Oral History Interview with Mary Taylor

BETSY BRINSON: Today is August fifteenth, the year two thousand. This is an interview with Mary Taylor. The interviewer is Betsy Brinson and we are conducting the interview in the residence of Miss Taylor in Paducah, Kentucky. Miss Taylor, I need to get a voice level, so would you say your full name for me, please?

MARY TAYLOR: My name is Mary E. Taylor.

BRINSON: And what does the “E” stand for?

TAYLOR: Ella.

BRINSON: Ella?

TAYLOR: Etta, E T T A.

BRINSON: Etta, okay, thank you. Okay, well thank you, Miss Taylor for agreeing to talk with me today. When I talked with Mr. J. W. Cleary, who’s the president of the NAACP, he gave me names of people who had been active in the community and the NAACP Chapter, and your name was one of them. And what I would like to do today, is I’m going to ask you some questions about you, personally, and then maybe we can talk a little bit about the role of the NAACP in Paducah; and race relations in Paducah as you see them. Does that sound okay?

TAYLOR: Yes.

BRINSON: Okay. Why don’t we begin, please, by telling me where and when you were born.

TAYLOR: I was born in Massac County, Illinois.

BRINSON: And what year was that?

TAYLOR: Nineteen and fourteen.

BRINSON: Nineteen fourteen, and can you spell the name of that county for me, please?

TAYLOR: M A S S A C.

BRINSON: Massac county, okay. You okay?

TAYLOR: Yeah, cut it off.

[Tape goes off and on]

BRINSON: Okay, so that makes you eighty-six years old.

TAYLOR: Eighty-six years old, March the twentieth of two thousand.

BRINSON: Tell me a little bit, please, about your growing up, who was in your family and do you know anything about your ancestors?

TAYLOR: It was a large family of us, and I am the oldest of nine children. And we were raised by our mother and father. My father passed away when I, oh after I was grown. And my mother passed away in nineteen and fifty-nine. And of course, it was eight other children.

BRINSON: How did your family make their living?

TAYLOR: My father, he worked as a tie carrier.

BRINSON: Now tell me what that is.

TAYLOR: Do you know what that is?

BRINSON: No, a tie...?

TAYLOR: Carrier. He would load them on barges.

BRINSON: Tie...oh okay. T I E

TAYLOR: T I E S, ties, you know, the rail road ties.

BRINSON: And he would load those on boats?

TAYLOR: On boats, barges, and they went all over at that time.

BRINSON: Did your mother work outside of the home?

TAYLOR: Not until after he passed away, then she began to work, because there was quite a few of the smaller children, at that time.

BRINSON: What kind of work could she find to do in Illinois?

TAYLOR: Just plain housework.

BRINSON: Did, what do you know about any of your ancestors?

TAYLOR: Oh, I knew my grandmother from my Daddy’s side. My mother’s mother had passed away before I got old enough to remember them. But my grandfather and grandmother from my father’s side and about six or seven aunts and uncles. I knew that side of the family real well. But my mother’s people.

BRINSON: Let me stop you. Did they live in Illinois?

TAYLOR: No, they lived in Tennessee, a little place called Saltillo, Tennessee, on the other side of Lexington, Tennessee. We had been visiting, you know, as we grew along. And we knew my father’s people real well.

BRINSON: And what do you know about your mother’s people?

TAYLOR: As I said, I don’t remember my grandparents, but she did have two brothers that I, which was my uncles, I did know. And they, one worked in the coal mine. The other one, I think he worked for the city, because he lived in Evansville, Indiana, while we were growing up.

BRINSON: And the one who lived in the coal mine, where did he do that?

TAYLOR: Up in Kentucky, around....up in Kentucky...

BRINSON: Eastern or western?

TAYLOR: Up....Eastern Kentucky.

BRINSON: Eastern Kentucky, okay. Because you had some coal mines out here in Western Kentucky at one time too, didn’t you?

TAYLOR: I think so, it seemed like that.

BRINSON: I think I read that somewhere. Do you, have you ever heard any family stories about your family being slaves at sometime?

