Oral History Interview with F.E. Whitney

BETSY BRINSON: This is an interview with Mr. F. E. Whitney in his hometown of Hopkinsville, Kentucky. The interviewer is Betsy Brinson, and the interview takes place at the Virginia Street Baptist Church. Well, thank you for meeting with me today, Mr. Whitney

FRANCIS EUGENE WHITNEY: It’s a pleasure, to be here.

BRINSON: Let me get a voice level here on you please, if you would give me your full name and your birth date and birth place, please.

WHITNEY: My full name is Francis Eugene Whitney. I was born here in Hopkinsville, Kentucky on August third, nineteen and sixteen.

BRINSON: So you have a birthday coming up.

WHITNEY: That’s right.

BRINSON: And you will be how old on your birthday?

WHITNEY: Eighty-four.

BRINSON: Eighty-four. Okay. (Tape goes off and comes back on) We talked a little bit on the phone about this project, but basically, what I would like to do today is get a little bit of background information about you here in Hopkinsville. But then I also want to talk to you about the history in Hopkinsville and surrounding areas if you like, from about nineteen thirty to nineteen seventy-five, and the whole effort to eliminate legal segregation here in the community. Some people call that civil rights.

WHITNEY: Civil rights, yeah.

BRINSON: But we take it back to nineteen thirty in Kentucky, because there clearly were people who were involved in trying to eliminate segregation in all manner of ways back to nineteen thirty and probably before that, too. But let’s begin with some information about you. You were born here in Hopkinsville.

WHITNEY: That’s correct.

BRINSON: Can you tell me a little bit about your family, your immediate family, maybe your grandparents, where your ancestors came from, if you know that?

WHITNEY: Okay, my grandparents on both sides, maternal and paternal came from Barren County. My father was born in a little place below, I say just above Scottsville, called Statenfield.

BRINSON: Statenfield?

WHITNEY: Statenfield. And my mother was born in Glasgow, Kentucky, both in Barren County. Grandfather Whitney had a little farm, a hundred and twenty-five acres down there, which was swamp and hills, but it was a matter of survival. And grandparents, my grandma Smith and her husband, they had a little place in Glasgow, just outside of Glasgow, about nineteen acres. And that’s how they survived in those days. And my father came, I don’t know why he got the inspiration to study Law, which back in those days, they read Law. He passed the Bar there in Glasgow. The judges and the Court gave the examination and that was in eighteen and ninety-seven.

BRINSON: Did he apprentice himself to a lawyer to read Law?

WHITNEY: All I know is that--I don’t think so, because right after he was given--they gave him--declared him officially a lawyer, he came here to Hopkinsville; where he was attempting to break ground and practice here. That was about November, I believe, of ninety-seven that he came here. Of course, and it was a tough time, and in the meantime, the government, I forget right the name of the Governor, decided to have mail carriers, letter carriers. So they were going to hire, at that time, Negroes, to do that, and there was one other gentleman here, I think his name was Whitlock, and my father was the second person to carry the mail. Incidentally, they really were mail carriers, because they delivered the letters in the morning and carried parcel post in the afternoon. And he did that too, because at that time a Negro practicing Law was just almost, (Laughing) it was an almost mythical thing. But it was a matter of survival.

BRINSON: So, he broke some real barriers.

WHITNEY: That’s right.

BRINSON: ...for his race...

WHITNEY: That was the beginning of change, because it changed a lot of attitudes and so forth. My mother, her brother--her oldest brother, whose name was Samuel Smith--he was a minister. He had a church in Owensboro, which was built by the Fourth Street Baptist Church there. And he came, he had a little sister, the baby sister and brought her to Owensboro and put her in high school, and there she was educated. Anyway she finished high school in eighteen ninety-nine. She went back to Glasgow, Barren County there, and taught in the school, a place called Hiseville, about three years; and after that she and my father married, and she came to Hopkinsville.

BRINSON: Tell me the name of that town, Hiseville?

WHITNEY: Hiseville.

BRINSON: Do you know how to spell that?

WHITNEY: H I S E V I L L E.

BRINSON: Okay, thank you.

WHITNEY: And she taught there until they married. I think it was about three years, and then she came here.

BRINSON: Do you have any brothers and sisters?

WHITNEY: Had one brother, name was James T. Whitney, Junior, and he passed in nineteen seventy-three. And he was, he finished off high school here at Attucks, and went to Fisk. The curious thing about James—he--at the time he was in Fisk--the Depression--it was in the late twenties, about twenty-nine, twenty-eight; but I’m saying this to tell you—he--one summer he got a job in Cincinnati at the Union Terminal there and he made so much money that he didn’t go back to Fisk to finish that last, I think he had about a quarter.

BRINSON: Which of you is the oldest?

WHITNEY: He was the oldest.

BRINSON: He was the oldest.

WHITNEY: Incidentally he was, we used to tease Mom about it, he was twelve years older than I. I was a baby, just the two of us. And he stayed there. He kept promising to go back to get his degree, but all the other folks were having such a hard time and he was making so much money down at the terminal, he never did get back.

BRINSON: Tell me about your early education.

WHITNEY: Well, I was educated here in the schools, we called it Jackson Street, now it is known as Booker T. Washington. And after I finished there, I went to Attucks High School here.

BRINSON: Crispus Attucks...

WHITNEY: Crispus Attucks...

BRINSON: High School

WHITNEY: High school. And I finished Crispus Attucks in nineteen and thirty-three.

BRINSON: How many people approximately, were in your graduation class at high school?

WHITNEY: At the most there were perhaps, maybe twenty.

BRINSON: Twenty, okay. So how, now I know that Hopkinsville, the last census, nineteen ninety I believe, had about thirty thousand people in town, but I don’t know how many of those are black.

WHITNEY: Well, I’ll give you some figures, let’s say we’ll just pick out of the air, you’ll pardon that type of expression. But do you remember, you ever remember talking about during the days of Franklin Roosevelt and the National Recovery Act?

BRINSON: Uh hmm, uh hmm.

WHITNEY: This was in the nineteen fifties, they made a survey, and at that time there were, fifty-two percent of the population of Hopkinsville was what we now call Black. But now they estimate at the least, the population is thirty percent.

BRINSON: Thirty percent, so there’s been a big drop.

WHITNEY: Been a big drop. Well, see because the one thing is economic, because back in my days, and back in my brother’s days, there was no job opportunities. The only thing here we’d had then, the biggest thing in our economy was agriculture. And of course you know, if you are familiar with agriculture and down here the basic thing was tobacco. And the working season maybe was from, oh latter part of February through, maybe up to November. And the rest of the time you didn’t have anything, they didn’t have anything to do.

BRINSON: So a lot of people have left over the years.

WHITNEY: A lot of people left then. And of course, one of the things they were looking for were job opportunities. And of course being Negro, the opportunities to work unless you were, well like the Doctors, Ministers, Undertakers and then when the Civil Service opened up. But the other jobs were just--I don’t know how you’d classify them--but they were mediocre.

BRINSON: Right. When people have left Hopkinsville from the Black community, where do they go?

WHITNEY: Most of them went to Indianapolis, Chicago, St. Louis and in the Eastern part is in Ohio, Dayton, Columbus along in there.

BRINSON: To the bigger cities.

WHITNEY: That’s right, where we thought the opportunity was. And they got better jobs, and of course, the change became when Fort Campbell came.

BRINSON: Was that during World War Two?

WHITNEY: Uh hmm. At the beginning of World War Two, starting about nineteen and forty-two, forty-one, when Fort Campbell began to come in.

BRINSON: And Fort Campbell is about how far from Hopkinsville?

WHITNEY: It is just about sixteen miles.

BRINSON: Sixteen miles, okay.

WHITNEY: And so that brought a change in the economy, and then that also brought a change in the distribution of people; because more white people came and those that didn’t go away somewhere else, they came into Christian County. See and part of Fort Campbell is in Christian County, and there was quite an argument between the two Senators, one from Tennessee and one from Kentucky, with most of the ground in Tennessee, why was it named Fort Campbell, Kentucky. But our Senator from Kentucky was the most influential and that’s the way, you know, our politics goes, and that was the way it stayed.

BRINSON: I wonder with Fort Campbell coming, how did that affect the Black community in Hopkinsville?

WHITNEY: Well, that brought some changes because people could get jobs at Fort Campbell. And it was quite an interesting thing that you ask that question, our people let’s say were working here in the farm, on farms and as maids and chauffeurs, they found they could get a job, they went to Fort Campbell. And there was a little protest from some of the people in the county that went to the general and talked to him about hiring all of their blacks down there, and they were having a hard job. And he told them well you pay them more money [Laughing] and that wouldn’t happen. I think that’s the impact that the Fort Campbell had on the community.

