Oral History Interview with Walter T. Hutchins

BETSY BRINSON: This is an interview with Mr. Wally Hutchins. The interview takes place at his residence in ….

WALTER HUTCHINS: ...say my name again? Walter W. Hutchins, September twenty-ninth nineteen thirty-one.

BRINSON: And date of birth.

HUTCHINS: It’s Walter W. Hutchins and I was born September twenty-ninth, nineteen thirty-one.

BRINSON: Thank you very much for being willing to talk with me today. I know when I called you, Mr. Hutchins, I asked you if I could talk with you about Lyman Johnson, who was your father-in-law. And I do want to get to that, but I’d like to start with a little bit about who you are, and you gave me your birth date; and I know you moved to, you didn’t, you were not born in Louisville. But tell me a little bit about your background. Where you were born.

HUTCHINS: Okay, Betsy, I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, went to school there, graduated from Penn State University with degrees in, dual degree in Industrial Psychology and Industrial Engineering. Spent some time in the Air Force and after that, then took a diploma course in Advertising and Marketing at the Charles Morris Price School in Philadelphia. Began work as a consultant in Marketing and Research, and spent time with private consultants, Merck, Sharp and Dohme. And spent about eleven years with the Insurance Company of North America in one of their subsidiaries in Charge of Marketing. Then I went into Real Estate as a Broker and Appraiser, and did that for a number of years.

BRINSON: Were you living in Pennsylvania?

HUTCHINS: In Philadelphia, living in Philadelphia all that time. About that time, I had been married to Lyman Johnson’s daughter since nineteen sixty-six. She contracted a rather, it’s called now, a catastrophic illness, and we thought we’d come down to Louisville. Her father had retired and her mother had died. So he was kind of here by himself, and we just thought we’d bring the family together. Unfortunately she passed soon after I got here.

BRINSON: Let me stop you there.

HUTCHINS: Yeah.

BRINSON: What is her name, please?

HUTCHINS: Her name was Yvonne Johnson, Florence Yvonne Johnson.

BRINSON: And she was an only child?

HUTCHINS: She was one of two children. She was the daughter and he also had a son, who he named Lyman M. Johnson.

BRINSON: Right. I think I’ve met him actually at the, uh, U.K. did the fiftieth anniversary celebration last year.

HUTCHINS: Yeah, oh good. Yeah.

BRINSON: I think he was there.

HUTCHINS: He was there, yes.

BRINSON: How did you meet your wife?

HUTCHINS: I guess you would call it a social meeting, kind of thing. I met her, kind of at the height of the movement days. Now it’s called “The Movement” in quotes. We were both in the movement.

BRINSON: She was in Philadelphia?

HUTCHINS: In Philadelphia, she was working in Philadelphia, she was a psychologist, also. And she was working there.

BRINSON: And tell me a little bit about your involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.

HUTCHINS: I suppose you’d say I was active, an activist, more active than some. I was with CORE, for those who don’t remember it is the Congress of Racial Equality. [Laughing] And we were primarily working on fair housing, and adequate housing; and any kind of housing. That was our chief focus at that time, in the early sixties.

BRINSON: And within Philadelphia as a...?

HUTCHINS: In Philadelphia as our base, right. So I was in the movement then for roughly, since the middle of the sixties. Towards the end of the sixties, she and.....Well we got married in sixty-six, and I think in sixty, about sixty-eight, we decided that we could do a little more and we opened a community center, it’s called “Black House”. And it was to inform and educate, it was in the heart of North Philadelphia, which is an inner-city neighborhood.

BRINSON: Actually my daughter lives in Philadelphia.

HUTCHINS: Does she?

BRINSON: She’s down on Twenty-Second Street, but I know a little bit.

HUTCHINS: You know, yeah, yeah, this was the heart of North Philadelphia. It was primarily for kids. We would open every day after school, from like three to seven and then we would be open on Saturday, during the day. And we had just as many things as we could find to do. We had reading, had people come in and speak; and we had games and crafts, literally anything you could do was welcome, because they had nothing to do, but run in the streets and stuff. And it was definitely cultural,, and we had people contributing from all over the city, in terms of garments and books, and literature and their time. It was just a great thing. We did it for a couple of years and then we were expecting our first child ,and it just got to be a little bit too much. So we weren’t able to find anyone to take it over and we closed it down after about two years.