TAYLOR: Yes, sometimes my grandmother had told us a few things, you know, along. Because she was, I believe she said she was born about a year or two years before the Proclamation. But anyway, she lived through that time, you know, area of time. Yeah, she, they had told us quite a few things about slaves.

BRINSON: Where did she grow up?

TAYLOR: She grew up in the Tennessee area, around there.

BRINSON: Tell me a little bit please, about your education.

TAYLOR: Well, as I said, it was a big family of us, and that’s been quite some time ago, as you know. After, I just finished the eighth grade, because the others came along behind me, you know. And our people, we weren’t rich folks, we were poor farmers. People out in the farm area, you know. I didn’t get no more education than that, until after I grew up. After I got grown, I have tried to better myself in a lot of ways.

BRINSON: Well, I want you to tell me about that, but first let me ask you, when you were going to school as a child, how big was your school and how far did you have to go? What was it named?

TAYLOR: In Illinois, most of the schools go by a number, and we lived in the country, out in the real country. And I didn’t have very far to go to school, about a half a mile. It was a one, big room school, and eight classes in it. And usually one teacher, and she would take care of the whole school. I remember times of going, she’d be there, our teacher would be there first, of course, making the fires and taking care of the kids that had come in, most especially in the winter time. Of course, the bigger children that were in school would help her to a certain extent.

BRINSON: How many children do you think were there, at any one time?

TAYLOR: Oh, I know it would be about fifty or sixty.

BRINSON: Wow, that’s a big school.

TAYLOR: And it was eight classes.

BRINSON: Did you have any favorite subjects? No?

TAYLOR: No, I don’t think. (Laughing)

BRINSON: What did you like best about school?

TAYLOR: Well, I liked the most of it, our studies and all this. I used to think I liked Geography. I don’t think they teaches this no more, these kinds of things anymore. We had Geography, Reading, Arithmetic. It was Arithmetic. And English, Civics, that was the kind of studies we had at the time, you see.

BRINSON: Do you know anything about your teachers, like where they had gotten their training to be teachers, maybe?

TAYLOR: Not really, but I think most of them, from around Southern Illinois, and places like that, you know.

BRINSON: When you finished the eighth grade, then what did you do?

TAYLOR: Well, helped out at home. (Laughing)

BRINSON: At what point did you come to Kentucky?

TAYLOR: After I married. I met my husband, and I was about nineteen years old when I came to Kentucky.

BRINSON: How did you meet him?

TAYLOR: He came in our neighborhood. (Laughing) And he had an uncle that lived over there and he came over and stayed with him a while.

BRINSON: What was your husband’s name?

TAYLOR: James Taylor.

BRINSON: And so was he from Kentucky?

TAYLOR: Yeah, Paducah.

BRINSON: Paducah, Kentucky, okay. So you came to Kentucky as a young bride.

TAYLOR: Yeah. Sure did.

BRINSON: Did he have other family here?

TAYLOR: Yes, he had a family, his mother, his father, and about five sisters and brothers.

BRINSON: Had you met any of them before you came?

TAYLOR: No. (Laughter)

BRINSON: How was that?

TAYLOR: Well, I..I...I didn’t know nothing about them, what I mean. But when I first came to Paducah, I met his mother, and she was a wonderful person, and well, just fell in there, just like another family. (Laughing)

BRINSON: That’s good. Did you and your husband have any children?

TAYLOR: No, we didn’t.

BRINSON: Okay. And how did you and your husband make your living?

TAYLOR: He was a contractor. He usually worked with, on the roads, you know, and the streets, just contracting. He was a concrete finisher.

BRINSON: And where did he get, how did he learn to do that?

TAYLOR: I guess in, probably just picked it up. But after, he went to school here, you see, Lincoln School, you know.

BRINSON: Was he able to finish school?

TAYLOR: No more than about the eighth grade too, something like that.

BRINSON: And did you work outside the home, Miss Taylor?

TAYLOR: Not then, not too much then, but later on down in the years, I just started just doing housework, you know.

BRINSON: Okay. And you said earlier that you had tried to do some more education.

TAYLOR: Yeah.

BRINSON: Tell me about that, please.

