Oral History Interview with Charles Whitehead, November 10, 2000

BETSY BRINSON: ...Part of the interview with Chuck Whitehead and the interviewer is Betsy Brinson and the date is January, is it ninth?...tenth...

CHARLES WHITEHEAD: Tenth.

BRINSON: January tenth...

WHITEHEAD: Two thousand.

BRINSON: Two thousand. Well, Chuck when we finished last time, we had been talking about some of your activity within Ashland Corporation to assist people who were being discriminated against as employees in the communities that they were working in. And you had, you told me a story out of Pensacola....You told me a story out of Louisiana, and then we moved to a story in Pensacola, and our time and our tape ran out.

WHITEHEAD: Okay.

BRINSON: And do you recall?

WHITEHEAD: Recall the story? Yes, I can talk to you about that. In the early seventies, late sixties of working with a chemical plant in Pensacola, Florida where segregation still existed in the early seventies. The plant in my opinion, was sort of run like a plantation, with the plant manager having the authority to be an absolute dictator, as long as he provided the revenues that the former company had wanted prior to us taking it over. And had done some things in the way of deciding who could use the credit union, what they could buy and what he would approve for them to buy with their own credit union monies; and monies, a lot of the credit union members. The interesting thing about that whole incident was, because of the working conditions and how the African-American was treated, the African-American employees--although they belonged to the Union--walked out and set up a picket at the plant. And I was called in to see if I could not resolve what, the issues. And it was kind of interesting when I got there. I was kind of caught between the Devil and the deep blue sea, because the Union president, International president had shown up and said that Ashland had a contract with the Union; and the African-American employees said they weren’t going back until some of the issues were resolved. Kind of caught me off guard, but we made the statement that we were only going to review those things where management had prerogatives. And we got caught up in a meeting that lasted all afternoon, whereby people wanted to relate to me what had been done in prior years; back in the thirties, late thirties, early in the forties. One of the things I said was, “Well I can’t be held responsible for what happened in the past, but you can hold us accountable and responsible for how we go forward.” One of the things, the Union spoke up and said, “Well you can’t...,” no they said, “We want”--I’ll never forget this—“We want to go on record of Ashland doing certain things.” And I said, “You can’t go on record in this meeting, because we are only talking about those things, that, where Ashland management has prerogatives.” And so he said, “Oh”, and was quiet. So we went back and agreed to change what was then segregated locker rooms. We also agreed to allow--look at the testing programs that they had at the company; look at the promotional practices; policies that they had at the company and to change those. And we did. And we changed all of those, but one of the things that we ran into--in this bath house--we had to build a new bath change house, in order to tear down the vestiges of the old segregated unit. And I don’t know, if the plant manager, but somebody in the community or whatever, but they went to the extent of having the Health Department say that some of the African Americans, you know, quarantine the whole bath house, so that they didn’t have to make the changes right away: because they said that some of the African American employees were suspected of having TB, which proved not to be the case. It was a stalling tactic that people had used to delay the inevitable, and that was the desegregation of the bath houses. And I found that to be, still in the early seventies, segregation to still exist, even though the law had changed. Old habits are hard to break. And I’ll never forget that I go into Alabama, into a facility, whereby the signs had been taken down, but nothing had changed. And I ended up going out to the hardware store and buying a couple of two by fours, and closing up the old, segregated bath house and saying, “Out of Order, Off Limits,” etc., in order to force the kind of change that we expected at that time.

BRINSON: What was the Union?

WHITEHEAD: Chemical, Chemical, Chemical Workers, I think it may have been the Chemical Workers Union. I can’t recall. Chemical Atomic Unions, or something. Or in a lot of our plants in the South, we had the Operating Engineers, and that was a real experience, working in Texas with them, also. And some of the things that we had to do, particular when it came to seniority and how seniority was given out. And how some of the African Americans would never get in line for the better jobs, because they were in crafts; or they were in if you still had an old janitor, your seniority maybe didn’t go into the; you couldn’t use it in the Operating Units, or you always had low seniority.

BRINSON: Thank you. I wanted to kind of wrap that up, in terms of your employment with Ashland, if we could.

WHITEHEAD: Okay.

BRINSON: And good, we did just fine. There are two, there are actually three areas that I hope we can talk about today. The first is, your involvement with the NAACP, the second is, maybe a little bit about your involvement with the Kentucky State University Foundation; and then finally maybe just a little bit about your interest in education.

WHITEHEAD: Okay.

