Oral History Interview with Frank Moxley

BETSEY BRINSON: … 2000. This is an interview with Dr. Frank O. Moxley. The interview takes place in his residence in Bowling Green, Kentucky and the interviewer is Betsy Brinson.

BRINSON: Well, thank you, Dr. Moxley, for agreeing to talk to me. I need to get a voice level so could you, um, give me your full name, and your birth date, and birthplace, please?

FRANK MOXLEY: My full name?

BRINSON: Uh-huh.

MOXLEY: Frank ( ) Moxley.

BRINSON: Okay. And you were born what year?

MOXLEY: 1908.

BRINSON: 1908. So that makes you eighty . . .

MOXLEY: This month I’ll be ninety-two.

BRINSON: Ninety-two? Okay. [chuckle-Moxley] And where were you born?

MOXLEY: Right around the corner, 626 Fourth Street.

BRINSON: Right here in Bowling Green. Okay. Uh, when I talked to you on the phone, I’m not sure how much I told you about what we’re trying to do. The Kentucky Historical Society is trying to document the whole effort between 1930 and 1975 to eliminate legal segregation in Kentucky. So some of what I want to ask you today is about you, but some of it is, is sort of what you can tell me about Bowling Green and the surrounding areas and whatnot; and what was happening during certain periods. Uh, tell me a little bit, if you would please, about your growing up, your family, your early education. What do you know, for example, about your ancestors?

MOXLEY: We had a pretty close family. I’m the, I’m the first of six children and, uh, then later on my family moved to Gary, Indiana. My father was working for the ( ) Life Insurance Company when they were setting it up. And he was on board, and he tried to--he went, he went to Indiana to get the insurance set up there. He worked there and he died there. Uh, my mother was—my, my grandfather was a minister and my mother, she went to school down in Montgomery, Alabama. And at that time it was difficult ‘cause the only school blacks could go to was a school, ( ) called ( ) Academy. There’s a lot of material in the Western library on that. And the ( ) important people on that. Uh, after, after—I’m going to stop there. I’m going to stop there. About education, uh, the school I went to was State Street School and I have some pictures of it, two or three pictures of it. And, and, uh, my principal was E. E. Reed and he got me in love with math [laughing]. So I knew a lot of math and then I went to college, and when I came back, I taught algebra and geometry.

BRINSON: Let me ask you some questions about your school. It would have been an all-black school?

MOXLEY: It was.

BRINSON: How many people were in your graduating class, approximately?

MOXLEY: I think it was somewhere between thirty and forty anyway.

BRINSON: Okay. And what year did you graduate?

MOXLEY: 1926.

BRINSON: Okay. Um, at what point do you think you became aware that you were growing up in a segregated society? Were there any personal situations . . .

MOXLEY: Nothing happened in Bowling Green to indicate that . . . and, uh, my people were pretty close. And like I said, my mother went to college and my grandfather was a minister, so we did most of the things--I still do. (laughing)

BRINSON: You came from a middle-class, educated family then?

MOXLEY: Right. In other words, my grandmother cooked on Saturday; no cooking on Sunday. We all got to sit at the table on Sunday, and each one had to have a Bible verse or (chuckle) or he was in trouble. And then she even carried out that years later when we were living in Gary. She used to have fish on Sunday and everybody sit down--everybody sit together. And, uh, she had one thing that has changed . . . my family, and your family too. After she went down to Montgomery, she came back and she discovered how important education was--so she came back and she made one statement, “All my children are going to go to college.” And she did get all of them to college.

BRINSON: That’s, that’s quite a miracle really.

MOXLEY: That’s right. That table in my kitchen there is a sort of little . . . reminder that I used later on when I was bringing the children along. Every night that was the place where they studied.

BRINSON: In your kitchen?

MOXLEY: Yeah, and they studied too. Matter of fact, every one of us did go to college. Two of us got their doctor’s degrees, the others got master’s degrees.

