BETSY BRINSON: An interview with Dr. Samuel Robinson. The interview takes place
in his office at the Lincoln Foundation in Louisville, Kentucky. The interviewer is Betsy Brinson.Brinson: Dr. Robinson would you say a word or two for me? Give me your full name?
Dr. Samuel Robinson: My name is Sam Robinson uh, I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee
and have…BRINSON: What year were you born?
ROBINSON: I was born in December, 1935, in Memphis, Tennessee.
BRINSON: And that makes you…?
ROBINSON: I’m sixty-four years old.
BRINSON: Almost sixty-five.
ROBINSON: Almost sixty-five.
BRINSON: Well thank you very much for agreeing to talk with me today. We’re
having a little technical difficulty. [pause] There we go, you’re okay. Um, you were saying that you were born in Memphis, Tennessee, and where were you … tell me a little bit about your family, and your growing up.ROBINSON: Well, I grew up in, um Memphis, Tennessee. There were nine children in
our family. My mother was a domestic, my father was a truck driver, and we were fortunate to all realize a college education. All nine of us completed uh, the Bachelor, and we have four who have completed the Doctorate in our family. Uh, and this is very interesting how this came about. My grandfather, whose name was uh, Samuel Robinson, graduated from Rust College in uh, Hollow Springs, Mississippi, in 1898, and he was, for over forty years, a uh, school administrator in the uh, Memphis area. Now all of my aunts were school teachers, but my—the--my uncles were uh, laborers and uh, they were--they did not realize a college education because I was told that my grandfather felt that if the sons received an education that they would be killed. That because of their--uh they would become uppity African-Americans, and this would be something that whites would not like; so he did not educate his sons, but he educated his daughters. So this made it very interesting in our family because of the discrepancy in terms of education. My aunts were teachers, my uh father was a laborer, my mother--and we were not included in any of the family gatherings because of the number of children. Because my aunts had one and two children, and they had more of the typical family; when sometimes my mother was referred to--in a negative way--as a breeder. And so, I think that inspired my parents, that although you have children--that uh, I mean we were not educated, but we are going to see that all of our children receive an education. And that, and that is how that came about.BRINSON: How far did your parents get in their own education?
ROBINSON: My mother completed the eighth grade, and my father completed the
ninth grade. And uh--but although he was--his son--maybe the tenth grade; but although he was the son of a school administrator, which I thought very interesting.BRINSON: Um-hmm.
ROBINSON: And uh, my grandmother was a, uh very light-skinned woman, and she
always reminded us of our white heritage--uh, her--my grandmother…BRINSON: What do you know about that white heritage, anything?
ROBINSON: Yes, I know something. It was in Mississippi. She was born on this
plantation, and she would talk about that she was not really black.BRINSON: Um-hmm.
ROBINSON: And she stressed, she would stress that uh--and she was very
prejudiced in terms of skin color.BRINSON: Now she would have come later than slavery. Certainly, …
ROBINSON: Yes, she would come later, but as you know, at one time the--and the
issue of skin color--which we most know is a universal problem, as we look at the world--uh that issue, but I was--well in my family of nine we have the range in terms of hues. And uh, I was a favorite one because of my skin color.BRINSON: For someone who can’t see you, how would you describe your skin color?
ROBINSON: Well, I would say a light brown. And that’s uh, what I would say; that
I am a light-brown skinned person. And I experienced that in growing up in school, that I think that as a light-browned-skinned child; I was given special treat--uh privileges in classes.BRINSON: Uh-huh, do you remember any examples?
ROBINSON: Oh yeah, I remember vividly. Uh, teachers, uh in terms of the
lighter-skinned children lived, uh sat closer to the front. The darker skinned were given seats in the back of the classroom.BRINSON: And this was uh, an all black classroom?
ROBINSON: These were, it was an all black classroom. And uh, I remember vividly
I was always chosen for the leading roles in the plays. I was really given--I always felt that, and I still do; I believe that I was given special privileges just--and often we laugh about, they tease me--they say if you had had good hair, you would have had more privileges. But it happened and so that’s why um…BRINSON: Now what did they mean by that? Because now, of course…
ROBINSON: Uh, good hair means straight, uh, uh, you k now hair, not nappy hair.
I, I have nappy hair. But they said light skinned and nappy hair, that puts you at another level; but if you had been light skinned and good hair, you would have been at another level in terms of access, accessibility. And I still believe that today, I think that uh, some white people feel more comfortable with lighter-skinned African-Americans.BRINSON: Um-hmm, um-hmm, let me ask, having that special kind of treatment as a
child in school, how did that, how were your relations with your peers?ROBINSON: Sometime very hostile. You know, I was the kid that they would beat up
on because they think that you think you are half-white, or something like that. And uh, so I uh established a niche for me of ah--of ah, associating myself with uh, with uh kids who were intellectually inclined; and had my little own--my little world. And I was kind of ridiculed from time to time because at the time uh, we bought our clothes from rummage sales. You know white people would come to the neighborhood on Saturdays and bring these clothes, and I would go over there and buy my clothes and buy my family’s clothes. And my sisters were embarrassed to be seen at--and so they would send me over there, and if I saw something that they liked, and uh, I would bring it over; and then they would say oh but they would not dare be caught. And this goes on today, because one of my favorite things I like to do is go to yard sales, and go to consignment stores. And uh, although people think I’m a well-dressed person--but many of my clothes come from consignment stores. I paid thirty or forty dollars for a, uh, a Heart, Schaffner and Marks coat, or coats. That’s uh, in fact, recently I bought a sports coat and I took it to the place and I’d say, “How much would this uh, coat cost if I’d bought it?” And this one it was brand new, and he said “This coat would cost twelve hundred dollars.” And I told him, I said, “I paid forty dollars for it.”BRINSON: Well I’m finding that Louisville, for myself now, has a large number of
consignments, nice consignments.ROBINSON: Yes, up-scale.
BRINSON: Right.
ROBINSON: Up-scale, uh yeah, and so, in fact. Okay, continue.
BRINSON: Let me go back, because I noticed that your grandfather is Samuel, and
but you’re Sam. Is your full name Samuel?ROBINSON: Yes, well this is uh, this is another peculiar thing. Uh, uh, within
the African-American community we tend to call out, I am known as Samuel by my--you know when I go back home. But, this is a white person designation of me. And we laugh about that…BRINSON: The Sam.
ROBINSON: The Sam.
BRINSON: Shortening…
ROBINSON: Just like my brother’s name is James, now he has become Jim. But we in
the, up in our little enclave where we grow up, no one would call him James. And so we see this as a uh, a white person designation of your being.BRINSON: Interesting. What, how far back do you know anything about your family
and ancestors?ROBINSON: Well I know--we have--I know very well. My uh, on my mothers side we
were Westbrooks, and we--that reminds me this story. My mother, right after slavery, her brothers uh, owned property in Shelby County.BRINSON: Your mother?
ROBINSON: That’s my mothers father…
BRINSON: Okay.
ROBINSON: …owned property in, in Shelby County, Kentucky. And they, my mother
grew up on, on a farm that was owned by her father. She would never--right after slavery, her grandfather--her par--there were five brothers, the Westbrook brothers. And we uh, we have our--my family is documented, because we had the one cousin, and one aunt--one of my cousins worked in Washington, D.C.; and he can trace our ancestry and so forth. There were five brothers that came from North Carolina to the town, and they bought, they were farm owners.BRINSON: Um-hmm.
ROBINSON: And at one time the five brothers owned one-thousand acres in
Jefferson, in, in Shelby County. Now right now within our family we have about three hundred of those acres. Because what happened was that uh…BRINSON: Is it still being farmed today?
ROBINSON: No, uh no, the land, the land is just what like what is going on here,
Eastwood. The land, we are getting like ten and fifteen thousand dollars an acre because the city limits has gone that far. And I, I just think that if that land had stayed in our family, or it, it would be larger than Bullitt.BRINSON: Uh-huh, uh-huh.
ROBINSON: And we would be very wealthy people.
BRINSON: Well it is a lot of land.
ROBINSON: A thousand--a thousand, and I have that--I have--I would like, I can
share that with you.BRINSON: What did they farm, do you know?
ROBINSON: Cotton.
BRINSON: Cotton.
ROBINSON: Cotton, and uh, what is that, soy beans, so forth, yeah. Mainly
cotton. And, and they had large families and so they worked the land themselves. But as much of the land was lost because of payment of taxes and so forth and, and having to sell; you know when they would have bad crops--you know they would have to sell some of the land to survive from uh, uh, the family. And all of those, now I look more like the Westbrook part, I look more like my mother; and we can--we can tell a Westbrook when we get to the reunion, because they all--and, and we have an Indian part of us that…BRINSON: What can you tell me about that?
ROBINSON: I don’t know much about that. My mother--I have--I could share with
you an oral history, which my sister, whose a professor at--at, whose uh, uh, ABD in African-American literature--at the University of Mississippi, and she teaches at Shelby State Community College in Memphis. Now she did an oral history with my mother, and my mother can go more into that.BRINSON: Um-hmm.
ROBINSON: And but, but that’s part of it. We lost a lot of land that way.
