Oral History Interview with Alberta Brown & Marilyn Brown Queen

BETSY BRINSON: ...two thousand. This is an interview with the family, the wife and daughter of, is it Curley Brown, Senior?

UNKNOWN: Yes.

BRINSON: Okay. And the interviewer is Betsy Brinson and it takes place in the family residence in Paducah, Kentucky. Could you just give me your full name?

MARILYN BROWN QUEEN: Marilyn Brown Queen.

BRINSON: Queen? Q U E E N?

QUEEN: Uh huh, E E N, yes.

BRINSON: And you Mrs. Brown.

ALBERTA BROWN: Etta Alberta Brown.

BRINSON: Well thank you for agreeing to talk with me today. I’d like to start, Mrs. Brown, and ask you if you could tell me where and when you were born, please.

BROWN: … burg, Kentucky, December the eleventh...

QUEEN: December the twenty-third.

BROWN: Twenty-first.

QUEEN: Twenty-third.

BROWN: Twenty-third. Oh Lord have mercy. Nineteen and what?

QUEEN: Seventeen.

BROWN: Seventeen, yeah seventeen.

BRINSON: So that makes you eighty-three years old?

QUEEN: Three, uh huh.

BRINSON: And you said, Pryorsburg? Is that near here?

BROWN: It’s on the other side of Mayfield.

BRINSON: Other side of Mayfield, okay. So it is close. And how long have you lived in Paducah?

BROWN: Oh lord...they tell me when I was in my teens, and I’m in my eighties now. (Laughing)

BRINSON: So you’ve lived here a long time.

BROWN: I’ve been here a long, long time. I don’t know anything about--don’t remember too much--I lived in Pryorsburg, Kentucky, right out from Mayfield.

BRINSON: And how did your family, while you were growing up, make their living?

BROWN: We lived on a farm.

BRINSON: On a farm, okay.

BROWN: My brother worked at the clay mine, clay pit.

BRINSON: The clay pit? And how many brothers and sisters do you have?

BROWN: There’s ten of us, five girls and five boys.

BRINSON: Well, that worked out well. (Laughter – Brown) Five and five. Can you tell me a little bit about your education?

BROWN: Well I went to school in Pryorsburg, got as far as, I have eighth grade. We lived out in the country and the time it got cold, got bad, we missed a lot. So I got up to the eighth grade.

BRINSON: And did you need to work on the farm?

BROWN: Oh yeah.

BRINSON: What kinds of chores did you have to do on the farm?

BROWN: Well they raised, my dad raised tobacco, that was it out there, tobacco.

BRINSON: So you did what? Did you plant it? Did you strip it?

BROWN: Yeah, set it out, then tend to it, until the time came to sucker it, you know it had little things, vines, then you had to sucker it. Then they cut it.

BRINSON: Okay, hard work.

BROWN: Yeah.

BRINSON: How did you meet Mr. Brown?

BROWN: Oh, we were in Paducah just...

QUEEN: Church wasn’t it?

BROWN: Church, at church.

BRINSON: Do you remember the first time you met him?

BROWN: Well, I saw him, not really. He was very active in church, Superintendent of the Sunday School and everything. And you know I saw him a long time before I said anything to him, before we really got acquainted, you know. But he was always real nice, you know, when somebody new came in and he’d come around to see about people.

BRINSON: So how long before you decided you were going to be a couple?

BROWN: I guess about a year. Well, no, I don’t mean it that long, because he was hanging around. (Laughter)

BRINSON: He was interested in you.

BROWN: I think maybe about three months.

BRINSON: And then were you married in the church that you belonged to?

BROWN: Uh huh. No. Married down to Pastor, to Reverend...

QUEEN: Crenshaw?

BROWN: ...no, Katherine’s husband.

QUEEN: Moss?

BROWN: Uh hmm, Reverend Moss.

BRINSON: What can you tell me about your husband’s early background? Where did he grow up?

BROWN: He grew up in Mississippi.

BRINSON: In Mississippi? How did he get from Mississippi to Paducah?

BROWN: I guess he was just glad to get away from there. (Laughing) He just came on, came to Paducah when he was, well he was in his teens.

BRINSON: Do you know why he chose Paducah?

BROWN: No.

