Oral History Interview with Frank Burke

ETHEL WHITE: Today is October 17, 2000, and we are going to continue our conversation. Mr. Burke, I would like to ask you just one last question about your war experiences before we move on. And that is, if you could just sum them up, talk briefly about perhaps what you took away from the war and whether it changed you at all.

FRANK BURKE: Well I’m sure having experienced a war it changes all, whether we were military or civilian personnel or what. But yes, I think it took, it gave us all a great appreciation for the Western way of doing things, having not only been fighting against the Nazis, but to have observed the great Russian forces. I think it made us appreciate America more than anything else, and to appreciate the heroism of the people. 1:00I guess if we all have read The Greatest Generation, we know some of those things. The way we went over, of course, we were able to observe the heroism of the British civilian population for a while first. And we had, I had the same experiences, I guess that everyone else had, who was actively involved in the war, especially by the end of it, we were just very happy that it was over.

WHITE: All right, so you came home, you said you just missed the invasion of Japan, because of the dropping of the bomb.

BURKE: That’s true.

WHITE: And you came home and disembarked, where was that again?

BURKE: We disembarked at Newport News, Virginia.

WHITE: Newport News.

BURKE: We had, they had intended that we were going to Panama to be re-fitted to go out in the Pacific, but fortunately the war ended. We came home at Newport News, Virginia.

WHITE: Did you come home to cheering crowds?

BURKE: Uh, I don’t know. We came home to a huge 2:00naval base. (Laughing) People, I don’t think there were any cheering crowds. People were certainly very happy. And we were all delighted to be home and I was able to reach my wife by telephone, I think within a few hours of having landed.

WHITE: And then it was home to Louisville?

BURKE: Came home to Louisville. Our first daughter, whom I had seen the day she was born, was with her mother when they greeted me at the railroad station at Tenth and Broadway. She could walk and said, “Howdy do, Daddy.” So it was great to be home.

WHITE: And her name?

BURKE: Her name is Lyn.

WHITE: Okay. And...

BURKE: She is now a grandmother, by the way. (Laughing) WHITE: Time flies. (Laughing) And what did you decide to do once you got home?

BURKE: Well I had always wanted to go to Law school. I intended to go to Law school. And I was fortunate enough, we were, available to us was the G.I. Bill of Rights. I also applied--because 3:00I needed a job to help me through Law school--I applied and got a job as a temporary clerk at the United States Post Office. And all of the time that I was in Law school, I worked at the Post Office at night and went to Law school in the daytime. We were lucky I didn’t get in the first group of jobs, because anybody who had been in the service got five additional points in your Civil Service examination and if you had been wounded, you got ten. So there were a number of us, a number of us, who got a hundred and five in our Civil Service examinations. (Laughing) But you had to have a hundred and ten to get hired in the first group, because they took it all. But I was hired pretty soon, and I’m not sure if I got started on the job before we started Law school or not. That was all in 1946. But I worked at the Post Office in the daytime, at night, and went to Law school in the daytime for those years.

WHITE: 4:00Did you, was there anything particularly to focus on in Law school? Particular professors, particular interests that were developing, anything like that, and was there any, any connection at all with the political world then?

BURKE: Well, I’m not sure there was any connection with the political world at Law school. It was an interesting time to be going to Law school. Those of us who had been in the service of course, some of us were older than our professors. Because the Law schools had been closed during the end of World War II. There was a year when I think there were no graduates of the Law school here. So that all of us were back, many of them had started in Law school before, my classmates I mean, had started Law school before the war and then come back to finish. Others of us had not gotten to start. It was very interesting because on rainy days--you see when you left the service everybody got to keep their own raincoats-and we had people in our Law school classes who had, 5:00we only had one who had a star on his shoulder. We had one general. We had lots of colonels, and all kinds of lieutenant colonels and so on. Those of us who were lieutenants were really down the ranks, but almost everybody in Law school at that time had been in the service. And lot of these high ranks were Air Force people, lot of people reached high ranks in the Air Force at a very early age. We used to claim that when we were in Europe that they should have signs up that said, “Colonels of the United States Air Force under the age of twenty-one must be accompanied by their parents,” because there were some very young high ranking officers, for the sad reason that so many of those people got killed.

WHITE: Well do I infer then that when you went to Law school you were simply going to Law school to be a lawyer? Was that as far as your thinking went?

BURKE: Well, I’m not sure of that. I had been attuned to the political world most of my life. One of my uncles was the Chairman of the Democratic 6:00Party here when I was in high school. So that I knew about political activities, I guess from the time I was born.

WHITE: Had you learned anything about it, or had you developed any ideas from this osmosis?

BURKE: Oh I’m sure I had learned a great deal about it. I worked in elections long before I could vote. I was an envelope stuffer and handbill passer and so on from very early, at least when I was in high school.

WHITE: Well, shall we move on from Law school then? Is there anything else to...

BURKE: Oh I don’t think so.

WHITE: ...to talk about? Okay. Well let’s talk about your first job then.

BURKE: Well my first job...

WHITE: Your first law job, excuse me.

BURKE: My first law job, I went to work for a Louisville law firm during my last year in law school. And worked for them, and worked for them 7:00for a while after I got out of Law school.

WHITE: Which firm was that?

BURKE: I was with Davis, Bale, Visor and Marcus, when I was in Law school and for a short time after I left Law school. Then I went to the Louisville firm of what was then called Skaggs, Hayes and Fahe, and worked with them for a couple of years. And then I knew some of the people who were in the city government, the city administration and the city law department, and I went to work in the city law department when Mayor Farnsley was mayor.

WHITE: Well those would be some interesting years to focus on now.

BURKE: They were interesting...

WHITE: For a little bit.

BURKE: They were interesting years. I went to work first in the city Law Department. I was an Assistant Law Director, but progressively I became Director of Public Safety. I became Executive Assistant to the Mayor. And for a couple of years I held those two positions simultaneously. I was Director of Public Safety and Executive 8:00Assistant to the Mayor.

WHITE: And can you describe the jobs and some of the issues that were involved?

BURKE: Well yes, in the law department it was as most law firms are, the others, the jobs are pretty much as they are now. I was Executive Assistant to the Mayor and I was Director of Public Safety, which means that organizationally within the city, I had the jurisdiction over the Police department, the Fire department and at that time the city Dog Pound. That’s been changed now. But those were pretty much standard the way the jobs are now. Now the issues, very interesting as you might think. It’s pretty hard to go back in time and to understand what was going on then, in terms of today. But the early and the later fifties, Mr. Farnsley, Mayor Farnsley 9:00was the first real post-World War II Mayor of Louisville, and there was a great deal to be done. Because during World War II there had been a stop really in most civilian things. The infrastructure of the city had badly deteriorated. It was the time when they needed to begin to extend sewers, and nobody could do that because the sewers had been built by City of Louisville voted bond issues and they needed to extend sewers out into the areas which were not in the city, which you couldn’t do with city bond issues. I’m not going to be able to recall for you precisely the days, I’m just using this as an example, but that’s when they created the Louisville and Jefferson County Metropolitan Sewer District, in order that they could from bond revenues extend 10:00sewer service and improve the old ones.

WHITE: Now this was under Farnsley?

BURKE: Oh yes. The roads, you know, the public works had deteriorated, the sewers had deteriorated, the public utilities had deteriorated; and with all of the good things which came out of the end of the war, you see, there was a great need for housing. This was when, under President Eisenhower, that the Interstate and Defense Highway system begins to be enacted. The building of the Interstate system, the extension of urban America was all going on. These were exciting days. And this has nothing to do with me, or anything that I accomplished, but you were asking what was going on. This is what was going on, this was post-World War II America.

WHITE: Well, and it is interesting to read about some of the things that were going on then, because it appears that the issues, 11:00and I guess maybe we have to hold off on this a little bit. But the issues under Farnsley did not appear to be that different than the issues when you became mayor.

BURKE: Well that’s right, I mean, it’s a series of progressions.

WHITE: So you must have absorbed something.

BURKE: That’s right, it’s a series of progressions. And I know for example, that you are particularly interested in talking about the civil rights activities under various people: and we can talk some, if you like, about the civil rights activities under Mayor Farnsley.

WHITE: Let’s go right ahead.

BURKE: All right. Mayor Farnsley was committed to developing better race relations, improved conditions for the African-American community; improved opportunities and did it both in perfectly obvious ways and in some rather subtle ways. For example the way the parks began to be integrated was under Mayor Farnsley. The segregation of the parks had been done by 12:00the old Louisville Board of Park Commissioners, which did not exist after the late nineteen forties. I’m sure--although it would have been when I was in the Army--I’m sure that it was under Mayor Wyatt that the statutes were changed that re-organized city governments, which did away with a large numbers of Boards and Commissions, for example, the Board of Park Commissioners, the Board of Public Works, the Board of Sewer Commissioners. All those were replaced by either by joint city-county agencies or by directors in a direct administrative partnership. So the way the parks got integrated really was: Charlie and some of the people around him discovered that there was a park in Louisville called Elliot’s Square, which is at Elliot Street, obviously and in the western half of Louisville; which was not a park it was a public square. It had never been under the jurisdiction of the Board of Park Commissioners. So that 13:00the segregation orders of the Board of Park Commissioners never applied to Elliot Square. So through the appropriate portions of the city administration, Mayor Farnsley just had the word put out through the neighborhood and so on, that Elliot Square was not segregated; that all citizens were welcome to use, and urged to use Elliot Square. And sufficient safety measures were taken to be sure that nothing untoward would happen and it didn’t. And it was really the first integration of a park in Louisville. Then the integration of the big park system went through a lawsuit, as you may know, the parks were segregated, as I say, by an order of the Board of Park Commissioners. A suit was brought in the Federal court to undo the orders which segregated the Louisville golf courses 14:00in the public parks. Some persons who wanted to use the golf course in Seneca Park, were denied the right to do that because of their race, brought a suit in Federal court. The city came back and plead the Board of Park Commissioners’ order and so on and obviously as happened in cases where the law was applied, the city lost that lawsuit and decided not to appeal. So that the segregation of the parks was accomplished by the activities of going through a suit in the Federal court and then letting the judgment stand.

WHITE: Had you told me off tape at some point that the Park Commissioners back in the whenever it was...

BURKE: In the twenties.

WHITE: In the twenties, had simply decided that the parks would be segregated?

BURKE: That’s right. That was in the big segregation movements following World War I. As you know, that’s also the time--and we had them in Louisville and they had them 15:00many places--where there were deed restrictions placed in transfers of property among private persons; which restricted ownership of land to persons of limited number of races. This was post-World War I, and I wasn’t here. Post-World War I apparently was a time of great segregation.

WHITE: I also thought I had heard something about you yourself being sent into a park to play softball? Or is there a story there or am I wrong?

