Oral History Interview with Jim Young

DAVID WOLFORD: This is David Wolford. It is the tenth of August, 2002. I'm in Russellville in Logan County. Here with Mr. Jim Young. Mr. Young, would you just kind of introduce yourself and tell us where you grew up.

JIM YOUNG: Okay. David, I was a native of Logan County. My father owned a farm about two miles north of Adairville and I attended twelve years of school, one through twelve, at Adairville. Graduated from there in 1950. Went to Austin Peay and got my Master's degree at Peabody in Nashville and then later got another thirty hours beyond that at Western. But I started my teaching career at a, in 1955 at Trenton, KY. It was a little one through twelve school, independent school, that, we only had I think fifty-two youngsters in the, in high school. I 1:00taught six different subjects and a homeroom and kept the bird book. Coached basketball and baseball. And, it was, that was a full year. Then I went to Lewisburg in '56. I taught and I coached there for two years. Then I came to Russellville in '58. In 1958 through '61, I was director of pupil personnel and head basketball coach. In '61, Mr. Krushev put up the Berlin Wall and President Kennedy activated our local Guard unit in which I was having to pull active reserve time. So I went back in the army. In '62 I came out of the army and went to Auburn, one through twelve, elementary through high school. And I served there until December of '65. At that time the Elementary and Secondary Education 2:00Act was passed and Mr. Stevenson who was superintendent of the Russellville School offered me a position as Assistant Superintendent in the Russellville system taking care of the federal programs and the buses, and a little of everything. And then when he retired in 1974, I, the board elected me to serve as Superintendent and I served until I retired in 1993. It's been an interesting life here in Logan County and I look forward to hearing what you got to ask.

DW: Okay, well, let's start with the, your time at Trenton in Todd county.

YOUNG: Okay.

DW: I know you weren't there long, but that was during the '55-'56 school year.

YOUNG: Correct.

DW: It's right after the Supreme Court had made the initial ruling about segregation and then they had also made a clarification by this time.

YOUNG: Right.

DW: Do you recall by any chance the feeling in Todd County about the idea of 3:00integrating their students?

YOUNG: Right. I was, I was prepared to teach and coach there. And it was funny because all the board members were either farmers, and there was a banker, there was a gentleman who owned a garage there, but I met the board and was interviewed. They pulled two pickup trucks together and we sat there together in the middle of a place of the side of the road with the lights on and they talked to me. And they agreed to, decided to hire me. And when we got through I'll clean this language up a little bit as I relate it to you, but the, one of the men said, "Now Mr. Young, I'll tell you right now." He says, "There's two things we will never do here at Trenton." He says, "Number one, we'll never send our 4:00children to Elkton to school." ( )

DW: What's Elkton?

YOUNG: Elkton was the center of Todd County. And there had been talk about consolidating all those schools into one, see. So he told me, he said, "We will never int-, we'll never, we'll never let our children go to a consolidated school in Elkton." And he said, " Number two," he says, "our children will never go to school with blacks." He called them the n-word, but anyway--

DW: Now who was this who was speaking?

YOUNG: This was one of the Board members. I don't recall the gentleman's name, but anyway it was odd because two years later their school, their high school went under and their kids did go to Elkton to consolidated school and then in about another two or three years, they were fully integrated and all the, and so 5:00his, his, his ESP was slightly out of kilter because everything he said they weren't going to do at Trenton they had done within five years.

DW: Did the community, do you think the community in Trenton or the Todd county residents, do you think they agreed with this gentleman or do you think that he was kind of a--

YOUNG: I don't know. I think he may have just been out on his own on that deal. Might have been expressing a personal prejudice only. But I, Todd County has been integrated for quite some time and I've not heard of any difficulties there.

DW: Okay. How would you describe public reaction, black and white, in Logan County regarding the ruling about segregation back when that first happened?

YOUNG: Well, when the Brown decision was done?

DW: Correct.

YOUNG: Of course, it was, everybody here in the heartland of the United States, 6:00when they make a decision in Washington in the Supreme Court it seems like it's happened overseas, you know. It, at that time, this was in 1954. And everybody thinks well, that applies everywhere, but you know, it won't apply here. But, the thing that occurred was that, well, we can get into this later on, but I think when the decision was first made, nobody really thought a great deal about it. Maybe, maybe some of the local black citizens did. And certainly the leadership in the town did because of what they did later on. But the general public, I don't think they really paid it much attention when it first came out.

