Civil Rights Act of sixty-six. But that was, from that side, the Civil Rights side, I’ve just explained what their view was.

BRINSON: Right, one....

BREATHITT: But that wasn’t the view of The Courier Journal. They knew I was doing all I could, and was very limited in my abilities to get something done, that session.

BRINSON: And what about the Lexington paper?

BREATHITT: The Lexington paper at that time, was not an activist paper. It was run by--Fred Wachs was the publisher for the Stahl estate, which owned the paper. There was a little group that ran this community. Fred Wachs the publisher of the paper, both papers for that matter. Although under the Stahl will, or the trust that was set up, they had to have the morning paper as a Democratic paper, and the state central executive committee picked the editor. Now that editor had no responsibilities except write one editorial a day. And that was Don Mills, who had been my press secretary. [Laughing] I got him named through the state central executive committee as the editor. And he was very close to Ed Pritchard. I could tell when Ed Pritchard wrote the editorial and when Don did. Because I could spot Don, because he wrote a lot of my pot boiling speeches. When I had something that really had to soar, Pritch was my principal advisor and writer.

BRINSON: Reverend Estill and others have said to me, even though they were involved in demonstrations in Lexington, that the paper knew about, that the paper elected just not to cover it. And in fact, if you go back now, as I have and look for photos and stories, there’s nothing there. But it’s all in The Louisville Courier.

BREATHITT: Oh yes. No, the Lexington paper had Herndon Evans in those days, as the Democratic editor. And Herndon supported me politically when I ran. And he supported most of my initiatives, but he never supported me on the Civil Rights thing. And I’m sure that’s the pressure from the Establishment. The Establishment didn’t want to stir it up. And that was Ed Dabney with the bank, Fred Wachs with the paper. It was, oh the President of Kentucky Utilities, what was his name? He was in on it, the Mayor at the time. This little group would have who was the Mayor at the time I was involved, and then Frank Peters out at the University of Kentucky, who was the Vice-President and Business Manager of the University. And he was their guy at the University, and he was so powerful, that the President of the University had to defer to Frank Peters. And Combs caught him with his hand in the cookie jar, and in those days, the Governor was Chairman of the Board and they got rid of Frank Peters. Which made it possible then for Oswald to have a free hand as President. It was a burden for Frank Dickey, who was a very decent and fine man, who is still living, who had been the Dean of the College of Education. But he inherited him and he was the fire base up there, because he had this, I always called it the Oligarchy downtown, that ran the town. It’s not true now. Because when Knight-Ryder took that paper over, it’s just a totally free.

BRINSON: It’s very different.

BREATHITT: Well, it’s a fine paper.

BRINSON: Right. It’s been a real pleasure to come from reading The Richmond Times Dispatch in Virginia...

BREATHITT: Yes. [Laughing]

BRINSON: ...To The Lexington Herald.

BREATHITT: Well, The Lexington Herald is, I think that absentee ownership helped The Herald and it hurt The Courier. The Courier has restricted its circulation now to the Greater Louisville Metropolitan Area, and it used to be totally statewide, daily circulation in every county.

BRINSON: Right.

BREATHITT: And was, I could not have passed the Strip Mine Bill or the Civil Rights Bill or any other progressive, liberal initiatives of my administration without Barry Bingham and Mary, Mark Etheridge’s support. And Lyle Baker’s and that editorial board. And John Ed Pierce at that time was the bright eyed, young, crusading editorial writer, that Barry Bingham had as his number one writer. Now, he still writes stuff for The Herald Leader, but it’s...

BRINSON: I want to go back to the rally, because that was the only Civil Rights rally at that time.

BREATHITT: There was a sit-in, there was a sit-in by some people, that sat in all during that time.

BRINSON: And there was a fasting, too, wasn’t there that went on in one of the...?

BREATHITT: Yes, during the sit-in there was a fasting by--a number of them were fasting during that time. And they were up in the galleries, and people criticized me. But that was a Legislative function, you have to let people come in the gallery. And so I never did try to kick them out, even though a lot of times they were criticizing me for my failure to get it passed, which I received from a number of the real activists in the civil rights community, and by The Louisville Defender. But no, this paper here, you wouldn’t even know what was going on.

BRINSON: I believe your daughter, who was a young, young woman...

