Oral History Interview with Gladman Humbles

BETSY BRINSON: This is an interview with Gladman Humbles. The interviewer is Betsy Brinson and the interview takes place at Mr. Humbles' residence in Paducah, Kentucky.

BRINSON: Could you just give me your complete name please?

HUMBLES: It's Gladman C. Humbles.

BRINSON: And Gladman is G-l-a-d-m-a-n?

HUMBLES: Correct.

BRINSON: And you last name?

HUMBLES: H-u-m-b-l-e-s.

BRINSON: B-l-e-s? Okay. Thank you very much for agreeing to talk with me this morning. Any number of people have suggested your name to me as someone who would be an authority both on the history of Paducah and this topic, which is to eliminate--the whole effort to eliminate--legal segregation in Kentucky from 1930 to 1974. Now I know that we may go before that, we may talk a little bit in the present but thank you for talking with me. Could we begin . . . shall I call you Mr. Humbles?

HUMBLES: Mr. Humbles or Gladman, either one, I'm . . .either one's fine. Gladman's fine, that's good.

BRINSON: Could we begin a little about you, where and when you were born?

HUMBLES: I was born, legally I was born here in Paducah but I was really born in Kansas City. In fact, I'm writing a book about my biological mother and the search I had for her, and all the interesting things that happened. The book is called, "Finding Mama" and I'm quite well into the book now. The book's nearing completion; but I, for all legal reasons, I was born in Paducah.

BRINSON: So you came here at a very early age?

HUMBLES: I was less than a year old. I was a few months old.

BRINSON: Okay and what's your birth date?

HUMBLES: December 3, 1930.

BRINSON: So that makes you not quite seventy?

HUMBLES: Sixty-nine.

BRINSON: Sixty-nine years old, okay. Could you tell me a little bit about your growing up specifically here in Paducah, your family, any brothers and sisters, or grandparents that . . . or ancestors that you have heard about in growing up?

HUMBLES: My father was well up in age when I was conceived. And my father was my actual father, but my mother wasn't my actual mother. She accepted me as her own, however. In growing up in Paducah as a young boy the patterns of segregation were not as rigid as in the deep South but however they existed. For example, in my book I mentioned where we had a swimming hole down at the river and we went there to swim, and we kind of thought that was our own private swimming hole. And whites had a nice swimming pool out at the Noble Park, the Municipal park. There was a kind of a mixed pattern of segregation. For example, we could sit anywhere on the bus in the bus system, we didn't have to move back and give our seats to whites as they did in places Birmingham where the civil rights movement really got kicked off. We . . . we couldn't ride in white taxicabs, however, but at that time there were four black taxicabs in Paducah. Down at Kresge's, I remember that we could stand up at a counter and almost . . .

BRINSON: Kresge's?

HUMBLES: Oh, that was a . . .

BRINSON: K-r-e-s-a-g-e, is that correct?

HUMBLES: K-r-e-s-g-e's. It was a Five and Ten store. ‘Course they have any more now, it's a dollar-and-up store . . .[Laughter]

BRINSON: Right. Let me stop you here one minute please. I just wanted to move the fan so the noise wouldn’t …

HUMBLES: Okay, I forgot the air purifier—that’s good.

BRINSON: Well go ahead—you were telling me …

HUMBLES: Is it back on? Okay. Well, um, at the Five and Dime store there was a lot of black people worked downtown and you could stand up, but you couldn't sit down at the lunch counter. And, of course, the movie theatre was segregated, we had a balcony. We paid quite a bit less money. The schools were segregated, though it was kind of a caste system in a way because some people of affluence, some African-Americans of affluence, they could go downtown and be treated quite courteously. And, in fact, they might allow them to try on some clothes. But as a general rule, you just had to buy and to guess your size and buy. Of course, the churches were completely segregated. The . . .

BRINSON: Did your family belong to a church in Paducah?

HUMBLES: They went to Washington Street Church, a Baptist church. All of the eating establishments were segregated, restaurants and dairyettes, and so forth. Of course, dairyettes you could go to the window and carry out. There were a lot of places where you could carry out stuff; you couldn't sit down. I remember a place down on Second Street where people were--including myself, I worked downtown at the time I was a young boy and going to school--and you could go back in the kitchen and eat but you couldn't sit out front and . . .

BRINSON: Do the remember the name of that place?

HUMBLES: It was Lambert's Restaurant.

BRINSON: Lambert's Restaurant?

HUMBLES: Yes. They had plate lunches back then for thirty-five cents. [Laughing]

BRINSON: Was the food good?

HUMBLES: Quite good, they had black cooks in the kitchen. [Laughter] If I should be completely honest which I like to be, except for the economic part of it and the fact that we had a substandard school, just the fact that we weren't totally unhappy with segregation not . . . I mean as a social side of it. What we were unhappy with was the fact that, for example, I shined shoes as a young boy and sometimes while going to school I made thirty-five dollars a week and .

BRINSON: How old were you? What age range was that?

HUMBLES: About fourteen. And that was a godly amount of money.

BRINSON: So by then it was in the 1940s?

HUMBLES: Nineteen forties, right.

BRINSON: Probably during and after the war?

HUMBLES: Right, right. I remember a little humorous incident that happened. I worked in a real classy barber shop downtown; worked after school on Saturdays. And my father didn't want me to work there because he was afraid of the--he was quite protective of the family and he felt like that I would be called the N-word, and he didn't how I would handle it. Just told me to keep my mouth shut, get my things up and come on. Well there were two incidents that happened. One being that this well-dressed woman had her son there, and was going through a Life magazine and having him to pick out certain things in the magazine; like this is a house, this is a car. And at that time Joe Lewis had won a fight, and when he got to that page he said, "Momma I know what this is. This is a nigger." But that didn't . . . the woman and I kind of communicated with our eyes and facial expressions, because she admonished the child and I looked at her in such a way to say that, "You probably taught him this so, therefore, why are you jumping on him? He will be bewildered." We communicated without saying anything in this particular. . . but another incident happened which caused me to quit the job. There was an old man who used the N-word so frequent. I didn't really know him at the time he came in but I found out something about him later. I won't call his name; he still has people here. He came in--and I'm not giving this information to cause any friction now--but anyway he came in, and I was sitting by the shine stand and he poked me with his cane and said, "I see you got you a new nigger here." And I think this was what my father was talking about and I just didn't know. . . . I just froze up and I didn't know what to do. And he wanted to know can I talk, and he wanted to know could I grin, and he wanted to know what was wrong with me? And I just became I don't know, I just--I was so sensitized to the situation until I just--almost cried but I didn't want to cry. And then he wanted to rub his hand--he said I had curly hair--he wanted to rub his hand through my head. And I said, "No, I'd rather you not do that, just something bad might happen." I just felt like that I had gone as far as I could go and I had to make a stand. And it looks . . . it seems as though he caught the message and he turned around and left. And I got my little brushes and rags together and I left out the shop. But the shop was in the big ten-story bank building on the corner. The short name was the Ten Story Building. So the barber followed me out and he said, "Are your gonna quit?" And I said, "Yes, I'm going to quit." He tried to give the impression that this . . . not to be so sensitive, this was a harmless old man and so forth. Well, I became kind of insensitive to the barber because I thought he was more intelligent than the old man. The way I look at it, an ignorant man with money is just an ignorant man with money, but an intelligent person with or without money is an intelligent person. And this is an ignorant old man with money and he felt like that he could just do as he please. As I got older, I never forgot this incident as a . . .

BRINSON: How old do you think you were?

HUMBLES: I was around fourteen and, of course, I came home and told my father about it. And that's not quite the end of the story. So I started going to the market place with my father to the current market house, which is a museum. They call it a Market House Museum. Back in the forties it was a real market place. You could go in and buy all kind of vegetables, meats, everything. So my father was a man, I guess you would say, of wealth back then, by black standards anyway and . . .