BRINSON: Now at what point did you come to Louisville?

HUTCHINS: That was in nineteen ninety.

BRINSON: Nineteen ninety, so much later.

HUTCHINS: Much later, yeah. We had--my son was in--had gone, of course to schools in Philadelphia. He was, I think in his second year at Morehouse by nineteen ninety, so it was convenient for us to kind of close down in Philadelphia and come here. And that’s what we did.

BRINSON: Did your wife continue working after the birth of your son?

HUTCHINS: Oh yes, yes, she worked for quite a number of years. She began showing signs of affliction in about the mid-eighties. And the diagnosis was never favorable, but she ran contrary to the diagnosis, and she managed to thrive for more years than she had been given credit for, or expectancy.

BRINSON: How did she practice, her being a psychologist?

HUTCHINS: She was a therapist, and focused on children, child therapy.

BRINSON: In a private practice?

HUTCHINS: No it was a clinic, but privately--well first she had worked with the state hospital, that’s right, which was a mental hospital. And I think, she got out before the focus shifted away from the institutionalization of people. I don’t know where it went. (Laughing) I think the term then was they were dumped; literally. There was no place for them to go, except for medical treatment, which was not the same as mental treatment. But she got out before that, and then went with a private child service organization and practiced there.

BRINSON: Can you recall from discussions with her, at what point she left? She grew up in Louisville, I take it.

HUTCHINS: Yes, she grew up in Louisville, went to U of L, got her, did her graduate work at Ohio State. And probably about sixty, was looking for a job and the Philadelphia offer was the one she chose. She had offers in Boston, she interviewed in Boston and New York and Philadelphia was the one she chose.

BRINSON: Did she ever think, to the best of your knowledge, about returning to Louisville?

HUTCHINS: To work?

BRINSON: Uh huh.

HUTCHINS: I don’t think so, no, I don’t think so.

BRINSON: Do you know why?

HUTCHINS: No, I don’t really know why, except that I think she thought she had more opportunity elsewhere, in that practice. And even today, if I were to say--if you were looking to practice in that area, though it’s much improved, there’s probably greater opportunities elsewhere.

BRINSON: Do you have any recollection of your first meeting with her father, Lyman Johnson?

HUTCHINS: Well, yes I do. (Laughing) We had been dating for a couple years, I guess, I would say, yeah had to be a couple. And her father and mother used to travel often, and they have a--Doctor Johnson was the eighth of nine children; and probably five of those, his brothers and sisters, settled in New York. So, he would frequently travel to New York, and since Philadelphia was right on the way, they would often stop. And finally I was deemed worthy of meeting the family, which was impressive. I was pleased to rise to that status. And of course, not knowing really anything about him, nothing at all, when I met him. I just knew that they were the parents of the lady that I was entertaining.

BRINSON: Right. So you didn’t know about his leadership in Kentucky?

HUTCHINS: Not at all, not at all. And she’d never....She said he was a school teacher. I knew that, and that he had been teaching for a long time, which at that time would have been thirty some years.

BRINSON: Do you remember at what point you began to get an inkling that he was more than a school teacher?

HUTCHINS: I think the first, when I came down for the wedding. We were married here. And I could only--I could not be unaware of the deference that was paid to him, just in normal, everyday on-goings; and his presence and his leadership in the family. Of course you know a wedding is a lot of details coming together, and when you’re not at the site, someone has to do it. And he had everything just arranged. (Claps hands)

BRINSON: Where were you married?

HUTCHINS: We were married at Plymouth Congregational Church.

BRINSON: And did you have a reception afterwards?

HUTCHINS: Reception was, reception was in the lower level, yeah, the auditorium.

BRINSON: And approximately how many people do you think were there? (Laughter – Hutchins)

HUTCHINS: It felt like the whole city was there. (Laughter) It was a big crowd, it was a big crowd.

BRINSON: Were you feeling a little intimidated?

HUTCHINS: No. I was, I think the wedding experience overrode any kind of intimidation. (Laughing) That was, you know, just fills you up. You’ve experienced it, have you?

BRINSON: Oh yes.

HUTCHINS: Okay, you know. (Laughter)

BRINSON: Was he, do you think he was aware upon meeting you, of your involvement in Philadelphia with CORE and with housing issues?