BRINSON: That’s wonderful. When you were growing up, though, Dr. Moxley, uh, tell me about stores and restaurants and theaters and whatnot in Bowling Green.

MOXLEY: ( ) got the whole big picture of me talking about that. Actually, uh—me, I didn’t, I don’t feel, like somebody asked me, “Did you drink water in the park?” You know, used to have water there. I say, “Yeah.” I knew you wasn’t supposed to. The only thing that bothered us was on the corner there where the vacant lot--parking lot, and Woolworth’s had a store there and they didn’t let us eat at the counter. Later on, Penney’s over there where they got the—the Governor’s got something now over there--and they had signs, “black” and “white” and so forth. There was nobody that did anything that said you couldn’t go in the park or not, couldn’t do this or the other. I don’t recall—now my father did have one fight. I think he and another fellow got in a thing with a shovel but it wasn’t serious. Nothing happened to him.

BRINSON: What about the library? Could you go to the library and check books out?

MOXLEY: We had a good library in High Street, I mean State Street.

BRINSON: Right, the library . . .

MOXLEY: Yeah, had a good library and plus the fact being in a family like mine, we read books. You ought to see my basement; whole bunch of old books down there (laughing). We read. My father had—this is what he did; this is funny. In those days, you know, the record player was on a can like and we could use a record player; but on Sunday after church we had to read the Harvard Classic. I still got the copies up there that he made us read. (laughing)

BRINSON: The Harvard Classic? That’s unusual to read in church, isn’t it?

MOXLEY: That’s right. No, it wasn’t in church. It was at home in the afternoon after church was out.

BRINSON: Oh, I see.

MOXLEY: You didn’t go out and play on a Sunday afternoon. You went home. You listened to that radio or read the Harvard Classic.

BRINSON: Okay. So you graduated in 1926 and then what happened?

MOXLEY: I went to Wilberforce University. That’s a Methodist school.

BRINSON: In Ohio.

MOXLEY: In Ohio.

BRINSON: And how long were you there?

MOXLEY: I graduated from there. I got a B.S. from there.

BRINSON: Okay. And what was your major?

MOXLEY: Uh, what was my major? I know math was minor. I’m not sure. (laughing)

BRINSON: And did you play athletics?

MOXLEY: Some, but I wasn’t on the team. I was, I was an observer, particularly in basketball. Of course, I had a lot of success in basketball afterwards.

BRINSON: Okay. Well, that’s sort of where I was going. I was wondering if you had been an athlete while you were growing up.

MOXLEY: I was athlete but I wasn’t quite good enough. (laughing) I was a little thing. And this guy came in and he asked me, said, “What was your answer for the kids not being able to win?” I said, “They weren’t in the best shape.” The team in the best shape usually won, best condition.

BRINSON: Okay, so you went to Wilberforce and you graduated in four years. Is that correct?

MOXLEY: Yeah.

BRINSON: And then what happened?

MOXLEY: Well, my father had told us all along that I was going to medical school. When the time came for me to go to medical school, he didn’t have the money for me to go medical school. So I went back to Ohio State one year and did work there that would qualify me for teaching. And when I got through at Ohio State—I really met some good people at Ohio State, particularly the professors. Dr. Reed and people that wrote books and things and some of them corresponded with me after I left. But I got a job in Bucrest High School in West Virginia . . .

BRINSON: How do you spell . . . ?

MOXLEY: I don’t know how you spell it. (laughing)

BRINSON: B-U . . .

MOXLEY: Bucrest. But after—when it came out I had this job, P.C. Cherry was the Superintendent here. He wrote me a letter and said, “We want our young people to come back to Bowling Green. “And I want you to come back here, and I got it fixed for you to come back here.” And I came back.

BRINSON: That sounded good to you?

MOXLEY: Well, and I could have done just as well out there, I suppose, but it helped in a way because I got, I got the climate and the things I wanted to raise a family. My family was raised in Bowling Green.

BRINSON: Tell me how you met your wife.