BRINSON: How did he make his living?

HUMBLES: Well, my father made his living through real estate. He rented houses and bought and sold property, and he owned a garage . . . owned interest in a garage downtown. My father was very fair, but he would go down there as night watchman to kind of watch his investment. But anyway when this man poked my father while he was buying some meat, I pulled my father's coat and said, "Daddy, that's the man that called me these names." Then my father gave him a good, good tongue-lashing. And he said, "I didn't know that was your son." He said, "Well, you shouldn't talk to any boy like that." And my father grabbed me by the arm and took me home, and there was a lot of tension in the house because this man was the most prominent; if not the most prominent, one the most prominent white men in town, wealth-wise and so forth. And my father got his gun and sat by the door, and I was all excited and my mother was crying. And when things calmed down, I asked Daddy, I said, "You told me to behave myself when I went to the barbershop and not say anything, and you curse that old man out and he has all this money." And I said, "Why did you do that?" He says, "Well, you don't have any power, any sense, or any money, or anything. You just a boy." He said, "I don't have very much but I wasn't gonna let him get away with what he did to my son; and I had the opportunity then and there to do it and I took a calculated gamble because I felt like he would not have wanted the embarrassment of a black man talking to him the way I did. To tell anybody about it." He said, "But I . . . my home is the only thing I have that I cherish and therefore I came home and I got my gun because I wasn't gonna let anybody in here without a warrant." So my dad was pretty--he stood up pretty well.

BRINSON: Tell me your father's name.

HUMBLES: William Humbles. In fact, he came from Virginia. Came here from Virginia on a honeymoon and he sold property. He could buy houses then for three hundred and four hundred dollars. And he was going to Kansas City on a honeymoon and stopped here to see a relative who was a Dr. Isabel on my mother's side and he never . . . he never made it to Kansas City. He just stayed here. [Laughing]

BRINSON: Liked it okay?

HUMBLES: Yeah.

BRINSON: Did you have any brothers and sisters growing up ( )?

HUMBLES: Well, not growing up. My--they had a son back, I don't know--my father came here in the early--around 1900 or even before then, and they had a son named Alton. And Alton is a victim of discrimination, also. Alton had a case of diphtheria and he was--there was only one doctor that I know of back when I was a child that would see black people. And I remember I was--a cup fell down on my toe which I was tampering with and cut my big toe off, there's still a big--you can still see the stitches and he sewed it up. But anyway . . .

BRINSON: Was he white?

HUMBLES: Yes, he's Dr. Froage. And at the time . . .

BRINSON: Froage?

HUMBLES: Froage. F-r-o-a-g-e. And at the time, course eventually we had--I believe we had three or four doctors but--black doctors. I believe it was four. And--but Dr. Froage was the only doctor that would look after--and of the course the hospitals, there was only one hospital that you could go to. At that time it was called Riverside Hospital. I don't know exactly who ran it. But anyway, Alton had diphtheria and they were giving him medicine. Now I don't know whether they carried him to Dr. Froage or not, but they carried him out of town to some doctors. And they were giving him some medicine, which was the wrong medicine. And they carried him to St. Louis and they said he had diphtheria but it was too late to do anything about it. And this medicine was working adversely against him. So he died at five. And I think that's why my mother, the mother that I knew, accepted me so well.

BRINSON: So you grew up really as an only child?

HUMBLES: Yes, I did.

BRINSON: Tell me about your education.

HUMBLES: My education was at Lincoln School.

BRINSON: It was an all-black school?

HUMBLES: It was an all-black school. I guess I was . . . my mother was a motivational fact in me finishing because I ran away to the circus one time. (Laughing)

BRINSON: How old were you when you did that?

HUMBLES: I was in the eleventh grade so I should've been around sixteen, I guess, fifteen, sixteen. I didn't stay very long because I didn't like the harsh conditions of the circus life.

BRINSON: What prompted you to run away, though, to them?

HUMBLES: Well, there was a circus on the edge of town here one . . . stayed here all the summer, they were getting up. And I was in a class play and my father wouldn't buy me a suit. And I had one suit and he thought that was enough, and we got into an argument about it; and I just wanted to change between . . . for action, you know, kind of show off a little bit. I made a threat, sometimes you have to be careful the threats you make because you can't--you might--[Laughter] so I made a threat to go off with the circus. They had a big sign out there that said, "Join the circus and see the world." But I never saw the world, I just saw one show lot to the other show lot. [Laughing] I didn't even know what went on in town; I didn't even know what town we were in sometimes. But anyway, I thought I could bluff him into buying a suit and he was--my dad was a very strong man when it came to having his way pretty much. And he--my mother--I worked the game on her and it upset her. But anyway, the bottom line was I packed my little bag and when I left, he didn't beg me back or anything. He didn't . . . I just went on and left to show him I would do it. But when I got some money together and I called my mother, and she was crying and begging me back. I thought, I said, “I'd better go ahead and stop this game before it's too late, before I overplay my hand.” So then I came on back home. [Laughter]

BRINSON: So you didn't miss any school time?

HUMBLES: Well I had to take make-up tests.

BRINSON: Okay, you did miss. Okay.

HUMBLES: I missed some time. I was gone about a month and I had to take make-up--my mother had--she had gone to the school, and the teachers would allow me to pass tests and do back homework and all. So I was in the eleventh grade, so I attribute it that to her that I did finish high school, which I'm happy about.

BRINSON: And was it . . . were there eleven grades or twelve grades?

HUMBLES: Twelve grades.

BRINSON: Okay. Tell me about the Lincoln School. For example, how many were there in your graduating class approximately?

HUMBLES: Classes were small by the time . . . classes were always small to my knowledge at Lincoln. We had maybe at the very most twenty-five people.

BRINSON: And what year did you graduate?

HUMBLES: Nineteen forty-eight.

BRINSON: Forty-eight?

HUMBLES: Uh-huh.

BRINSON: Okay and were you aware of any differences while you were in school between the black school and the white school?

HUMBLES: Very much aware. We . . . we, I don't want to say anything to denigrate the Principal or I don't want to say anything derogatory about it; but the Principal seemed to fit a mold that we're doing okay over here, we don't need anything else. And we played in . . . the football team for example, they played in hand-me-down togs from the white school. The curtain, I remember, for the stage was a canvas curtain instead of a velvet curtain. In this article I wrote, they didn't even have an Office Practice class until the NAACP--Curly Brown was the President then--they finally got one through his insistence. But the Pincipal, I think, was a good man and wanted us to do well, but he wasn't the kind of man that would be aggressive or push anything. He was just a status-quo of a man. And we couldn't play on the--we had to play at a place called Hooks Park and clean the manure off. At this time Hooks had gone down, and we had to clean the manure off and run the . . . Shoo the cows off to even put the line down to even have a game. But there was a highly noticeable ( ); we use to always say, “Why can't we have this, why can't we have that?” But we weren't happy . . . we weren't unhappy as being with the camaraderie of a bunch of black kids trying to survive in a world we didn't create. And so some of us did quite well. And incidentally, I wrote two articles about Lincoln School which have become--they've become keepsakes in--all over the country. I had two . . . one article is over there on the wall and I've had a . . . I did a sequel to that.

BRINSON: Maybe at some time you could share a copy of those with me to go . . .

HUMBLES: I'll give you a copy.

BRINSON: Okay. Can you tell me anything about the teachers at Lincoln School? Do you know--and you may not remember this--but do you have any recollection of where they received their own training as teachers?