TAYLOR: Well, they set up this adult education.

BRINSON: Uh huh.

TAYLOR: And I took that up, I mean. I’m sorry I never did get my GED, but I did earn it. But never ever went and got my test, see. We had to go to Murray to do that. But this was later in years, that was after he passed away. He was in the Army in World War Two. And in nineteen fifty-two, he passed away. Then that’s really when I went to work. My first big job was Lourdes Hospital, Riverside Hospital. And this school was going on, and I went to school.

BRINSON: And what were you doing at Riverside Hospital?

TAYLOR: I started off as a maid, aide, you know. I was in the Housekeeping Department.

BRINSON: Okay, Riverside Hospital isn’t here today, is it?

TAYLOR: No, it’s Lourdes Hospital bought it.

BRINSON: Lourdes. L O U R...

TAYLOR: D E S. Lourdes.

BRINSON: And Lourdes is a Catholic Hospital.

TAYLOR: Yeah, they were Catholic. See, the Riverside was a, belonged to the city, well you know, the general hospital in the city. But they came here, in fifty-three, I guess it was, and they bought Riverside. And it was on the Riverfront, down on Fourth Street. But later years, they bought a place out here, and it’s out on Taylor Road, now, not Caywood Road, Lone Oak Road.

BRINSON: Tell me the name of that road again.

TAYLOR: Lone Oak, Lone Oak.

BRINSON: Lawn Oak?

TAYLOR: Lone, L O N E--Oak, O A K--Lone Oak Road.

BRINSON: When you went to work though, was it still Riverside Hospital?

TAYLOR: Yes, it was Riverside when I went, first started working there, and that was in fifty-three. And I worked there five years under Riverside, then they bought it.

BRINSON: And you continued to work?

TAYLOR: Yeah, yeah.

BRINSON: I want to ask you about Riverside Hospital. Did it treat black people from the community?

TAYLOR: Yes. But it was segregated.

BRINSON: It was segregated, okay.

TAYLOR: When I first went to work at the hospital, all black people were on the first floor, and just part of it. You couldn’t, you had about four rooms on the end, for the black folks. And if it got to be more than that, they had some little rooms, outside. Now that was as far as the black people could get. But after the Catholics bought the hospital, that’s when it really broke down, because they didn’t, they didn’t agree with it at all, you see. But we didn’t move off of the first floor though, until three or four years later. You couldn’t go any further than the first floor. Yeah, it was segregated.

BRINSON: At what point in your life, did you first realize that we had a segregated society?

TAYLOR: Well, when we were growing up, I’ll have to say this, we lived, as I said, out in the country. And the first little place, little store, where you could go and buy anything, that was the white, the white neighborhood. Now back this way, was the black neighborhood, and we had separate schools. But we could play together, went places together, the kids, you know. And at that time, it didn’t matter to me, that way. But the older I got, I began to realize, they don’t want us there. We couldn’t go there, or different things, you know. Then I began to realize, this isn’t right. (Laughing) I knew we just couldn’t do it, then being a child, I didn’t know anything else to do, but accept it, you see.

BRINSON: When do you think you first heard about the NAACP? Did you know about them while you were growing up?

TAYLOR: No, not too much, but somewhere along in my early teens, reading of course, and I’d seen about these things; but I didn’t realize what it meant, at that time. I was, had married and lived here, when I thoroughly knew what the NAACP was really.

BRINSON: And tell me, if you remember, how you first became involved with the NAACP here.

TAYLOR: People began talk about how the people were being treated in other places, you know. It never was too bad around here. But I mean, you know, didn’t have too much trouble, but most people knew where, you belonged over here, they belonged over there. We just left it like that. But I began to realize this is, I tell you, Mr. Thurgood Marshall, that’s the first person that I really paid some attention to, as to what was going on, and how it was separate, you see. Because I remember him, one of his main cases he had, was about the trains, where to sit on the train. Oh, it was in court I don’t know how long. But anyway he won that case, see, where you could get on the train and sit in the same car. But up until then, some of this is just passing through my mind, all of the black people sat in the first coach, behind the engine. All the others in the others. And I said, I wonder why they put us up front now? That’s the way I felt. Well, they said, if anything happened, that’s the first car to go. (Laughing) That don’t make you feel good.