MOXLEY: Uh, this—she’s my second wife.

BRINSON: Okay.

MOXLEY: My, my first wife was in school also, about a year behind me.

BRINSON: At Kentucky State?

MOXLEY: No, in high school.

BRINSON: Okay.

MOXLEY: In high school.

BRINSON: So she was here—you wanted to come back?

MOXLEY: Well, not necessarily. (laughing) I, I wanted a good job first.

BRINSON: And, and what was the job? What was the position that you had . . .

MOXLEY: When I came back, I, I had—see, I had a little math . . . had a man out at the hospital while ago said, “He was my teacher, he taught algebra and geometry.” So I came back and I taught algebra and geometry.

BRINSON: Okay. And, uh, how many years did you teach in the school here?

MOXLEY: I taught till the school was changed in sixty-six. And I was the first one to switch—they switched up to ( ) when they asked me in sixty-six.

BRINSON: Okay. I wanted to ask you about that. Were there any differences that you know between the black and the white schools, both while you were growing up and also while you were teaching at the black school?

MOXLEY: I didn’t notice it at the time, but some things did happen to us. And I had one girl finished at Western and on her thesis she pointed out some things that I didn’t notice at the time. For instance, she felt like that we had a better school than any ( ) because most teachers had a master’s degree and everything.

BRINSON: Uh-huh. I’m wondering, though, before integration--for example, when you had textbooks, were they new textbooks?

MOXLEY: Yeah, they didn’t give us old textbooks. I had a good principal, E. T. Buford. He was a go-getter, ‘cause the reason I went--the direction I did find in my life.

BRINSON: And did, did your school have science facilities and cafeteria and library that were comparable to the white schools?

MOXLEY: Had all that. He made sure we had all of that.

BRINSON: Okay. Uh, so as I understand it, after the Brown decision in fifty-four that said schools should be integrated, Bowling Green took a while to make that happen . . .

MOXLEY: (laughing) Yeah, ( ).

BRINSON: . . . and there was a lawsuit.

MOXLEY: Yeah ( ).

BRINSON: You were involved with the lawsuit?

MOXLEY: No, no, I was ( ). I was working ( ) wasn’t involved in it. A fellow named, uh, Henry Alexander and some of the ministers got together.

BRINSON: Some of the ministers?

MOXLEY: Yeah, but not Dr. Jones.

BRINSON: Okay. And so they brought the lawsuit. Did they do that with the NAACP?

MOXLEY: Yeah, it was supported by the NAACP.

BRINSON: Uh, tell me about the NAACP chapter here. Were you a member?

MOXLEY: Yeah, I was a member. I’ve been a member all my life. And this is a funny thing, I—my father was a NAACP member. In those days they paid a dollar (laughing) and I have, I have a record--listen at it and also a copy of it, of the minutes and so forth back then when he was in the NAACP and I was a student.

BRINSON: And many of the NAACP chapters used to have youth groups.

MOXLEY: Yeah, I was in that too.

BRINSON: You were in that too?

MOXLEY: Yeah.

BRINSON: Was—other than the lawsuit to integrate the schools, did the NAACP in the--say in the 1950s, have other issues that they were working on?

MOXLEY: Integration was an issue. Some of us—matter of fact, I went to Montgomery once to march, you know, and some things like that.

BRINSON: Down in Alabama?

MOXLEY: Yeah.

BRINSON: In the sixties?

MOXLEY: Yeah.

BRINSON: Tell me about that. How did you go?

MOXLEY: Drove a car down there and I was scared to death. (laughter) And a fella it was on a ( ), and he went with me and we laughed about that two or three times because he also goes to ballgames ( ).

BRINSON: I’m sorry, who went with you?

MOXLEY: Was White . . .

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: Shelby.

MOXLEY: Shelby White.

BRINSON: Shelby White.

MOXLEY: Uh-huh. Yeah.

BRINSON: Now, did you go down when they had the, uh, the boycott against the buses in the fifties? Or did you go in the sixties when Martin Luther King . . .