HUMBLES: Well, I don't have a recollection of where they received their training. At the time, at the time that I was in school, the local college, I mean the state college facility was Kentucky State. But however, many teachers came here from some other place and I could not tell you exactly where they received their training. But I can tell you something about the teachers. As any other educational institution, we had good teachers and bad teachers. I'm not going to put them all on a pedestal and say they were all good because I think we had caring and uncaring teachers. I think we had some that looked at it like this is a good job for me. I remember teachers would use the phrase, "I've got mine--you've got yours to get," which I didn't think was a nice thing to say. It was like if you want to learn you can, if you don't I'm still gonna get paid. But on the whole I believe that those . . . the learning process, I believe, is consistent with the desire to learn. That even under a bad teacher if you want to, you can get down in the books and learn yourself. Of course the teacher can motivate you and help you a lot but you have to do the learning.

BRINSON: During this period, well really up until the sixties in Kentucky, teachers who wanted to do graduate work would have to go out of the state and they receive scholarship money from Kentucky to do that. Did you ever hear about any of the teachers at Lincoln going off in the summer to Indiana or Ohio or New York or other places?

HUMBLES: Yes, I can't recall exact ones that did it but some teachers went on to get their Master's. And of course back then . . . now you have to have a Doctorate to be kind of recognized pretty well. But back then a Master's was a great achievement. And I know myself, even I decided to study pharmacy after I left the service and drifted around for a while and I couldn't go to Kentucky State. I went to Creighton in Omaha. I didn't complete it, but I went there a couple of years. But . . . but back then some of them did go off other places and came back.

BRINSON: What about the textbooks that you had at Lincoln School?

HUMBLES: Well, the textbooks . . . I don't know what type of textbooks Tilghman had, which was a white school; but we had adequate textbooks I would say. We had, course some of them were worn quite badly, but as far as the content of the textbooks, I think the material was there. We even studied black history at Lincoln.

BRINSON: I wanted to ask you about that. Do you . . . talk about that a little bit.

HUMBLES: Okay. There were two teachers, one named Ms. Weston and one named Ms. Sullivan, and they taught Black History out of a--I can't think of the name of the book. In fact, I was trying to get a copy. Ms. Sullivan passed not too long ago but her kids wouldn't part with book for anything. But anyway, it wasn't a very thick book but we had--did have a Black History course. And we knew about . . . we knew about people that are icons in black history as children. You know, we knew about Sojourn of Truth and Nat Turner and all these people because we had that course. And as I told you before when we started this, Kentucky's kind of . . . it's been a strange situation here in Kentucky. Even though Kentucky was a border state that held onto slavery until the bitter end--Kentucky didn't want to give it up--but the Thirteenth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment--of course, the Emancipation Proclamation didn't free blacks here in Kentucky because they were not in rebellion against the union. But at the same time, the Thirteenth Amendment, it did. And I just did an article on this, too. I have about what . . . about slavery in Kentucky and so forth, and in Paducah.

BRINSON: I need to stop you and ask a couple of questions. When you had black history at Lincoln School, what age, what grade was that . . .

HUMBLES: We had it in two levels. We had it, I think, Mrs. Weston . . . I know I had two teachers in Black History; but I would say we had it around the ninth grade and again probably in the eleventh grade. I'm not sure though.

BRINSON: And every student had it?

HUMBLES: Yes.

BRINSON: Okay, it wasn't an elective or anything?

HUMBLES: No. It was a course.

BRINSON: You mentioned the Emancipation Proclamation. I was interested to read that Paducah has been celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation for . . . I guess since . . . a long time anyway. And I read in the newspaper recently that you do it on August eighth. Why do you do that instead of January?

HUMBLES: Well that's kind of ironical that you asked that. I just finished an article which I did a lot of research on, and there are several theories about that but none of them hold water actually. We just don't know. No one has ever been able to actually find out. A professor at the college named Roberts, he wanted to say one time that, I think, that the Haitians . . . we celebrate it in conjunction with them but they didn't celebrate on August eighth in Haiti. And another thing that was . . .

BRINSON: That must be John Robertson?

HUMBLES: John Robertson.

BRINSON: And he wrote a history of . . .

HUMBLES: Right.

BRINSON: Of Paducah. That's right. And you're right, I believe he . . . I remember his saying that the event here at one period brought people from all over, Louisville and others on the train and whatnot and that it became a big sort of recreational event as well an . . .

HUMBLES: Right.

BRINSON: Historical event, that you have a baseball team, I believe . . .

HUMBLES: We had everything. We had everything. I mean in a line of sports we had . . . I mean kids pitched horseshoes, baseballs, softball, basket . . . everything. It was all done in one day and it was something going on all over town. And of course we had one of the best baseball players in the country, if not the best catcher, named Patterson. His nickname was Kid and I think his name was--James Patterson--Robert Patterson. But anyway, I just did an article on this, and some say that it was . . . the weather was cold in January, then there's another …

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE ONE

BEGIN TAPE ONE SIDE TWO

BRINSON: …. theories around the . . .

HUMBLES: Right.

BRINSON: Proclamation thing . . .

HUMBLES: Like I . . . some said, you know, the weather was cold in January, but that doesn't hold so because Kentucky slaves were not freed under Emancipation Proclamation. Now there is another theory that goes around to say that the Emancipation Proclamation itself caused such a chaos and confusion that Kentucky slaves heard about it in their slave cabins, and when they went to the fields to work, they just wouldn't work. Which may have very well been the first labor strike. [Laughing] And that the--it was such--the abolitionists were so much against slavery, and there was resentment going against it until the slave owners didn't know what to do. They weren't going to shoot them all and they weren't going . . . they didn't want to cause a rebellion, so they were just at a loss to know what to do. And it created so much chaos. So eventually, with slaves not working and all, they were turned loose. And of course they were turned loose--they were barefooted and didn't have any money so no one knows the date that they were turned loose actually here in Kentucky. And--but they enlisted in the army and they headed for the big cities like Lexington and Louisville. And you have to realize in walking, it might have taken ( ) leave in early August and probably walked to Lexington or Louisville which was a pretty good hike from Paducah. Then there is another strange story that I read, The Anti-Slavery Movement in Kentucky, you can't check it out, it's for the reading room. It said that this slave owner was named Hayes--and a slave told the story--and said he called the slaves together and he said, I'll kind of shorten it, "As of this day, all of you are freed but if I had my way I'd kill Lincoln if he were here for taking you away from me. I'll go to the granary and this . . . get what ever you want, let's have a party." And the slave owner said, “We had one big jubilee” . . . I mean the slave did. And said Hayes joined them so. . . . The book didn't say that happened in Paducah but . . .and it didn't give a date so it's all speculative as to why this exists. I know some fellow brought me a paper, I don't have it handy, they were celebrating the eighth of August back here in 1800s, and had events in the paper about it, different parts and places. Did you know that?

BRINSON: No, I didn't.

HUMBLES: Yeah, well a man that's interested in that kind of stuff, he brought me a paper about it.

BRINSON: So back in the late 1800s and after that?

HUMBLES: Yes, it's been celebrated here in Paducah.

BRINSON: When do you think you first got interested in history?

HUMBLES: Well, history is such a fascinating--I know that when I decided to study pharmacy, I didn't think it would be too exciting just pushing pills off from one tray to a bottle. But I got interested in history as I--first of all, I was the first African-American on the Paducah Fire Department, and it gave me a lot of time to read. And I'm not a historian by any means but it gave me a lot of time to read while we didn't have training and drill, and out on fire. And so I found history to be a rather fascinating subject, in particular African-American history and American history. And I got interested in it just through quest for knowledge and curiosity, and wanting to know where this came from or how this happened or what caused this and so forth.

BRINSON: I want to go back a minute because you've mentioned a couple of things and I want to try to put them into a time perspective here. When you graduated from high school, you mentioned, I believe, going into the military?