BRINSON: Did people do that? Did people pay more...?

WHITNEY: Some did that wanted to still keep the black help, because they figured that was the only way they were going to get their maids and their cooks and their chauffeurs, they’d have to pay them.

BRINSON: So Fort Campbell helped in that it provided jobs.

WHITNEY: That’s right.

BRINSON: Did it change any attitudes though about social justice and equality in any way? WHITNEY: Well, it had its impact. I’ll tell you what happened. The biggest thing that happened, in my opinion, that made a big change, was in nineteen and fifty-two. We had a commission form of government, which was just three commissioners; the mayor, public safety, and then I think the road department, or something like those three categories. A man was--a soldier was shot, killed, up here on Seventh Street, between Virginia and Main, and he was white. The police officer shot him. It was--upset the general out there, at Fort Campbell. And he said--took Hopkinsville off limits to soldiers. So there was always a group of people who, and these were white, who were concerned about the welfare of the community. And they knew at that time they couldn’t afford to lose what Fort Campbell had brought to us economically, to the whole community. And they talked with the general and he said, “They’d have to prove to him that this wasn’t going to happen, for a soldier to come up here and get killed.” So, that’s when these people decided to change the form of government from commission to councilmatic. And of course--naturally you are familiar with the people--there are those who didn’t want to see the change, but the folks who were looking for progress, said this was the time to make a change. They said to us and what you would now call the Black community, will you help us make this change in form of government, if you will help, we’ll see that you have two people on the council. And so we did. We co-operated with this group to change a government from commission to councilmatic. And that’s why we now today have a councilmatic form of government, which changed a lot of attitudes.

BRINSON: I actually watched a little bit of the council meeting on television last night.

WHITNEY: Oh, you did?

BRINSON: When I first came to town. And I noticed there was at least only one black member present and one woman and the rest seemed to be white men.

WHITNEY: Well see there were two, they are, I know there are three on the council now. Why they weren’t there last night, I’m not able to say.

BRINSON: Maybe summer vacations.

WHITNEY: Maybe so, but there are three.

BRINSON: Let me go back to Fort Campbell, the beginning of Fort Campbell again, because you remember with World War Two, when the military became integrated; and after the war with President Truman’s edict, and men who served in World War Two, particularly the Black soldiers got out and saw some of the world; and it was hard for some of them to come back home again, particularly if they were coming to a community from the Deep South or whatever, where there was racial prejudice and bias. I wonder if there were any here in Hopkinsville, who went away or went to work at Fort Campbell, who came back into the community and thought well maybe we need to do things differently here.

WHITNEY: Yes. We had, of course, I know you are familiar with an organization called the NAACP? And it was the one spearheading this thing of Civil Rights and of course it was, I’ll give you some names of some of the persons that were instrumental in getting some of the changes, a Minister named Sill Stripland.

BRINSON: Sill Strickland?

WHITNEY: Stripland, uh hmm, Lewis P....attorney Lewis P. McHenry.

BRINSON: And this was about what period?

WHITNEY: This was in the period of the forties, late forties.

BRINSON: Okay.

WHITNEY: I can’t give you a specifically, late forties, but it was in there. Late forties, early fifties. A Doctor Brooks, a fellow named Willie Jones, who was the President of the NAACP. And they were bringing, of course we had a pretty nice chapter of NAACP in getting our people organized, to stick together to demand things that previously, that before World War Two, they didn’t speak out much about. It was certainly something of a beginning of a change.

BRINSON: Do you know how old the NAACP chapter is in Hopkinsville?

WHITNEY: Yes’m. My father along with a bunch of other men, named Peter Boyd and Peter Postel.

BRINSON: Peter Boyd?

WHITNEY: Uh hmm, Peter Boyd, Peter Postel, Abe Holmes, Will Norman. It was about nineteen and nineteen when they set up the first NAACP chapter here. And they were forever, what we call going around knocking on doors, you know, until the time you didn’t get a response. But at least they knew the pressure was asking for.

BRINSON: Was there a youth chapter of the NAACP here?

WHITNEY: There wasn’t then. I think there’s a youth chapter now.

BRINSON: So as a young boy, you never belonged to the NAACP?

WHITNEY: No. Not any of my generation, they didn’t, I reckon we thought maybe it was just for the older folks.

BRINSON: I wonder if there were any women who were involved in the NAACP?

WHITNEY: Well now, back in my days there were. The women, they had to be a member of the chapter, but they weren’t vocal, you know, they just were supporters. In later years, there was a lady here, named Mrs. Munn; Doctor Brooks’ daughter-in-law, named Nan Paine Brooks, was very active.

BRINSON: Nan?

WHITNEY: Paine Brooks, she was very active, and she kept a very active chapter of the NAACP. They were constantly pressing for civil rights.

BRINSON: Was she an officer?

WHITNEY: Yeah, she was the President of the chapter for quite some time.

BRINSON: And that would have been? When do you think that might have been?

WHITNEY: That was in the late fifties.

BRINSON: Okay. Would you be able to sort of estimate for me the size of the NAACP membership? Are we talking about thirty people or three hundred people or...?

WHITNEY: Well, it was say, I would say anywhere from--it would fluctuate anywhere between say thirty and fifty.

BRINSON: Okay. Who would come to meetings?

WHITNEY: Well now, I’d say you’d have fifty on the roll, but you’d have maybe thirty or some odd who would actually participate in the meeting. That was back then.

BRINSON: Did the chapter raise money to send to the National NAACP for litigation?

WHITNEY: Oh yes, litigation and support those families. That is one of the functions of NAACP, each chapter raises some money to help the national cause.

BRINSON: Now, you went to an all Black school.

WHITNEY: That’s right.

BRINSON: All the way through?

WHITNEY: All the way through.

BRINSON: I want to ask you a few questions about that. Were there any differences in the black school and the white school, during the time you were going through, that you were aware of?

WHITNEY: Now what are you speaking of? Are you going back to the secondary or high school, high school or college?

BRINSON: No, not college, just elementary and high school.

WHITNEY: They biggest thing that we were aware of, was the facility, the physical facility itself. For example, it used to happen at Attucks, we had a department of Home Economics and Short Hand, Business. Okay in the one year, in the Home Economics Department they didn’t have any refrigerators. So what they did, what the Board did, they took all of the refrigerators from the Hopkinsville High School and put them in Attucks and bought the new ones for the white school. When we went to the Board and asked for them, why that’s what they did. They got the new ones, but we got the ones from the Hopkinsville High School and they put the new ones in the....that’s the way we got refrigerators, typewriters and mimeograph machines. We got the second hand material. Now that was the big difference, and I say this, because I want to give credit to the folks who taught. They who taught, they wanted to impart the best of knowledge to us. They were the most dedicated teachers. I wouldn’t swap them for nothing in the world. But for physical things that’s where we were short changed. We just happened to notice that.

BRINSON: How about textbooks? Did you get second hand textbooks from the white school?

WHITNEY: We’d buy second hand textbooks. And then we still, now one thing, we did, were able to buy new books from what we called, used to be Hall’s Drugstore. And they were pretty nice in a way, because first they’d sell all of the new books to the white students, and then those that were left, we would get them up at Attucks, and some of the other schools. And they would, you could take your old book back down there, from the seventh grade, or whatever grade it was you finished, and if it was in fair condition they would sell it for you, give you so much for it.

BRINSON: So everybody bought their textbooks. The school didn’t give them to you?

WHITNEY: No, no, you bought them. You had to buy your textbooks.

BRINSON: How about Science programs? Did you have laboratories for Chemistry the same as the white school?

WHITNEY: Yes. That was one thing that was unusual about Attucks, we had test tubes, bunsen burners, scales. They got the money from somewhere to get those. I remember that distinctly. And one thing, interest in this branch, speaking of Hopkinsville, this may be....This is off of the subject. But you asking about equipment, when I finished, I majored in Natural Science and Mathematics, and when I finished I got a temporary job in Paris, Kentucky...

BRINSON: Now, you’re talking about when you went to college?

WHITNEY: Talking about teaching, this is after I finished college. I’m just speaking about equipment, what I said, getting back to the point that it was unusual about Attucks, and this was in nineteen thirty-seven....

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE ONE

BEGIN TAPE ONE SIDE TWO

BRINSON: Didn’t even have test tubes in Paris.

WHITNEY: Didn’t have test tubes in Paris, Kentucky.

BRINSON: They had perfume bottles.

WHITNEY: Perfume bottles.

BRINSON: That was in a black school?

WHITNEY: Black school, uh hmm. Made me appreciate more what had happened here in Hopkinsville, thirty or fifty and twenty years prior.

BRINSON: I wonder, do you think the black teachers were paid the same as white teachers?