BRINSON: Um-hmm. Do you have any idea Sam, when they stopped farming completely
on that property?ROBINSON: Oh they, they…
BRINSON: Has it been…
ROBINSON: Well they farmed until they like, like the forties and fifties and
sixties, because I remember… We lived on the edge of uh, town. You know, we lived on what you call in the county. Right on the edge of Memphis. But these, where the land was, was in the country. You know, which was about twenty or twenty-five miles from where we lived. And there is a street named for my ancestors--the Westbrook Road--in the community in uh, Louisville. Now we can go to the graveyard, and we have a well maintained graveyard to go to; and these are the ancestors of these--this is that--and I go to see my grandfather. And who---yeah, now my grandfather was very light-skinned man too; and his wife, they were kind of light. But uh getting back to my grandmother on my fathers side, I never could understand why she was so darned prejudiced against very lighted color; and her husband was very, very black.BRINSON: So even though you grew up in Tennessee, you have strong connections to Louisville.
ROBINSON: Yes, I came here--I came to Louisville, and uh, well let me just tell
you--let me just kind of bring you up…BRINSON: Let me just stop you, ‘cause I don’t want you to jump too far ahead
here. Let me go back uh, and ask you, you started school at an all black school?ROBINSON: Yes.
BRINSON: And did you graduate?
ROBINSON: Yes, I went to the same school from one through twelve in this little
rural, semi-rural community; because most of the people who lived there did not farm. We had gardens—but--and everything, we had gardens, but we did not farm. We had pigs, we had chickens, and all of that; but we did not have extensive farms because, you know, we just would have a lot down the street where we--where my aunt--where we were raised you know--potatoes, tomatoes, uh, greens, crowder peas, and uh, cut green beans, and all of that helped, you know, in terms of family. Uh you know feeding the family.BRINSON: Tell me the name of the school, please.
ROBINSON: Douglas High School.
BRINSON: Douglas High School
ROBINSON: Frederick Douglas High School.
BRINSON: Frederick Douglas High School?
ROBINSON: Yes.
BRINSON: And the town name?
ROBINSON: The community was Douglas.
BRINSON: Douglas?
ROBINSON: Douglas, I lived in Douglas, uh which was like every little community
like, Indian Hills, uh, St. Matthews, I lived in Douglas.BRINSON: So was it an all black community?
ROBINSON: Yes, yes. The only uh white people, we had some Chinese individuals
who lived there and uh, owned a grocery store. And we accepted them, they were accepted as a part of it. Uh, but their children did not go to Douglas, they went to the white school in the next community.BRINSON: Uh, tell me, just so I have a sense where in Tennessee, what’s the, the
nearest big town that…ROBINSON: Uh Memphis.
BRINSON: Memphis.
ROBINSON: Yes. I grew up near Memphis. And as a child I went to Arkansas to pick
cotton, all the way through that rural part of Tennessee. I would get nuts, and my mother was an excellent cotton picker. My mother could pick two hundred and fifty to three hundred pounds in one day.BRINSON: And did you do that when you weren’t in school?
ROBINSON: Well…
BRINSON: In the summer months, or…
ROBINSON: Well sometimes it was, we would do it on days when uh they were
in-service; there were holidays and so forth. Now, but you got to remember, out in the country they would dismiss school around uh--you would start in July and go until probably the first of October; and then that was known as the cotton picking season. And so whenever we would have a special day, or once in a while my parents would give me permission to miss school and pick cotton. You know.BRINSON: And what did you use the earnings for?
ROBINSON: To support myself. And I should tell you a little more about--I began
supporting myself at five years old. Because there was a paper route which stayed in our family for over about twenty-five or thirty years. So, when one would get too old then the other would. So that’s how we mainly supported ourselves, and we used it to support the family; because any money I made I had to give part of it to my parents, you know.BRINSON: When you graduated Sam, from high school, how many were there in your
graduating class?ROBINSON: Thirty-eight.
BRINSON: Thirty-eight?
ROBINSON: Yes and I was Salutatorian.
BRINSON: You were?
ROBINSON: Yeah, and I always--my best--my best-friend was Valedictorian. And we
were--I told you about how I kind of centered around academically talented--and he was uh Valedictorian. And we were very, very close. He was President of the Student Council, I was the Vice President of the Student Council. He was uh, uh, let’s see what else would that--then we went to college together.BRINSON: And that was where?
ROBINSON: At Tennessee State University in Nashville, Tennessee. We uh
entered--we uh, we were determined--we both went there, uh, … they did not have um all of the aid that you have now in terms of--like the uh S. E. O. G., Pell Grant and so forth; but uh we had jobs. He worked--and so we uh, left together. The first year we were in the band together, in the college marching band; and so we enjoyed it, …BRINSON: What instrument did you play?
ROBINSON: I played the bell-lyra.
BRINSON: And had you played that before?
ROBINSON: Yeah in high school. I was in high school—I was the--I did band in
high school. Yeah, but the thing that really is really interesting that I would like to share is that, I told you that I have always worked, from the, from the, from the fifth through probably the seventh or the eighth; I was the, the uh the communities delivery boy for the pharmacy. So I worked, uh, I was paid one dollar a night, and I had to work seven days a week. And I had a very strict boss, who, who made me produce; and I worked from four o’clock in the afternoon until ten.BRINSON: Hmm. Was this a black pharmacist?
ROBINSON: Yes it was.
BRINSON: This sounds like a very self-sufficient community.
ROBINSON: It was, it very much, very much self-sufficient. We had a physician,
we had a, a pharmacist, we had several grocery stores, we had dry-goods stores, you know, and we had, we had our own little uh, night-life. Right, well we lived behind what we called one of the “joints.” And so, one of the--what we would enjoy on Friday night would be to sit in our yards, and after people had been drinking for a while they get arrogant and we would watch the fights.BRINSON: Hmmm.
ROBINSON: And so, and many--uh sometimes the women would run into our yard and
run into our house, and my dad would lock the door, and the man would be clamoring, and my father, and that would just break up the, you know, the uh up there. And you know, you had to do that because the music was very loud. And so I just--we were just--they were going to sit out here and we would--a lot of gossiping would go on. You know, about who was there and who came out with whom, and so forth. And they, they would throw whiskey bottles out over in my yard, our yard; and then I would sell those empty bottles to the bootlegger, and he would give me five cents per bottle. And you know, when I think about this--and I often tell--I often think about my uh, Aunt Lou Caysberg, uh the Caysbergs--see that one, when she talked about growing up in Stamps, Arkansas, is just classic of the type of environment that I grew up in.BRINSON: Well now this would have been the forties and the fifties.
ROBINSON: This would have been the forties, because I was, by the late forties,
or I graduated in fifty-three, but that was still going on.BRINSON: Right, do you remember any of the music?
ROBINSON: Oh yeah. I mean Louis Jordan, Hal Donia, you know uh, Duke Ellington,
uh the Bobby Blue Band, and you know I watched B B. King grow. When we were in high school we laughed at B B. King because he had a little show singing that little jumping music, and we would just laugh at him. But now, look at B B King.BRINSON: That’s right.
ROBINSON: See B B King lived in the next community from us, and he had his own
little television, I mean radio show. “This is B B King,” and so forth, and we would just, we would say, “Listen at this music, this is B B King,” and just laugh [laughing]. And uh, getting back to this I did in high school and this intellectual thing, well as you know there were a particular dress during that time. There were kind of a, they were called Drakes. Have you ever heard of Drakes?BRINSON: No, actually…
ROBINSON: They traveled: they ah, balloon here and they get smaller down here,
and there were long coats and big hats; but uh, my parents would uh never let us do that, and that’s why sometimes we were called the ‘white family’.BRINSON: Um-hmm.
ROBINSON: First of all we valued education more than most of the people in the
community. Most of the people in the community saw uh, children from an economic perspective, to graduate from high school, get a job, stay at home, and help pay some of these bills. And my mother was often ridiculed. “I don’t see Sarah, why you sending all them kids to college? They aren’t going to do anything for you.” You know, “What are you sending all those, they aren’t going to do anything for you.” And uh, mom said, “If they can take care of themselves, that will be a blessing to me.”BRINSON: That makes sense.
ROBINSON: Yes.
BRINSON: And at what point Sam, do you think you became aware that you were
growing up living in a segregated society?ROBINSON: Well, when I uh--when I--well first of all, I worked for white people
during high school. See I was--when I left the drug store in about ninth grade, I began to work as a car-hop at a, uh a drive-in. And uh, and made very good money, because I played a role that I was a little--little uh--let me see what word I wanna use--I was not as smart as I could--I did that with white people: because what I would do is when I would serve the tray, they would say, “Boy, go get me something else.” I would say, “Yes sir.” Then they would say uh, uh then when I was ready for the tip what I would do is I would act like I could not count, so that they would say “Boy just go on.” You know, and that was just a game.BRINSON: Why did you do that?
ROBINSON: Because uh, uh, at that time I was very hostile toward white folk. A
lot of hostility was there because uh, I could not--I had to--you know the car-hop played, I could not go into the restaurant, no. They had a little shed, a little old place where I’d--like what you would see when you went to a park--and they had a little stove that I had to have, make a fire in the winter to keep warm in the winter time; and so I had to stay there. And I recall that uh, after a while--to increase the business--the owner of the drive-in indicated that we were no longer employed, because they hired white girls.BRINSON: Where there any white car-hops at the time when you were there?
ROBINSON: No. No. No, never, but we made very good money. I would make, I mean
this was the late forties, early fifties, I could make fifty dollars in one night.BRINSON: Goodness. Well you were uh, pretending that you couldn’t count. Did you
do that because that ever uh resulted in more of a tip?ROBINSON: Oh yes. See because by the time they would get frustrated with me, and
said, “Boy just keep the change.”BRINSON: Hmm, well that is good money.
ROBINSON: Oh yeah, when I was in college I made uh, as much as a hundred dollars
a night car-hopping.BRINSON: So you did that through college?