BURKE: I don’t remember that when Charlie was Mayor. I remember doing some things when I was Mayor which was necessary to bring about the integration of some private establishments. But let’s go--you were--we were talking about what happened in the fifties when Charlie was Mayor.

WHITE: Right. I just misunderstood.

BURKE: Yes. Well, another device which was used, which was perfectly proper. The way the Louisville 16:00Public Libraries were integrated is that at the behest of Mayor Farnsley and a number of other people, the library board decided that although they were under an order too. They were under a policy of segregation of the libraries. And it was decided that since the main branch of the library contained so many facilities and so many books, tapes, records, pictures, so on, which were not available other places in the system, that the unique situation of the main library was that it should be integrated. So by an order of the Library Board and everybody who was involved, the main library was integrated on the theory that it needed to be done, because it had resources that nobody else had. Then gradually the branches were integrated.

WHITE: And it was done by Executive Order? 17:00I mean, it was just done?

BURKE: Uh hmm. Well, it was done by Executive Order and it was also done by policy changes of the Library Board. The other important thing that was done under Mayor Farnsley was the integration, which became the integration of the University of Louisville. I read in the paper within recent days of the death of our friend, Doctor Phillip Davidson, who at that time was President of the University of Louisville. The decision was made that the way to integrate the University of Louisville, in which Charlie Farnsley, not only as mayor, but also as a person, was extremely interested and was helpful to the University. It was decided that it was not feasible to operate what was called Louisville Municipal College, which was a racially segregated college really, at Seventh and Kentucky; which was the, you know, the local college for African-American persons. It was decided 18:00that it wasn’t feasible to operate that, so they just simply closed it. And having closed it, there was no place else for students to go, except the University of Louisville. Doctor Parrish was the first African-American faculty member at the University of Louisville. He came from Louisville Municipal College. And these were some of the things that were done, but it marked, I think, an actual attitude and progression under Mayor Farnsley; and the improvement of the situation for African-American residents of the Louisville community.

WHITE: Now from the point of view of an insider...

BURKE: Yes.

WHITE: Yourself. How, what did you notice about, you know, how these things were affected? I mean, were you privy to any, you know, meetings or discussions with Mayor Farnsley or anybody else. In other words, what was going on in the inside? Do you remember?

BURKE: Yes. Probably every 19:00day there were such discussions, because it was a continuing policy. And there was great co-operation between the Mayor’s office and the Board of Alderman and obviously all of the appointed officials. And this was a continuing policy that was implemented day after day, every time an opportunity came up, and also throughout the community. You may not remember this, but Charlie invented and had a program that he called “Beef Sessions”, to allow people to “Beef”, to complain. These were held every Monday. They were held Monday mornings, usually, but once or twice a month they would be held on Monday night. And through these citizen’s report and citizen complaint sessions, all of these ideas were put forward and talked about and they were objected to and all of the various things that were done. But it was, 20:00yes, when you say were there conversations--probably no fewer than every day. It was a progressive program.

WHITE: And as Executive Assistant to the Mayor, what, do you remember any particular tasks you had in this line?

BURKE: Oh yeah, in every one of the things which you and I are talking about, I was probably the person who Mayor Farnsley designated to practically bring them about. Charlie was a great thinker and a great policy maker and a great dealer with the public. But he was not a great person for handling details. (Laughing) So, yeah I was involved in almost all of these things. Not some of the early ones, we would have to check the years, because I wasn’t there during the early years of Charlie’s administration. But, yes, I was involved in almost all of these things.

WHITE: So you were the detail person?

BURKE: That’s right. 21:00WHITE: So if you were not there in the early years, you would not have been there for instance when Lyman Johnson filed suit for the admission to the University of Kentucky?

BURKE: I’m not sure what year that was, I knew...

WHITE: That was ‘48.

BURKE: No, I was not there then. I was still in Law school.

WHITE: So you were not there. Right.

BURKE: But I knew Doctor Johnson most of the years that he and I were both involved in local things. I remember being in meetings in Doctor Johnson’s home. I can’t tell you what it was about, but--and I was not involved in 1948. But as you know, Doctor Johnson continued his interest in all kinds of civic affairs, not only having to do with the African-American community. He was an important person in this community. I do remember him, knew him well.

WHITE: What was he like?

BURKE: He was as pleasant a person as you could imagine. I think some people have an idea that because of the great things that he accomplished, that he did it through some sort of a militantism. Doctor Johnson 22:00was closer to being in the scope of Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi than some firebrand. He was a quiet, persuasive, intelligent person, to whom you could talk. He was very insistent upon the things in which he believed. But he was a lovely person to deal with, he was a true gentleman in the, in the true sense of that word.

WHITE: Do you remember anything about the Iroquois Amphitheatre and the desegregation of it?

BURKE: It was in the park, so I guess, I guess it was...

WHITE: Well some...

BURKE: I don’t remember specifically, but I would think that the Iroquois Amphitheatre became an integrated facility when all the parks did.

WHITE: Apparently it was, had something to do with the play about Lincoln, The Tall Kentuckian. That was in nineteen fifty-three.

BURKE: You know, I don’t know. 23:00WHITE: A lot was going on then.

BURKE: I don’t know.

WHITE: Can you talk a little about Mayor Farnsley, himself, since you worked so closely with him? From your point of view.

BURKE: Mayor Farnsley was a unique individual. He was intellectually a curious person as you will ever see. His interests stretched from modern municipal finance to ancient Chinese philosophy. He was interested in Greek philosophy as well. He was a person who understood - you know he went to school. He kept going to school even, you know just maybe, while he was mayor, but certainly just before. He would commute up to the University of Kentucky and studied Municipal Finance and Public Finance and so on with Doctor Martin. Charlie was the great champion of, although 24:00other people had worked on this, and if it were not this having been accomplished here, municipal finance all over Kentucky would be in a shambles. Charlie was the great father and developer of the occupational license tax, which makes finance in Kentucky possible. You cannot finance local governments now and have lower taxes, real estate wouldn’t produce nearly enough money to run a local government, city, county, schools, anybody. Charlie was a great proponent and champion and adapter of the occupational license tax. Charlie was an interesting person. He also had an abiding interest in the Civil War. He was a member of the Civil War Round Table. He had books, and memorabilia of all kind of the Confederacy. You know Charlie had been 25:00involved with various people in the Whiskey business, both as a lawyer and as an investor. I’m not sure any of them ever produced anything very much. But just to give you an idea, Charlie was the owner of the label, which another distillery still owns and I guess uses, for a brand of whiskey called “Rebel Yell”. That was Charlie’s brand. And he tried to do one to be a supplement to Rebel Yell, which was called DamnYankee”, and the Copyright Office refused it on the basis that it was bad taste. So he changed the application and applied for one called Bad Taste, but they wouldn’t give him that either. I tell you all of these things. Charlie also had an abiding interest in old automobiles. He owned a number of really very valuable old automobiles. I don’t know anything about old automobiles, so I can’t tell you what make he had. But 26:00he bought and sold and traded in vintage automobiles. He had a tremendous breadth of interests and was fun to be around.

WHITE: Apparently he had the energy to go along with it.

BURKE: Well he did, he did indeed.

WHITE: Anything else about Civil Rights under Mayor Farnsley come to mind before we move on to other issues?

BURKE: I think maybe we have, I think maybe we have covered the overall policies, and in the parks, the municipal college and the libraries and so on.

WHITE: And your own involvement.

BURKE: Yes and it gives us an idea of what happened during his administrations.

WHITE: Okay. Now what about culture?

BURKE: Charlie was probably the, if it could be said of anything, Charlie was the father of the Louisville Orchestra, as you may know. I’m not sure of all of the things that had to do with bringing the various people that had the orchestra here, but 27:00Charlie was, I think, responsible for the commissioning of the modern musical works. Who was that done by? Rockf, Rockf, one of the foundations, Ford, Rockefeller, one of the big ones.

WHITE: Ford I think.

BURKE: Anyway, Charlie was responsible for the fame of the Louisville Orchestra in recording newer composers. And I have been told that, we have no idea, and I’m sure there’s a lot that’s happened since then, but if you would listen to your radio in Europe, at that time, when the Louisville Orchestra was recording the newer composers, that you were as likely to hear a composition being recorded, having been recorded by the Louisville Orchestra as you would from anybody else. It was a great step forward. In the arts, Charlie was a great believer, that not only in the arts as the arts, but he was a great believer that an important 28:00arts community was important for the civic and economic community.

WHITE: Well now, were you dispatched to carry out any of this?

BURKE: No I didn’t have much, I wasn’t much involved in his interest in the cultural community, but he certainly had it and certainly carried it out. He did some things which caused the recognition to be made of some important composers. What’s the name of the composer who did Amal and the Night Visitors?

WHITE: Oh, Minotti.

BURKE: Minotti, well Minotti earliest successes, I think, are recordings by the Louisville Orchestra, and some other very important people. Charlie was a great believer in the development of the cultural life of the city.

WHITE: Well now was there anything that you, yourself was particularly immersed in that you recall any details of, I mean were there any particular...?

BURKE: In the cultural world?

WHITE: No, no, no, just generally under Charlie Farnsley.

BURKE: Generally, generally...

WHITE: Did you have a niche or were you the Jack-of-All-Trades? (Laughing) BURKE: I was 29:00the Jack-of-All-Trades, in addition to the niche as Director of Public Safety in operating the police and fire department stuff. Also, as Executive Assistant to the Mayor I was the Jack-of-All-Trades.

WHITE: And what about any other interesting people, personalities that you might have had anything to do with during those years? Is there anybody...?

BURKE: You mean in the city?

WHITE: In the course of carrying out your job, besides Mayor Farnsley. I’m going to stop this now, because we’re at the end.

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE ONE BEGIN TAPE ONE SIDE TWO BURKE: We’re talking about Charlie Farnsley’s interests and other things that I may remember, in addition to his actual activities in the job, his promotion of the Arts, Charlie was very actively involved in politics, as you might think. And therefore coming through and around City Hall at that time 30:00we saw the persons who were most active in Kentucky politics as well as some nationally. I would give great credit for many of the things that happened during Mr. Farnsley’s administration to Mr. Dan Bick, who at that time was President of the Board of Alderman. Mr. Bick was a merchant and a dedicated public servant, of a kind of person, that was able to, through the Aldermen and through his business connections, I’m sure, able to implement the activities of Mr. Farnsley. Charlie was also very close to, not that they were always kind to him, was very close to the people at The Courier Journal. Barry Bingham, Jr. and Charlie Farnsley had gone to school together when they were boys. Mark Etheridge was at that time the publisher of The Courier Journal. Norman Isaacs was the head person of The Louisville Times. I guess they called Norman editor, 31:00but these persons were very important in the newspaper business and were around. They were close to Charlie. So, yeah, those were important. Earl Clements, Lawrence Weatherbee, various people who were important in state government. These people--Charlie was deep--was closely involved, not always on a friendly basis with all of those people.

