Oral History Interview with George Gill

ETHEL WHITE: This is a conversation with George Gill. We are at his studio at 419 Cherry Lane in Peewee Valley. It is May 9th, 2000. My name is Ethel White.

WHITE: If we could start with some background, some biographical material on you starting with where you are from and focusing on your profession.

GEORGE GILL: Well, I was born, brought up in Indianapolis and went to Indiana University where I graduated in 1957. I split up my college by service in the Navy for two years, so I was a little behind. My original class was 1955. And from there I went to Richmond, Virginia to become a reporter for the afternoon paper there called The News Leader, 1:00and I stayed there for three years. I came to Louisville in 1960 as a copy editor and later became a reporter. And in ’sixty-five I became city editor and in 1966 became managing editor, meaning that I was responsible for the news product of The Courier-Journal from 1965 till 1974 when I became general manager.

WHITE: Let’s see, if we could go back and fill in some of the blanks starting with, perhaps with how you got into journalism.

GILL: Well, I got into journalism by putting out a weekly typewritten newspaper when I was about seven years old (laughing) in Indianapolis, and I always wanted to be in the 2:00newspaper business. I always wanted to be a newspaper reporter and I—in high school I worked for the high school newspaper. I also played on the basketball team and I covered sports, which made it very difficult to get my own name into the high school (laughing) newspaper. I never was editor of the high school newspaper because of--the counselor advised me that it was reserved for people who were serious about journalism. And the guy who beat me out was a guy named Johnny Shreve, who went on and became an Air Force pilot and flew commercial jets for a living; and I went on into the newspaper business. I majored in journalism and government at Indiana and worked on The Indiana Daily Student, and I became its editor in the fall of my senior year after I came back from the Navy. I was in the public information 3:00end of the Navy in Norfolk and in the, in the Atlantic fleet. I met my wife, Kay, at The Indiana Daily Student. The first time I ever laid eyes on her, she had ink all over her elbows from making up the front page of The Indiana Daily Student. And I drove a taxicab to make money in college to help me through, and I used to court her in the taxicab, unbeknownst to the owner of the cab company. And we ended up being married in 1957, and I’ve been paying for it ever since. We’ve been now married forty-two years.

WHITE: Paying for it how?

GILL: (laughing) The, uh, move to Richmond after college, uh, gave some 4:00of the people at Indiana some pause because they were training people for Indiana newspapers basically. But I had been in the Navy in Norfolk and was involved in news stories, primarily airplane accidents, representing the Navy’s interest; and worked with The News Leader in an airplane crash that occurred over the city of Richmond and killed a bunch of people in, I think 1955--or 1955 I guess it was. And because of that work with the Navy, they offered me a summer internship between my junior and senior years of college and I accepted it. And then they offered me a full-time job after I graduated. And so I went back to Virginia; but it was really a fortunate move for me professionally 5:00because of what was going on in the country in those days. The Brown versus Board of Education decision was in 1954, as I recall, and the follow-on was the all-deliberate-speed directive of the Supreme Court in 1955.

WHITE: Round two.

GILL: Yeah. And I landed in Richmond in 1956, and one of the cases in Brown versus Board of Education was Prince Edward County Virginia. And in those days, uh, Virginia didn’t think the war was over, that being the War Between the States, as they, they call it. And Virginia launched into a, a policy of massive resistance 6:00to school integration, and I, as a reporter, was covering the federal courts at that time. And that’s where a lot of these lawsuits were coming to trial, and particularly the Appeals Court; the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals was there. And so I saw it from the legalistic standpoint in the courtroom, and then spent an awful lot of time in Front Royal, Virginia where they closed the schools for two years rather than admit Negroes--as they were called in those days. I covered the White Citizens Council, which was the white arm of the, the citizens organized to resist massively the order to integrate. And I covered school closings in Norfolk and in Charlottesville. And, interestingly--and 7:00some activity in Richmond itself, although Richmond came a little bit later--interestingly, the attorney for the school board in Richmond was Louis Powell, who later became Chairman of the School Board in Richmond; and then later, of course, became a Justice of the Supreme Court, or a Justice of the United States, I should say. And in those early days, Thurgood Marshall, who was an attorney for the NAACP, came through Richmond frequently to argue court cases, and I covered a lot of his activities. I don’t know whether you want anecdotal stuff along the way or not.

WHITE: I would like to get as much as you can remember. (laughter-Gill) Anecdotal is fine and, 8:00I mean, starting with what you—why don’t you . . . we’ll give you free rein.

GILL: Thinking about Thurgood Marshall, he, he borrowed a little law office down on, downtown storefront in Richmond and was--he and an attorney named Spotswood Robinson were active, very active with the NAACP and prosecuting these cases. Well, we worked awfully hard and we worked hand-in-glove with all of the attorneys, and covering all of this thing. And every once in a while at the end of the day, 4:30 or so in the afternoon—and I worked for an afternoon paper so my day was over by two o’clock in the afternoon—Mr. Marshall would say, “Boy, isn’t it about five o’clock?” (laughing) I’d say, “Yeah, I think it is.” So we’d sit down in his little office, and he’d pull a little bottle of whiskey out of his, his brief bag; 9:00and we had a little drink. And I never will forget that. That was back in the days--in the fifties--before, obviously before Watergate and before Vietnam; when reporters tended to trust their sources and sources tended to trust reporters. And one of the major techniques of understanding this movement and of reporting this movement, or any complex news story, was that the reporter—and this was my approach—I would say, “Help me understand this.” And, “Explain this to me.” And “Can we go over this one more time.” And, of course, the 1950’s also brought you the McCarthy era, which was 10:00trusting of sources that ran amok. But having said that, it was still a time of trust between reporters and their sources. I covered the, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals out of which many of these integration decisions were coming. And working for an afternoon newspaper, I had a deadline of 10:30 in the morning, and opinions came in at ten o’clock and were released. And so I had about twenty minutes to consume the details of these decisions and dictate a story off the top of my head to the newspaper. And of course my stories were picked up by the Associated Press and went throughout the state, and went throughout the country for that matter; and so it was absolutely critical that I not make mistakes. And as a young reporter, I felt that burden very heavily. 11:00The chief judge of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals was a fellow named Simon Sobolof, and he was a former solicitor general of the United States; and then was appointed to the Fourth Circuit. And I think he lived in Baltimore, but the headquarters of the Court was in Richmond. And one day I wandered into his chambers in the afternoon, and he was lying on a couch having a sort of a nap and sort of dictating things. And I told him of my dilemma. I said, “Here I am a young reporter. I’ve got this tremendous responsibility and I want to make sure that I understand what the Court is saying.” Because the nuances in some of those opinions were pretty, uh, hard to understand very quickly. And Judge Sobolof said to me, “Well, I understand you.” 12:00And he said, “Let me tell you what I want you to do.” He said, “I want to give you a bunch of phone numbers.” And he gave me a bunch of phone numbers, his home and his office in Baltimore and so forth. And he said, “When you’ve got an opinion that you don’t feel comfortable reporting on, you give me a call.” And he said, “Find me someplace.” And he said, “I will tell you what page to look on, and what paragraph to look at so you know precisely the Court’s intent.” And I said, “Well, that’s very gracious of you, and I will take advantage of that.” Well, I did several times when the Court issued orders that resulted in the closing of schools in Warren County, Virginia, which is up north, and Charlottesville and Norfolk. I called him and it was all off the record, but he gave me 13:00in layman’s terms the meaning of the decision that the Court had just handed down. So I could report with then what I thought was great accuracy, the intent of the Court and—because these were very volatile times. There was no particularly violent environment, but still there were demonstrations and there were school closings; and, and it was still a very critical time for the courts to be intervening in the school systems. And so that was the experience of a trusting young reporter back in those days.

WHITE: Can you remind me or educate me about—and whoever’s listening—about those, some of those cases. Were, were most of them directed at school closings, and did most of them fall in the same direction?

GILL: Yes, they all, they all fell in the same direction. And I think there were—Prince Edward County 14:00was a county school system and was part of the Brown case. Then, by extension, after the ‘all-deliberate-speed decision’ in ’fifty-five, lawsuits were filed by the NAACP, and several jurisdictions--among them Warren County, Virginia and Charlottesville, Norfolk and later Richmond. And they went through the District court phase and they went to the Appeals court phase; and it was at the Appeals court level where the decisions came down on the side of the NAACP plaintiffs that says, “Yes, the state school system had to admit Negroes to the school system.” And the response in Prince Edward and Warren County, Charlottesville, and Norfolk was to close the schools. And they shut down the schools. And the White Citizens Councils and other white groups 15:00formed associations to run schools for white children in church buildings and that sort of thing. In the meantime, the Negroes were out on the street with no place to go to school, except when they went to the school, the school was closed. So that was kind of the gist of what was going on.