ROBINSON: Yes I did it in college. In college I had three jobs. I worked as a
uh--a uh--a an assistant in the biology department, you know as a lab assistant. I picked up laundry in the dorm, and I also worked as a--at a drive-in, from like five to eleven.BRINSON: What did you major in?
ROBINSON: Biology. My uh, my aspiration was to be a medical doctor.
BRINSON: Umm, uh-huh.
ROBINSON: And so I finished college in three years. And uh, when I, when it
became--I did well on the Medical Aptitude Test; but I--now the University of Tennessee Medical School was like ten to fifteen minutes from my home, but I could not go. I could not attend the University of…, although I graduated with about a 3.4 GPA…BRINSON: Because it was all white?
ROBINSON: It was all white. And so I …
BRINSON: Tell me the year again, that you graduated from college?
ROBINSON: Nineteen fifty-six.
BRINSON: Fifty-six.
ROBINSON: I graduated, I finished high school in 1953, and graduated in 1956.
And so, in, and uh, I had built--as you know--I’m going back to this intellectual perspective--all of the intellectually gifted were either going into grad, into the uh, uh masters’ degree, or law school, and so forth. And so I had built up in my mind that I was going to attend Meharry Medical College, and uh, . . . Well let’s get back to high school. In high school I did not want to go to Cincy State. I thought, and uh, I knew uh, I wanted to go to Howard University in Washington, D.C. And I had built up in my mind that that was were I wanted to go. My father died during my senior year, which was very traumatic; and I knew that--see I’m the fifth child and with all the other brothers and sisters, they were gone too; we had a very special relationship with the President at Tennessee State. He would allow us to go on credit, you know, because my dad would make an effort and so forth. So when we were--and at that time they had very hostile people in the. . .End Side ONE TAPE ONE
BEGIN SIDE TWO TAPE ONE
ROBINSON: . . .Yeah the birth of a--they were very nasty. And children when we
were in the line—[she] hollered, this nasty cashier would say, “No. Your not gonna register. No, you can’t register until you get…”, and here we were in line and the kids would go out embarrassed, you know. But she never did that for us, because we had a special relationship, and I was very quiet to her.BRINSON: And this is an all black college?
ROBINSON: This was an all black college.
BRINSON: Still?
ROBINSON: Yeah still, yeah, yeah. So we had a special relationship there with
the President, the Vice-President, so forth; and uh, we, the Robinson family had a special relationship there.BRINSON: Was it the death of your father, and your need to help out that kept
you from going to Howard? Was that…ROBINSON: Well, I think it was a decision that was made, that we already had
established a very good working relationship and it would be easier. And, plus, Howard was not offering me a full scholarship.BRINSON: Um-hmm.
ROBINSON: And so my mother said--and so that was a disappointment. The other
disappointment for me was when I--I paraded around back--because everybody, you know, I was in Alpha Kappa Mew, which was the equivalent at that time, of the Phi Beta Kappa; and that was blacks. They didn’t have Phi Beta Kappa on black campuses, so Dr. George W. Gore founded Alpha Kappa Mew, which is, you have to have a 3.3 GPA, and you know, and all of the other attributes for inclusion. I was inducted into Alpha Kappa Mew, I was inducted into Beta Kappa Ki, which was the scientific society, because of my biology major; and then I was uh, inducted into Kappa Delta Pi, you’ve heard of Kappa Delta Pi haven’t you? It’s like Phi Delta Kappa--or so forth. And I am member of--I made--in graduate school I made Phi Delta Kappa which is, you know the education fraternity. But, I did all of that, but I paraded around there, and um, uh because that was the thing to do. And I knew that if--I knew that possibly that I couldn’t attend, would not be able to go. But, and I also had pride that I could not face my community. You know, that I had not gotten into Meharry. So what I did was I remained at Tennessee State because I was devastated. And I didn’t want, I did not want any rumors to go around in the Douglas community; one of their bright, smart Robinson’s didn’t get into Meharry. So I stayed and completed a uh, uh masters in Educational Guidance.BRINSON: Okay.
ROBINSON: And I uh, then in nineteen… in that year I did substitute teaching in
my um, for one year in Memphis in the school which meant that you don’t ( ) and so forth. That was also a devastating experience.BRINSON: In what way?
ROBINSON: Well, well I had completed my student teaching and made A’s; and had a
3.0 in biology and I was uh, I was not employed.BRINSON: You were doing substitute teaching.
ROBINSON: I was doing substitute teaching.
BRINSON: Now this would have been late fifties.
ROBINSON: Yeah, I was doing substitute teaching and I was not employed. Yet, I
saw all of the--all of my--we have a large contingent of people from Memphis and they were employed and with lower GPA’s and so forth. That was also devastating to me.BRINSON: Let me just ask you, because that of course, was after the Brown
decision, what was the status of the schools in . . .ROBINSON: They were all black.
BRINSON: They were still segregated?
ROBINSON: Segregated. Mainly segregated schools. And uh, but in Memphis at the
time, African-Americans, mainly those who were employed, received their employment because of what family their mothers and fathers worked for. So my father worked for a, uh, this paper company, and he asked--he said uh, “Sam, would you like for me to go to my, the owner of the company and ask him to put in a good word for you?” And I was very arrogant, and I said, “Are you kidding? Dad I don’t need that.” I said, “I have a high academic--I have been in Beta Kappa Ki, I’ve been in…” and I said--and he said, “I didn’t do that.”BRINSON: Do you regret that?
ROBINSON: Yes. No, no, no, no, no. I do not regret, to me God works in
mysterious ways, because I would have been stuck in Memphis.BRINSON: Uh-hmm, that’s true. Uh-hmm.
ROBINSON: And when I, I did not apply, then I went into the army. I was drafted.
I was a private with a masters degree [laughing] with the intention--well when I first was drafted they asked me if I wanted to go to Officer’s Candidate School, and I said, “No.” I want to stay two years and this is it. So I did all the basic training and so forth, then I was assigned to. . .BRINSON: Where were you stationed?
ROBINSON: At Fort Benning.
BRINSON: In Georgia?
ROBINSON: In Georgia. I worked until--I worked there--my uh wife did substitute
teaching. I married while in the Army. I got married over the Christmas holidays. So my uh, my wife is from Austin, Texas. We met at Tennessee State uh, and uh one thing related to that is that we were--we are Presbyterians; and uh, I was very active uh in, I was a member of the Fellowship for Reconciliation, a peace group. Very active in college, which made it that I was on the campus of George Peabody and Vanderbilt a lot. And people wandered what is this nigger doing over here? And the same thing happened to me that I invited them to Tennessee State, and Tennessee State was all black. And people were very, they wondered what was going on. And so I was labeled as, as a fooling around with communism.BRINSON: I wanted to ask you some questions about that. First, let me ask you
Sam, um, how did you, first off, did you grow up in the Presbyterian church?ROBINSON: No, no I did not grow up in the Presbyterian church. I grew up in the
Baptist. I was very active. I was the Director of the Choir, I could raise more money when uh--for Children’s Day in fact, when I was fifteen or sixteen, uh I would serve as a fundraiser for the children’s activity. And then the men would want me to be a captain so that the money would be raised, ‘cause I could raise money. And so I would have fish fry’s, ice cream socials, and, and heaven and hell party. Have you ever heard of a heaven and hell party?BRINSON: No.
ROBINSON: A heaven and hell party is, you go to the party and you have to
determine whether or not you were going to heaven or hell. And that was by, what tickets you picked. If you picked uh the hell one, you received some hot spaghetti, and if you received the heaven one you would receive ice cream.BRINSON: Well all that fundraising certainly helped you in later years in your
career I bet.ROBINSON: That’s right.
BRINSON: Yeah.
ROBINSON: Yeah, so I, so what happened with that is uh, uh, when I, when we
attended college and I became the moderator of the Westminster Fellowship. I was a Baptist and the Presbyterian--and I was the Baptists who was the Chair of the Westminster Fellowship in this Presbyterian church that was near the campus. And so we could walk to the campus, and they had a very effective, a very outstanding Westminster Fellowship at this church. And then we would go because, you know on Sundays and in school we would be given bologna sandwiches; bologna and cheese, in a sack and, but the Presbyterian church served well. They would have chili, and spaghetti, and ice cream, and so that was our Sunday meal for my wife. . . and so going to walk down there, that was a date for me, because I could not afford to take my wife to a movie or so forth. So we courted and that would give us time together. Going down to this Presbyterian church. And so I was so impressed with what went on . . . But first of all, I grew up in a Fundamental church. The minister had, uh, a third grade education, and some time he ridiculed people who were educated. And my, and really my mother was a very, she said “Sam,” after I came back she said, “You should not be going to this church.” Because the minister after a while, he started trying to exploit me, you know in terms of coming home and getting back into church like I was; but I had received an education and I could see that, you know, uh, issues and problems. Because I just didn’t feel like I needed a third-grade-educated man leading me in my religious life. So this church in Nashville, I became very close to the minister, very close, in fact, at one . . .BRINSON: The Presbyterian?
ROBINSON: Presbyterian. In fact, at one time there were trying to convince me to
go into the ministry. And--but I said--and one thing that impressed me more than anything else was that he said, “I am”--because one thing at our West Minster Fellowship, uh, there were Baptists, Methodist, they didn’t care, they didn’t, it was not just for Presbyterians. That’s where I began a lot of work in an integrated situation. Because the Westminster Fellowship at Vanderbilt, Peabody, and all of us were unique and I became a part of them; and really enjoyed that type--and in fact, one of the most interesting stories that I have to tell is that, Mr. Tidings was the first Director of the Lincoln Foundation for many years.BRINSON: Mr. Tidings?
