Oral History Interview with Wardelle Harvey

BETSY BRINSON: This is an interview with the Reverend Wardelle Harvey, Senior. The interview takes place at his church in Paducah, Kentucky, and the interviewer is Betsy Brinson. Reverend Harvey would you just give me your full name, please?

REVEREND HARVEY: Wardelle W A R D E L L E, Green G R double E N, Harvey H A R V E Y, Senior.

BRINSON: Okay, thank you. Reverend Harvey can you tell me where and when you were born, please?

HARVEY: I was born in Booneville, Indiana, June the twelfth nineteen twenty-six.

BRINSON: And that makes you how old today?

HARVEY: Seventy-three years old.

BRINSON: Seventy-three, well you are certainly a young looking man, for seventy-three years old. I wouldn’t have guessed that.

HARVEY: Yes. [Laughter]

BRINSON: I’d like to begin a little bit, please, by asking you about your early family, your growing up, who was in your family, what you may know about your ancestors.

HARVEY: My grandfather was William Green, his wife was Maddy Green. Maddy Green was half Cherokee Indian, her father was a Paul Knox from the Owensboro, Kentucky area.

BRINSON: Paul Knox?

HARVEY: Paul Knox.

BRINSON: K N O X?

HARVEY: Yes. And her mother was a black woman. And they gave birth to Inez--I N E Z--Washington. That was her last name before she died, the name of that was my mother.

BRINSON: Let me stop you. You said she was a black woman, so I’m assuming Paul Knox was...?

HARVEY: Cherokee Indian, full blooded Cherokee Indian, yes, full blooded Cherokee Indian, yes. I had an older sister by the name of Marian and I have a younger sister, that lives in Evansville, Indiana. Her name is Willamae.

BRINSON: Spell Willamae, please.

HARVEY: W I L L A M A E.

BRINSON: I’ll ask you that occasionally for the person who is transcribing the interview.

HARVEY: Yes, all right, okay. My mother came from Indiana, where she was born. She was born in Richland, Indiana, and they moved to Booneville, Indiana.

BRINSON: Richland?

HARVEY: Richland, Indiana, uh huh. My mother married my father, who was Elmer Harvey, in Youngstown, Ohio. And my mother left my father, when she was seven months pregnant with me. My father was mean to her. I never saw my father until I was twenty-six years old, to even meet him. My father died when I was forty-two and I went to that funeral. I had a half-brother and a half-sister by that first marriage, Elmer and Emily, and they’re both dead now.

BRINSON: When your mother left your father, where did she move to?

HARVEY: She went back to Booneville, Indiana. She went to Booneville, Indiana, where her mother and father, William and Maddy Green lived. And that’s where I was raised.

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

HARVEY: I went to Booneville High School. They never had a black high school in Booneville, Indiana, that’s how race relations were there in Booneville. In fact, my mother went to the same high school, that I went to.

BRINSON: But it was an integrated high school?

HARVEY: Yes, wasn’t but one high school there.

BRINSON: Let me back up.

HARVEY: Yes ma’am.

BRINSON: You went to elementary school in?

HARVEY: In Booneville.

BRINSON: In Booneville.

HARVEY: They had a black elementary school.

BRINSON: Okay.

HARVEY: But after the elementary school, they only had the high school.

BRINSON: And the black elementary school went through what year, what grade?

HARVEY: Eighth grade.

BRINSON: Eighth grade, okay.

HARVEY: Now, just ten miles from Booneville, a place called, by the name of Newburgh, Indiana, the black children there, they bussed them to Evansville, Indiana, to Lincoln High School. So there was just that much difference in ten miles, of relations, you know, yeah.

BRINSON: Can you estimate for me how big the black population was in the town, growing up?

HARVEY: In Booneville, the population was probably about a hundred and twenty-five, at that time.

BRINSON: A hundred and twenty-five thousand?

HARVEY: People.

BRINSON: People? Oh it was little, little!

HARVEY: Black people, black people.

BRINSON: Oh, okay.

HARVEY: Black people.

BRINSON: And how big?

HARVEY: Five thousand, four hundred and twenty-six, that was the total population of Booneville.

BRINSON: I’m surprised you even had a black elementary school.

HARVEY: Yes.

BRINSON: With that few. How many were in your classes, while you were in elementary school?

HARVEY: About, between twenty-eight and thirty, seemed like a waste to have one. [Laughing]

BRINSON: And did they, was that total for all six years?

HARVEY: Yes ma’am.

BRINSON: Okay, so you went to school, really, with children at all different levels of elementary school.

HARVEY: All in one room, all in one big room.

BRINSON: Okay, do you remember anything about your teachers? And in particular, what I’m looking at is if you know where they got their training.

HARVEY: Juanita MacFarland was my first teacher, and another lady, it’s very coincidental, no relation or anything, but a lady by the name of Catherine MacFarland came from Evansville, to take her place, because Juanita married and moved to California. Yes.

BRINSON: And do you have any idea where they got their training to be teachers?

HARVEY: I really do not. I really do not, but they were great teachers.

BRINSON: So then you went to Lincoln High School.

HARVEY: No.

BRINSON: No,....

HARVEY: Booneville High School.

BRINSON: Booneville High School, thank you.

HARVEY: Lincoln High School was Evansville, in Evansville.

BRINSON: Right, okay. In Booneville High School, how many were there in your graduating class for example, approximately?

HARVEY: There was probably about fifty, forty or fifty, I guess, in my whole class. See we took different subjects at different rooms, you know.

BRINSON: And how many of you were of color?

HARVEY: Probably eight or ten, probably eight or ten.

BRINSON: Can you think back a little bit about what that experience was like for you, going to an integrated school, after having been in an all black school?

HARVEY: After being in an elementary black school? It was no problem, because we didn’t have problems to amount to anything in Booneville at all. Just around the corner, about two blocks from where I lived was one of the best restaurants in Booneville at that particular time. And our families would enter this restaurant anytime they wanted, sit anyplace they want to and eat. And I finally, during the summertime, worked there. The lady’s name was Mary Black. I’ll never forget her.

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

HARVEY: My father, I remember as a small child, my father worked for the PWA or either the WPA. I remember the day that Roosevelt died, I remember the day that Roosevelt died, and they thought that was a....They almost considered him a Jesus, because the economics had changed, you know, and they did have something to do, you know. My mother did day work. She worked for a rich family by the name of Roth. They owned a dry goods store in Booneville, Indiana. And my mother worked for them a long time. She took care of the house, the cooking and everything. And they were very nice to her. She went to Minnesota to a home they had up there in the summertime. They were real wealthy. And she went to Albuquerque, New Mexico with them and stayed there with them. She was just a part of the family.

BRINSON: Did you ever get to visit on any of those business trips?

HARVEY: No I never did, no I sure didn’t.

BRINSON: So what year now, did you graduate from high school?

HARVEY: I did not graduate from high school.

BRINSON: Okay, tell me about that.

HARVEY: All right. I worked and when I was a junior in high school, I helped my mother--who I said did day work--we were a poor family. I helped my mother put my older sister, Marian, through Indiana State Teacher’s College, yes. And I just never went back. I kept helping the family. We were a poor family. And years later, years later, I started to working at Chrysler Corporation in Evansville as a metal finisher. And also I worked in the spray painting department, and I was called into the ministry. And after being called into the ministry, rather than go back to Booneville, I went to a small college in Evansville, that was on the east side of Evansville. It was called the Tri-State Baptist College. This college, the professors, had some real good teachers that organized this school. They were some that had, I’d say, theological, philosophical differences with Southern Baptists at that time. They were all Caucasians and they started that school. So I went there. So I had to take classes, because I didn’t, I finished the eleventh grade, but I had to take classes to make that up. And then after a while I started on my regular curriculum. And I had a B. Th., that’s what I graduated with, a Bachelor of Theology.