WHITE: And did the courts then force the schools to reopen?

GILL: Uh, eventually, yes, in some cases, as I recall. The courts forced the schools to reopen and then finally . . .

WHITE: Were you still there when that happened?

GILL: Well, yeah. I--my memory is a little fuzzy about that, but I think, uh, I don’t remember ever covering the admission—maybe I did in Warren County—the admission of, of black children to the public school when it reopened. I think Warren County was closed for about a year and then reopened and, uh, under--and also the state legislature was involved in this 16:00and, and dictated the funding for these schools. And so it was very difficult to, for a local school system to obey the federal law on the one hand, or the federal court’s mandate on the one hand; and on the other hand have funding cut off by the state of Virginia because they had no funds to run the schools. So even though the local school boards may have wanted to open up the schools on an integrated basis, it was very difficult because of the state legislature.

WHITE: Uh, I want to ask you about that in a minute; but before we leave the courts, did you cover any of the lower court decision making . . .

GILL: Yeah, I covered . . .

WHITE: . . . other than the Court of Appeals?

GILL: I covered the district court in Richmond but that, that scope was limited because these other, these outlying counties in the state were in other district courts’ jurisdiction. So when I got 17:00in on the act, it was usually (coughs), excuse me, it was usually at the appellate level.

WHITE: Do you remember anything about divisions within any of the courts?

GILL: Uh . . .

WHITE: Any that stuck in your mind?

GILL: No, not particularly. The Fourth Circuit, I think, had seven judges at that time, six or seven judges; and the court was pretty unanimous because it had the mandate of the Supreme Court in 1954 and ’fifty-five behind it. So there was little they could do if they did disagree.

WHITE: Did you also cover the legislature?

GILL: No, I, I did not. That was somebody else’s responsibility. But of course the legislature met in Richmond, and I was there when it met. And so it was very much a topic on everybody’s mind about what the legislature was doing in, in terms of trying to oppose what the federal courts were trying 18:00to impose on the school districts.

WHITE: And what did you--I suppose we’re wandering into hearsay here, but I think since we’re not a court of law, it’s okay--what, what were you hearing in the newsroom from people who covered the legislature?

GILL: Well, the, the newsroom then, as now, was basically made up of, of people who had a liberal bent. And so there was a good deal of snickering and disapproval, although the reporters tried very much to cover the story fairly and, and thoroughly and honestly. Personally, I think they were--most of us were pretty revolted by what the state of Virginia was trying to do.

WHITE: Well did they, did they describe ever in your hearing what was going on in the legislature? In other words, how the issue was being grappled with?

GILL: Well, it was just being grappled with under this umbrella: massive resistance 19:00and states rights and we’re not going to do it. And, of course, the editor of The News Leader in those days was James Jackson Kilpatrick, who later went on to write a national syndicated column. And Kilpo, as he was called, was a champion of massive resistance. And he wrote ponderous volumes of editorials trying to legitimatize his position, that it was the state’s right to resist massively. So the editorial tone of the paper I worked for was very, very conservative. And, in fact, when I was a reporter in Warren County and, and Front Royal, and the schools were closed, and I was reporting daily on the activities of the children and the maneuvering of the politicians 20:00and this and that, uh, Kilpatrick sent an editorial writer to Front Royal to write the edit-, to write the real story. And so in my own paper I was giving, writing news reports every day; and on the editorial page, the editorial writer was writing about the same events but with a very, very right wing point of view, which was pretty frustrating. And it, it—another thing that I recall, I was, I was called in by the publisher of the paper, Ted Bryant, and asked--not asked, I was told to write press releases for the White Citizens group up in Front Royal at the same time 21:00I was reporting on them. And I refused to do it. I said, “I cannot do that ethically.” And shortly thereafter when I was on the streets in Warren County and the White Citizens Council guy called me over and said, “We know you’re on our side,” and so forth and so on. And it was a pretty brutal ethical dilemma for me personally. I should have quit.

WHITE: He, he said to you, “We know you’re . . .

GILL: On our side.

WHITE: . . . on our side.” Even though you were not.

GILL: Even though I was not. And, and in those days, also, reporting on the streets was difficult because the White Citizens groups would talk to me; and the liberal groups, the Negro groups, would not talk to me because of the paper I represented. And there was a lot of national press involved, and The Washington Post and The, then, Washington Star--now defunct--had 22:00reporters on the scene. And the reporter for The Washington Star was a woman named Ludie Werner, who went on to win the Pulitzer that year for her coverage of the integration situation in Virginia; and Bob Baker, who worked for The Washington Post, both had the ears of the black folks in town and what their dilemma was and could not talk to the white side, because the white folks wouldn’t talk to them. So I would listen and report on the white side because the white folks would not talk to them, and they would listen and report on the black side. And then we would get behind the barn and exchange notes and, uh, so as to present a balanced story every day. But the emotion—as I say, there was not necessarily the threat of violence--but the emotions were very, very high.

WHITE: I was going to ask you what you were seeing out there on the streets. 23:00GILL: Well . . .

WHITE: What do high emotions look like?

GILL: Well, high, high emotions look like enormous bravado on the part of, of white politicians, uh, thinking they had beaten the system.

WHITE: Why did they think they had beaten the system?

GILL: Well, because they . . .

WHITE: Because they were able to resist the courts.

GILL: That’s right, and they had closed the schools. And ‘see, we’ll show them.’ And on the black, or Negro, side, as it was known in those days, uh, determination, a lot of enormous frustration. A lot of those kids were--the black kids were every bit as promising as, as anybody else, and they were on the streets. They had no place to go to school.

WHITE: Their determination and their frustration, how was that played out on the street? I mean, were they shouting? 24:00Were they demonstrating?

GILL: No, there weren’t particularly demonstrations. There were meetings. A lot of church meetings, a lot of church involvement; a lot of, of determination on the part of the legal, legal side, the attorneys, uh, trying to pursue different legal avenues and none of which seemed to be working. So it, it was emotional and somewhat tense but not, not--it didn’t come close to violence. At, at some of the schools there were demonstrations. There were black kids who demonstrated, there were white kids who demonstrated, white parents and black parents and that sort of thing. But in Virginia I never got the feeling we were close to fist fights and rock throwing. Now that’s greatly opposed to what happened in Louisville and elsewhere 25:00later on with the open housing and open, and eating establishments and that sort of thing, where there really was violence. But, uh, there was really no sense of violence, just a sense of tension and, and, and dismay.

WHITE: Of course, we’re not focused on Richmond, but is there anything else particularly telling as far as being a prelude to coming to Louisville goes in Richmond? Does that sum up your . . .

GILL: Well, that’s, that’s about, that’s a quick overview of three years. It was, it was very busy and the thing was by no means resolved by the time I left in 1960. And I had always wanted to work for The Courier-Journal and I got my chance, was offered a job, in 26:00late 1959 and came to work in February of 1960. So I did leave sort of a story without an ending in Richmond, but it was soon to pick up again right here in Louisville.

WHITE: So this—it sounds like this was both a negative and a positive step. You were ready to leave Richmond, but you also . . .

GILL: I really wanted . . .

WHITE: . . . wanted to come to The Courier-Journal.

GILL: I wanted to come to The Courier-Journal . I also wanted to see some of those stories through, but you had to make choices.

WHITE: And, and when you—who hired you at The Courier-Journal?

GILL: Uh, James S. Pope was the executive editor.

WHITE: And what were you, what were you told when you were offered a job? Were you--was there a niche you were to have or . . .

GILL: Well, I came to work on the copy desk, and the copy desk works at night. Edits copy and writes headlines; and I worked from 27:00four o’clock in the afternoon till two o’clock in the morning. And I had like Tuesday and Thursday off, worked every weekend at nights. And I always thought that if I behaved myself and worked hard, I could get two days off in a row in day work someday. Copy editors were hard to find and I was so anxious to come to The Courier, that I took what was offered; and it was a copy-editing job. I had my interview with Jimmy Pope, Senior at Sigma Delta Chi--and that’s the professional journalism fraternity--Convention in Indianapolis in late 1959. And I had contacted Jimmy and he said that, ‘he would see me at the convention.’ Well, the convention went on for two or three days, and we hadn’t made a connection; 28:00and it was the final banquet, and I had my clippings under my arm ready to show and all of this. And, uh, my wife and I were sitting way in the back of the room, and Jimmy Pope was sitting up at a very prominent table in front of this huge banquet hall with Barry Bingham, Senior and Mark Ethridge, who was then publisher. And the speaker of the evening was Richard Nixon, and Richard Nixon was sitting five feet away. And my wife kept goading me to go up and make myself known. So finally I sucked it up and walked across this banquet hall full of people and up to this table and introduced myself. And Jimmy Pope said, “Hunker down here a minute. Let me talk to you a second.” And he talked to me for about five minutes, introduced me to Barry Bingham, Senior and to Mark Ethridge. And he said, “I’ll be in touch.” 29:00And the next week I got a letter offering me a job on the copy desk, so it was wise that I got up and went across the room (laughing) when I did. But I was on the copy desk only for about a year because my real love was reporting, and so in the fall of 1960, late in the fall of 1960, I guess, I became a reporter for The Courier-Journal.