BREATHITT: She was...help lead it. [Laughing]

BRINSON: Tell me about that. She was thirteen, was that? She attended the rallies?

BREATHITT: Yes, she was, yes and my minister from Hopkinsville. They were right up front. And she came in, when they selected the group, she just, they let her come in with them. She came in all excited and emotional about it. And she had been...

BRINSON: What’s her name?

BREATHITT: ...active in middle school and she was a freshman in high school now, here in Frankfort. But she hadn’t even enrolled yet, yeah, she had just enrolled in Frankfort High School.

BRINSON: Tell me her name.

BREATHITT: Mary Frances Breathitt. And she later, was extremely active in McCarthy’s campaign. She went to Emory. She went to Yale Divinity School and got her Master’s in Philosophy, not a Master’s, but an undergraduate degree from American University. She’s now an invalid. She had a whole series of seizures, and is now paralyzed and in a nursing home. But she’s recovered most of her cognitive skills. We watched Angela Davis’ tape, that uh, last night for two hours, of her appearance here.

BRINSON: Oh, well that’s wonderful.

BREATHITT: And Micki Finney, she knew all the people they referred to, because she had been very active in activist, very liberal causes, as a real activist, almost a revolutionary.

BRINSON: Was Micki Finney active during the sixties?

BREATHITT: No, no, she was too young.

BRINSON: Young, right, okay.

BREATHITT: Too young, but she was on the program when Angela Davis was here, several months ago.

BRINSON: Oh, I see.

BREATHITT: She and, she knew all those. She’s been active with the Writer’s Caucus, but she’s a manic-depressive, and it was a real problem. And then she had a Grand Mal seizure and a whole series of seizures. And I thought she was gone. But her sister and I went over, because we hadn’t heard from her that day, and found her and she was in a coma for five or six weeks. But she spent all of her life in causes. She’s extremely intelligent, a bibliophile, had a fantastic library.

BRINSON: Well it is a wonderful image of a young woman...

BREATHITT: Yes.

BRINSON: ...at that age, taking an active role.

BREATHITT: Well most of my cabinet was in that march.

BRINSON: Okay. Was that the first time...

BREATHITT: Bell, who was....What’s that?

BRINSON: Was that the first time that you met Martin Luther King?

BREATHITT: Yes. The first time I met him, was when he came in there. I’ve got a picture back in my office with Jackie Robinson, with them, and with Frank Stanley, Jr. . Of course, he had been the organizer of the march. Of course, at that time Frank thought I would be successful in getting it passed. But I knew that if I didn’t get it passed, my credibility would be destroyed. And I saw this as an opportunity to do something with my life, that would have real significance in Kentucky and in the South. But it was a great group of people in that march. Ed Pritchard was in it, my Commissioner of Aeronautics, Phil Swift, who had been editor of The Frankfort State Journal, and Happy Chandler’s paper. He had been a Journalism graduate at Indiana University in Indiana. Bob Bell, who was Commissioner of Parks, former Revenue Commissioner, later the head of the Advocates for Education. Do you know Bob?

BRINSON: No.

BREATHITT: Well, he’s a fine person.

BRINSON: Did you ever think about going out and joining them?

BREATHITT: The march? Oh, I was welcome. I was welcomed, when they came to the Capital to see the Governor. That was our plan. I mean I worked on the plan with Frank Stanley and with Burke Marshall, who was the civil rights guy in the Justice Department, and John Douglas. And you know, all that communication went back with Martin Luther King and all the others. I later got to know Martin Luther King very, very well, by serving on that Presidential Commission.

BRINSON: Well, I want to talk about that in just a minute, but before we leave...

BREATHITT: Well let’s, before that is the...

BRINSON: The rally, I want to ask you if you ever knew Georgia Davis Powers or Luke E. Ward, who worked with Frank Stanley to sort of organize the logistics.

BREATHITT: Oh yes, oh yes, I knew, I knew Georgia Davis Powers very well. Luke E. was always on the Chandler side, was active for Governor Chandler. And Jack Ward, who’s the architect. I was never that close to them politically. But Georgia and I were, and she supported me. And I knew Georgia well, and admired her very, very much. She was a major factor in the civil rights movement, and in her service in the Legislature, as was May Kidd. But she came in after my time.

BRINSON: I guess Georgia Davis Powers actually didn’t come in until sixty-eight.

