Oral History Interview with Morton Holbrook

BETSY BRINSON: ...the year two thousand, this is an interview with Morton Holbrook, the interview takes place at his old law practice in Owensboro, Kentucky, and the interviewer is Betsy Brinson. Mr. Holbrook, I need a voice level from you, could you begin by giving me your full name, and your birth date, and birth place, please.

MORTON HOLBROOK: My full name is Morton Joshua, J O S H U A, Holbrook, Junior. I was born September fifteen, nineteen fourteen, in Davies County, Kentucky, in the vicinity of Whitesville Village, fifteen miles east of Owensboro, Kentucky.

BRINSON: Well, thank you very much, Mr. Holbrook, for agreeing to talk with me today.

HOLBROOK: Great pleasure.

BRINSON: I think I explained a little about what we are trying to do with this project. Do you have any questions before we actually begin?

HOLBROOK: No, not really.

BRINSON: Okay, great. Well, what I want to do today is talk a little bit about you, but I also want to have you kind of help me to understand some of the dynamics within the community, best that you can, around some of the issues that have affected the African-American community from nineteen thirty on to about nineteen seventy-five. And I understand, you know, there may be things you just don’t know about; and that’s fine, but whatever we can learn from you, that would be good, too. So, tell me a little bit, just to begin, about your family, your early growing up, your mother, father and what you might know about your ancestors.

HOLBROOK: Well, my father was, of course, same name, Senior. My mother was Ida Simpson Holbrook. Both were natives of Ohio County, both were school teachers. My father was a lawyer, who never practiced law. He spent most of his life raising a large family and running a small country bank, and acting as pro bono lawyer for everybody in the neighborhood.

BRINSON: So, he made his living actually from the bank?

HOLBROOK: Oh yes.

BRINSON: Okay.

HOLBROOK: There were seven children, four girls first and then three boys.

BRINSON: And where do you fall in that?

HOLBROOK: I’m next to the youngest. My younger brother was killed in World War Two out in the Philippines. And my older brother was killed in a car wreck. My sisters are all deceased. I think they would tell you I probably worked them to death, picking up my things. They had the privilege of either spanking me or spoiling me, whichever they chose. My mother was a saintly woman, whose duty was to raise the girls; and my father was to raise the boys. They both believed the biblical admonition of spare the rod and spoil the child. And they didn’t want any of their children to be spoiled. All of my sisters, save one, I guess, were college graduates. Both my brothers were also college graduates.

BRINSON: So it’s a family that believed in education.

HOLBROOK: Oh yes, yes.

BRINSON: What about your grandparents? How far....

HOLBROOK: My paternal grandparents were John D. Holbrook and Oma Field, F I E L D, Holbrook.

BRINSON: Were they from this area?

HOLBROOK: They were from Ohio County. My grandfather was a farmer. And he married my grandmother, Oma Field. And the Field family was a family over in Ohio County, her parents had slaves. One of the few families in this area that had slaves. There were twelve children in my father’s family. And also twelve children living and two deceased in my grandmother’s side, my paternal grandmother’s side. There were eleven girls and one boy.

BRINSON: That’s a big family.

HOLBROOK: Big family. In back of that, my great-grandparents on my father’s side were from, well my great-great grandfather came to Ohio County from, I think, the Clinch River Valley in Virginia. And one of my aunts did some research work, which I’ve long since forgotten and probably have in the files someplace, my early ancestors came into Vermont, I believe, and then migrated southward.

BRINSON: Okay.

HOLBROOK: My grandparents on my mother’s side, I really don’t know that much about. I know that my grandfather, Justin Simpson, was said to have been from Shelby County, Kentucky, and before that, from Virginia. I don’t know whether the town of Simpsonville is the area in which he was born or not, but I rather guess it was. I never spent any time researching. And I believe my aunt found that on the Holbrook’s side, they put out a King’s lien in England, way back there....

BRINSON: Sounds like a good English name.

HOLBROOK: Yeah, it is. I was up there frequently in World War Two, before the invasion. We were participating in the antiaircraft defense of Great Britain for about a year before the invasion. That was part of my beat. There were a great many Holbrooks in Lincolnshire in England. My father always thought that we were what he called Scotch-Irish. If he were correct about that, which I rather doubt, that was sort of a hard scrabble section up along the Scots-English boundary. Mixture of Scotch and Irish people, apparently poor farmers, must have been, otherwise they wouldn’t have hazarded the trip across the Atlantic.

BRINSON: Okay, that’s good, thank you. What I’m doing with that is just trying to establish how long you’ve had family roots here in Kentucky.

HOLBROOK: Yes.

BRINSON: And you certainly do. Tell me a little bit, if you would please, about your early education. Did you go to school here?

HOLBROOK: I went to one of the county schools out in Whitesville. A small school from primary through high school. Then I went to the University of Kentucky.

BRINSON: Before you tell me about that, tell me what year you graduated from high school.

HOLBROOK: Thirty-one.

BRINSON: Nineteen thirty-one. And do you remember approximately how many students were in your graduating class?

HOLBROOK: I think eighteen, but I could be wrong, very small class.

BRINSON: Okay, just trying to get an estimate of the size of schools.

HOLBROOK: They’re all dead now.

BRINSON: And I’m assuming it would have been a segregated school at that point in time.

HOLBROOK: Oh yes, yes, the black folks had only a grade school, and anyone, any African-American who wanted to go to high school was transported into Owensboro, where he or she attended the Western High School, it was called.

BRINSON: Was it, the students who came in, did they come and go to their homes on a daily basis? Or did they come and board with someone during the week, so they could attend the class?

HOLBROOK: My memory about it is, that there were very few of them who went to high school at all; and such as there were, excuse me, either stayed with people here in Owensboro or rode the bus back into the far woods.

BRINSON: But in some cases it was too far to come and go in the same day.