BRINSON: Right, right.

TAYLOR: But that’s the way it was, see. But anyway, I remember that thing. As I said, I didn’t, I don’t know, I just didn’t, I hadn’t been raised right under that kind of treatment too much. But as I say, we all ran around there together. But then in other places, I found out that you didn’t do that.

BRINSON: Did you belong to a church growing up?

TAYLOR: Oh yes. I been in church all my life, I think.

BRINSON: And what church did you join when you came to Paducah?

TAYLOR: Wait, may I say this?

BRINSON: Sure.

TAYLOR: My first church I grew up in was the Freewill Missionary Baptist Church, I mean the Freewill Baptist Church, out in the country. Then when my husband went into the Army, I joined the Missionary Baptist Church, in Brookport, Illinois.

BRINSON: In Brook....?

TAYLOR: In Brookport.

BRINSON: Brookport, okay.

TAYLOR: And I stayed in that church until way up through the war and everything. And then after he came home....I moved back. I went back to Brookport during the service, I mean...

BRINSON: While he was in the service.

TAYLOR: In the service, yeah. Then I came back home, back over here, and I joined the Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in nineteen and forty-seven. And that’s where I am now.

BRINSON: Where did your husband serve during the military?

TAYLOR: In....France, oh yeah, because he, they landed....D-Day in France. He was on that ship. And that was the area more or less that he served in, in the European.

BRINSON: Had you joined the NAACP at that point?

TAYLOR: Yeah, yes.

BRINSON: And your husband?

TAYLOR: Oh yeah, he was a member too. I think my first card I remember getting from the NAACP was in about nineteen and forty, forty or forty-one. And would you believe they were one dollar? That was the dues.

BRINSON: When you joined the NAACP Chapter here, how many people do you think belonged at that point?

TAYLOR: Well, we had our, what do you call it....We had to have fifty people to even get a...

BRINSON: To be recognized by the National...?

TAYLOR: Yeah, yeah, by the National, that’s what I’m trying to say. So we had, I guess about seventy-five or a hundred, maybe.

BRINSON: And did that number get larger over the years, or smaller?

TAYLOR: It got smaller and at times, when, during the sixties I would say, it grew. It began to really grow.

BRINSON: So how many would you guess, were members when it had the most membership in the sixties?

TAYLOR: About the last part of it.

BRINSON: How many people, would you just roughly estimate belonged at that point?

TAYLOR: Oh about, I would say about two hundred. Everybody didn’t feel the same, you know, about it.

BRINSON: Sure. Where were the meetings held?

TAYLOR: Down here at Seventh and Adams, they had a big building there, the boy’s club. And we’d have our meetings there once a month.

BRINSON: And did the NAACP have an office there?

TAYLOR: No. We did our, all our business we did out of home.

BRINSON: And the president during the time was Curley...?

TAYLOR: Curley Brown

BRINSON: Was there a Youth Council?

TAYLOR: Yes.

BRINSON: Can you tell me about that? What did they do?

TAYLOR: Well, we would have little socials, to raise money, that was the point, you see. And we, I tell you, who was the Youth Council Advisor there, even way back then, was Lorraine Mathis. I believe she told me you called her.

BRINSON: Yes, I’m going to go see her in another day or so.

TAYLOR: Yeah, I believe she told me, Wednesday. But anyway, now she can tell you about that, because that was really her department.

BRINSON: I’m just trying to get a sense of the Chapter activity and whatnot, that’s why I’m asking you that.

TAYLOR: Well, that’s what the youth would do. We’d have different little programs, little dances, different things like that for the younger people.

BRINSON: I know that you became an....

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE ONE

BEGIN TAPE ONE SIDE TWO

BRINSON: ...became an officer.

TAYLOR: At first, under Curley Brown, Mrs. Osala Dawson was our secretary, and she was there, when I came into it.

BRINSON: And what was her first name again?

TAYLOR: Osala

BRINSON: How do you think...?