WHITE: And was there a mood in Louisville that you could describe as far as, uh, feel anything sort of as far as racial relations went?

GILL: Uh, the, uh, I guess the predominant feel when, when I became a reporter and had turned away from schools; and you know Louisville had had a history of successfully and very peacefully integrating 30:00the parks, the libraries in the fifties, I guess, before I got here. And the school system, as I recall, in those days was integrated. And I think I’m correct on that. So the focus was shifting in Louisville toward public accommodations. And about that time, uh, the sit-ins had begun at lunch counters down in, in the deeper South, where the Negro kids would go in and demand service and were refused. So I guess it was about early 1961—and some of these dates sort of meld together in my mind--but in the early sixties the movement was beginning 31:00to come to the fore in Louisville. And there were some rallies that were being held by black children after school. The focus was Quinn Chapel out on West Chestnut, and the leader always was Frank Stanley, Junior, whose family owned the, the black newspaper in Louisville, The Louisville Defender. So I think I covered, as a reporter, the first sit-in in Louisville, and that occurred one evening—and I think it was in the spring of, uh, I believe it was 1961, but I could be wrong. But it was around then. And a group of about half a dozen black kids gathered 32:00at the . . .

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE ONE BEGIN TAPE ONE SIDE TWO GILL: Always ethnic designations were in the process of change. Back in those days, they were ‘Negroes’ and called themselves Negroes. And then--this was on the, right on the eve of when ‘black’ became popular, and then ‘Afro-American’ became popular, and then ‘African-American;’ and nowadays ‘people of color’ and so forth and so on. So when I speak of Negroes and blacks, it’s all kind of mixed up in the timing. But a group of black kids gathered at Quinn Chapel and marched into downtown Louisville to Cupie’s Restaurant on North Fifth Street. Cupie’s was located just north of Walnut, uh, in a, in a building that’s no longer there. And Cupie’s 33:00was a, a lunch counter with hamburgers and this and that. And the black kids went in, and sat down, and were refused service. And I was there and watched this happen. And then the black kids . . .

WHITE: May I interrupt you?

GILL: Yeah.

WHITE: Why were you there?

GILL: I, I was . . .

WHITE: Did you know what was going to happen?

GILL: I knew it was going to happen, right.

WHITE: Somebody called the paper or . . .

GILL: Well, in those days I was kind of assigned to the civil rights beat, and I was in touch with Frank Stanley all the time; and they were having frequent rallies and this and that and deciding what to do. So it was just a part of my reporting that I knew it was going to happen, so I was there. And it was seven o’clock in the evening, and they were denied service and as—and these kids were young; I mean, they were, you know, twelve, thirteen, fourteen—and they began to fool around. 34:00And they got ketchup, and they got mustard, and they squirted it on the counters and so forth. And, as I recall, the Cupie management called the police, and the police came; and the kids sort of peacefully left. The police told them to leave, and nobody was arrested. So I went back to the paper to write my story, and I was quickly informed that there was to be no story written; and that was on orders of the Executive Editor, James Pope. And I was never given an explanation except by inference that this was a disruption and it was not in the best interest of the city to write a story about this happening. So to my knowledge, this was the first sit-in in Louisville, and it was never reported 35:00by The Courier-Journal.

WHITE: Do you know if it was reported by, say, The Defender?

GILL: I think it was probably reported by The Defender, as I recall, yeah, but . . .

WHITE: And was—forgive me for continuing to interrupt you . . .

GILL: That’s all right.

WHITE: But what about The Louisville Times?

GILL: The Louisville—the same executive editor ruled both The Louisville Times and The Courier-Journal so nothing was in either paper. And I thought that was rather passing strange, but the event was, was relatively minor compared with to what was to follow. And so I did not get up my ethics and quit my job (laughing) or anything like that. Maybe I should have. But I think those judgements, that judgement, was probably--and I’m assuming here--was made out of sort of fear of escalation. 36:00That if we made—and, of course, that was long before television had live cameras and all of that business--if we just were quiet about it, it might go away. I think that was probably the basis of it, of the judgement. But, of course, it didn’t go away. And that spring--and I guess the year was ‘sixty-one and ‘sixty-two, around in there--these rallies became daily events in, at Quinn Chapel; and the city was in the throes of debating open housing laws and public accommodation laws and so forth. But the white establishments were just resisting, and they were not going to have anything to do with it. And so the kids would march almost every afternoon in the spring, if it wasn’t raining. And they would start 37:00at the Quinn Chapel, and they would march down Chestnut to Fourth Street. And the Blue Boar was their target. And the Blue Boar on Fourth Street, and there was a Blue Boar on Walnut right next to the Kentucky Hotel. And they would walk in circles, and chant, and carry signs, and so forth. And Frank Stanley, Junior was always there on the scene, and he was very much in command. And he, and Frank--in those days--was probably in his late twenties, and had a lot of respect from the, from the kids; and they followed his lead pretty much. And they would chant—and the Blue Boar, I recall, hired security officers who stood and blocked the door. 38:00And, uh, couple of funny—not so funny—things happened. But, uh, Frank sometimes had demonstrations going in two places at once and—on Fourth Street and on Walnut—and he couldn’t be both places at the same time obviously. One time I was, I think, on Fourth Street and these kids, being kids, were walking in a circle and the cop--the security guy--he was a private security guy in front of the door--was a great big white fellow with a great big potbelly hanging over his belt. And these kids, as they walked in a circle, would come around and poke him in the belly. And these were young kids, I mean, they were just, they were kids. And he got madder and redder, and the kids got pokier. And I guess 39:00I violated my objectivity, if there is such a thing, a time or two. But I went around the corner and found Frank Stanley, and I said, “Frank, your kids are hitting that cop in the stomach with their thumbs, and he doesn’t like it, and they’re getting more boisterous,” and so forth. And Frank thanked me, and came around on Fourth Street, and called those kids up, off in a snap of a finger and lectured them. And that you are not to do that, you are to walk with dignity and you’re not to touch that security officer. So they went back and started to walk in circles and, and didn’t touch the cop any more. And another time we were around on Walnut and a bunch of white young people were in the Kentucky Hotel when they were marching next door at the Blue Boar. And they opened the windows and started throwing stuff. And it--and again Frank was around 40:00the corner, and again I guess I violated my objectivity, but I remember going around the corner and saying, “Frank, this is getting ugly. People are throwing stuff out the windows.” And he went around on Walnut Street and immediately called them off; he didn’t want anybody hurt. But those were the early days. It was kind of a taunting kind of thing and, and the arrests were to come very quickly thereafter, when they began arresting the kids.

WHITE: Did you—you said these were young kids who, it was almost inevitable they would get a little out of hand. Was there any training going on in those very early days?

GILL: As I recall, at the Quinn Chapel, Frank would always give instructions. And the instructions were always--nonviolence was the, was the rule of the day. And they were to walk and chant in unison and chant their slogans and so forth; but they were not to participate in any kind of physical activity whatsoever regardless 41:00of what happened to them.

WHITE: Do you know if Frank Stanley, Junior, had been in contact with anybody perhaps with more experience than him anywhere . . .?