HOLBROOK: No it really wasn’t. There was a company here called the Kinrad Tube and Lamp Company.

BRINSON: Kinrad?

HOLBROOK: Yeah, Kinrad.

BRINSON: K I N...?

HOLBROOK: KEN-RAD.

BRINSON: Okay.

HOLBROOK: That employed large numbers of people. They made radio tubes. And in consequence of that, there was a bus route, that went from Fordsville, Kentucky, which is farther East than Whitesville, that would come through Whitesville. And the black kids could ride that into town. The County School Board, at least while I was counsel for the School Board, which began in--gee I don’t know when I started--I believe I started representing the County school system after I came home from World War Two, probably in forty-five, forty-six. Anyway the County School Board financed the black students who wanted to come into town; would pay their transportation. And as I recall there was a tuition fee in addition, for students that lived outside the city. Western was a city school, not a county school. So the County school system had to pay the tuition and then the County School Board picked up the cost of transportation for them.

BRINSON: I want to try and get a sense of a little bit of the demographics here. I’m working with several pages of notes. The nineteen ninety census for Owensboro has the population at about fifty-three thousand, five hundred. And I’m wondering if you have any sense of what portion of the population may be African-American. Are we talking about a small number?

HOLBROOK: In what year?

BRINSON: This is nineteen ninety, so...

HOLBROOK: I guess it was maybe in the neighborhood of maybe seven percent.

BRINSON: And from the time that you came back here after the war, or even earlier, from nineteen thirty on, would you have a sense that, that population in the Black community has stayed constant, has it dropped, has it increased?

HOLBROOK: I would hazard a guess, that it has probably declined.

BRINSON: Declined?

HOLBROOK: I know that in the area where I grew up, we had a fairly large, Black settlement. I played with the black children when I was in grade school, high school. We had a number of farms scattered around, and I worked with them on the farms. One of the greatest fellows I ever knew, was a Black man, named Albert Norris, “Integrity” personified. He killed hogs for us. We’d kill eight or ten hogs every year for pork. And he tended crops on farms. And all my friends among the younger black fellows, we played baseball together, swam in the same ponds, very rarely had any trouble. I guess the last fist fight I ever had was with a black boy. (Laughing) I always was very resentful, he had me down, and then I got him down and one of my sisters ran out and pulled me off of him. And I never forgave her for breaking up the fight when it was to my advantage.

BRINSON: How old were you at the time?

HOLBROOK: Oh, I don’t know, I guess I was ten or eleven.

BRINSON: Do you remember what that dispute was about?

HOLBROOK: No idea. As I remember, I was sitting outside the bank and Earl Epperson was his name. He lived across the field from one of our farms. He was sort of the strong boy among the blacks and I was sort of the strong boy among the whites, and we just exchanged a few words and got in a fist fight. Until the day he died, every time we would meet on the street, we’d hug. He became a plasterer here in town and had a very nice family. And his father was the Rector out at the Presbyterian Church, not the Rector. What do you call the janitor?

BRINSON: The Sexton?

HOLBROOK: Sexton! He was the Sexton at the First Presbyterian Church here, had a lovely baritone voice. At night, as far back as I can remember, although their house was probably half a mile away across the fields, you could hear them singing to midnight or after, playing on the guitar, banjo. So, of that Black community, which was probably I’d say, as many as fifty families.

BRINSON: Did it have a name that it was known by?

HOLBROOK: No, just Colored Town. Baptist Town some called it, although there wasn’t....Yeah there was a Baptist, a black Baptist Church. And there was a Holy Roller, we called them Holy Roller Church, which offered a lot of entertainment in the summertime. They’d have meetings. Some of the black folks who worked on our farms, would be gone to this Holy Roller Church, and we youngsters would sometimes walk over there and watch them. They would speak in unknown tongues and anoint people with oil. (Laughing) We had an old fellow, who worked on our farm, called Uncle Anthony. All the black folks, older folks, were known as Uncle or Aunt. And we had this old Uncle Anthony.

BRINSON: Andy?

HOLBROOK: Anthony, I don’t know what his name was. (Laughing) Everybody just called him Uncle Anthony. And they were anointing him with oil one time. And they put some, I don’t know what it was, but anyway it took all of his hair off. And it was the subject of a lot of jollity among the kids. And we had an old, black fellow, who was in the Civil War, he was in his nineties, no I think he was in his eighties when I first knew him. And we kids would sometime would run up behind him and go “bang, bang”, to see him jump. (Laughter-Brinson) He and, there was one white man, John, J. W. M. Mosley, were the only Confederate veterans still living in our community out there. And Mr. Mosley died in the thirties. I remember he had a beard down to about his waist. And Uncle John Jackson, the black man, lived to nearly a hundred and put up with us kids all that time. But now you go out there and the community, there’s one, two, only three black families that I know of, out there now. They’ve all gone. They scattered to Detroit, as they called it. Some of them came into Owensboro, most of them I guess came into Owensboro. But Detroit was one of their favorite destinations, that and Indianapolis or “Indianopolis” as they called it, were places, in the first city they could get jobs in the automobile plants. I don’t know what most of them did up in Indianapolis. I remember we had, we always had black kitchen help and housekeeping help. And one of our longtime cooks, had a daughter, who would go up to Detroit and come home pregnant all the time. And my younger brother and I used to, she’d come back from Detroit and we’d ask her, “Now are you going to have another child?” And she’d purport to be outraged by these questions, but nonetheless would generally turn up with one. (Laughing) And all of those, there was Aunt Sue, Aunt Artie, Aunt Mary.

BRINSON: Where do you think the term Aunt and Uncle came from?

HOLBROOK: I don’t know. I guess it was an effort by our parents to show some deference. My father was a rather strict disciplinarian. He expected children to say sir and ma’am and to stand up when people talked to them. I can see how that came about in our family, but I really don’t know how it arose in the community.