TAYLOR: O S A, osa,

BRINSON: Ola

TAYLOR: O S A L A—Dawson--D A W S O N. And she stayed there until she passes, and that was something like eighteen years. And right after she passed away, I was elected as their secretary. Secretary-Treasurer, that’s the way it was called. And I stayed there. And that was about, that was in the fifties, early fifties, something like that. I mean later part of the fifties.

BRINSON: And how long did you hold that office?

TAYLOR: Oh about, close to twenty years. (Laughing)

BRINSON: Twenty years, okay. And can you tell me what your duties were for that position?

TAYLOR: I was just their secretary, at our meetings. I’d be at the meetings, you know, and take the minutes of whatever was happening, whatever we were doing, whatever our business would consist of. I did that and took all the memberships. And I was the one that sent them to the office, to the National.

BRINSON: Okay, and are any of those old records still available?

TAYLOR: No, the other day I was looking at something and I looked in a book, and I seen some names that I had written down and sent in one time. But no, when I gave it up, I turned everything over to them, back with, the old records and everything. I just carried everything to them. I don’t know.

BRINSON: So you don’t know whether, somewhere in an attic or something, they might be.

TAYLOR: No, yeah, it might be. You might talk to J. W., he might know something. But it’s been several presidents in between Curley and him, though.

BRINSON: I’ve read that James Crumlin, an attorney from Louisville, who handled a number of lawsuits for the NAACP.

TAYLOR: Yes.

BRINSON: He said once, and I’m quoting him, “That he thought Paducah was one of the most active NAACP Chapters in Kentucky.” Would you?

TAYLOR: Yes, I would agree with him, because we have, this Chapter has tried to help others, you know, other, establish other chapters. Because I remember us going to Mayfield, going to Murray, going to Cairo one time. You know, trying to help them get it started, chapters started. I’ll agree that this was the most active.

BRINSON: And when you went to help start another chapter, how did you do that?

TAYLOR: Well, there would be somebody in that, let’s say Mayfield, and they want to get a chapter started. Well, they called the president, our president and as many members as we could go, you know, and most especially the officers. Then he would explain to them what it was all about.

BRINSON: Did any of those places ever get fifty people, enough to have a chapter?

TAYLOR: Yeah, Mayfield did have one.

BRINSON: Mayfield had a chapter?

TAYLOR: And it probably still has. And I don’t know about Cairo anymore.

BRINSON: Now Cairo is up in Illinois.

TAYLOR: In Illinois, though.

BRINSON: And that’s C A I R O ?

TAYLOR: C A I R O, yeah, Cairo.

BRINSON: And Murray?

TAYLOR: We went to Murray.

BRINSON: Did Murray get a chapter going?

TAYLOR: Yes they did. But I haven’t heard anything about it. [Laughing] I guess it’s still in functioning, I reckon. I really don’t know.

BRINSON: I’ve read that there was a group here that was active in trying to integrate the theaters and maybe some other things, called the Non-Partisan League. Did you ever hear of that?

TAYLOR: Yes.

BRINSON: Can you? I don’t know anything more about it.

TAYLOR: Well, this, but they didn’t do it. Yeah, they did help. I mean, any kind of help in that form was appreciated, you know. But the NAACP was in on it, on that too, the theaters, because Gladman Umber.

BRINSON: I’ve met him.

TAYLOR: You’ve met him. He was the Chairperson for that theater. He, Ms. Dawson that I was telling you about, and some other person, I don’t remember now who that was, and the president, they’re the ones that really took care of that. And eventually we worked it out, they worked it out. And then you could go to any of them and anywhere. But at first, no, it was one little hole, if you saw a movie. And I remember so well, I wanted to see Gone With The Wind. (Laughing) I went, but you had a certain little place you went, you see.

BRINSON: What did you think of Gone With The Wind?

TAYLOR: It was some picture. (Laughing) Oh, I’ve seen it some many times since. Yeah, it was a good movie, but it kind of gets you, about the way people do you, done. Because as I started to say a few minutes ago, our grandmother would tell us some things, you know, that would happen when they were growing up. Now, she, they supposedly to have freed them, before she got grown. But the way they were still using them, you wouldn’t have known they were. And she had told us quite a few things about things, just unnecessary things were done to you, that shouldn’t have been.