GILL: I think, I think so. And occasionally some of them would show up in town in those early days. One of them I remember--and I think Frank may have taken his lead from some of, some of his activity, was James Farmer, who was the National Director of CORE, which was the Congress on Racial Equality. And Farmer was a little more experienced guy, a little older guy—I think he died recently—and he would show up at these rallies ever once in a while at Quinn Chapel; and there would be maybe a hundred kids and a smattering of 42:00young adults. And I remember one of the stories that I blew and (laughing) didn’t report. Farmer—I was at Quinn Chapel one night at a rally before a march, and I was out on the back stoop smoking a cigarette actually; and Farmer came out to smoke a cigarette and we began to chat. And again these were still the days when we kind of trusted each other. And Farmer said, “Did you ever realize the dynamics that are going on here of a Negro religious mentality?” And I said, “Tell me about it.” And he said, “Well, you know, it’s a combination of religion and song, and rhythm and emotion.” And he said, “There’s a real technique 43:00of building this emotion and of sustaining it so these kids can go out and, and be disciplined and yet walk into some chance of danger,” and so forth. And he said, “I’ll tell you, I’ll give you a tip.” He said, “Very soon now we’re going to get a bunch of buses, and we’re going to put a bunch of Negroes on them, and we’re going to take them in to the South, and we’re going to stop at restaurants and hotels and movie theaters.” And he said, “We’re going to call them ‘the freedom rides’.” And he said, “We’re going to organize them and there’ll be four or five Greyhound buses and we’re going . . .” Well, in all my young wisdom, I did not report that. And of course he was very much right in what he was predicting, and that was--the freedom rides 44:00were soon to follow, went down into the Carolinas and Georgia and Alabama.

WHITE: Did you make a conscious decision not to report it?

GILL: It just kind of went over the top. I mean, I, uh, it, it’s one of those things (laughing) you look back on and say, “My God, why didn’t I write the story?” But it, it just didn’t occur to me. I just kind of passed it off as sort of conversation, and it would have been a national exclusive had I reported it. And by that time, of course, The Courier-Journal and The Times were both reporting these daily marches. And, and the thing was out of the bottle by then, and so it was very much being reported and reported accurately as best we could.

WHITE: I never asked you, when you were talking about Richmond, what, if anything, you learned (clears throat) from Thurgood Marshall when you and he were having a drink together? Did you learn 45:00anything from him or, or anything else in Richmond that helped undergird your beginnings in Louisville?

Gill: Oh, oh, very, very much so. I, I, well I learned a lot of law as a lay person. I learned a lot of, uh, I learned a lot about Plessy versus Ferguson; and a lot about how conjunctive processes work and so forth.

WHITE: Plessey being ‘separate but equal.’ GILL: Separate but equal, right. And I, and I think I learned a lot about the mentality of the leadership in the civil rights movement. The mentality was very tenacious, very determined, very righteous. And I must say that, personally, I, although I tried to not let it influence what I wrote 46:00and reported on, I really agreed, I really agreed with them. I mean, it was just outrageous that it came to this, that we had to go through all this. But the Marshalls and the Spotwood Robinsons and, and those fellows were pretty, pretty righteous and very determined, calm and competent. They, I mean, they knew their business.

WHITE: Did you have the opportunity—again, in those early years in Louisville—to talk to, I believe you called them the ‘white power structure’?

GILL: Uh . . .

WHITE: You had the opportunity to talk to some blacks like Farmer and Stanley, but what about white people?

GILL: Not, not . . . Only storeowners like, like the Blue Boar—what was his name?

WHITE: Gene Johnson.

GILL: Gene Johnson. 47:00WHITE: What was their point of view?

GILL: Well, their point of view was that they had a private establishment, and they could admit who they wanted to, and that they were going to stick by it. And there was no law that says they had to admit people they didn’t want to admit, who happened to be black.

WHITE: Uh . . .

GILL: But, but in terms . . .

WHITE: How about . . . excuse me.

GILL: But in terms of the power structure, uh, no. I didn’t have much contact with business leaders or anything like that. I was pretty much a street reporter.

WHITE: Perhaps there is something you could say about then the feelings of these white store-owners and perhaps people like them who—I mean, it was a private establishment and they could admit whom they want, which meant that they very clearly did not want to admit black people.

GILL: That’s right.

WHITE: Now, you had moved from Virginia 48:00to Louisville. You had not been in the Deep South, but what can you say about white attitudes that underlay . . .

GILL: Well, I think the, the . . .

WHITE: . . . this feeling of admitting who they wanted to?

GILL: The white, the white attitude--and to say Richmond was not the Deep South is geographically correct, but attitudinally I think it was the Deep South.

WHITE: I’ll try and be careful.

GILL: And there were white and colored restrooms, there were white and colored drinking fountains, white and colored restroom, uh, restrooms and waiting rooms in the bus station. Now when I got to Louisville, that sort of thing didn’t exist, as I, best I recall. I can’t recall seeing white and colored drinking fountains in Louisville, but there was, there was still an underpinning 49:00of, of segregation. You know, the department stores about trying on clothes and that sort of thing. And then the public accommodations. And it was more—I guess in my view, it was more historic and traditional than racist. Now I may be wrong, but in a lot of cases, I think—the movie theaters, for instance. I think a lot of movie theaters would have said, “Fine,” you know, “If you got money, come on in and watch the movie—and sit downstairs.” But sort of tradition and history said, “No,” and there was sort of a resistance to breaking ranks. But, at any rate, that was kind of the early experience in the sixties. And 50:00then came open housing legislation, and then came public accommodation legislation. I was not all that involved in the, in the legal side of it in Louisville. I was mostly involved on the streets in those early years in the sixties.

WHITE: All right. Open housing legislation came and did that change the street scene?

GILL: I, you know, I can’t remember which came first, whether it was public accommodations or open housing. I think I do recall, though—and by this time I think I had moved inside as an editor—I do recall that, that when that legislation did become effective, a lot of the steam went out of it fairly quickly. And, of course, that was before the big eruptions in, 51:00nationally in ’sixty-seven and ’sixty-eight; and then, of course, the eruption here in ’sixty-eight, which was very, very serious. But I think most of the steam was going out, as this legislation became effective. And, you know, I can’t, I can’t really remember the timing on that legislation. Maybe you could help me there. I, I don’t remember precisely the years that all of this took place.

WHITE: Public accommodations was—well, the march on Frankfort was 1964, and the public accommodations came soon after that.

GILL: Soon after that.

WHITE: That, [coughs-Gill] that was the Civil Rights Act--the national Civil Rights Act was in ‘sixty-four.

GILL: ‘Sixty-four, right. And so, yeah, okay, so that timing was about right. So, so the three, two or three years there of ‘sixty-one, ‘sixty-two, ‘sixty-three were active on the street; 52:00and then once the legislation came along, the steam kind of went out of it. But (laughing) that was before the, the eruption of street violence in Detroit and Washington and elsewhere in the late, in the later sixties.

WHITE: Did, did the, uh, if not violence, the activity in the streets not escalate in Louisville in those years, later years? You don’t remember . . .

GILL: Well, in the later, later sixties it surely did.

WHITE: Yeah, okay.

GILL: And, uh, but I think the open, the public accommodations emphasis, some of the steam pretty much went out of it with--with legislation; but then became the national anger over the Martin Luther King assassination. Which—and, 53:00boy, those were just God-awful times. I can remember in, in ’sixty-seven and ’sixty-eight when I was managing editor, just literally being scared to death for our society. It was just dreadful. And, and we were just constantly on alert, particularly in the spring and summertime—tonight’s the night, you know. You would hear these, these rumors and I guess the Louisville-lag sort of took place there—they often say Louisville lags behind everybody else. Well, we lagged about a year in our street eruption, as I recall, cause I think Detroit was in—well, the King assassination was, when? Sixty- 54:00. . .

WHITE: ’Sixty-eight? ’Sixty-seven?

GILL: ’Sixty-seven, I believe it was, if I’m not mistaken.

WHITE: But the big explosive summer was the summer, nationally, of ’sixty-eight.

GILL: Well, well, and the big explosive spring in Louisville was ’sixty-eight. And I do remember that. And it started over the—well, it was just a national, it was just a national phenomenon that, you know, you just held your breath as to who was going to be next. And the Louisville explosion began over Memorial Day weekend, as I recall, in 1968. And it began at Twenty-eighth and Greenwood and . . .

WHITE: Why there?

GILL: Oh, it was—I guess it was a good corner (laughing) for cruising 55:00and gathering; and (coughs) and a lot, a lot of interesting things--a lot of interesting things happened. In that spring we were very anxious and tense about what was going to happen in the city, and we just really didn’t know.

WHITE: ‘We’ meaning at The Courier-Journal?

GILL: At the paper, right. And the police department didn’t know. And one of the things The Courier-Journal did--and I guess I kind of took the lead in this—uh, experience elsewhere had, had shown that the police department had to speak with one voice, rightly or wrongly it had to speak with a voice and not let 56:00individual district commanders here and there give their own biases and so forth and so on. And communication with the police department had to be very quick and, and reliable. This was long before the days of cellular phones and all that. So we set up a hotline with the Louisville police department and worked with the telephone company—and this sounds very crude by today’s standards—but worked with the telephone company to set up a system whereby the police department had, in effect, a red phone. And they could pick up a phone that would instantly connect them with the newsrooms; and by this time radio and television were active in reporting, and the newspapers, of course. 57:00So the police could communicate with the media instantly.