MOXLEY: I think it was in the sixties when I went ‘cause I went—I did a workshop at Tuskegee when I was down there.

BRINSON: Okay. What was the workshop about?

MOXLEY: I forgot the issue.

BRINSON: You were taking it or you were giving it?

MOXLEY: I was giving it. Yeah. I did workshops just about every place you can name.

BRINSON: Uh, so you went to Alabama, and Shelby. Were there other people in Bowling Green who were interested?

MOXLEY: Yeah, one or two. I can’t think off-hand but there were some others that went.

BRINSON: In the sixties when we had the sit-ins and the demonstrations in Louisville and Lexington, um, were there any here in Bowling Green, to open up restaurants and lunch counters?

MOXLEY: No.

BRINSON: No? None at all. Okay. Why do you think that was?

MOXLEY: Well, for one thing I remember the Sheriff and the police telling me that there wasn’t going to be any marching of Ku Klux Klan, and so forth like that and they made sure. Basketball’s a funny thing. Now we had a big gym down there and we had the best team in town. Everybody—if you didn’t get there early, you didn’t get a seat. And we paid the police to watch everything. And they watched everything so we had no trouble.

BRINSON: Okay.

MOXLEY: I’d go to Glasgow—I when they had marches there ( ). I had a workshop down in west Kentucky ( ).

BRINSON: So, let me make sure I understand this. In Glasgow there were demonstrations . . .

MOXLEY: Yeah, I been to Glasgow. They had demonstrations, marches and everything.

BRINSON: Okay. And what were the demonstrations for?

MOXLEY: I really don’t know. This wasn’t no integration.

BRINSON: It was about integration?

MOXLEY: Yeah.

BRINSON: Okay. Let me ask you questions about voting. Has voting ever been a problem here for the black community?

MOXLEY: Not that I know of. Just between me and my daddy. He wanted to go Republican; I wanted to go Democrat. [laughing] Nobody tried to keep you from voting.

BRINSON: Okay. Nobody ever . . . ?

MOXLEY: I tell you--it’s funny what they did.

MRS. MOXLEY: They tried to buy votes.

MOXLEY: That’s right and I, I ran for city commission the first time they tried to have it. I didn’t win because we couldn’t pay for the votes and we couldn’t buy the whiskey. Whiskey was a big thing. You give me a drink of whiskey, I’ll vote for you. ( ) We just couldn’t do it.

BRINSON: That was—when did you run for City Commission?

MOXLEY: The first one, the very first time they tried to have a City Commission.

BRINSON: Which would have been in the sixties?

MOXLEY: The sixties.

BRINSON: Okay. Uh, have there been many blacks who’ve been elected to, like, school board or . . .

MOXLEY: Yeah, Joe Denny. Joe Denny. He’s still on City Commission.

BRINSON: Anybody else?

MOXLEY: No. I don’t recall anybody else.

BRINSON: That’s not very many given the size of . . .

MOXLEY: Well, they don’t participate. Like for instance I went to Washington to Carter’s inauguration banquet and . . .

BRINSON: President Carter’s inauguration?

MOXLEY: Yeah, yeah. If I go to meeting now, I’ll see three black people and that’s all. They just—they don’t go, don’t participate. Now I missed a meeting the other night and ( ). I had planned to be there but they got two black people that are going to go to the convention this time. They didn’t—they don’t—they haven’t participated. Isn’t anybody keeping them from participating. They just don’t do it.

BRINSON: You’re talking about going to the Democratic Convention?

MOXLEY: Yeah.

BRINSON: Okay. Well, I understand that you also were the first black to go to Western University. Is that true?

MOXLEY: Yeah, that’s true.

BRINSON: Tell me about that.

MOXLEY: Well, after I finished high school I couldn’t go to Western, I couldn’t go to UK, and I didn’t want to go to Kentucky State—and my mother didn’t want me to go either. [slight laugh] So . . .