HUMBLES: I went to California first and lived a while.

BRINSON: Okay, and why did you go to California?

HUMBLES: Well, I had some relatives there and I felt like Paducah was . . . Paducah didn't offer me anything at the time. My options were so limited. At one time--I didn't mention this when we talking--but one time the railroad shops was the best job you could get in Paducah, and blacks were relegated to the nastiest, dirtiest jobs; sandblasting, health-threatening jobs, sandblasting, cleaning old engines and getting the scale and stuff off of them. And so teachers made twenty-five hundred dollars a year when I graduated, or maybe three thousand at the most. Which wasn't . . . it sure wasn't . . . I think at somewhere along the line black teachers started making as much as whites, earning as much. But anyway, none of those things appealed to me and I just said, "Well, I'll just go to Los Angeles."

BRINSON: Tell me your graduation year again.

HUMBLES: Nineteen forty-eight.

BRINSON: Nineteen forty-eight?

HUMBLES: Uh-huh.

BRINSON: Okay, so you go to Los Angeles . . .

HUMBLES: Went to Los Angeles and a love affair went sour. [Laughing] I started to fall in love there and it went sour, and I went on enlisted in the Air Force and stayed there for close to six years. Came back here and drifted a while and then I went off to college and my mother . . . my father had a prostrate operation but then my mother's heart failed on her and she died; and I came back here and looked after my father a while and I just sort of got stuck.

BRINSON: When you went to college, was that to Creighton?

HUMBLES: Right.

BRINSON: In Iowa?

HUMBLES: In Omaha.

BRINSON: Omaha? Nebraska, that's right.

HUMBLES: Right.

BRINSON: And you enrolled in the pharmacy program you said? I take it you didn't love it?

HUMBLES: No, well I just looked at it was something nice to do and not too hard. [Laughing]

BRINSON: Did you ever work in a pharmacy?

HUMBLES: No. Uh-uh. It was a seven-year . . . it pre-pharmacy and then pharmacy so you had to go through your regular curriculum and then go . . . then get into the pharmacy business.

BRINSON: Do you remember how you heard about Creighton? What took you there?

HUMBLES: Well, it's interesting. I had a good friend here, and he wanted to get away from Paducah, too; and we decided that we would definitely go west, for some reason. And we took darts and put a map up, and one hit close to Creighton. I had been accepted at Creighton and the University of Minnesota, and the dart hit closer to Creighton; and that's why we decided to go to Omaha. [Laughter-Brinson]

BRINSON: Okay, so you came back here with your parents illness and then what?

HUMBLES: Well . . .

BRINSON: And where are we now into . . . the late fifties?

BRINSON: We were into the . . . yes, yes we're into . . . well, there is something that is interesting here. I was married at this time and had a child, son. And we had used the laundromats in Creighton, and the first thing . . .

BRINSON: You used . . . I'm sorry, you used what?

HUMBLES: The laundromats.

BRINSON: The laundromats? Okay.

HUMBLES: And I guess you might say that I was indirectly responsible for the first integration that came about in Paducah. We came back and, of course, we had been using the laundromats there in Omaha, and they [we] had this young child, and we were turned down at all the laundromats. Now this was in, I would say around--my mother died in fifty-seven--it was around in fifty-seven. So I told my wife, she was just . . . she was from Kansas, she was kind of amazed at this but I told her, I said, "Well, lets don't angry, let's get smart and build a laundromat." So, I got enough money and went into the laundromat business. And I noticed these white laundry owners would come by my place and they would look and look and look, and I always just had the place packed. And soon thereafter, all the white laundromats . . . that was the first public accommodation that integrated here in Paducah. And they started giving discounts and all. I'm not going to blame it all on them, but I learned that you can't compete unless you really got something good going because there is just too much out there for you. So, but indirectly I was the cause of the laundromats being integrated.

BRINSON: And where was your laundromat here in town?

HUMBLES: Down on Seventh Street, which probably was a mistake, too, because if you go into business you have to look at it from a people perspective and not black or white. Just . . . it's open for people to come here and do business.

BRINSON: And you integrated your laundromat, too?

HUMBLES: Well, it was integrated but, you know, Seventh Street is not--wasn't the best of locations but it was where all the black businesses were. And it was integrated but I didn't get very much white business. But they wanted this black business because they saw these people coming in droves when I first opened. I was, you know, I had to have help in everything but it just weaned on down.

BRINSON: So how long do you think you had that business?

HUMBLES: Oh, about five . . . five or six years.

BRINSON: And did it actually take that long before the white owners opened up theirs or . . .

HUMBLES: No, they opened up theirs. I did well for about a couple of years and then it started just going downhill. And I was trying to keep it up on pride more than common sense.

BRINSON: You mentioned the Seventh Street area as being a black business district and I understand that there was also a hotel here that . . .

HUMBLES: Yeah.

BRINSON: I don't know the name of it though . . .

HUMBLES: Metropolitan.

BRINSON: That they are trying to . . .

HUMBLES: Restore.

BRINSON: Restore.

HUMBLES: Right.

BRINSON: Is that down in the Seventh Street area?

HUMBLES: It's off of Seventh Street. It's on Jackson . . . let me see, on Jackson Street. It's closer to Eighth than Seventh.

BRINSON: So when you came back here from California, Gladman, the Brown Decision in fifty-four and Implementation Decision in fifty-five would have come down. What was happening at the point of your return with integrating the school system in Paducah?

HUMBLES: Well, the school systems . . . the school system integrated without the . . . we never had to have any--to my knowledge--we never had to have any--I think perhaps we had little pockets of dispute or . . . we didn't have any what you'd call horrendous violence. We had probably some name-calling and some resentment and some--but for the most part if you compare it with the Deep South; the school integrated here without too much fanfare. There were a couple of things that happened. We had some ( ) I know ( ) Black, Junior, who's doing the school system as her dissertation--I did have the book, I don't know what, I think I gave it back to him. There were some, there were a few biased teachers where black students excel and they gave them lower grades. And they let them know, “I’m in charge and I gave you what I want” or, you know, “That's the grade you got”' We had some of that but as far as the type of incidents that happened in Mississippi or Alabama and . . .

BRINSON: Or even up in Sturgis . . .

HUMBLES: Yeah, right, Sturgis. That's a good example. I forgot about Sturgis.

BRINSON: ‘Cause I think it was the National Guard from Paducah . . .

HUMBLES: Yes.

BRINSON: Wasn't it, that they called into Sturgis?

HUMBLES: Correct. Right. But we didn't have that type of thing. The schools . . . I don't say it was done with complete finesse and smoothness, but I would say that it say that it was done in an orderly manner.

BRINSON: It is not entirely fair to you, since you weren't here, to ask you this, but how did they do it? Did they just say, “Okay, if you're a black student and you want to go to a white school, you can do it?” Or was there some sort of systematic arrangement . . . ?

HUMBLES: I think that the way it was. I think—‘cause you're jogging my memory on it now--they kept Lincoln School and let those that wanted to go to Tilghman, go. And probably thought--of course it's quite expensive to keep a dual school system--but they started off by letting those that wanted to go to Tilghman go; because I don't know exactly what year, because Lincoln stood for five or six years after integration because there were enough students to justify it. And there were still kind of a mentality that the more blacks we could keep at Lincoln the less we will have out here. There was still that kind--but then Lincoln got unfeasible after so long and people said, “Well they, you know, they got better this over there, better that and it's a better building, it's a better science class, its more” . . . you know, we only had one Bunsen burner, for example, in science class. And so people gradually just started saying, “I think I'm going to send kid over to Tilghman.” And Lincoln just closed the doors.

BRINSON: Was there ever any busing?