HUTCHINS: Oh I’m sure. Yeah I’m sure, because although I didn’t go through--I didn’t ask their permission--I’m sure she conveyed enough about me, to convince them that it was appropriate and proper and made sense; and whatever all the other things she needed to get married. Yeah.

BRINSON: So he, at what point did he actually step down from the school system?

HUTCHINS: Well, he stopped teaching about, almost about the time, about sixty-six, about the time we were getting married. I don’t have the exact, but he was then Assistant Principal in two locations, and then worked in another school for a period of time, for another, almost six years. And then after that he was a member of the School Board, elected to that, or appointed for possibly two terms. So his career, teaching career, spanned forty years, and then additional years as a School Board member. And because he was so dynamic, it just seemed like he was just a part of everything up until, really later years. Awards would still come. I remember him receiving the Governor’s Medallion in nineteen ninety-six, no, no, maybe ninety-five. He had come out of the hospital and he was in a nursing home here. And the award was offered, and the question was whether or not he would be able to go up to get it. And he said he wanted to go, and of course he needed a wheelchair to travel around by then. And I can still remember the night we drove up and trying to find the entrance to the Governor’s Mansion....Now that I know where it is, it’s easy. (Laughing)

BRINSON: Right.

HUTCHINS: But to find it in a night, it wasn’t rainy so much, but it was in Frankfort, still, I still have trouble finding my way across the bridge sometimes. (Laughing) But anyway yeah, he went up and got it. This was Governor Brereton Jones, who gave it to him. And Governor Breathitt, and another governor was present. I want to say Coombs?

BRINSON: Uh or Carroll?

HUTCHINS: Carroll, Carroll, I think it was Carroll.

BRINSON: I’m not sure. I think Governor Coombs would have been there, but I think he had died at that time.

HUTCHINS: Oh okay, Carroll, I think that was Carroll, yeah, two former governors were there also. So it was quite a night. And then even after that, Common Cause chose him as their recipient, and by that time he had moved to Tennessee to live with a niece. She was a retired registered nurse and she said, “Why don’t you come on down.” Columbia was where he was born. So Common Cause wanted to know if he would be able to come to Washington for that, and sure enough he said let’s go. So they worked it out, got the plane, got the chair and fortunately my son was in Washington. He had graduated from Morehouse several years before, but he had a business in Washington; so he was able to be there and help. And they got a great picture of Doctor Johnson, my son and his niece in front of the Washington Monument; and it’s just a real precious picture.

BRINSON: Who owns the picture today?

HUTCHINS: Well Betsy, I started actually in nineteen ninety-three a Johnson Historical Society...

BRINSON: Did you? Okay.

HUTCHINS: ...to assemble, and document and preserve literally as much about Lyman Johnson as I could.

BRINSON: Wonderful.

HUTCHINS: And that picture is in the archives, it’s not really. I don’t call it archives. It’s his papers. But I have them here, they are on their way to U of L for a permanent depository. So they’re in the Johnson Papers.

BRINSON: That’s wonderful that you are doing that.

HUTCHINS: It’s a joy. It’s a privilege, really. Each year we have a birthday memorial on his birthday. We call it a Birthday Memorial and Chit Chat, because chit chat was a word he used to use often when he got people together for dinner and chit chat. And they would just sit and talk about literally anything that came up or pressing issues. So, we’ve done that now for three years and plan to do it for as long as we can.

BRINSON: And where do you hold that?

HUTCHINS: The church, the Plymouth Church has been available every time. It’s the second Saturday in June, which is the date closest to his birthday, so we’ve kind of institutionalized it to that point.

BRINSON: Tell me his exact birth date.

HUTCHINS: His exact birth date was the twelfth of June nineteen oh six.

BRINSON: When you have the birthday and the chit chat, tell me what goes on there, how many people come and what’s the conversation like? Is there a formal program?

HUTCHINS: Betsy, every year it’s different. The first year it was almost a memorial kind of thing, and I had a representative from U. K.; and a representative from LCCC; because they have an award that is named after him. So Stan Watkins came, and Chester Grundy came up from U. K.. And it was just a, kind of, almost a memorial. Then I also incorporate the audience as much as possible, so I then asked--oh, we also played some of his tapes. Okay? And that’s part of the program, and then the audience could recollect anything they wanted to say and I recorded their comments. And that kind of made the package for the first year. Then the second year--I’d have to look and see how we did it, because this last year is the one I remember most vividly. This year I asked people to come prepared to say what they thought Lyman Johnson would say about the city-county merger; the Central High suit and the police situation. And people had a lot to talk about.