BRINSON: Does that sound okay? Okay. I have to laugh when I say the NAACP, because we actually tried to do this twice, I noticed when I went back and listened to the tapes. And each time we kind of just got started and then we’d move off into, you know, your career in the Military or your, the beginning of your employment in Ashland, and we had lots of good stories, but we never really talked about the NAACP. So, I know you said that in Ashland, and I believe in Huntington, there was certainly good people there, who later went on to become active at the National level. We talked a little bit about eventually there being a chapter, I believe in Huntington.

WHITEHEAD: Uh huh.

BRINSON: But how did, when did you first decide that you should become a member of the NAACP?

WHITEHEAD: Well, I had been a member of the NAACP, prior to moving to Ashland. I was a member in Columbus, Ohio. And the NAACP, there was not a chapter in the Ashland area when I first moved there in nineteen sixty-three, although there was a very active chapter in Huntington, West Virginia. And so the folk in Ashland, who wanted or needed the help of the NAACP would go to Huntington to get whatever help. But most of the folk in Ashland, prior to us getting there. I was the first professional to be hired in Ashland. It was one of these small communities, where the African American community was less than three percent, therefore people had dual employment. They may have worked in a factory in the day and they worked in somebody’s home in the evenings. And so therefore most of the problems that people would have that they would work through their employer, etc. So therefore, except as some folks saw it at the extremes or nobody really, during those days really wanted to rock the boat. And there were people in the community, who were very prominent, who could make decisions. I’ll give you an example of that, story that was related to me by a Reverend George Childs, who was the...

BRINSON: I think you did tell me.

WHITEHEAD: Oh, did I tell you that story? Okay, well I’ll move on, not until I became Director of Equal Opportunity Affairs for Ashland, and really had an opportunity to start to focus on some of the problems that a community like Ashland might present. And how do, if you wanted to be an agent of change, how do you get those changes made? And one of the things that I thought that we could do, we should do, that gave people an opportunity to make whatever changes that they felt needed to make, was to have a strong NAACP Chapter. And by doing that, one of the things that we did was to take out a corporate membership in the NAACP, and also encouraged our employees to join; and to make sure that we help to finance or made regular donations to them, so that they would be active, or they could be active in the community, if they so chose to be. And so there, probably is the, how the first NAACP Chapters came about in the Ashland, Kentucky community. This was the late sixties, sixty-nine, nineteen seventy, early seventies, simply because there were these problems of unemployment. There were problems with housing, etc., and therefore nobody really, in the community at that point in time, wanted to really, you know, rock the boat. And working for a company like Ashland in a small community like that, that gave you certain leverage, that we would not have had otherwise, to get certain things done, as far as housing was concerned; as far as bringing in new people to the community; and to making sure that the community was attractive enough, in those kinds of ways, that would allow us to meet our obligation as a Federal contractor. To, you know, to get somebody from Cincinnati to move to a place like Ashland, Kentucky, would have been a major chore. One of the things that we did, was to do what we call, impact employment. Impact employment means that we brought in maybe nine, ten, eleven families all at one time, so that it would make an impact on the community. It would allow them to have a social structure, which by they could rely on each other; and it would change the, help change the culture, the atmosphere of the community, because people would interface at a different level, than what they had interfaced before. My experience with that community was that, people, because they had dual employment, had always made a fairly decent living for themselves, including the African-Americans. The issue was that like a lot of Southern areas at the time, was that people were able to educate the children, but if you educate the children, they had to go elsewhere to find jobs. There was no place for them to work in that community. And so therefore, you found a lot of families, who had people, children, who were doing well, all over the country, simply because they were educated Ohio State, or Kentucky State, or the University of Kentucky, and had moved on to other places to work.

BRINSON: You’re actually telling me about a new kind of membership. I know about youth membership and adult membership, but a corporate membership in the NAACP is more recent than the....

WHITEHEAD: Right, well we bought a Corporate Life Membership, and so rather than saying a Corporate Membership, we would probably say, you could put it in the category of a Corporate Life Membership. Okay?

BRINSON: Okay.

WHITEHEAD: So you are familiar with the Life memberships of the NAACP?

BRINSON: A little bit.

WHITEHEAD: Okay.

BRINSON: What does that commit the corporation to, basically?

WHITEHEAD: Basically what it is, is that it gives them the same rights and privileges as any other member of the organization.

BRINSON: Then as I understand it, you now have moved to be on the National Board of the NAACP?