BRINSON: Bachelor of Theology.

HARVEY: But I had to take these other classes, because I did not finish at Booneville High School, yes. And the most tragic thing was, but I just, I felt so sorry for my mother. And I wanted my sister, who I loved very much, who taught at this same elementary school I went to for six years, and died suddenly. She was twenty-nine years. And it just seemed like the bottom fell out of our lives at that particular time, you know, yeah.

BRINSON: What happened to her?

HARVEY: One night she took sick, about four or five days after having a complete physical examination to teach elementary school, which all teachers took, you know. She went to Deaconess Hospital eleven o’clock one night. And I remember the doctor that worked on her at the time, after all these years, his name was Doctor Cochran. She had a severe or unusual type of diabetes, something where the pancreas collapsed immediately or something like that. She went into a coma. And the next morning at eight o’clock, Marian died, yes.

BRINSON: That’s tragic.

HARVEY: Yes, it was, really.

BRINSON: You never get over the loss of a young person, like that.

HARVEY: No, my mother like to have lost her mind.

BRINSON: So, at that point you were, where were you? Were you at the Baptist college, the Tri-State Baptist College when your sister died?

HARVEY: No, this was before I went in the ministry.

BRINSON: Before you went in the ministry.

HARVEY: Before I went in the ministry. This is before I went in the ministry. I was married....

BRINSON: Do you think that experience...

HARVEY: Ma’am?

BRINSON: Do you think that experience of your sister’s death helped move you to the ministry in some way?

HARVEY: Uhh [sighs] I don’t know. She had a lot of influence on me, because she was a very religious person. And the piano that she learned how to play on, is sitting over there. It was moved into my mother’s house, when my mother was two years old. My mother was born in eighteen ninety-seven. That piano was put in the house, so she was a talented musician, and a very religious person, very religious, yes.

BRINSON: So when you finished with your Bachelor in Theology?

HARVEY: Yes.

BRINSON: Where did you go then? What happened to you next?

HARVEY: I started to pastoring my first church. I became a missionary for the Ohio Valley District Baptist Association in Evansville. And there was a church that was vacant, and so they put me over there in this small church; they only had nine or ten members, so they put me there.

[Phone rings: tape goes off and on]

HARVEY: And so anyway the name of this church was First Ebenezer Baptist Church. It was in Evansville, on the corner of Sycamore and Morton Street. And I went to there. We had probably about ten people. This was a split off of New Hope Baptist Church. The minister died that was there. He was forced into retirement from New Hope Baptist Church, and that’s why this other church was organized, out of frictions and problems, you know. So they sent me there. I stayed there for six years, at that church. We bought a building, and when I left there, we had one hundred and sixty members. And I came to Paducah, Kentucky, to the Harrison Street Baptist Church.

BRINSON: And that would have been what year?

HARVEY: Nineteen sixty-two, and I stayed there until March the sixteenth nineteen eighty-six. And I left there, several members came to me--there were problems arose, and several members came to me and said, “Reverend, let’s go somewhere and organize a church.” And I had a minister friend from Indiana that I recommended to Macedonia Baptist Church here at that time. And he had finally left Macedonia and went to organize a church, called First Liberty Baptist Church. And so we gathered there and had a meeting. We had eighty-nine people, that wanted to organize this church. And we organized that church on March the sixteenth nineteen eighty-six. And we stayed there six months, worshiping in that church, after their services. And then we left there and went to the Community Center, because we wanted to do some other things that was impossible to do there. We held all of our services at the Community Center. And then in six months we came here, to a small building that was here. It was the former Calvary Baptist Church, a Caucasian church.

BRINSON: The building was the former Calvary Baptist Church?

HARVEY: Yes, right.

BRINSON: And the name of the church now is?

HARVEY: This church is Greater Love Baptist Church, Greater Love Missionary Baptist Church. And we bought this church for fifty thousand dollars. By being a new church, it was impossible to borrow money, unless you had been an organization for at least three years, they said. And so anyway, I had real good credit at Citizen’s Bank and my wife and I signed the note for the church. In five years, we paid the fifty thousand dollars off, and then we did all the things that you see here, that we’re doing now, in fourteen years, yes.

BRINSON: That’s wonderful.

HARVEY: Yes.

BRINSON: Let me go back to when you came to Kentucky in 1962, came to Paducah, specifically, which was a pretty important time in the whole history of the Civil Rights circle nationally.

HARVEY: Yes, yes.

BRINSON: What was going on in Paducah at that point?

HARVEY: Could we just back up just a minute to Evansville, where I was?

BRINSON: Sure.

HARVEY: In Evansville, I became involved in the political arena and civic work. There was segregation in Evansville at the bus station, the Greyhound bus station was segregated, swimming pools were segregated. And a man by the name of W. R. Brown, I’ve got his picture over there, R. W. Brown, who pastors New Hope Baptist Church today. He is probably eighty-six years old or older, probably. As a young minister I really learned and got a lot of experience, those six years that I was in Evansville, which is only fifteen miles from my home in Booneville. But when I came here in sixty-two, there were a lot of problems, there was not one restaurant, public accommodations was terrible, even the municipal housing, all kinds of problems. And I went to work on that. And the NAACP branch here had a man by the name of Curley Brown was the President at that particular time, but they probably only had ten or fifteen active members. And I wanted to do greater than that, so I organized a Non-Partisan League. And the Non-Partisan League, it seemed like everybody just fell for it. We probably had over a hundred members. And the Non-Partisan League is the one that probably did most of the integrating and opening doors that were closed here in Paducah.

BRINSON: Tell me where you came up with the name Non-Partisan League. What does that mean?

HARVEY: You are neither Democrat or Republican.

BRINSON: Okay.

HARVEY: Just non-partisan, yes, uh huh.

BRINSON: And why did you think it important to establish a new organization?

HARVEY: The NAACP has been a great organization across the country, but here it had just sort of fizzled out or was not real effective. And I thought maybe that we needed something new. And W. C. Young--who was older than me and a great civil rights worker--he was one of the nominees--he’s dead, but he was one of the nominees--he and Curley Brown both were. And so he was my vice-president, and everybody worked just about at that time, you know. A lot of things they gave me the authority to do. And I didn’t want to be the Lone Ranger, but a lot of things I went out there and I really did.

BRINSON: So, you were like the president of the group?

HARVEY: I was the President.

BRINSON: Okay.

HARVEY: I was the President.

BRINSON: How did you go about recruiting people to the league?

HARVEY: The people just saw the problems that they had here.

BRINSON: But did you go to the churches first?

HARVEY: Yes, we put out announcements and stuff that we were going to organize it, this group, you know, and everything, you know. And young and old, we just had a lot of people. We had a lot of people. We had most of the black business people here, at that particular time, you know.

BRINSON: Are there any records left from the Partisan League? Anything like correspondence or flyers or minutes of the meetings?

HARVEY: I have a book here with a whole lot of stuff in it, clippings from the newspaper that talks about the Non-Partisan League and things that were achieved and so on. The theaters was even discriminatory, you couldn’t even go to a drive-in theater, not even a drive-in theater and sit in your own car. And downtown, the Columbia and the Arcadia Theater, which was owned by Mr. Kiler.

BRINSON: How do you spell that?

HARVEY: Jack K I L E R, something like that. And Mr. Brown had met with Mr. Kiler for several times and no, nothing was settled, you know. So anyway, I’ve got some copies of some letters in there, that I wrote to the Mayor, to talk to Mr. Kiler because he was a friend of his, to make a way for me and then I had an appointment with Mr. Kiler. And I talked, I probably had two or three sessions with Mr. Kiler, and it just seemed like we clicked for some reason or another, possibly because of my personality being a little different from Mr. Brown’s. I wasn’t maybe quite as pushy at that time. And so we solved the problem. And there are copies of letters in there, where each theater was going to be integrated at a certain time. And I’ll tell you how bad it was. At the Arcadia theater, they had a sign, on the Fifth Street side, a big sign said Black, Colored entrance to the theater. You had to go up the steps, to the balcony. Where they sold popcorn and stuff downstairs in the entrance there. You had to go down the steps, come out and get your popcorn and go back upstairs. And some people used to say, well that’s the best seats, you know. Well, it was, but it was just a matter of the white being separated from the black.