BRINSON: Do you think he was just on the move and stopped here? Or did he have any family here?

BROWN: No he had some....he had....I know you can’t remember her name, Kearney’s first cousin.

BRINSON: But he did have some distant family here?

BROWN: Uh hmm.

BRINSON: So he probably stopped to visit.

BROWN: Yeah, there was somebody already here, his first cousin. They were just, you know, real close.

BRINSON: Do you know, can you tell me anything about his early family in Mississippi? Like how many children in his family?

BROWN: Well, he had a brother.

QUEEN: Mother died early.

BROWN: His mother died real early. He grew up with his aunt and dad.

BRINSON: Do you know how they made their living?

BROWN: Farming, I guess.

BRINSON: Farming too? And how far did Mr. Brown get in his education?

BROWN: He completed public school and went out to West Kentucky to....

QUEEN: When it was an Industrial College, he went there.

BROWN: Attended, yeah.

BRINSON: Okay, now did you know him when he was at the Industrial College?

BROWN: Oh yeah.

BRINSON: You did. What did he study there?

QUEEN: Carpentry.

BROWN: He was a carpenter.

QUEEN: They were married at that time. He went back to high school later.

BRINSON: When did he start to become active with the NAACP? Do you remember that?

BROWN: I can’t remember the date, but [Laughing] as soon it was organized around here.

QUEEN: He was a charter member of the state, and he was president here for like thirty-five years. He’s been dead twenty something.

BRINSON: He died in nineteen seventy-six, right?

QUEEN: Seventy-six, yeah. So, he had been president for thirty something years. I think he was a charter member of the state branch, probably.

BRINSON: So maybe he would have been active here from about nineteen forty-five, sometime.

QUEEN: Forties, yes, I’m sure, yeah, I’m sure, I’m sure.

BRINSON: And of course, we had World War II, did he have to go on and serve?

BROWN: No.

BRINSON: Were you active in the NAACP in the forties?

BROWN: Oh yeah.

BRINSON: In the forties with him? What can you remember? How big was the chapter at that point?

BROWN: We had a lot of names, you know, people that joined, but everybody didn’t--we’d have a good meeting, but everybody didn’t attend the meetings. We had practically—my husband probably got everybody he knew, you know.

BRINSON: And I think it was in nineteen forty-nine, nineteen fifty, that the NAACP chapter sued to opened up the Paducah Junior College, I think it was called.

QUEEN: Um hmm

BROWN: Um hmm

BRINSON: Do you have any recollection of that lawsuit?

BROWN: Just remember it casually, not really too much.

BRINSON: Do you remember that? I don’t know how old you were, Marilyn. [Laughter]

QUEEN: I can’t remember any details.

BRINSON: What year were you born?

QUEEN: I was born in forty-four. I don’t remember any details about that. I guess I remember the result of it. I don’t remember the actual filing of the lawsuit or anything like that. I can remember when my brother went.

BRINSON: Let me tell you what I know.

QUEEN: Okay.

BRINSON: And you tell me if this sounds like what you’ve heard at all. The first two students that went in to apply, went with a lawyer from here.

QUEEN: Joe Freeland.

BRINSON: Right.

QUEEN: Probably.

BRINSON: And they were both men and they were both turned down because of race. And then the lawsuit was filed. And the next, after that, well actually the Selective Service Board then drafted those two young men. And then the next two people to actually challenge it were two women. And one of the questions I’ve had in that is, did Mr. Brown and the lawyer and the NAACP, why did these two young men get drafted? Did they get drafted because they were making trouble?

QUEEN: Now that I can’t, I can’t really speak to that. Gladman, when he came by, he said you were going to talk to him. He may have some specifics, he was around that age, you know. But I don’t have any specifics, I don’t remember any specifics about that. Because Sonny, my brother, graduated high school in what, I think, fifty-three.

BRINSON: And then the lawsuit, I believe, was resolved in about fifty-three, in favor of opening up the school. And then your brother was one of four students

BROWN: The first ones.

BRINSON: ...who actually were the first students there. Where is your brother today?

QUEEN: He’s dead.

BRINSON: He’s dead?

QUEEN: Yeah, he was killed in a car accident in sixty-three, when he was a candidate for his Ph.D., at Southern Illinois University.