HUMBLES: There was busing, yes. It kind of ironical the way the busing system changed. When we were kids, we walked to school and they were busing white kids into Tilghman from out in the county area. They didn't have all the schools they have now. And then they started busing [Laughing] black kids to Tilghman. But there was not a big . . . for the most part, for the most part--I don't want to give Paducah any more than it's due--but for the most part, we have not had complete racial harmony here by any means but we've not had an ugly and nasty type thing.

BRINSON: I've read that in the early fifties the population was growing in Paducah and there was actually a bond resolution put forth. I don't what happened to it but it was to build several new black schools and several new white schools. Can you recall, were there any new schools that were built?

HUMBLES: No, I'm kind of lost on that one. I . . .

BRINSON: It may not have passed. It would have had to do something if there were . . .

HUMBLES: What year was that?

BRINSON: Fifty—fifty-one.

HUMBLES: I was in the service then.

BRINSON: Right. Okay, but there are that many new schools that you are aware . . .

HUMBLES: No, I don't . . . no.

BRINSON: How do you spell Tilghman first off and who . . .

HUMBLES: T-i-l-g-h-m-a-n.

BRINSON: And who was Tilghman? A school was named after . . .

HUMBLES: It was named after, I believe it was named after a Confederate general, I'm not sure.

BRINSON: Oh, Benjamin Tilghman?

HUMBLES: Yeah, I can't . . . Lloyd Tilghman.

BRINSON: Lloyd Tilghman?

HUMBLES: Uh-huh.

BRINSON: Okay, okay. Abraham Lincoln and Lloyd Tilghman, huh?

HUMBLES: Uh-huh.

BRINSON: Okay. So you had the laundromat here . . . and how was it for you in coming back after you had been in the military, which had moved more into integration; you lived in California which was another kind of culture; you mentioned your wife being a little surprised about laundromats here, but how was it for you generally to come back here after. . .

HUMBLES: Well, it was something I didn't really relish because . . . but I knew that I would have to take care of my father because his . . . with the loss of his wife, his mind deteriorated and he had this, any number of problems and he was up in his years. But it was something that I didn't really relish but it was something I knew I had to do. And I had seen a little bit of the world and I had got, you know, I was able to go where I wanted to more or less, and do what I wanted to. And when I came back, it was just wasn't good for me to tell you the truth about it. I didn't feel . . . I made the best of it but I didn't really . . . before when I was a younger person it didn't seem to bother me so much, but I said, you know, here I can't even go and see a good play, or a good show or anything like this. A good jazz band, a club band . . . it was just like coming back to the country, you know, and watching the cows. [Laughter]

BRINSON: So it wasn't ideal but did you . . . what was going on in your life at that point in time? Did you decide that you were going to make it better in some way or . . .

HUMBLES: Well, I did . . . I worked with the NAACP closely and I like to get to something if I could. You know, I was the first black on the Paducah Fire Department, which in my opinion it wasn't an honor, it was kind of a horror story. When my laundry started going down, I was selling all of these concessions, pop and candy and cigarettes, and it was just barely keeping it afloat. And there was a barber down the street, his wife lives there now, named George Jacobson. And he came down and talked to me, and I liked George, he'd been mayor of Paducah and he'd been a city commissioner. And he wanted to know how I was selling. He said, "You're selling as much pop as a small grocery store." And I said, "Well, I'm selling at a discount and if I get my bottles back, it's kind of helping to pay the bills." I said, "George, you know that I am going to have to get a job." And he said, " Why don't you . . . do you want a job?" I said, “Yeah.” He said, "Why don't you get on that fire department?" I said, "Well, they're not hiring blacks on the fire department." He said, "That's going to change. They will hire." He said, "I'll help you get on."

BRINSON: And this would have been about what period?

HUMBLES: This was 1963. ‘Cause I built the laundry in fifty-nine. And so, a strange thing happened about getting on this fire department. Two commissioners had seen the handwriting on the wall. One was named A. B. Finley and one was named Albert Karnes, he was a lawyer , and Finley . . .

BRINSON: Karnes?

HUMBLES: Karnes, K-a-r-n-e-s.

BRINSON: Okay.

HUMBLES: Finley was a funeral director and they were both city commissioners. And they had told the fire chief--this was before any mandate was made, but they had seen this happening in other places and they wanted to kind of get things going in Paducah without being pushed into it--so they told the fire chief to go out and find some blacks for the fire department. The fire chief didn't want to do that but he went out, and he looked and said he couldn't find any. So when George was, a kind of conservative-type fellow; and Joe Freeland, who was a lawyer for NAACP, he was a liberal; and I saw an advantage of playing both ends against the middle. So I talked to--after George said he would help me--I went to Freeland for help but I didn't let Freeland know that George said he would help me. And I had Freeland working on one end and George working on the other end. [Laughter] So that's the way I got on the fire department.

BRINSON: Did you have to go down and apply?

HUMBLES: Oh yes, I had to do that.

BRINSON: And what was that process like? What did they say to you, what did they you that you needed to do or . . .

HUMBLES: Well, you know, it was kind of . . . I kept my cool, I didn't . . . but I thought, you know. They told me I was going be called nigger and called names, and asked they asked me about it. They said, "You're like Jackie Robinson." And I came close to saying, "If I'm like Jackie Robinson, so why don't you pay me like baseball pay Jackie Robinson?" [Laughing] But back then, the pay was like two hundred and seventy dollars a month when I went on. It's been thirty-some years, I went on in sixty-three so it's been a long time. But it was below what plants were paying, but I looked at it as . . . I didn't really think I would stay but I'm kind of stubborn-type fellow that if you push me in the wrong direction, I push back. [Laughing]

BRINSON: So you stayed how long?

HUMBLES: Twenty-nine years.

BRINSON: Twenty-nine years.

HUMBLES: Yeah.

BRINSON: Okay. In the beginning though, were there requirements that you had to stay at the fire house overnight and whatnot?

HUMBLES: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

BRINSON: Did that pose a problem for . . .

HUMBLES: Yes, yes it did. It was . . . I would take another two-hour session or longer . . . just say that I was like the--I was like the fly in the milk if you want to. [Laughter] You know, I was just a . . . well, if I look back on it, it's something I can understand in a way. They had never been conditioned . . . the fire department was an all-white outfit, it had been kind of a political plum for whites and here I come on the scene. It's something different, something new, something . . . [Interruption]

BRINSON: You were talking about the fire department . . .

HUMBLES: Yes, well there . . . I don't want to enumerate things that happened but . . . there were a lot of things that happened. It was like I'm just . . . here I am coming on the scene and I'm just messing up a good deal for them. In fact, there were only two or three people that even spoke for a long time. But I'm a person that tries to turn adversary to advantage and . . .

BRINSON: I don't want to have you talk about things you don't want to but I would be interested in knowing, for example, how did you handle eating together? How did you handle sleeping together in the beginning?

HUMBLES: Well, I slept with one eye open. [Laughing] But anyway, it was kind of ironical. When I first went there, they were having union meetings and they told the chief that they didn't want me eating with them. Well, I felt like I've never wanted to eat with anyone that didn't want me to eat with them. That's kind of a private matter. If I go to a restaurant, I'm not going to some persons table and sit down at their table, you know; they're with their group and I'm with mine. But anyway, there was something funny that happened, well, you can say it's funny but it's . . . My wife was bringing my meals and then--she cooked nice meals and brought them to me. And so one day I was getting transferred to another station, and the Assistant Chief--I said, "Well, can I pick up . . . I haven't had breakfast, do you mind . . ." I was going to transfer to the downtown station which is the big station, they call it. I said, "Do you mind if I stop and pick up something?" He said, "Well, yeah if you want to, go ahead. I want to talk to you when you get down." So when I went down--I was down eating a MacMuffin or something, and he said, "Well, we've all decided we going to start treating you like a man. We're not gonna--we want you to come up and eat with us and be one of the guys," blah, blah, blah. "We don't want you to have a chip on your shoulder," and blah, blah, blah. Well, I was a little bit reluctant to go but I went. And he sat at the table and he started to telling black jokes, you know, in a very derogatory manner and I almost choked him. And one of the guys came down and apologized for him and I said, “I'll have to eat under the condition that I'd be the goat,” and I just didn't want to be there so I just stopped eating. So when I made Assistant Chief, I came--I only lived a few blocks from the station, so we had privileges of coming home to eat, or getting out from the station, so I came home. Then they started teasing me about I thought I was too good to eat with them. [Laughter] So it was kind of a no-win situation.