BRINSON: Well, was it used in other households that you know about? Did other children use the Aunt and the Uncle?

HOLBROOK: Come to think about it, I don’t really remember that they did.

BRINSON: Or was that maybe unique to your household?

HOLBROOK: It may have been limited to our family. Of course our family was pretty large. I really don’t know. I can’t recall that. We called all the younger fellows by their first names. Indeed, practically everyone in the community had a nickname, blacks and whites alike. We rarely ever called anybody by their given name, it was generally a sobriquet of some sort tacked onto them. Like one fellow was called two ninety-eight. He always bought overalls for two dollars and ninety-eight cents, and he was always proud of his overalls. (Laughing) So people just started calling him two ninety-eight. Most of the names, the nicknames, you never knew how they came about.

BRINSON: Was that done to blacks in the community?

HOLBROOK: Blacks and whites.

BRINSON: Blacks and whites, okay. Two ninety-eight.

HOLBROOK: Two ninety-eight. And then there was names that you couldn’t attach any significance to like for example in one family--a white family, a rather large family--one of the boys nickname was Ob, another’s name was Shoat.

BRINSON: What was that last one?

HOLBROOK: Shoat.

BRINSON: Would you spell that?

HOLBROOK: S H O A T, it’s the name of a small hog, a shoat. Only occasionally did we ever have any trouble. I do recall at one time we had a sort of a rifle battle, no one got hit. The blacks were in the pond that we wanted to go swimming in and they said that we had to wait until they got out. And one of them fired a rifle in our direction. I don’t know whether he meant to hit us or not. Anyway we went and got a rifle and got up on the barn and fired at them.

BRINSON: And you would have been about how old?

HOLBROOK: Oh, I guess I was in seventh grade, sixth grade, fifth grade, in there.

BRINSON: So, going to jump ahead here a little bit. When you finished high school you went to the University of Kentucky and then to the National Institute of Public Affairs in nineteen thirty-five. Now tell me what that is.

HOLBROOK: That was an organization put together by former Congressman from Arkansas, as I recall. And he talked the, I believe it was the Rockefeller Foundation out of money. Anyway, his concept was to bring a student from each state to Washington to work in one of the government agencies and then to return to his own state. He had a lot of ideas about bringing the country together, Wingo was his name. Otis Wingo. And now that I think about it, I believe he was the son of the Congressman from Arkansas.

BRINSON: But this was an educational program?

HOLBROOK: Yes, he had entree to just about everyone there, cabinet officers, for example. I remember Dan Roper was Secretary of Commerce then, and we had an interview with him. Eugene Field, who owned The Washington Post, had us all out at his place. We were supposed to work at a government agency in the morning and in the afternoon to attend either the Congress or the Supreme Court. And at night we had classes scheduled at, I believe it was called American University. It was a full schedule.

BRINSON: So from there, you, when you finished that program, you went to Harvard Law School, where you got your law degree. And you mentioned earlier that you served during World War Two. And I believe from your resume, after the war, you came back to practice here in Owensboro?

HOLBROOK: Yeah, I practiced here for--I had married here in nineteen forty--and I practiced law here from nineteen thirty-eight to nineteen forty-two. Then I was overseas for two and a half years or so, came back here. Shortly after I got back--well when I got into Hampton Roads I guess it was--there was a message for me to call Judge Wilbur K. Miller, who was one of the lawyers that I had started practicing law with as a kid. He was on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The law firm in Louisville, whom I had known quite well, had sent me an offer to practice law with them when I got home. Judge Miller wanted to tell me that he had arranged a partnership for me here with a lawyer by the name of Fowler, O. L. Fowler.

BRINSON: Oil?

HOLBROOK: O. L.

BRINSON: O. L., okay, thank you.

HOLBROOK: Fowler, F O W L E R. And he thought I would find it more pleasant than practicing law with the firm in Louisville. And so I started practicing law with Mr. Fowler. He was a great guy. He said, “First year it will be fifty-five, forty-five, second year and thereafter it will be fifty, fifty.”

BRINSON: I said, “That isn’t fair, I don’t have any clients left, except for one, that’s Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and the Bank.” They told me, they’d be here when I got back. And he laughed and said, “Well you haven’t heard me out. There are thirty-five lawsuits over an oil pool down in Union County.” [Coughs] Excuse me. “And I expect you to go take over trying all those lawsuits.” (Laughing) Furthermore he says, “As long as we are partners, you will not run for public office and two; you will not represent insurance companies or banks.” [Laughing] I said, “Why not?” And he said, “Oh hell, they want you to make reports, all that paperwork. My clients are all in the oil and gas business. They handle more money with less formality than any group. And I just don’t want to be bothered with banks and insurance companies.” Well we practiced law together from November of forty-five when I got.....

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE ONE

BEGIN TAPE ONE SIDE TWO

HOLBROOK: Say...

BRINSON: Let me just back up to make sure, you were saying, when we lost the end of the tape, that he was killed in an automobile accident in nineteen forty-seven.

HOLBROOK: He and another lawyer, named Miller Highland, who were leaders at the Bar here, were going to Evansville to go talk with some Evansville lawyers about settling some lawsuits. There was a heavy storm, snowstorm, put four inches of snow on the ground. A portion of U.S. 60 between here and Henderson parallels the railroad track very close to the railroad track. There was a train sitting on this track, blowing a lot of smoke, which was blowing across the highway and obscuring the vision. Mr. Fowler was driving the car, and there was a truck right in front of him that was driving very slowly. He attempted to go around the truck and didn’t see the oncoming truck, smashed into it, killed both the lawyers.

BRINSON: Had you begun at this point in time to represent the Davies County School Board?

HOLBROOK: I don’t believe so.

(Tape stops and starts)

BRINSON: That happens. Well, I was getting ready to ask you, how long you actually served as attorney to the Davies County School Board.