WHITE: Do you remember any particular issues that, either they worked closely together on or that they did not agree on?

BURKE: Well, you know that would be very hard to characterize in interview like this. Sometime somebody might want to make a study of the editorial policies of The Courier Journal during those years. (Laughing) WHITE: And were you--were there press secretaries in those years? In other words, did you do any of, any of the dealings with the press? Who did that?

BURKE: Yes, various of us, who worked in the mayor’s office. 32:00I did some. Roy Owsley, who was called the City Consultant, did a lot of dealings with the press.

WHITE: Anything come to mind about any of that from your point of view?

BURKE: No.

WHITE: Okay. Now what about the, General Electric moved its Appliance Park here in 1951. Do you remember anything about that in particular?

BURKE: I remember a great deal about it. I remember, and I would have to think back what I was doing. I guess it was when I was working in the mayor’s office. The word was out that this big industry was coming--for a long time--and as the work was being done to prepare their coming, they were really very good at not disclosing who “they” were. There was, you know, the decision was being made, and there were choices being made between whether or not they would come here 33:00or someplace else. And people may not realize this, but there was, not only were there discussions about whether they would come here or go to some other city; but there were discussions as to if they came here where they would locate. And the location which they finally chose, at what we all now have known for a long time as Appliance Park, was not the one that was looked at first and favorably. It was considerably west of there, because this industry which was going to be located here, required all kinds of things. And one of it, was they needed to be served by two railroads. And the two railroads, I guess it was the L&N and the Illinois Central because we have so much rail service here. But anyway, the site which was west, considerably west, several miles west of where Appliance Park eventually located, was served by two railroads, 34:00but it didn’t have some of the other aspects that it required. And one of the railroads actually brought in a new rail line into what became Appliance Park. Oh yes, there was great negotiations, because this thing was going to be so big and people didn’t know who it was. They had tremendous needs for water, they had tremendous needs for energy, for electricity and so on. They were going to require a lot of access by highway as well as by rail. I remember when all those negotiation were going on. I had nothing to do with them, but I remember. And then when it was finally disclosed....And when they were building Appliance Park, you know, General Electric located the building, which I guess is known as either three ten or three twelve West Liberty Street, and they had all of their offices in there when they were making their plans to move here and to build Appliance Park, before they actually moved out there on site. 35:00But I do not claim to be fully informed, but you asked me if I remember that and I do remember it.

WHITE: And also, apparently the bringing here of GE was part of a, of a growth spurt in this area, and I guess nationally as well, post-war growth.

BURKE: Of there is no question about it.

WHITE: Now how did that affect the way your job was going and how did you, did you have anything to do with either guiding or stimulating or, any of that growth?

BURKE: My uh, well I hope so.

WHITE: Or reacting to it?

BURKE: Well, I was going to say, you know, you’re talking about the coming of the General Electric company, but there was tremendous expansion as you know. Ford built a new factory. The post World War expansion here was tremendous. 36:00It required a lot of activity by local government. And the building of the Interstate and defense highway system was going on. And I do remember all of the activities. My particular participation did not have to do with the economic development aspects, but in trying to be sure that local governments were able to supply the needs of these people. But they, you know, they needed co-ordination of public services and private utilities in order to work and I was involved in trying to be sure those things happened. I did very little dealing with the industries themselves.

WHITE: So this was sort of the nuts and bolts underpinnings of all of this.

BURKE: Uh huh, that’s right.

WHITE: Okay. And you, you remained with city government after Mayor Farnsley...

BURKE: Very 37:00 briefly.

WHITE: ...left office. Is that correct?

BURKE: Well, very briefly.

WHITE: Very briefly?

BURKE: Yes.

WHITE: What happened then?

BURKE: Well I determined that I was ready to leave. I stayed, I guess, who, Mayor Broaddus, followed Mayor Farnsley? I stayed, you know, maybe a month or two until they were able to put their own staff into effect. I was ready to leave and did leave, and went with Mayor Farnsley. Mayor Farnsley went back into his old law firm and I went with him.

WHITE: And how long did you remain there?

BURKE: Well, more or less forever. I did, and I would have to - I’m not sure that I went directly from City Hall into practicing law with Charlie Farnsley and Bill Itell and Ray Stevenson. I had an office by myself over in the old Louisville Trust building for a while. And you and I would have to sit down and get out some calendars to figure out when 38:00I did what. But I was--we had a law firm, and I was with them really for a long, long time; but I was in and out.

WHITE: So you, yeah, you were in and out, and one of the things you did, I would say in connection with your public life, I guess, was in nineteen fifty-six, when you worked for the Chamber of Commerce.

BURKE: I did.

WHITE: This was while you were still practicing law.

BURKE: Yes.

WHITE: All right. And can you talk about that a little bit?

BURKE: Sure. I went to work almost full time for the Louisville area Chamber of Commerce in a position that they did not have before. They wanted to have--and this is the matter you were talking about before--they wanted to have, and have had through their various evolutions; a thing called the Area Development Division. And I was Director for a short time of the Area Development Division of the Louisville Area Chamber of Commerce. 39:00WHITE: And what of note was going on while you were directing that?

BURKE: Well a lot of things were going on. There was a lot of industry and you will have to help me. When was the Mallen plan?

WHITE: Well that was what I guess that I was getting to, and I thought perhaps, that was 1956, also.

BURKE: Well it may have been before that.

WHITE: Was it?

BURKE: I’m not sure.

WHITE: Okay.

BURKE: During that period of time, I was the Secretary of the group that drew the Mallen plan; which was one of the early efforts to bring about co-ordination and merger of local governments.

WHITE: Now was that the first time? Do you remember?

BURKE: It was the first effort to do it. I won’t say it hadn’t been thought about. But yes that was the first organized effort to really bring it about and to make a scientific effort to achieve a plan. And it was pretty good.

WHITE: And what happened to it?

BURKE: Well it got beat. It had a lot of--it had a lot of people who were opposed to it. 40:00It had to be passed by a double vote. It had to pass both by the voters of the City of Louisville and by the voters of the people outside of Louisville. The people of Louisville approved it. The people outside of Louisville disapproved it by a very narrow margin. And I attribute that to the fact that the big opponents were some big industries, who did not want their plants to be in the city of Louisville.

WHITE: Do you remember when the ah--Shively became an incorporated city? Because I gather...

BURKE: Well, I know. I don’t remember, but I know.

WHITE: ...that apparently thwarted the expansion plans of the city of Louisville...

BURKE: In that direction.

WHITE: ...that was the first instance of the development of all these smaller cities that we have here.

BURKE: Well now you know you have to be careful about saying first or something of anything.

WHITE: Okay.

BURKE: And it certainly 41:00was an early one. It was before my time. I know about it, but I was not involved.

WHITE: Okay. So the Mallen plan was defeated.

BURKE: That’s right.

WHITE: And then you moved on, if I’m not skipping anything important, you moved on to the State Legislature.

BURKE: That’s right. I served one term in the State Legislature. I was there, I was elected to the State Legislature in 1957. I served one term. I was elected to Congress while I was a member of the State Legislature.

WHITE: All right, how did your running for the State Legislature come about? Why did you decide to do it?

BURKE: Well, I decided that it would be a good idea, and that—without--I didn’t think that the person who was representing the district in which I lived, in the State Legislature was doing a particularly strong job. He was an incumbent, and I ran against him in the primary 42:00and won.

WHITE: Had you made any kind of a conscious decision that you were going to run for elective office, that you would like to become an elected representative of some kind?

BURKE: Yes, I’m sure I had, yes.

WHITE: But you don’t remember any particular...?

BURKE: No, I just wanted to be a member of an elected body and I thought I could do a good job.

WHITE: Who were your supporters? Who got behind you early on?

BURKE: Well yes, you must remember at that time, both the Republican and the Democratic parties here--and I’m a Democrat--had very strong and very able party organizations county wide. And once I won the primary, the Democratic organization all supported me.

WHITE: Who helped you in your campaign? Who was your campaign manager?

BURKE: Well, you know, at that time we all ran as tickets; you didn’t have these individual campaigns 43:00that are running about now. And that was, I think, the strength of the party organization. Mr. McKay Reed was the Chairman of the Democratic party organization at that time. Those were the days when Miss Lainie McLachlan was the Secretary of the Democratic party organization, and I would just have to go on and on. It was a very complete and very well handled group. There were lots of people. My family helped. We were all involved.

WHITE: Do you remember what you ran on? Just your opponent’s lack of ability or were there other issues?

BURKE: Well, I’m sure there were other issues, but I would have to go back and research what in nineteen fifty-seven the State Legislature was involved in.

WHITE: Well, that was over forty years ago, so...(Laughing) BURKE: That’s right.

WHITE: Do you remember, how much do you remember about that short term in office? I mean, less than two years, right?

BURKE: Well, I just served during one term of the Legislature, I had to resign 44:00to be a Congressman.

WHITE: Right.

BURKE: It was an interesting time in Frankfort. There were some big things happening. You must remember that, that was at the time that Governor A. B. Chandler was serving his second term. Having been elected Governor about 1937, you know he was re-elected in 1957. Anytime you were in Frankfort when Governor Chandler was in office was an interesting time. There were some big things that happened. I remember for example, a great controversy. That’s the time that the Legislature authorized a new Medical School at the University of Kentucky. There were, you know, there were all of the regional problems and so on. It was an interesting time to be there.

WHITE: Did you....Were there any particular issues, that were, that you were particularly interested on that you worked harder on than others?

BURKE: Well, I’m sure.

WHITE: Or were you getting your feet wet? (Laughing) BURKE: Well 45:00I was trying to learn. And those of us who were from the metropolitan area had to be very careful that we were not trampled down by the rest of the legislature. And we weren’t. It all went well.

WHITE: Also, did you have, yourself have dealings with Happy Chandler or...

BURKE: Oh yes.

WHITE: Or were you just sort of one of the crowd in the Legislature?

BURKE: Oh no, no, no, no. I knew Governor Chandler both then and later. Yeah I had dealings--Governor Chandler, if you were in the Legislature; you had dealings with Governor Chandler. He was around.

WHITE: These were the days that the Governor had, is this correct, more power than the Governor does now?

BURKE: Oh yes. Oh yes indeed. The way the Legislature was organized.

WHITE: How did Governor Chandler handle the Legislature? In other words, if he wanted you to vote on a 46:00certain issue, how would he approach you?

BURKE: Any way he felt like. Governor Chandler would talk to you personally, he would call you on the telephone. Governor Chandler used to come in on the floor of the House of Representatives and sit up with the Speaker and watch how people voted and comment. This was the day before they had the machines with which you vote. You voted by voice when they called your name. And Governor Chandler was a real presence. He would come and watch you.