BRINSON: I bet.

HUTCHINS: Yeah, and we recorded that and everyone just, you know, had a good chit chat.

BRINSON: I’m curious, what do people think he would have said about the Central law suit?

HUTCHINS: I was almost going to say, I’ll play you the tape. (Laughter) It was interesting, because we had, we had the plaintiffs there--a representative of the plaintiffs. She just came because, you know, she wanted to and was welcome to; and we had representatives from the alliance, who had joined the suit. And then we had some other people--I would say--who would say probably represented the other side. What did they say? Everybody seemed to think that he would be in favor of wherever they were. He’d be in favor of the suit, he’d be in favor of the School Board, he’d be in favor of the school. And it was such a fluid thing, that you can’t really say. Everyone had a different opinion.

BRINSON: It’s a tough issue.

HUTCHINS: It’s tough, yeah, yeah. And I think the judge worded his rendering such a way, that--I feel it was a magnificent wording. I mean he allowed for the entry, but he allowed that we wouldn’t revert to the strict segregation; and there’s a nice broad area in between. I think it was masterful--personal opinion.

BRINSON: Let me go back, you said that you moved here in nineteen ninety?

HUTCHINS: Ninety.

BRINSON: And your wife’s health was poor.

HUTCHINS: Yes.

BRINSON: And tell me about your interactions with Mr. Johnson at that point.

HUTCHINS: At that point, we just kind of became as children of parents, kind of care givers. He was fairly, fairly robust.

BRINSON: He would have been eighty-four.

HUTCHINS: Right, right. And of course he was living, by then he had moved to Blanton House, so he had his own apartment. Don’t think he was still driving...no, he wasn’t still driving. His eyes started to fail as he got older and he had to stop driving. But he kept his parking space, because I could use it every time I went down to Blanton House. But that was primarily--he didn’t need continuous attention. And he seemed to be thankful that I was able to take care of Yvonne, as much as I could. And that was the major, I mean she just required, you know, twenty-four hours, seven....attention. She could sit up and she could feed herself till the end, and coherent and all that, but it was a muscular dystrophy.

BRINSON: Did you care for her at home?

HUTCHINS: Yes, she never had to be institutionalized.

BRINSON: And she died in what year?

HUTCHINS: Ninety-one.

BRINSON: Ninety-one, so really shortly after you moved here.

HUTCHINS: Yeah, yeah shortly.

BRINSON: Sort of hard, I’m going to ask you something and I’m thinking well, that would be hard to answer. How did she feel about coming back to Louisville?

HUTCHINS: She was in favor of it, because she knew that her father was here, kind of by himself. And again it was just an opportune time, because our son was out of the house, in school. We didn’t need the size house we had, and we were actually looking to get on one floor anyway; and decided to come here and get on one floor. So she was at ease with it and kind of welcomed it. Again, I think that being closer to her father was kind of comforting.

BRINSON: So you really weren’t here a very long period before her death, but you elected to stay on?

HUTCHINS: Well again it was, I guess, fortuitous, my son was getting ready to graduate, and I wanted to really find out what he was going to do after he graduated; whether he was looking to come back home to be with us--to be with me or what. And it turned out he was perfectly content to stay in Atlanta. He had, even before he graduated he had started a school there and a business, so he was well engaged and he was comfortable with it. So, I had no pressing business back in Philadelphia. I had no immediate family there and Louisville was a nice change of pace. And I liked it, and it seemed to like me, so I decided to stay. [Laughing]

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE ONE

BEGIN TAPE ONE SIDE TWO

BRINSON: ...describe the differences between Louisville and Philadelphia at the time that you came here. Well, let me even take you back further than that. When you first started visiting here, were you aware, were there things going on in Louisville and things in Philadelphia? Were there differences? How were they similar?

HUTCHINS: Louisville was less intense, less hectic. Philadelphia is the third or fourth largest city in the country, just busy, really busy. Really busy, really big, problems as with any major metropolitan area. Louisville was just, I’d say, more relaxed, had problems, but the scale was considerably less, and frankly easier to take. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was ready for it.

BRINSON: I can see that.

HUTCHINS: You can, sure.