BRINSON: Now what year did you start the Non-Partisan League?

HARVEY: Ohhh, I don’t know.

BRINSON: How soon after you arrived in sixty-two?

HARVEY: Prob--I believe, I imagine it was probably sixty-three somewhere in there. It wasn’t too long. It was not too long.

BRINSON: And how did you work with the local NAACP? How did they feel about your organization?

HARVEY: Uhh. There may have been some feelings, but it was not obvious if it was, you know. Yeah. And some people, a few of those people belonged to both of them, both organizations, you know, yeah. There was no conflict at that time. The only thing that bothered me was after we did so many things, we just decided to let the Non-Partisan League go and let the NAACP, since it had parent groups and everything, be the organization.

BRINSON: Since it had parent groups, you mean at the state and national level?

HARVEY: NAACP, like I say, the National, yes, uh huh, yes.

BRINSON: Okay.

HARVEY: So there is no Non-Partisan League.

BRINSON: Right. And so how long did the League actually operate?

HARVEY: I would say probably about six years, something like that. We integrated restaurants and picture shows, just about anything in Paducah, you could go anywhere you wanted to.

BRINSON: I understand that there were individuals or a group from here in Paducah that went to Selma, when the boycott, for the march and whatnot there. Do you have any recollection of that? I’ve been told that by one person. Another person told me they really weren’t aware of that.

HARVEY: Yeah. I was very young and so on, but Martin Luther King and I had met....We met the first time in 1956 in Denver, Colorado at the National Baptist Convention U. S. A., Incorporated. I knew his father. I’m probably two years older than Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King and I stayed in the, I believe it was the Delaware Hotel, or something like that, in Denver Colorado; and there were adjoining rooms. And at that particular time, he was supposed to be the guest speaker at the National Baptist Convention. And J. H. Jackson was the President for a number of years, but J. H. Jackson was somewhat fearful of Martin Luther King because he was just on the rise, you know. And there was a conflict when he was supposed to speak. And so, I was a young fellow too, so that kind of brought us together, you know. It was just great.

BRINSON: Did he ever speak at that convention?

HARVEY: Yes ma’am, he spoke at the convention. And probably about three or four years after that is when the convention split and the Progressive organization came into being. Gardener Taylor was the first president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention. But Martin Luther King and J. H. Jackson’s attitude toward him with the National Baptist Convention, had a big bearing on the split of that convention. In fact, J. H. Jackson pastored the largest black church in America at that time. It was the Olivet Baptist Church in Chicago, Illinois.

BRINSON: Olivet, O L I V E T?

HARVEY: Yes, right. And that church was on the South Parkway and I believe, Thirty-first Street. And I think they changed South Parkway to Martin Luther King Boulevard, and J. H. Jackson changed the address of the church to the other street. [Laughing] He didn’t want to get any mail from Martin Luther King Boulevard. Yeah.

BRINSON: That must have been years later.

HARVEY: Oh it was.

BRINSON: But still it shows that he hadn’t gotten over.

HARVEY: No, he hadn’t gotten over it. He had not gotten over it yet, that’s right.

BRINSON: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was there any involvement in Paducah or any members?

HARVEY: No, Louisville is probably the closest place. Reverend Charles Kirby, who is a friend of mine, married a lady out of this, her people came out of this church. Betty Kiser is her name.

BRINSON: And is Reverend Kirby still living?

HARVEY: He is pastoring Southern Star Baptist Church in Louisville. My daughter is one of the musicians there at that church. She is a Minister of Music. And Reverend Kirby is one of them that was inducted into this, the same time I was, yes.

BRINSON: The ( ) Hall of Fame.

HARVEY: Right, we are about the same age, yes, uh huh.

BRINSON: In 1964 in Frankfort there was a rally in support of the Public Accommodations Bill that was in the Legislature. And it was the only state-wide rally that was held.

HARVEY: Ike and Tina Turner were there at that rally. I was there.

BRINSON: Ike and Tina Turner?

HARVEY: Ike and Tina Turner was guests for that.

BRINSON: And you?

HARVEY: I was there.

BRINSON: Okay. Did a group go from Paducah?

HARVEY: A busload from Paducah went, yes, a busload from Paducah went.

BRINSON: Did you go under the sponsorship of the Partisan, Non-Partisan League or the NAACP or was it just individuals?

HARVEY: I think it was just a group. I can’t remember. I don’t remember what name we went under or anything like that, but we were there. Yes.

BRINSON: And I believe Martin Luther King, Jr. was there.

HARVEY: Yes, yes.

BRINSON: And Jackie Robinson, and Peter, Paul and Mary.

HARVEY: Whole bunch of people, yes, yes, yes.

BRINSON: What do you remember about that day?

HARVEY: I remember so many people. That was one of the biggest rallies I had possibly been to at that time. The March on Frankfort, that’s what they called. I remember it very well.

BRINSON: What was the weather like that day?

HARVEY: The weather was nice. I can’t remember any bad weather. I can’t remember any bad weather.

BRINSON: Was it cold, because it was...?

HARVEY: I don’t think it was cold. I think it was probably chilly or something, but I don’t think it was cold. I can’t remember what month it was held.

BRINSON: I think it was March.

HARVEY: Okay.

BRINSON: But I’m not sure about that.

HARVEY: Yes. But it was cool, I remember that. It was not a summer sleeve, short sleeve weather.

BRINSON: And did you have any hopes for the day?

HARVEY: Yeah, I felt like that Kentucky was on the move, making progress. I really do. I think that was one indication, by the reception that, that large a group had at that time. I thought it was on the move.

BRINSON: Did you ever belong to the NAACP here in Kentucky?

HARVEY: I’m a lifetime member, and I received one of the highest awards right there. It’s on the wall there. That’s the reason I was telling you there is so much history on this wall here. [Laughing]

BRINSON: There certainly is. So you were a member of the local chapter and that makes you a member of the state and the national as well.

HARVEY: Yes. I have a five hundred dollar membership, which is a lifetime membership.

BRINSON: And have you played a leadership role within the NAACP?

HARVEY: Just a member and support in activities and stuff that they’ve got. I’ve never held office. Well, I did to, one time I helped the church member, church committee. I think I served on that one time, as Chairman of the Board. That’s about the limit of that.

BRINSON: Well, I know you have a story about attending a KKK meeting in Paducah...

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE ONE

BEGIN TAPE ONE SIDE TWO

BRINSON: Reverend Harvey, I was just asking you to tell me about the KKK meeting here in Paducah that you attended.

HARVEY: Yes, I had come out of office in nineteen seventy-four, and in nineteen seventy-five the Klan received a permit from Dolly McNutt.

BRINSON: Dolly McNutt?

HARVEY: Dolly McNutt, who became Mayor and also became a State Representative later on.

BRINSON: Its that a woman, Dolly?

HARVEY: A woman, she was the first woman to be elected to the Paducah City Commission. I was the first black person and preacher to be elected to a public office, from Henderson to Guthrie, from Owensboro, Kentucky to Hickman, Kentucky. So, anyway these people asked for a permit and after receiving a permit, well they received the permit by saying the committee would be....I mean their thing that they were going to have there, was program, was going to be public. It had to be public for the city to give them a permit, whether they were going to charge or whether it was going to be free. So they agreed that it would be public. But after Friday, after the City Hall closed, they stated that, “There would be no niggers permitted to come to that meeting.”