BRINSON: But in the early days, you are saying your wife brought you food but everyone else there would eat food . . .

HUMBLES: Oh, they would cook, yeah. Right, right.

BRINSON: What about overnight sleeping arrangements? You said you slept . . .

HUMBLES: Well, we slept dormitory style and some . . . we slept dormitory style and they had a special bed for me, the administration did because they said that . . . we worked twenty-four and we're off forty-eight. So it meant that we had three crews. So somebody had to sleep on somebody else's dirty linen. But for me, they had this special bed. I had my own linen and no one slept in my bed, and that was fine me. I didn't gripe to the NAACP about that. [Laughing] So that was just fine. And if I got transferred to another station, my bed went, too.

BRINSON: How long before another black was hired on the force? How long were you the only . . .

HUMBLES: Well, I'm just . . . I didn't keep a record of all this. I'd say it was--maybe a couple of years.

BRINSON: A couple of years?

HUMBLES: Uh-huh.

BRINSON: And then, how did it work out? Did more and more blacks begin to become firefighters?

HUMBLES: Well, I wish you would interview Robert Coleman . . .

BRINSON: I can't find him. I think he's out of town.

HUMBLES: He's back in town.

BRINSON: Is he? Okay.

HUMBLES: Well, Robert Coleman is a good friend of mine and he was a city commissioner. And by this time, Leon Dodge, who was then the Fire Chief, he was . . . we all worked together. I'd put it like this; but Coleman and I worked in unison. He would work to get a black person on, and then I would go to the Chief and talk to the chief. And one time, while we had something like about twelve percent of the population, there were about twelve blacks on the fire department out of eighty. We don't have any now, different things happened. But we had the best record of . . . Paducah had the best record of hiring than any other city in the Commonwealth, I think, including Louisville.

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE TWO

BEGIN TAPE TWO SIDE ONE

BRINSON: …. Paducah?

HUMBLES: Well, I don't want . . . I don't want to stick my neck out too far but I guess if you don't tell history like it really is, then you're not telling history. I think there's been more a bias against women actually than it has against blacks. Because other cities have successfully hired women, but I don't think that Paducah really wants to hire a woman. A woman would have to not . . . she would not have to . . . well, I will give you an example of something that happened. A woman passed the physical agility test, she passed the mental test, and they had a running around, in fact, around Tilghman track field.

BRINSON: Around the track?

HUMBLES: And she missed it by like two or three seconds and they didn't hire her, you know. And I'm not going . . . I can't sit here and prove that if it weren't some man on the department and he missed it by two or three seconds, they would have hired him but they probably would have. I put it in that way. But they were determined to make her tow the line all the way down the line. And another woman--in fact, she lost a lawsuit--she had been a stripper but she had done everything right, and she had been a stripper. And her dad--I think her dad had been a firefighter--but, you know, she was honest in saying she'd had been a stripper out here at a place and she wanted to elevate herself and so forth; and I think they really held this against her. But she had passed all . . . she did everything right. But I was on the Interview Board and I gave her, I think, a decent interview rating but she was getting some low scores there. She had sued the city and she lost.

BRINSON: Lost?

HUMBLES: Yeah.

BRINSON: Do you remember what reason they said she lost?

HUMBLES: I don't remember what reason but it's very difficult . . . in this area, if you've got a civil rights suit whether your African-American, a woman, Oriental, or what you better have all the T's crossed and I's dotted and the ( ) ‘cause if there is anything . . . if there is anyway that they can go for the city, they'll go for it. I've been through some three . . . I've been through some civil rights suits myself.

BRINSON: Can I ask you to talk about those briefly or . . . .

HUMBLES: Well, I was up for Assistant Chief some time ago and the city asked me to interview with them. They said, "We know we're not doing this very well but when we get through could you give us some ideals on how to do it better?" So I wrote a poem--it was interspersed with four-letter words--and everybody thought it was quite comical around the workplace. And this stuff goes on in the blue-collar workplace all the time. And Larry got a hold of it, and it was like I'd burned the flag. [Laughing] So I got a ninety-day suspension and I went to federal court to get my suspension overturned. The union didn't support me. I sued the union and I sued the city for discrimination. I lost all three of them.

BRINSON: Was the NAACP involved in any of that?

HUMBLES: No, no.

BRINSON: Did you ask them to. . . .

HUMBLES: No, I just went . . . I just took it on my own and went to court.

BRINSON: On you own? Okay, who handled that for you?

HUMBLES: John Stewart out of Louisville. You mean attorney, right?

BRINSON: Right. Okay.

HUMBLES: Are we above ( ) ?

BRINSON: I hope so.

HUMBLES: I say we will probably get through.

BRINSON: Okay. I actually wondered whether Mr. Freeland had. . . .

HUMBLES: No, he had got along in his advancing years. In fact, he's retired now. I don't . .

BRINSON: He's not in the phone directory . . .

HUMBLES: I know it. I know it. I don't what happened.

BRINSON: But he is still living?

HUMBLES: If he's passed, I haven't seen anything in the paper about anything. He should be moving way past eighty years old.

BRINSON: I'm going to ask you a couple of things about him if you can tell me. Is he white?

HUMBLES: Yes.

BRINSON: Yes? And is he Jewish?

HUMBLES: No.

BRINSON: No? And I only ask that because I know that you have a Jewish population here .

HUMBLES: Yes.

BRINSON: Historically actually, and wondered . . . but he's not?

HUMBLES: No.

BRINSON: Okay. What can you tell me about him?

HUMBLES: I known Joe Freeland for a long, long time. And Joe Freeland has . . . well, when he was a younger man and he's very fiery and very vociferous against racial discrimination. And he was NAACP's lawyer back when Curly Brown was President, and he was my personal lawyer for several years. And I asked Joe one time, I said, "Joe why did you . . . how did you get so outspoken and all of this and go to bat for blacks and so forth?" He said, “Well, his grandfather mistreated slaves badly--had his own slaves and mistreated them.” And he said, "While I can't do anything about that,” he said, "I can be a better person myself." And it was just sort of like an atonement thing that, you know, 'his grandfather did the bad thing, I'm going to do the good thing.' [Laughing]

BRINSON: Did he grow up here in Paducah?

HUMBLES: I don't really . . . he spent practically all of his life here.

BRINSON: Do you know where he went to law school?

HUMBLES: I believe he went to the University of Kentucky. I'm not sure. They said Joe had an IQ of 168, he was one of the highest IQ people in the state.

BRINSON: But he could handle NAACP cases and whatnot and yet he managed to have a thriving law practice?

HUMBLES: It's because he's such a good lawyer. He was . . . well, when he was really at his best, he was, I would say, one of the best lawyers in Paducah. And people, you know, they just . . . when people are in a jam, they'll put the prejudice out of their mind, they come first to try to get out. And, you know, they can go back to being prejudice later so they won't worry about. . . .

BRINSON: What kind of law did he do?