WHITE: So the red phone—it included television, radio . . .

GILL: Yes, included every newspaper, every newsroom in, in town. And, the reverse was true. We could pick up the phone in the newsroom, and it would ring in police headquarters, and the guy in charge was supposed to be available. And this was also back in the days before we had public relations people on the police department. We were dealing directly with the command. Well, our, our riot—and it was a riot—began that May of ‘eighty-, of ’sixty-eight; and experience elsewhere had shown that these disturbances tended to last twenty-four 58:00to forty-eight hours; and then one of two things happened. They either escalated and became much more widespread when people began to run--particularly people in the black neighborhoods--began to run out of diapers, and run out of baby food, and run out of milk and so forth. They either escalated enormously or died very quickly after about forty-eight hours. Well, the first night at Twenty-eighth and Greenwood, we used that hotline several times. And I think it did serve a purpose: and that was that the police could communicate with one voice their viewpoint of what was happening and what their response was. Now that was not to say that was the whole story.

WHITE: That was not to say what?

GILL: It was the whole story. I mean, there was another side of the story on the streets. 59:00But that posed a problem for The Courier-Journal and other news organizations in town because we had no black reporters. Had nobody—isn’t that terrible? (laughing) So when this thing blew up, uh, I did, I did a couple of things. I went back to—well, first of all, that first night at Twenty-eighth and Greenwood, we, we sent a white photographer down there to take pictures. He refused to take his own car, and that was a good call, because he took a taxicab and went down there; and the, and the folks in the street immediately turned the cab over and burned it. And the white photographer barely got out without getting beat up pretty badly. So I went back to the art department at The Courier-Journal where we had a black artist, believe it or not, 60:00and his name was Mervin Aubespin; and, of course, Mervin today is Associate Editor of the paper. And I said, “Mervin, you’re black and you’re now a reporter. (laughing) And you’ve got to help us out.” And he said, “I understand.” He said, “I understand.” (coughs) And I said, “So do your best and go out there and find out what’s going on and let us know, ‘cause white folks can’t get in there.” Well, Mervin did and did a nice job. And he also ran across a sort of ne’er-do-well black young fellow who had a camera, who was taking pictures. So Mervin sent that guy back to the paper, and his name was Jay Thomas. And Jay came in and said, “Well . . .” he said, “I got some pictures.” And I said, “Well, I got some money.” And I had cash 61:00in a draw so I agreed to pay him, I think it was $50 or $75 a night, if he would just take pictures, and come in and show them to us; and then we would print what we wanted to, and would pay him for the rights to the pictures. And he was black and he could get in there and take pictures. And we had no black photographers. Well, we later, later on, in years later, Jay was hired as a full-time photographer. I don’t know where he is now, but that’s how crude it was. Well, the second night, I think, of the disturbance in Louisville is when the two kids got shot. And two black kids got shot in separate incidents; and, as I recall, they were several blocks apart, but it happened almost simultaneously. And it was about 11:30 at night 62:00when this happened. And so I picked up the, the hotline and got the night police chief, named Bert Hawkins as I recall, and I said, “Bert, we’ve had two kids killed out there, and the street talk we’ve got . . .” I mean everybody tells us exactly what happened, and that was that they were being chased by angry store-owners who thought they were looting and this and that and the other thing. But I said, “We need the official police version, and this has got to be the fastest homicide investigation in history because I need this information in about an hour.” And Bert said, “Well, I think I can get it for you.” And in about an hour he came back with the police version of what had happened: so we were able to construct a story based on 63:00Merv’s reporting on the streets, and Jay Thomas and others, and what the police were saying. So we had a balanced account of what happened. And I kind of forget the details of it, but I think it was a looting situation. Now, our presses began about midnight or 12:30 in those days, one o’clock maybe, and I was able to—now there’s a lot of “I” in here, but I was there. (laughing) WHITE: It’s supposed to be.

GILL: I, I took it upon myself to reroute the trucks. And, usually, the early edition--the early papers from the final press run went to the West End and the later ones went to the East End.

WHITE: Let’s stop right there and run out the tape.

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE TWO BEGIN TAPE TWO SIDE ONE GILL: Yeah, well, we were talking about rearranging the trucks, and the reason 64:00the papers, earlier papers went—and this is the final edition—went to the West End and the later papers went to the East End was purely geographic. I mean, it was accidental. There was no intent there at all. It was just our circulation pattern because the first papers got to go somewhere. And, uh, but I took it upon myself to rearrange the, the trucks, with the help of the circulation department; so that the later papers from that final, uh, edition went to the West End, as near as we could get them to the West End. And that latter part of the press run had the story in it about the killing of the two kids: and the street version, which basically was they were innocent bystanders, and the police version was that they were looters. And they were not shot by the police. I don’t think . . . I, I 65:00think so, I think they were shot by other people. And we put all those papers with that story in, that the police had provided and the street people had provided, into the West End. And the newspaper had great credibility in those days. I hope it does today too, but it did in those days. And this was the, going into the third day, as I recall, of the Louisville experience; and the violence just, (snaps fingers) just disappeared. It just dampened out. And I always thought that maybe by telling both sides of the story very quickly and being believed that there was—you know, police said one thing, the street people said the other thing—but that there was some sense of 66:00horror: that now we’re killing people. And the thing just seemed to die down and, but those were scary two or three days. The National Guard was here; and I can remember leaving the paper at two or three o’clock in the morning and seeing armed personnel carriers on Sixth Street and Broadway. The National Guard was here with bayonets and all that business. And so, at any rate, . . . Well . . .

WHITE: I wanted to ask you about the leadership because this is the time, ’sixty-eight, when it begins to turn violent. Now, you had mentioned Frank Stanley’s active hand in things in the earlier sixties. Was, were these demonstrations without leaders?

GILL: Yeah. They were street, street people and . . .

WHITE: Spontaneous.

GILL: And the Reverend Hodge was very much involved 67:00back in those days. Hodge—and you asked a moment ago if Frank Stanley listened to anybody, Senior, and he listened to Reverend Hodge a lot. What was his name? W.J., uh . . .

WHITE: Yeah, I know who you mean. W. . .

GILL: But Hodge was not a leader of street demonstrations; he was just a common hand. But, uh . . .

WHITE: So, so that when you, you were able to get the story to the East End and the demonstrations stopped . . .

GILL: Story to the West End.

WHITE: I mean the West End, excuse me. That must have been spontaneous also and not leadership driven.

GILL: I think so. And also probably the element that people were running out of food. Their stores were shut, and some of them were burned; and they were running out of baby food and stuff, and they had to survive. And so it—and then 68:00there were some rumbles, as I recall, afterwards, but nothing nearly as serious as that Memorial Day weekend. But the point I wanted to also follow on was the problem of no blacks in the newsroom. Now, uh, it all—back in those days--and it’s hard to imagine from today’s perspective--but back in those days nobody really thought much about the fact that there weren’t any black faces in the newsroom. It was just something that Negro kids didn’t do. I mean, they weren’t in the journalism schools, they weren’t—I mean, it just wasn’t one of their things. And nobody much thought about it. And then, oh my God, all of a sudden we had this problem. And then, and then conscience began to set in, and it says, “Look, shouldn’t our newsroom 69:00look like the community; and our community is about, you know, twelve to twenty percent black. And shouldn’t we have representation?” and so forth. All right. Now what are you going to do? Where are you going to get them? Well there was a furious search back in the late sixties of all the journalism schools and all this for black kids. Well, the black kid was sitting on, (laughing) on Easy Street if he were in a journalism program because he was sought after, or she was sought after, very, very strongly, always write your own ticket. We did, we were able to hire one black reporter from out of town who turned out to be a disaster because he just wasn’t capable at all. We hired another black youngster from Columbia School who, whose 70:00name was Bill Drummond, who turned out to be enormously professional and went on to work for The L.A. Times and, and, uh, was in their New Delhi bureau for a while and was quite successful. And Norm Isaacs, who was executive editor back in those days, hired Charlene . . .

WHITE: Hunter ( ) GILL: Hunter. Charlene Hunter.

WHITE: Hunter, excuse me.