BRINSON: Why, why was that?

MOXLEY: So I went to Wilberforce and, and I finished in four years, just like I told you before. But, uh, when I come back again, I, I still couldn’t get through—couldn’t go to Western, couldn’t go to Kentucky State—I mean, uh, to Kentucky, yeah, uh, University of Kentucky. So Dr. Buford, the fellow I was talking about and was my principal then, he and I decided to go to Indiana University. So we, we picked out what we wanted to do and enrolled in the university. Here’s the way we split it up: the class we’d take, like for instance, my biggest haul was leaving here at two o’clock on a Saturday morning and going to Indianapolis for a class, and then coming back.

BRINSON: How far . . .?

MOXLEY: I did seventeen trips like that and there wasn’t no 65; and 31W was the road. Snow, ice and everything else.

BRINSON: How long of a drive is that?

MOXLEY: Huh?

BRINSON: How long does it take you to do that drive?

MOXLEY: I’ve forgotten now and I used to drive up there so often. [laughing] Indianapolis is about—it’s less than three hundred miles. About two hundred and some odd miles.

BRINSON: It’s a good drive.

MOXLEY: Yeah, it was a good drive and going 31W. (laughing) Wasn’t no I-65. And, but now we had a break in there. Sometime the classes could be—a particular class could be ( ) Evansville. Sometime we’d go to class there, and there was another place over on the Indiana side. We could go to class and—in those days we’d go on a Wednesday and come right back. Now, the thing that Mr. Buford made clear with me is: don’t sit in the back of the room. Don’t get with other blacks. That stuck, stuck in my craw and bothered me. So when I enrolled in Western—Katy Thompson was there then--two of us, only two of us enrolled, ( ) and myself. And he was pretty well--felt like me ( ). So I enrolled in a class--that the state was requiring the Superintendents in these small schools to take some kind of courses, (laughing) and I was in the class. I didn’t sit in the rear; I sat in the front. ( ) I had two of them with me. And then later on most of the Superintendents knew me, and they asked me where they could get somebody to work in their school. (laughing) I helped a lot of them . . .

BRINSON: That was certainly . . .

MOXLEY: But now—was nobody--been a lot about who finished first. See, there’s two differences. I, I was in the Master in the main part; I mean the Master part of Western; the other was in ( ), this other part. Then we had other people that went in the next year and they say, “Oh, I finished first.” Well, my wife can tell you—when we was ( ) it was out in the yard wasn’t it?

MRS. MOXLEY: No, it was inside.

MOXLEY: We had something out in the yard . . .

MRS. MOXLEY: When he graduated. My daughter and I went to his graduation, and we sat down like ( ); you know, like any other graduate’s people would. So we sat down and the lady, a lady came to us and said, “You’ll be more comfortable if you sit up there.” So I said, “No, we’ll sit here, same as we always . . .” So that was all there was to it. We didn’t say anything, wasn’t any arguments. He was the only one that graduated. He was the only one. [phone rings]

BRINSON: How, how did you find—how did the teachers treat you?

MOXLEY: Fine. One or two of them was real buddies of mine later on.

BRINSON: Okay. How about the other students?

MOXLEY: Particularly that—huh? The other students were all right. I was going to get to that later. They were all right—they didn’t-- I didn’t have any problem.

BRINSON: So you were a, a coach for a number of years of some pretty successful teams I understand.

MOXLEY: Right. Right.

BRINSON: What, what was it like, uh, to go from a segregated team and league to an integrated coaching situation? How was it for you and how was it for the players?