ROBINSON: Tidings, a white man. See I’m the first African-American, because if
we go into the history, at one time uh, the Foundation didn’t have any black people on its’ Board, it was paternalistic. Okay, so what was more than anything is that when I came here to work, that Mr. Tidings’ daughter had attended George Peabody College. And she, and we were--and I knew her. You know how people’s paths cross again? That Ann Tidings was--we were very good friends. In fact, my wife and I integrated Macome. Macome is the Presbyterian retreat camp.BRINSON: Can you spell that?
ROBINSON: M-A-C-O-M-E, Macome
BRINSON: And where is that?
ROBINSON: Its’ up near Nashville, right outside Nashville. You know they use it
for summer camps and so forth. So uh, Huella and I we were asked to go; but the Presbyterians in Nashville, uh, indicated that we could not attend, because of race. So Huella and I--so I brought that back to my colleagues at Vanderbilt. The group unanimously said that, “If Sam and Huella cannot go, we are not going.” The other thing happened, they was mad. They said, “Okay we’ll let them go, but there has, there cannot be any activities where Sam and Huella hold hands with white people.” Okay, . . .BRINSON: Like standing or praying and playing games?
ROBINSON: Yeah, like we’re playing games, you know at a retreat you have all of
these, you know hand games; and they can go but not have any type of touch.BRINSON: Right, or even a prayer circle…
ROBINSON: Yeah, that’s right, if you held hands for the prayer, they don’t let
you do that. So, uh what happened was, that was brought back to the group, and so uh, they, the group, rejected that. Rejected that. So here Huella and I went to the camp, you know, on full-terms, you know and this was a weekend activity. And that was just part of some of my activities related to diversity and becoming involved, because I think some of the things had to do, you know would cause a person to SNICK. And some of them took place and took part in what we call test-runs, in drive-ins where if I drove the automobile, uh I was denied, but if I was a passenger, I was admitted.BRINSON: So you were actually part of SNICK?
ROBINSON: I was a part of the Fellowship for Reconciliation, which was the
pacifist peace group, so forth.BRINSON: Right. Umm, I asked that about SNICK because of the area that you were located.
ROBINSON: Well I’m just saying that SNICK came around, around the 1960’s. I’m
just saying that the type of things that we did, as I. . .BRINSON: But the Fellowship for Reconciliation was actually doing, sponsoring
the test-runs for the drive-ins?ROBINSON: That’s right. And they were sponsoring the, I went to the Highland
Folklander school at Mont Eagle.BRINSON: Would you tell me about that?
ROBINSON: Well, uh the night I was there a cross was burned, and I observed
that. I was scared, I was afraid to death.BRINSON: Um-hmm, where . . .
ROBINSON: Mont Eagle is in east Tennessee near Chattanooga.
BRINSON: Right, and this was the early times. . .
ROBINSON: Early, you know non-violent, you know instruction and non-violence,
and so forth.BRINSON: Right, right, did you um have a chance to meet Miles Fortner, the
founder of . . .?ROBINSON: Yes, yes I did.
BRINSON: Um, and of course the early citizenship schools of the civil rights
movement . . .ROBINSON: Yeah, but that may have been, you know I went maybe a weekend, you
know, on a weekend uh, uh to that; and I did not go on a long time basis and uh, that’s also why . . . . I had a brother who was uh, athletic, more of a, more of the kind who was not much into activism. And he went home and told my mother that I was getting into deep water, and it frightened my mother. He said “Sam is going to get killed, because he’s going off in the deep.” Said “He’s fooling around with those white liberals and he is gonna die.” That’s frightened her. And my mother told me that--I have this joke that’s really--that I tell about the agitator that’s uh, in the washing machine. The agitator is the one that gets the work done, it’s the part that gets the work done. And I told that to my mother, and she said “I trust you.” But it was frightening.BRINSON: Go back to your story about testing the drive-ins, and the fellowship.
Tell me a little bit more about that.ROBINSON: Well, there was uh, a very small group of us at school, not more than
seven or eight of us at Tennessee State; and we were the ones that were doing these kinds of things.BRINSON: But now was that the chapter or were you a part of a chapter that had
students from other campuses also?ROBINSON: Well we were, that was part that had students from other chapters back then.
BRINSON: Right, okay, and you said you were testing the drive-ins?
ROBINSON: Yeah, to see, you know, the desegregation, we . . .
BRINSON: Whether you could be served?
ROBINSON: Served, whether we could be served. We could not be served in
restaurants in 1958. We had to sit--if we went downtown to the movies we had the black section of the movies, and all of that. And, and it was very, you know--and the international students always would, you know they could go anywhere and so forth. And they used to laugh at us [laughing] saying, “You live in America and you can’t go, and I can go.” What type of situation is this?BRINSON: So, tell me how you got to Kentucky.
ROBINSON: Okay, that’s most interesting. I wanted to—after--while in the army--I
failed to mention that after basic training, I had a very good job. I worked as a, as a, I worked for a Humroo which was a research part, I worked as the Physiological Research Assistant.BRINSON: Can you spell the name of that company for me?
ROBINSON: H U M R O O , out of George Washington University.
BRINSON: Okay.
ROBINSON: Which was like, they had a contract to uh, to uh, construct uh, tests
for basic trainees. So I did that. I had an office, in fact, here I was a PF-1, PFC, Spec 4; and uh, I had to check the work of Master Sergeants. So uh, because they were not well educated, many of them had high school, but I had to check for grammar, syntax, and all that kind of stuff; and so that’s what I did, and so. . .BRINSON: So this was after the military, or in the military?
ROBINSON: In the military. I worked for George Washington University in the
military. I worked for Humroo which was a unit in the army that was part of George Washington. And my wife was taught--she uh, well first of all, when we married, I went back to basic training. I went back to Ft. Benning, and she didn’t come because she was teaching in Texas; she was teaching in Austin, Texas. And so she came to live with me in uh--I mean we began to live together in June, and I went for her--her aunt had given us an automobile and so that helped a lot. And we shopped at the Commissary and so forth, and we had a--we lived a very, pretty, middle class life while I was in the military; because she had a job teaching and I, I was a in the military. And we had all this access to clothes, and the commissary and all that. So uh, as we began to think of our lives and what we were going to do, Huella told me that she did not want to go back to Memphis because there were too many Robinsons there; and she did not want them to be getting in our business. And I told her, I said “I do not--I am not going to your hometown, because I do not want to be bothered with the Walkers.” So we thought about uh, a neutral place--so I contacted, I went on a couple of interviews. At first I went to one in Halifax, North Carolina, uh, and so I went there and I went to the interview at Baffoon High School and I was going to be a teacher there. They had limited housing there, and so the principal was uh, a, lived alone, and so I was then offered a job at the high school to teach math and science, but we had to live with the principal. And we had a young baby, and so we said, no, no, I’m not going to take that one. Then I went to an interview in Idlewild, Michigan, which is very near Traverse City, and real cold; an all-black community up there where blacks from Chicago had summer homes but during the winter it was very cold, isolated, and so forth. And I decided that I didn’t want to do that. And because I would have been up there in all that cold weather and again, we would have to live with someone. So I, in fact, Dr. Joseph McMillan--have you ever heard of Dr. Joseph McMillan, whose uh, of the Rainbow Coalition?BRINSON: Oh yes.
ROBINSON: Okay, well very interesting, he taught there for two or three years,
and I think that our paths didn’t cross; but I just missed him by a year or two; and he left there and went to Battle Creek, not Battle Creek, uh, oh what is that other . . .BRINSON: Did you go to Idlewild?
ROBINSON: No, I went there for the interview . . .
BRINSON: Oh just the interview . . .
ROBINSON: Yeah, and didn’t do that. Uh, then I did another one in uh, oh what is
the uh, Joe Fords hometown in Michigan? Oh come on, Battle Creek,BRINSON: Battle Creek?
ROBINSON: No, no not Battle Creek, they have a museum there.
BRINSON: Oh, I don’t know.
ROBINSON: Okay, okay, well I went there, now this was after I was employed here,
uh, that after a year I started--I didn’t know if I wanted to continue to do that or if I wanted to get back into education. So what I did was I heard of a job in this community, in Wyoming, Michigan, and Wyoming is a suburb of--and it’s driving me crazy ‘cause I can’t think of that--but Wyoming was a [interruption] But what happened was, I went for the interview and so when I went there people were very polite to me and you know I had a doctorate; and you know they didn’t have a picture of me, and uh they thought I was white. And so when I asked how many African-Americans do you have employed in the system--none! And I said, “No, no, I’m not a going to go there.” You know, because I didn’t feel like I wanted to go through all of that.BRINSON: All of that being . . .?
ROBINSON: Being in a fish bowl, you know, being, people just looking at me and
so forth. And it was very, blue collar neighborhood, I mean community. And you know, we had to find housing; and no African-Americans, I’m told, that lived in the community. Now this was a suburb of this, the larger community that . . . Okay, its’ a large city, with a large Indian population. And when I came in from that overnight trip I heard some comments about--at one of the Howard Johnson’s, they said, “Put him down there, [pause] put him down there.” And I overheard it. Because I don’t think that I was very welcomed to stay there. And then I went through the community and I saw a lot of Christian schools, and that was kind of a . . . gave me some idea about the type of – and it still is today, type of very conservative community.BRINSON: Now you said, I think I heard you say, that you were actually here at
the Lincoln Foundation?ROBINSON: Yes.