BREATHITT: Correct. She came in after I went out of office. But she was very important in that whole period, because she was active on that committee. And I knew her then. I’ve been a great admirer of hers.

BRINSON: I want to go back to this committee to fulfill these rights, which I believe was sixty-four? And was...

BREATHITT: You’ve got to go back before that to get the historical part, is when Johnson called me in sixty-four. I had backed him, and he had asked me as the youngest governor in the country to second his nomination. And that, and I got to know Johnson, and I got to know his people. Aaron McPherson, I got to know real well, his counselor. And so he called me to Washington. I’ve got a picture of the meeting back there in my office. And he said, “I’ve got to have your help.” He says, “My Civil Rights Bill is hung up in the Senate. The filibusters were, why some of my best friends. And I want the Governors’ Conference to come out and support the Civil Rights Bill.” This is the Civil Rights Bill of sixty-four. He said, “I can’t get any of the Southern governors to sponsor a resolution. Now my friends that are for it say they won’t fight it, but they’re not going to vote for it.” Even though some of them were for it, like Terry Sanford. My gosh, he was really for it, but he still had ambitions in North Carolina, and he just didn’t think he could vote for it. So he says, “I can get the other border state governors to support you, but I think you are a better example of it, because you are younger. And I want you to sponsor it, and I’ll get some Republican to co-sponsor the resolution.” And he said, “It will be very helpful, this thing is very tight.” And he says, “I will have no credibility in the world, and our country will have no credibility in the world, if we maintain segregation as a policy in this country. We’ve assumed the leadership of the world, we’ve got to get rid of it.” And he said, “It’s going to, you know it’s going to destroy the solid South in the Democratic party.” I didn’t believe it. I said, “Oh Mr. President, surely not, you’re too deeply embedded in the Democratic Party.” He said, “It’s based on segregation.” And he said, “The Deep South, at some time we will lose, because the politicians will take advantage of the issue”. “Now that,” he said, “I don’t think we will lose the border states.” And we had Governor Millard Tawes of Maryland, Carbo of Delaware, and the Governor of West Virginia, who later went to prison,[Laughing] who was very strong, he was very strong in the Civil Rights battle, and Kentucky. And he said, “Now”--Buford Ellington was sort of his liaison in Tennessee--he says, “Tennessee will probably support us, but Frank Clements won’t introduce the resolution.” Or Buford was there and Clements, Ellington and Clements were allies. They called it leapfrog government, you know. They had four year limitations. One would run for governor and then the next one. They did that for about twenty years. So I agreed to do it, and I got Mark Hatfield. That was easy for Mark Hatfield to co-sponsor the resolution. And coming from Mark, because he was a liberal Republican. I really didn’t know him very well at that time, but he agreed to co-sponsor it with me. And we got it passed, every governor in both parties supported it, except the Deep South governors.

BRINSON: Southern governors.

BREATHITT: And we couldn’t get any of them, but I understood why.

BRINSON: Did Terry Sanford never vote for it?

BREATHITT: No, he didn’t. He said, “You’re right,” and said, “It will pass, and I wish I could,” but he didn’t.

BRINSON: But the governors’ vote affected or helped to push toward the Congressional...

BREATHITT: Oh sure, when the Governors’ Conference came out with an overwhelming vote for the Civil Rights Bill, it helped him. It helped him build the momentum to pass it. And so I did that, and as a reward for that and my loyal support in his race, he appointed me to the Commission to fulfill these rights, which was run by, Chaired by Ben Hineman, who was the president....A liberal, corporate executive of the Chicago-Northwestern Railroad.

BRINSON: How do you spell Hineman?

BREATHITT: Just spell it phonetically. I can’t spell it for you. I looked for my report of that Commission. I couldn’t find it. It’s down at Murray. All those papers are down at Murray. And I tried to get the lawyer who headed it, who’s with a law firm in Washington, who was later Muskie’s national campaign chairman. Tried to get him on the phone to talk to him about it, see if he had that report. I know he does. Let me see if I can’t get that report for you, it would be so much simpler than digging through that stuff down at Murray. Or maybe you can get the librarian to find it for you. They are collating that material, finally.

BRINSON: Are they? Well, I am going down that way in a couple of months. I thought I’d stop and just ask for...

