Oral History Interview with Lynwood Montell

INTERVIEWER: Now, we haven’t had any lost.

LYNWOOD MONTELL: Now do they have to be me as an individual? Or could they be...

INTERVIEWER: No, you can be in a group with other people.

MONTELL: ...like my brother or whatever? Okay.

INTERVIEWER: If you are out doing something that is always better, than if it’s just a stiff...

MONTELL: Okay.

INTERVIEWER: ...you know, meeting in front of something kind of picture. But if you’re in doubt, send it all and we’ll pick the ones that we think will be best to use. It’s better to have too much and to not use them all, than to not have enough. Do you teach at any of the universities?

MONTELL: Not anymore I don’t.

INTERVIEWER: But you did at Bowling Green?

MONTELL: No. Uh unh. Not anymore. I did a lot of lecturing around the state.

BETSY BRINSON: But you did teach at Western?

MONTELL: Oh, I taught thirty years as Western.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, okay.

BRINSON: Yeah, I’ve met all kinds of people who have taken your classes, saying you ought to go over there. I think he is retired. He’s also on the Kentucky Oral History Commission.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, okay.

AUDIOMAN: All right, if you’ll just look at Betsy as you talk. You don’t have to look around.

BRINSON: ...that you had as a young boy with segregation?

MONTELL: When I was a young, seven year old boy, I was drinking from a “Colored” water fountain and lo and behold, a white custodian came running over and pushed me so hard, that my head literally hit the floor.

BRINSON: And how did you feel about that?

MONTELL: At that point in time I really didn’t know what to think, because I was not accustomed to racism.

BRINSON: And tell me how you developed your understanding of that incident.

MONTELL: It’s hard to respond to that, except as I grew older, then I learned that the term “Colored” was not an appropriate term. And yet a lot of the white people where I grew up did use it. But for the most part the people in my home community, they were not racist. And I’ll never forget, my father, a white man, of course, went to school in a one room school and there was one young, black fella, who went to school there in nineteen seventeen, nineteen eighteen. And that was Mount Gilead, Monroe County.

BRINSON: That was pretty unusual.

MONTELL: Yes, it was indeed. And my father and Slick Dunn, as the black fella was called, my father and he, they were dear friends for the remainder of their lives. They visited each other and would have meals with each other. And it was just fantastic.

BRINSON: What do you know about your Kentucky ancestors?

MONTELL: Well...

BRINSON: Or are they even from Kentucky?

MONTELL: My, all of my people are Kentucky ancestors, indeed, but there’s nothing that has to do with racism. Let me tell you one story that happened to my great-great-grandparents on my father’s mother’s side. And what it is, they were slave holders. They owned two slaves. And after the Civil War, of course, they lived on as tenant farmers. And the black man’s wife died and the black fella then, he asked them, he said, could we be buried alongside the two of you, and he said, because we just think the world of you and we just want to be buried with you. And in the Mount Gilead cemetery they are there with my great-great-grandparents.

BRINSON: I’ve always been interested in the fact that you are the author of The Saga of Coal Ridge, which is the study of a black community in Kentucky, which no longer exists, as I understand. What prompted you to do that research?

MONTELL: The thing that prompted me, I think, more than anything else, is that....and I was going to Indiana University working on my Ph.D. at that point in time. And I was challenged by a cultural geographer, who had taught at U.C. Berkeley for many years. But he came to Indiana University and was teaching there one Spring semester. And he issued a challenge that we need to look at all aspects of the local life and culture. And so I thought in terms of this black community in southern Cumberland County, Kentucky. And I said what I am going to do, I intend to write a history about these people and I’ll have you know, I didn’t know this at that point in time, but that turned out to be the first book ever published about a rural, black community after the Civil War. And it has been translated in part into German and published in Germany.

BRINSON: Okay, you want to go back to [INAUDIBLE]? So we’ll go back and ask you to tell the story about the water fountain, but just add more detail to it.