BRINSON: That’s tragic. What was he doing his Ph.D. in?

QUEEN: Microbiology.

BRINSON: Now Marilyn, when you were in the schools here--when you and I talked on the phone--I believe you said that you actually went to school here, when they were integrating. Tell me, how far did you go in school to an all black school before integration?

QUEEN: Sixth, seventh grade.

BRINSON: Seventh grade, and that would have been about what year? Do you remember?

QUEEN: Graduated in sixty-two, think I was at Jetton in fifty-nine, probably fifty-six, fifty-eight, something like that.

BRINSON: So the Brown versus the Board of Education came down in fifty-four, and then I think it took another year for the implementation suits, so the Paducah school was actually...

QUEEN: Went ahead, I think.

BRINSON: ...integrated fairly early compared to some other places.

QUEEN: Uh hmm. Oh yeah, we did. The first year, I think it was possible, we did.

BRINSON: Do you know what moved the city system to move forward like that? Not all school systems were that...

QUEEN: Probably Daddy. (Laughter)

BRINSON: That’s what I’m getting at. (Laughter)

QUEEN: Yeah. He was pretty fierce. I don’t remember having much of a choice. But there wasn’t a lot of...

BROWN: But they didn’t mind it, you know, they went on first. I might have been...

QUEEN: We figured it was a no win situation, so, but I don’t think we....

BROWN: I was more afraid than they were.

BRINSON: Now there were seven children?

QUEEN: Uh hmm.

BRINSON: And were they all in school at that point?

QUEEN: Everybody but Stevie, the baby.

BRINSON: But you were concerned Mrs. Brown, why was that?

BROWN: Oh yeah. What?

BRINSON: What were your concerns?

BROWN: I just didn’t know what might happen.

BRINSON: You were concerned for their safety?

BROWN: Yes. Because we used to get, I used to get all kinds of calls all during the night. And just say anything to me and hang up.

BRINSON: as that because your children were in the school?

BROWN: Oh, I don’t know, because...

QUEEN: Probably because of Daddy. It was more because of him.

BRINSON: Was there any Klan activity in this area?

BROWN: I don’t know.

QUEEN: I don’t remember any visible, no.

BRINSON: But you just remember people calling and saying things to you.

BROWN: Yeah, uh hmm.

QUEEN: Oh yeah, we used to hear noises outside. And I think Daddy got knocked in the head a couple of, one time I remember.

BRINSON: Tell me what you remember.

QUEEN: I just remember him coming home and some of his friends. He was pretty protective of us. Some of his friends had already taken him and gotten him taken care of, and we were here. And of course, he always acted like it was nothing.

BRINSON: Tell me what, so you went from, to the all black school through sixth grade. And what was the name of that school?

QUEEN: Lincoln.

BRINSON: Lincoln. And then in seventh grade you went to what school?

QUEEN: Jetton.

BRINSON: How do you spell that?

QUEEN: J E T T O N.

BRINSON: I just came by there.

QUEEN: Uh huh, right. They just turned ( ).

BRINSON: I had to stop and ask for directions again. And he said, “Oh, well that street is Tenth street, you’re on the right street.” And when you went there in seventh grade, tell me about that. How big of a...

QUEEN: Well it seemed huge. It was a lot bigger than Lincoln. I was a little apprehensive at first. But I can remember, Daddy took me and I found comfort in that, until he left. [Laughing] And I can remember it feeling a little bit uncomfortable, but that really didn’t, it didn’t last a long time. The teachers I can remember being pretty good. It wasn’t any open hostility.

BRINSON: Were they all white teachers?

QUEEN: Oh sure.

BRINSON: Were there any black teachers at that point?

QUEEN: No. There weren’t any when I graduated from Tilghman, as far as that goes.

BROWN: Not very many now.

BRINSON: Do you have many, do you have any sense of what happened to black teachers with integration in Paducah? In other places, in some other places, you know, they lost their jobs.

QUEEN: I don’t think that happened much here, because see by the time, at that point we went, Lincoln was still open, so you know, they were still there until I left, you know, until I was out of Tilghman. So I’m not real sure on how that transition went, because it was still open, so there was just a few of us there.

BRINSON: It sounds like the arrangement here was, if you wanted to go to an all white school you could, but the School Board didn’t make any arrangement for moving everybody.