WHITNEY: No, no. They weren’t paid the same. That was another point back—making--no they weren’t paid the same. This is one reason my brother, he was offered a job, principal of a school in Somerset, when he was in Fisk, and they didn’t pay him, they wouldn’t pay him, that’s why he stayed in the station in Cincinnati. That’s what our people were going through. I made about sixty dollars as the principal of the school.

BRINSON: I want to ask you to think back for me please, growing up in a segregated society, do you remember when you first realized that this was a segregated society and there were things that you couldn’t do because of your color?

WHITNEY: Oh, yes. That was quite obvious, like the schools, let’s go back to the schools. Our gymnasium here was one of the best, here at Crispus Attucks, in the state, except in Central in Louisville. And maybe--I don’t know of any others that had a gym as well. Okay, now we didn’t, but it wasn’t as large a facility as you had at Hopkinsville High School. Football, we didn’t have an athletic field. They had one at Hopkinsville High School, and we could go over there and practice and play when they didn’t use it. And you know, we couldn’t go to a game over there--even if it was--if we not involved; I mean, except if it was Hopkinsville High and some school from Bowling Green. We wanted to see the game, we had to sit in trees across the street. We couldn’t go in the stadium. Those were some of the things that, inadequacies that existed then. And of course in the course of time, things changed, but it was that way then.

BRINSON: When you were growing up, tell me about whether you could go to restaurants or try on clothes in stores, or...

WHITNEY: No, no. If you tried on a pair of shoes, they were your shoes, you couldn’t....Same thing with clothes. They had two clothing stores, Anderson’s and E. P. Barnes, and you had to be certain of your size before you bought it; if it wasn’t, you were just stuck with it. And theaters, we had two theaters, you had to sit in the balconies. And it goes on up, until late, mid fifties when it began to change.

BRINSON: What about the library?

WHITNEY: Well, we walked past the library for years. It was, I can’t remember exactly the year, but it was somewhere after the World War Two, that we could go to the library. And you know, incidentally--I tell you--I’ve often thought about that, even with the segregation and discrimination; there were people in my race that had, had libraries at home. I have a whole, several sets of books, that I keep as a memory, the library my father and mother had for us there at home: Harvard’s Classics, World’s Best Histories, Funk and Wagnall’s Encyclopedia. And most of our people, like the teachers and professional people, since we couldn’t go to Carnegie Library here, they had a library at home.

BRINSON: So there wasn’t a black library?

WHITNEY: Uh uh.

BRINSON: In some communities the black school library has been the primary library for the community.

WHITNEY: Okay, we did finally have one at Attucks, I believe it was about nineteen and twenty-nine or thirty, when they had a library in Attucks High School. And of course, the people of the community are the ones that made contributions, it wasn’t from the School Board.

BRINSON: What about parks and swimming pools?

WHITNEY: Hmm. No, we swam--I swam in the little river and all the places, we didn’t go into the park. Now if you went to a ball park, they had a place in the bleachers just for--just like they did at the show, you know, you could go sit up in the balconies. The same thing at the ball park, but now it wasn’t a park that was set up, where we were free to go. Now there was one place out here in the East, Northeast of Hopkinsville. Man by the name of Fleming, owned a farm called Fleming Cave, and he would let us go out there and play baseball and so forth, but that was the extent of the type of park.

BRINSON: Was Mr. Fleming white or black?

WHITNEY: White, he was white.

BRINSON: Given all of this, I wonder, while you were growing up, was there ever an occasion where you knew what the rule was, but you just decided to try and test it in some way?

WHITNEY: Well under the--as an individual we didn’t do it, but we did from the NAACP, like we would go to the show; and I never shall forget that this was when I was on the city council and the group, NAACP, was going to challenge, boycott, the Alhambra Theater over here. We had a mayor, Mr. Lackey, who was the owner of the WHOP radio station. This group said to him that, “We are going to boycott this, break up this business of segregation here in Hopkinsville, going into a, people can’t go into a restaurant, can’t go into the shows.” And he made a declaration that, “They weren’t going to have--that he wasn’t going to let any riots happen and we were going to stop this thing of segregation, and told all the managers that if any--I think he called them Negroes then--going in there;” said, “Don’t you call no police, you call me.” Said, “We are going to break this stuff up of segregation of theaters and restaurants and so forth.” And I’m using the man that was managing the Alhambra said, “Well I’ve got to talk to my bosses over in Nashville.” And he said, “Well, you’re in Hopkinsville and I’m the mayor.” Said, “You do what I say or we’ll close the place up.” And that was the turning point there.

BRINSON: Let me go back and ask that another way, because you gave me a story about organized resistance. But I’m just wondering as a little boy, some people tell me that they, you know, they knew they weren’t supposed to sit at the bar stool, the counter stool, or they knew they weren’t supposed to sit in a certain place on a bus, but they did it anyway, just to test it. And usually they got told, you know, to go away. But they tested it, just individually, little things, you know, the way children do.

WHITNEY: Do, uh huh.

BRINSON: And I just wonder if you recall anything like that in your boyhood?

WHITNEY: Nooo...

BRINSON: Or your brother’s.

WHITNEY: We didn’t, I don’t recall where we individually, we did....I think more or less we accepted the thing and only would do something, like I say, in a group.

BRINSON: Okay. You told me about your father and how, and his work. I wonder, did your mother work outside the home?

WHITNEY: No, you said she was going to stay home and raise her boy.

BRINSON: Now you graduated high school in nineteen thirty-three and then what?

WHITNEY: That’s when I went to Kentucky State, which is now Kentucky State University, it was Kentucky State College then.

BRINSON: And you were there for four years?

WHITNEY: Four years, uh hmm.

BRINSON: And then you went into teaching.

WHITNEY: Well, I wanted to teach, and the funniest thing about it is, you coming out in the midst of the Depression; you almost had to buy a job. And as I said, I had a temporary job, that was a substitute over in Paris, Kentucky. That’s all I got of teaching. After that I came back home, and there just weren’t any jobs; and so I got working with an insurance company. We had black insurance companies. Have you ever heard of those?

BRINSON: What was the name of it?

WHITNEY: The first one that I worked with was Domestic. And I carried a debit, made twelve dollars a week. I’d make some money.

BRINSON: Twelve dollars a week, that’s...

WHITNEY: It was a lot of money then.

BRINSON: It is. Where was Domestic headquartered?

WHITNEY: In Louisville, at Sixth and Walnut. I worked with them. And of course you were in a debit period, an insurance debit. Of course, see there’s another thing where the segregation and discrimination--we couldn’t get--you couldn’t get insurance with, say Metropolitan, or Lincoln Income, or National. That’s why you had, what we call now, the black company, because we couldn’t get insurance with the white ones.

BRINSON: Right.

WHITNEY: We’d walk all through the country, everywhere, selling five and ten cents policies and so forth.

BRINSON: I wonder, once you sold the policy, did you have to go back and collect on it?

WHITNEY: Oh yeah, we’d go weekly.

BRINSON: Weekly, okay.

WHITNEY: See, most of it, our premiums were weekly. Now there may be some people who were able to pay by the month. But that’s the only way, pay five cents and get a dollar for sick and accident. You pay ten cents, maybe you can get a policy for paying you a hundred, two hundred dollars a death, something like that, if you get it every week. That’s when we sold--we used to sell what they called the little endowments for ten cents, a thousand dollars at seventeen years old. We’d sell them on the idea that you pay this ten cents a week and the child finishes high school, you’ve got a thousand dollars to send him off to school somewhere. We called them educational policies.

BRINSON: Well, that’s attractive.

WHITNEY: That’s what we had to work with.

BRINSON: How old of a company was Domestic?

WHITNEY: At the time I went with it, I suppose it was about twenty-five, thirty years old.

BRINSON: Was there a benevolent society that went along with it? Do you know what I mean when I say that?

WHITNEY: Yes, I don’t think so. I can’t recall. I don’t think so. Now, see there were two of them. We had one across the street, which was named, which was larger, called The Mammoth. It’s on the other side of Walnut Street. It’s a six-story, beautiful six-story building there. It was, it operated in three states.

BRINSON: And where was it headquartered?

WHITNEY: Louisville.

BRINSON: Louisville. Okay. Was that the full name of it, Mammoth?

WHITNEY: Mammoth Life.

BRINSON: Mammoth Life, okay. And do you know about how old it was? Or when it started?

WHITNEY: It was about, I would say it was somewhere about thirty-five, forty years old when it....of course, now it has been sold out, both of those companies are gone.

BRINSON: Did it have a benevolent society attached to it, that you remember?

WHITNEY: I don’t recall where they, started out as a benevolent group or not, because when I was with them, they didn’t.