BRINSON: Okay. How did you get to the Lincoln Foundation? And where in there did
you get your Ph. D.?ROBINSON: Well I was, it was August, and the Army had indicated to me that I
could um--that if I received an appointment as a teacher I could get out of the Army early; which meant that I would have gotten out in September, but if I got a job I could get out in August. So I began to look around and I contacted the Southern Education, the teachers’ agency in Richmond, Virginia. Is it still in existence?BRINSON: I think so.
ROBINSON: Okay, well they dealt mainly with African-Americans at the time. And I
wrote, and they made me aware of this job at Lincoln Institute. So I uh, called Mr. Whitney M. Young, Sr., over the telephone and he said uh, he said “Well”--and he knew that I had a Masters’ degree; and you know, a major in biology. And so uh, his biology teacher had abruptly quit—because--and so I, the had abruptly quit in August so he needed someone right away. So he employed me right over the telephone.BRINSON: Um-hmm.
ROBINSON: Then--now when I arrived here, I knew that there were two or three
Tennessee State Alumni who were living here; but I didn’t know--but we came here with a young baby, a chest of drawers, and an automobile. So I began teaching and when I came to teach I was twenty-four years old. And uh, we had to um, first of all for several days we lived when we first arrived--Lincoln Institute is a boarding school and we lived in the infirmary you know, for several days until Dr. Young arranged with one of the single teachers who taught here in--who lived here and taught Lincoln, to live with him. So we lived with him for--with this man, he didn’t have a wife, and had ample room; and we had access to the kitchen, bathroom, so we lived there. Then uh, uh, . . .BRINSON: How long did you do that?
ROBINSON: For about six or seven months. Then I found, there was some new
apartments built, now I could not have lived in uh, in anywhere in Louisville; I had to find an apartment in the black community. So, some new apartments were built.BRINSON: Now was that a requirement of the Institute or was that just. . . ?
ROBINSON: No.
BRINSON: Was that just because of the way housing. . . .
ROBINSON: The housing, the housing in Louisville, you know that I could
not--rental property was you know regulated to the African-Americans… So this woman, Mrs. Hortence Young, and her husband, Dr. C. Milton Young built these apartments, very nice. Two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, so we were uh, able to get some furniture on credit; uh I bought a used refrigerator and a used stove, and we were set-up. We were really proud because this was new and we were paying. . . and Mrs. Young uh makes you feel that you were selected to be here because of your caliber, the caliber of you, and we were paying sixty-five dollars a month.BRINSON: And this was what year again?
ROBINSON: This was 1961. And she said, “Well we screen, and we’re only taking
professional people.” And because I worked for Dr. Young, who was a dear friend . . .END SIDE TWO TAPE ONE
BEGIN TAPE TWO SIDE ONE
BRINSON: How many students . . .?
ROBINSON: Well Lincoln—when I came to teach there in 1960 had about four hundred
students there because at that time you had buses from Shelbyville, a black justice come because all of the black youngsters in Shelbyville and Shelby County elected to go. They could go to Shelby County High and Shelbyville High but only a few chose that, they thought they would like going to Lincoln Institute. Plus they were very--and their parents--because many of these students parents had attended Lincoln Institute. So uh, . . .BRINSON: Now they were day students?
ROBINSON: They were day students, but we also had students from Chicago, New
York, uh Cincinnati, Indianapolis. We had--they lived on campus, but we also had day students from Shelbyville who lived there; because you have to remember that in many counties in Kentucky that there were the African-American elementary schools, but they did not have a high school. But what they would do is pay for their black high school students to go to boarding schools like Lincoln. So those, many of these people who sent their kids back to Lincoln had graduated from Lincoln too. So all of these little towns like uh, Eddyville, and uh let me see, little communities, Cadiz, Nicholasville. Now these, all these little communities in Eastern Kentucky, Manchester, uh Hazard, and so forth, many of them were very happy to send their African-American students there so that they wouldn’t have to deal with what went on there. But one thing that also in your larger cities, you had African-American high schools like Attucks in Hopkinsville; you had uh, you had schools in Paducah; you had African-American schools in, you had one in Frankfort; you had one in Lexington—Dunbar. And all of those school had uh, had those schools there, and uh we had – so that meant that we played each other in sports; basketball, football, and so forth. But we. . .BRINSON: You tended to get your students more from the smaller, rural areas of Kentucky?
ROBINSON: That’s right. From the smaller, where sometimes there was only two or
three black families.BRINSON: And no, no high schools, black high schools.
ROBINSON: That’s right, that’s right. So they would come there.
BRINSON: Is the Lincoln campus still there?
ROBINSON: Sure, we own it. We own four hundred acres.
BRINSON: I need to go out there.
ROBINSON: I have a picture of our.[Tape stopped] Okay, it’s the Job Corps
Center, and the Foundation now, now, Gordon told me that you had seen the tape from, on the rear.BRINSON: I did.
ROBINSON: Well that--you know, Lincoln--you know at Lincoln the students were
lined up going to Lincoln Institute. Okay, so when I got there--and still again, uh the creativity of Dr. Whitney M. Young, Sr. was just amazing. He was highly respected by, by the community, by white people, poor folks, State Department, everything. Now, Lincoln survived because of Dr. Young mainly. Because Dr. Young, what he did was uh, uh, was able to work with the President of Kentucky State, and what he did--we were considered a Teachers Education Center for uh, Kentucky State University.BRINSON: They sent their teachers in training?
ROBINSON: Yeah, because when I got there, I mean--well uh I didn’t do that much
teaching because I had at least one or two student teachers all the year. And you know, once I would get the--you know two or three weeks of observation then they were in charge. And so that would go on, and that’s why--and Dr. Young would use me to do--for other things. Uh, because I thought I was special to him, he was very impressed with me that uh, when this biology teacher left, his wife was the principal, she left too. And so, this was real interesting, Dr. Young was the President of Lincoln Institute, and--but we also had what we called the Dean of Education, and so the Dean of Education was the principal. So uh, uh after Dr.--this woman left, Dr. Eleanor Love became the principal, Dr. Young’s daughter; and after one year of me teaching she made me her Assistant Principal. And really it was really funny because when I came to campus--Dr. Young shared with me in later years--he said, “I was frightened to death because I expected you to be taller.” And I weighed 124 pounds and he just thought that possibly some of the larger football players may not respect me, you know so forth. But uh, my thesis, and still today is that if you have an expected lesson plan and so forth, you do not have any problems. Now that was teacher expectations, and I, to that day uh, um, and until after then I became her Assistant Principal, then Dr. Love became a Dean for a university college, she worked at the University of Louisville, she went, she left Lincoln because we uh, we saw the hand-writing on the wall that the school was going to close. And that was frightening to me during my first year of teaching there, there was a mass exodus of uh, employees, maybe eight or ten teachers that came to teach here, and very frightening to the staff, and all of these people were telling me “You’d better get out of there because it’s going to close.”BRINSON: Why was it going to close?
ROBINSON: Because, more and more counties was not giving the students
opportunities to come. They said, “No,” it’s 1966 and we don’t need that expense so we’ll just educate our black students.BRINSON: So it was up to the counties --these were all rural counties actually,
to finance the students to come. . . ?ROBINSON: Yeah, and see our budget was uh, imbedded in K State’s budget in terms
of the appropriations.BRINSON: Right.
ROBINSON: So nobody, and Dr. Young told me that, he said “See, this is how you
do it. This is how you survive, you imbed it in there and how can anybody fuss about KSU having a Teachers Education Center.” And that was worked out with Dr. Atwood, and Dr. Young.BRINSON: Well I thought, obviously incorrectly, I thought that the Institute was
funded out of money that went into an endowment from Berea when the Day Law came into effect.ROBINSON: No.
BRINSON: No?
ROBINSON: No, No. Initially, initially, but see what we did around 1948 is that
we deeded the land to the state.BRINSON: Oh.
ROBINSON: And so Lincoln became a, well another name was state high school. And
so the foundation at that time--then Mr. Tidings who was the Director there, he moved from the campus and then the Institute was separate from the Foundation. And uh, and see Mr. Tidings um,--that’s an interesting, that’s a whole interesting story that Dr. Young shared with me. See, Dr.--Lincoln had white faculty members and African-American faculty over there; but white faculty members lived on one side of the campus and African-Americans lived on the other side. And uh, one joy that uh, Mr. Tidings often shared with me was that he wondered, he said that, “When he, when they would have faculty, when they would have parties on the campus everybody would come here and act proper you know, and drink and have these polite discussions. Then he would look across the campus when they would go back to their side and they were having a lot of fun.” [laughter] And one thing that, one other part of that was see, Mr. Tidings was the son of one of the Board members, I mean he was the son-in-law of one of the most powerful Board members. It was understood that although Dr. Young was President, Mr. Tidings did work for him.BRINSON: Did not work for him?
ROBINSON: Work for him, he was the business manager, so Mr. Tidings, that was
uh, a real problem through the years. They were not very--they were very polite to each other--but the Board let him understand that he--that Natcher did not work for Dr. Young.BRINSON: Let me go back now, when, when the land was deeded to the state in
1948. . .ROBINSON: Right.
BRINSON: Was that part of the strategy with Kentucky State?
ROBINSON: Yes, yes it was.
BRINSON: To make it become . . .
ROBINSON: Exactly, exactly, and then what happened was, the Lincoln Foundation
office was removed from Lincoln Institute and established in Louisville, and which Mr. Tidings went with it, and became the Executive Director of the Lincoln Foundation and Mr. Tidings could do whatever he wanted to with the uh, with the assets. So what he did, at that point, the Foundation was receiving a minimal assistance, because Mr. Tidings was using this fund to become--do you remember the Moral Rearmament?BRINSON: Moral re. . .