BREATHITT: My papers are now in what they call the Breathitt-Stubblefield room. And I went down there one day, about two years ago, unannounced and I said, “I’d like to see my papers.” And I’m stuck in the basement. They were in acid-proof boxes, had never been collated or organized in any way. And what prompted me to do it was, Jim Klotter had gone down and tried to get some material out of my papers, I think on this subject and said they are in terrible shape, had an awful hard time. Well, they promised me they are going to collate it. And they do have it up in this room now, with desks for scholars to work on, along with Congressman Stubblefield’s papers. And uh...

[Tape stops and resumes]

BRINSON: I want to go back though to the Committee or the Commission?

BREATHITT: Commission, Commission, it was a Presidential Commission, appointed and empowered to come up with a plan to implement the Civil War Act of nineteen sixty-four. And on it was a great group of people, Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins, Bayard Rustin, who was the great philosopher of the movement; and A. Phillip Randolph, Judge Higginbotham, Jordan, who was the President’s friend. Was the head of the--wrote a registration drive in the South. Floyd McKissack, who was one of the more activists.

BRINSON: Right, NAACP

BREATHITT: Wasn’t he with CORE? No, he wasn’t.

BRINSON: He was with NAACP in Durham, North Carolina.

BREATHITT: Farmer, Ralph Farmer, let me see, who else? Whitney Young, Jr, well, all the great Civil Rights leaders.

BRINSON: Were there any women on it?

BREATHITT: I don’t think there was a woman on it. I don’t think there was a woman on it. Isn’t that amazing?

BRINSON: Well, it was nineteen sixty-four.

BREATHITT: Yeah. But at any rate, that was a two year effort. And I tell you, Fauntleroy was one of the young lawyers that staffed it. And Beryl Bernhardt was a staff guy, who was Muskie’s national campaign chairman, later. But it was a marvelous experience for a young governor, from a small town, with that kind of background, to sit down for two years, as an equal on that Commission. I wasn’t their equal, but at least I had the chair of an equal. And it was a great learning and growing experience for me, that two year period. I wouldn’t take anything for it.

BRINSON: How often did you meet as a whole body?

BREATHITT: Oh regularly, every, about every month. And they would give us a report on where they were, and we had stuff coming back and forth the whole time. And I had Felix Joiner, who was later at the University of North Carolina as their top financial guy. When Louie Nunn came in, I called up Bill Friday. I said, have you got a place for.....

END OF TAPE TWO SIDE ONE

BEGIN TAPE TWO SIDE TWO

BREATHITT: ...when I chaired the Commission on Rural Poverty, which was a Presidential Commission. He put together a staff for me.

BRINSON: So, he was your full time staff person working on this Commission with you?

BREATHITT: Yeah, yeah. Well, he also headed the Commission, the Finance Department in Kentucky. But he was, he was outstanding and he helped me with it.

BRINSON: And tell me his name, one more time.

BREATHITT: Felix Joiner.

BRINSON: Joiner.

BREATHITT: J O I N E R. And he just retired a year ago at the University of North Carolina system, as their top financial guy. He’s worth talking to about it.

BRINSON: There must be papers of that Commission someplace.

BREATHITT: There are, there are, and I’m sure they’re, all of them are down at Murray. Everything is down at Murray. But I am going to call and get a hold of Beryl Bernhardt. I know he’s got a file on it, because he was the counsel for it. I’ve got to get that to you. That will be my responsibility, to get that to you.

BRINSON: That would be great.

BREATHITT: Because, you know, my recollection can be faulty. And people’s recollections, you really need to get to the source to be certain, accurate.

BRINSON: Right.

BREATHITT: But it was one of the high points of my public life.

BRINSON: What do you remember about the strategies that the Commission was recommending to implement?

BREATHITT: Affirmative Action. I remember Judge Higginbotham, who was a federal judge, black, and he says, “To really get this job done nationally, with the foot dragging and the gradualism and the opposition that you are going to get, unless you have Affirmative Action, we are not going to get the job done.” That was one of the things that I remember, the discussions. Of course, you’d get Floyd McKissack and these people, they’d be shaking their fists all the time. They were ready to go to war like they had in the whole Civil Rights movement, if they didn’t get it. But they just felt that Affirmative Action was the thing they were going to have to have. Because they just didn’t think we could get the job done without it. And all arguments were raised. We only had three white people on it, me and Courtland Groves, who is the CEO of Lockheed, who was the liberal CEO, who had backed Johnson, but who had been active in Civil Rights efforts. And Theodore McCaldren, who had been governor, who was a Republican. I think he was the only Republican on the Commission.