HOLBROOK: Around twenty-five years. I don’t remember the exact dates.

BRINSON: That’s good. Where I’m going with this, Mr. Holbrook, is I want to talk a little bit about how and when the schools actually began the desegregation process. Were you part of that discussion as their...?

HOLBROOK: Oh yes, as soon as the Brown case came down. Seems to me that, that case was argued twice. I may be wrong about that.

BRINSON: Well, there was the fifty-four decision, and in fifty-five there was an implementation process.

HOLBROOK: Ah yeah. They came up with that all deliberate speed formula.

BRINSON: Right.

HOLBROOK: As soon as that came down, as soon as the decision came down, I talked with the Board about it. The County Board was actually elated with it. The expense of bringing the students, the black students from the county into the city, and paying a tuition in the city, they didn’t like. It took, it diminished the funds available in the county system. There were very few blacks by then in high school, but enough that they wanted to get rid of the expense. I don’t think there was much opposition among the public in the county here.

BRINSON: How many schools, approximately, are we talking about in the county?

HOLBROOK: Oh, we still had some grade schools scattered around over the county; but during the time I represented them, we started consolidating all these schools. And one of my tasks frequently, was to go out to a community and explain why we were closing their school. This really provoked a lot of antagonism. The black problem didn’t provoke any problem. I recommended that they desegregate all the schools immediately, and so did the County School Superintendent recommend that; and the School Board said, “Fine, let’s go with it.” So we desegregated all the county schools in one fell swoop. The city handled it differently. I can’t remember whether they started from the top and went to the bottom; or from the bottom and then to the top. They did it by grades. And oh, there were letters to the editor, some disgruntled people saying this was going to cause fights and deteriorate the academic excellence and all that. But they were of no consequence. And as I recall, we only had one fistfight in the whole desegregation problem in the county. And I don’t think the city really had any difficulty about it, although G. G., Greg Tolbert, and Mr. Field and these folks would be able to tell you a lot more about that than I.

BRINSON: So you represented the county, but that didn’t include the city of Owensboro.

HOLBROOK: No, the city of Owensboro has an independent school system.

BRINSON: I have learned actually, in the city, itself, in nineteen fifty-five there was a partial desegregation that took place; but that in nineteen fifty-six there was a lawsuit filed against the city, charging that the plan was inadequate because it was to be phased in over a twelve year period. Do you remember hearing anything about that lawsuit?

HOLBROOK: Oh, I’m sure I knew about it at the time, but I don’t have any memory about it. (Laughing) In chatting with Mr. Field the other day. I called him and told him that you would probably want to interview him. His memory about it was that they were, the city schools were fully integrated in nineteen sixty-two. Western closed in nineteen sixty-two. Of course, he was speaking from memory, and he said he had some notes, and promised to review them.

BRINSON: Okay, that’s helpful. Do you have any recollection about the county, when the schools were desegregated, as to what happened to the black teachers in the process? Were they moved to the white schools? Did any of them lose positions? Did any of them have to take other positions in the move?

HOLBROOK: I think they had to take other positions, but as far as I can remember, none of them lost their job. They were integrated into the faculties of the various schools.

BRINSON: And do you have any recollection of what happened to the black school principal?

HOLBROOK: Yes, gee I was thinking about him the other day. He was a great guy.

BRINSON: Do you remember his name? It was a long time ago.

HOLBROOK: For the life of me, I cannot recall his name. I remember that I went out to the club, to the country club to play golf one day, and I had left some golf shoes out to be shined. And I was astonished to find that he was shining shoes out there. And I said, “What in God’s name are you doing out here at this?” And he said, “Well I wanted to have something to do.” I believe he retired, I believe what happened to him, is he retired. But as he was, gee, why can’t I think of his name? Well, Harry Field will be able to tell you what his name was. I don’t think that he--I don’t remember any school that he became principal of.

BRINSON: And in the county, you had how many black elementary schools?

HOLBROOK: Let’s see, one at Whitesville, there was one, I believe, at Utica, may have been one at West Louisville. There were very few, and they were small, ill equipped, impoverished faculty. Separate, but equal, was a farce.

BRINSON: And then the high school students came into the city black schools.

HOLBROOK: To Western. There may have been a black school down at Sorgho, come to think about it. There’s a church down there, called Little Flock Baptist Church, and one of our maid’s father was the preacher there. And I believe they did have a school down there for several years. Anyway there were just four or five schools.

BRINSON: Okay. I know that you have been a Democratic party leader, at all levels, for a number of years.

HOLBROOK: Well, that’s stretching the truth, drastically.

BRINSON: Is it? Okay. What I really want to talk to you about though, in that context, is a little bit about voting and participation of the Black community in the political process here in town.

HOLBROOK: Well, the Blacks voted here, always. They were segregated on the ballots. I mean, if you wanted to look at a voters list, you looked at the black list and you looked at the white list. And even taxes were segregated on the tax rolls. If you were examining--a lawyer were examining a title to property that was owned by blacks, he went to the black indexes; (Laughing) and if it was owned by whites, you went to the white index. And of course, they had separate bath facilities, the restaurants were segregated.

BRINSON: I’m going to talk to you about some of the public accommodations, also.

HOLBROOK: I see.

BRINSON: But so, to your recollections, blacks always voted. Which party did they tend to support?

HOLBROOK: Well, my memory about it was that prior to Roosevelt, the Blacks generally supported the Republican party, they called it the party of Old Abe. But when Roosevelt became President, he did so many things that the Black people appreciated, that most of them switched to the Democratic party. There was widespread efforts, principally by white political candidates to take over certain segments of the black votes with gifts and whiskey, things of that sort.

BRINSON: Tried to buy votes?