ROBINSON: Rearmament. That was a, uh movement on moral education, and that was
one of the thrust for the Foundation was to try to get moral education into the schools of Kentucky. And so, Mr. Tidings just did whatever he wanted to do. Now one aspect of that is that uh, the, out of the income from the endowment the Foundation would uh, uh, provide a minister for the Institute. Someone who would come out and provide church service on Sundays. And that was being paid for by the Foundation, but otherwise Mr. Tidings was making a name for himself; he was the first Director of the Louisville/Jefferson County Human Relations Commission, which the Foundation paid for him to do that, you know because this was in the moral rearmament, so forth and all that movement.BRINSON: Um, I want to ask you about the students at the Institute in the early
sixties before it closed?ROBINSON: Okay.
BRINSON: Because uh, of course in Louisville we also had high school students
who were beginning to participate in the sit-ins demonstrations . . .ROBINSON: Yes.
BRINSON: I know there was an effort in Shelbyville to open up the swimming pool
and whatnot. . .ROBINSON: Oh yes that’s right.
BRINSON: Were any of the Lincoln Institute students involved in those efforts?
ROBINSON: Oh no, no. No, no, um, I don’t, you know in reflection I don’t think
Dr. Young would have been approved of that. You know, but, but if I have to talk to you about the Lincoln school that’s a whole other chapter, because see I stayed through--on that campus, I moved to the campus in 1965 because when Dr. Young left I was brought to the campus. And then, and after his daughter left I became his Administrate Assistant. You know, Dr. Young was a very clever man. He would give you titles to do anything like, I taught biology, I was Assistant Principal, I was uh, Administrative Assistant to him, uh, and I was uh, I was in charge of gathering and doing all the accreditation reports and all that; and some of my colleagues would refer to me as Dr. Young’s flunky. You see. But at the same time I was absorbing all of what had gone on, and so--and we had become--I think I came more to being like a son to him, because his son, Whitney, Jr. was away. And when Whitney, Jr. would come to town and have to speak I would be his chauffeur. So, and then I would absorbing--we would go to Western and so forth, and I remember one time when we arrived at Bowling Green at the city limits we had a police escort; and we uh, uh, had a policeman outside of the doors the entire time that we were there.BRINSON: So uh, Whitney, Jr. was affiliated with the Urban League at that time?
ROBINSON: That’s right, he was affiliated, knew him well and really loved those
drives and conversations which I relished because he was a brilliant man Brilliant man.BRINSON: Do you remember any one in particular, any drive that you made?
ROBINSON: Well yes, he often stressed, you know partner-shipping with industry
and corporate America and so forth. And stressing to me that there is no monolithic way of uh, you know because sometimes he was considered an Uncle Tom, um, and he was uh--and he just stressed to me, “Now Sam, keep that in mind, there is no, some of the people hollering and screaming, there has to be someone at the corporate table.” He said, “When I began my work”, he said, “Those corporate executive were riding the trains from Westchester County and so forth, reading the paper all the way, and they began to look out the window to see what was going on, and it became interesting.” And he was, he had so many friends, Henry Ford was a very good friend, in fact, Henry Ford paid for his, at his death he paid the mortgage on the house. A beautiful uh, colonial house in New Rochelle.BRINSON: What was the age difference between you and Whitney, Jr.?
ROBINSON: He was born in 1921 and I was born in 1935.
BRINSON: So fourteen years?
ROBINSON: Yes.
BRINSON: Okay.
ROBINSON: Um-hmm. And um, I went through that agony with the family, because I
am uh considered a member of their family.BRINSON: At his death?
ROBINSON: At his death, well I went through. . . .
BRINSON: He was in a swimming pool as I recall. . .
ROBINSON: No. He was in the ocean in Nigeria.
BRINSON: Right.
ROBINSON: In Lagos. In the house, you have to go through the Whitney M. Young
house that my wife maintains, because that’s where we lived at one time.BRINSON: Hmm.
ROBINSON: That was my home. That’s where my children grew up, and you know it
was really beautiful because they could roam; they could ride in all of the campus. And uh, and now we laugh about it [laughing] because she said, “Daddy, sometimes those kids gave me a hard time because you were principal.” And they would look at her and badger me and so forth.BRINSON: Now let me understand the dates here a little bit. The Institute closed
as a school in . . .ROBINSON: In 1966.
BRINSON: Okay, and, and then you were there in 1965. You were there when it closed?
ROBINSON: I was there when it closed and I was there afterwards.
BRINSON: Okay.
ROBINSON: Okay, and afterwards that was the beginning of the Lincoln School.
BRINSON: Okay.
ROBINSON: The Lincoln School was a, after 1966 there were questions as to what’s
going to happen to this property, you know. Uh, and it was owned by the state, it was surplus property, they didn’t need anymore land. So, uh then Governor Breathitt, Ned Breathitt, um came forth with an idea of establishing a school for--a residential school for gifted, disadvantaged children. And so this school came out and the plan was drawn up, and for one year I um, I stayed there without students; and was paid full salary. One of my plans was to work on the establishment of the Lincoln School. But, I also used that time to take additional courses towards a Doctorate.BRINSON: Um-hmm, where were you doing your Doctorate?
ROBINSON: At University of Louisville.
BRINSON: Okay.
ROBINSON: So I had took all of these hours which eventually you know, I
accumulated enough hours that I could go back to the Bloomington campus, so I completed a Doctorate in a year and a summer. In Urban Ed and Curriculum.BRINSON: Okay. And . . .
ROBINSON: That was in 1974, but, now do you want me to go into the Lincoln School?
BRINSON: Well, I do but um, before we leave that I want to ask you, what did you
do for your dissertation? What was the topic that interested you in your Doctoral. . . .ROBINSON: Educational needs. I did a study of educational needs for the
predominantly African-American high schools in Louisville, Kentucky. And see, I did it just at the end of segregation, I mean no uh, of the merger of city/county. Because see, right after my dissertation was completed there weren’t no more African-American high schools.BRINSON: Hmm, interesting topic.
ROBINSON: Uh-hmm.
BRINSON: I do want you to tell me about the Lincoln School.
ROBINSON: Well okay. Well let me uh, as you know the school closed and so I
stayed there a year to help plan this school. And we lived there, no students, just maintaining buildings. So, the Lincoln School was established and it brought together uh--and the school was heralded as the first school of its’ kind in the nation. We recruited nationally for our teachers. We had teachers from California, Boston, we advertised in the New York Times, and we wanted creative, dynamic teachers and so forth, and we had them. We had an outstanding faculty of individuals that we had brought. . . The first year we had uh, sixty-five students from all--from the counties, which you brought the urban kids, the rural kids; and I mean from Eastern Kentucky and so forth, and you know, we had social workers, we had a physiologist, we had uh; we had no more than fifteen students in a class. Students took classes from seven a.m., to six o’clock, five o’clock in the afternoon, uh, music and art were a part of it, and so youngsters could just accumulate hours all over the place. And so uh, that went on for. . .BRINSON: Were the students racially mixed?
ROBINSON: More, there was sixty-five percent white.
BRINSON: Really?
ROBINSON: Yes, thirty-five percent black. Okay, and you know there was some
reluctance at part, and then the dynamics of bringing urban kids to rural kids, and so forth together was quite a challenge. You know, you know cultural values, music, attire, sleeping together, you know we, we encouraged white students and black students to share rooms rather than come back and have all blacks living together in one side and so forth. And. . .BRINSON: And the age range of the students?
ROBINSON: Well they were ninth, well see we began with the ninth grade and we
added a grade each year until we had a full compliment of students by twelfth grade.BRINSON: Now this of course, was the period of the whole war on poverty, and . . .
ROBINSON: Yes, it was time, it was the time of student activism, and our kids
were, our kids were activist kids. I mean we had the, you know we had the kids who were--and you know really we had a faculty that was the same way. We had brought in some very radical people to the faculty.BRINSON: How were they activist once they arrived here?
ROBINSON: Well they were activist against me as the principal, in terms…[both
laughing] They were very open with me, and sometimes very intimidating. ‘Cause they were brilliant, brilliant kids, and they would--and the faculty--I tell you that was the most difficult job that I had ever had because I had individuals who were extremely bright. And they would, they uh, they would share in the decision making. And I, you know then, that was not the case with Lincoln Institute, you know, I was pretty much an autocrat; but everything I did they questioned. You know and the kids had a newspaper one time, and one I remember vividly was that the dining room had some interest in a lard factory.BRINSON: Say that again?
ROBINSON: Lard, you know there was so much grease in the food, in the food, that
they said--and I mean they were--I mean they were real interesting. And the kids wanted--we had a thirty-year reunion--we have a reunion every year. These kids have done well, we have two or three millionaires, Ph.D.’s, uh, teachers and everything; but uh what really came out of that was the profound respect that they had for one another. These urban-ghetto kids and this white kid from--and when we have the reunion there is so much hugging and kissing all over the place. We were very much of a--we were called the flower children, because we allowed the kids to go barefooted; wore their hair down here; long hair, uh, African-Americans went with whites, whites were boys--all of that, all of that was going on.BRINSON: Of course, in this period also you had, in Louisville . . .
ROBINSON: The desegregation. You had the kids
BRINSON: Riots.
ROBINSON: You had the riots and you had a . . .
BRINSON: The housing?
ROBINSON: And you had the kids from Central going to Quinn Heights Church after
school everyday, and going to the Blue Boar. All of that, see what I would do is on my way home I would go by there to see those kids. Many of them, you know like Blaine Hudson was out there, Deonna Tinsip, Dr. Deonna. . .BRINSON: They were students out there?
ROBINSON: Yeah, Blaine was right in the middle of all of that. You know Blaine.