BRINSON: So you first worked for Domestic?

WHITNEY: First for Domestic.

BRINSON: For how long?

WHITNEY: That was up until World War Two. And World War Two started, so we had worked it up to the point where we had a little office here, a branch office, and we’d gotten the debits up here from maybe to around--here in Hopkinsville--maybe to about a thousand dollars a week. That was big business to us.

BRINSON: How many people worked here for the company?

WHITNEY: Uh which, you speaking of Domestic?

BRINSON: For Domestic.

WHITNEY: Just two of us. And see we worked Hopkinsville, Preston, Cadiz, and did the same thing for the Mammoth. Only the Mammoth was much larger. What I’m saying, up until World War Two, it got so hot you know, everybody was avoiding getting in the actual duty. I went to, got a job in Wright Patterson Field, outside of Dayton. That’s where, I worked up there.

BRINSON: What were you doing up there?

WHITNEY: I was in Personnel out at the Field, in the department where we called engine change. Like they brought the B-24 Bombers and other planes in, where we’d take care of the engines and the fuselage. That’s where I worked.

BRINSON: But you had a civilian position.

WHITNEY: That was civilian, uh hmm.

BRINSON: Right. Did you have a family at this time?

WHITNEY: Hmm?

BRINSON: Did you have a family at this time? You have a wife?

WHITNEY: No see, we didn’t really marry until--that was in nineteen forty-one. Yeah, I had forgotten about that.

BRINSON: Did she go with you up there?

WHITNEY: Well, she was teaching over here in Todd County.

BRINSON: In what county?

WHITNEY: Todd County.

BRINSON: Todd County.

WHITNEY: Uh huh. Elton.

BRINSON: I’m still new enough to Kentucky, I don’t know all the counties.

WHITNEY: That’s Todd County, the next county over, east of us. She was teaching over there.

BRINSON: How did you meet her?

WHITNEY: Well, actually we were, all grew up here. We didn’t establish any real ties until I came back home here in--when I was back here working the debit, and she was teaching. And that’s when we joined hands.

BRINSON: And her name is?

WHITNEY: Georgia, Georgia, she was Georgia Evans.

BRINSON: So after the war, after the time you were up in Ohio, then what? What happened to you after that?

WHITNEY: Okay. Then I was trying to still escape getting into combat duty, and the Signal Corps was looking for technicians. And they had a Signal Corps school in Lexington, and it was established at Transylvania, what we called Johnson School. So I applied for that and I got in, I’m trying to escape getting in combat, you know. (Laughing) So I got, and we studied radio, telegraph and telephone, all of this communication. So they said we may have to maybe get in the front line doing the technical work.

BRINSON: Was that training at Transylvania integrated?

WHITNEY: Yes.

BRINSON: It was? Okay.

WHITNEY: It was integrated. It was integrated. Uh hmm. It was integrated. And even went to Avondale, a place out from it where we were getting the elements of radar. It is amusing now, to see how simple what we were dealing, compared to what they have nowadays. It was amazing. And we took that course. We were up there about, almost a year. Then I got called for active duty. And that’s a long story.

BRINSON: And so, did you serve?

WHITNEY: Yes, I had to.

BRINSON: So you’re a World War Two veteran.

WHITNEY: I’m a World War Two veteran and I call myself, I hate to say it, it was NA/NA, UA/NA, unattached, unassigned. I’m not going to bother you with that, but as you mentioned a few minutes ago about Mr. Truman, talking about integration, we were trained by the Signal Corps as technicians. There were eight of us, and four went to Fort Mammoth, New Jersey and four went to Camp Crowder Central Signal Corps School.

BRINSON: Which Camp?

WHITNEY: Camp Crowder.

BRINSON: Crowder? Where is that?

WHITNEY: Just outside of....near Neosho, you ever hear of Neosho, Missouri, or Springfield? It’s down in that area. And it was the Signal Corps Unit from where they train you especially for a particular task in communications.

BRINSON: Where all were you stationed, after your training?

WHITNEY: That’s where I get back to unattached/unassigned, everywhere I went, nobody wanted to use us.

BRINSON: Why do you think that was?

WHITNEY: They just didn’t want a Negro, didn’t want to do it. Went all over the United States.

BRINSON: So if you had been white, you think they would have wanted you?

WHITNEY: Oh yeah. See the rank we had was Master Sergeant--wasn’t any--wasn’t one rank, what you call--our Spec number was 261, and you were Master Sergeant in charge of Communications. And when the man said--even the general couldn’t get a phone unless I approved it. I knew that wasn’t going to work. (Laughing) We’d go from Post to Post and nobody wanted us.

BRINSON: How did that work? They would assign you to a Post and you’d get there...?

WHITNEY: Okay, when we finished the Central School, and this is on top of what all we had from up here at Transylvania and Avondale and Johnson School. They just, you’d go and there was no assignment. They wouldn’t give you an assignment.

BRINSON: How did you feel about that?

WHITNEY: Well, I didn’t like it, but there was nothing I could do, because it was a hopeless situation. We were down at Maxwell Field here, man laughed and put us, (Laughed) at the end of the runway, where the planes were taking off. And when we finally got to Moody Field, down in Valdosta, Georgia; I told the Major that I was a radio, a technician, radio, telephone and telegraph. He laughed and said, “Well by God, the closest you’ll get to that is riding a bicycle over to the message center.” And he was right. That was the Air Force. That was just the way it was.

BRINSON: So how long did that happen?

WHITNEY: Well, I’ll tell you what happened. It was a strange thing. The cadets at Moody Field were being trained to fly the AT-20--B-24 Bombers, and they had a training plane called the AT-10; AT-10 twin-engine-trainer, which they trained in. And what was happening, the fellows were getting lost out over the Gulf of Mexico and over the Atlantic Ocean, because their equipment wasn’t working and improperly, you know; the radar and the marker beacon, and that’s all they had. Radio compass, not radar, radio compass and the marker beacon. So they were losing, so many--so many young men were being lost and they were white, out over the ocean and Gulf of Mexico. The Inspector General was down there and he was looking, said, “My gosh you’ve got technicians here, who are specialists in this place.” Said, “Let them check these planes and set these, fix them radio compasses and fix that marker beacon.” And so the general out at the Post called us in, and said they were going to put us to work. And of course, that was what we wanted to do, we’d been trained in high tech. Said, “But now,” says, “You can’t work in a regular shift, it ain’t going to work.” What he said to me, “I don’t mean any harm,” he said, “These peckerwoods would mess up this place.” Said, “We’re going to change the shift, change the flight patterns, the training patterns.” Says, “You all, we got you come at four o’clock in the evening and off at eleven, and we’ll change the training flights for the morning, so the pilots can--and then in the evenings when they’re through, you check the planes and so forth.” Well, we’d all been walking picking up paper and sweeping sand all day long. (Laughing) That was--we’d be glad to do that and we’d have an extra long weekend. So we did that--and the funny thing--and we fixed the radio compasses and the marker beacons and so forth, and didn’t have anymore....And you know the civilian population got angry. They told him, the general, you know, they were going to walk off the Post, they’d tie up the whole Post, if they didn’t get rid of us. And they shipped us out, broke us down and shipped us out of there.

BRINSON: Did the survival rate improve though, after you all starting taking care...?

WHITNEY: Yeah, they would....The military people were tickled to death, but the civilians there in Valdosta, they wouldn’t have it, they were going to tie up the Post.

BRINSON: I had an uncle, who was a young pilot, who went down in the Gulf of Mexico...

WHITNEY: Is that right?

BRINSON: ...during that period. I never knew him, because I was a baby.

WHITNEY: Is that right? I bet you he might have been at Moody Field. Well, I declare, small world.

BRINSON: Right. But you’ve just given me a lot more information about that, than I’ve ever heard before.

WHITNEY: Well, it’s like that one--I don’t make a long story short--but one of the things, just how the attitudes were down there. One group--we had one group--this was before, the young men who were experts in engine--airplane engines over from, who would train over here in Chinook Field, in St. Louis. This is one day, a detail before we had this trouble with the communication equipment. We all went over the engines, what you call the engine change. They changed the engines ever so often, back in those days of gasoline engines. We were just on detail over there in the engine change room, and so they took us over there; and we reported into the man, and the general--the colonel told him, “We bought some--had some fellows who were in the detail.” Said, says, “Well you all clean up around here.” He said, “You said these boys are experts in engines?” He said, “Yes sir, they’re specialists.” He said, “Well there’s an engine over there, sitting up there on a bracket.” Said, “Tell them to see if they can fix that and I’ll be back in a little while.”

BRINSON: I have to stop you just a...