BRINSON: He had been governor of where?

BREATHITT: Of Maryland, and was Mayor of Baltimore, I think, at the time. And he had backed Johnson, because he couldn’t go for Goldwater. He was a liberal Republican, like, you know, most of the Republicans in Maryland used to be. Who was the senator, who was a liberal Republican for Maryland? I’m trying to think of his name, anyway.

BRINSON: Did you meet in Washington?

BREATHITT: Uh hmm. We met in the Treaty Room in the Executive Office Building. And of course the staff there, Harry McPherson really put the staff together. Harry and Beryl Bernhardt are now law partners. I know I can get the papers from them, and I will.

BRINSON: And did the President ever meet with you?

BREATHITT: When we had our first meeting, went over and were sworn in, he gave us the charge. And that was over at the White House. And then we had Harry McPherson, somebody from the White House attended every meeting, mainly as observers. Because you know, with a Presidential Commission, you don’t want to create the impression that the President is writing it, or doing it. But he called us over, and we were sworn in; and he gave us the message, you know. I want to tell you this about Johnson. This was the thing that was the most emotional, committed action in a positive way, in his administration. He really was for Civil Rights. And in history, it is the thing that justifies his presidency. He inherited Viet Nam and did not know how to disengage, and it destroyed his administration. But the Poverty Program, which I was deeply involved with, and headed the Rural Poverty Commission. We learned from, it was the unfinished agenda of the New Deal, is really what it was. And we learned as much about the failures, as we did the successes of that whole effort. He really cared about that, he also cared about education. But Civil Rights was the thing that he really gave his all to. He used every political skill, and called in every chit he had in the House and Senate, mainly the Senate, to get the thing passed. It’s amazing to me it was that hard to pass, but it was, of course because of the filibuster. He had the votes.

BRINSON: The Commission, operated you said, for two years and then it was ( ) dissolved.

BREATHITT: Gave a report, gave a report. It resulted in some legislation. And in the interim, we had interim reports and things to do. But Vernon Jordan, I remember, was a young, idealistic fellow that had been on the firing line of voter registration in the South. He became a Washington Power Broker. But he was, in those times, that was what he was. I remember having wonderful, interesting conversations with him, because he was younger than me. And Whitney Young, Jr., I enjoyed because we were both from Kentucky.

BRINSON: Did you know each other before?

BREATHITT: I knew his father, who headed Lincoln Institute, well. I had met him, but see, I had only been Governor for months when I went on that Commission, for nearly a year. But of course, I got to know him real well. But I got to know Martin Luther King real well, and Philip Randolph. I sat by King at the table. Randolph was on the other side of King, and then on the left was Roy Wilkins, two people down. Of course, King was always prodding me about getting that Civil Rights Bill passed and what we could do. Of course that, I was just so committed to doing that. The whole credibility of me and my administration rested on passing that Bill. And I just had to do it. Plus after that experience with Johnson, and that experience of that two years, by the time I got to that sixty-six session it was something I really knew something about.

BRINSON: So, you really knew Martin Luther King before he came to the rally in Frankfort?

BREATHITT: No, no, no, no. See, I served on this Commission after the rally in the Frankfort.

BRINSON: Okay, that’s right.

BREATHITT: And before the sixty-six session. By the time I got to the sixty-six session, and then later when we got into that Housing Ordinance in Louisville, King and I spoke at the church together.

BRINSON: I wanted to ask you what you did...

BREATHITT: I was very active in that, and marched in that thing, march with Wilson ( ), and Frank Burke. Frank Burke’s alive now.

BRINSON: Oh is he?

BREATHITT: In our law firm, he was former Mayor, former Congressman, very much involved in all this. It is worth calling him.

BRINSON: Okay.

BREATHITT: Frank Burke, his cousin was the CEO of Riggs Bank in Washington.

BRINSON: I’ve actually seen a photo of you in that march in Louisville.