BROWN: Uh hmm

QUEEN: Uh hmm. I can’t remember that anybody lost their jobs though.

BROWN: Uh uh. Uh uh.

QUEEN: Of course, just like I said, I wasn’t around at that point, so.

BRINSON: How were the other children to you?

QUEEN: The students?

BRINSON: Uh hmm.

QUEEN: You know, it probably, and I’ve probably made this statement before, probably encountered less prejudice during those times, than probably in my adult life. It went, you know, we made friends, and we did fine.

BRINSON: Why do you say that, “Compared to your adult life?”

QUEEN: I mean, you know, it seemed like to me, I always describe it as a situation where they had probably never been around me anymore than I had been around them; and there was some apprehension, not apprehension, stand-offishness at the very beginning. But then we just went right on, and like I said I had a couple of white teachers that seemed to make an effort. I remember this little lady that taught me Science at Jetton. One time in class she asked me a question. And I kind of hesitated and she asked me to stay after class. And she was a real enthusiastic kind of person anyway. And she, you know, jumped in my face and she told me, “Not to be afraid to open my mouth. I had as much right to be wrong as anybody else,” you know, that kind of broke the ice. But as far as the students....Actually when we grew up, there were people around. That street over there was totally white, so I guess, you know, you knew some of the people anyway, you just didn’t go to school with them.

BRINSON: And did you go all the way through high school here in Paducah? And you finished high school here? What year was that?

QUEEN: Sixty-two.

BRINSON: And at that point, how many, approximately, students were there in your graduating class?

QUEEN: Oh there was about (Laughing) thirteen of us, and about three hundred.

BRINSON: Total. Thirteen graduating.

QUEEN: Blacks.

BRINSON: Oh! Thirteen blacks.

QUEEN: And about, you know, it was close to three hundred students.

BRINSON: In the total school.

QUEEN: No, in the graduating class.

BRINSON: Oh, that’s big.

QUEEN: Tilghman is pretty big. Matter of fact it was bigger then--because they didn’t have--I’m not sure that they hadn’t separated like in the county and they had Heath and all that. So I think most of the people were pretty there. But I think it was three hundred and some people in my class.

BRINSON: That’s a big class. And the name of the school is?

QUEEN: Paducah Tilghman.

BRINSON: Tilghman, T I L

QUEEN: T I L G H M A N.

BRINSON: Okay, do you know what that name comes from?

QUEEN: It’s named from some person, some man, but I don’t know what he did. He may have been an educator or something.

BRINSON: And when you graduated, then what?

QUEEN: What did I do? I went to PJC, we all did.

BRINSON: Okay, here in Paducah?

QUEEN: Uh hmm, Paducah Junior College, yeah.

BRINSON: And what did you study there?

QUEEN: Liberal Arts. You don’t really declare a degree in the first couple of years.

BRINSON: Now, I know you told me on the phone that, eventually you moved to Louisville. You lived in Louisville for twenty some years. How did you, when did you move to Louisville? Do you remember that?

QUEEN: Probably sixty-seven, sixty-eight, somewhere along in there.

BRINSON: And had you, did you know Louisville at all before you moved there?

QUEEN: Oh, I had been there several times and I had an aunt there and I, it was going to be a stopover for someplace else I figured. Daddy would let me go there, and then I could go on, but I didn’t. (Laughing)

BRINSON: Well Louisville, of course, in sixty-eight was in the midst of a whole open housing type thing. Do you recall any of that? There were some riots unfortunately.

QUEEN: I re-, yeah, I recall there on Twenty-eighth and Greenwood, and I recall the decision on, the busing decision, and all of that. Yeah, I recall the riots.

BRINSON: Want to ask you how you would compare at the time that you went to Louisville, the early years, how would you compare race relations in Louisville with what you’d grown up with in Paducah? Was Paducah further ahead or further behind than Louisville?

QUEEN: In race relations? I think that Paducah was pretty much on target. I think, and maybe it’s because, some people would say it was because of my name. I just always had the feeling in Paducah if you kind of deserved a position, it wouldn’t be as tough to get, you know. It might have been name recognition. I never really worked here, but people seemed to get into jobs without a lot of that.

BRINSON: When you say name recognition, you think they knew of your father?