HOLBROOK: Trying to buy votes. White and Black alike. I’m sure they succeeded in some cases, although it was never a major problem. We did not have a boss in the black fraternity, black segment here. They were pretty independent. You had some leaders in the Black community. Greg Tolbert’s mother--his family were--Mrs. Tolbert was a graduate of Kentucky State University and taught school, and a very fine person.

BRINSON: What sort of a leadership role did she play, do you remember?

HOLBROOK: Principally in educational circles, I don’t recall that she participated in politics, although she may have.

BRINSON: Okay. At what point do you recall Blacks actually beginning to run for office, or being appointed to appointive office?

HOLBROOK: There were very few appointive offices for Blacks, up until fairly recent years. And no elected Black officers for many years. In fact, I’m not so sure that Reverend McFarland wasn’t the first Black officer elected by the voter people.

BRINSON: He told me, actually he served in nineteen eighty-five, eighty-six. Now there was a woman here.

HOLBROOK: Holly Burroughs?

BRINSON: No, her name is Jean Higgs. And she told me, that she was the first, she was a telephone supervisor for the telephone company. And she told me that she was the first Black appointed and then elected to the School Board.

HOLBROOK: To the City School Board was she?

BRINSON: To the City School Board.

HOLBROOK: Yeah. Well that may very well be. Of course, we now have Holly Burroughs on the city commission.

BRINSON: What do you think kept Blacks from being more active, in running for office?

HOLBROOK: Well, they are a comparatively small part of the population, and by and large they were under educated. They didn’t have the finances to run for public office. And face it, there were a lot of people who still had severe prejudices against black people. They believed in segregation. Governor of Alabama had a lot of adherents here, so I can understand why they didn’t run for public office.

BRINSON: Okay.

HOLBROOK: It’s been very unusual that Reverend McFarland has generally been right at the top of the ticket. I really thought he ought to give way to Holly. I talked with her several times about running. She was bright, ambitious, was also a telephone operator, but was taking courses at college. And I thought to divide the vote would be a great mistake, and since Reverend McFarland had been on the Commission, I think for two terms, maybe three, I thought Holly should be given a chance; but he didn’t agree about that. [Laughing] And so she had to run against him and she did beat him.

BRINSON: Does Owensboro have a district election, or is everything at-large?

HOLBROOK: It’s at-large.

BRINSON: At-large, okay. We started a few minutes ago, to talk about opening up public accommodations, in terms of restaurants and theaters. What do you recall about that experience? In most places in Kentucky this was beginning to happen in the early sixties. In some places it was actually a little earlier than that.

HOLBROOK: Well, the Blacks here in town, by and large, were slow to be assertive, they still were hesitant to walk into the larger restaurants in town. Gabe’s for example was a--that’s G A B E, Gabe Fiarella had the most popular restaurant in town here for many years. And while he had some black employees, I don’t really think that black people ever felt comfortable going into Gabe’s to eat. Almost never saw them there. He had a restaurant downtown, then he moved out to Eighteenth and Hartford Road.

[Interruption tape goes off and on]

HOLBROOK: Another thing, the black people didn’t have the money to eat out in restaurants often.

BRINSON: Right. How about movie theaters here?

HOLBROOK: Well, I don’t go to movies enough to really know about that. [Laughing]

BRINSON: At one point though, I’m sure they were segregated.

HOLBROOK: Oh yeah.

BRINSON: Was there a separate balcony for black attendees?

HOLBROOK: Gee, I can’t recall.

BRINSON: Do you have any recollection of separate waiting rooms for buses and trains?

HOLBROOK: Oh yeah, yes. The L&N Railroad Company, well actually it was the L. H. and Saint L. in the thirties and in the forties too, for that matter. Louisville, Henderson and Saint Louis and the Illinois Central that served here. And the L. H. & Saint L., which later became the L&N Railroad Company had a very nice station out on Frederica Street. They had separate waiting rooms. The Illinois Central had a separate waiting station, and I don’t remember much about it, but I’m sure it was segregated. They wouldn’t...

BRINSON: And I would guess also separate water fountains and different facilities.

HOLBROOK: Oh yeah, yeah.

BRINSON: Do you have any recollections about libraries? Was there a separate black library?

HOLBROOK: No, there wasn’t and as a matter of fact, I don’t know of any black library in existence, except at Western High School.

BRINSON: And of course, they couldn’t attend the main library.

HOLBROOK: No, I say that, but I don’t remember ever seeing any black people out at the library. It was a small, Carnegie Library at Ninth and Frederica Street. And the librarian there, Rose, not Rose, Mrs. McCullach, anyway I’m sure would have served black students had they come in there; but I never saw one in there.

BRINSON: In the early sixties when we began to see the sit-ins and demonstrations in Louisville, certainly, some also in Lexington. Was there any activity like that here in Owensboro, that you recall?

HOLBROOK: No, I really don’t. There was a shocking thing that happened here in thirty-six, I guess it was. They hanged a black man, just down where the Executive Inn is now. Some black lawyers up in Louisville--the judge--the circuit judge on the bench then, appointed the whole Bar to represent the black man. And of course, no one did anything, really. Perfunctory cross examination of witnesses. So these lawyers from up in Louisville came down and filed a petition in the Federal Court to set aside this whole proceeding. And that was not successful. But the tragedy of the thing was that people--thousands of people gathered to watch this. And I have to admit that I was guilty as one of them. I was a sophomore at Harvard Law School then. And of course, this thing got widespread publicity. One of my friends was touring France at that time and he sent me a clipping from one of the Parisian newspapers with a big story about the woman sheriff, gonna hang this black man. And of course, I came in to watch it. There were...

BRINSON: And what was he charged?

HOLBROOK: Rape. He raped and murdered an elderly white woman, who lived here in the town. He was not--he was feared really in the black community. He had a bad reputation. I don’t think the blacks had any sympathy for him really. But nonetheless, I think that public spectacle of thousands of people gathering to see a black man die, cast a sort of pall over the black community; even though they didn’t like, Ray Bethea was his name. I don’t know that I could prove that theory.