BRINSON: And they stated that how?

HARVEY: Over the news media at that time, “That there would be no niggers permitted to that meeting.”

BRINSON: And did The Paducah Sun report that?

HARVEY: I’m not, I don’t remember. I don’t have any recollection of that.

BRINSON: Did the radio report that or...?

HARVEY: I don’t remember it ever being reported. But anyway I went back and called Dolly McNutt. I called Tommy Lambert. I called Henry ( ). And I believe it was Hornsby, John Hornsby at that time, who was the other commissioner. And I asked them if they would revoke that permit. And they were so frightened, they said, “Reverend I just don’t believe we want to do that, because they are liable to burn crosses in our yards. No telling what they’ll”--they were fearful, you know. I just said, “Okay, if you won’t revoke the permit, I will make it public.” So they didn’t know what I meant, and I didn’t go into any details. So on Sunday morning when I finished preaching, I said, “How would you all like to go to the Klan rally with me?” And so they just laughed, they didn’t take it seriously, you know. So, when I left church I went straight to, it was the Jaycee Civic Center at that time, now it’s the Robert Cherry Center.

BRINSON: And you went alone?

HARVEY: Yes, ma’am. I went alone. And when I got to the Jaycee Civic Center, there was a man there that went in with me. He was the, his name is Preston Kennedy. He still lives in Reidland. He’s probably, an old man, probably eighty years old, something like that.

BRINSON: Where does he live?

HARVEY: Somewhere in Reidland.

BRINSON: Spell that for me.

HARVEY: Reidland, R E I D L A N D, Reidland, Kentucky. It’s just on the outskirts of Paducah. And he was there at that particular time and he went in with me. He didn’t believe I was really going to go in, but I did. And he went in with me.

BRINSON: And he was black also?

HARVEY: No, he’s white.

BRINSON: He’s white.

HARVEY: He was the editor of The Paducah Sun at that time.

BRINSON: Oh, okay.

HARVEY: He was the editor of The Paducah Sun. And before we went in, there was an ambulance backed up there and there was two black men, young men, that they were put in the ambulance. And the Klan had beat them up, for some reason. I don’t know if they were trying to get enter or what, but they beat them up when they were going. And everybody was so surprised that I was still going to go in. I went in, everybody was robed, and I thought it was the most pathetic thing when I got inside and I saw Caucasian women in here with small children running around, playing and everything, you know. All the men were robed. I didn’t see any female that I knew at that particular time.

BRINSON: What would you estimate the size of the crowd?

HARVEY: Probably a hundred and seventy-five, between a hundred and seventy-five and two hundred people. It was full, yes, it was full. And David Duke was the Grand Dragon at that particular time. I’ve got pictures of him right behind you there. David Duke was the Grand Dragon and I sat probably about fifteen feet in front of him. And when he opened his meeting, he said, “I’m glad that there’s no damn niggers here in this meeting.” And I looked at Preston and Preston looked at me, at that particular time. I sat there until they had an intermission. After the intermission, I decided to leave and I left at that particular time. We heard a lot of noise outside and to my surprise the members of my church had found out about it. And there’s pictures there of Jim Burr, who was one of the young deacons that was there outside. Oh gosh, there were three times as many people outside as there was inside. I know that there was five hundred out there, at least, outside, black and white. And most of these people, at that time, I believe, were anti-Klan for Paducah, you know. But there was a few sympathizers too with them, I’m sure. And I was just shocked when I got out there and saw all those people, you know. But it was quite an experience. But my reason was, for going there, was not just to be braggadocio[s] or anything like that, but I went there because I wanted to make it public, because these people would not revoke that permit. And that was my reason for going.

BRINSON: And they were meeting in a public facility.

HARVEY: Meeting in a public facility, and that’s the reason why I did it. I look back now at the whole incident, it makes me sort of shake, you know, the things that could happen. Because after that, the Klan drove past my house in robes, they didn’t want me to know who they were, in robes. And where I live is a dead-end into Noble Park. And they drive down and turn around and come back out. And so, you know, had all kinds of calls, but there was never any incident, as such, other than just showing themselves and calling, you know.

BRINSON: Did they say anything when they called?

HARVEY: Oh yes, they would cuss me and say they were going to kill me and this and that and all that kind of stuff, you know. One Sunday morning after that, they called the church, Harrison Street Baptist Church and said, “That they were going to come over and blow the church up, this and that and everything like that.” I remember them blocking off, the church is on Harrison Street, between Eleventh and Twelfth, and they blocked, the city blocked off Eleventh Street and they blocked off Twelfth Street. So no cars could come through there unless it was some membership going to the parking lot, because there’s somebody there, you know. And so on, you know. But nobody ever showed up, nothing happened. And then later, I’ve got two or three articles here. There’s one right there. It says, “W. G. Harvey helped city”. That’s an article by The Paducah Sun. They said that the Klan never got a foothold here, because I embarrassed them so much by my presence at their meeting. Then later, the other sign there is when David Duke ran for Governor of Louisiana. And he claimed to be a born again Christian. They interviewed me at that time, and they brought, that’s when they brought it back and put David Duke’s picture there and my picture, yeah. So that’s the only two stories about the Klan at all and my involvement.

BRINSON: Did that story get picked up on the...?

HARVEY: No, no.

BRINSON: ...AP or ? It just got local press? Okay.

HARVEY: Local press, that’s all. Nobody else knew, except somebody, some relative or something told them something, you know, mouth to mouth. It was never on any media that I know of, yes.

BRINSON: Other than The Paducah Sun.

HARVEY: Yes, yes.

BRINSON: Don’t you think that’s a little strange in this day and age, that...?

HARVEY: Well at that time--I just--I really, after my experience with Kentucky Humanities and KET, after they had this information and they did nothing about it. I felt like, first I felt like that Paducah did not want the country to know that they had a black man here, that was courageous enough to go to a Klan rally, and come out not hurt or anything, you know. I don’t think Paducah wanted that to be known out of Paducah. And then after Kentucky Humanities didn’t do anything about it, and after KET didn’t do anything, after receiving all this documentation, I felt like maybe Kentucky felt that way. [Laughing] I couldn’t help but feel that way at that time, you know. And Doctor Robinson, who’s here, Doctor Robinson is one of the great historians here, you know.

BRINSON: Right, he wrote The History of Paducah.

HARVEY: And the first time he wrote his book, he talked about places being integrated and me being the activist and so on, but just a very little. And I don’t have any knowledge of him ever enlarging on this here. And I called him and told him that I had sent this information to Kentucky Humanities and KET, because he was on one of those Boards. And he, the way he talked like, well I’m just a member and I don’t have anything to do with it, Reverend. I can’t help you and so on. So he never did.

BRINSON: I guess I’m not so surprised about Kentucky Humanities and KET, because of the nature of their programs.

HARVEY: Yes.

BRINSON: But it does surprise me that The Paducah Sun did not share that with the Associated Press.

HARVEY: Yes. I don’t know why. I don’t know why. You can look at the articles and it will tell you...

BRINSON: I would like to do that.

HARVEY: Well, I mean here they are, behind you. Associated Press had it, you know, it never did say where, but Associated Press has articles that will tell you, you know, Associated Press, you know, yes.

BRINSON: Let me ask you a few questions, please, about that event. You said, there was not a Klan chapter here in Paducah. So the people who came to this rally, were from...

HARVEY: I think, they came, they came from different places. Now they did have some kind of organization, I think, up around Benton and somewhere up in Marshall County, something like that. Because the spokesman at that time, that made the arrangements, I can’t remember the name now, he was from Calvert City or Benton, or somewhere up in there. I did know his name at one time, but I forgot his name later. He’s the one that made the arrangements. And like the Grand Dragon from Louisiana, and there’s people come from Indiana, Ohio, the other places, you know. They came here for this particular rally, just like a convention meets somewhere and people come from other areas. That’s the way that was.