BRINSON: Let me go back to the local NAACP, did you ever have any speakers come here from outside? People that you can remember? What kind of programs?

TAYLOR: We had a banquet every year. And I can’t say this was the first one that I remember. Do you remember the Little Rock, Arkansas incident?

BRINSON: Uh hmm.

TAYLOR: That lady.

BRINSON: Daisy Bates?

TAYLOR: Daisy Bates. She was one of our speakers. That was the biggest, in that day, banquet we had every had. And we used to have them at Washington Street Church. They had a basement, a nice place, you know. The night that she came, the whole church was in use, there was that many people. They really turned out for that.

BRINSON: What did you think of her talk?

TAYLOR: Oh she was, she was beautiful. And then we had Mrs. Belafonte came one time.

BRINSON: Mrs. Belafonte?

TAYLOR: Uh huh, she came.

BRINSON: She didn’t bring her husband?

TAYLOR: No, he didn’t come. (Laughing) But she was a speaker one time. Right off hand, that’s all I can remember right now. But I do remember we had a man.

BRINSON: I wonder, did Thurgood Marshall ever come?

TAYLOR: No, he didn’t, but I’ll tell who did, Clarence....

BRINSON: Mitchell?

TAYLOR: Mitchell, he did. And I’m not so sure, but to me it seems like Mr. Randolph came one time. Lady, that’s been a long time ago, to me.

BRINSON: Mr. Randolph was with the Porter Union at that point in time? Was it that Mr. Randolph, who was with the sleeping car?

TAYLOR: I think, believe it was. I believe it was.

BRINSON: And did you use the banquets also to raise money?

TAYLOR: Yes, that’s what it was about. And would you believe the first banquets we began to have, you know, back in the earlier time, were two dollars were all we could get out of one. You know what I mean, we’d sell our tickets for about two dollars.

BRINSON: And you’d have to pay for your food.

TAYLOR: Yeah, well we donated that. We had a donation, this Lorraine Mathis I was just telling you about, her husband, I remember, he was on that committee. And he would contact these grocers and places. They helped us--they really was nice about that.

BRINSON: So, they gave the food, but then did you have to cook the food?

TAYLOR: We cooked it. Most of the women of the branch would cook it. Because I was working at the hospital at the time, and I have stayed up all night long, cooking. (Laughing) You know, leading up to it. And then getting my shower and get ready and go on to work. We have done that, you know, three or four of us would go to each house, and that’s the way we did it.

BRINSON: So you’d cook together with three or four of you?

TAYLOR: Yes.

BRINSON: And that kind of made it go faster.

TAYLOR: It did, and we enjoyed it too. Really enjoyed it.

BRINSON: Well, you were working for a good cause.

TAYLOR: That’s what we felt like. That’s exactly what we felt like.

BRINSON: And the money that you raised, tell me, went to New York? And how was it used, how did you, what did you know about how they would use the money that you raised here?

TAYLOR: Well, like, diff...you remember when Edgar Meg....Edgar Megan, am I saying that right, got killed? [She is referring to Medgar Evers]

BRINSON: Yes.

TAYLOR: They had to have lawyers and things? Well, everybody contributed, you see. And those banquets and things of that nature were for this, see.

BRINSON: So it would pay for litigation and lawyers and what not.

TAYLOR: Uh huh. We’ve had bingo games, just anything, you know, that was legal to do, to raise our little money.

BRINSON: Did you ever go to any National NAACP meetings? State or National?

TAYLOR: I went to, I’ve been to the....I went to State once.

BRINSON: And where was that held?

TAYLOR: I think we were in Elizabethtown, I want to think. And I went to National the year that Martin Luther King came out with his, you know, during that time.

BRINSON: When he became involved in Alabama and the buses? The boycott of the buses?

TAYLOR: Yeah, that’s right, that’s right. The reason I remember that, that’s the one he was at, and it was in Detroit. And then I went to one in Louisville.

BRINSON: That was a National meeting that was held in Louisville?