DW: The districts in the county both the Russellville system and the Logan 7:00county system did integrate relatively early, 1956.

YOUNG: Right.

DW: Why did the local school boards integrate at this time, do you think?

YOUNG: I think it was due primarily to the leadership here in Russellville. And the, and the people in the county went along with it, but there was a, after this thing began, about a year and a half after the decision, people began to realize or the leadership of the county and the city realized that hey, this is the law of the land and we need to go ahead and do something about it. The a, they made a conscious effort to, to integrate the high schools in '56. They didn't have the room at the time to do the elementary. So, they just didn't say we're going to do it. There was a lot of meetings, for example, leaders in the 8:00town that were members, board members. There were superintendents. There were lay people. They held meetings at churches. They held all the civic clubs, the women's clubs, everyone, all those people were addressed telling them that this was the law of the land and it needed to be done and it was set up to do in '56. And it was done and this, there was no hassle to it. The Klu Klux Klan didn't come into town. You didn't see any crosses burned. There was just nothing like that occurred. The kids came into school. The white kids, seemingly to me, from what, the standpoint I could see, welcomed them in. And there were a lot of good 9:00black athletes that came into school. And they got instant recognition because of their stature as, you know, playing ball and all. But, anyway, it was really a very positive time in the county. And it just, it went well and I attribute it to the, to the leaders there. Bob Stevenson and Bob Piper were superintendents in the city and the county. And you had men like Dr. Burn who was chairman of the Russellville Board at that time. Mr. Mickey Sash who was general manager of the radio station. You just had a lot of people in the community who said this was the thing to do and let's do it and do it right. And it was done right.

DW: So you would say that the white leaders initiated the--

YOUNG: Oh yeah, absolutely.

DW: Integration? Was there any pressure from the black community to do this at all?

YOUNG: None that I recall at that time. They wanted to do this.

DW: The black community wanted to be integrated?

YOUNG: Yes they did. And they wanted their children to come to school and have the best of facilities and everything that the white children had. And, but, you had, you had a much broader based, a bigger based black Christian community at that time. And they worked hand in hand with the white leadership and the white leaders to get this going. All of your white ministers and so forth were, I mean they were preaching this from the pulpit that this was the thing to do. And it just, it just, it just happened. It was a big voluntary effort that went well from all sides. Now that's not to say there wasn't some individuals out there 11:00that were unhappy about, that were not happy about this, I'm sure there were. But they were so outnumbered that they didn't say anything.

DW: Really?

YOUNG: No. You just didn't hear it. They might, they might have grumbled to themselves, but you know I never heard a thing.

DW: Hm. What type of plan did the administration devise, you know, once the decision was made, we're going to go through with this and integrate, what kind of plan was created or what kind of steps were made to guarantee a smooth transition?

YOUNG: Well, I really, really don't know. I think that before the children ever arrived at school the major part of the work had been done. Gave the attitude of the community to accept this and to say that it was the thing to do. Really when 12:00the children showed up and enrolled, they just enrolled and school started and that was the end of it. The teachers were assigned, as I, as I, I don't think I mentioned this before but, on e of the things when the schools were integrated, I don't know if you've got this on your questions or not, but all the black teachers were accommodated.

DW: Meaning?

YOUNG: They were all hired. There were no layoffs of black personnel. And they were all placed in various schools in various, teaching various subjects and that all went well. There was not a single black professional that was knocked out of a job because of this. And that helped because they were friendly faces when these children, when these kids walked into the school.

DW: Uhm. I guess when this first happened you were at Lewisburg High School--

YOUNG: Yes.

DW: In '56, '58, which is part of the Logan county system.

YOUNG: Right.

DW: You know what were some things maybe you saw in the school building or in a classroom or, were you coaching at the time also?