BREATHITT: Oh is that right? [Laughing] I don’t even have it. But Don Mills, who was my press secretary, was active in all that. It is worth talking to him, he was very young. I’ve got his telephone number here in town. He’s here in town. And he was editor of The Lexington Herald in the old days, before Knight-Rider bought it. He was very close to Pritchard.

BRINSON: Okay. I have two more questions to ask you.

BREATHITT: Cut loose.

BRINSON: In nineteen sixty-six, you were awarded the Lincoln Key Leadership Award for passage of the Civil Rights Bill. Can you tell me what that is? Who makes that award?

BREATHITT: Isn’t that awful? I can’t remember, but I knew I was...

BRINSON: Is it a Kentucky Award?

BREATHITT: I think it’s a national award. And I think it has to do with a Kentucky affiliation, and I think they probably nominated me. Isn’t that awful? I remember getting the award.

BRINSON: Maybe there’s information in your papers about that.

BREATHITT: I’m sure there is.

BRINSON: Okay.

BREATHITT: They’re all down at Murray, so they are not accessible. And if they once get them really collated and indexed, people can get that information easily. If they ever get it on the Internet. It is in the library, you know, our library you can pull those things up fast. I don’t know whether they have that capacity or not.

BRINSON: I was interested, I have just finished reading Randall Robinson’s book, called The Debt. He’s the head of Trans-Africa, which helped lead the Apartheid, the anti-Apartheid effort in South Africa. But his book, he and other black leaders are beginning to call for reparations to the black community for slavery. And he makes the argument that almost every other population, Japanese-Americans, the Jews, during the Holocaust, that, that is an acceptable kind of compromise that we’ve achieved in public policy. But that, for blacks to ask it, people say well it was too long ago, we just can’t conceive of that ever happening. He’s not even so much talking about direct reparation to individuals....

BREATHITT: I don’t think you could do that.

BRINSON: ...as he is putting money into the black community for employment training.

BREATHITT: I think it’s proper. I support it. I mean I think it ought to, it ought to go just to the black community. I don’t think you could ever get into it, plus it would be a nightmare to try to administer. Plus the people that are really entitled to reparation are gone. But I think that there ought to be reparations. I think we need to go back to Affirmative Action. You know it was real interesting. I sat there with my daughter last night, listening--I didn’t go to Angela Davis’ lecture. And Micki Finney wrote a poem for the event. And Ann Grundy gave a wonderful talk. And then Angela Davis spoke for over an hour and had a long question and answer session. It’s a pretty terrific tape. Did you go to it?

BRINSON: No, I didn’t. I was out of town, but I heard Angela Davis speak in Louisville, last Fall.

BREATHITT: Oh, okay, you probably heard the same speech.

BRINSON: Somewhat maybe. And I’ve interviewed Ann Garrett Grundy, so I know a little bit of what she was going to do.

BREATHITT: Oh yeah, well. And Micki Finney is one of our stars.

BRINSON: Yes.

BREATHITT: We worked out a deal, which hasn’t been implemented and I think Micki maybe hasn’t been really anxious to do it. To swap and get Klotter over at U. K. for, teach a course on Kentucky history, and to get Micki to go over to Georgetown. Because the President over there is really under the gun to try to do some things to show diversity at a Baptist school, really, a real Baptist school. And he’s a, he’s a renaissance Baptist.

BRINSON: Well, I want to ask you in closing, Governor, you had a very important contribution to make in Kentucky Civil Rights history with the legislation and your support. Is there anything looking back now, that you would have done differently?