BRINSON: Just from my own visits to Philadelphia.

HUTCHINS: Uh hmm.

BRINSON: Of course, I don’t live in Louisville. I live in Lexington, but I’m relatively new to Kentucky.

HUTCHINS: Okay, you’re from?

BRINSON: I came here two years ago from Richmond, Virginia.

HUTCHINS: Oh.

BRINSON: But I’m in and out of Louisville a lot. Now Yvonne’s brother lives in Pennsylvania. Am I right?

HUTCHINS: He lives just outside of Philadelphia.

BRINSON: And is he younger or older than she was?

HUTCHINS: He’s younger.

BRINSON: And their mother, now, what was her name?

HUTCHINS: Her name was Juanita Morell Johnson. She died about seventy-eight.

BRINSON: I’ve always wondered about her, without knowing much at all, because he was so active; and I don’t know whether she was at all, or whether--I just don’t know anything about her.

HUTCHINS: About the wife, yeah. You had met Doctor Johnson?

BRINSON: No, no, no.

HUTCHINS: Never did?

BRINSON: Never. I mean, I know from what I’ve read. I’ve watched some videos.

HUTCHINS: Oh so you were probably not even here, while he was alive, I see.

BRINSON: What kind of a woman was she? What were her interests?

HUTCHINS: Mrs. Johnson, after they married, she was primarily a homemaker. She was a college graduate and had worked in Registration at maybe Knoxville or Nashville. I don’t know, but I can find out. And I think she was working there, when they got acquainted. But primarily a homemaker. I don’t think she ever worked here. I’m sure she did some volunteer activities, because that was her nature; and kept the home, raised the kids, and did all the great things that a guy like Lyman Johnson needed to have done, so that he could do what he had to do. [Laughing]

BRINSON: Do you have any knowledge of what kind of volunteer activities, or if she belonged to any organizations or her church?

HUTCHINS: I knew she was a member of Plymouth, as he was. I’d really have to do more research to find that out definitively. I just, I’m sure it’s obtainable out of his papers and so forth, but I don’t know.

BRINSON: Are any of his papers already at the University of Louisville?

HUTCHINS: No, the only thing they have now--he was a recipient of--the figure keeps rising, I’m saying now about two hundred and fifty certificates, citations, awards, plaques, whatever. We--they all have that out there now at U. of L. But that is all. They have none of his papers. They’re in about twenty plus boxes here. And he was so meticulous in his organization that, of course, he has an alpha index and a numeric index, and everything is cross-referenced. You can go there and within minutes find whatever subject, it’s just...

BRINSON: Impressive?

HUTCHINS: Impressive, exactly. Overwhelming by most. Because, I’ve been doing more research, matter of fact, I’m in discussion with the Kentucky Humanities Council now to do something with Lyman Johnson.

BRINSON: What do you mean when you say to do something, because they have several different programs?

HUTCHINS: Well, the Chautauqua or the speakers, okay. I auditioned for the Chautauqua and I was not chosen. And one of the things that Virginia Smith said was, “The panel thought that being the kind of person he was, there was not the drama in his life, that the Chautauqua characters like to have, okay?” And I could see it. I could see as they say, “Where they were coming from” on that. I think we could have dramatized: well the incidents that I mentioned all had drama involved with them, but anyway. So, matter fact, she is waiting for me to call her now to talk about doing, being a speakers bureau. Okay? So that’s kind of where that is.

BRINSON: Can you describe for me, which incidents you were proposing to play in the Chautauqua?

HUTCHINS: I was going to--okay, it’s okay to tell you this, right? Okay. I’m thinking about....what the Humanities Council, their version....well anyway.

BRINSON: I guess I’m not getting at so much, or I’m not asking so much about their interpretation, I’m just curious about what examples of his life that you were....

HUTCHINS: What I was going to do. Well, we were going to talk about the suit against U. K. . Okay? We were going to talk about the teacher’s equalization, he fought a big battle, but it didn’t take long to convince the powers that be, that black teachers should be getting the same amount of money as white teachers for doing the same thing. Then there’s his whole activities in the Civil Rights, the protest to open up the pools, the restaurants, the showcases, the theaters and so forth, and the stores. That’s another, I think, dramatic situation. So those were the ones that I was going to focus on and pull the drama out of. And I still will, I expect I’ll do the speaker’s bureau.