WHITE: And he would comment at the time, while he was sitting there?

BURKE: Uh huh, he would, he would. And he didn’t only feel free to try to influence, for example the caucus of his own party; Governor Chandler was a Democrat; but he would go to the Republican caucus also. He was a great bi-partisan person.

WHITE: Did he, were people afraid of him?

BURKE: Absolutely. (Laughter) WHITE: Did you have any particular stories?

BURKE: No, I never had any reason 47:00to be afraid of him. You said, “Were people afraid of him?” Yes.

WHITE: Now, what about, were there any desegregation issues while you were in the Legislature? Do you remember that?

BURKE: Not that I recall.

WHITE: Okay, any other people loom large from those years in the State Legislature besides Governor Chandler?

BURKE: Well there were, you know, there were people who...

WHITE: That may have influenced you, mentored you?

BURKE: I don’t know about that, but they were people of whom you have heard. Harry Lee Waterfield was Lt. Governor, and he was very important in Kentucky state history and politics and so on. John Breckenridge who became Attorney General, I think, also a member of Congress from Lexington for a short time, used to sit next to me in the Legislature.

WHITE: What was he like?

BURKE: John was a great guy. He was a friend of mine. You know, 48:00there were a lot of people around Frankfort at that time whom you’ve heard of.

WHITE: And then you said you had to resign to run for Congress.

BURKE: I didn’t have to resign to run. I had to resign when I was elected.

WHITE: Oh right.

BURKE: So that I could become a member of Congress. When I ran for Congress, I was a member of the Legislature.

WHITE: And, did those, so did those years overlap?

BURKE: Yes.

WHITE: You see, it’s hard to tell whether it’s the beginning or the end of a year, when I have years down here.

BURKE: Yeah, they overlapped.

WHITE: So your term was...

BURKE: Was half over.

WHITE: Was unexpired.

BURKE: That’s right.

WHITE: Who took your place? Remember?

BURKE: Oh my, I don’t remember.

WHITE: Okay, too long ago. Well how did the congressional election come about? Why did you decide to run for Congress?

BURKE: Well, I’ll tell you, part of that probably was very partisan. I thought this District ought to be represented by a Democrat. I thought this was a democratic community. And the distinguished 49:00Republicans had held it for about twelve years. Thurston Morton had served as Congressman from this district for about three terms and then he ran for the Senate. And then John Robsion succeeded him, and he had been elected for about three terms. And in 1956 when President Eisenhower was elected, Mr. Robsion carried this district by some huge margin. And I think the reason that I got to run as a Democrat was nobody else wanted to do it. It looked like a pretty tough insurmountable task. It had been Republican since Thurston Morton beat Emmett O’Neal, which must have been twelve or fourteen years before nineteen fifty-eight. So I ran and won in the primary, and I don’t remember, but I had four or five opponents. And I won in the primary and then in the general election beat John Robsion.

WHITE: How did 50:00you beat John Robsion, who you just said had won by a pretty good margin before?

BURKE: Oh yeah, he had.

WHITE: What, do you remember how you did it? Do you remember little decisions made?

BURKE: Worked very hard. (Laughing) We knocked on all the doors in Jefferson county, at that time they were just beginning to do television advertising. And we scraped together a lot of money, and would you believe this, they did political television ads live. If you had a thirty second television spot, you reported to the station and they timed you. And if you think that doesn’t teach you a lot of things about making television appearances, you’ve never done one. We did everything we could do and we did win.

WHITE: And your ads, did you appear in all...

BURKE: Well, not all of them.

WHITE: Or most of your ads?

BURKE: Most of them, yeah.

WHITE: Did they tend to be sort of testimonial ads if other people appeared?

BURKE: Well, yeah, sometime, but I mean, you know, political advertising at that time was very rudimentary and had not developed its skills. One thing that I remember 51:00the stations always insisted on being paid in advance, apparently they had been taken by some political candidates, who after they lost, said, “I can’t make money, I’m not going to pay you.” But yeah, we did it by working very hard. My wife and I went around--we had a station wagon at that time--we had neighborhood coffees all over. I mean I bet we had a hundred. And we went all over Jefferson county and just asked people to vote for me.

WHITE: So these were the days when sort of the foot campaigns...

BURKE: Oh yes.

WHITE: The block by block campaigns were...

BURKE: Absolutely.

WHITE: The way things were done. And television was just beginning to...

BURKE: And radio was pretty prominent, but we didn’t have much money.

WHITE: Were those days in which any of the national figures spotted some of these more local, if you can call this a local campaign. In other words, were any big guns sent in to help you 52:00the way they do at least with some now?

BURKE: In ‘fifty-eight…I don’t remember in ‘58. In sixty when I ran for re-election and was re-elected, yes. But I don’t think we had any big help from outside in 1958.

WHITE: So you think the secret to your win was hard work?

BURKE: Yeah, no question about it.

WHITE: I noticed in the archives, I believe this was at the U of L archives, you had a telegram in November of 1958, so you had not been in Congress, heretofore, a telegram from John F. Kennedy, congratulating you on your victory. I don’t know whether you remember it or not?

BURKE: I don’t remember the specific one.

WHITE: Do you, and you had mentioned to me that you and Kennedy were friends, but were you friends then? Did he know you?

BURKE: I didn’t know him well, 53:00you know, in ‘58. And I’m sure that Senator Kennedy, knowing his ambitions, was watching all of the Congressional districts in the country, and I appreciate very much his....I probably met him. Now let me test your memory on this--didn’t President Kennedy eventually--President Kennedy, didn’t he attempt to run for vice-president in 1956?

WHITE: I believe that’s correct.

BURKE: I think that’s right. And I know he was here, that’s probably the first time I ever met him.

WHITE: So you did meet him before you went into...?

BURKE: I’m sure I did, but you know, I don’t have very clear memories on that.

WHITE: Well then, I mean as long as we’re on the subject, because there’s a lot of other things to talk about in Congress, I think. But, how did your relationship to him develop. You have a signed photograph on your wall.

BURKE: I do indeed. When I was elected to Congress in 1958, and this may be going back some, 54:00when I was elected to Congress in 1958, President Eisenhower was President. Now should we talk about when President Eisenhower was President, or do you want me to describe to you, as you asked me to do, how my relationship with President Kennedy developed?

WHITE: You can, I think the way your mind works is more important, so. (Laughing) BURKE: Well, let me.... we can WHITE: If it’s better to start with Eisenhower, let’s start with Eisenhower.

BURKE: Well it might be.

WHITE: Okay, let’s do that.

BURKE: When I was elected President—President--when I was elected to Congress, President Eisenhower was President. You must remember, to-be President Kennedy, was a Senator from Massachusetts. And it was the time that Sam Rayburn was Speaker of the House, John McCormack was the Majority Leader, Richard Nixon was the Vice-President and therefore presiding officer of the Senate. Everett Dirkson was the 55:00Maj--was the Min--he was the Minority, yeah, Minority Leader, by that time in the Senate. Charlie Halleck from Indiana, was the Republican Leader in the House. So now, we’ve put those things in perspective. So at that time, of course, and you know how long these things take, Senator Kennedy was among the people who were talking about running for President in nineteen sixty. And I got to know President Kennedy as Senator Kennedy from Massachusetts, because we had many of the same interests legislatively in 1958, 1959. And then I started working on his campaign for President very early, probably in 1959. There were a group of us, who worked, as best we could, on President Kennedy’s early campaigns. And we had 56:00a little in-house organization afterwards, after the successes of 1960, which we called “Before West Virginia”. Before Senator Kennedy defeated Senator Hubert Humphrey in the West Virginia primary, we were a very small number of people, trying to get the Senator from Massachusetts support to run for President of the United States. So those of us who were his supporters before West Virginia, called ourselves such. I got to know him really in the 1958-‘59; ‘59-‘60 era, principally because I was one of the people who tried to be helpful in working on his early campaign.

WHITE: Well, let’s--and before you did that, you said you had similar interests. And what were some of those interests?

BURKE: Well, I think if you just, without trying to go into all of these things, they were some of the things which developed when he became President. 57:00We were both, I guess, considered to be, Democrats. Sam Rayburn used to say, “He was a Democrat, he wasn’t a Southern Democrat or a Liberal Democrat, he was a Democrat without prefix, suffix or apology.” So I guess that we just were both supporters of many of the programs which could be identified as the Democratic programs in the Congress.

WHITE: But I guess there was something beyond that, that led you to get out early, behind him in the presidential campaign?

BURKE: I was impressed by President Kennedy. And it was very difficult to be his supporter as a new congressman from Kentucky, because at that time, the real leader of the congressional delegation in Washington from Kentucky, was Senator Earl Clements; who was a very close friend 58:00of Senator Lyndon Johnson, and who was a very big supporter of Lyndon Johnson to become the President of the United States. I guess the first time I really--other than in the formal ways--the first time I ever met Lyndon Johnson was at Earl Clements’s house in Morganfield. But I was just impressed, I thought President, I thought Senator Kennedy had the best chance of becoming the next Democratic President of the United States.

WHITE: Now what was it that made you think that?

BURKE: His charisma, his ability to enunciate positions, his character which I think would, which did make him appropriate and available to be supported by people from all over the country. Not as we know the whole history, not that President Johnson didn’t also do that, but I was just charmed by President Kennedy. 59:00WHITE: When you say that you got out ahead of him, not ahead of him, excuse me. You started campaigning for him early. What did that involve?

BURKE: A lot of it was correspondence, a lot of it was dealing with people in the Southeastern states, to try to get support for President Kennedy in advance of the convention. And you know those things have to be done months ahead of time. And those of us who were working on that, called upon, talked with and so on, other members of Congress, other people whom we knew in the Party, to try to get some support for President Kennedy before the convention. And as you may know, we didn’t have much luck in Kentucky. (Laughing) We did in some other parts of the Southeast.

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE TWO BEGIN TAPE TWO SIDE ONE WHITE: Did you go to the convention? That elected Kennedy?

BURKE: That nominated him? 60:00WHITE: That nominated him. Excuse me.

BURKE: No, I was not a delegate. I could have gone as a member of Congress. But I was not a delegate, because I tell you, those persons who were pretty much in charge of the Kentucky delegation to the Los Angeles convention wanted to be sure that all the delegates were for Senator Johnson. There weren’t many, there were a couple of delegates who were committed to President Kennedy, but the Kentucky delegation to the Presidential election of nineteen sixty was controlled by Senator Earl Clements, and he was making sure that, that delegation was going to vote for Senator Johnson.

WHITE: How did you, how did you maintain a relationship with Earl Clements, and also work for Senator Kennedy?