TAYLOR: Yes ma’am.

BRINSON: Okay.

TAYLOR: I believe that’s all of the Nationals that I ever got to.

BRINSON: When do you think, approximately, was that meeting in Louisville?

TAYLOR: About, it was in the eighties.

BRINSON: In the eighties, okay, okay. I understand that Curley Brown and maybe some others from here, went to Selma in Alabama for the march. Did you go, or do you remember that at all?

TAYLOR: No. I remember the march, but I couldn’t say who went.

BRINSON: Do you remember that there was a group who went from here?

TAYLOR: Not to that. I can’t remember that. I’ll tell you what they did, a group went from here to Washington, on that march.

BRINSON: In nineteen sixty-three, right. Did any of them talk about that, when they came back?

TAYLOR: Oh yeah, they talked about it. [Laughing] They talked about it, and I remember, and you know it was all on television and everything. I was trying to work and trying to watch, [Laughing], because I really wanted to hear Martin Luther King and I did. And I have an old 78 record here of his, of that speech.

BRINSON: His “I Have A Dream” talk.

TAYLOR: “I Have A Dream” speech.

BRINSON: You were working at the hospital and you were trying to...watch it.

TAYLOR: Trying to work and trying to listen. [Laughing]

BRINSON: But there was a group that went from here?

TAYLOR: To that, I remember, but Selma, I can’t.

BRINSON: Okay, did they go, how did they go to Washington? Did they rent a bus or drive in cars?

TAYLOR: I better not say, but in my mind right now, it seemed like everybody met somewhere, I don’t know whether it was Frankfort or where. And it was a bus.

BRINSON: Oh, okay. And they were NAACP?

TAYLOR: Yeah, the members...

BRINSON: Of different places, okay. Well speaking of Frankfort, now in nineteen sixty-four, there was a rally in Frankfort at the Capitol and it was to support a bill that was in the legislature then to open up public accommodations, restaurants, whatnot, theaters. And I wonder if a group from Paducah went to that rally?

TAYLOR: Yeah, I remember that, because in the later years, a preacher that was our pastor, now this is since then now. Because I remember him saying he went, because he said he had to climb up a tree to see the, you know, it was so many people, he said, down on the ground, he got up in the tree, where they had the speaking, the speakers. [Laughing]

BRINSON: Martin Luther King was there.

TAYLOR: Yeah, he was there, I remember that.

BRINSON: I’m about running out of questions here, let me stop a minute.

[Tape goes off and on]

BRINSON: So you stepped down as the Secretary-Treasurer in the NAACP.

TAYLOR: I stepped down as the Secretary, but they elected me then just as the Treasurer. And I have given up the Treasurer, since J. W.’s been in.

BRINSON: And J. W. is the President now, that’s J. W. Cleary.

TAYLOR: I haven’t, it’s been about I’ll say about four years, five.

BRINSON: What is the NAACP chapter involved in today?

TAYLOR: Well, they are, I really don’t know, because I don’t attend it as I did back in them days, of course. (Laughing) Because I don’t drive very well at night, no more. And so, I really don’t know, me not attending it.

BRINSON: Do they do a banquet?

TAYLOR: Oh yeah, we still have the banquet.

BRINSON: Still have the banquet every year.

TAYLOR: And that’s another thing I can remember, I was telling you about Miss Daisy Bates was the biggest one we had at that time. But now we use the Executive Inn and they are full.

BRINSON: They’re full?

TAYLOR: Yeah.

BRINSON: So they get a good turnout.

TAYLOR: Uh hhmm.

BRINSON: And probably nobody cooks for it anymore, do they?

TAYLOR: No, that’s what we do....(Laughing) it helped a lot, but honey we have really cooked. Just the ladies, you know. You have something like eight and ten turkeys, you know, to fix and all that kind of stuff.

BRINSON: Let me ask you something about the roles of women in the local NAACP. Let me tell you this, in some of the chapters in other parts like Lexington, there have been women, who have been presidents of the chapter. Danville is another one. And yet, everyone that I’ve heard about here in Paducah has been a man president.

TAYLOR: No, we had one.