GILL: As a summer intern. And we--I could tell you a couple of stories, and I shouldn’t because she’s still very active, about our social life back in those days. (laughing) It would be inappropriate to tell you that we went skinny-dipping one time in the farm pond of a famous right wing judge in this county while he was out of town. (laughter-Gill) At any rate, Charlene worked for The Louisville Times and 71:00she was a star and obviously and so forth. But that didn’t solve the problem. Well, I went to the management of the paper and said, “We’ve got to do something about this, and it has to be long term. And we have to, we have to grow our own black reporters.” And so the management--and in those days it was Isaacs and Lyle Baker and Barry Bingham, Senior-- said, “Fine, we’ll give you a little money and, and you go do it.” Well I went to a couple of places. First of all, I went to Northwestern University and talked to the Dean--who was a friend of mine--Bill Cole, who ran, and the university still runs, a summer program in four or five disciplines. 72:00And you’ve probably heard of it; it’s called CHERUB program. And they have a CHERUB program in drama and they have one in English literature, I guess. Well, they got one in journalism. And this is a four, or five-week thing where they take juniors in high school and totally immerse them in the subject; and they let them eat it and drink it and sleep it for four or five weeks. And the whole idea being that, as juniors in high school, they come back and they are more career-oriented and exposed to the various disciplines and so forth. Well, Northwestern, being a private university, was desperately trying to integrate its forces. And he said, “If you could only send us some black kids.” So I went to Art Walters, who ran the Urban League in Louisville 73:00in those days, and I said, “Art, we got to convince some black kids who want to be journalists.” So Art and I designed this CHERUB program, and I think it still exists today. We went into the high schools and found two black kids with aptitude or some promise, according to their high school records and their high school teachers. Uh, they didn’t have to have any particular interest in journalism or newspapers or anything else. They had to have the aptitude to acquire some skills. And then we picked them out and approached them, “How would you like to go to Chicago for five weeks and it won’t cost you anything?” Well, the kids turned out to be thrilled by this. Some of them had never been out of the West End of Louisville. Some of them had never been on an airplane; some of them 74:00never been in the airport. And we took these kids, two each summer, beginning about ’sixty-nine, I believe, and sent them to the CHERUB program at Northwestern in journalism where they were immersed in the practice of writing stories and all that sort of thing, even though they’d never heard of such a thing. Then when they came back in their senior year of high school, we offered them copyboy jobs and that sort of thing, clerk jobs, at the newspaper and tried to mentor them. And, in fact, we had a, a man almost full time assigned to mentoring these kids and guiding them toward college; helping them get into college, helping select a major and so forth. The gamble being in five years when they got out of high school and college, they would come back to The Courier-Journal and The Times 75:00and be reporters and get started in the profession and so forth. Well, the thing—and one of the things that I cautioned about was that we have to be realistic. First of all, we have to be willing to fail; some of them aren’t going to make it. Number Two, those that are really good we’re going to lose because The Washington Post or The L.A. Times or The New York Times is going to pluck them up. And the management of the paper, Barry, Senior, and Lyle Baker and Norman Isaacs, says, “Fine, we agree to all that. It’s a good investment.” So we proceeded to do this. And we did it, uh—well, the last, not in 2000 but in ’99, a guy from The Wall Street Journal won a Pulitzer Prize. He was one of our early ones. 76:00Another one is, or was recently, fairly recently, Education Editor of The New York Times. And these are kids we find who are juniors in high, school and we were able to channel into the profession. Well . . .

WHITE: Did you get any of them?

GILL: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We got, we got a lot of them and some of them, I guess, are still around. And then of course the industry as a whole began to grapple with this problem. And by the early seventies, why there was a national movement on to funnel black kids into journalism; and it’s still an ongoing thing. I think I read a figure the other day that eleven percent of the working journalists in newspapers today are minorities. 77:00And that’s not enough, but it’s a heck of a lot better than zero and a heck of a lot better than it was. So, that’s kind of the end of my involvement, unless you want to talk a little bit about busing. But that’s in the seventies.

WHITE: Well, I really would like to move into busing in a minute. I wanted to ask you a little bit about decision-making at The Courier-Journal.

GILL: Uh-huh.

WHITE: Do you remember any meetings with people about how you were going to handle this problem both logistically and editorially?

GILL: Oh, we had, we had meetings back to back.

WHITE: I mean, if this was after your days as a reporter, I presume you weren’t out on the streets that much.

GILL: No, I was an editor and was managing editor and making all kinds of decisions. And, of course, decision-making as a news judgement is an inexact science. And you take any ten managing 78:00editors on any given day and give them the same range of story opportunities and you’re going to end up with ten different front pages. I mean, there is no right answer. But we had, oh, we had meetings and meetings, and we wrung our hands about . . .

WHITE: Who was the ‘we’? You and Barry Bingham and Norm Isaacs and Lyle Baker?

GILL: Well, Norm and I—well, the business side--Barry Bingham, Senior, and Lyle Baker were removed from the news operation, but when Isaacs was there--and I think Isaacs left in ’sixty-nine--but Isaacs was involved. I was involved, the city editors were involved . . .

WHITE: Can we have some names here? Do you remember?

GILL: Oh, uh, well, I guess the city editor was Paul Jannish in those days, was one of them. And I think--and Merv Aubespin was involved. Merv was always our black 79:00burr under the saddle. He came to me one Derby, and I forget what year it was but it was maybe early seventies, late, got to be seventy-something. He said, “Let me show you something.” And he opened up the Derby Day paper and went page to page of all the parties we’d covered and all this. He said, “Show me a black face.” I said, “Oh Jesus, Mervin, you’re so right.” And the next year, by gosh, we had black faces represented. Was that racist? No, it wasn’t racist. It was unawareness. It was naiveté. Call it what you will. I mean, it was a different time. But Merv was involved in these things, and occasionally we would counsel with people in the community, although not 80:00on a regular basis. But we would, you know, try to sound out a little bit what, what perception the public had of what we were doing as a newspaper to sort of give us some balance. But I tell you, back in those days, between ‘sixty-six and ‘seventy-four, there was such enormous news going on. Remember--you remember we went to the moon then too? Abortion rights, women’s rights, uh, Vietnam, the beginnings of Watergate, Pentagon Papers, Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King assassinations, cities burning. It was just—the events that we had to grapple with were just so numerous and so enormous, we tried very much 81:00in our decision making to bring balance and some consistency to what we were doing. But events were just exploding all over the place and it was very—really, it was very difficult to get any criticism from anybody because things were just going on so much. I mean just every day—you know, I remember when I was in college I took a course in editing. And the final exam was to lay out a front page based on a menu, a budget of stories available: and the stories available were the coronation of the Queen of England, and World War II began, and the Titanic sunk. And all of these things happened the very same day. And I thought it was absolutely ridiculous until the late sixties and early seventies when I was managing editor and had to lay out a front page, 82:00and I could have laid out fifteen front pages some days. The events were so overwhelming. So really the public perception of us, I think, was affected by the enormity of it all and the fact that we still had a great deal of credibility.

WHITE: As I understand newspapers, the news side and the editorial side operate independently.

GILL: That is correct.

WHITE: Where does the managing editor, or where did he, at least, sit in all that?

GILL: The managing editor sat atop the news organization.

WHITE: Okay, so you had . . .

GILL: So I, my . . .

WHITE: . . . had nothing to do with editorial . . .

GILL: Nothing to do with editorial, nothing to do with advertising, nothing to do with circulation, nothing to do with anything but just the daily news report and the reporters in the newsroom.

WHITE: And as you say, balance and priority of . . .

GILL: Of how you play things and how--what size headlines you put on it, and where you put stories, 83:00and that sort of thing. And then, and then responsible for the fairness and balance of the reporting to make sure that we were, you know, touching all the bases. But as I said, it’s a very inexact science and always will be.

WHITE: Uh, were there in your job—I mean, I know that you were coached by various people, if that’s the right word, when you were a reporter. When you were managing editor, were there certain people that you turned to that we haven’t talked about, either black or white, in this community for background or some sort of educational help?

GILL: Well, the—not so much in the community, but internally it was Norman Isaacs, who was executive editor and my boss. And as executive editor he oversaw the news operations of both The Times and The Courier-Journal; and The Louisville Times and The Courier-Journal each had a managing editor. 84:00So he was, uh, and he was an officer of the company, and he was more involved in, in representing the news interest and the business of the paper, and so forth. But he was, he was my boss. One of the toughest men that I’ve ever known in my life.

WHITE: How tough? Tough in what way?