WHITEHEAD: I serve on the National Board of the NAACP. I serve on the, I’m Treasurer of the Special Contributions Fund of the NAACP. I am on the Executive Committee of the NAACP National Board. And I chair the largest fundraiser that the NAACP has, which is the Image Awards. How did I get involved at the National level? That was a question. I started to take an interest, as I said before, there were two gentlemen in Huntington, West Virginia, who were very, very active in the NAACP, and sort of were my mentors, while I was in the Ashland area. One was an attorney by the name of Herbert Henderson, then a minister by the name of Charles Smith. Herbert Henderson later became the acting General Counsel, had served as General Counsel. And Charles Smith came on to be Deputy Director of the NAACP, and served a number of years under Ben Cooks. And so therefore, that kind of drew me into the national scene. And what I was doing for Ashland at the time was, there came a time when the Special Contributions Fund was trying to get more corporate types to become involved, and apparently I, because of what I had done in Ashland and in Kentucky, became a natural to become part of this. And let me tell you about my work in Kentucky leading up to that. Most states had Conferences or Branches of statewide organizations, and John Johnson, who serves--works for the National now, was at, I think he was President of the Louisville branch. But he had wanted to find a way of financing, and bringing together, and providing funds for the state conference of branches in the state of Kentucky. And he called a meeting or had the old, I’m trying to think of one of the other oil companies that were located in Louisville, hosted a lunch for him. And I was at that lunch, and we talked about putting up monies to help finance the State NAACP branches. So we were one of the original companies to put monies to help finance, and to solidify a State Conference in the state of Kentucky. And that was in the early seventies, so therefore we spent a lot of time doing those kinds of things. And we were playing a major part in the last National Conference that they had, convention that the NAACP had in Louisville. And this is, I think seventy-eight or nineteen eighty, a number of years ago. And one of the things that we did was, I’ll never forget that year prior to having the conference in Louisville, the conference had been in St. Louis, and it was the year that...

BRINSON: So this was the National Conference that was being held in Louisville?

WHITEHEAD: Right. Right. And we, in fact, we probably spent, put up, which was a large amount of money for us to do, we were major sponsors of any number of events at that particular convention. And I put my whole staff to work in helping, making sure that, that happened. And it was one of the better conventions that I think the NAACP had had.

BRINSON: I remember a few years ago, when I was living in Richmond, Virginia. Richmond was on a short list of potential sites for the NAACP conference a couple of years down the road. And I don’t think, I don’t think they ever made it. But it was very clear from the news publicity, and the conversations going on, that, you know, this was a big event; and it was going to require an awful lot of the city participation to make it happen.

WHITEHEAD: Well, Louisville is probably--Louisville has a lot of, in my opinion, it is a good convention city. It has lots of hotel rooms, transportation is not a big requirement because the convention center is downtown; and they’ve got the trolley that runs up and down the streets, so it is a natural. It was a natural for us, because there was, oh, five or six hotels within walking distance of the convention center. So therefore, Louisville was very attractive, and having a major corporation put up the kinds of money that we put up, versus what the rest of the companies in Louisville :Louisville has a lot of companies that have African-Americans as major consumers. As you talk about tobacco, you talk about alcohol, you talk about fast food. And so, ( ) here, the biggest clientele are African-Americans. And so therefore that probably started my involvement with the NAACP. One of the things that I was always interested in was, I am an accountant by education. And so therefore, right away I took an interest in the finances and the internal operations of the organization. And when Merle Evers Williams came to power, and the NAACP was in really bad shape financially. Frank Borges, who had formally served as the Treasurer of the State of Connecticut, and he was Treasurer of the NAACP. And I was Treasurer of the Special Contributions Fund. And we decided to work in tandem, in looking at these two funds to see how we could make the NAACP financially viable once again. From there I was elected to the National Board. And by being on the National Board, and also by being the Treasurer of the Special Contributions, automatically put me on the Executive Committee. Now I spent a couple of years in a very, very awkward position, and that was being on the Executive Committee of the NAACP and not being on the National Board.

BRINSON: Hmmm, I see.

WHITEHEAD: And that was pretty awkward from the standpoint of not really having a vote in the regular meetings, but having a vote when the Executive Committee was in session. The constitution by-laws of the NAACP says that the President and the Treasurer of the Special Contributions Fund are also members of the Executive Committee of the NAACP.

BRINSON: Sounds like you go to a lot of meetings. Is that true?