BRINSON: Well I wonder if it didn’t also place the same feeling over the white community; because I’ve actually had several people now, to mention that and they’ve been white. And it’s clearly an incident that good people, you know, are left with sort of struggling about how this could happen.

HOLBROOK: Oh yeah, my father was rather furious at me, for coming in to watch that. I told him, of course, I would get a thousand questions at Harvard Law School about this event and I wanted to see what went on.

BRINSON: What did go on?

HOLBROOK: Pardon me?

BRINSON: What did go on, do you...?

HOLBROOK: Oh, I remember it vividly. The Sheriff--the elected Sheriff had died, Everett Thompson, I believe was his name. And his wife had succeeded to the office. And of course, when the verdict was sustained through all the procedures, it was widely speculated that she would hang Bethea. Instead she employed a professional hangman. As I recall, he was from Louisville. I don’t know how he got to be professional, because there wasn’t that kind of hanging going on to qualify for a profession. Anyway, she did not do the hanging. The gallows were erected in what is now the parking lot. Did you stay at the Executive Inn last night?

BRINSON: No, but I have stayed there.

HOLBROOK: I see, well where the parking lot is, is where they hanged him. And as I remember the event, the jailer brought the prisoner out, just a short distance from the jail, over half a block. And the prisoner stopped--they had steps built up to the gallows--and the prisoner stopped at the bottom of the steps; and I thought, changed his socks. I remember he took his shoes off, and it looked to me as if he were changing his socks. And then he was lead up to the platform where the hangman and the deputy jailer, deputy sheriff were standing, waiting for him. They put a drape over his head, sort of a sack like thing, it came down to just below his shoulders, as I remember. And the hangman put the noose around his neck. And I can’t remember now whether there was a minister there or not. I don’t believe there was, there may have been though. Anyway, he put the noose around him, and there was a big knot--so called hangman’s knot--close to his right ear. And there was a deathly silence over the whole crowd. They were gathered around about as far as you could see around there. The hangman then tripped the trapdoor, and he fell to a point where his head was maybe three or four feet below the platform. And as he hit--dropped to the end of the rope--the rope snapped his head around like this to the side and his feet convulsed a few times, then quit. I believe there was a doctor there, I can’t remember. Anyway, they pronounced him dead. I can’t remember whether it was a doctor who did that, it may have been the coroner. I was standing some distance back. I didn’t get there. They had the--the so called hangman parties the night before, some of the places around town. Like every bar, you know, they take advantage of every opportunity to sell drinks. So it was jammed up close to the gallows. I was standing back maybe fifty, sixty feet. And then they took his body down, and I don’t know where they took it. I guess they buried him out in the Potter’s Field for black folks here.

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE TWO

BEGIN SIDE ONE TAPE TWO

BRINSON: You were saying it was all white, no blacks. How about male, female, how did that kind of break down?

HOLBROOK: Overwhelmingly male, in fact (Laughing), I don’t recall seeing any women there.

BRINSON: Was it a quiet crowd, was it a noisy crowd?

HOLBROOK: Not a noisy crowd. Before they brought Rainey out of jail, of course, there was a lot of conversation. But when they brought him up to the gallows steps, everything got quiet. I can’t remember whether I asked the jailer after that, whether he actually changed his socks or not. That was what I saw him doing. I know he stopped at the first step and I saw him take off his shoe and then take off another shoe.

BRINSON: At what point did the crowd begin to disperse?

HOLBROOK: Immediately after he was pronounced dead, they disassembled. It got this town an awful lot of bad publicity. Every newspaper in the country carried the story, and it was carried in Europe.

BRINSON: Did you get questions from Harvard classmates?

HOLBROOK: Oh yeah, yeah. Everybody wanted to know what kind of justice we had down here. It was the last, I’m sure the last public hanging in the United Stat

BRINSON: Okay, thank you. In nineteen sixty-eight, Mr. Holbrook, that was a pretty volatile year, we had the death of Martin Luther King, we had riots and demonstrations any number of places, including Louisville. And I understand that there was an incident here, in Owensboro, in the black community. Do you have any recollection of that? The little bit of information that I have is that it actually took place in the black community. There were about twenty-two arrests made.

HOLBROOK: Gee, I don’t remember that, can’t give you any help on that.

BRINSON: But other than that, which you don’t remember, do you remember any kind of activity of that sort, here?

HOLBROOK: There was police brutality. A black fellow came to me one day with freshly healed scars on his head, wanted me to sue the police, whom he accused of having beaten him up; and I agreed to look into it for him. I went over and interviewed the police chief, several of the officers, all of whom denied that they had done this. All claimed that he had, had a fight down in Baptist Town and got these scars and so forth. I always believed his story about it, but I never thought I could get a jury to disbelieve all these police officers. The city, in fairness to the city, they always had some black police officers here. And by and large they were very good officers. I can’t remember now, of course, they were not accused by this boy of having participated in beating him. And I don’t know whether I ever interviewed them about the case or not. But I always believed the boy was telling me the truth about that. And I always believed the chief and these two or three officers, the boy told me did it, lied about it, but other than that, I don’t recall any, any really proof of police brutality. It was pretty well left up to the black police officers to police that part of town.

BRINSON: That leads me to ask you about black employment, particularly after the law was passed in the sixties, opening up jobs for blacks in areas that they hadn’t had them. How did that actually come about in Owensboro, Davies county? Is there a Commission on Human Relations for example that handles...?