BRINSON: Do you have any photographs in his collection?

HUTCHINS: Oh yeah, matter of fact, I’m working on a, I’m calling it now an annotated photo biography. Many photos that have not been published. And I’d say it’s about that thick now, and it’s just a work in progress.

BRINSON: Are there photos from any of the social justice issues that he was involved in, or are the photos mostly family photos?

HUTCHINS: Well, they’re family photos, plus they’re photos of him getting the awards, there are news clipping from situations, photograph that appeared in The New York Times, when the bussing was a big thing. It’s a real famous one. Times came down to do a story, because bussing was such a hot issue here.

BRINSON: So it’s a collection of lots of different....

HUTCHINS: Uh hmm.

BRINSON: When are you hoping to move it to the University of Louisville? [Laughter]

HUTCHINS: Oh, the papers? I’m kind of pledging that as soon as we reach a decision about what I’ll do with Humanities Council. I still do have to go through some boxes, because I’m still looking and adding photographs. I really wanted it to be there by now, but it just, things keep coming up. He had asked me to make sure, to go through it and take out any really personal family type things. And I feel that obligation, that’s kind of a slow process.

BRINSON: Well, twenty boxes is a lot of material. I’m asking about the collection because, I think I said to you, when we talked on the phone, that we are going to be doing a film documentary on the struggle for civil rights in Kentucky from nineteen thirty to probably nineteen seventy-five. I think we’ll stop with the bussing.

HUTCHINS: Ahhh. Okay.

BRINSON: And we’re looking both for people who can talk to us about specifics, but we’re also looking for photos and whatnot that we can use as part of the documentary. And there are not that many photos, at least The Louisville Courier took a number.

HUTCHINS: Right.

BRINSON: But many of the other newspapers in the state, even though they knew things were happening, elected not to cover it.

HUTCHINS: Oh, right. Yeah. No, The Courier Journal is the major source. And I think we talked before and, of course, whatever they have out at U. of L., in the archives. The Defender, they took a lot of pictures, but accessibility, I can’t comment on that.

BRINSON: Well, to sum this up. How do you see the contributions of your father-in-law?

HUTCHINS: Betsy, the more I learn about them and study about them and try to prepare to present them, the more impressed I become. This whole situation with, for instance the suit against U. K.; most people think that, okay he got some lawyers, he filed suit and the judge said okay. But there was so much that went on before it, and even getting from the decision to sue to the suit, there was raising money, getting the lawyers, organizing the whole thing. Before a lawyer will go sue, he has to be pretty well convinced that he’s got a good case; and the case had to be made. So, literally he--Mr.--Doctor Johnson had to be denied entrance to make the suit, they have a legal term for it, to make it go. And all that had to happen beforehand. And in preparing again for the audition at Kentucky Humanities, I literally went through every clipping he had on this, it’s got to be about ninety, about, related to the suit, that was recorded in the paper and then there’s some personal letters as well.

BRINSON: Well, if I recall correctly, he actually looked for someone else to be a plaintiff for a long time.

HUTCHINS: Yeah, right, the NAACP did, yeah. And they had the qualifications, someone had to be this, and they had to be that, and they had to have all this, plus the personal qualifications; they had to be willing to take it. And it’s like all the fingers, (Laughing) wound up pointing at him. And he said, “Okay.” Because he admits in a number of statements that he didn’t need a doctorate. He was teaching, he had been teaching; and there were no great opportunities for advancement, so, but he wanted to--he didn’t see why he should be denied the opportunity, just because he was a Negro.

BRINSON: I’ve also heard attributed to him--tell me if you’ve heard this--that even though he was willing to make himself a plaintiff in the lawsuit, that he already had a degree from the University of Michigan, a Master’s Degree, I believe.

HUTCHINS: Right.

BRINSON: And that he reportedly said at one point, you know, “I want the right to be at U. K., but if I were actually choosing a graduate program, I would do much better to go back to the University of Michigan, because it is a better school, than the University of Kentucky was.”

HUTCHINS: His words, his words, matter of fact, he called U. K. a dump. He said, “I wouldn’t want to go to this …” (Laughing). He had his Master’s Degree, plus probably two thirds of the requirements for his doctorate, because he had gone to the University of Wisconsin as well.

BRINSON: That’s right.