BRINSON: But then the follow-up to you of the phone calls and driving by your house, that probably, don’t you think, was done by local, people locally?

HARVEY: Yes, yes. There was a small house on Thirteenth Street, North Thirteenth Street, and there was a young man, can’t remember the name, this was several years after that; a young man that established some kind of Department of the Klan there. And he was trying to get some activity started among the young whites. And Prince Hatchet was the President of the NAACP. Prince Hatchet was the pastor of the Washington Street Baptist Church at that time, and he lived over on ( ) in the parsonage over there. And the Klan, some Klan members or sympathizers came by and threw some kind of Molotov Cocktail or bomb, something like that and burned the garage attached to the house; just a little something, not too much about it. And then later on, Tobacco and Firearms found out about the place on Thirteenth Street and they raided it and broke it up. And they found a list of people that they were supposed to shoot or assassinate in that building. And they say I was the second person on the list. Prince Hatchet was the first person on the list, but that was only because of being the President of the NAACP. Because nothing really constructive was being done at that time by the NAACP. But anyway, my name was second on the list they said.

BRINSON: Can you remember any other names that you heard were on the list?

HARVEY: No, I don’t remember any other names, but I just heard that I was the second person on the list. The young man that lived there and operated this office....There was a trial and I think they gave him four or five years or something like that, unless he got out early. I never heard from him anymore. Can’t remember the name, so he just sort of faded out. But I remember the day that the house was raided and everything by Tobacco and Firearms at that time. A fellow by the name of Mickey Sullivan, who is dead now, Caucasian, fine young man, was head of the Firearms, Tobacco and Firearms at that time, here. His wife worked for Carroll Hubbard. She was his main secretary at that particular time.

BRINSON: The day of the rally that you attended, I know this is a long time back to think about this, but do you remember the content of any of the talks of the speakers that you heard that day?

HARVEY: The only think I can remember was, that they were people that just felt like the black man was, blacks and Jews were not even considered, or not important at all. They were just for the white race, yeah. They were anti everything that was not white.

BRINSON: And did they talk about any actions or programs or activities that they wanted to bring about?

HARVEY: I don’t remember that. I don’t remember that at all. I can’t remember that, anything that I could actually document. I don’t remember that. All I remember is that they were just like a white citizens council. Nobody else was important. That blacks were coming in and taking over and so on, you know.

BRINSON: Is there any evidence of a White Citizen’s Council in Paducah?

HARVEY: No, not that I know of.

BRINSON: Okay, so the Klan has been the...?

HARVEY: Right, that was the main one that’s ever been here, that I know of, yeah.

BRINSON: You must have been a little nervous, I guess, to be in there with all that?

HARVEY: I tell you what, believe it or not, but I can’t believe I was as courageous and as fearless as I was. But I prayed over it, and I am a Christian and I felt like the Lord created all people equal and it doesn’t make any difference in people. Everybody should have the same opportunities to live where they can afford, and be a first class citizen, you know. I felt like that I had those God given rights, and I didn’t care what happened. I didn’t care what happened. I felt like everything would be all right. And that’s the reason why I went.

BRINSON: Were there any police in the ...?

HARVEY: Not inside.

BRINSON: Not inside.

HARVEY: No, if there were, what police were there, were outside. There were no police inside.

BRINSON: How did your family feel about you going?

HARVEY: Oh, they were fearless, I mean fearful for me, very fearful for me, yes. My mother, gosh she was really upset, my wife, and I can’t remember the attitude of the children at that time. They were just small.

BRINSON: You mentioned earlier that you had been a City Commissioner, I believe. Or am I...is that correct?

HARVEY: Yes, ma’am.

BRINSON: Okay.

HARVEY: City Commissioner and Mayor Pro-tem.

BRINSON: Okay. Tell me about your move to become a City Commissioner.

HARVEY: There had been a number of men, Iville Boyd, man by the name of Iville Boyd was one, he had run three or four times, and a man by the name of Frank Brown.

BRINSON: These are black men?

HARVEY: Yes. That’s two that had run for office. And they had a lot of political rallies and things like that, you know, but nobody could ever get elected. And the reason why that nobody could ever get elected was, because they only campaigned in black neighborhoods. And there was not enough black people to elect them. And the next thing I couldn’t figure out when I came here, why anybody would campaign just in black neighborhoods when it was a city wide election. There was no wards, no districts, so you were going to be a commissioner, if elected, by all the people in Paducah. So the first thing I did...

BRINSON: Tell me what period we’re talking about here.

HARVEY: Nineteen sixty-eight.

BRINSON: Okay.

HARVEY: Nineteen sixty-eight. I started to campaign and I said, “The first thing I am going to do is”....We had twenty-four, twenty-four districts at that time, twenty-four precincts at that time. I said, “I am going to cover all of them. I’m not just going to campaign where black people are.” So I went to Buckner Lane, which was one of the, probably the most famous Caucasian place at that particular time, the homes and everything, you know. I went straight to Buckner Lane.

BRINSON: Buckner?

HARVEY: Buckner Lane, yes. And there was a huge house, I can’t remember the name of the people or anything at all, but it was wealthy people. I went there and knocked on the front door. A black woman came to the door. And she said, “What you want?” And I said, “I want to talk to the man of the house or the lady of house. I’m campaigning for Commissioner.” She said, “You go around to the back door.” [Laughing] I went around to the back door. And she brought the lady to the back door. She was standing there behind her, with her, you know. Lady opened the door, and asked me who I was, what I wanted, and everything. I told her, “I’m Reverend W. G. Harvey, Pastor of Harrison Street Baptist Church. I’m running for City Commissioner and I’d just like to let her know a little about my platform and so on, you know.” She said, “Come right on in, Reverend.” And I went on in the house and she carried me right on up to the den. We sat there and got acquainted and talked. “You know,” she said, “You’re the first black person that ever came and asked me to vote for them.” And I said, “Well, I probably am aware of that. I heard that most of them campaigned in black neighborhoods, you know.” And she was just as nice as could be, and she called that black woman and told her, said, “Bring us some coffee”....I can’t remember. I wish I could think of her name. I’ve tried a thousand times to think of it. “Bring us some coffee.” And boy she rolled her eyes at me and looked all funny. And she went and got coffee and brought it in there. And I drank coffee. I didn’t even want coffee, but I drank coffee. [Laughter] And we sat there and talked probably a half an hour. And when I got ready to go, I remember distinctly, she called that lady and said, “You let him out the front door. And if he ever comes here again, don’t you never take him to the back door.” I remember that just as plain. I told it I don’t know how many times. So I can’t think of her name. And so I was so well accepted in so many places. All right, so I missed this election by less than ten votes. I think it was between four and seven votes. I missed being elected. A white man by the name of Bill Fellows, or William Fellows.

BRINSON: F E L L O W S?

HARVEY: Yes, was the one that just barely beat me. He was the most outgoing, friendliest fellow you ever saw in your life when he talked to me. And I found out, that he was going, when he was campaigning in white neighborhoods, he would tell them, “If you elect that nigger we are going really be in serious trouble. We cannot afford to elect a black man.” So he only beat me by that narrow margin, after indoctrinating Caucasian people with all that. I had told my church at that time, before the election, I said, “I’m going to be the next Commissioner. I’m going to be the first Black Commissioner to be elected. I can tell by the attitudes of the people that I campaigned with in white communities.” And so, after the election, Bill Fellows got seriously sick, this was before the swearing in and everything. So they sent Bill Fellows to the University of Kentucky Hospital. They had an exploratory operation. Bill Fellows died at U. K.. And when Bill Fellows died at U. K., they hadn’t sworn the Commissioners in or anything at that particular time, or he didn’t get sworn in. I think one of them swore the others in, but they couldn’t, while he was up there, maybe a week or so. And so there was a number of people that went to City Hall. Robert Cherry was the Mayor at that particular time. Large number of black and white people, that went to City Hall. And they said, “We believe that you ought to appoint Reverend W. G. Harvey, because he was the next man in line for votes and Bill Fellows just barely beat him.” At that time, Robert Cherry was just a little reluctant to do this. The law is that the Mayor has to make the appointment, and the City Commission has to ratify it. I think it is the same law that is used when people are appointed to a Board. The Mayor makes an appointment, and the City Commissioners ratify it. So anyway, overwhelmingly this was done, and reluctantly Bob Cherry made the appointment and it was ratified. And so after so many days, there has to be a runoff election. I don’t remember whether it was ninety days or what, three months, I think. So a man by the name of James Lynn, a white man.