BURKE: Oh you know...

WHITE: Or did it come between you, or did it work out okay?

BURKE: Well, you know, this is a matter of being involved professionally in politics; you don’t get mad at people 61:00because you disagree with them. (Laughing) Senator Clements remained a friend of mine until the day he died, when he had long since ceased being a senator. We got along fine, we just didn’t agree on who we were for, for the Presidency.

WHITE: Did you have to actually say to him, I’m for Kennedy not Johnson.

BURKE: Well sure, sure. We talked about it at length. (Laughing) WHITE: You did talk about it?

BURKE: Oh, he wanted me to be for Johnson. Yes, oh yes, Senator Clements and I talked about this at great length.

WHITE: Well, did you, did you continue then, particularly once Senator Kennedy was nominated, did you continue to campaign with him? For him, I mean.

BURKE: Yes, yes I worked then principally in Kentucky, but you know there were other things which they asked me to do; but yeah I was involved in the campaign in nineteen sixty. I was running myself for re-election.

WHITE: Oh right, of course. 62:00At this point, I’m not sure whether to continue with the Kennedy story or whether to try to finish talking about some of the issues from your first term. How would you rather do it?

BURKE: Well, why don’t we just take some issues from the first term; because I’ll tell you it will be very brief. I would have to go read the congressional record to remember what some of the issues were. I do remember that, you know President Eisenhower was still President. And I think that various--I’m trying to remember some of the controversial things.

WHITE: Well I can tic off a few.

BURKE: All right.

WHITE: Of course, some of these came under Kennedy. I don’t know, of course there was the admission of Hawaii.

BURKE: And Alaska.

WHITE: And Alaska.

BURKE: Right.

WHITE: And were they sort of done deals? I mean, uncompromised deals?

BURKE: Well, they were by that time, you see, those had been going on for many years. 63:00Alaska and Hawaii both had wanted to be admitted to the Union as states for a long time. And I didn’t know this until I got up there, and I bet you know it; based upon the admission of other states to the Union going back to nineteen eleven and nineteen twelve when New Mexico and Arizona were the last states admitted, there is a procedure--there is a formula. There are standards which territories or dependencies would have to reach before they are capable of being admitted. And I won’t bore you with them. The problem with those two states was, apparently because one would have been known in one particular political persuasion and one the other. It had always apparently for many years been understood that Hawaii and Arizona would either be both admitted...

WHITE: Alaska?

BURKE: Yeah, Hawaii and Alaska, either would be both 64:00admitted or neither would. It was a procedure, and you see that’s before--and one of the things is that they are supposed to be economically independent. Well, I think apparently it was believed that Hawaii was economically independent, but there was grave doubt that Alaska was. That was before the big oil field strikes in Alaska. And so by the time I got there, they were no longer controversial, it was going to be done. But I remember the great ceremonies. I remember the delegates from Hawaii and Alaska. I guess, Rivers from Alaska was I believe elected a member of the House once. And I’m trying to remember if Dan ( ) was ever a delegate, or if he was first elected as the first congressman from Hawaii. But yeah, those were very interesting 65:00 days.

WHITE: And now what about sanctions on Cuba? Do you remember if that came along under Eisenhower?

BURKE: I remember, no, oh sanctions on Cuba. I don’t remember the sanctions, but I certainly remember the face-off about the missiles.

WHITE: Right and that was the next, that would have been your second term.

BURKE: Yes, that’s right.

WHITE: I also found a letter, and this would be your first term, a nineteen fifty-nine letter, that you wrote to Mr. Celebrezze describing the city as the American frontier.

BURKE: Uh huh.

WHITE: Did you retain your interest in having worked in a mayor’s administration--more than one--did you retain a particular interest in urban affairs?

BURKE: Oh very much, yes indeed. I was on the Committee on the District of Columbia, which was before they had their present organization. I was on the Congressional Oversight Committee of the District of Columbia, as well as, the Committee on Public Works. 66:00Yes, I certainly did retain my interest in urban America and tried to follow those bills which affected cities.

WHITE: Were cities beginning to lose their grip? (Laughing) If that’s not an overstatement, as early as 1958, or did that happen later? Or lose their funding or however you...?

BURKE: Well, no; yes, cities began to get in trouble at least that early. It was mainly economic, but many other things played a part also.

WHITE: Were there, I’m sort of gathering from your answers, there were no sort of big standout Bills that you remember?

BURKE: Well, I don’t remember and I probably should have done some research before you and I talked. But no I don’t remember any big standout Bills.

WHITE: Of course the National Debt was increasing in those years.

BURKE: National Debt was increasing, but I believe the 67:00last year I was in Congress, when President Kennedy was President, I believe we had a balanced budget. I think that was the last time until now.

WHITE: And you had mentioned earlier the Interstate Highway Act under Eisenhower.

BURKE: Eisenhower, right.

WHITE: Now was there more along those lines between ‘58 and ‘60?

BURKE: Yes, it had to be implemented. And I was on the Committee on Public Works, and yes we dealt with the Interstate system; we dealt with the Tennessee Valley Authority; we dealt with all the flood control projects in the country, and so on.

WHITE: Do you remember anything coming up about railroads? While the highways were being built were the railways ceasing to be funded as much as they had been? Do you remember dealing with any of that?

BURKE: Well I don’t know that the railroads were funded 68:00by the Federal government.

WHITE: Or subsidized?

BURKE: Well, they’re still subsidized. (Laughing) But yeah, of course the railroads over the years, and not just during these years, had very different interests because of the nature of the Interstate Defense Highway System. Yeah, and there were matters on those subjects, that’s right.

WHITE: Okay, when Kennedy was elected...

BURKE: Yes.

WHITE: ...in nineteen sixty, do you remember an enormous change in the country or did it just sort of, one administration flow into the other?

BURKE: No there was...

WHITE: What do you remember about the mood?

BURKE: Yes, there was enormous change in the country. President Eisenhower as we all know, had been the Commander in Chief during the great World War II military victories. There was a great post-World War II peace; and he was pretty much 69:00of a father figure. And President Kennedy came along, as he says in his famous inaugural address, “He was the first president born in the twentieth century.” It was a vast change from simply a euphoria over the end of World War II, and you know, the progression of all the things which needed to be done. And the job which Kennedy described as being his.

WHITE: What did that mean for Capitol Hill? Well, first of all, what did it mean for the Democrats on Capitol Hill?

BURKE: Well, it meant that, you know, here we had a Democratic president and a legislative program, you know, which with a majority in the Congress, could be implemented. We had the other situation before, President Eisenhower was certainly not 70:00considered to be a person who blocked things, but it gave a great chance of the Democratic party and the country, I think, to move forward.

WHITE: How did, how did Kennedy deal with Congress? How was it for you as a Congressman?

BURKE: He was very skillful, having been a member of the House and a member of the Senate both, he knew what lines you stepped over and which you didn’t. And although he did have an excellent staff, he dealt directly and personally with Congress. He’d call you up and talk to you about legislation that was pending.

WHITE: Was he as charming over the phone as he was publicly?

BURKE: Oh yeah, he was a charming person. But he was very skillful at dealing with the Congress. As I say, you know, I think it helps that he had been a member of the House and a member of the Senate. 71:00Strangely enough, let me tell you about something when he was a member of the House that many people do not know: because you can’t imagine two people from different worlds. Jack Kennedy and Carl Perkins from the mountains of Eastern Kentucky were extremely close friends. Carl Perkins was the Chairman of a committee in the House upon which Congressman Kennedy served. And Congressman Perkins carried in his pocket Congressman Kennedy’s proxy to vote on various Bills within the rules of the House. Isn’t that interesting? They had the same vision for the United States. And Carl was the Chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor, and they were very close personally. If you knew both of them, you could not imagine two more different people. 72:00WHITE: How would you put that vision into words?

BURKE: Well they were more interested in the legislation which came from the Education and Labor Committee. Carl is the great father, you know, of the Elementary and Secondary School Act, the Bills on Higher Education. Those were the kinds of things in which they shared such a common interest.

WHITE: And of course Kennedy, I guess you would say gave America a feeling of mission.

BURKE: I think that’s right, yeah. He said, “The torch had passed.” WHITE: And you were swept along with this. Swept along, maybe is not the right word.

BURKE: I think that’s right. I think that’s fair.

WHITE: So that when he, was the Peace Corps was one of his early initiatives? I think it was pretty early.

BURKE: It was, it was, that’s right.

WHITE: Did that have any trouble getting through Congress?

BURKE: Oh I think it did, yeah, you know, 73:00just because it was different.

WHITE: Of course one of the first things that happened was the Bay of Pigs.

BURKE: No, well yes.

WHITE: After he became President.

BURKE: That’s right.

WHITE: Which he presumably had inherited from Eisenhower.

BURKE: No question.

WHITE: But do you remember, do you remember any, what the reaction on Capitol Hill? Do you remember any of your feelings about that?

BURKE: Oh yes, it was, you know, it was the same reaction that everybody all over the country had, that it was a tragedy and you know, that probably it was a mistake. But I thought President Kennedy did the only thing that he could do. He said, “It happened on my watch.” WHITE: Take a break now. (Interview continues on another date below) WHITE: Today is October 27, 2000, and we’re going to continue our conversation and we’ve agreed that we’ll talk about a couple of things that we might have missed from the last session, if that’s okay. And starting with World War II I want to--you had mentioned that very briefly, 74:00the heroism of the British people; and I’d like to pick up on that and see if there’s anything in particular that you remember about that.

BURKE: Well yes there is, and of course as you say, we’ve rambled a little bit before. We arrived in England, well we really arrived in Scotland in the summer of 1944. So we did not see anything of the classical Battle of Britain by manned aircraft, which everybody knows about. But we were there when the V-bombs were landing in England. When we first arrived the V1's were still coming in. The V1's were non-manned missiles really; V1 bombs, which were projected from I guess Holland and various other places into England. And they could be anticipated because they were something like aircraft. You could hear their propulsion motors, 75:00putt, putt, putt, putt, putt as they came. And then when they cut off, you knew they had gone into a glide and were going to hit something. We saw those in England, and they were very devastating, where they hit they did a lot of damage. We were also there and saw in England--but I particularly saw in Belgium--when the Germans had gotten their V2 non-manned bombs up in the air. And they were absolutely silent. They were really treacherous, because they--all of a sudden half-a-block would just be leveled by these terrifically high explosives. And in the face of all that the British people were heroic. They were stoic as they really are, and they had a sense of humor beyond that which most of us attribute to the British. They were good. Just to give you one example, the people whom 76:00in this country we call air-raid wardens; those were the people who were supposed to go around knocking on the doors in case the bombers came here and so on. In England they were called air-raid precautionaries. And they wore arm bands which were black and white, had white letters on them. And they said ARP, which meant Air-Raid Precautionaries, but in the common terms of the British people they said what it really meant was, “‘Anging Round the Pubs,” that these people spent a good deal of time doing that. (Laughter) And the standard joke about all of those things was that, one of the V1's hit an apartment block and knocked it down, and the ARP’s and the others were going in there to bring people out. And they were assisting a rather elderly lady, whose house had been knocked down about her ears. And they started to go back 77:00in, and she said, “Where are you going?” And they said, “Well we’re going back in and get your husband.” And she said, “That coward joined the Army.” (Laughter) Saying that it was much more dangerous to be home. They had big tanks of water, which looked like large, above the ground wading pools, that were around to put out fires. Those were called stationary dams. They looked like big tubs. But they were very heroic. They withstood the bombardments. By the time we got there it was almost over. But they were still suffering and it was amazing to see.