QUEEN: Yeah, they used to say that. (Laughing)

BRINSON: And your relationship. And so that what, you think?

QUEEN: It probably helped.

BRINSON: Probably helped. You mentioned also on the phone, Marilyn, that some of your brothers and sisters also helped to integrate. We talked about your brother.

QUEEN: Well, Curley Junior was the first one at PJC and the first one to graduate. And he and Dora, my oldest sister, they both graduated from Lincoln, then they went to PJC. The rest of us graduated from Tilghman and we were all in that first class, except my baby brother. You know, the first year they integrated, we were all in there.

BRINSON: Do you, and this is not entirely fair to ask you to speak for them, but do you have any sense of what that experience was like for them?

QUEEN: Probably pretty much like mine. I don’t think we really, nobody really fought it. Just like I said, I’m not sure that they, anybody had any real opposition to doing it. If everybody figured we couldn’t in light of Dad’s position or if everybody figured he was going to make you (Laughing) if you didn’t want to go anyway, you know. I don’t know what he would have done, we just didn’t, we just didn’t discuss it.

BRINSON: I wonder if you remember in nineteen sixty-four now there was a rally in Frankfort and Martin Luther King was there and there were people that came from all over the state? And I wonder if you or your husband...?

QUEEN: Daddy was there. And he was in, and Selma, and he was in the March on Washington.

BRINSON: So he really got around.

QUEEN: Uh huh.

BRINSON: Did he ever talk about people that he met?

QUEEN: Well you know, yeah, and then back then, the NAACP was a lot smaller than it is now and a lot more personal. So, it wasn’t a real big thing to him to have direct access to the people at the National Office or know them by name, you know. I can remember that. Matter of fact, when I was looking through here, I remember seeing a letter from Gloster Current, who was Director of Branches at that time, whom I met, when I went to a convention. And Clarence Mitchell and Roy Wilkins and those kind of people, it was not a big thing to have a one on one conversation with them.

BRINSON: Did you ever travel with your husband to any of the NAACP conventions?

BROWN: Once or twice.

QUEEN: He took , he took, a lot of times, I guess with seven of us, it was like two sets of kids. A lot of times, he took the older ones with him. Or we went to visit her sister and stuff a lot of times. And we went on. But he took my older brothers and sisters sometimes. Then when we got older, I mean older, he took us.

BRINSON: I wonder if any of the children still live in Paducah?

QUEEN: No, but me, I just came back.

BRINSON: You came back. Why is that? Why do people leave Paducah?

QUEEN: Oh, (Laughter) Good place to be from. Well, I guess my theory on that is, after you go away to school and you know, your world kind of enlarges...

BRINSON: Expands

QUEEN: ....I think most kids, you know, even with my son, you know, he grew up in Louisville. I think once you get away, you just kind of keep going.

BRINSON: If any of you had wanted to stay in Paducah, after you finished your education, what would employment have been like for you as a person of color here?

QUEEN: Well, probably if you were a teacher, it would be fine. I’m not sure, I’m not sure about the other careers. I think maybe with the plants and stuff, if you were, I don’t know if you could have done it if you were at that level. But I know a lot of people worked there. I’m not real sure, other than...

BRINSON: The city? What’s the city hiring like? Do you have any sense?

QUEEN: I don’t have a sense of that.

[Tape goes off and on]

BRINSON: I read somewhere that your father has an award named after him, given locally every year?

QUEEN: The NAACP gives it at their banquet.

BRINSON: Right. And what is that award for, and how did that come about? Do you know?

QUEEN: I’m not sure. They started it a couple of years after he died. And I think it’s for people who have carried on and made some contribution in that field.

BRINSON: And Mrs. Brown, this article that The Paducah Sun did a few years ago about your husband, says that both your husband and you were fanatics about education. (Laughter)

BROWN: ( )

BRINSON: What?

BROWN: I said, “We wanted them in school.”

BRINSON: And so all seven of your children went to college. And you were saying that two of your brothers actually are deceased now, from automobile accidents.

QUEEN: Right, I only have one brother living, Donald.

BRINSON: Well is there anything else that either of you can think to tell me about Mr. Brown’s advocacy here with the NAACP?