BRINSON: L Y N N?

HARVEY: Yes, worked for an insurance company here. The insurance company was located at Twelfth and Broadway. I haven’t seen him, I don’t know whether he’s even alive yet or not. He filed to run against me. The only person that filed against me. Bob Cherry, who thought I was going to be all right after a while. Those ninety days after working with me. He enjoyed me. We’d become the very best of friends. We were friends until he died here, just a few years ago. They begged him to not run against me, so I would automatically have that seat. He said, “No, I’m going to run against the nigger anyway.” He ran. When he ran, I beat him three to one. So, that was really my first election. The first ninety days, it was appointment.

BRINSON: Tell me what you remember about your first meeting in the Commission.

HARVEY: In the Commission? Oh, it was exciting. A lot of people came and filled the halls to see me. And then Bob Cherry was the president of some nationwide florist organization. And Bob Cherry had to go abroad somewhere, Italy or somewhere. And so I served as Mayor Pro-tem, now this was after my second election, second election.

BRINSON: Okay, after you had been, okay, right. But your first meeting, I mean here you are...

HARVEY: Yes.

BRINSON: ...the first black member of the Commission ever.

HARVEY: Yes, it was exciting, it was exciting. And it seemed like the people were very enthusiastic about it and so on. And meetings were better attended, I guess to see how I was going to function or how I was accepted or something. A Commission term runs for two years. The next term is when I became Mayor Pro-tem, because I received more votes than anybody. And Dolly McNutt was the first woman to be elected to the City Commission, so we were great friends.

BRINSON: And this would have been 1970...?

HARVEY: Seventy, something like that, yeah, because I came out in seventy-four and I did three, two-year terms.

BRINSON: Why did you come out?

HARVEY: Well, there was just a lot of things happening. I’ll just let you see this.

BRINSON: And were there any other black Commissioners at that point in time?

HARVEY: At this particular time, a man ran against me, by the name of Frank Brown. And Robert Cherry and I were very good friends, but I was always my own man and Bob knew this. And a lot of things were happening, but there was some jealousy in the black community. And you can see all those important people there, I mean that is the crust of the black community that supported a man by the name of Joe Bush, who ran for City Commissioner. And Frank Brown, who is alive yet. Frank and I are friends now. But I went through a whole lot of stuff with the black community. And when the election was over, the two of them only had thirteen hundred votes, and I had forty-nine hundred votes. As I said, a lot of those are white votes. They believed in me and they supported me. And there are other articles in this book here, that tells you this.

BRINSON: Did you decide not to run again, in part because of the tensions within the black community?

HARVEY: It had its bearing, but not really. The six years that I spent on the Commission I felt like there were some things that I possibly was not doing at church, my church work. Yeah. Some things that I was probably not doing with my children at that age. And so that’s the reason why I didn’t run anymore. This had its bearing. It hurt me to see, to see the black people have the attitude that they had, you know. But they wanted me to do special things for black people, and I stood on my philosophy that I am a City Commissioner of Paducah Kentucky. I don’t represent a ward, and I was called the People’s Commissioner. And I stuck by my philosophy.

BRINSON: What do you consider your biggest accomplishments in those six years as a Commissioner?

HARVEY: Well, I was able to--just because of the office--I was able to get a lot of jobs for black people. I was able to hire a lot of black people, get a lot of black people hired for the city. In fact, there was no black people in City Hall. Well, I did that before, when I was actively involved in the Non-Partisan group. I got the first black person to work in City Hall, other than janitors. She worked in the clerical department, in the Finance department there. I got a lot of jobs, I got a lot of jobs for people.

BRINSON: I’ve heard of Gladman...

HARVEY: Humbles?

BRINSON: Humbles, that you were helpful to him.

HARVEY: Yes.

BRINSON: In becoming the first black firefighter.

HARVEY: Becoming the first....that’s exactly right, that’s exactly right. And also Assistant Fire Chief. And my son is Assistant Fire Chief now, and I had nothing to do with it, maybe the name helped, but I did not do anything to either ( ) please do this for me. So there was a lot of jobs, lot of jobs. And at one time the city under Bill Murphy wanted to sell the refuse department. There were more black men working for the refuse department than there was any other place in town at that time. And we didn’t want that to happen, we thought still had better service [Distortion in tape] than selling it to ( ). And at that time I was connected ( ) here. In fact I have here literature that I got from ( ) and Washington, D.C., that verified it. So Bill Murphy and that Commission wanted....

END OF SIDE TWO TAPE ONE

BEGIN TAPE TWO SIDE ONE

HARVEY: ...Mayor Webber had to people in general. He came here working for the Chamber of Commerce as a Director. That’s how he came to Paducah. And so I said, well, we’ll see about getting them in. So anyway I organized a group and I had a bunch of city workers and I had wealthy people, Caucasians that joined me. They didn’t want to see BFI come in and take it over and everything. And so we really put an organization together, and after the signatures came in, I think I had forty eight hundred signatures that was needed to put it on the Referendum. And I have that in here, the suit and everything. And I hired Jim Owens, who’s an attorney here and Bill Graves, who’s an appeals judge, William “Bill” Graves. And they handled the case, and we won. When the election was over, we beat them three to one in votes. And they couldn’t sell it. The city owns it today. The city owns it today.

BRINSON: You saved the jobs for the city.

HARVEY: Yes, Yes. So, me being there, it opened a lot of doors. And as of now, I probably get an average of twenty, I get from twenty to sometimes twenty-seven calls a day asking me to help them with this or that and so on. It is either something that’s connected with my ministry, like come to pray for me I’m going to have an operation at the hospital; or either a nursing home will call, or somebody wants help to try to get in a nursing home; or somebody just wants some information how to do something, that they don’t have the knowledge and know how to do it. And I will say that five percent of those calls are from Caucasians, who believe in me, yeah. But the Commission is what give me, that was my launching pad. And then I had a broadcast, a radio broadcast for fifteen years and I had a telecast, in fact, we had the first black operated and owned cable station in America--the second, the second one. Clay Evans, Fellowship Baptist Church in Chicago probably had the first. So that broadcast went from Douglas Communication in Jackson, Tennessee all down through West Tennessee and down through part of Mississippi and then the tape was sent to North Chicago...

BRINSON: And this was to broadcast your church services?

HARVEY: Church service, church service. And Wisconsin, Racine, Wisconsin, all up in there and Toledo, Ohio. So this gave me a lot of latitude, you know, for people knowing who I am. And so my work really, when I talk about calls and so on, it’s not just people in Paducah. I mean, I’ve had calls, people I’ve helped from Hopkinsville, from Madisonville, from Cadis, from Murray, from Hickman, from Mayfield. I’ve even had people that were connected with the NAACP to call me and other organizations where there’s problems and I’ve contributed to it.

BRINSON: Recently the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights had its fortieth anniversary celebration and you were nominated and selected as one of twenty-one individuals for their Civil Rights Hall of Fame. A big honor.

HARVEY: Yes.