YOUNG: Right. It was my first year there at Lewisburg and it wasn't, there was an incident that occurred there that was interesting that sticks out in my mind. Lewisburg was a one through twelve school that had, was a largely populated school at that time. I'd say 7-800 students. And most of the black citizens lived in Russellville, Olmstead, Adairville, the southern part where the big farms had been. But the principal at Lewisburg, Glen Somerston, the first thing, the first hour of the first day, everybody met in the gymnasium. And we was 14:00there and the kids were finding out whose room they were going to be in and so forth. And all of the sudden this one black kid walks in the door at the gymnasium and it got as quiet as a tomb. It was an interesting thing that happened. There were a couple of kids there that played basketball, Larry Forgey and Brownie Banks. And all the basketball players were sitting over there on one side.

DW: Is this the Larry Forgey?

YOUNG: Yeah.

DW: Yeah.

YOUNG: And they, and when this kid showed up though and everything got silenced, suddenly silent. They came, they got up out of the stands, walked over and said, "Come on Otis, come over here and sit with us." And he walked over and sat with them and, and everybody went back to normal. And I'd say Otis Folkes was 15:00probably one of the most popular kids in the school when he graduated from our school.

DW: And he's Otis--

YOUNG: F-O-U-L-K-E-S or F-O-L-K-E-S. Otis Folkes.

DW: And he was the sole--

YOUNG: He was the sole black student.

DW: Black student in that school?

YOUNG: In a school of about 800 students.

DW: Wow.

YOUNG; But I thought it was, I thought it was interesting the response from Larry and Brownie was particularly good because it set a tone for the smaller kids to say hey, you know, here's a guy that's coming in that's a complete stranger and we bring him in and make him feel welcome. And he was a very popular fellow.

DW: What are some other interactions you might have seen between whites and blacks in, you know, in the months or even the years to follow?

YOUNG: Oh my stars. I don't know. I will say that, that the atmosphere, I was 16:00trying to think of any personal incidents like that that occurred and as time goes on I may think of them and relay them to you. I think though the thing that bothered me probably more than anything was that we had had such a nice, what I call a very cooperative integration of our schools. And both races appeared to me were very supportive of this endeavor. And then when the, in the sixties, 17:00when we had the riots, when we had Stokely Carmichael saying, "Burn, baby, burn." And we had the assassination of Dr. King and we had some of these things occur. I saw an attitude shift on some black children that was, that was very disturbing. It was a, you could almost see hatred in their eyes. And that was a real, that was a real come down for me because a, I was of the opinion that a, that I was a, I guess I was overly optimistic. But I just felt like that the 18:00public education system was the route whereby we would go to being able to take a generation of youngsters and give them some advantages that their children, that their parents and grandparents never had. I'm a great believer that education is the way that you pull yourself up. When you pull yourself up economically, then you have a, you pull yourself up a lot of other ways too. And this to me, this was the thing that integration of our schools was supposed to do. It was not so much that we were going to socialize with all the people together. It was the fact that we were going to take a, these black children whose parents and grandparents had never had the opportunity of a first-rate 19:00education, we were going to bring them into the American dream where they could get the good job and build the home and have the family and get that type of thing there. And that, there have been a lot of success stories where it hasn't, it didn't come true to the degree that I hoped for when it started in '56. And I think the militant force that took part, that started there in the mid-sixties, really set our cause back.

DW: Hm-hmm.

YOUNG: I tell you. People are scared of a lot of things now, but I, in the mid-sixties after they shot Mr. Kennedy, both Kennedys and Mr. King and they burnt the cities down, I thought that was the worst era of America. Of course 20:00this was the Vietnam thing. I thought all of that was. I really feared for what was going to happen to our country. And it's, I was a lot more worried about it then than I am now.

DW: Really?

YOUNG: Yeah, oh, yeah. I just thought that we were going to end up having martial law. That we were just going to have two distinct groups or societies and it was just going to really be tough. But, it, it's worked out better than the sixties. The sixties were, I thought was a horrible time for this country, the worst that I've seen. Probably the worst since the Civil War. But anyway, we've digressed a little.

DW: That's okay.

YOUNG: But anyway--

DW: But your point is that that locally integration was probably smoother in the earlier years than it was in the mid-sixties because of the movement nation-wide.

YOUNG: That's correct.

DW: Right. And the influence of some of these, you called, more militant

leaders--

YOUNG: Right.

DW: On the local black followers, I guess, the students or the--

YOUNG: Well, we've never really had a, a , I guess they took their cue from the national leaders because I just never seen our local black leadership exhibit the kind of resentment that we see sometimes on television.