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE TWO

BEGIN TAPE TWO SIDE ONE

WHITNEY: Engine change, and the engine was over there on this bracket. And said, “See if you all can, tell your guys if they are expert, tell them to fix it.” So he went away, and I told the fellows, “Well fellows, you are specialists in the engine. I don’t know a thing about it, but you all are supposed to be airplane mechanics.” And they got over there and fixed--worked at that engine and got it to running, propeller and so forth. (Laughing) It wasn’t thirty minutes they had it fixed. And so wasn’t nothing to do but sit down, and we sat down. He came back about maybe about ten-thirty, eleven, we were sitting down. “Well, I thought I told you fellows to fix that engine.” And I said, “Sir they’ve got it loaded, fixed.” “Well, let me see.” They went over there and started that engine. He walked around that engine, I reckon maybe ten or fifteen times, shaking his head and said, “I didn’t know niggers had that much sense.”

BRINSON: Hm.

WHITNEY: And this is the type of thing...

BRINSON: I wonder though from the time that you and the others with you started doing the work there, and the time, and before the civilians said they didn’t like it, how long did you actually stay there?

WHITNEY: Well after this, when this last threat that I told you about a few minutes ago, we weren’t....See what had happened, when the planes were coming in at four o’clock, I mean, after the pilots were through and we would test them. When the crews, the civilian crews came the next morning, they didn’t have anything to do. It wasn’t, it wasn’t, we weren’t there two months, they got rid of us. And the general there at the airport, Moody Field, said they just had to let us go, had to get rid of us. Changed my Spec number, to ship me out, from 261 to 790, from a Specialist to a General Labor.

BRINSON: When the civilians came back in though, do you have any sense whether they could do the quality of work that you all had done? Was it....?

WHITNEY: I don’t know. I couldn’t say, because we were gone, see. They got us all out of there.

BRINSON: What happened to you when the war was over?

WHITNEY: Well, I came, after I came back, that’s when I changed and went back into the insurance business. Went with, let’s see, went with the Mammoth.

BRINSON: Okay.

WHITNEY: I worked with them from forty-five to nineteen forty-seven, for two years.

BRINSON: And at what point did you get involved in real estate?

WHITNEY: It was in the Spring of nineteen forty-eight. When I came back to the Mammoth, see I had, had ten years experience with the Domestic, before I went into training--with my other training, I was made, sort of what you call a field supervisor. And Mammoth operated in Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, three states. And I did sort of a traveling inspector. And then the Mammoth office--management man here got sick, and I decided I’d come--and then I came here to take over until he got better. But he didn’t get better, so I stayed here until they got this in shape, and they wanted me to get back on the field again; and I was tired of running all over, since the war and insurance running. And I had been married--we’d been married since forty-one and we wanted to settle down; and that’s when I decided I was going into the real estate endeavor.

BRINSON: Did you go in by yourself?

WHITNEY: By myself.

BRINSON: How was it to practice real estate then? Did you have to have a license in the state?

WHITNEY: Yes, we had to have a license. When I did this, like it is now, if you could pass the examination and you had good references, why you could get your license. Of course, it’s all together different now. But then all you had to do was, you had to have the guts to try. (Laughing) That’s all you needed back then.

BRINSON: I’m wondering about real estate, which I don’t know anything about. I’m wondering weren’t there problems for you, being a black man, as a Realtor?

WHITNEY: Yeah, oh yeah. You were strictly, that was strictly segregated. Now one advantage is, if a black man wanted to buy a house, he had to go to, had to come to a black man, because a white one wouldn’t fool with him. Because the segregation pattern was then--that you--there weren’t any new houses that a black man could build. Now only, they didn’t have but two groups or two classes I’ll say--two or three classes of our people: they may be the doctors, undertaker, principal of the school and maybe independent business person, who has had his own funds. They were about the only ones who could buy and build a new house. Of course, we were the secondary market. See that’s where the white person, who has, wanted to move out of a neighborhood, if he couldn’t get his neighbors to buy it, he’d sell it to that colored man. And that’s the pattern all over, especially all over the South, anywhere you go, from Louisville in the west end, used to be white, years ago, but you know, the Negroes would buy those houses.

BRINSON: Did you sell any commercial real estate?

WHITNEY: No, the closest to commercial wouldn’t be, nothing big time, maybe like a little store here on Virginia Street, fellow wanted to put a drugstore or a saloon, but no large commercial projects.

BRINSON: Could you make a living at this?

WHITNEY: Well it was a struggle. We survived, because my wife was teaching and we worked together, and that’s the way you had to do it.

BRINSON: Okay. I want to jump ahead a little bit and ask you about the fifties, when the Supreme Court issued the Brown Decision to integrate the school systems.

WHITNEY: Uh hmm.

BRINSON: How was that received here in Hopkinsville? What happened with school integration in Hopkinsville?

WHITNEY: Well it was, I think people take that like the old saying, like a dose of salts, you know.

BRINSON: A dose of salt? What? Say that again. A dose of salts?

WHITNEY: Salts. Epsom salts.

BRINSON: Epsom salts.

WHITNEY: Bitter, you know.

BRINSON: Okay.

WHITNEY: They accepted it because it was the law, not that you were welcome. They weren’t welcomed, uh uh. It was alright as long as you ain’t on the football team or basketball team, but in other things.

BRINSON: Now, you are referring to the white community, I believe?

WHITNEY: Yeah, as acceptability.

BRINSON: How did the black community feel about it?

WHITNEY: Well, it was mixed feelings. There were some felt that it was a good thing, because they had the illusion that what they were going to learn in the white school was so much better than they, a lot of them thought. But when they got in there, they found that it wasn’t. That’s what I mentioned earlier about what a good school Attucks was, because the teachers, a lot of white teachers didn’t spend much time teaching, the black students always stood around and kept quiet. That was the attitude around here, most of the black, white teachers had.

BRINSON: Did the school officials move fairly quickly after the Supreme Court decision? Or, in some communities, in Bowling Green, for example, it took them ten years, and it took a law suit by the NAACP to get the School Board to actually move to open up the schools to integration.

WHITNEY: Well we were fortunate here. We didn’t have to go through that. I think that’s back to the, you know, you talked about the numbers. Remember you mentioned about the thirty percent. I think the ratio of black people in Christian county made it a little different, because politically, you see, the fellows who wanted to be mayors and judges and so forth in prominent positions. And I expect, whether our people knew it, maybe the dollars, you know with thirty percent of the population, it would wake them up, if they started spending money somewhere else. It would have an impact. So silently, I think that’s why this was a little bit more acceptable, because of the number of people we had here. You know, there is no place in the state of Kentucky that’s got as many Negroes and is as populated as Christian county. So the economic impact of those people.

BRINSON: Right. I think I recall that Governor Ed Breathitt was the attorney to the School Board here.

WHITNEY: Ned Breathitt, uh hmm, uh hmm.

BRINSON: What was his role in integration of the schools?

WHITNEY: Well, see he brought a big change about, because he set up the first commission, Human Relation Commission in the state.

BRINSON: But he did that as Governor.

WHITNEY: As Governor.

BRINSON: Right. But back during school integration when he was the School Board attorney, did he have a role?

WHITNEY: I think he did, because you wouldn’t--I couldn’t--I wouldn’t say how vocal it was, as far as the public. But I think his impact, by his fairness, the type of man he was, he advised the Board not that it would....getting back to what I was saying about the Negroes’ power to vote and spend, that they better accept this change.

BRINSON: Okay. Different communities integrated their schools in different ways, and in some cases the black children could go to the white schools if they wanted to, in some communities there was busing. What happened here? Did...and what happened to the black schools?

WHITNEY: Well, they maintained--I believe Attucks didn’t fold out completely until about the middle sixties. And they were using the busing technique here, see. And it wasn’t until, in the mid sixties that either the schools were, you know, they didn’t use the schools. But they used to busing technique for the first, I would say maybe the first ten years. Because Attucks was a multi, I think fifth grade center. I forget what grades were over in Booker Washington. In the course of time, they eliminated the busings and the schools were closed.

BRINSON: They closed the black schools? Booker T. and....?

WHITNEY: Booker T. and Attucks.

BRINSON: Are they still there? The buildings?

WHITNEY: Attucks is still there, both the buildings, now it is some kind of training. I forget what it is, at Booker Washington. It’s for disadvantaged.

BRINSON: So they are still using the building?

WHITNEY: Using Booker T., but not Attucks. Attucks is, the alumni are trying to renovate it for a museum or something.

BRINSON: I wonder, was your wife teaching in the system during that, the time of integration?

WHITNEY: Yes, uh hmm, yeah.

BRINSON: What did she have to say about it? What happened to her and the other black teachers?