MOXLEY: Well, I think, I think—I wanted her to get in on this—uh, I was going to say, first I taught at Western in the summer after I got my degree. And I think most of the them were all white. And I had a way of making people comfortable: “Let’s have class out in the yard, let’s do this, that and the other.” So I was pretty popular with the students I taught in Counselor Education now. Now Counselor--that’s another thing that’s important. Before I got my degree at Western, my principal came to me--we rented a house in Bloomington in the summer and I went to school. So he came by one summer day, and I’d just got enrolled in this thing that I was going to take to get a Master’s degree from Indiana University. He said, “Look I got something to tell you.” Said, “You don’t want to be old Principal.” Said, “I got something better than that.” What had happened, the state had gotten with him and asked him—and worked out with him that I could work for the state in introducing Elementary Guidance and Guidance. And I said, "Yeah. Okay, I’ll try it.” So I stopped right there and didn’t finish that course even. So when school started that year, I was out with the teams I was coaching and here come two fellows with Mr. Buford ( ) and wanted to come and talk to me. And they offered me where I would work for the state in eastern, in western Kentucky in Guidance and tell them what to buy and show them, indicate to them how it works and everything. So that got me started working with, uh, black and white because they didn’t have no black counselors.

BRINSON: But did you still coach while you were doing this?

MOXLEY: I still coached.

BRINSON: You did?

MOXLEY: Yeah.

BRINSON: Okay.

MOXLEY: Now ( )—coaches ( )—I have a real problem when you get to that part of the Bible where it says ‘turn the other cheek,’ you know? (laughing) But I had a lot of help. I guess—maybe some people take a look at me an say he ain’t nothing to--but I remember I took weeks--and we had a nice gym down there, and I put signs up about people hitting and about this and not doing that and the other, you know; and not doing . . . what do you do and so forth. And then I insisted that all of them go to church Sunday. I wanted to see them in church and Sunday School. All of them too. (laughing) And, uh, so finally I got around to where they kind of tentatively accepted the fact that they wouldn’t be spit on, or hit, or kicked or something like that. But what happened was—I can’t think of the coach--guys name and referee—uh, he came on and we said, “Don’t worry about a thing coach.” And this boy, Taylor boy got spit on right there in our gym and then he got peeved, and he took the—well, he did what he had to do, get rid of them. He stopped them from spitting on the boy and doing the things to boys they shouldn’t do. Now, the way I did it--and I played all these teams, all these white schools. If I didn’t win and it wasn’t fair, I would be sitting like I’m sitting now. And I’d sit there till all the boys got dressed and I said, “Well, thank you. Good-night.” (laughing) Some boy ( ) said, “We never could beat you.” I won them over where they wouldn’t do things.

BRINSON: Right. How, how would you evaluate the progress of race relations in Bowling Green?

MOXLEY: Hmm, that’s kind of hard. Miss Downs called me ( ) I didn’t want to miss, and she wanted to know about getting the teachers that are retired to come to the Kentucky Education Association monthly meeting. I’m about the only one that goes. (laughing) They—not that anybody’s done anything to them; they just haven’t learned how to relate to all people.

BRINSON: So the black teachers really just don’t . . .

MOXLEY: They haven’t learned to relate.

BRINSON: . . . they don’t want to.

MOXLEY: Yeah, they won’t relate. Now the same thing could happen to me in basketball if I stuck my nose out and complained about this and fussed about that. They wouldn’t want to relate to me there. I think some of them really felt bad after they ( ), but I won them over.

BRINSON: But do you think that, uh, that maybe they could relate if they wanted to but they just decided they didn’t want to.

MOXLEY: They didn’t want to.

BRINSON: It’s not worth the effort?

MOXLEY: I guess that’s so. And we, we played everywhere—that’s why I said it was successful—we played in Ohio also, up in Cincinnati, places. And we played in style. I’ll show you some pictures in there in the next room on the wall and you see the team and so forth.

BRINSON: Okay.

MOXLEY: Uh, but I had, I had no problems. Larry Doty was working at the time and he’d look at me when he’d go to another place, “Does the referee know you?” (laughing) ( ).

BRINSON: Tell me who you would say were some of the black leaders in Bowling Green when it came to promoting, uh, better situations for the black community.

MOXLEY: Most of them are dead, I expect.

BRINSON: Well, that’s okay. Just tell me . . .