GILL: Oh, I wanted—I didn’t have a vacation in five years. I wanted to take a day and go to a football game in Baltimore over Thanksgiving one time ‘cause my brother lived there, and, and I wanted to go and take my kids. And he said, “Well, you can get an airplane out of here at seven o’clock on Wednesday night, and there’s an airplane leaving Baltimore at seven o’clock Thursday night, and be back on deck Friday morning.” That’s the kind of guy he was. Every night the first edition was delivered to my home and to his home. I started my workday at nine 85:00in the morning. At eleven at night I was on the phone with Isaacs every night, seven days a week, where he would review what the first edition’s news play was, question me, challenging me, arguing with me. On Sunday morning, the phone would ring, uh, every Sunday at 9:30 or so, and sometimes the conversation would last three hours. It was tough; it was really tough. And I hated it and I loved it at the same time. In later years, he, he mellowed, and I guess I did too; and we became pretty good friends in his retirement. We used to talk on the phone and reminisce and so forth. But as a day-to-day working boss, he was enormously tough.

WHITE: In the, in the area of civil rights, did you find that he was either pushing you, or reluctant to go in your direction, 86:00or were you pretty much in sync.

GILL: We were pretty much in sync. In fact, we were in sync. There was no overriding philosophical difference in how we were approaching this thing. We were going to tell the story and tell it right. The arguments were in the details, you know. I mean, should this headline have been two columns or three columns, you know, that kind of thing. But, no, there was no, no argument about our purpose and our mission.

WHITE: Were you in contact with any of the other newspapers around the state?

GILL: Oh—not so much around the state, but a lot around the country.

WHITE: Around the country?

GILL: Uh-huh.

WHITE: What form did those contacts take?

GILL: Well, mostly in associations. I was in the Associated Press Managing Editors Association, which is the convention, or the organization of managing editors, who are 87:00in charge of papers with Associated Press connections. And I was also involved in the American Society of Newspaper Editors, which is sort of one cut above--it was in those days--APME. And these included not only news-side editors, but editorial-side editors; and, of course, there were many, many—also, there was something called the Southern Regional Education Board--you might have heard of--back in those days based in Atlanta, that was set up as sort of a clearinghouse for civil rights kind of stuff. And there were a lot of seminars that we sent people to. A lot of seminars we participated in in those organizations--even, even places like the Southern Police Institute at U of L. I used to 88:00lecture out there at their command seminars, close the doors for three hours with commanders of police departments from all over the country. Frank Haddad and I used to do that together sometimes.

WHITE: What did you tell them?

GILL: Well, in the sixties there was a great deal--particularly in the later, latter part of the sixties--there was a great animosity nationally between police departments and the press. And, particularly after the Vietnam thing got going and the Chicago convention in 1968; which is, Democratic Convention--where I got tear-gassed—(laughing) was up there and that was dreadful.

WHITE: I think we need to talk about that, but go ahead . . .

GILL: Well, that was Vietnam-related but there was a great deal of animosity between the press and police. And my purpose of going out there at their invitation was to let them vent 89:00and then try to say, “Hey there are some workable solutions that we may be able to work toward.” And one of them was this hotline thing we talked about.

WHITE: So you made this particular lecture before you set up the hotline?

GILL: Uh, no, after, afterward.

WHITE: So you passed this on . . .

GILL: Passed this on as an idea. “Hey, have you ever thought of this?” And then, you know, the guy, the Chief of Police in Miami, Florida, for instance, would say--and this is not hypothetical--he said, “You know, those bastards down at the newspaper . . blah, blah, blah.” I’d say, “When was the last time you talked to Larry Jenks?” “Well, who’s Larry Jenks?” “Well,” I said, “You ought to know who Larry Jenks is. Larry Jenks is the Managing Editor of The Miami Herald. Call him up. Make him take you to lunch or something. Get to know him.” So the animosity was pretty great. And so we had forums nationally rather than so much in the state.

WHITE: 90:00Aside from the police institute, when you would go to your meetings of the managing editors or the newspaper editors or whatever, do you remember anything specific that you either learned from other newspapers in other cities or that, or that you, you taught them that they hadn’t thought about?

GILL: I, I can’t remember specifics, but there was a lot of exchange. I can remember, uh--and here we’re getting into busing--but before busing, a whole bunch of us went up to Boston and sat down with Boston Globe folks, because they had been through a busing experience the year before and we were facing it. And we went up there for two or three days and just talked to our counterparts; and it was pretty unstructured; but we learned a lot of things. And I can’t really give you specifics that we learned; but just by conversation 91:00and sharing of experiences. Those were the days when--it was also before the chains owned all the newspapers in the country, so most of these newspapers were independent.

WHITE: Were what?

GILL: Were independent.

WHITE: Independent.

GILL: Independently owned so there was no sense of competition. In other words, Gannett and Knight-Ridder weren’t at each other’s throats someplace. So there was a very openness in sharing information and techniques and that sort of thing.

WHITE: I’m going to put this on pause so we can talk for a minute about where we want to go. [interruption] I’ve asked Mr. Gill to provide some sort of an epilogue here. We’re getting a little off our subject, and we’re going to point to the ’sixty-eight convention, Democratic Convention in Chicago; and then move on to 92:00school busing in ‘seventy-five. It’s just too good to miss so (laughter-Gill) while we’re here, if you would, let’s talk about the ‘sixty-eight convention.

GILL: Well, I went to the ‘sixty-eight convention as managing editor. And in those days the managing editor usually went to the national political conventions, back in the days when political conventions meant something. And we would have a team of reporters, and I served as sort of the coordinating editor; and, and edited up the daily report out of the convention. Well, ‘sixty-eight in Chicago at the Democratic Convention was something that was really vicious, mostly driven--I would say 80 percent driven--by the Vietnam War, the anti-war folks. But there was a great civil rights element to it as well. And I can remember the poor folks, 93:00caravan with the horse, mule-drawn carriages. And so there was an overtone of civil rights involved in it. But basically it was a, just a tremendous confrontation between two cultures who just did not understand each other at all: the Chicago Police Department and its government and Mayor Daly, and the anti-war and, to some degree, civil rights activists who were just in their face. The—I can remember starting out in Grant Park up near the Loop with rallies where these young hippie girls would have the “f” word written on their forehead; and face to face 94:00with ethnic cops who had kids their age. And they just didn’t understand each other. And they, and they started to beat on each other. And there was a march that was led from downtown to the Cow Palace. And I think it was led by Dick Gregory, although I may be mistaken, but that’s been a long time ago; but he was a young man back in those days. And it had anti-Vietnam, but also some civil rights overtones. And he was going to lead a march of this ragtag bunch of kids to the Cow Palace and shut down the convention. And the cops stopped him about Twenty-first Street South. And they drew a line in the sand and said, “You’re not going any further.” And he said, “Yes I am.” And there must have been, oh, four thousand or five thousand of them. And the cops tear-gassed them all . . .

END OF TAPE TWO SIDE ONE BEGIN TAPE TWO SIDE TWO GILL: Uh, the cops tear-gassed them all. 95:00And they used tear-gas out of flame-thrower tanks. And it was serious tear-gas. And there were bricks being thrown and it was just chaotic. And I was down there in a suit and tie, and I remember getting tear-gassed. And I’d been gassed in the Navy as part of training and knew what it felt like. And it doesn’t feel good at all.

WHITE: What does it feel like?

GILL: It feels like you’re going to die. I mean it’s just--you can’t breathe. It’s just overpowering. And I was down on the, on the ground and bricks were flying around. And I never will forget it, this little hippie girl came up to me, and she had a little Red Cross patch and an old dirty washrag soaked in vinegar; and she stuck it in my face and washed my face off. And vinegar, being somewhat of an antidote to tear-gas, and she said, “Now, Mister, you’re going to be all right. You’re going to live. We’ve been through this before.” and so forth. It was just chaotic. 96:00And, as I said before, that was another symbol of the chaos that was going on in the country at the time; and civil rights was a part of it, but it was not the driving force. The driving force was the Vietnam War.

WHITE: Do you—I mean, can you describe how it was a part and what were the civil rights overtones?

GILL: Well, the civil rights overtones were the presence of a lot of black demonstrators, who had their own agenda and mostly directed at, at poor people and the black situation as they saw it; but it was mostly anti-war. And I think, uh—who was it that used to be in Louisville who was . . . Martin Luther King’s 97:00brother, was it?

WHITE: He was here.

GILL: Yeah, I think he was one of the mainstays of that demonstration and . . .

WHITE: In Chicago?

GILL: In Chicago, right. And led a poor people’s march with a, with a wagon pulled by mules and so forth and ran up against army vehicles with barbed wire wrapped around them. And so it was a real nasty confrontation. But it was kind of a sign of the times.

WHITE: And how were the times—we’re going to move into school busing which was seven years later—but sometimes it’s hard to remember what happened between ‘sixty-eight and ‘seventy-five. Do you remember . . ?.