BRINSON: Um-hmmm.
ROBINSON: Yeah. So we would go by and I would--now that was before Lincoln
School. But see Lincoln School was right there at the very, you know at the Olympic Black Power Saloon and so forth. And uh, and that was one of the crowning blows to the demise of the school was we had a--and I, I , Dr. Young, the difference between Dr. Young--one difference was, Dr. Young was very close to the corporate community in Shelbyville. I had--I was kind of you know, on the fringe of that because I, I saw many of them as racists and I didn’t want to be bothered with them. You know, because Dr. Young was one who they respected and he was special; and they didn’t accept other African-Americans in the same light. For instance, Colonel Sanders, he lived there in the community and his uh, business was located out there. Well I was also in charge of gathering ads for the yearbooks; and so uh, I would have to go to these business and say, “Won’t you put an ad in the yearbook?” Well with Colonel Sanders I would go, and Dr. Young would call and tell him that I was coming because he had a very good relationship, and he would like--they would call me preacher, [pause] and that was insulting. And I just thought it was very, very insulting that I have to take this. And I talked to Dr. Young about that, and so he, Dr. Young would say, “Well, you know,” not that he would say nothing to it, but, you know, “Well get over it.” [laughing] “’Cause that’s what your living with.” So. . .BRINSON: How long did this uh, did this school stay in operation?
ROBINSON: Three years.
BRINSON: Three years.
ROBINSON: And I was considered a faculty member at U K, ‘cause the school was
under the directions of, of uh, U K. Now we had a Director of the school, an Executive Director of the Lincoln School, and he, but he was more of the external person. His name was William Tisdale.BRINSON: How do you spell that ?
ROBINSON: T-I-S-D-A-L-E.
BRINSON: Okay.
ROBINSON: Very liberal, very fine person. Now I was the principal and I was in
charge of, I was in charge of the day to day operation of the school. He was also still, he was also Director, head of Special Ed at U L, I mean U K, and so forth. But, let me tell you what happened when the faculty was selected. Initially all of the teachers were white, and here I had an all white faculty, and I hate to be--I thought some of the people were prejudiced. Like one woman told Dr. Young, she had real problems working for me. And she was, she was brilliant, she was an excellent person and so forth, but she said, “Sometimes I just can’t grasp the idea of me working for an African-American, I just can’t.” She said, “That’s what is eating at me.” She said, “And I know that in subtle ways I let Sam know that.” And she did. But she was so good at what she does and her interest in the kids that I tolerated it. Then I became concerned about that, you know. At first she had said that we have thirty-five percent African-Americans, and then we brought, began to bring on African-Americans, we had an African American--no wait a minute let me go back to that. We had two of them, the social worker was black, and so she was never there because she was going to visit homes, you know. She did a lot with home schools. Excellent woman, you know she had MSW and so forth, really something. So we were the two. So after that we uh, the school went, well we a, and uh we were constantly under scrutiny [laughing].BRINSON: So you were a national pilot.
ROBINSON: Yeah, we had people coming in from all over, and I was going places
speaking on you know, about what it was; but it was also interesting that the Grand Jury in Shelby County visited us on a regular basis.BRINSON: Now why was that?
ROBINSON: To monitor us because we were considered communists some of them. This
was a communistic experiment.BRINSON: Talk about that a little bit more.
ROBINSON: Well we were, we had a very, we had a Rogerian approach to education.
You know, uh Carl Rodgers and his stuff, we were right in--right in there--humanistic education.BRINSON: Hmm.
ROBINSON: And that was the antithesis to what was going on in Shelby County and
so forth--but there were Shelby County--but we had the best of everything, we had – the kids . . .END SIDE ONE TAPE TWO
BEGIN SIDE TWO TAPE TWO
ROBINSON: . . . you know was. . .
BRINSON: Rich.
ROBINSON: Was very, very rich. And what I liked about it, all about more than
anything--about this respect thing, the African-American kids loved uh, you know a certain type of music; but we made provisions for the, you know the kids from Eastern Kentucky. For one time the music would be their kind of music and then they—they--they were very respectful of their differences. And it was not a lot of racists stuff going on that people would, would go on and, but once in a while--the most traumatic cases that I dealt with had to do with a kid from uh, Paducah, from one of the rural counties. His mother had really expressed that she did not like having her son in a school with a nigger principal. So this kid was hostile toward me, you know very hostile, and we were trying to hold on to the kids; and sometimes I took stuff, that you know I shouldn’t have. I was just trying to give him a chance. I ended up suspending this kid from school. This woman was going to take me to court. She uh, I mean they did a lot to try to calm her down--that’s when Dr. Tisdale and all of them—‘cause she was going to say, “This nigger, what he did to my son.” And so uh, what happened was that uh, she said to him that I should take sodium pentothal to really get the truth; that I should be administered sodium pentothal, because she felt like that I had not been above--I mean I had two white kids like that. Two, one was from Lexington, the other was from--okay where--Caldwell County.BRINSON: Caldwell?
ROBINSON: Okay, and both of them were basically racists. They stuck to
themselves like three or four, two or three of them, they was a little clan in the school. So they didn’t have much to do with the other kids, but every time they would get the chance they would show hostility, and we would get them out of there, we got them out of there. So I had to go through that.BRINSON: Tell me about the Shelby County Grand Jury.
ROBINSON: Well they always came back with a very positive report.
BRINSON: Did they send one or more people.
ROBINSON: No, four or five people would come and they would go look, they would
go to the classrooms, and so forth; and we always received glowing remarks; but I think that they kept sending them there because they wanted to keep us on our toes.BRINSON: Well what did they say they were coming for, I mean that’s a pretty
unusual. . .ROBINSON: Just an examination of the school.
BRINSON: That’s pretty unusual for a Grand Jury.
ROBINSON: Of course, of course, we were under scrutiny. And one of the, and at
the time--you know it’s interesting that I am serving on the State Department of Education Board. The State Department was the biggest joke that we laughed about, because you had all of those incompetent people there and they stayed away from us. They wouldn’t come near, they didn’t want to come near because our teachers made an ass out of them when they came there, and laughed about it.BRINSON: Hmm, now were those students involved outside of the campus?
ROBINSON: Of course they did. They loved to do things to irritate the people.
For instance a white girl and a white boy they would go up there and integrated holding hands and long hair, and they knew what they were doing. And I got a call that said if you don’t keep those flower children from coming up here, we’re going to kill them.BRINSON: Coming up here was where?
ROBINSON: They would walk to the store, Simpsonville. You know it’s a little
community there, Simpsonville. And they would walk up there to the store to buy their goods and so forth, and while they were there they would kiss, you know, start fondling over each other in the store; and that was just more than these people could take. And they would say--we warned them about that too. We told them, “Now wait a minute,” you know we gave them the privilege to live on campus but we talked to them about their behavior; that these are some very, very dangerous people out there, and you have to walk up that highway to Simpsonville, cross the bridge and on your way back you could have been killed an nobody would have known anything.BRINSON: What happened to the school Sam, after three years?
ROBINSON: Okay, well let me get to that. One of the crowning blows to the
school, because the school, the uh, excuse for closing the school was because of excessive costs per people.BRINSON: And it was state money?
ROBINSON: It was state money. But the real reason why the Lincoln School closed,
it was because of racism; the feeling that we were too far out you know, in terms of what we did. And so, but that never surfaced, because what happened was--one of the crowning events that happened--that we played--our basketball team played the Shelbyville basketball team. The National Anthem was played; some of the kids sat; and some of these black kids did the Black Power Salute, and it was headlines upon headlines about what’s going on there in that controversial place; the a, a hotbed for liberalism, they got to go. That is what closed us.BRINSON: So, so the state legislature . . .
ROBINSON: They, our funds were not. . .
BRINSON: . . . they would not put funds in the budget?
ROBINSON: Yeah for the money, but we had one graduating class of forty-two
students. All forty-two of those youngsters received four-year scholarships to college. All to Yale, to Harvard, to Princeton, U K, U L, everybody was after our kids. Stanford. All forty-two received four-year scholarships.BRINSON: That’s pretty amazing.
ROBINSON: Isn’t it. One of my, Gail Ecten, do you know Gail Ecten?
BRINSON: I just know the name.
ROBINSON: Okay, he was on the faculty, he was my Assistant Principal. I had a
white Assistant Principal who is very close, we are still very close today.BRINSON: He’s the fellow who authored, The Founding of the Lincoln Institute,
the Lincoln School?ROBINSON: No, no, yeah, you mean. . . .
BRINSON: The article you gave me.
ROBINSON: That was not what I wanted – yeah, this is his dissertation. That is
his dissertation from U K.BRINSON: I would like to read this too.
ROBINSON: Yeah, you can have it. Okay, but no I have another article by George
Wright that you need to read.BRINSON: Do you want to stop and take a break for a minute?
ROBINSON: Yeah, let me get some water.
BRINSON: We’ve just taken a break . . .
ROBINSON: We were talking about the Lincoln School.
BRINSON: Right.