WHITEHEAD: Well, we have, with technology being what it is now, the first couple of years it was really trying. It was trying from the standpoint that we almost went once or twice a month to Baltimore to do hands on things, to meet with our funders. The Ford Foundation is an example, to talk with staff, to talk with vendors, to make sure...It was almost like running it on a day-to-day basis. We probably talked, I probably during that first year, talked to someone in the NAACP everyday for the first year, primarily about the finances, how to clear up the finances. And sort of, we were able to get the Ford Foundation to provide some funds for Price-Waterhouse to become our in-house accounting firm. Which means after the first couple of meetings with the internal staff, we decided to let everybody go in the internal staff, except those folk that we really needed for historical purposes. And one of the first conventions that we went to, and that was in February. But we went to the convention that year in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And some reporters, I made a speech before the Presidents of the State Conference, at the State Conference Presidents’ meeting. And one of the things, I made a vow to make a pledge to them that we would not leave Minnesota owing anybody any money. And we kept that vow and that promise.

BRINSON: And that was what year?

WHITEHEAD: That was ....

BRINSON: Or just approximately.

WHITEHEAD: Approximately ninety-two, ninety-three, somewhere in there.

BRINSON: So this decade, last decade now. We’ve been following the boycott in South Carolina, and have noticed that the state NAACP is really, sort of leading the charge there. And wondered if the National NAACP has any role, or what their role might be in that?

WHITEHEAD: Well, the National NAACP at its last convention, starting in January, agreed to boycott the state of South Carolina until the flag comes down.

BRINSON: The Confederate flag.

WHITEHEAD: The Confederate flag comes down, which is kind of interesting from the kind of role that I play. I have a friend who has a time share at Hilton Head, which we normally go to every September. And this year we didn’t go, simply because of the Confederate flag situation. I think that--and I read a letter the other day, about Hilton Head, saying that we agree with you, and so therefore we maybe ought to exempt you from the boycott. And we said that you need to work with the state. And so we have been, the National has been really instrumental in having a coalition of groups to come together, who have supported our efforts in South Carolina. But I was really kind of disappointed a little bit, to see over the weekend that there was a rally in opposition to what we wanted. And saying that...

BRINSON: I saw that, there were about six thousand people, I think.

WHITEHEAD: So this goes to tell you just how much of a racial divide that we still have in this country.

BRINSON: Right. And I was struck with one of the individuals who was interviewed as part of the press, who attended this rally, or several, and they were asked, “Well, don’t you care what the country thinks about South Carolina and what’s going on?” And they said, “No, we just want the Confederate flag to fly as it always has.” Not a good situation.

WHITEHEAD: Well, it’s kind of sad when, I think people really don’t understand what’s happening in the world, when we start talking about a global economy; and how that affects all of us. And how if we are to maintain a strong America, that we have to be united as a people, from the standpoint of the survival. For us to maintain a certain standard of living in this country, that the old thinking has to, it just has to change. It has to change and it will change. Russia changed. Whoever thought that communism would....whoever thought that Apartheid, is probably more of an example, that Apartheid would change?

END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE A

BEGIN TAPE ONE, SIDE TWO

WHITEHEAD: ...more progressive than part of the North, because there’s always been that kind of, a different kind of relationship. It’s been a kind of open kind of relationship. There’s been this kind of, the subtleties of the North have been, in my opinion, more difficult in some cases to overcome. And if you remember the history of Doctor King, that some of his most violent and unexpected moments came when he tried to do some things in the North. It was just--it was okay as long as those kinds of things took place below the Mason-Dixon line, but nobody wanted him to come North with some of those kind of ideas. And so therefore, in some cases, the South has made a lot of progress. But then you have those old symbols, signs, etc., such as the Confederate flag that have been difficult to overcome, and South Carolina is one of the states that, that needs to happen. It is kind of interesting, a few years ago, I don’t remember the years, but we had one of our board meetings in Columbia, South Carolina. Brown vs. Board of Education. It was during the uh, I guess, the tenth, or maybe not the tenth, but one of the anniversaries.

BRINSON: Anniversaries of the Brown decision.

WHITEHEAD: Right. But the case that started, ended up in the Supreme Court as Brown vs. Board of Education. But it started in Sumter in South Carolina, so we decided to visit that school while we were there. And I’m saying to myself, I’m not sure I want to get up at seven o’clock in the morning and go out some fifty miles to visit a school. But I was glad that I did. I could not believe my eyes as to what I witnessed. It was almost as if you had gone into South Africa and to Soweto. The school had been abandoned. Once the school had been integrated, all the whites went to private schools and left the school there with not very much being done to it over a period of time. But they were in the process of building a new school. To sit there and watch these kids who were so anxious to please us. They were all scrubbed up and they had little blue and white uniforms on, and they prepared lunch and they prepared a program for us. And it really made my heart feel good. But because of the national attention, all of the county officials had an opportunity to come on. And I had an opportunity to talk to the Superintendent of the schools. And I just told her, in a very nice way, that...