BRINSON: You did have one? Okay. Tell me about her.

TAYLOR: Well, she’s not, she passed away a few years ago. But she didn’t stay but one year.

BRINSON: Do you remember her name?

TAYLOR: I’ll think of it in a minute.

BRINSON: Why did she only serve for a year?

TAYLOR: Let’s cut that off a minute.

[Tape goes off and on]

BRINSON: Her name was...

TAYLOR: Was Marie Broady.

BRINSON: Broady? B R

TAYLOR: B R O A D Y.

BRINSON: Okay.

TAYLOR: Broady. And she, I believe it was just about a year, or a year and a half, but at first she was second president. And I can’t remember under who this was. Was it...Gladman, he’s been our president. But anyway, right after that she was elected for a year. I don’t know why she really left. I think something didn’t please her or something.

BRINSON: So she stayed in Paducah, but she just gave up her office?

TAYLOR: Oh yes, she just passed away about three years ago now.

BRINSON: How would you--what would you say about the kind of news coverage that the Paducah Sun gave to the whole struggle for civil rights here? Did they report it at all?

TAYLOR: I think they did fairly well with it. We’d always get, like our banquet, or if we were having another little social or a little dance, or whatever. They always, you know, they’d do this for us. And our meetings, and things of that nature. They covered us pretty good, and they really do a good job now.

BRINSON: Were there ever any demonstrations or sit ins or boycotts, like nothing new for Easter Boycott, here in Paducah?

TAYLOR: No, we didn’t. But we had, we have had little problems from time to time. Because one time, every officer in our branch got a little something in the mail. Because I can remember coming home and seeing this little package. What is this? Somebody sent every one of us a dead mouse through the mail. Now that was quite upsetting.

BRINSON: Yes.

TAYLOR: And actually never did find out exactly who it was. That was one of the things that really wasn’t very pleasant. At the hospital one time, before they really integrated it, one of the, the lady that was over the dining area, she began to want to separate us, you know. Went in there one day, and she had put a little sign on every table, where she wanted us to sit, and this other where they were to sit. Well, now that hadn’t been, see. And I wondered what happened. I just went and called my president and told him what was happening. He just told me to go on back to work and, you know, not bother. But in the meantime he, that’s Curley, Miss Dawson and Joseph Freelin, he was our lawyer here in Paducah. They came down and talked to the hospital staff, you know. And it just burst just like that.

BRINSON: It sounds like you were able here to really negotiate the issues, rather than have to use...

TAYLOR: Sit-ins and things of that nature, that’s right.

[Tape goes off and on]

BRINSON: Want to ask you about Joe Freelin, the lawyer. He was a white man.

TAYLOR: Yeah.

BRINSON: Right. And what can you tell me about him? Why did he become active with you all?

TAYLOR: I’ll tell you exactly what he told us at a meeting one night. He said, “He just felt like he wanted to help somebody that needed help,” you know. “That his father was so hard about, against black people, just couldn’t, just didn’t like them. And he could never understand why, because to him, they were just people like everybody else.” But anyway, when he got his lawyer degree and all this, he said, “That gave him an incentive to do something to help where the black people were concerned,” see. Now he told us that one night at one of the meetings. Because he would come to the meetings. I think he is a life member now.

BRINSON: He’s still living?

TAYLOR: Yes, he’s still, he’s pretty feeble, but.

BRINSON: I can’t find him in the phone book. I can’t find his name and telephone number in the Paducah phone book.

TAYLOR: It’s not?

BRINSON: No. That’s why I wasn’t sure whether he was still living.

TAYLOR: Well, if he has, I haven’t...

BRINSON: And you would have seen that in the newspaper.

TAYLOR: And then when you talk to Gladman, ask him about it.

BRINSON: Okay.

TAYLOR: He would come near knowing the most.

BRINSON: Well is there anything else, that I haven’t asked you about, that you think you should tell me?

TAYLOR: ( )

BRINSON: Well, you’ve been a great interview Mrs. Taylor.

TAYLOR: Oh, well thank you. I was mighty scared is all.

BRINSON: You’ve given me a lot of...

END OF INTERVIEW