HOLBROOK: Yeah, they have one and I think it’s been fairly active. I don’t know how many cases they dispose of, but they’ve been rather influential about it. I don’t remember any suits being filed, tell you the truth, after Johnson forced through the Civil Rights Act. I was counsel for the General Electric Company here for several years. I don’t remember any charges against GE about that. They had black employees out there. We had a number--we had some strikes, but not based on that, they were always arguments over pay, working conditions, things of that sort. Violations of seniority, unions claimed. Had a very strong union here. I remember--I can’t recall now--I took one of the cases up to sixth Circuit for GE, but it had nothing to do with race.

BRINSON: How about the city employment?

HOLBROOK: Well, I think the employment of the blacks was largely in menial positions; garbage, sanitation, street work, things like that.

BRINSON: And probably those kinds of positions they held before the sixties.

HOLBROOK: Yes, yeah before that. I don’t really think the Johnson legislation had much to do here in our community.

BRINSON: There’s quite a bit of industry in the area, I gather, and I wonder with that industry whether they began, as new companies began to come into the area, did they begin to hire more black workers?

HOLBROOK: Well gee, the companies that were here, were national companies. For example, GE had sixty-five hundred people employed here at one time. And they were not going to vary on national policy here in Owensboro, no matter what the local sentiment was. And the distilleries were still operating here then, making whiskey. We had Fleischmann, another national and Jewish owned company, which would be against any discrimination. We had Glenmore, which was not exactly a national concern, but nonetheless in the national market. And then we had the Medley distilling company. And I represented those distilleries. They had scattered about, black employees, again not in supervisory positions, but good wages. The Medley Boys--there were five Medley brothers, who came back here from World War Two, about the same time I did. And they bought out an old distillery, sour mash distillery, I can’t remember the name of it. And we got into trade name litigation with Fleischmann’s people. And I went up to New York to meet with the President of Fleischmann’s Distilling Company and his lawyers and staff. And Gus Fleischmann was at the meeting, (Laughing) and he accused my clients of being prejudiced against the Jews. And I challenged him about that, suggested he call Western Wines and Liquor Company up in Saint Louis, which is one of our major purchasers of bulk whiskey and is Jewish owned. And told him, “You call them, they’ve known my clients, and their fathers and grandfathers in the distilling business for three generations, and if they don’t tell you that there is not a drop of prejudice in these people, I’ll go back home.” Well, he didn’t take me up on it. All he could do was cite a case out on the West coast, where some salesman of Medley Distilling Company had spoken against the Jewish fraternity out there.

BRINSON: How do you think black employment in the community is today? Beyond the lower wage positions, has there been any progress in terms of supervisory roles?

HOLBROOK: It’s been disturbingly slow. That’s one reason I want you to talk with G. G. Tolbert, he was a friend of my boys here. He works at Kentucky Wesleyan College now, has a good job out there. He’s a bright boy, taught in the public schools here. He can probably tell you a lot more about that than I, because he knows which of his friends have jobs, which ones don’t. And also, Richard Brown, you know I couldn’t think of his first name when we were talking, who is the Probation and Parole Officer here now. He sees a lot of the troubles in black people in getting jobs and holding them. Several of my boyhood chums in the black race, with whom I played baseball and stuff like that, became small businessmen here in Owensboro. Olive, he’s dead ten years ago. Ollie Epson, brother of Earl Epson, with whom I had my last fistfight, was a plasterer contractor here in town, and a really talented workman. You may think putting plaster on ceilings and all, is not very talented work, but it requires a lot of competent workmanship, both in the mixing of the material and in the application. He did the plastering in my house and it is as good today as it was forty years ago when it was built. Reverend McFarland, you know, runs the funeral home here for the black people. Most of the segregation in Owensboro, and I think mostly in Kentucky is still in the Churches, you just don’t have any mixed congregations. We have retrogressed in that. The First Baptist Church here, originally had, maybe a quarter of its membership were black, that was back before the Civil War. But now, black man walk into a white church, it wouldn’t be in my church, they would be welcomed. But they just don’t come, they prefer to go to their own churches. It’s sort of like KSU. The most segregated college in Kentucky is KSU. And it will always be that way, as long as the blacks say, “We want our college.” (Laughing)

BRINSON: Okay. I’m coming to the end, but I want to ask you just by way of summarizing here, how you would evaluate overall the progress of improving race relations in the area?

HOLBROOK: Oh, I think there’s been tremendous progress. Black people can walk into any restaurant in town and get food, seated wherever they want to sit. They can walk into any hotel or motel in town get rooms, accommodations. Enormous progress. Most people, white people in Owensboro, in Davies County, would not believe me if I told them that they used to segregate the tax rolls in the town. (Laughing) They’d say, “Nah, that never happened,” but it did happen. Just incredible progress.

BRINSON: What do you think the community did exceptionally well in this whole effort? And at the same time, what do you think they did poorly?

HOLBROOK: Well, I credit the schools with, I think, doing a good job at desegregation here. I think the school leaders were responsive to the Brown Decision and have managed pretty well. I noted for a few years after that, for example, I would sometimes be asked to speak at senior high here, or the county high. And the black students, frequently responded indifferently, they would stretch, put their hand over on their shoulder, were somewhat discourteous, but that too has largely dissipated. The prominence of athletes in basketball, particularly by the blacks has done a great deal for them. For example, the first President of Kentucky Wesleyan, maybe the second one, I forget, was a fellow named Oscar Lever. He was a native of North or South Carolina. And I had a black friend, the friend of one of my sons, who was a really fine basketball player. And I went out to see Doctor Lever about allowing him to enter Wesleyan. And he just turned me down flat, wouldn’t hear, wouldn’t think of it. And I never could--I liked him--he was a personable fellow and had a good educational background; but he was profoundly prejudice. Now you go to watch the Wesleyan College ball team and hell, they’re all black. (Laughing) And that has done a lot. For example, I have a dear friend named Rosalyn Woodburn, the former wife of, I guess one of our most wealthy and successful businessmen here in town. They’re divorced now, unfortunately. But anyway, one of their daughters married one of the black basketball players out here, just a wonderful guy. And Rosalyn goes horseback riding with me occasionally, and I was chatting with her about what I regard as one of her most sparkling accomplishments. The couple was married in the First Presbyterian Church, here. And at the end of the ceremony when the bride and the groom were walking out, and the ushers were bringing the parents of the couples down the aisle; Rosalyn went out on the arm of a black fellow. It caused no adverse comment, something that would have provoked a riot, you know. And just today, as I was driving in, I live out in the country here, and as I was driving in, I saw this white girl and this black boy sitting in a bus stop inside of town. She had her arms around his neck, you know, and they were just carrying on, as if they couldn’t wait another minute. That raises no eyebrows now. There are a number of blacks and whites here in our town, who live together, some of them married. Unbelievable change.