BRINSON: It was a woman?

WHITEHEAD: It was a woman--about the conditions I saw, and how could she have let that, as Superintendent of the schools? It brought tears to her eyes. She started crying and told me that she was going to do better. From the standpoint that once she saw and she looked: and I knew she knew that certain things that happened that should not have happened. And these kids wanted to, hadn’t made very high--test scores were absolutely atrocious. I mean, these kids had basically, talk about going to an institution of higher learning. And this is why I am so strong, feel so strongly about remedial education. It’s not that, what our expectations are, or what the expectations of those who have and the have-nots. If you look at, and I am familiar with the school systems in Ohio, and they just passed a law, the Equalization Law. But in Southeastern Ohio, we have school districts, where three thousand dollars were spent on a student, versus the other rich school districts, where fifteen thousand dollars per student per year were spent. But we expect unequal input, but equal outcome. And so therefore, the same thing in Kentucky, we have to make sure that, you know, we may have somebody, who graduated summa cum laude from a school in Eastern Kentucky, but has not had the same opportunity, the same exposure as someone from Ohio or from one of the larger school districts. Now should we deny that individual an opportunity to learn, if perhaps they have been deficient in a certain area? And if you go to a place like Eastern Kentucky University or Morehead, there is no stigma attached to remedial education, simply because everybody, most of the folk that go there, need remedial math and remedial English.

BRINSON: Talk to me a little bit about your involvement with the Kentucky State University Foundation.

WHITEHEAD: My involvement with the Kentucky State Foundation came about, once again, in the....I played football against Kentucky State for Central State, so I had some knowledge of Kentucky State being a historical black institution. And also that Central State and Kentucky State were big rivalries in the athletics and all, as part of the same conference. But I really didn’t get involved with Kentucky State until, once again, I worked for Ashland. We would recruit at Ashland. And Ashland had really strong ties with Kentucky State. Paul G. Blazer, the Founder of Kentucky State, he had a knack of contributing monies to causes that he felt really needed the support, Lee’s Junior College in Kentucky, a lot of schools in Eastern Kentucky, and Kentucky State University. The library at Kentucky State University is named, is called Blazer Library, and it is named after the Blazer family. Well, I never forget that during one of my recruiting trips, I was called in by the President; and he wanted to know why I had been coming to Kentucky State University, recruiting all of those years and had not hired any Kentucky State graduates. And what I told him was, “Mr. President, I come to buy apples and you’ve been trying to sell me oranges all these years.” And he just kind of looked at me and smiled and he said to me, “Will you help me produce some apples?” And so that kind of committed me, and I said I would, committed me to seeing what I could do with my involvement with Kentucky State. One of the things we went back and right away we did was to give Kentucky State, we found they had more faculty than they had students in the Chemical, in the Chemistry Department. And so therefore we gave some scholarships, created a scholarship program, and created a research grant for Kentucky State University. And also allowed some of the excess equipment etc., that we had, had in some of our laboratories etc., to be given to Kentucky State, to strengthen their Chemistry Department. So right away they went to, oh, I guess from two or three students, to twenty, thirty, forty students in Chemistry. The second thing that we did at Kentucky State was, we came together with the University of Kentucky and created a dual engineering program, what we called a two plus two or two plus three, whatever they call it. But anyway it was a program whereby you went three years at Kentucky State and two years at the University of Kentucky to get a degree in Engineering from the University of Kentucky. And you could also pick up a degree in Mathematics or Applied Science or something from Kentucky State University. We funded that program by providing a full-time person to run that, paying for that person at Kentucky State. And providing scholarship monies for students who were in the program. And also providing summer job opportunities in Engineering for those folk, who were a part of that program. And so right away I became a target for the Kentucky State Foundation. And I went on their Foundation Board and served on the Board for a number of years, not in a leadership role, but as a Board member. Then they brought on a young man, who had been on the Council of Higher Education for the state of Kentucky, who was an attorney, by the name of Raymond Burroughs. And Raymond is a Rhodes Scholar, a very, very articulate young man. And I became interested in what he wanted to do at Kentucky State. And so therefore I assumed the role, was elected to Chair the Kentucky State Foundation. The Kentucky State Foundation became very, very active and we did an excellent job. In fact, one year we were, nationally we had the largest percentage of givers of any school in the country. We went from like, percentage of increase from three or four percent of the Alumni giving, to eighteen percent in less than two years. And we built up a Foundation that had, had a couple of thousand dollars, to a Foundation that had over three million dollars. And that went on, Raymond was there for about five years. And then we got a new Governor, some people who wanted to--felt that--in my opinion that--Kentucky State--there was several attempts to close Kentucky State down, based on the fact that people felt that African American students could go to any institution in the state. And therefore Kentucky State still had a lot of out-of-state students coming there, and that Kentucky could best be served by making Kentucky State a junior college, etc.. So therefore, when we took up the cause for Kentucky State, because those folk who were advocating that, really didn’t understand what was going on at Kentucky State. Why did they have so many out-of-state students versus in-state students? One of the reasons were, that if you were educated in Kentucky in the sixties and the seventies there were few job opportunities. And so folk had to leave the state to get jobs, and so therefore--but they had a good experience at Kentucky State. So if they were Kentuckians, they wanted their children to have that same opportunity and they would send their children back to Kentucky State. The other thing too is that in the higher education environment, I think Kentucky State; and historical black colleges, played a role in allowing African Americans to at least have an institution where they felt that they were in charge of something. And people really don’t understand that African Americans in Kentucky feel that, lots of them feel that the only thing that they own is Kentucky State University. And so therefore, little old ladies in Paris and Harlan, Kentucky will come to the...