DW: Right.

YOUNG: But we must have liked what we see on TV. And I think maybe some of that happened. But then again it may have just years of pent-up resentment that finally just came to the surface. But I hated to see it because I think it drives a wedge between people. And when you have people who are willing to cooperate and decide to do things that finally just say, "Well, I told you so." 22:00And then resisting the effort towards trying to resolve some of these huge problems that we've got. So, anyway, that, I saw a big difference in the attitudes of kids after the sixties.

DW: Now you in between '58 and '61, you were coaching in the Russellville system.

YOUNG: Right. Right.

DW: Now what did you coach?

YOUNG: I coached, I was the head basketball coach here. And I coached some great kids and we all just had a great time. That was a great time to be alive in Kentucky and basketball. We just, I had several black players that played for us at the time.

DW: How did the community was, react to that when there was an integrated ball club?

YOUNG: I couldn't, I couldn't see anything other than the fact that everybody just had a great time.

DW: Right.

YOUNG: No, it just, it was just, it just was a, we just didn't see any evidence 23:00of, of trouble. I know that sometimes we would go into schools that were, had not integrated yet. And there maybe a few catcalls or anything, but, no, there just wasn't, I, we just didn't see a lot of problems.

DW: What, you know, what kind of impact do you think sports, you know, integrated athletics here in Russellville or in the county, you know what kind of impact do you think that had on the whole process?

YOUNG: Well, it was a very positive thing because those here, the kids, I had some boys that, well like George Hill, Marvin Carnell, gosh, later Charlie 24:00Lewis. All those kids were nice athletes and they were good students. You didn't play back then if you didn't pass. And George, as a matter of fact, went on, ended up getting his Ph.D. later on. George was a bright kid and went to Bellarmine on scholarship and played four years basketball on scholarship at Bellarmine. Later on he ended up getting his doctorate.( ) But overall, all of the Logan county schools, I think, had black kids or two on their rosters, on their team, and they just went out to play to full houses every night and just had a great time. Competed, everybody played hard, but then there wasn't the hatred that you see in some places. It just, everybody just competed and had a 25:00great time. It was a good time to be in athletics.

DW: Why did the Russellville Board of Ed integrate the high school in '56 and then it was many years later that the grade schools began to integrate?

YOUNG: Primarily it was because of, I think, the housing situation. You had one through twelve centers at the five county schools: Adairville, Auburn, Chandler, Olmstead and Lewisport. Now they were jammed full of people. You had a--

DW: All of those schools were one through twelve?

YOUNG: Correct. There was an Adairville Training School. There was a black school at Adairville that had, that was one through eight.

DW: What's the training school? I mean is it like a vocational school?

YOUNG: No, they just called it that. It was just an elementary school.

DW: Okay.

YOUNG: You had, you had a couple of two room schools. One at Olmstead and I think one at Auburn. But all the high schools, all the black students, all the high school black students came to Russellville or Knob City. And all of Russellville's nine through twelve went there, plus one through eight. When they integrated the high school, you didn't have a vast number of students because back in that time you had a tremendous drop out rate. And a lot of the, a lot of the kids, black and white, just an eighth grade education was all they would get. So, what occurred was, when you looked at the numbers that, when they did 27:00integrate, there weren't a great deal of kids that came. I think there were forty some in Russellville. But a, there wasn't room to take care of the one through eights that were out in all these communities. It wasn't until later on when Russellville was able to build its high school that they were able to take in enough students to, to integrate them through out the county. So, anyway, it was, it was primarily, solely a housing issue that it wasn't all done in 1956. It had to wait until accommodations permitted in '66.

DW: So I see, so there was no plan, I mean if the residential patterns or the 28:00nature of school buildings if they were more like are today where you have grade schools and middle schools and high schools, possibly that first year in '56, it might have been integrated one through twelve, you think?

YOUNG: If it, if you had the housing accommodations, there's no questions about it.

DW: So what, it had nothing to do with any kind of gradualism. It was just strictly getting people from point A to B?

YOUNG: That's correct.

DW: Students, I am talking about.