WHITE: And then moving on to the Farnsley years, we’re sort of catching little strands here and there. Is there anything to discuss that has to do with the circumstances of your hiring, either how you got into the first job 78:00under Mayor Farnsley? And perhaps do you remember anything about the hiring process itself?

BURKE: Pretty ordinary, I think. (Laughing) I was working for a law firm. I had gotten out of Law school about a year and a half earlier, maybe two years earlier; and some of my fellow law students had already gone to work for the city. And Jim Thornberry, who was a class mate of mine in Law school, in fact we had gone to grade school together, was working in City Hall and there was a vacancy over there. And I talked to Jim about it, and Jim was very effective in getting me the job offer. As I say, there wasn’t anything very fancy about the circumstances of the hiring. A friend of mine got me a job, that’s about as common as I can think.

WHITE: And you had mentioned the “beef sessions”, and I ...

BURKE: Yes.

WHITE: Just wondered whether, since we are focusing on civil rights, at least from time to time, were there any complaints or hoorahs or anything, 79:00that you remember during those sessions on that subject?

BURKE: Well I can’t remember specific ones, but knowing that when this was, you know, in the middle nineteen fifties, and as we talked before about the integration of the parks and of the libraries, of the University and so on. Yes, at the “beef sessions”, which as we have discussed were weekly or bi-monthly, citizens meetings at which the Mayor and the Department Heads sat in the Board of Aldermen chambers and listened to whatsoever citizens might want to discuss. There were, I am sure, a great many discussions of the need to integrate facilities, and those persons who brought that, of course found in Mayor Farnsley and those who were working with him, an extremely sympathetic ear, and fortunately were able to accomplish some things.

WHITE: And we agreed before 80:00we started recording this morning, that there wasn’t enough going on in the Police and Fire Departments, or at least enough that would stand out as evocative of an era or whatever to talk about.

BURKE: I don’t think, I don’t think, that during Mayor Farnsley’s administration there was anything, except you know, an effort to do a good job with the Police and Fire Departments, nothing dramatic that I can think of.

WHITE: And then going back to what we talked about as far as Congress is concerned last time. You had mentioned meeting Lyndon Johnson at Earl Clements’ house, and I neglected to ask you what the meeting was like, what Lyndon Johnson, how he struck you, what your first impressions were?

BURKE: Well, you know, I’m not sure that, that’s the first time I had ever met the man who was to become President Johnson. Of course, he and Senator Clements were very close. We were--and I’m trying to remember, 81:00there were several Democratic congressmen from Kentucky, who were down at Morganfield; and I don’t remember the occasion. But I do remember that Senator Johnson was there. It was probably in nineteen fifty-nine, when he was, you know, running for president really. I just remember his being there. His approach to persons running for other offices was, that he would be glad to come and speak in your district either for you or against you, whichever you thought would help. (Laughter—White) He was believe it or not, despite his obviously very strong personality, he was an absolutely charming person.

WHITE: How was that manifested, I mean?

BURKE: Just in his dealings with people. I mean, he understood that, you know, you need to listen to people. He was a very strong 82:00personality. But Lyndon Johnson was a capable person, as many people have said, and this certainly is not a peculiar assessment on my part, many people have said that he probably was the best prepared president we’ve ever had. That he probably understood the legislative and administrative functions of the federal government better than anybody else who served in the office.

WHITE: So you have a sense, once again we are going back almost fifty years, you have a sense of having met him before you were at Earl Clements’ house, but you don’t...

BURKE: I think so.

WHITE: Particularly remember a first meeting?

BURKE: No. I would guess though, that just trying to piece this together as we are, that this must have been after I had been elected to Congress the first time. So I would have been in Washington at least one term, and Senator Johnson 83:00of Texas was the Majority Leader of the Senate, so I’m certain that I had met him before that. But I certainly was not a close confidante.

WHITE: All right, well now let’s continue on with our discussion of your two terms in Congress and let’s start with your arrival, because we didn’t really focus on your arrival, your first impressions, who took you in hand, what you had to learn.

BURKE: All right, we can talk about that. Evie and I arrived in Washington. I had been in the State Legislature, I was elected to Congress. We arrived in Washington with our four children, and the first thing that we started doing was finding out where we were going to live; and where the children were going to go to school. Now this is a real footnote. But at that time, you see there was a limitation on how many trips home you could get, that’s not true anymore. You know, you can make as many as you want, but you had to pay for them; 84:00and the salaries were pretty low. So what we arranged for the time we were in Washington, our children went to school one semester in Louisville and one in Washington. It worked fine, but you know, it was quite a burden. But we arrived, and at that time, of course, President Eisenhower was President of the United States having been elected in 1956; and the Congress was changing. The Congress was becoming a majority Democratic Congress at that time. And some of the real giants of the Congress were still there and very active, and I got to know them well. For example, at the time that President Eisenhower was President, if we would want to look first at the United States Senate: Richard Nixon was Vice-President and therefore the presiding officer of the Senate. Lyndon Johnson, a senator from Texas was the Majority 85:00Leader in the Senate. Everett Dirkson a senator from Illinois, was the Minority Leader in the Senate. In the House of Representatives, Sam Rayburn of Texas was the Speaker, who had been in the Congress since nineteen hundred and twelve; who served as Speaker longer than anybody else in the history of the United States, was the Speaker at the time that I was in Congress. A majority of the members of the United States Senate had served in the House while Sam Rayburn was Speaker. So, Mr. Rayburn, you know, he was the author of the Interstate Commerce Act and all sorts of things. John McCormack of Massachusetts was the Majority Leader in the House. Charles Halleck of Indiana was the Minority Leader in the House. Mr. Joel Martin of Massachusetts who had been Speaker while there was 86:00a Republican majority in the House, just before this, was still there. So there was great leadership and great strength. And it is my opinion that--and somebody can get in to what happened to the administrative functions of the Congress of the United States subsequent to Watergate--but you see it is my impression that at this time, when the House and Senate were arranged as they were; and as irritating as it might have seemed to those of us who didn’t have much seniority; the real seniority system which worked at that time, contributed to a great deal of party responsibility, which I think we would all agree is absolutely missing in the Congress now. There is no party responsibility.

WHITE: Now, by party responsibility do you mean voting together on a certain set of issues?

BURKE: Adopting policies which the party adopted as their policy. 87:00We now have five hundred and thirty-five individuals. And obviously, we have seen, we’ve seen things in Congress in recent years that you never would have seen before, the inability to adopt a budget. That would never have happened. Now let me tell you how strongly that worked, but how bi-partisan it was. I was certainly not a part of these discussions. But I know that during the legislative agenda when things were very important, that almost every legislative day in Mr. Rayburn’s office in the House, Mr. Rayburn and Mr.--probably Mr. Nixon, but certainly Mr. Johnson and Mr. Dirkson and Mr. McCormack and Mr. Halleck, all met to go over the proposed legislative programs for that day and that period 88:00in the House and the Senate. And Mr. Rayburn was in charge, there was no question about that. And what he always asked was, “What does the President have to have?” Because Mr. Rayburn would frequently say in public speeches and other places that, “You know, first I’m an American, and then I’m a Democrat.” And they knew how many votes they had. They knew what programs were pending. They knew what could be done and they did it. And it worked fine. But I’m afraid, and I say this without any disrespect of some people currently there, who are my friends, we don’t have that quality of leadership in the House or the Senate at this time. Now this may just be an old man looking back. I recall that Cicero, in talking about various people in Rome criticized and he called them, “Laudatores 89:00temporus aectores”, which means, “Those who would praise the times which are past.” (Laughing) And I’m afraid, you know, that all of us as we get older do that. But I think it’s a balanced evaluation to say that we don’t have anybody in the House or Senate at this time, who look anything like these leaders.

WHITE: Well now, I’m asking you for a little philosophy, or at the very least to hazard an educated guess, but do you think that, that is because, you know, eras come and eras go; and some eras just for whatever reason tend to throw up an unusual cadre of leaders? Or do you think it has more to do with the structure of, within the Congress and within the two party system?

BURKE: I think it is a little of each, plus a third big factor. And the third big factor is the single 90:00subject voter, and the press following Watergate. You would be surprised if you wanted to do a statistical study, how many very, very capable people left both the House and the Senate when this business of single issues came up and when the business of the press having to investigate and report what color shoe laces everybody had. A lot of people just have decided that the game is not worth the candle. And the single issue situation and the insistence of the press for all of this investigative reporting has driven a number of good people out of government. I could give you some names, but I’m not going to do it, because I would skip some. But if you went back and looked subsequent to Watergate at some of the people who are--who would have been there... 91:00END OF TAPE TWO SIDE ONE BEGIN SIDE TWO TAPE TWO WHITE: How do we re-capture it?

BURKE: Well I don’t know. (Laughter—White) We’ve got to--I guess, you and I are talking about those things which are past, and I can’t theorize on how you would do that.

WHITE: Fair enough. Well what about, first of all, where did you live in Washington? You kept your house here and then you had a place to live in Washington.

BURKE: We did, we rented an apartment in Washington, lived on Connecticut Avenue.

WHITE: And what did you have to learn? I mean, you’ve come out of being a State Legislator and you arrive in the halls of Congress. How did you learn the ropes? How did you learn what to do and where to go?

BURKE: It’s a very friendly place actually, there’s some opportunities for training. For example, I remember going to a series of lectures 92:00or meetings that not only did some senior people in the House and Senate: but the big, one of the best familiarities and descriptions of what goes on up there was conducted by Scottie Weston, who was the New York Times representative in Washington for a long time.

WHITE: James Weston, yes.

BURKE: Yes, he was called Scottie. He had lived in Scotland. Although...

WHITE: I’m just identifying him for whoever.