GILL: Well . . .

WHITE: . . . events progressing . . .

GILL: I think, I think . . .

WHITE: . . . the atmosphere changing?

GILL: I think the atmosphere was, was changing somewhat but probably overshadowed by Vietnam. 98:00And Vietnam was just an overpowering influence in the--in the American life in those days. And the raging debate on whether it was right or wrong, and the body bags coming home, and, and all of that. And I think that sort of took center stage. And our busing situation here followed similar busing situations elsewhere. Boston comes to mind. But it was a whole, a whole—sort of a different atmosphere. Well, it was a different atmosphere because the demonstrators in the streets this time were white and they were opposing court-ordered busing. They weren’t 99:00opposing integration. They were opposing integration by busing kids from one district to another. And the, the focus of the, of their disgust was of course federal court in Louisville, which is at Sixth and Broadway, right across the street from The Courier-Journal building. And The Courier-Journal had been rather strong editorially in support of this court-ordered busing. So the demonstrators came--and a lot of the demonstrations were in the southern part of the county, along Dixie Highway and Preston Highway and that sort of thing, but it did get into downtown a time or two. And there was one very massive demonstration, I remember, and it was during 100:00the afternoon at Sixth and Broadway, in front of the federal building and in front of The Courier-Journal building. And I think the estimates were correct that there were about ten thousand people, and they were very angry and very upset. Well, my own involvement—at that time I was then general manager of the newspaper--and responsibility, my responsibility included the physical plant and the business side and so forth. And I was very concerned that we would be pretty badly assaulted by an angry crowd; it could do real damage to property and to people. Among other things we did was we installed bulletproof glass in Barry Bingham, Junior’s 101:00office, which was on the third floor and faced the corner of Sixth and Broadway. We did it against his wishes. He was out of town when we did it and we didn’t ask him. We just did it because Barry had a habit of--young Barry--of sort of defying good judgement sometimes. And when there was a crowd amassed in front of the paper one time, he walked right through it. And somebody had torn open a newspaper box and stolen a newspaper, and he accosted them and said, “You shouldn’t do that. You should pay for that newspaper. You shouldn’t steal it.” And he almost got hit in the head with a baseball bat and so forth. But, at any rate, I was very concerned about the physical plant and our people; so I had several meetings with the police department, and before, uh, these demonstrations began. 102:00And on the day of the big march, they had about ten thousand folks, as I said, in the streets. And they were very angry, and one of their weapons they used was slingshots with spark plugs in them. And a guy with a slingshot, who’s any good at it, with a spark plug can spoil your day. And they were shooting out our windows. And we lost that day about $30,000 worth of windows. Well, there were a number of police around . . .

WHITE: Let me back you up again. I’m, I’m trying not to ask a stupid question, but what does a spark plug do on a slingshot? I mean, it’s hard and it breaks glass but does it do anything else?

GILL: That’s what it does. It’s hard and it breaks glass, and if it hits you in the head, it will break your head.

WHITE: Okay.

GILL: And it’s like a piece of shrapnel. It’s rough and has some glass in it, and it’s got some metal in it, and it’s just the right weight and the right size. So if you ever want to shoot somebody with a slingshot, use a 103:00spark plug as, as ammunition. But, at any rate, there were a few police out in front, and the crowd was very noisy and, again, were using their slingshots; but nobody was beating up on anybody. And nobody was assaulting the building. And the demonstration ran its course in an hour or so and began to disappear and disperse. What the demonstrators didn’t know was that the police commander was in my office looking down on this from the third floor of The Courier-Journal building, and behind the building were about two hundred police in riot gear; uh, ready to be summoned on a moment’s notice to protect the property and protect our trucks and protect our people. But it didn’t come to that. But I think one of the ironic things about this is that these--a lot of these same demonstrators 104:00who were so angry about busing or integration, were the same people a few months later who came down to Sixth and Chestnut to another Bingham enterprise--WHAS Television and Radio--with volunteer firemen boots full of change for the Crusade for Children. And I don’t know what that says. I’ve often wondered about that. I think they could separate maybe their irate emotions from their, their goodness side. I don’t know. But I think a lot of the same people were throwing rocks at us one day and a few months later were throwing money at the Crusade to help unfortunate children.

WHITE: Another thing I was wondering, that maybe you could help me with--naturally I’m trying to make a cogent piece out of 105:00this, putting together this coda with the body of the oral history--and that is that it seems to me that when Vietnam began to overtake civil rights and Martin Luther King began to get interested in Vietnam, was there not some sort of a poverty issue with the Vietnam and a race issue and perhaps a class issue in here?

GILL: Yes, there surely was.

WHITE: Did the newspaper do any dealing—of course, we segue into busing.

GILL: I, I . . .

WHITE: Do you remember any . . .

GILL: I don’t know that we did anything special, but I think you’re right. There was an undercurrent of poor people, the unfairness of the draft, the fact that a lot of black folks were serving in Vietnam who didn’t want to be there probably. So there was sort of a marriage of the discontent. 106:00But I don’t know that we were all that conscious of it. I don’t know that it had a focus all that much.

WHITE: Do you remember a time when this intent of whatever kind became almost palpably on the wane, when it began to ebb? Or was it so gradual that you have to look back on it?

GILL: You know, odd to say it--but maybe it’s not odd to say it--landing on the moon in 1969 was a tremendous plus. And we were just coming out of these chaotic years. And, you know, Kennedy had been shot, and his brother had been shot, and Martin Luther King had been shot; and all of these things were going on; and we really needed something positive. And, by golly, we landed two guys on the moon. 107:00And I think that was a tremendous boost to the national morale at the time, besides being an enormous engineering accomplishment and a great adventure. It was a great morale booster, and I think that kind of broke a lot of the malaise that was abounding. I don’t know that it lasted all that long. Of course, Vietnam went on for a while, but, but suddenly the country had something to focus on that wasn’t awful. It was a great success.

WHITE: That would be a great note to end on, but I’ve got one more question.

GILL: All right.

WHITE: And that is: did these experiences change you in any way? Either your outlook or . . .

GILL: Oh, gee, I, I--it, it’s hard to tell. I . . .

WHITE: Or maybe I should say, 108:00how do you look back on these years? What kind, what . . .

GILL: I look back on a lot of those things and wonder how in the world I ever lived through it because of the, of the tension and the stress of it all. And I think, you know—and it’s not only my own personal experience, but the experience of the society in the decade of the sixties, particularly with all these things going on. It was just very, very traumatic. And I look back on it as a very interesting time. But I think I forget how stressful it was, and stressful not only for those of us who were involved in the media, but stressful for everybody. It really was a stressful time. But it’s hard for me to evaluate. I don’t mean to, to stretch this out, but the 109:00day--the, that Wesbecker went wild at Standard Gravure and shot all the people; I was in the middle of all that--had blood running in my shoes and all that. The SWAT team was in there and we didn’t know what we had to deal with. And had he turned the other way, he would have been in my office, and it was just a, just a God-awful day. And I, I came home that night and, “Ho-hum, another day at the office,” you know. We shot eight people and killed them. And I said later, to my wife, “You know, that didn’t particularly impact me, affect me.” And she said, “You don’t know how it impacted.” So some of those awful experiences, like the ‘sixty-eight convention and like, you know, the civil rights riot of ‘sixty-eight and so forth probably did impact 110:00me personally; but I just don’t realize quite what it did.

WHITE: I have to ask one more question.

GILL: All right.

WHITE: The conventional wisdom--whatever you think of that--says that one of the reasons we pulled through a lot of this heavy stuff in the sixties and early seventies was the strength of our institutions, our democratic institutions. Do you think if we had as much trouble this year or next year, do you think our institutions are still in good enough shape to pull us through?

GILL: Oh, gee, that’s a marvelous question. In terms of media institutions, it’s a whole new world. And I don’t know. You’ve got--look what happened in the impeachment. You know, I mean there were opinions all over the lot, and news all over the lot; and the people basically said, “Ho hum.” (laughing) And I wonder today if the credibility of the media is as strong as it was 111:00back then, and I think that was part of what carried us through. I wonder if the traditional institutions, you know, beginning with church and marriage and childhood and all that--I don’t know whether they are strong enough today to have the same result. But I agree with you. I think the strength and credibility of the institutional American life probably saw us through those times. And I don’t know whether it would happen today or not.

WHITE: Did we overlook anything?

GILL: No. I think that’s--I’ve talked long enough. (laughing) WHITE: It’s been very interesting. Thanks a lot.

GILL: Thank you.

END OF TAPE TWO SIDE TWO END OF INTERVIEW