ROBINSON: We were talking about the Lincoln School and uh, and its’ demise. The
Lincoln School as I indicated earlier, had to--now I had told you about the incident related to the Black Power salute and so forth--and so we had our uh, graduating class, we--those students who, as you know, the kids had a lot of flexibility in terms of while they were in school. We had one youngster to finish the Lincoln School with twelve college hours. And so many of them went to U L and so forth to take courses while they were enrolled there at, and so forth. We also had a summer school that summer after the graduation to allow as many of the students an opportunity to graduate from the Lincoln School; because as you know many of them--uh, normally we expect students to take five or six courses--they were taking eight and nine at one--you know because they would add music; they would have all of those courses after the regular school hours.BRINSON: So you had to close the school when you actually had students who were
not ready to graduate.ROBINSON: We closed the school, but those who could get enough credits for
graduation in August, we allowed them to graduate and they came back. So we didn’t have a large graduation but we allowed, so Lincoln School was in operation through August.BRINSON: And were there any students who were, uh, who had to go on to other
schools? High schools?ROBINSON: Oh yeah, yes they did. Many of them returned uh, to uh, to their local
high schools. But we also had individuals from boarding schools coming to ask us--and several of our students wound up going to boarding schools in the east.BRINSON: Okay, okay. Umm.
ROBINSON: For instance, I really wish you would talk to Gwen Young. Gwen is a
Vice President at National City Bank in here. She wound up going to a boarding school in Appleton Wisconsin, later she received a full scholarship to Carlton College, and she has a law degree from the University of Minnesota. And she at one time was the Executive Director of the Louisville/Jefferson County Human Relations Commission, and now she is a Vice President at National City Bank. She is one that uh, you could talk to.BRINSON: Okay.
ROBINSON: Now I think one of our most, well let me get this card here. The one,
if your talking about--you know success is relative--and if you want to use the criterion for economic success, uh you would use Mike Stadther, he lives in New York City.BRINSON: How do you spell his last name?
ROBINSON: S-T-A-D-T-H-E-R.
BRINSON: Okay.
ROBINSON: He is the Co-Founder of one of the, uh, dot coms.
BRINSON: Hmm, um-hmm.
ROBINSON: He lives on an estate in Westchester County and so forth. With the
house with the guest house.BRINSON: And you get these students together again for . . .
ROBINSON: Well they were here this last--they get together every five years. And
he was here, and he paid for a lot of expenses related to the event. Very nice, one of the most complete persons I have ever come across. An artists, a math genius, a really nice, general, I really, he reminds me of Bill Gates. I’m talking about in terms of--now he’s the one who had twelve hours of college before he even – and he grew up right there off Third Street. He, at the time he entered our program he was a student at Manual High School.BRINSON: You mentioned earlier that the school came about because of some
interest by Governor Breathitt, and what not. Did he stay involved in any way?ROBINSON: Well he did, he did. That dissertation will really point out how
Reverend Jackson from Frankfort was involved. There was a lot of people involved, the State Department was involved, and the Board of Directors, the state had people; Dr. Young was very much involved in that. One thing that I also wanted to tell you was that, Dr. Young played a pivotal role in my getting the job.BRINSON: Dr. Young, Sr.
ROBINSON: Yes. Senior. Because I had taught at the Institute, he uh, and Mr.
Tidings was about to retire, he was seventy-four years old; and uh, Dr. Young came to me and said--at the time I had served from 1970 to 1973 at Shawnee High School as principal.BRINSON: Hmm.
ROBINSON: Wait, wait, let me just be sure for accuracy. The first year from
seventy--that’s after I left Lincoln--from 1970 to 1971 I served as the Assistant Principal at Shawnee High School. Then in seventy-one I became the principal of Shawnee High School. Also related to that is that we moved to a nearly an all white neighborhood and experienced some problems.BRINSON: What kinds of problems?
ROBINSON: People unfriendly, they didn’t want African-Americans to move to their
middle-class neighborhood so forth, and they were not very kind to us.BRINSON: Did they say things to you?
ROBINSON: Subtle things. Uh, not wanting children to play with our children, so
that type of thing. However, we were very fortunate to move next door to a very nice liberal family who had children our children’s’ age.BRINSON: Um, can you tell me the name of the neighborhood?
ROBINSON: Bancroft. It’s right near Ballard High School. It’s a very
middle-classed neighborhood and the audacity of me to be moving there was not well-taken by some people. There were a lot of nice people, but some of them for instance--one neighbor shared with me that a lady down the street that had told the milkman if her served the Robinson Family then he could cut her milk off. And so you know that. . .BRINSON: Did he continue to service you?
ROBINSON: Yes.
BRINSON: He was not intimidated by her?
ROBINSON: No, he was not intimidated by her; and she threw it out that she knew
she needed milk. And then I just, I became a Commissioner of a--I always get these fifth and sixth class--it was a fifth class city. You know, and so . . .BRINSON: You were a Commissioner?
ROBINSON: I became a member of the Operational Board for the city.
BRINSON: Oh, a City Commissioner.
ROBINSON: A City Commissioner, I was elected, because you have to be elected by,
you know people who live in that environment, and I served for three or four years as a Commissioner.BRINSON: Okay, in the seventies?
ROBINSON: In the seventies.
BRINSON: Okay, I’m going to stop here since we have agreed. I do have one other
thing I want to ask you, but we have agreed when we broke that I am going to come back and we are going to begin to talk about things like the City Commission, the Foundation; and--but before I leave I want to ask you, because I know from the Courier Journal article on you, that you marched with Martin Luther King.ROBINSON: I did.
BRINSON: And I wonder if you could just tell me a little bit about that.
ROBINSON: Well it was the open housing here in Louisville. Well I met Martin
Luther King when I was at Tennessee State, and he came to speak to us. I sat on the stage with him because I was very involved with the Student Christian Association on campus, SCA. And uh, Martin, we always had on those campuses religious entities to speak, and he came at the joint--and this always involved Tennessee State, Meharry, and Fisk--uh, this it was always a joint effort. So there was a joint meeting at Tennessee State and I was Co-Chair of the Religious Entities Committees Activities for that particular year, and Dr. King came there and I was just--we were just so, we were very much impressed with his delivery, his vision, and we said, “He’s just a praying man.” We were just carried away, and because of, of the University minister had said, “You must, Sam,” and told us, “You must hear this minister.” And we were impressed that he had a Doctorate in Theology. And you know, really from Boston U, and he was so young, and I think he had a Doctorate before when he was what like in his twenties. And we were just thoroughly uh, impressed, and one of my friends was dating a young lady from Union Screens, Alabama, who had grown up with Coretta. So, in fact he ended up marrying her, so we were idealistic. We were, you know--we were as you know these were mostly kids who were not athletes. And I was not an athlete, and in fact sometimes we would just say, “Why do we have to live with these types.” And you know we were just up there, visionary in terms of what we could do. And that’s uh, I met him there; and then when he came here in the sixties, we had open housing marches in various parts of the city and so forth. Now I had been nominated for the Freedom Award here that is given by the Mayor, and uh, a young man has written a piece related to that, let me see if I can get a copy of that for you.BRINSON: Okay, let me ask you a question or two before you do that though
please. Um, I know that uh, Martin Luther King was here in the sixties, and that his brother was a minister here, I--do you have any idea if he came here at all in the fifties?ROBINSON: I don’t know that. I don’t know that. I could not answer that. He was
here a lot in the sixties and he was here a lot when his brother A. D. Williams King was the minister at Zion Baptist Church here in town.BRINSON: Okay. Did any other people with name recognition come through
Louisville, that you recall?ROBINSON: Oh yeah. Well Julian Bond has uh, Lincoln Institute roots. You know
Julian Bond was here, and Snick Stelltick all of those, Jose Williams, all of those rabble-rousers came.BRINSON: I was wondering when you were talking about the first meeting, Martin
Luther King, that actually made me think, did you ever know, or have any interaction with Steven Wright?ROBINSON: Sure, sure he was the President of the ( ). Sure and then went to
Hampton, of course, we are fraternity brothers. Yeah Steve and I were frat brothers, I belonged to Sigma Pi Phi. Sigma Pi Phi is the oldest fraternity among African-Americans. It was founded in the early nineteen hundreds, and supposed to have included the talented ten that the boy talked about; and we still are moving. So to be elected to Sigma Pi Phi was one of the greatest. That really means that you have arrived, and we still adhere to that; but what has happened with Sigma Pi Phi is that we do not live up to the ideals of ( ). Because he thought that we should be change agents, in terms of you are the talented men, you should be leaders in social change; but most of the people that was in leadership, like Governor Walter is Sigma Pi Phi, um, ( ) was Sigma Ki Phi, all of the great leaders, Benjamin Hook, was Sigma Ki Phi, Dr. Young and his son, both. And so we still go on, but we have--we are trying to get back to that, but what has happened is that it has been more social than. . ..BRINSON: I’ll have to look that up. You mentioned knowing Ruby Martin when we
were taking a break.ROBINSON: Yeah well Ruby I worked with, you know with her work in civil rights.
And um, I have gotten to know her more because in the last uh, year--I mean several years, I have uh, been the person, the team leader for Kentucky dealing with higher desegregation in higher education. And so for several years I have gone to Atlanta for the Southern Educational Foundation Report on Desegregation. Have you seen those reports?BRINSON: Not . . .
ROBINSON: I have some of those, so if you need them I have those. No, uh ( ) we
talk about the Adams case and the implications, and my job has been--Ruby is the coordinator. Ruby asked me, I think uh, asked me if I would do that, and so I have lead the Kentucky Team. Sharrad Jackson is usually a part of the team, we have people from--Gerald Neal is a part of it, and we go there and talk about what--and we have never--we have not done what we are--we were supposed to come back and put on a conference here, dealing with desegregation in higher education; but I’m a member of the Committee on Equal Opportunities, and so you know we are basically doing that when we do our campus visits.BRINSON: Okay, let’s stop for today and find another time that is good for you
that we can pick this up again.ROBINSON: Okay.
BRINSON: Thank you.
ROBINSON: Excuse me, what are you going to do with this?
END SIDE TWO TAPE TWO
END OF INTERVIEW
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