BURKE: Although he was born in Columbus, Ohio of persons who were immigrants of Scotland; and his father got very tired of the United States and for a while went back to Scotland. And then came here again. But Scottie Weston--who had a Scots accent, many people thought was some sort of a European--was born in Columbus, went to Ohio State University, began his career in journalism as a sports writer; was the traveling secretary of the Cincinnati Red’s 93:00baseball team early in his career. He worked for The New York Times as a sports writer and was the--got into being a reporter on state’s matter, on matters of state and government and so on: because he was in Europe covering the races really--probably in France or in England for The New York Times--when World War II really started. And as he says, “They really couldn’t get anybody else over there;” so they had to say, “Weston, you are going to report all this stuff.” So as I say, then he was in Washington for many years. I point this out to you, only to--Congress is a friendly place and conducts its own orientation, most of it is on the job training. But I tell you, as Mr. Rayburn used to tell young congress persons that, “You will look around here when you get here and you will see people you’ve heard of all your life, and you see 94:00these pictures on the wall of Henry Clay and all these people, and you will say, what am I doing here?” And he said, “After about a year, you will look around and see all of your colleagues in the Congress and say, what are they doing here?” (Laughter—White) Now the Congress is very representative of the United States, they’ve got--you’ve got people representing everybody; and that’s what you’ve got. You’ve got all kinds of people, and it’s a great amalgam.

WHITE: Who would you, who would you say were your strongest mentors?

BURKE: Well, as I’ve mentioned Rayburn, McCormack...

WHITE: All of those leaders mentored you, as they say?

BURKE: Oh yeah, and the, I was on Public Works; and 95:00there was some very strong people there, who were very good. And then our own Kentucky delegation, Mr. Brent Spence, who was the Chairman of the Banking Committee was still in the House when I was first elected. There’s a bridge named for him now, between Covington and Cincinnati, the Brent Spence Bridge. But then Carl Perkins was the Committee Chairman. Perkins was the Chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor. And John Watts was on Ways and Means. These are all Kentucky Congressmen, and they helped. Frank Stubblefield and I were elected to Congress for the first time the same year. He was from the first Congressional district, from Murray, Kentucky. But our senior mentors in the Kentucky Congressional delegation were very kind and helped us a lot. Bill ( ) was on Appropriations, all of these people. Perkins and Spence 96:00were of course extremely important in the Congress; both of them were Committee chairmen. Tell you a little vignette about Carl, you will not believe this, when you know the backgrounds of the two people. Serving on the House Committee on Education and Labor, Carl Perkins and John F, Kennedy, a Congressman from Massachusetts, were very close. Perkins was the Chairman, and Congressman Kennedy from Massachusetts, before he was elected to the Senate, was a member of that committee. They thought so much alike and had so much confidence in each other, and for example; when John F. Kennedy decided that he was going to run for the Senate and so on and knew he would miss some committee votes and so on. Carl Perkins carried John Kennedy’s proxy in his pocket. And if you ever met the two of them together, you would not have thought these are congenial people, but they were. 97:00They were extremely close.

WHITE: Reminds me of Ted Kennedy and Orin Hatch. (Laughing) Another unlikely combination.

BURKE: That’s right.

WHITE: And how, were there any particular friends, I mean, not mentors so much as just new friendships that you developed?

BURKE: Yeah there were, I mean, you get to know the people who are on your committees. You get to know people regionally, you know, those who are from this part of the country; those who have some of the same interests that you have. And it would be difficult without going back in the books to give you names. But to answer your question, yes you become very friendly within. It’s a friendly place.

WHITE: But not one person who became your buddy, but just a lot of new friends.

BURKE: No, well unless it’s Frank Stubblefield. He and I were elected together at the same time, neither of us, as I say, had been there before; we were each from Kentucky. 98:00And our wives become very close friends. Yeah, Frank was probably my best friend in the Congress.

WHITE: And you’ve mentioned once or twice that you were on the Committee for the District of Columbia and the Public Works Committee.

BURKE: That’s right.

WHITE: Anything about the particular tasks of those particular committees that stand out in your memory? I mean I know the Eisenhower years were known for not a whole lot happening, at least under Eisenhower’s initiation; but do you remember anything about those committees?

BURKE: I mean, those are very interesting committees. For example, the Committee on Public Works has oversight jurisdiction of the Interstate and Defense highway system; of all flood control, all the water things in the United States, whether it is the beach erosion or the traffic on the Ohio River, 99:00all public buildings and grounds. For example, as you say during the Eisenhower Administration they had, had a policy that they were allowing public buildings to be built by private investors, and then leased back to the Federal government. During nineteen fifty-eight or fifty-nine we passed the Public Buildings Act, and the building now named for my friend Ron Mazzoli, was one of the very first Federal buildings in the United States built under the new Public Buildings Act. I introduced it in the House by being on the Committee of Public Works, John Cooper supported it in the Senate, and we got that building built. A little interesting story about that: I had, as you say, served on the Committee on the District of Columbia, which is not considered to be a jewel of a place to serve. 100:00The Speaker had asked me to do it, so when I realized under the Public Buildings Act it might be possible to get a much needed Federal building in Louisville; I went to the Speaker and I said, “Mr. Speaker tell me about this. In making the budget and in making the schedule for the new Public Buildings Act, I would like to get a new Federal building in Louisville.” And almost immediately he said to me, “I think I can get you the second or the third one. I have promised Lyndon the first one in Dallas.” And that happened, the first one was built in Dallas. This is the second one built under those Acts. Now the District of Columbia...

WHITE: Now let’s just make it clear for the record, that it was not called the Mazzoli Building then.

BURKE: No, Ron Mazolli was...

WHITE: Did it have a name, or was it just a federal building at that time?

BURKE: It was just called the Federal Building. No it didn’t have a name. No, my friend Ron was not elected to Congress until 101:00nineteen seventy. This was ten years before then.

WHITE: Well, this is if some young historian is listening to this in a hundred years. (Laughing) Just to straighten that out.

BURKE: Yes, that’s right, that’s right. Now on the Committee on the District of Columbia, I was just show you how interesting that was: as the present governmental structure for the District of Columbia had not been adopted at that time. So they were under, they had practic....their legislative body for the District was pretty weak. And the House Committee on the District of Columbia, the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia were effectively the legislative bodies for the District of Columbia. There were very strong feelings, both ways, for example: 102:00I sat there on the Committee on the District of Columbia and I think they went back and forth as chairpersons. For example, Congressman Dawson from Chicago, who was the first African-American elected to the House of Representatives from Chicago. Now Congressman Dawson had been there a long time in nineteen fifty-nine, probably twenty-five or thirty years. And also on that committee was Congressman Smith from Virginia, the great famous Chairman of the Rules Committee, who ruled with an iron hand. So you can imagine that with Congressman Dawson and Congressman Smith there was some strong differences of opinion. But it was an interesting committee to serve on. Those were two very able people.

WHITE: This would be differences of opinion about where power should lie or just about how to handle goings on in the District?

BURKE: Differences of opinion about the world. (Laughing) WHITE: Everything, okay.

BURKE: When you have a congressman from 103:00rural, northern Virginia and a congressman from the south side of Chicago, they don’t exactly live on the same planet.

WHITE: And what about Eisenhower? We reversed order a little bit and talked about Kennedy from a personal point of view last time, but we haven’t talked about Eisenhower. Did you meet Eisenhower as a congressman?

BURKE: Oh yes, well yes...

WHITE: Different party.

BURKE: The presidents are always very careful, or at least they used to be--I can’t tell you about now. But they were always very careful, there would be at least one or two functions in the White House every year, to which each member of the House and Senate were invited. There would be various functions, also for example I remember Mrs. Eisenhower had some functions where all the congressional wives were invited. Yes, I had met 104:00General Eisenhower, President Eisenhower, didn’t know him well, not like I knew Jack Kennedy.

WHITE: How did he come across to you?

BURKE: Well, I think as he came across to everybody else. Post-World War II, the country was looking for a father figure. (Laughing) WHITE: So he was a genial guy?

BURKE: Oh yes, President Eisenhower was very forceful. He was a general. He had been a soldier all his life, and we all understand the military mentality, and he never lost it. He was a person that gave orders and liked to have them followed. But he understood, he was good, yes, he was a genial person, lovely person.

WHITE: Because, I mean just to probe this a little bit--once again going back to the history books, Eisenhower apparently--well and I remember this--gave the impression publicly of being a sort of a calm, ordinary, genial even 105:00somewhat confused person. And then historians found out later, that behind the scenes of the White House he was quite the opposite. So I just wondered which came across to a congressman?

BURKE: Well both.

WHITE: Okay.

BURKE: He came, as you say, he had a very pleasant personality. And I think that had been part of his genius in being Commander of the European Theater, you know; he had to make mesh the views of a lot of people who didn’t agree with each other. (Laughing) And he was very good at that, but yeah, he was very straight. He was a soldier, he was a general, that, you know, who when he said something should be done, it should be done; and there wasn’t any excuse. Now, when he ran into a Congress that was in control of another political party; I think he had to learn to deal with that. I don’t think he liked it. But yeah, you’re right, you’re right, he had those two aspects to his personality, but was a pleasant person.

WHITE: And displayed both to a congressman.

BURKE: Oh yeah, oh yeah, you’d learn. 106:00WHITE: Now do you remember the overthrow of Batista by Castro in 1959?

BURKE: I sure do. I sure do.

WHITE: And you were in Congress.

BURKE: I was in Congress. And the interesting thing that I remember about that, is that during President Eisenhower’s Administration, General Castro was invited to come and visit Washington. He was invited by the American Society of Newspaper Editors and Publishers. He was not an official guest of the United States; but he was invited, the President received him. He was invited to address a joint session of the House and Senate, and he did. He was being introduced at that time as an agrarian reformer. He was the, as I say, he was invited 107:00here by the American Society of Newspaper Editors and Publishers, and he was an agrarian reformer. As a matter of fact, I remember seeing him. We lived in an apartment on Connecticut Avenue, between Yuma and Albemarle, and he was in a parade in an open automobile on Wisconsin Avenue; just within that section--as we say the second alphabet. Is that too much inside Washington talk? Do you know about the second alphabet? (Laughing) WHITE: Not, not, maybe if you remind me, but not off hand.

BURKE: Well, the streets in Washington are very easy, it’s easy to get around Washington if you know the code. Going out from the Capitol where everything starts--now you know there is various geographical areas. For example, take Northwest, which 108:00is the area that I was talking about. The first twenty, I guess, because they leave a couple out, streets, not the avenues, are lettered. There’s “A”, “B”, “C”, “D”, “E”, “F”, and so on. The second series are two syllables, Albemarle, Brandywine, Chesapeake, Davenport, Ellicott, ( ) and so on. Then beyond that, Yuma is the last one in the two syllables. And then beyond there, you pick up three syllables except it loses a little as it gets toward Bethesda; because you pick up a lot of streets that have states’ names and so on. But anyway, that’s a footnote, everybody knows that. Yeah, I remember seeing Castro being paraded in an open convertible sedan on Wisconsin Avenue, you know he was a great guest. He was the agrarian reformer 109:00who had overthrown the terrible dictator Batista, and you know, was going to free the Cuban people, I guess.