YOUNG: Yeah, it was a, that was solely it because I think if the housing had been available in '56, it would have all been done because some districts after we integrated started trying to come in, and started with grade one and then grade two and then work it in gradually and that was never even thought of here.

DW: Okay. You understand why I asked it though because--

YOUNG: Certainly.

DW: I knew that it, because I knew that the Russellville system integrated in 29:00'56 for the high schools and then the grade schools were either '65 or '66.

YOUNG: Yeah.

DW: I thought that was planned, but that wasn't, it sounds as though that wasn't really done intentionally either. It just, that was just the time when it was possible to integrate.

YOUNG: That's correct. That's exactly what it is, when it was possible to integrate.

DW: You were principal at Auburn Elementary School in the early sixties and I think you were principal when it took in its first black students.

YOUNG: Right.

DW: Can you explain to me how that happened?

YOUNG: Well, Auburn had a two-room elementary school on Hill Street. And we knew, we knew that plans were being made to integrate the lower, to do this integration in '66. But in '64, they had not, they had a two-teacher school there at Hill Street. And they had them because in, in getting a teacher. But, 30:00anyway the day before school, on the first day of, I think it was the day before school, I had a group of about three or four black ladies that came to the office and asked to see me. When they sat down they said, "Mr. Young, we want to ask you if we bring our children tomorrow the first day of school here, what are you going to do?" And I said, "Well, I'm going to enroll them." And they said, "Well, we, that is what we want to do." They said that we don't have a teacher up there and we'd like our children to come to school here. So the next day they showed up and we enrolled them in school. And we integrated a year before everybody else, maybe two, I don't know, but anyway it was '60, about '64 when 31:00we integrated. And Bill Coke, Mr. Bill Coke was the Board member, as soon as I told these ladies that and they left, I called Mr. Coke and I said, "Mr. Coke." I said, I told him what had happened. I said, "I told them if they brought the children to school, I was going to integrate them." I said, "Or enroll them." And then he, and I said, "I hope that's all right with you." And he said, "Yeah, I'd have been very disappointed if you hadn't have given that response." Because he was a very progressive individual. He was a very good board member. And, but, it, that was an interesting era. And there were some great kids at Auburn. I really enjoyed them. We never had a moment's problem. And they were a lot of fun. We had, we had a good time.

DW: Who do you think was most instrumental in making integration happen in the 32:00county? Meaning the whole county, both systems.

YOUNG: I really think, if I had to put it to any one individual and I don't know that I'm one hundred percent right on this, I would think it would be the superintendent of the Russellville school system, Mr. R.E. Stevenson. Mr. Stevenson just had the tremendous respect from everybody. He had been a principal at Auburn and he come to Russellville as principal and then was made superintendent. And people held him in very high esteem. But, if I had to say any one individual, I, I would attribute it to him. It wasn't just a one-man deal. But that's not the question you asked me.

DW: Right.

YOUNG: Mr. Piper who was superintendent at Russellville, Logan County was a very 33:00fine man, and he and Mr. Stevenson cooperated on many, many issues, but--

END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A

START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B

YOUNG: As I said we had many people in town who were instrumental in getting this accomplished. Dr. Burn, a medical doctor was chairman of the board at that time. I can remember individuals like Mr. Sash who was the general manager of the local radio station. The ministers in town, our board members and our, Mr. 34:00Peterson, all I had these individuals on the right side of the issue. They went to all the various civic clubs, women's clubs talking about getting this accomplished in '56. And it was, it just was a nice positive effort. But I would, if I had to attribute it to any one individual, the success of it, I would attribute it to Mr. Bob Stevenson.

DW: Okay. What, you said Knob City High School, which was really a one through twelve school.

YOUNG: Correct.

DW: It taught the black students in Russellville. In the pre-integration days.

YOUNG: Right.

DW: And did it also, did students of the Logan County system, black students of the Logan County system, actually come to Russellville?

YOUNG: Right. The students from a, any high school students, any black high 35:00school student that wanted to go to high school had to be bussed to a, to a --

DW: Knob City.

YOUNG: Knob City.

DW: What about one through eight? If you lived out in Auburn or you lived out in Lewisburg and you were in fifth grade and you're black.

YOUNG: Well, as I said before, there was a one through eight center in Adairville. There was a, I think it was a two or three room schoolhouse in Olmstead community.