BRINSON: So what do you think, if you do, what do you think the community did not do so well at, in terms of racial progress?

HOLBROOK: Well, one thing that has been disappointing is the low rate of secondary education, of post-secondary education of the black people. The legislature has, as you probably know, I served several years on the Governor’s post-secondary nominating committee. And the General Assembly set up all these categories, you’ve got to have equal representation between male and female, proportional representation between political parties, races and all that sort of thing. And almost impossible to do that with black people, because you can’t find them.

BRINSON: And you have to be a college graduate, regardless of race to serve.

HOLBROOK: Well, no, you don’t really have to be.

BRINSON: Oh you don’t?

HOLBROOK: No, but you want people with that sort of education to serve. And I swear it is just distressing. I went through probably four hundred and fifty or five hundred applications, and I could put on, as I did, I think it was only one page of legal size paper in longhand the names of black people. And many of them didn’t want to serve.

BRINSON: How does that process work? Can you nominate yourself?

HOLBROOK: Sure you could.

BRINSON: You can? And then also you’re nominated by others?

HOLBROOK: Matter of fact that’s the way you start, you file an application with the administrative office in the Governor’s Office.

BRINSON: Okay.

HOLBROOK: And then the committee sits down and goes over it. It started out with a great bang, then over three terms I sort of got worn out with it. But I say, in the college and post graduate work, it’s the worst job we’ve done with changing the economic and cultural status of African-Americans.

BRINSON: Now that certainly applies to the state. Does it apply also, how does that apply here in Davies County? I mean you do have the community college, I guess, that you have to make appointments to.

HOLBROOK: No we don’t. We don’t make those. We make it just for the eight universities, oh yeah the community colleges, no, no, we don’t. We don’t.

BRINSON: They don’t have Boards?

HOLBROOK: They have Boards, but they are selected locally.

BRINSON: Well, if they are selected locally, would that be an issue here in terms of black representation?

HOLBROOK: It should be but I don’t, as far as I know, the local Board....You see the community colleges were administered by the University of Kentucky for many years, and they had advisory, sort of Advisory Boards. And I really don’t know, I haven’t looked at the statute in some time, whether there is a statutory procedure that has to be followed. At any rate, the community colleges, we never did furnish those.

BRINSON: Okay. Well is there anything else, Mr. Holbrook, about this topic that we haven’t talked about, that you think is important to include?

HOLBROOK: Well, I’m not sure that I understand. Could you put in one sentence, the focus of your effort?

BRINSON: Well, it’s an effort to first off look at what a separate society was like, a segregated society, both from perspective of white and black. And then to look at some of the changes that came about with school desegregation and public accommodations and employment, and to document those. Because there are very few written records of any sort. So, this is why we need the stories.

HOLBROOK: Oh yes, jury service. When I first came back here to practice law, I started with the firm of Kerry, Miller and Kirk. Kerry was the member of Congress from the second district. Judge Kirk had been a U. S. Commissioner in Louisville, and Wilbur Miller was a former county attorney and former Commonwealth Attorney and he was a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and a very bright person, but an unreconstructed Rebel. And the Scottsboro case had just been decided, maybe while I was in Law school, and the custom then was to appoint the new lawyers to represent all the impecunious persons charged with crime. And I was appointed, the judge appointed me to represent two or three black boys here, charged with various felonies. And I immediately raised the Scottsboro issue, that blacks had been systematically excluded from the jury panels here. And the judge called me back in chambers and said, “Are you serious about this motion?” And I said, “Well absolutely. I’m going up on it, if you don’t sustain my motion.” “Well,” he shook his head sadly, [Laughing] said, “All right Mr. Holbrook, I’m going to sustain your motion.” So I went back over to the office, greatly elated. And the first fellow I ran into over there, was Judge Miller. And I said, “Hey I just had a stroke of good luck.” “ What was it?” I said, “I just set aside the indictments of my clients down there on the ground of black people have been systematically excluded.” His face clouded up and he got red in the face, and he said, “You have played hell.” And I was just crushed, you know, I thought this was a great triumph. And of course, we’ve had black people on the jury ever since here and all over the state; not that they paid any attention to what we did here in this county. But lawyers started raising the issue in all the courts and of course, they were sustained about that. So that had a profound influence on the administration of justice in the courts. Now for years, a black juror on the jury panel, didn’t really exercise a lot of influence. He was intimidated, he or she was intimidated. Oh, also, they excluded women from jury here, juries here, that’s another....Oh, yeah, I raised that issue, too. So that had more, really, the Scottsboro case had about as much influence as any of the Congressional acts to tell you the truth, on the administration of justice in the state. Because of the small percentage of black population in the state. Now you know, Kentucky is, except for Louisville, you get outside of Louisville and you just don’t have any black population. There is no work for them of any consequence, it’s low work and low pay. So that I guess is the one thing I would point to that we haven’t discussed and the profound effect that it’s had in the jury system.

BRINSON: Thank you very much for talking to me.

HOLBROOK: Great pleasure. You want to go to lunch with me?

END OF INTERVIEW