BRINSON: I think I’ve interviewed some of them.

WHITEHEAD: ...who will come to the defense of Kentucky State ...

BRINSON: Right, just tremendous loyalty.

WHITEHEAD: Right. When they won’t get involved any other way, politically, in the state. BRINSON: Let me go back a minute, because you raise a very interesting question for me, when you talked about increasing Alumni giving at Kentucky State.

WHITEHEAD: Uh huh.

BRINSON: And just recently I’ve seen a study of the private colleges today, and Centre in fact, was identified as being up there at the top of the Alumni who give to their college. And I wonder, of course, private is always, you’re going to find a higher level of giving than you are at public, generally. But I wonder if that if true with the historically black colleges? Do you have any idea?

WHITEHEAD: Well I would say that giving at historical black colleges have not been that good. I mean it could have been better. It’s because...

BRINSON: Of course, you have a whole set of circumstances.

WHITEHEAD: Well it’s, yeah the circumstances may be different, but I think that it’s a matter of will. It’s a matter of attitude. It’s a matter of having somebody at the helm who has vision. And I’ll give you an example, the United Negro College Fund has got somebody, they’re getting a lot more money than they ever got before. Spellman College, a few years ago, had a, I forget the lady’s name, but she had some vision, she understood fund raising and so therefore she got people...

BRINSON: Jeanetta Cole.

WHITEHEAD: Jeanetta Cole, right, Jeanetta Cole got people to give on a large scale. Well, Kentucky State, I think over the years is no different from some other institutions that we have in the state, who for many years, a large percentage of their budget came from the state. But this has been decreasing every year, and so some folk have gone to the legislators and kind of got what they want; and not really understanding that the President at a modern institution has a sort of different role. That a vast majority of their time has to be spent in the fund raising arena. Raymond understood that. I don’t think that we had any President after Raymond who really understood that, because we went to great pains and effort to make sure that Raymond understood. I’ll never forget the conversation that he and I had about getting some monies from a corporation like Exxon. Well you don’t know anybody at Exxon, and why would Exxon want to give some money in Kentucky, you know, whole kinds of things. So go see the people at Exxon, and tell them the Kentucky story and tell them exactly what it is that you want to accomplish and how you are going about doing it. You are a Rhodes scholar, and that some day you want to have a Rhodes--Kentucky State to produce a Rhodes scholar. He goes up there early on in his career as President. And they come back, and they give him a gift of fifty thousand dollars, they sent. So he had lots of success, very early in the fund raising game. But historically it’s like, well sometimes we set the bar too low, and when we have a low bar, low expectations gets low results, or minimal results. So if you have high expectations. And it was always amazing to me about, when I would do college recruiting and I would go to a school like Miami of Ohio or any, or University of Kentucky, and the emphasis that they placed on recruiting and the relationship with businesses, because of their history. And then I would go to a historical black institution, and they would have it down in the basement in some hot, stuffy room; and you know, not pay much attention to that activity, not putting the money into it, and not having somebody of the same caliber, the same caliber of, kind of operations, as some of the predominantly--other schools would. But then you would run into a school, whereby somebody understood that. Well, one of the schools early on that I visited, where they had somebody who really understood, and that was Southern University in Baton Rouge. And the Director of Placements office was next to the President’s office. And the placement office was in that same Administration building, very nice quarters and they did a nice job for that institution. Tennessee State University in Nashville was another entity that understood what that was all about. Now the Privates probably knew, had more experience in fund raising, in knowing what they had to do, than the Publics.