DW: What community?

YOUNG: Olmstead community. That's a rural farming community. You just didn't, a, there was a two-room one through eight center there in Auburn. You didn't have many blacks north of highway 68. They had to come into, if there were any there they came into Russellville School or went to Olmstead. But, there was no school to my knowledge any black elementary schools north of 68. Because--

DW: There's no blacks living north of 68.

YOUNG: Because a, your soil changes right on Highway 68. And the south of 68 is rich farmland and of course you had a, they were dependent upon tenant labor. And then north of it there was small farms and the people themselves took care of it. And so you just didn't have any black tenants north of Highway 68. So there weren't any schools there because there just wasn't a population up there.

DW: I understand. What ever became of Knob City High, the building?

YOUNG: Believe it or not when we vacated that in '66, I was involved with that. We wrote a grant to a, and, I think the federal government supplied us with 37:00about sixty-five or seventy thousand dollars. And we deeded that building to the city of Russellville and converted it or renovated it into a community center. And Head Start and a lot of other programs are still run out of that building.

DW: The building still stands.

YOUNG: The building still stands. Correct.

DW: Would you have said it was a pretty good building at the time when it was a--

YOUNG: Well, it was a wooden structure and it was a, in looking at it in comparison to what I went to in Adairville about the same. It was, it had wood floors, they were oiled, like all schools were back then. You didn't have tile and carpet in it. But no, it was a, it was about typical of what any white student in Logan county was going to at the time.

DW: What about the quality of education there? In Knob City?

YOUNG: Well, I'm, I can't speak to that but some of the kids who got out there…For example, a, I was, there was, I won't name is name, but, I went to Adairville to school twelve years and it was pretty austere to be quite frank about it. We didn't have any biology or chemistry labs. We had an agriculture shop. We didn't have any art. We didn't have any music. As I said before it was just a basic education and later on when I was talking to some of the youngsters that left, they felt like when they left Knob City and went to the county system, they felt like their education took a backward step because they didn't have any labs, didn't have any science labs. They didn't have any art. They 39:00didn't have any music, no choirs for them to sing in or anything like that. They didn't make any protest about it. It was just the law of the land. That's where they lived and that's were they were supposed to go to school. And they did it. But later on when they became adults, we were talking about it. Some of them said, "Hey we felt we probably go at better education at Knob City than we did going to Adairville or Olmstead ( )."

DW: Again, that pretty much finishes my questions. If you want to say anything in closing here about desegregation of schools in Logan County?

YOUNG: No, well, it was a, it really just was an interesting time. I was fortunate enough to start my teaching career when it happened in the high school here. And to be coming into administration when it occurred in the elementary 40:00school. So I was in key spots both times when really both stages of integration took place. And it's been interesting to see what has occurred. As I said before, we have had a lot of success stories. We have had some black kids who have gone out and done well, but not near to the degree that I would have hoped for when we started in '56. I, I still believe that the public school system is the great, well not equalizer, but I think it is the great way that you pull yourself up by the bootstraps. For example, look at the success stories that are 41:00happening in the public schools. And let's take it from, let's take it from the Asian students that come into America. They are very well disciplined, but they come in and they say oh my stars we get a free education and if we're top of our class, we'll come out and good gosh and they'll pay us, we'll get a free college education. And if we come out the top of our class there, here comes IBM and here comes 3M and here comes all these people, they're starting us off at big salaries. And they see this as a land of opportunity. And I, I fear that what has occurred in the sixties, when I told you that I saw a change. The oriental 42:00student sees this as a land of opportunity. And I think the Hispanic student sees it as a land of opportunity. I fear that many of our black students see America as a system of oppression, a land of oppression. They're having a very difficult time getting the slavery issue and all the Jim Crowe laws and all that stuff out, even though that's dead now, it's still there. And, and I wish they could see, I wish they could see the country and opportunities that are here instead of remembering the past and all the sins of the past. When we can get over that issue, then, then I think this country will take off like a ( ). But a, it, I hope it will occur. It won't occur in my lifetime, but maybe it will in yours.

DW: Okay. Well, thanks a lot, Mr. Young. I appreciate it.

YOUNG: Well, I enjoyed it.

DW: Okay.

END OF INTERVIEW