MONTELL: Okay, back in nineteen thirty-eight, when I was seven years old, my parents and other families in northern Monroe County, Kentucky, they went, we all went, that is, to Lookout Mountain. And got there and we walked into the Visitor’s Center. And as soon as we opened the door, I saw a water fountain over against the wall. And back in that day and time, country boys and girls, if you wanted running water, you had to run down the hill to get it. So I went running over to that water fountain and just started, slurp, slurp, just drinking away. And suddenly I heard someone running and yelling out, boy, ain’t you got a lick of sense? Can’t you read nuthin’? And he hit me so hard that I fell to the floor. The back of my head literally crashed against the floor. And in a few moments I was able to rise up and I saw the word “Colored” above the water fountain. And that was the first time that I had ever been aware that indeed we were to look down upon, as it were, the black people in our local communities.

BRINSON: How did the other adults or people with you react to that?

MONTELL: Well, my mother and daddy, of course, didn’t like it at all. But they were the only ones, you know, that sort of fussed at him. But all the others did not like it, yes. They commented about it and the fact that, that sort of thing should not take place.

BRINSON: But it was his place.

MONTELL: But it was his place. He was the custodian there in the Visitor’s Center. And boy, oh boy, he kept me away from that water fountain after that. And there are so many things in the lives of all of us, whether white or black, we need to share accounts like this. We need to write them down before we forget it or while we are still living, because our great-grandchildren will certainly be interested in knowing what race relations were like while we were growing up as little boys and girls.

AUDIOMAN: Betsy, you can’t go, uh hmm. [LAUGHTER]

BRINSON: I’m sorry. I know better and I did it. I just did it one time, didn’t I?

AUDIOMAN: No, you were pretty constant.

MONTELL: How is it going basically?

AUDIOMAN: Great.

BRINSON: Except I’m screwing it up.

AUDIOMAN: Let’s try the story one more time.

MONTELL: The whole story?

AUDIOMAN: Yes sir.

MONTELL: Back in nineteen thirty-eight, when I was a little, seven year old boy, my parents and some other families there in northern Monroe County, they were able to charter a bus. Now during the Depression era, I don’t know how they did it, but they did. And we went down to the Great Smoky Mountains and then from there, we went to the Lookout Mountains in Chattanooga. We got up into the parking lot.

AUDIOMAN: Stop.

INTERVIEWER: Don’t look at us. Don’t look at Chris.

AUDIOMAN: Betsy is the only one here. She’s the only one in the room.

BRINSON: And I have to be quiet now.

MONTELL: [LAUGHING] So now I’ve got to start again.

AUDIOMAN: Yes sir.

MONTELL: Back in nineteen thirty-eight, when I was a little, seven year old boy, my parents and some others there in our home community in northern Monroe County, chartered a bus. And we went to the Great Smoky Mountains and from there we went on over then to Chattanooga to the Lookout Mountains. Pulled into the parking lot, got off the bus, went into the Visitor’s Center and the moment I stepped inside the Visitor’s Center, I saw a water fountain and I went running over to it. Because as I’ve said to many people before, back then if you wanted running water we had to run down the hill to get it. So, I was over there, just slurping away on that water and I heard this person come running over and he was yelling, boy, ain’t you got a lick of sense? Can’t you read nothing? And it was the white custodian and he pushed me so hard that my head literally hit the floor. And in a few moments I was able to rise up and I looked up. There above the water fountain was the word. “Colored”. And that was the first time ever that I was supposed to have been made aware, apparently, that we were more superior, supposedly, than the black population.

BRINSON: How did your parents and the others in your group handle the situation?

MONTELL: Well, my parents came running over to me, of course. And they fussed at the person who did the pushing. And the others didn’t do anything, but they talked about it later on. And it was just something that none of them had ever been made aware of. Because there were several black families in the community where I grew up and there was not a lot of visitation for the most part, but people did get along though. And I knew never of a racist episode all the while that I was growing up, through my teen years even.

INTERVIEWER: Okay, that’s it, good.

MONTELL: You mean that’s it?

INTERVIEWER: That’s it, right.

END OF INTERVIEW