HUMBLES: Criminal law. He did criminal law and . . . mostly criminal law.

BRINSON: Okay. Well, I don't know why I can't find him, but if you have any thoughts when we finish this, to how I can, Id like to talk to him if he's still, you know, if he's willing. I actually want to ask you about some other people, too, but before I do that let me just . . . a couple of little things about you, please. When did you . . . I understand that you write news articles and whatnot on black history in Paducah. When did you start all that? How did that come about?

HUMBLES: Well . . .

BRINSON: It's wonderful by the way.

HUMBLES: The way it came about, I found out--I wished to be an advocate for trying to win people over. To not being, you know, we all got to live in the world together and let's try to cooperate and not be bias and stuff like this. But . . .At the fire station, I just saw this as falling on deaf ears. That my crusading wasn't--I wasn't getting many converts. So I said, “Well I'd just start writing Letters to the Editor, and let my views be known by the whole city.” So I write these letters, and they would look at their paper and roll their eyes at me; and [Laughter-Brinson] I wouldn't, you know, say anything. So one time, one of them got up enough nerve to say, "Say ah, I want to ask you a question, " said, "Who do you get to write these articles for you?" And I said, "Well, I'm keeping that a secret, but I'd like to know something from you. Who do you get to read them?" [Laughter] I've always believed that you can take adversary, under certain circumstances, and turn it into advantage. And I said, “If this is kind of creating a stir and they are reading the stuff, I'll just try to improve my writing skills and expand on them and write more and more and more.” And it's clearly mushroomed. [Laughing]

BRINSON: My understanding of the Paducah Sun is that it has been historically not a supportive paper about racial issues. How did it come about that you became a writer for them?

HUMBLES: Well, that's an interesting question, too. I . . .

BRINSON: Tell me if you think my assumption is true or false.

HUMBLES: I think it's some basic truth. I would say that the Sun is a very conservative-oriented paper and it's . . . I don't know, one time I gave them a big blasting letter. There was a drug bust around town, and they had all of the blacks on the front page, you know, five or six people, big drug bust; and the whites were included the bust, there were several places raided. And back on page five, they had kind of a little small picture of the whites, and I raised the roof about it and they printed my letter. And it seemingly . . . they like the other point of view sometimes and I express it quite well . . .

BRINSON: You are a fine writer . . .

HUMBLES: The Sun and I don't agree on hardly anything editorial-wise. But when I carry something down, they've got a real nice managing editor, Carl Harrison. He's a real different type of guy. He's likes the merit of something, and when I carry it down and he reads it, he'll tell me, "We liked that Yeah, we want that." And so I've written several pieces that's gone beyond the "Letter to the Editor," to the editorial page. So I've done quite a bit of that.

BRINSON: It's worked out. And now you're working on a book?

HUMBLES: Yes.

BRINSON: But that's a book about your personal story. . . .

HUMBLES: Right.

BRINSON: Okay. How are you coming with that?

HUMBLES: Well, I'm, I'm . . . it's, a lady's done . . . she's an English Lit major and she's doing some, giving me some suggestions on it. And she's doing the rework on it because I'm getting it ready for the publisher, in other words, if I can ever get published.

BRINSON: I want to ask you a couple of things since we talked . . . you were at one point, I believe, the President of the NAACP chapter?

HUMBLES: Yes.

BRINSON: When was that?

HUMBLES: There for four years, let me see I got . . . let me see if there is any date on this thing . . . 1992 I got one thing . . . ninety-two to ninety-six, I believe.

BRINSON: Nineteen ninty-two to ninety-six?

HUMBLES: So fairly recently?

BRINSON: Yes. Wait a minute . . . is that? No, it couldn't be . . . maybe it was ninety-six, I don't know.

BRINSON: But within the last ten years?

HUMBLES: Eighty . . . that's eighty-six, I'm sorry.

BRINSON: Eighty-six?

HUMBLES: Eighty-six.

BRINSON: So 1982 to eighty-six. How active is the NAACP today?

HUMBLES: Well, I kind of wish you hadn't of asked that question because, in my opinion, the NAACP has a banquet every year and that's it.

BRINSON: Okay.

HUMBLES: They might do something else but if they do, I don't know what they do.

BRINSON: But the Paducah chapter seems to have a history of advocacy around topics of race discrimination and whatnot but not so much today. I imagine the banquet raises scholarship money ( )?

HUMBLES: Yes, the banquet, they get a good speaker in and people go and listen to the speaker and then come home from one year to the next. If they are doing anything, I don't see it in print. I don't know of anything they are doing.

BRINSON: Okay. Back in the late forties, I read that there was a group here called the Nonpartisan League.

HUMBLES: Uh-huh.

BRINSON: Can you tell me anything about them? That's all I know is the name, that they were. . . .

HUMBLES: Well, the Nonpartisan League was in the forties, did you say?

BRINSON: Well, I think in the late forties.

HUMBLES: Yeah. I don't know . . . I know, really to be honest I couldn't tell you a lot about them because I don't know what transpired with them. It was an older set. I don't know what went on.

BRINSON: Okay, but it was separate from the NAACP?

HUMBLES: Yes, I know that.

BRINSON: Okay, do you think it might have been an organization that came out of the churches? Was it a mixed racially group?

HUMBLES: No, I wouldn't think back then they would have had a mixed racially group; but I think possibly the Nonpartisan League was a group of men who . . . I don't even know what their goal was, whether they registered people to vote or what. I don't know.

BRINSON: And then a question I want to ask if you might know something about the lawsuit that was filed against Paducah Junior College in 1949 . . .

HUMBLES: That I do know something about . . .

BRINSON: …to fifty-three? And I was interested that the first two students who went to apply were men and that they later were drafted. And then the next go round, they--I guess the NAACP sent two women--I sort of wondered what that was all about. Did they, I mean first off draft, people are drafted usually by local officials, local draft boards. Was that recrimination for having been involved in that lawsuit?

HUMBLES: Now I don't know that part of it. I do know that, that there had to be a lawsuit filed, and there were a lot of delays in getting--it was called PJC then, Paducah Junior College--and it was a lot of . . . it took a long time to get that going. And there was a lawsuit that had delays, delays, delays. Lawyers--you know, lawyers can find ways to make delays--but anyway, Curly Brown was President of the NAACP at the time--and the way they filed the case, I believe, on the basis that they didn't have a black junior college. We don't have a black one, so therefore if you don't have a black one, we are entitled to go, you know. And I think that through a long legal process lasting about three or four years, we were successful.

BRINSON: Right and then I believe Curly Brown's son was one of the first black students who actually . . .

HUMBLES: He was, he was.

BRINSON: Enrolled there.

HUMBLES: He was. Right.

BRINSON: I wonder, I've read that the local NAACP worked for better employment in the fifties and I wonder about jobs at the Atomic Energy Project here since that's a federal program. Were they taking blacks into employment there?

HUMBLES: I think they did. But back then, I think that blacks didn't have a choice jobs, they had the lesser. It was still--in the black community, if you had job at a plant--back when I came along--this is going back a little--if you had a job at the post office, a job at the railroad shops, those were the two choice jobs. Now when the KOW--I think they call it--when it came into being . . .

BRINSON: What is that?

HUMBLES: The KOW.

BRINSON: What is that?

HUMBLES: I don' know, it was, it was . . . when the built the atomic plant here, they called it a KOW or something like that. I can't think what the initials stand for. But anyway, if you had a job there period, whether you had a shovel in your hand or were a janitor or whatever you were, there was discrimination there. But whatever you did there, you were going to bring home a pretty good paycheck. And you were considered, in the black community, "Well, he's got a job at KOW." You know, you were pretty well . . . had one of the better jobs. Now I also wasn't here at that time, I don't believe. What period are you talking about?