WHITNEY: Well, when they--when they did that, they transferred her to what we call, is now--they built a new Hopkinsville High School. And the old Hopkinsville High School became an eighth grade center, and they moved her over there. A lot of our teachers were just scattered out among the white schools all over the county.

BRINSON: How did she feel about that move?

WHITNEY: Well, she didn’t particularly care for it, but you know in a survival, economics and everything. We were struggling. There wasn’t anything else you could do.

BRINSON: Do you know if any of the black teachers lost their jobs or were sort of demoted to positions?

WHITNEY: No, not to my knowledge in Christian county. They were scattered all out. Now, some left and went other places. But I don’t know whether that was a result of the integration or desegregation or whatever you want to call it.

BRINSON: How about the principals?

WHITNEY: Well now one of, the principal at Attucks was made assistant principal here, and then he was finally made assistant superintendent. I don’t recall....but they were all placed, to my knowledge, my memory may not be...

BRINSON: In some communities, I have heard stories that there are like alumni reunions of the students who went to the all black schools.

WHITNEY: Uh hmm.

BRINSON: And I wonder if that is true here in Hopkinsville?

WHITNEY: Yeah, we have an alumni association of Attucks. They are the ones now that are trying to rehabilitate it and make a museum out of it.

BRINSON: Do they get together?

WHITNEY: Yeah, they meet, they meet.

BRINSON: Every year and have banquets?

WHITNEY: Uh huh. They have, we’re getting ready to have one in the later part of July.

BRINSON: How long does it last?

WHITNEY: It’s about three days.

BRINSON: Okay.

WHITNEY: Usually a weekend, Saturday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

BRINSON: And what kinds of activities are there at the reunion?

WHITNEY: Well they have a, well they have a meeting, a growth meeting. Then they have a banquet and a social affair. And of course they have the individuals, you know, like the class of the sixty something, the class of the fifty something, they’ll get themselves together.

BRINSON: Right. How many people come?

WHITNEY: Well, it is several hundred, I don’t know, but it is up in the hundreds.

BRINSON: Do people come from outside of Hopkinsville that have moved away?

WHITNEY: Yes. They come, all come back home. Uh huh. They come back home.

BRINSON: How far do you think?

WHITNEY: Oh we have some that come from California. We have, one lady that I know comes from California, about two or three from New York and Chicago. They come back home.

BRINSON: Okay, okay.

(Tape goes off and on)

BRINSON: I wanted to ask you, I read that it used to be the turn of the century, that the black community here would celebrate Emancipation Day on August eighth.

WHITNEY: Uh huh.

BRINSON: And I wonder if, how long they continued to do that? If there’s still any kind of celebration like that today, or...?

WHITNEY: No. I think that the--that’s, I think that’s one of those things that maybe have, is fading out. Because the younger generation just aren’t familiar with what it is all about. And so the olders are dying and the younger ones don’t pick it up and carry it on. So it isn’t, the impact; it’s just that it is dying out.

BRINSON: Was there an Emancipation Day celebration when you were growing up?

WHITNEY: Yes, now the biggest one that was in this area, was down near a place called Crofton. Ever heard of that?

BRINSON: Crofton?

WHITNEY: Uh hmm. They really went in for big time. Crofton, it’s about ten miles North of here. Of course, I think it’s fading out, because the older people, who really have a deeper feeling for emancipation, they’re passing away. And the young ones don’t pick it up.

BRINSON: What did they do at these celebrations?

WHITNEY: Oh just get together and talk about the good times that they had in school, because that’s the only outlet we had anyway.

BRINSON: Was there ever a speaker, or anyone who talked about slavery?

WHITNEY: Yeah, they’d have some of the prominent leaders of the state or the community to speak, come and visit with them.

BRINSON: Was there ever any music or dancing or...?

WHITNEY: Oh yeah, they’d, the dance, they’d have a dance. And they’d have....you see we had, back in those days, you usually had a black band, and they’d have a nice celebration and a barbecue. It was a really joyful get together.

BRINSON: And how many people do you remember used to come?

WHITNEY: Several hundreds, several hundreds.

BRINSON: Was there ever any religion as part of the celebration?

WHITNEY: They all would come to, like all the members, who are members of this church, they would be here that Sunday morning. They’d go to their various churches.

BRINSON: Okay.

WHITNEY: And they were recognized as such, I mean, each church would.

BRINSON: About when do you think they stopped doing that in Hopkinsville?

WHITNEY: It’s really, it’s kind of hard to say. It’s been quite some time ago.

BRINSON: I want to ask you some questions please about voting, and also blacks being elected to offices a little bit.

WHITNEY: Okay.

BRINSON: Has voting ever been an issue for the black community here? Has there ever been, has it ever been hard to vote, if you wanted to, or to register to vote?

WHITNEY: Well, yeah prior to--I guess going back to--let’s go, I’ll use nineteen fifty-three as a changing point. They weren’t encouraged to vote. I can remember as a little boy when voting day was, that the farmers would come up here with wagons and pick the fellas up and take them back in the country to pick strawberries or do some kind of work, so they wouldn’t be voting. They weren’t encouraged to vote. When I get back to this fifty-three, when we got the NAACP and the incident at Fort Campbell; we got the people concerned to wake up, that they can become a part of this thing. Voting became a big thing for that generation. And of course, that they could see some results of voting. Now, fortunately, it is unusual, I don’t know whether you know it, but we’ve always been encouraged to have a magistrate. There’s been a magistrate here since nineteen sixteen. They always had one magistrate, and still have one. But now, and since we’ve had people in elective offices, who were getting their jobs as a result of a political affiliation. There’s been a lot of concern about voting. Now, but to what is bothering me, is there’s a sort of decline in that interest now. I can’t explain it, why it is. But a lot of years, there’s not as much enthusiasm about voting as there was back in the days of Martin Luther King and so forth.

BRINSON: And that’s probably true everywhere, don’t you think?

WHITNEY: Uh huh.

BRINSON: I wonder, back in the forties and the fifties, was there ever any attempt to buy votes?

WHITNEY: Well, under the cover, there’s always said, that there’s certain attempts to buy votes. But we have tried to advance the philosophy, don’t sell your vote, you cheapen it.

BRINSON: Right. Did the NAACP hold voter registration drives?

WHITNEY: Uh huh, that’s right. They’d hold registration drives and of course, since the people--the thing is now--is getting the people to their register, because they’ve got to be a registered voter to get certain (Laughing) privileges and things. And actually going to the polls. It’s ridiculous here in the whole county. This last election here, I don’t think we had thirty-five percent, and this is overall. There’s is something out there that, I don’t know what’s happened to people.

BRINSON: I know back in eighteen ninety-seven, there was a black elected to city council and then I think in the nineteen twenties, there was a gentleman named Walter Robinson, who was elected, a black man, who was elected to city council. But I wonder....

WHITNEY: When was that now?

BRINSON: In the nineteen twenties, nineteen twenty-seven or so. A Walter Robinson?

WHITNEY: I don’t remember that.

BRINSON: But I don’t know if there have been any blacks elected since then. Now you said you served on the city council.

WHITNEY: Since nineteen fifty-three. I don’t know about, where’d we get that Walter Robinson.

BRINSON: I took that from a book authored by George Wright, which is a history of blacks in Kentucky.

WHITNEY: Hmm.

BRINSON: That doesn’t sound familiar to you? Okay. And the fellow elected in eighteen ninety-seven was named Edward Glass.

WHITNEY: Okay, yeah, Edward, that was Edward Glass, eighteen ninety-seven. He was an undertaker.

BRINSON: Was he?

WHITNEY: Yeah.

BRINSON: Okay. And then in nineteen...

WHITNEY: I think Walter Robinson ran, but didn’t win.

BRINSON: Oh, okay. Well now you were elected in nineteen fifty-three.

WHITNEY: Uh huh.

BRINSON: Were you elected at large, or is there a district vote here in Hopkinsville?

WHITNEY: No. When you change the form of government. You set up each ward, when they changed the form of government, all of these twelve men were selected; and they were voted on as at large, that time. Then every other election, they assign you a ward.

BRINSON: How about for School Board? Have there been any blacks on the School Board?

WHITNEY: Oh, now this is another thing that we, first black on the School Board here, after integration, was a fellow named Richard Smith. And we have a lady, who’s on the School Board now. She is chairman of the School Board, a Mrs. Bonnie Lynch.

BRINSON: Bonnie Lynch?

WHITNEY: Lynch, uh huh. She’s chairman of the School Board. I forget what year, she’d been on the School Board, I suspect eight or twelve years, somewhere along there.

BRINSON: But that’s only two blacks in a long period of time.

WHITNEY: Uh huh. That’s all there’s been.

BRINSON: Why do you think that is, when you have a large, black...