QUEEN: I’m trying to think, I can remember when I was like in the Youth Council. I can remember when we integrated the movie theaters, because some of us from the Youth Council had gone down with him. And you know, we used to go in the side door and up the steps.

BRINSON: Do you remember, what was the name of the movie theater?

QUEEN: There was two of them down there, Arcade and Columbia?

BROWN: Yeah.

QUEEN: Okay. But both of them, they were the same. And after we challenged that, I’m not sure if that entailed anything legal or not. But we finally, you know, we finally got that done. I can remember that.

BROWN: ( )

BRINSON: But the practice was to ask you to sit....

BROWN: Go around the side....

QUEEN: They didn’t ask you, that was the only place you could sit. You went in the side door and sat in the balcony.

BRINSON: Did they charge you...?

QUEEN: Yeah, you paid less. (Laughing)

BROWN: A lot of people thought it was crazy.

QUEEN: Yeah, that was some of the opposition.

BROWN: Thought it was crazy because they paid a dollar what?

QUEEN: I’ve forgot, I can’t remember what it was.

BROWN: Had to pay, what was it?

QUEEN: I don’t know, I don’t remember the price.

BRINSON: So when you decided to lobby against that, how did you go about it? Was there a demonstration?

QUEEN: No, we never ended up having to do that. I can remember just going down there. I guess Dad had requested, had a meeting with them. But I can remember some members of the Youth Council going with him, of course, he did most of the talking. [Laughing]

BRINSON: So you were active in the Youth Council?

QUEEN: Uh hmm. I actually served on the Board of Directors in Louisville for a period of time, of the NAACP.

BRINSON: Of the adult NAACP? Okay. So like father, like daughter, right? [Laughter]

QUEEN: He knew most of the people there, and it was kind of hard not to be.

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE ONE

BEGIN TAPE ONE SIDE TWO

BRINSON: ...involved in other efforts to open up facilities here?

QUEEN: That was the only thing I can remember doing. I remember that Daddy supposedly challenged the make-up of a jury here, when they wouldn’t let blacks serve on the jury. And I think that’s, part of that’s in that article. He and Joe, you know, challenged that.

BRINSON: Joe Freeland.

QUEEN: Uh huh.

BRINSON: Joe was a local attorney?

QUEEN: Uh hmm.

BRINSON: He was, okay. What can you tell me about him? He’s not listed.

QUEEN: I think, Joe’s still living, I think, unless he died. He’s old, he’s pretty feeble, I understand, but I asked somebody the other day. I think he’s still living.

BRINSON: Did you ever hear, either of you, of a gentleman named Timothy Taylor?

QUEEN: Uh uh.

BRINSON: He was from here, and in the early sixties, he was a state member of the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights.

BROWN: Seems like I’ve heard that name, but I can’t put nothing to it.

BRINSON: And he might have been white. I don’t know anything more about him.

QUEEN: I just remember, at that time, I can remember when Galen Martin was on there. I can remember correspondence of Daddy talking about him a lot. I think they became friends.

BRINSON: And they were working on...

QUEEN: I’m not sure.

BRINSON: ...things together?

QUEEN: Uh huh.

BRINSON: Paducah has a Commission on Human Rights.

QUEEN: Yeah.

BROWN: Uh hmm.

BRINSON: Do you have any idea of when it was first organized?

QUEEN: I have no clue, as a matter of fact, when I came back, I just remember reading and I saw the guy that’s over it with something in the paper, since I’ve been back here in the last year. And then I saw him at church, (Laughing) so I think he goes to our church, Sunday school. But I don’t have an idea.

BRINSON: Okay. Well, is there anything else you can think of?

BROWN: Mmmm. Uh uh.

BRINSON: Well thank you very much, both of you, for talking with me.

BROWN: You’re welcome.

[Tape goes off and on]

BRINSON: ...you were saying your brothers and sisters...

QUEEN: My older sister remembers a lot more than I do.

BROWN: She sure does.

QUEEN: And she remembers a lot of other things that they experienced more so than I, because I was one of the younger children.

BRINSON: Where does your older sister live?

QUEEN: She’s in Connecticut.

BRINSON: And her name?

QUEEN: Dora.

BRINSON: Okay.

QUEEN: She was in Connecticut.

BRINSON: Okay.

END OF INTERVIEW