MOXLEY: Henry Alexander ( ), Mr. . . .

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE ONE

BEGIN TAPE ONE SIDE TWO

MOXLEY: . . . except maybe Reverend Jackson, didn’t have any touch at all with racial problems.

BRINSON: Is Reverend Jackson still alive?

MOXLEY: Uh hmm. Church is out on Church Street.

BRINSON: Okay. Were there any women?

MOXLEY: We didn’t have any women pastors, preachers, but there were women preachers though. Occasionally one would be brought in for, uh, Revival.

BRINSON: But were there any women that you would call leaders in the community, the black community?

MOXLEY: Yeah, yeah, quite a few.

BRINSON: Can you tell me some of their names?

MOXLEY: Uh, Mrs., Miss Taylor was one. Uh . . .

BRINSON: What did she do?

MOXLEY: She was a teacher and there’s a little building over on State and Third that they put up and sometimes used to used that for activities. Miss Moses and Miss Hutchinson. We had some real good teachers--and Mr. and Mrs. Nichols and Miss Moore. They came out of Ohio, both of them came from Wilberforce like I did. They were good teachers.

BRINSON: Were there ever any women who, uh, were president of the local NAACP?

MOXLEY: Oh, yeah. I can’t remember ( ) ‘cause we changed around quite a bit. Huh?

MRS. MOXLEY: I’m trying . . .

MOXLEY: Miss Downs was too. And I was trying to think of somebody else; before Miss Downs came to town.

MRS. MOXLEY: Miss Moses or Miss . . .

MOXLEY: Miss Taylor.

MRS. MOXLEY: Taylor.

BRINSON: Well, now tell me how you two met.

MRS. MOXLEY: Well . . . (laughter-Moxleys) How did we meet? It’s been, it’s been so long.

BRINSON: How long?

MRS. MOXLEY: He was, he, of course, was teaching and I was in the cafeteria so . . .

BRINSON: You met that way?

MOXLEY: Oh, we met before that.

MRS. MOXLEY: Yeah.

MOXLEY: Way before that.

MRS. MOXLEY: How did we meet?

BRINSON: How, how long have you been together?

MOXLEY: We, we met because--for ten years every summer I would go to New York and work in food processing. And one summer—she would go to Indianapolis and work there. So she came up to, out to . . .

Mrs. MOXLEY: . . . to New York.

MOXLEY: Yeah, to Rochester and we just went from there, on and on.

MRS. MOXLEY: We married in forty-nine or . . . ?

MOXLEY: It was in the forties.

BRINSON: Okay.

MRS. MOXLEY: In the forties.

BRINSON: So you’ve been together . . .

MOXLEY: Fifty-some years.

BRINSON: Think you’ll stay together?

MRS. MOXLEY: (laughter-all) We might.

BRINSON: Okay. Well, is there anything else about, uh, the whole movement to eliminate segregation that I haven’t asked you that you want to tell me about?

MOXLEY: I don’t know. I laid on to just about every group in town. What’s the, Layman--( ) what’s the one I got the little jacket I got—I don’t even know the name of it now.

BRINSON: Is it an organization?

MOXLEY: Uh-huh. You know, we had one in the county and had one in the city. I still get ( ) from the Chamber of Commerce--from the county one.

BRINSON: Was it a Commission on Human Rights?

MOXLEY: No, it was, uh [laughing]

MRS. MOXLEY: I can’t think.

BRINSON: What did, what did the group do?

MOXLEY: We had projects in the community. For instance, we helped—when they first started setting up food for people that needed food and we paid, bought equipment for them. You know, that thing. Matter of fact, we went to Europe.

BRINSON: Went to Europe?

MOXLEY: Yeah. [laughing]

BRINSON: Wow. That sounds like a good deal.

MOXLEY: I can’t think—I hate to get up and go in there and get the . . .

BRINSON: That’s all right. Okay. Well, thank you very much for talking with me.

END OF INTERVIEW