BRINSON: Congratulations.

HARVEY: Thank you, thank you.

BRINSON: Can you tell me - how do you feel about that?

HARVEY: It’s something that really I never anticipated, really I never anticipated. I do not have all this on these walls to be braggadocio[s], but Black History has been so suppressed, pushed under the rug and so on, you know. And so I’ve got this here for the young people at this church, and the other people who happen to come; they can just see that some of the things that we enjoy today came through sweat, blood and tears, a lot of hard work. I don’t do this as a person that’s bragging, you know.

BRINSON: And for the readers of the transcript, we’re in Reverend Harvey’s office at the church, and the walls are just covered with news articles and photographs and historical information.

HARVEY: The lady that came from The Sun to do this interview after, that was on the twentieth of July, two days after I was inducted. She counted everything, and she said she counted a hundred and sixty-three, which was in the news article. Have you seen the news article?

BRINSON: No I haven’t.

HARVEY: I’ll save one for you, okay.

BRINSON: Okay.

HARVEY: When I came back here, all this here has to do with my induction, that whole wall there, has to do with my induction. The pictures that were taken, were taken by the membership that was there, and the other clippings from the paper. So added to this will be the hundred and thirty-third session of the Grand Lodge of Kentucky the Prince Hall, Affiliated, that was held in Louisville at the Gault House, the last week of July, when they accepted this induction. And I don’t know what all they are going to have on it, but they are sending a big plaque.

BRINSON: But you don’t have any more room on your walls for anything else here. [Laughter] You need another room, I think.

HARVEY: Yes, I just wanted to, just really keep it for young people to know where they come from.

BRINSON: You were telling me before we started the tape, that a group of you went to Louisville for the award.

HARVEY: Yes ma’am.

BRINSON: Were these people from your church or your family?

HARVEY: All members of church, all members of the church, my chairman, Tony Mackey and Vince Duncan, one of our male workers and Deacons that works with young people; and the rest of them were ladies, and they went. And they were just excited. In fact, they’ve done most of this here, they’re going to change the heading up there, have somebody to come in and professionally put a heading up there for it. But they’re just happy about it, you know. The church is happy about it, yes. I’m going to be celebrating my thirty-eighth anniversary on the eighth of October as a pastor in Paducah, thirty-eight years, yeah. And they’re excited about that and they’re going to do a lot of special things, that I don’t even know anything about.

BRINSON: Do you have any plans to retire?

HARVEY: No ma’am. No ma’am.

BRINSON: Okay.

HARVEY: In fact, I don’t really have a retirement plan. Now this is a sad commentary, but I want to go in history, since we are talking about it. I pastored Harrison Street Baptist Church for twenty-three years and ten months and after a lot of dissension, a lot of problems, I left there. And we organized this church, because eighty-nine people talked to me about let’s organize another church, you know. I had the first black retirement plan through Prudential Insurance, a good one, that would have given me a good retirement besides my social security.

BRINSON: You had that with the other church?

HARVEY: With the other church and it was transferable. But about two months after this church had been organized I went to Prudential to attempt to transfer it, and they told me that the officers of that church had already taken it out and cashed it in. They probably wouldn’t have gotten over about three thousand dollars out of it. And I think, to my best recollection was, I could have drawn probably about fourteen or fifteen thousand dollars when I got sixty-five and could have drawn about seven hundred dollars a month. So that would have made me a good retirement, yes.

BRINSON: But here you were starting a whole new church...

HARVEY: A whole new thing, that’s right.

BRINSON: ...you got a loan, and so you probably didn’t have the income at that point actually.

HARVEY: Yes. So I have no retirement. Right, right. And I got real excited after I was inducted into the Human Rights Civil Rights Hall of Fame. People in the congregation, in the audience were just talking, you know, some of them said, “You know you are going to be real famous,” said, “I tell you what,” said, “I bet you that some people are going to be calling you and wanting you to do a commercial.” And I said, “Oh that would be great, because I don’t have any retirement.” [Laughter] And I was in, there’s a big picture around the corner here. I was in a movie. I was in a movie, “In Country”. It is still available.

BRINSON: Oh right, by...

HARVEY: “In Country”, yes.

BRINSON: That’s the title of a novel by Bobby Ann Mason, who’s an author here.

HARVEY: All right, okay.

BRINSON: Okay.

HARVEY: And Bruce Willis, was in that, one of the main stars, and Emily Lloyd from England came here, she was in that. And I was in the movie, not a real big part, but I was in it, you know.

BRINSON: And how did that come about?

HARVEY: Well, I’ll tell you what. I applied for it, and I missed it. My wife applied for it, they were asking for people to come, you know. And my wife missed it.

BRINSON: Now what do you mean when you say you missed it?

HARVEY: Was not accepted to participate.

BRINSON: Okay.

HARVEY: Okay. So, I happened to be downtown one day and this was the last week that they were doing shots and everything you know. And I ran into Abernathy’s, Ralph Abernathy’s daughter. I knew Ralph Abernathy. I knew Martin Luther King. I was in several meetings with them, and Jesse Jackson. In fact, I spoke at SIU when Jesse Jackson ran for City Com--- ran for President. And there was over six thousand people at SIU when I spoke there.

BRINSON: SIU is Southern Indiana ..?

HARVEY: Southern Indiana, Illinois, Southern Illinois University.

BRINSON: ...Illinois University, okay.

HARVEY: Right. And so I knew all of them and I knew Abernathy real well. And his daughter knew me, and I was shocked. And she said, “Reverend Harvey, how come you haven’t come down and applied?” I said, “I did, but I missed it.” She said, “I tell you what. I’m working there.” She had a high position in making that movie. She said, “You come down there at such and such a time, talk to me and I’ll introduce you to these other people. And you will be in this movie. I want you in there!” [Laughing] I went down there the next day. She told me what to bring, she was so sure that I was going to be in it, what to bring and everything, you know and I did. And I ended up in the movie. There’s a picture there of me standing between Bruce Lloyd, Bruce Willis and Emily Lloyd, small picture there. And then there’s a big plaque around there showing the rest of it, all the characters and everything.

BRINSON: I actually just looked at that on video not too long ago.

HARVEY: You did? Uh huh.

BRINSON: I’ll have to go back now that I know you and see if I see you there.

HARVEY: Yeah, I’m in there. It shows me a couple of times in there. It shows an old blue Seville that I had with a black top on, it’s in and everything. [Laughing]

BRINSON: Well let me ask you a question about race relations overall in Paducah, because you have the advantage of having lived elsewhere, before you came to Paducah.

HARVEY: Yes.

BRINSON: And I wonder how you would evaluate race relations say in the sixties when you arrived here with other communities that you had been involved in, or Louisville, you know; were things moving along in the whole struggle for civil rights here, were they the same as they were in other places, were they different?

HARVEY: As I said, we solved a lot of problems in Evansville, Indiana before I left there, the first six years that I was there. So when I came here, we had to start all over again. There was no accommodations in motels, hotels, and restaurants and so on. The school system that’s the biggest problem we have here now. This is full of lawsuits that I filed with Kentucky, Doctor Cody.

BRINSON: Cody?

HARVEY: Cody, yeah, when he was there as the head. I filed with him and I filed with the Federal Government, Board of Education and so on, you know, against school problems. And we still have a lot of school problems. We don’t have enough black teachers. And we have, I’ll say the enrollment at Tilghman High School is probably forty-eight percent black, and you probably have about seven, between seven and ten percent black teachers. And the same thing is happening with the state as relates to faculty at West Kentucky Technical College, which used to be West Kentucky Vocational School, which was probably ninety percent black, as it relates to teachers and also students. And so I just was in a meeting yesterday morning at seven thirty, a breakfast, at West Kentucky Vocational School. West Kentucky Vocational School, almost all the janitors, teachers, I doubt whether they have over three or four teachers there at West Kentucky Vocational Technical School. And the enrollment, they announced yesterday morning that the enrollment was down to about seven percent black. Of course, it is a part now of Paducah Community College, you know. That was the purpose of moving it out there. I know about the political things that took it out there from where it was. And I knew what was going to happen, too. And so it’s just going there...