WHITNEY: Well, now we had a...no we’ve had, beg your pardon. The first School Board member was a Doctor Brooks, was in the early seventies. I forgot about that. Doctor P. C. Brooks was the first member of the School Board.

BRINSON: Was he a physician?

WHITNEY: He was a physician. He had the hospital, he built a hospital, when they had segregated hospitals here, right next door here.

BRINSON: To the church?

WHITNEY: To the church and he was...it was in the early seventies, I mean seventy-two or something like that.

BRINSON: Why do you think more blacks haven’t been elected to School Board?

WHITNEY: Well, it’s first of all, it’s way of, I think it has to do with getting blacks to run and then the numbers. Now the way we got Doctor Brooks, we got, the politicians got on us about it. See...

END OF TAPE TWO SIDE ONE

BEGIN TAPE TWO SIDE TWO

WHITNEY: They vote at large. And what we did, we got Doctor Brooks to run, and we got all of our people to vote just for Doctor Brooks. See, you can vote for all five, but we told them to single shot, so in all the precincts--we had four precincts--we still have four precincts which the black vote is predominant. Everyone of those precincts didn’t vote for the whole five, they just voted for Doctor Brooks; and that broke the thing. I understand that years ago, others had run, but they didn’t have the--but you go vote for five, why you, you know, you split. We call it single shotting.

BRINSON: So it sounds like the Black community has some organization when it comes to do just what you told me about.

WHITNEY: That’s right. In those days, that’s right, we had that type of organization, that get that togetherness. But it isn’t as strong as it used to be, because integration has changed some attitudes.

BRINSON: Has it changed any of the precincts or the wards in terms of...?

WHITNEY: Yes, because some people have moved out, where they moved in housing and then back into the real estate business. He can get him a house in a better, what we call an improved neighborhood, that has its affects on it.

BRINSON: Want to ask you a little bit about that, because I have read that there are some streets in Hopkinsville, where you have sort of big, white houses, or big houses with white residents and then right behind them you have smaller houses with black residents.

WHITNEY: Uh hmm.

BRINSON: Does that still continue today?

WHITNEY: Yeah, there are some remnants of that.

BRINSON: Okay. How do those neighborhoods work?

WHITNEY: Well, it’s hard to, when you say how do they work, what do you mean?

BRINSON: People get along? Or are there tensions there?

WHITNEY: Yeah, no, that seems to be acceptable. I don’t know of any neighborhoods, you take for instance out here--let’s just say for instance, South Virginia Street--on the back of it, where the place is called Kirkman Square, where our people--our people live back behind there, the big, white houses over on Virginia. I’ve never heard of any....And most of those people, I think that was part of the old, I forget what we called the pattern. But it’s the big houses here, the servants lived behind, being close, you know, a situation such as that.

BRINSON: Are there areas of Hopkinsville that have been historically black areas, that have their own name for example?

WHITNEY: Yeah, we got, you take, we got one section called Durretts Avenue.

BRINSON: Say that again...

WHITNEY: Durretts Avenue.

BRINSON: Durretts?

WHITNEY: Durretts Avenue.

BRINSON: D U R ?

WHITNEY: D U R R E T T S

BRINSON: Okay.

WHITNEY: And it was predominant, all in this section, this is the east end. And it’s a situation that went through a transition. You ride down the street, you can see that one time there were white people that lived here, they moved out, black people moved in. All of this east end is like that.

BRINSON: Have any of those early Black communities sort of been lost to urban renewal efforts?

WHITNEY: Well, now that gets back into the political picture. We had to bring--you had to get through city government, where the council man would push to get--there have been some--there’ve been some changes. But I think that, there’s been some, a lot of improvements that have come about when we changed the form of government; that you didn’t have prior to that time. In other words, I can remember before, they’d pave a street up to where blacks lived and stop, the Negroes lived on the other end of it. But since you changed the form of government, and this is say precinct one, got a council man representing them, that doesn’t happen anymore. Same thing with street lights, the water and sewerage and things, fireplugs and things like that.

BRINSON: Garbage pick-up.

WHITNEY: Garbage pick-up. But until you had this change in the form of government, some places you didn’t have fireplugs, you didn’t have street lights, the street wasn’t paved.

BRINSON: Right. Okay. I understand that in nineteen seventy-one, Hopkinsville passed a Fair Housing Ordinance. I think Hopkinsville was maybe there with about four or five other towns who did that during that time. Do you remember that at all? How that came to happen in Hopkinsville?

WHITNEY: Well, you have the, it gets back to the, uh, the NAACP, when we, I believe I was on the city council when we passed the Fair Housing Law.

BRINSON: How long were you on city council?

WHITNEY: From nineteen fifty-three to seventy-three.

BRINSON: Twenty years.

WHITNEY: I think I was there when we passed the Fair Housing thing.

BRINSON: But you think it was because the NAACP...?

WHITNEY: Well they had that help, see.

BRINSON: ...asked for it and supported it.

WHITNEY: That’s right.

BRINSON: Did it make a difference in town?

WHITNEY: Oh yeah, it made a difference. Uh huh. Made a difference.

BRINSON: How did it?

WHITNEY: Well, it, people were--I think it became an acceptable thing. I don’t know of too many instances. Right now, I can’t recall, where there was any overt resistance, that I know about. There could have been, but if there was then nobody made any challenge. But with the city council passing the Fair Housing Act and with the NAACP being present. I don’t know of any instances where we...I just don’t recall that many. Not that I’m saying that there weren’t any.

BRINSON: How integrated are neighborhoods today, in Hopkinsville?

WHITNEY: Well, it is a peculiar thing. I can’t say to what degree, it’s sparsely. In a new development you might see one or two blacks or Negroes in what we call a predominantly white neighborhood. And vice versa, you’ll see some whites that live in a black neighborhood. But it hasn’t been any mad rush.

BRINSON: How has all that affected you as a Realtor? You said when you first started, you had to just sell to the black community.

WHITNEY: Well we, now there is still that undertow, you know, we don’t, what I’m saying we don’t get any listings. When a neighborhood and you can tell when people are going to get ready to make a change, a fellow might list his house with me, but those are rare situations.

BRINSON: By fellow, you mean a white fellow?

WHITNEY: Yeah. Now in, we’ve had cases where a white has, say for instance this....but it gets back to what you asked about a few minutes ago. White starts developing, and maybe it’s a part of his development he can’t sell for some reason, or there’s something around over there that doesn’t suit the white purchaser, he’ll sell the rest to the black. We’ve got little spots like that now. But it’s, I suppose it’s--and what the developers, most of the developers, they’re white. Well he doesn’t list with me anyway. He’ll list with a white Realtor and go from there.

BRINSON: You mentioned Doctor Brooks had a hospital for the black community. Can you tell me about that? How old was that hospital?

WHITNEY: Well there were two. We had first, what you called Moore’s Clinic.

BRINSON: Moore’s Clinic?

WHITNEY: Uh huh, up here at Fifth and Liberty. And here’s a whole clinic, was about the size of this basement, pretty good example. Well that’s when we couldn’t go to Jenny Stewart.

BRINSON: Jenny Stewart?

WHITNEY: That’s the big medical center. And our people, I’m talking about my people, all over Western Kentucky, couldn’t go to any of the white hospitals. So they would come into Moore’s Clinic, which he opened in nineteen and thirty-seven.

BRINSON: Who is he?

WHITNEY: This is Doctor Moore, I’m beginning the history of the Brooks. And so it became sort of a medical center, well Moore couldn’t handle it. And the people were getting to the point where they weren’t being treated nicely at Jenny Stewart or couldn’t get in. Well Doctor Brooks opened his place in nineteen and forty-four.

BRINSON: Now, you said the size of the basement that we’re in, at the church, but it’s not very big, so did it take people overnight? Or was it just a day?

WHITNEY: Well, there was just so many he could take, so that’s why the Brooks became a necessity, you know, can’t catch the thing. People were coming from all around the other counties, Casey, Trigg, Hopkins, Todd, because they weren’t getting any service. So that’s when Brooks got the idea to build this place over here. And that was in nineteen forty-four.

BRINSON: And how big was that?

WHITNEY: Well now see he has, when you go out I’ll show it to you. His house was on one side, and he had about seven or eight rooms, upstairs. And of course, Moore still had his place, that took some of the stress.

BRINSON: I’m interested to know about where they got their nurses and where their nurses got trained.

WHITNEY: Well, now that’s--I don’t--I’m not so sure. I think Moore had one trained nurse, registered nurse, and I think, I’m trying to think. Brooks had one or two, but where they got their training, I’m not able to, I’m not able to say. I just don’t recall.

BRINSON: Because they wouldn’t have been able to go to any of the white...

WHITNEY: Uh uh.

BRINSON: ...nurse’s training programs.