BREATHITT: I don’t know what I could have done with the political realities of that sixty-four session. I didn’t have the horses. Because Louie Nunn swept in a bunch of Republicans, mainly House members. I only had a five vote margin, and totally inexperienced leadership. What happened in sixty-six, I talked John Y. Brown, Sr., who was a spell-binding orator, had been Congressman, who was for Civil Rights, and had been a, the lawyer that represented the Unions in Eastern Kentucky in their organizing fights, would get shot at, beat up, thrown in jail, that kind of guy, with great courage. He had been Speaker of the House in Kentucky. He was a maverick. But I asked him if he would, and he ran for Legislature, would he serve as Majority Leader. So he ran, and of course, in those days a Governor could pretty well see who was Majority Leader, you can’t anymore. But he had, had an inspirational speech when I was in the Legislature and he was there, about Garibaldi, his speech to his legions. And I remember when he was going out the door to go up to lead the debate on the House, I said, “John Y., give them the Garibaldi speech.” And he did. [Laughter] See that helped me. I had a--plus the Speaker had, had a lot of experience by then. Shelby McCallum did a good job, and then John Y. was the leader, and he--I had to stay downstairs and listen to it, you know. But I listened to it, because it was broadcast, it was so significant. But it justifies my public career. It justifies my Governorship. It justifies what I have done, because it was the most significant thing that I have ever had a part in. And I know that my leadership advanced it, but it also advanced it when I was the local attorney for the two school boards. It advanced it when I responded to Johnson on the resolution. Equally difficult was the passage of the Strip Mine Bill, because no Governor had ever challenged the utilities or the coal industry or the railroad industry. They were allied against me. The last one that did, got shot. But that would have passed ultimately anyway. Civil Rights would have passed ultimately anyway, but it really advanced it. It was the strongest Bill south of the Mason-Dixon line. The only one south of the Mason-Dixon line when we passed it. So I think that justifies whatever I did as a Governor or in my public activities. Plus I have been very active at the University of Kentucky on that side. I recruited with--this is an element--Oswald wanted to integrate athletics, as President of the University. He came from California, University of California system. He was recruited during Combs’ period as Governor and Chairman, the year before I became Governor. But we had a football coach from Alabama, and he didn’t want to be the first; and Rupp did not want to be the first. So Oswald and I said we are just going to do it. Now the Athletic Director was Bernie Shively, who’s from Illinois and played football, was a star at the University of Illinois. They had been integrated. He had played with African-Americans. There wasn’t any problem for the Athletic Director. But the coach, Charlie Bradshaw, was a Bryant devotee. And we recruited Nate Northington from Louisville to come to U. K.. We had him and his whole family over to the Governor’s mansion after Church for a late Sunday dinner. And Oswald and I talked to him, and we told him we would get him another African-American. And we recruited one, and to our distress he was killed in practice. So this Nate had to then survive as the only one there. They were room mates. And we pointed out to him, what it would mean. He would integrate the whole Southeastern Conference. There was not an African-American on scholarship or playing on any team in the Southeastern Conference. And this was years after we had integrated the University. But athletics was not integrated.

BRINSON: Well, I’ve read that. I’ve read that. But when I read it, I wondered what about Charlie Scott in Chapel Hill basketball in the early sixties? Was that a different?

BREATHITT: That wasn’t in the Southeastern Conference.

BRINSON: No, you’re right. That’s...

BREATHITT: Atlantic Coast Conference, yes. Of course, the University of North Carolina was very enlightened from Frank Graham’s days on. And you had a very enlightened series of governors.

BRINSON: Well, but you just told me about Terry Sanford, couldn’t publicly support...

BREATHITT: Yes, but on something like that, you know.

BRINSON: I have one last question. This has been a great interview, thank you. I’m glad we did it. Do you think that your leadership in Civil Rights ever worked against you, after the fact?

BREATHITT: I think that the two things that worked against me politically, was the Strip Mine Bill. I think that did more to end my political career than Civil Rights. Because once we passed that Bill, people found out the world didn’t come to an end. These economic interests never forgot what I did. But I think the two of them together ended my running for office. But I really had no great interest in running for office, because my wife was a great, good sport, supported me politically, said, “It is time for you to come spend time with me and my four children.” She said my four children, “They’re our four children”, she reminded me, “And it’s your responsibility.” So I didn’t run for the Senate in sixty-eight when I had an open seat. And Johnson did everything he could to get me to run. He couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t run, because he run--some people say he stole the election. Of course, we loyal Johnson people will never admit to that. He could not understand why I wouldn’t run for the Senate, because it was there for me in sixty-eight. I would have had opposition from those three economic interests, but they’re always for Republicans anyway, usually are. And Morton didn’t run, so it was an open seat. But yes, it impacted, but I have no regrets about it because I’ve had a very full life. Because I found out when you’re not in office, there’s so many things you can do. And if you’re not running for office, you’re not treading on other’s ambitions. And in many ways, as a private citizen, being a former Governor gives you an entree and a platform. So, Combs did it, Wilson Wyatt did it, and I did it. I’ve been very happy about it.

BRINSON: Thank you.

BREATHITT: Thank you.

END OF INTERVIEW