WHITE: And did everyone believe it?

BURKE: Oh sure.

WHITE: Do you remember anyone being skeptical in Congress?

BURKE: Oh, I’m sure they were...

WHITE: You don’t remember in particular, okay.

BURKE: I don’t remember that, but I know, that’s the aegis under which he was there.

WHITE: And then Eisenhower broke relations right after he left, right before he left the presidency, so...

BURKE: Well, that’s right.

WHITE: It didn’t take long apparently.

BURKE: The agrarian reformer turned into something else.

WHITE: Do you have any, there were a series of, apparently of recessions in the fifties and then nineteen sixty, sixty-one would have been the one while you were in Congress. Do you remember anything particularly about that? I don’t remember them being severe.

BURKE: I remember that they....Oh not they weren’t severe. I remember that they occurred. And for example, 110:00many people believed that the nineteen sixty situation was what resulted in President Kennedy’s election.

WHITE: And then what about the U2 incident?

BURKE: You know, you’ll have to refresh my recollection.

WHITE: That was where the U2 was shot down over Russia.

BURKE: I remember the U2 incident...

WHITE: Francis Gary Powers, wasn’t it? Yeah.

BURKE: Yes, I don’t remember precisely when it was.

WHITE: So you don’t remember how Congress, you as a congressman particularly...

BURKE: Yeah, I remember, President Eisenhower was still president I think, and all I remember was an extremely embarrassing incident for the United States and for the President.

WHITE: All right, well now let’s move into civil rights, because I think we can maybe pick up a few things from Eisenhower and then stick with the subject and flow into the Kennedy years. But one thing I’d like to do that we haven’t done yet, 111:00is go back and discuss--we’ve talked about some of the racial issues during the Farnsley years, so we’re jumping around a little bit--but I have not yet asked you about any early, either in your growing up years or the Army, during the war; what experiences did you have, if any, that might have had anything to do with race, and perhaps your own developing attitudes? Before we jump into the congressional years.

BURKE: Okay, you know, in my early developing years I was like everybody else who lived in a segregated society; I went to segregated schools, you know. We all went to segregated churches. Now, Louisville was not as terrible as some other places. I mean I don’t think, that persons of minority background were 112:00ever prohibited or even discouraged from voting. I think, in fact, that they were courted. But I lived, you know, in a segregated society. Then, when I went in the Army, I had not been an officer more than about six months, and then this was true for the rest of my service. I was in a segregated Army, but I always served in units where the officers were white or mixed white and black, and the enlisted men were all black. I served with African-American troops all the time I was in the Army, both in this country and in Europe. And I learned a great deal about African-American people.

WHITE: Now let me see if I can understand this. You said the Army was segregated, but your Army was not. How did that happen?

BURKE: Well, it was, it was 113:00segregated in that the units that I was with, formally had white officers and black enlisted men, but there were a few black officers, not many.

WHITE: And what do you remember about how that was played out? In other words, how did these units operate? Do you remember any incidents of anything?

BURKE: Yes. I remember lots of incidents of all kinds of things. This was a long time, especially when we were in Europe. You know I think I really learned what it meant to be the victims of segregation, because we were treated as seg....as black troops. I remember one time--I guess it was in Germany--it was either in Germany or eastern France that we had been pretty far forward and we 114:00were coming back. I guess we were coming back to pick up more ammunition to take back up to the tanks, and we--I took a number of trucks with me into an Army, a United States Army Installation, because we didn’t have anything to eat. We were, we were really driving. I thought, “Oh my not only can I get some K rations, which are boxed, for my men, I can get them fed.” So I pulled in and pulled up and identified myself to the mess sergeant, and said, you know, ‘who we were and you know, we were, we needed to eat.’ This was a white organization. And this guy said to me, he said, “Well Lieutenant, it’s perfectly fine. You can go over there and eat in the officer’s mess, but I can’t feed black troops.” 115:00Now that sort of thing went on, and you get pretty well educated.

WHITE: What happened to the black troops? Do you remember the outcome?

BURKE: I took them someplace, I took them someplace else. (Laughing) I found a place I could feed them.

WHITE: You were not going to go eat in the officer’s mess?

BURKE: Oh no, goodness gracious no. You know, I learned, I learned about segregation. I learned what wonderful soldiers these guys were, they were young, they were all African-Americans. Some of them when we were training down at Fort Knox, we got them to go to a beginning school. Some of them couldn’t write their names, they had, had that little opportunity to go to school. And yeah, I learned a whole lot about racial relations during my time in the Army. I think it helped me understand a lot.

WHITE: Were, were they, do you know, if they 116:00were at all struck by the anomaly of fighting for their country, but being strictly second class citizens and groups?

BURKE: Oh, I’m sure they were, but they had a great sense of humor about it. I remember when, oh they used to, you know Mrs. Roosevelt was a great champion of minority people, so they used to call themselves “Eleanor’s Lancers”. And I can remember one specific incident and I know where we were. We were looking for supplies and we were getting the things that we needed. And some of the German prisoners of war, which we had working with us, who were changing tires and so on, told us where what we were looking for was stored in some German warehouses, which had been bypassed. So we went to get them, and my first sergeant and I, whose name was Battle, B A T T L E, he and his 117:00wife ran a barber and beauty shop at a Hundred and Ninety-sixth Street in the Grand Concourse in the Bronx.

WHITE: Black?

BURKE: Oh yeah, all my troops were black. We decided we’d go get them. For various reasons we weren’t going to send a couple of privates over there. So Battle and I went over there, and in order to pick these things up, we had to move a couple of railroad cars that were sitting on a siding. And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a thing called a “track-jack” or not. But this happened to be the day after Franklin Roosevelt had died, which what, the Spring of nineteen forty-five, I guess.

WHITE: April, uh huh.

BURKE: Well we were up in Germany, but we were going back to eastern France. So Battle and I went over there to get these things out of the warehouse. And there were some railroad cars sitting on a siding, which were in our way. But we found a thing, it’s called a “track jack”, it’s a long metal pole with a wheel 118:00on the end and you can let the brakes off of the railroad car and put that wheel under it and get a hold of that thing, it’s like a lever. And you can start it rolling, and we did. And old Battle was there, I was up on top, I had let the brake go. And Battle was pushing that thing and he said, “Lieutenant, you know just what I just thought?” And I said, “What?” And he said, “My man ain’t been dead a day and you’ve got me shoving railroad cars.” (Laughter) Yeah, these men knew that, these were intelligent, bright guys. But you know, they were good Americans and good soldiers. They were going to do what they were supposed to do.

WHITE: And....when....never mind. (Laughing) Any other stories come to mind?

BURKE: No, those are typical. Oh there are a lot of stories. 119:00There were a lot of stories, but you know, those are representative.

WHITE: Do you ever remember an incident where you, I mean obviously, you had to stand up for them in a way when you took them to a different place for food. But did you ever get into any altercations with the white...

BURKE: No.

WHITE: ...other white people...

BURKE: No.

WHITE: ...about your black troops?

BURKE: No.

WHITE: No? Okay.

BURKE: No, we got along.

WHITE: Well then let’s jump to Congress then, with that as your background and with the fact that you had been part of the, some of the opening up in Louisville under Mayor Farnsley.

BURKE: Uh huh.

WHITE: Just remembering that, for instance, the lunch counter sit-ins took place in ‘fifty-nine and ‘sixty, let’s start with them.

BURKE: That’s right.

WHITE: Do you remember anything that, any discussions in Congress or anything like that as a result of those? 120:00Or do you just remember them as a citizen?

BURKE: Well, sure it was what was going on in this country. And I remember being with the people here, who were involved in that.

WHITE: Okay, but you don’t remember any particular dealings that Congress, or reactions, because of course they didn’t pass any legislation.

BURKE: Nothing that would be different from the general experiences.

WHITE: Although the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty was passed.

BURKE: It was. I voted for it. (Laughing) WHITE: Do you remember any particular debates about it?

BURKE: Yes, I do. Yes, I do. There were lots of debates about it.

WHITE: Any divisions?

BURKE: Yeah, you know, there were lots of, as I pointed out to you before, there were all shades of opinion in Congress on voting rights and on other things having to do with the rights of minorities. I can remember, for example, 121:00some of the persons who were opposed to them. I can remember John Bell Williams, you know I was in Congress the same time John Bell Williams from Mississippi was there. John Bell eventually became Governor of Mississippi. But then so was Adam Clayton Powell, from New York. And yes, I do remember the debates, they were extensive and they were bitter, and it was an interesting time to be there.

WHITE: And do you remember, I’m obviously sort of groping here, but there were a number of decisions after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision by the Warren Court, which continued to strike down segregation mostly in public accommodations. Do you remember any reaction to that particularly from the point of view of a congressman?

BURKE: Well sure, but I mean, you know it is the general experience of the country. Speaking of Brown versus. The Board of Education, the University 122:00Law School has just had Justice Scalia here, who delivered, who delivered the Harlan lecture this year. And we must--our fellow Louisvillian, Judge Harlan when he was on the Supreme Court of the United States, wrote the dissent in Plessey versus. Ferguson, which became the majority in Brown vs. The Board of Education. Justice Harlan was four generations before his time, I guess. (Laughter) WHITE: All right well then, (clears throat) excuse me, under Kennedy.

BURKE: Yes.

WHITE: As I recall there was some foot dragging on Kennedy’s part as civil rights demonstrations unfolded; partly perhaps because he was involved in the Berlin Crisis, but there were Freedom Riders in May of sixty-one. James Meredith was finally 123:00admitted to the University of Mississippi, Kennedy had to send Federal troops to Oxford. Anything about any of those parts of the civil rights debate and development that affected you, I mean as a congressman?

BURKE: Well, I can remember, well I can remember it affected everybody. But I can remember during those times--and of course, Robert Kennedy was the Attorney General--and it was the United States Department of Justice under Attorney General Kennedy, who was down there enforcing all those things. And I can remember at the times, that I would have to get out a calendar to figure all these out. I can remember that Martin Luther King, Jr. had a great deal of support from both President Kennedy and the Attorney General during his tribulations. And I’m embarrassed to say, I cannot remember the date that Doctor King was assassinated. 124:00WHITE: Well, it was nineteen sixty-eight.

BURKE: Eight, I guess. But he was very active...

WHITE: And you were not in Congress then.

BURKE: No, but he was very active at this time, you know. He was around and in the early nineteen sixties, having espoused The Cause. And I think he was being supported greatly by both of the Kennedy’s.

END OF TAPE TWO SIDE TWO END OF INTERVIEW