WHITNEY: I think maybe, there was a medical school over here in Nashville, called Meharry. Now which of those....I can’t recall.

BRINSON: You think Doctor Moore or Doctor Brooks might have gone to school there?

WHITNEY: May have gotten some of their ladies, they were local people, now whether they went, sent them over there, I don’t recall. I don’t recall.

BRINSON: Okay. I want to talk to you a little bit about the Human Rights Commission here in Hopkinsville, which I guess started in the sixties.

WHITNEY: It was in the sixties, it was sixty-four.

BRINSON: Sixty-four?

WHITNEY: Uh huh.

BRINSON: How did that come about?

WHITNEY: Well, when Ned Breathitt, he was governor, he set one up there. This back to the man, Lackey, that I mentioned, I was on the city council. And that’s when we got him to set up...

BRINSON: What was his name again?

WHITNEY: Lackey.

BRINSON: Lackey? L A C...?

WHITNEY: L A C K E Y.

BRINSON: And do you remember his first name? Was he like the first director, the first staff person?

WHITNEY: First what now?

BRINSON: The first staff? Was he an employee of the Human Rights Commission?

WHITNEY: No, no, he was mayor. He was mayor.

BRINSON: He was mayor. I’m sorry, okay.

WHITNEY: He was mayor and see he owned--I’ve mentioned--I mentioned earlier about WHOP, the radio station. He was--he’s the man that set up the first Human Rights Commission.

BRINSON: Okay. Did you have any involvement with it?

WHITNEY: Well, I was on the city council when....In setting it up, we got the people, we had, he put on there....He was a pretty smooth operator, he had seven whites and seven blacks. But now the first person, the amusing thing just talking about it. He set up a Director, but nobody was salaried. (Laughing)

BRINSON: You had a Director, but you didn’t pay the Director?

WHITNEY: Didn’t pay him.

BRINSON: How did the Director...?

WHITNEY: Well, everybody was interested in getting the thing going. And it was in later years that it became a salaried.

BRINSON: Hmm. That’s interesting. Do you remember some of the early responsibilities of the commission? Did they take positions on things? Did they issue reports?

WHITNEY: Uh huh. They were very, they were very, we were well pleased there. They went, strived to solve these racial problems without any adversity.

BRINSON: So they handled individual complaints, too?

WHITNEY: That’s right, they handled complaints and let it be known that they were going to try to follow the law and set up--follow the Human Rights thing with the state. See Ned Breathitt was Governor and they wanted to back--make his hometown--make him look better.

BRINSON: What did the NAACP think about the Commission?

WHITNEY: Well, they were happy for it, because we had members of the NAACP on it. I think the President, who was the president, Reverend Strickland, I think, our President, he was one of the members on it. They put everybody on there that would run.

BRINSON: I want to ask you about your newspapers here, your newspaper, you have one newspaper? Back in the fifties and the sixties?

WHITNEY: Yeah.

BRINSON: I’m sorry, I don’t remember the name of it.

WHITNEY: Well, we had one, had a newspaper, I believe the one that existed during that time was The Globe, we called it The Globe Journal. Of course, we’ve had several newspapers. Now my father had one, my brother did, back in the early teens, for while he was in high school. Probably had that going to keep him out of trouble, called Little Cool Run. And then they had....It operated until he went away to school. But during the time, these Civil Rights changes, it was The Globe Journal. That’s the last one we had.

BRINSON: Now that was the white controlled newspaper. Was there a Black newspaper also?

WHITNEY: No, this was a Black newspaper.

BRINSON: That was the Black newspaper?

WHITNEY: The Globe Journal was Black.

BRINSON: Okay. And what was the white newspaper called?

WHITNEY: White newspaper is still here, it exists as Kentucky New Era.

BRINSON: During the fifties and the sixties with integration and then, well in integration of the schools, but also of public accommodations, how did the white newspaper cover that?

WHITNEY: Well....

BRINSON: Or did they?

WHITNEY: Let see they--I’m trying to give you, think of some instances, I’ll put it this way, they covered it, but it wasn’t necessarily front page. They weren’t, in my recall, I don’t recall any, where they took any editorial stance. But incidentally, what I’m saying is, if it was published, it wouldn’t be, as I said, it wouldn’t be front page. It would be back over in the paper somewhere that something had happened. But I suppose you could say maybe they called themselves being neutral.

BRINSON: Neutral ? Okay. How about the black newspaper?

WHITNEY: Well, of course the black newspaper, it would publish those things. Whatever, if it was a confrontation or if it was something that was commendable. It was front page.

BRINSON: Tell me the name of the black newspaper again, please.

WHITNEY: Globe Journal, now that’s the one I remember.

BRINSON: Globe Journal, okay. They’re not in existence today?

WHITNEY: Uh uh, no, no.

BRINSON: When did they go out of business?

WHITNEY: Let’s see, well, when a fellow, Alonzo Glass, I can’t think of the other fellow’s name. When they died, that just was it.

BRINSON: I wonder if people in the Black community subscribe to newspapers outside the area, for example like The Louisville Defender?

WHITNEY: Oh yeah, The Louisville Defender, they had an office here once, uh hmm. Subscribe to it, The Louisville Defender, The Chicago Defender, Pittsburgh Courier, uh huh, they subscribe to those papers. And The Louisville Defender, when they had an office here, they would carry the news that was relevant to Hopkinsville and Christian county.

BRINSON: So people here, knew what was going on in Black thinking about Civil Rights from other newspapers.

WHITNEY: Oh yeah, that’s right, from other newspapers. See, The Louisville Defender, not the Defender, yeah Louisville Defender, Pittsburgh Courier, Chicago Defender, those two in particular, yeah, kept informed.

BRINSON: And then the NAACP members had The Crisis.

WHITNEY: That’s right, Crisis magazine. That’s right.

BRINSON: In nineteen sixty-four, when Governor Breathitt was in office, there was a rally in Frankfort to, in support of the proposed Public Accommodations Law. Did, are you aware, did anyone from Hopkinsville, did any groups of people go up to that rally?

WHITNEY: Yeah, I think we, a bunch of us went up there. I believe that...

BRINSON: Tell me about that.

WHITNEY: Huh?

BRINSON: Tell me about that.

WHITNEY: Well, that was, as far as, my memory’s a little vague on that. When we, I’m trying to think where we had the rally, was it up at the...

BRINSON: The Capitol?

WHITNEY: Capitol, I believe it was the Capitol, but it was quite a, from all over the state were there. I’m trying to think was that when Martin Luther King was up there.

BRINSON: Uh hmm.

WHITNEY: I believe that was when he was there. It was sort of a stimulating thing and one that let everybody know we were all in this together, and there’s something we could do about it. After listening to everybody else, you go home inspired to take another step.

BRINSON: How many people do you think went from Hopkinsville? Did you go on buses?

WHITNEY: It was a bus and some cars. I would say it was ever bit of maybe, pretty close to maybe fifty or more people.

BRINSON: How far is it to Frankfort from here?

WHITNEY: About two hundred and twenty some miles.

BRINSON: So it’s a good trip. Did you have to stay overnight, do you recall?

WHITNEY: No, I think we came back after it was all over.

BRINSON: I’m told it was a cold, rainy day. Do you remember that?

WHITNEY: I don’t remember, it might have been.

BRINSON: There are also different estimates of how many people were there. Some say well, there might have been five or ten thousand, other reports say, well there might have been as many as twenty-five thousand people. Do you remember whether you thought the crowd was...?

WHITNEY: No, it’s hard to, I don’t believe, it was in the thousands, but it wasn’t no twenty-five thousand people. It’s just hard to, you know when you see on the foots of that Capitol, you know and to look out on that...it’s hard to say, but it wouldn’t be no twenty-five thousand.

BRINSON: Well, I think I’m coming to the end of what I wanted to ask you. I wonder if there’s anything that we haven’t talked about, that you think is important to include in this conversation?

WHITNEY: Well, no, with regards to...

BRINSON: To Civil Rights and race relations.

WHITNEY: Civil rights....I uh, I can’t think of anything right at this point. We’ve about covered it. I think there may be, is a standstill, I don’t know what you call--where we go from here, your guess is as good as mine.

BRINSON: But we still have a way to go.

WHITNEY: Still a long way to go, uh huh, uh huh, still a long way to go. It’s come a long way and a long way to go, that’s a pretty good conclusion. I don’t know of any--I think one thing that we have to do as an Afro-American or Black whatever you want to call them, is to become--our people to become more concerned with the government and get more involved. This thing of not becoming content to think we’ve arrived, when we haven’t, because there’s still a lot to be accomplished.

BRINSON: Thank you very much.

WHITNEY: You’re certainly welcome.

END OF INTERVIEW