HUTCHINS: He was later asked by someone at U. K., many, many, many years later, why he called U. K. a dump. And he said, “At the time, it didn’t compare academically to where he had been trained.” But he modified it and said, “It’s better than I thought it was.” U. K. So, a diplomat. (Laughing)

BRINSON: Wade Hall’s biography of Lyman Johnson, what did he think about that?

HUTCHINS: What did Doctor Johnson think of it? I’d say he loved it.

BRINSON: Did he? Okay.

HUTCHINS: Yeah, he was pleased with it. Wade Hall spent many, many hours with him, to gain, to get the information. He’s such a masterful writer anyway. Have you met him? Do you know him? And a neat guy, so they matched quite well, and I think everybody was pleased.

BRINSON: Is anyone else to your knowledge, writing about him now, in terms of, you know, a major work to be published?

HUTCHINS: No, you know, they did a documentary; and then someone else did another documentary, so there are a couple of those around.

BRINSON: Right, I’ve seen...

HUTCHINS: But in terms of writing, nothing that I’m aware of.

BRINSON: From your work in his files, do you think there are special areas, maybe that haven’t been portrayed in the documentary or the biography that would provide new insights, new information?

HUTCHINS: Oh yes, oh yes. I told you, he was so meticulous in his records keeping, that literally everything that happened of note, he has a record of. Correspondence by names of people, places visited, the NAACP records. Of course he was the business manager at Central for twenty-five years. I guess they would call that Athletic Manager, Business Manager, but of athletics. (Laughing) There’s lots there.

BRINSON: So he kept all those papers?

HUTCHINS: Well, not all the documentation, but references to teams played and schedules, not intricate financial details.

BRINSON: In the photo biography that you are working on of him, are you going to present any of the new information?

HUTCHINS: Only as it relates to a photograph, yeah. This is strictly--I had thought earlier of some other, another approach; but I think this will be a first step. Something else could come later.

BRINSON: And do you have a publisher? Is it that far along?

HUTCHINS: My son, yeah, my son’s a literary agent in New York.

BRINSON: Ohh.

HUTCHINS: So there’s my publisher. (Laughing)

BRINSON: Well, that’s wonderful.

HUTCHINS: Yeah, it is.

BRINSON: Is there anything else you’d like to add to what we’ve talked about at this point?

HUTCHINS: Nothing, nothing really for the record. No.

BRINSON: I do remember what I wanted to ask you. Did he keep a journal of any kind? Sort of a daily accounting?

HUTCHINS: I have not uncovered anything like that.

BRINSON: Or a diary?

HUTCHINS: Not, no.

BRINSON: So it’s his correspondence and minutes and memorandums, and things of that nature.

HUTCHINS: Exactly, exactly, brochures, leaflets, pamphlets, papers.

BRINSON: Brochures and pamphlets from?

HUTCHINS: Award ceremonies, he spoke thousands of places. He was invited to come and talk and on the program and at least one roast. I was there for that.

BRINSON: Tell me about that. A roast?

HUTCHINS: Oh my, this had to be in the early eighties, and by then he had just amassed such a reputation. Could it have been, I think his wife was dead, so it had to be maybe eighty. And just everybody from everywhere came and did the roasting. I think, I think the Mayor might have been Sloane, but it might not have been yet Sloane. And judges and students and teachers and politicians. (Laughing)

BRINSON: In many roasts, as you probably know, frequently people sort of say things and take little sly digs at the person being roasted in a friendly kind of way. Was that the tone at all of this one? Or was it more a compliment to his...?

HUTCHINS: It was more a compliment, everybody just telling stories about Lyman, remembering this. It was great.

BRINSON: Do you have any sense at all when he was teaching American history, what his favorite areas of history were to teach?

HUTCHINS: Favorite areas, phew. No, no sense of favorite areas, because he, as a matter of fact, in Wade Hall’s book he talks about--there’s a chapter entitled, “The Iconoclast in the Classroom.” And his emphasis was always on the real, the true history, the real stuff. And he would name names, and site the places, where his research showed different situations than popular history texts do. And he would tell the children, said, “Look here’s the way it was. This is what the book says, but you find out, you can research it, you come to your own opinion about who was right or not.” And of course, when he ever talked about slavery, that was a big topic too. He debunked the myths and the stereotypes and the lies.