BRINSON: Right. But I just sense, as I talk to people, older people who have attended Kentucky State, exactly as you said, I mean that there is such loyalty and support for that institution. That even though it is a public school, I just feel like they would do whatever they could to help things there. And those who have been there, and most of them have done their education there, you know, just think it was a wonderful experience.

WHITEHEAD: It was a wonderful experience. If you had come out of Southeast Kentucky, a place like Harlan, or if you had come out of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, this was a ticket to be respected, to learn a profession, and most of your teachers, per se....

BRINSON: Even secretary Marlene Hill, who came here from New York, I believe.

WHITEHEAD: Right, right. And I don’t know if Marlene had--if she traces her history back--if she can trace anybody back to--her ancestors back to Kentucky. But a lot of the people from out of state have roots in Kentucky, and so therefore, people who have gone to Kentucky State--but one of my experiences was, we were not connected to the school for a number of years, was kind of a private foundation. And one of the reasons we made a private foundation out of it, is that we did not have to adhere to the State investment programs, etc. And so therefore we could grow the Foundation much faster. Well, anyway then we got into a big argument with the new Chair of the Board by the way, which was ex-Governor Louie Nunn and Vice-Chair, ex-Governor Ned Breathitt, as to whether or not we were private or a public foundation. And this...

BRINSON: Louie Nunn was the Chair of the KSU Board? [Laughter - Whitehead]

WHITEHEAD: Yes.

BRINSON: And Ned Breathitt was the...

WHITEHEAD: Was the Vice-Chair.

BRINSON: Vice-Chairman, that must have been an interesting period. [Laughter]

WHITEHEAD: You, believe me, believe me. So we get into this big legal battle with the Board of Trustees, and there is still some vestiges of that now, as to whether or not we were private or public. And this case goes all the way to the Kentucky Supreme Court, of which it was kind of a Solomon kind of decision, which said that we were up until a point’ and after that point we were not a public concern, a private concern. And so therefore, we were operating properly the way we were doing things. I think the State invested in Bonds, etc., and their return was like four percent, and they were getting like...And we were getting as much as eighteen, twenty-five percent returned on our investments. Hilliard and Lyons always handled our investments and did a really good job for us, and continue to do a good job for that Foundation. So that’s primarily my involvement with Kentucky State.

BRINSON: Okay

END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE TWO

BEGIN TAPE TWO, SIDE ONE

BRINSON: Hear over and over, in some way, the importance of education to you and your career and as I understand it, the Foundation that you have become...The President? Is that your title?

WHITEHEAD: That’s correct.

BRINSON: Focuses heavily on education.

WHITEHEAD: Right.

BRINSON: And certainly your activities at Kentucky State, and more recently, now you’re the Chair on the Board at the new Council for Post-secondary Education. Education just runs throughout your life as being an important area of advocacy and interest for you. Would you just talk about that a little bit with me?