BRINSON: What....

HARVEY: ...but this meeting was to try to recruit blacks now. I don’t know whether they’re waking up and seeing they’ve got to do something different. So we told them yesterday morning, said, not only do you need to recruit blacks, but you need black instructors, because it is not going to be attracting, it’s not going to be easy to recruit blacks when you have no black faculty at all.

BRINSON: And you were meeting with school officials, is that who...?

HARVEY: We were meeting with the instructor and part of the faculty of West Kentucky Technical College.

BRINSON: Let me back up a minute, you just mentioned that the Technical College was now part of the Community College.

HARVEY: Yes.

BRINSON: When that happened, were there advantages or disadvantages for that kind of consolidation to the black community in Paducah?

HARVEY: It was not an advantage to the black community in my opinion.

BRINSON: Okay, talk about that a little bit.

HARVEY: Because we don’t have enough people, enough students that are going. We have just a few students.

BRINSON: Whereas before?

HARVEY: Where before it was probably ninety percent, probably ninety percent. And we had people coming from everywhere. There wasn’t any problem with recruiting, because it was known all across the country. In fact, West Kentucky Vocational School was the third largest black facility in America, even in the Islands, the Bahamas and places like that, we had some people to come to West Kentucky Vocational School. It was that kind of quality school. And so now we don’t even have enough participation from the people that are here.

BRINSON: Why do you think that is?

HARVEY: Because they have no black instructors to amount to anything at all. Calvin Cole is the instructor in Tailoring. He lives just three doors from me. He is my neighbor. And we may have one or two more and that’s it, that’s it.

BRINSON: But with the merger, what happened to the black instructors?

HARVEY: They did away with them as they retired, never replaced them. That’s the same thing that was done here with Lincoln High School and Tilghman High School. Some that they did move, they either made them truant officers or librarians or something like that, you know. And they retired. They never got replaced, yes, they never got replaced.

BRINSON: Of course, one of the things that we read about in the press is that there’s a shortage of black teachers everywhere in this country.

HARVEY: There is a possibility that there are, yes.

BRINSON: And that, that teachers, or black graduates of college now have more job opportunities than they did at one point, when teaching was...

HARVEY: Yes.

BRINSON: How do you respond to that?

HARVEY: Well, I think up to, here, here in Paducah, a lot of the problem they have here is with the Board of Education, the local Board of Education. I don’t believe that they’ve done everything that they could have done. One of the biggest fights that we’ve had here, is with Doctor Ramage. There is an article right there on the board, where Doctor Ramage...

BRINSON: Is he the School Superintendent?

HARVEY: He’s the School Superintendent, yes. There was really a black woman that should have had the job, her name is Doctor Jean Kearney. She was the Assistant Superintendent. And Doctor Ramage came in over her, because he was accepted by the Board. And she had better qualifications, two to one, than Doctor Ramage had, but they hired him. And the Board has supported him in everything that he has done. I don’t believe he has sincerely, really tried to do any better as relates to hiring black teachers. And he broke every kind of law trying to hold onto certain things that he wanted to do. There’s an article there where Doctor Cody and them fined the District sixty-two thousand dollars. I’m the one that filed the complaint. Sixty-two thousand dollars and it’s got about six laws there that he broke trying to just have his own way and hold onto a man that he wanted to be Principal of Cooper-Whiteside. His name was William Cartwright. Doctor Cody had a lady, I mean Doctor Ramage(*) had a lady that was the Assistant Principal of Cooper-Whiteside. She had all kinds of degrees, certifications for principalship and William Cartwright had no certification at all. But Doctor Ramage said he is going to be principal here and the Board supported him. Only one person, a black lady by the name of Joyce Nelson, at that time, her name is Joyce Henderson now, was the only one that stood against it. And so I filed a complaint with the Kentucky Board of Education. I filed it with the Federal Government and then they backed off later, because it was filed within the state, which makes sense, I guess. But the State fined the District sixty thousand dollars for all the laws that he broke. In fact, Ramage, Doctor Ramage made Bill Cartwright the Principal. He called it Head Teacher, that’s what it was, Head Teacher, but it served in the same capacity as the principal. I looked up the law and the law said that you could do this, but it was where there was I think four or five classrooms or something like that, and just a small amount of people, you could use a Head Teacher. But why would you have a Head Teacher to run a school when you’ve got an Assistant Principal that has all of the qualifications and more to be the Principal, and not put her there because she is black. All right, so this girl left there and went to Dayton, Ohio and she is the Principal of a large school and has four other people working under her as aides to the Principal.

BRINSON: Tell me about the racial make-up of the local School Board at this point in time.

HARVEY: They have two Blacks.

BRINSON: Out of how many?

HARVEY: Out of five people with the Chairman, yes, four Board members and a Chairman. The Chairman is Doctor Gwen.

BRINSON: It sounds like you’re still an active...

HARVEY: They have four votes, they have four votes to do whatever they want to do. Joyce Nelson is the only one that will stand for what’s right, black know this, white people know this. And that’s why Doctor Ramage is able to do anything he wants to do.

BRINSON: It sounds like you are still an activist.

HARVEY: I am, very much an activist. I’m proud of it, because I am an activist for what is right, regardless of race, creed or color. I’m for what is right, that’s exactly right.

BRINSON: Is there anything else, Reverend Harvey, that we haven’t talked about today, that you think is important to include here?

HARVEY: I would just like to say that we still have, we still have problems. We have problems in employment, we have problems with municipal housing, and as far as accommodations and things like that, we don’t have any problems. But we don’t have enough jobs, and we have people that are qualified for jobs. So that’s a problem, that’s an ongoing problem, that’s an ongoing problem. And there’s still racism in Paducah. Now this year, the eighth of August, it was for the mixed thing, multi cultured.

BRINSON: That’s your Emancipation Proclamation Celebration.

HARVEY: Emancipation Proclamation, yeah, I was glad to see that. I’ll say we are making progress, we’re making progress, but it’s no Utopia, it’s no Utopia. There is an undercurrent yet that does not want it to happen. I’ll just give you an example. I noticed, it become very obvious to me a few years ago. We could have an interracial ministers meeting and all the pastors could be together in this meeting, you know, and we’d be having a real good time, you know. We’d be eating donuts and drinking coffee and so on, just patting one another on the back and talking. Everything would be fine, you know. But if you would be somewhere at the mall or somewhere else, and some of those pastors that had big churches would see you, they’d duck off another way, rather than meet you and talk to you in fellowship. But here last year, something happened, and now they are reaching out; trying to have a better relationship as it relates to congregations, going to other--mixed congregation, do they want to mix congregations, you know. So it’s better, you know. They want to be interracial, you know. I have a few, always, I’ve baptized I guess, at least twenty-five Caucasians since I’ve been in Paducah, the thirty years I’ve been here. In fact, I’ve always said the Lord is interested in everybody. Out of one blood, God created all nations that dwell upon the face of the Earth. That’s been my philosophy.

BRINSON: What happened last year?

HARVEY: Last year they began to have some interracial meetings at Southland, not--Don Young’s, Don Young’s church, Heartland Baptist Church, Heartland, one of the largest in town here. They began to bring in some people to try to make race relations better, you know. In fact, they brought several black, national preachers here, to preach, you know, to try to make race relations better, you know. And there was a number of black people that went to the meetings and so on, you know. So they’re trying now, they’re trying now. We have hope, you know, that things will get better, you know. People are just people.

BRINSON: Okay, thank you very much.

END OF INTERVIEW.