BRINSON: I have begun recently to think--to pose a theory--I suppose, that I am going to try out on you. I’m not sure that I’m right or wrong, I’m just sort of looking for people’s reaction to it; but my sense is that in Kentucky, when the schools were integrated--when the schools were still separate, that the black schools taught more black history than when the schools first became integrated; that there was not that much black history in the curriculum. And it took a while. And it’s still not great, but you know, for there to develop more African American history in the formal curriculum. And that we may have had a gap there of ten or fifteen years, where what we did know about African American history wasn’t taught much at all. Do you have any reaction to that? As I said, I’m not sure I’m right.

HUTCHINS: I think you are a hundred percent right. African American history was not even--there’s not even a subject category in the white schools. Slavery was rarely mentioned, as though it never existed. But yes, in the black schools, because you had primarily black instructors and totally black student bodies, the tradition was that, yes, we teach black history. We teach history. And this is where we were, and no, we didn’t come here voluntarily, yes we were brought here as slaves. And even after quote, slavery ended, slavery still existed. Discrimination existed, lack of opportunity and that continued twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, nineteen fifty-four they finally said, “Okay, okay, you can go to school together.”

BRINSON: And that was the end of black history, for a while.

HUTCHINS: For a while, because everything got diluted, except as was the case here, the teachers didn’t go. None of the black teachers went to white schools; none, very few, very few. But they took the black students, because the law said they had to, but there was a serious fight trying to get black teachers into other schools.

BRINSON: Well, the black teachers who stayed in their schools, to what degree were their classrooms comprised of white students?

HUTCHINS: Whatever the numbers had to be, it was mandatory percentages.

BRINSON: Do you think that those black teachers, though, who had been teaching black history as we knew it at that point, would have continued to teach...?

HUTCHINS: I’m sure they did. I’m sure they did. And there were many of them were looking for opportunity to spread the word so to speak; because they knew that the white student population was ignorant of that, of black history, other than maybe someone knew there was a Black History month, once a year.

BRINSON: With the rise of Black Power and Nationalism in the sixties, we began to see festivals and programs and clothing and names and all from Africa. And I have wondered whether some of that might have come in part because there had been sort of a gap there, in which for young African American people, children and young adults, they had missed the opportunity to have any black history.

HUTCHINS: Totally right. Totally, that was an awakening. That was an awakening, beginning in the late fifties. Basically I go back to after the war. Really after the war, when the black G. I.’s came back, and the question often came up, here I am, risked my life for this country and come back for this kind of treatment? No, no, doesn’t work. And that’s when people like Adam Clayton Powell and A. Phillip Randolph. They, they were doing things during the war, but after the war they were a focus of attention; and then more young people started to get into that quote movement, and the academics came along, it was just again the awakening. But, yeah. I, of course, I didn’t go to a segregated school when I was young. I always went to...

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE TWO

BEGIN TAPE TWO SIDE ONE

HUTCHINS: ...now there’s never, I never ( ) course that even smacked of Black history at all.

BRINSON: Well, is there anything else you’d like to add to this interview?

HUTCHINS: Well, I’d like to thank you for being the person in the oral history project that is doing this work. I’m a great fan--I describe myself as a history promoter. Let me remember to give you a flyer about an event that’s coming up this month. I’ll be talking about the life and times of Thomas F. Blue, Senior. He was the first librarian of the Western Branch Library, which is one of the first ( ) libraries in the nation, for then colored audiences. So I’ll be doing a program on him. But I am a history promoter, and oral history is such a, to me, such an important part of history. And we’re racing against the tide, because there are just fewer people who want to do it and the number of people who are available to give it, are literally leaving every day. One of the, I do a course on, I want to see my family tree. And one of the first things I tell people to do is when you go out of this class, go to the oldest living member of your family, right away. Don’t wait until tomorrow, if you can do it today. Go today and just begin to record and write down anything they say. Get the basic details and anything else they say, because that’s a resource and they’re the ones at risk.

BRINSON: How did you become interested in history? Can you remember?

HUTCHINS: I think I’ve always loved history. And I thought about how my interest grew. But even when I was a kid--and still, I love maps. I can literally read a map for hours, just reading it. And then I think wanting to know what made such and such appear on that map, is a natural outgrowth. I just came by it by nature being inquisitive and always loving to read and so forth.

BRINSON: Well, thank you very much.

HUTCHINS: You’re welcome.

END OF INTERVIEW