WHITEHEAD: Education changes lives, it allows--it’s the one thing that I think that provides equalization, the real equalization in this country. It allows a youngster, a man who is born in the piney woods of Mississippi, to get where he is today; and it had to be because of education. My parents, while they may not have been able to articulate what makes this country work, but they really understood our economic system. And they knew that our economic system was based upon, took two things and they were joined together; education and economics, if you wanted to get ahead and being able to compete. And they understood that the free enterprise system meant competition. And so one of the things that they observed by being sharecroppers in Mississippi, that you needed two things; that land was wealth, that education was power. It allowed you to create wealth. It allowed you to get ahead in this country. And they knew this by observation. Two things my father said to me as a youngster, get as much education as you can and own some land. And those were Southern virtues that when they had the big migration from the South that was taught, was told to us. And so therefore I was the first in my family to have an opportunity to get a college education. And what I did in college, was dependent on what the rest of, not only just my family, but the family unit, would have had an opportunity to do. We still have, what we call, what we consider to be the head of our family. The head of the family, I don’t know if we got this--where we picked up this trait--but the head of the family still isn’t sick, he knows where all the family members are, he’s got everybody’s addresses. And so therefore, I never forget that my father and his brothers came together to talk about me going off to college. Because that summer I had a very, very good job working over the summer. Better job than any of them had, but as a part-time job, which I could have stayed at; and they were just questioned what good would an education do, when he’s already got this good job? He probably needs to go to work. It’s kind of interesting, my cousins told me later that when I would come home for the holidays, they would always wanted to know when I was going back to school. And they said, “Now it’s not that we didn’t want you to stay and have a good time. We wanted to make sure that you went back to school and did what you were supposed to; because if you had messed up, then you may have ruined our chances of getting a college education.” And we sit down now and we talk about that. If you take a look at all the sacrifices that some of those families made at that particular point in time to try to get their children an education. We were very, very, my generation was very, very serious about getting an education. And as I look back and saw that we were still a very, very small unit of people, that in nineteen sixty-one when I graduated from college, there were like only fifty-five thousand African Americans in college in the United States. Isn’t that amazing?

BRINSON: It is amazing. And what is the number today?

WHITEHEAD: I don’t know what the number is today. But fifty-five thousand, and so therefore it was a, it was a small world. And you probably knew everybody that, if you talked to anybody long enough, you knew everybody, every African-American who had a degree. No matter where you went, you know, you run into some people and you say, you from the state of Washington? Well, yeah. Do you know so and so? Quite naturally they knew that person. But, so therefore, and I’ve seen the power of education. And I know that education is what’s going to help the state of Kentucky. Education is what’s going to have to happen in a knowledge based society to lift up this state. I just don’t see how....We don’t have, in a Global economy, we don’t have any choice, but to support education. The second thing is that we have to lift our boats. And I never forget, hearing as a young man, somebody gave a speech, and I never forgot this piece of the speech. He said to me and to this audience, what good does it do any of us to be on a yacht with a blue blazer on and a pair of grey slacks and you’ve got a hole in your bow? Doesn’t do much for us, does it? And so therefore I think we have to take a look at how do we raise the playing field and improve the lives of all Kentuckians? And Gordon and I have had these kinds of conversations. People keep talking about how will you know if we have succeeded? Well I think we know that the evidence will be very obvious, that we will attract the kind of jobs to the state, whereby our citizens can make a living. Now, I’m not talking about getting a job, but I’m talking about making a living wage where they can take care of their families and have some of the things that other people have in this country.

BRINSON: Well, I’ve come to end of the questions I wanted to ask you.

WHITEHEAD: Okay!

BRINSON: I wonder if there is anything though that we haven’t talked about, that you would like to include in this interview?

WHITEHEAD: Well, I’d like to include this by saying that I’ve seen some evidence of people trying to push the clock back. But I have hope, I have a vision, and I have dreams, and I recognize that it doesn’t do anybody any good to have a yacht with a hole in its bow. And therefore we have to make sure that we raise the level of everybody in this country. And I think education is the way that we do this, that makes this a viable economy that we need. We need everybody in this economy to not be a drag on the economy, and to be able to pay taxes and to do those things that makes this a better country. And I don’t believe in the old trickle down theory, you know. We tried that once and it never got down to where it needed to be. What we find is that some of the public schools, etc., and I’m not so sure that all the new gimmicks that we come up with helps raise all boats. I think that it is a way of taking care of somebody else’s problems. But it doesn’t really--what we got to do is have the will to go back into the public institutions and fix it. We can. I mean if we can put a man on the moon, then we can fix education, if we have the will to do it. I was telling the people here, across the river, and they were talking about all the problems that they had with the inner city schools, etc.. I’m saying the reason you have a problem is because nobody has the will to fix it. Once you decide that you have the will to fix it, then it will get fixed. And it will get fixed in a hurry. It’s like the story I told you about the preacher, how integration occurred in Ashland. It occurred overnight, because somebody had the will to fix it.

BRINSON: Well, that’s a wonderful metaphor of the yacht. We’re hosting a three day conference in February on the whole Kentucky experience with Civil Rights. And I just finished putting the program together and sending it to the printer. And I wish I’d actually, I went back through some of the early interviews that I’ve done and have had transcribed and pulled out little quotes from people. And I wish that I’d had that metaphor of your boat at the time, that I could have included it in the program. But I’ll use it....

WHITEHEAD: Well this is the kind of thing that....you got your tape off now? Cut your tape off.

END OF INTERVIEW