BRINSON: Well, I know the NAACP worked to improve employment in the fifties . . .

HUMBLES: Yeah.

BRINSON: But I don't know how long the Atomic Energy Project has been in Paducah.

HUMBLES: Well, I wasn't . . . see, I wasn't here from you might say forty-nine, I came back in fifty-three or fifty-four, somewhere along in there. I was in the service about that . . .

BRINSON: Right, but, so the KOW had black employees. Do you know how long they've been in business here?

HUMBLES: They're not here . . . matter of fact, my wife's father, she told me that he worked out there. I don't know exactly what he did but no, I don't. At one time, you know, Paducah was a boom town or it was flourishing with money, and money was floating around. But blacks never did get their share of good jobs, they just . . . the NAACP had to fight then to get blacks on the job. And later the fight became--after we got on the job--is to get them in every aspect of the job market. But at that time, it was just getting into the door.

BRINSON: ‘Course the world reads about Paducah now with the health problems coming from the gas diffusion plant operation here. How has that affected the black community here? Has it in any way? I know it's not over but . . .

HUMBLES: To be very honest about, I've started drinking bottled water. [Laughter] But to be very honest about it, there's a question mark that looms over everyone's head as to what's going to be done about this and when. But it's not like the roof is caving in. You know, it's not like a tornado's coming. It's just like, well, it's out there, it's twenty miles away, we want something done about it, quit politicking and get something done about it. But no one is . . . it's not a major priority in the black community, it's not, you know, it's not like "get it done tomorrow." And we don't know anymore about it than we read in the papers. We pick up in the Louisville paper and they tell more than the local paper.

BRINSON: Is it a priority in the white community?

HUMBLES: I don't really think so. There are mixed emotions in a way. I go to lunch with a white fellow that's in business here, and I went, his dad happened to be there one day and he kind of didn't think it was . . . he thought maybe it was a big exaggeration about it. I don't really know.

BRINSON: I guess where the reader of the transcript here, we should say that this has been identified as a health issue and that they may be an incident of health problems that have come from . . . what is it, the gas or is actually the uranium?

HUMBLES: Yeah, it's just uranium, uranium enrichment that gives off a residue of some kind, and they don't know what to do. They were suppose to dispose of all these barrels, they call it . . . they got a nickname for it, barrel something. But anyway; they was suppose to crush these barrels up and they claim at the rate that they are doing it is just so slow that they haven't even started good yet. They are suppose to crush them up and find some disposal method.

BRINSON: And the uranium is leaking into the water . . .

HUMBLES: The lines, which will only--which I'm just making an assumption, I'm not a scientist--but it's just a matter of time till it gets in this river, I don't know what we are going to do. If it does that.

BRINSON: I'm going to ask you about some people that I don't have much information on and maybe you can help me. In 1960, there was a fellow from here named Timothy Taylor who was appointed to the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights by the Governor. That's all I know. Do you know anything about him?

HUMBLES: Do you know his--what kind of type of work he did?

BRINSON: I don't know.

HUMBLES: I think he's passed if it's to who I'm talking about. I couldn't think of his first name. He's, he was here at West Kentucky Vocational School, I believe.

BRINSON: Okay. Okay, I can check that.

HUMBLES: But I think he's passed. I know he's passed, in fact.

BRINSON: Okay. Does a fellow named Edmond Wilford, Sr., who lives over in Cadiz, C-a-d-i-z?

HUMBLES: Don't know him.

BRINSON: You don't him, okay. Does a Mr. W. C. Young, Sr.. . . .

HUMBLES: He's passed.

BRINSON: Then over in--I'm not sure I'm pronouncing it right--Kuttawa . . .

HUMBLES: His widow's still living if you want to talk to her, W. C.'s widow. Her name is Carol Young.

BRINSON: Okay, I think I do have her number actually. There's a fellow in Kuttawa, is it Kuttawa?

HUMBLES: Kuttawa.

BRINSON: Kuttawa.

HUMBLES: Kuttawa, believe it or not, that's way you pronounce it.

BRINSON: Named Ewing Benberry.

HUMBLES: Yeah, Ewing Benberry. He's about ninety years old. He was one of the few blacks in the Republican party and he's been a pretty progressive man.

BRINSON: Do you have any idea at this point in time what the percent approximately the black population is in Paducah?

HUMBLES: We've talked this, it's around twelve percent. That's in the city, proper.

BRINSON: Right. When I was, this goes back to the Nineteenth Century I guess, I was interested in the fact that Paducah at one point played such an important role in the river transportation back and forth, north to south, and whatnot, and wondered in all of that that, how slavery had played into that.

HUMBLES: Well, I don't really know. I'm sure, they used to have a mural on the old post office wall--they don't have it on the new one--well, it's in the federal building now where slaves were loading stuff on the boats. But I don't really know exactly, I'm sure that slavery was--slaves were utilized in loading and unloading and stuff like this.

BRINSON: But were slaves ever sent south on the boats . . .

HUMBLES: I couldn't tell you that. I don't know.

BRINSON: To plantations or whatnot?

HUMBLES: I don't know. I don't think this was a slave-trading area.

BRINSON: Okay, that's what I'm looking for.

HUMBLES: Was Paducah on the Underground Railroad that you've ever heard of? Slaves fleeing?

HUMBLES: No. A very important battle took here involving Nathan Bedford Forest. It was a black regiment, I can't think of the company name. They turned him back. It was right down here on the river.

BRINSON The black regiment turned him back?

HUMBLES: Yes, uh-huh. And they were, they were . . . their families and descendents were supposed to be set free--I don't know the complete history on it but I've had a--and they weren't. They were in the union army, the men were and they were suppose to get freedom for their families or something. And they turned Forest back, it was a cannon. They used these cannons and Forest had to leave.

BRINSON: I think that's all that I wanted to ask you. Is there anything else that we haven't talked about today that you think is important to share?

HUMBLES: Well, you asked a lot. You got me pretty well going. [Laughter] As I've said, Paducah right now if we bring things up to the present date, there are isolated pockets where police have problems but we don't have even police problems like they have in the cities. I heard, not too long ago, where Nashville has a horrendous problem with the police department and blacks. Some officer may get out-of-pocket or out-of-hand but we don't have savage beatings or shootings and things like that.

BRINSON: How far is Nashville from Paducah?

HUMBLES: A hundred and forty miles. If you look at it from a total perspective, the races get along fairly well. And I'm not pouring any praise on Paducah because Paducah does have problems but I'm just telling, we get along fairly well. We don't have hate groups that I know of that are out in the open. We don't have them going around, somebody may have a swastika painted on their arm.

END OF TAPE TWO SIDE ONEBEGIN TAPE TWO SIDE TWO

HUMBLES: Who wants to see too much chaos happen here in Paducah. Everybody's cognizant of it. We don't, we would like to . . . don't let me make a ( ), blacks want their full share of everything here. And in some areas, we're not getting it. We're not getting it in the courts. Personally I think the courts--they're just shipping young, black men away wholesale with drugs and problems of that nature; and they're not being absolutely fair about it. That's my personal opinion. We're not getting all the jobs we should get but we do have a lot of good jobs. We don't have a good . . . we don't have the same racial ( ) of jobs. In, when you look at the whole community, we've got too many McDonald jobs and not enough good jobs. And Paducah is not any it's not any paradise but it's a pretty decent place to live. It's not a bad place. I guess I can see this ‘cause I've been one of the more fortunate ones. But I don't know what . . . you interviewed somebody that didn't have a job and didn't have a marketable skill, I don't know what they'd tell you.

BRINSON: Okay, okay. Thank you very much.

HUMBLES: Okay, you're quite welcome.

END OF INTERVIEW