Oral History Interview with Gladman Humbles

DAVID WOLFFORD: Yeah, I think so. My name is David Wolfford. I'm here with Mr. Gladman Humbles in Paducah, Kentucky. Today is the 14th of August, 2002. We're going to talk a little bit about Paducah's segregated Paducah and the desegregation of schools here. Mr. Humbles, go ahead and introduce yourself. Tell us where you were, where and when you were born and where you grew up.

GLADMAN HUMBLES: My name is Gladman Humbles. I was born, I was really born in Kansas City, Missouri, but I came here as an infant. You might say Paducah has been my home all my life except for my time in the service and off at college at Omaha, Nebraska. So I've been here practically all my life.

DW: Mr. Humbles, tell me where you went to school in your earliest years in Paducah.

GH: I went to Lincoln Elementary school as a child, and then I went on to Lincoln Junior High and High School. It was called Lincoln, they were separate buildings. There was an elementary building, and then there was a big building where the junior high and the high school students went.

DW: Where were those buildings?

GH: They were located, they took about a half a block, really over a half a block because they had a gym there at one time on the, between O'Hara Street and Tennessee Street and bounded by South Eighth Street and South Ninth Street.

DW: Okay. Before we get into the Lincoln Schools, what other schools, what other black schools existed in the Paducah City?

GH: Well, there was Garfield School was the north side school. As far as big 2:00schools, then they had a school up in the south side of town. I can't think of the name of it. But Garfield is the only other public school that I know of some stature.

DW: Were there black schools out in the county, in McCracken County, grade centers?

GH: I don't think there were very many because the, a lot of the black children in the county, they had to come to come to school at Lincoln or, some of them did. But they did have, I think they had some elementary schools in the county, which I can't recall exactly where they were. It's been a long time ago.

DW: Sure. So basically--

GH: In high school though they came to Paducah.

DW: Because Lincoln High School, was that the only black high school in the county I'm assuming?

GH: Yes.

DW: Did it also serve black students from surrounding counties, Lincoln High School?

GH: I'm not quite sure of that because I would say some surrounding counties more than likely it would because some of the counties were close by. But I don't know of any, Mayfield of course had their own high school, and that's, I guess, about the closest larger place. But I'm not, I would say that some counties close by McCracken County that Lincoln did serve because I think they were bussed in.

DW: Do you, do you recall any students being from other counties?

GH: You're taking me back a long time. I recall some students that did come from other counties or came from outlying areas, but I can't name them to you at 4:00present. I do recall students coming in from quite a distance.

DW: Okay. Could you describe the buildings of Lincoln High School a little bit more. What was the physical situation with the buildings? What kind of condition were these buildings in?

GH: Well, if you talk about the structure, the physical structure of Lincoln School, Lincoln School was one of the most outstanding schools for blacks in the entire state with perhaps the exception of Louisville. The school was built, and it was quite a bit of money appropriated for it. I don't have the exact amount, but it was. Back in the days when it was built it was, it wasn't a 5:00whole lot under the white schools, the cost. And the building we're talking about the building itself, the building was a fine outstanding building, had two great big columns, four I think, big white columns on the front of it, a big massive entranceway and was a good solid structure and a fine building. The gym wasn't very much. It was located right on the southeast corner of Ninth and O'Hara Streets, and it was just an old dilapidated building. In fact when everybody got up and cheered, you could hear the floor shake. So that was torn down eventually and a new gymnasium was built. It was a first class building too. But the problem wasn't necessarily the building. The problem was what we 6:00had in the building. I remember for example in the chemistry class, we had one Bunsen burner, and we had a little litmus paper test. We didn't, we didn't have any adequate supplies or teaching aids that the white school had. Because I went off to college, I had to really work hard to get a C out of chemistry because I never been exposed to what I was taught there. It was kind of like a breeze at Lincoln, but the building itself, the physical structure was a magnificent piece of work.

DW: Was it fairly new when you were there? You graduated in 1948 I believe, is that correct?

GH: That's correct. The school was built I believe back in the, I believe it was built in the late '20s. I'm not sure of that. But it was, I'll put it like 7:00this. It was in fine condition. It was, it wasn't new, but it was in very good condition.

DW: Does any of the old Lincoln campus still stand?

GH: No, it's just a barren ground now. It was a big controversy over that. It was bought by three entrepreneurs, and they couldn't find anything to do with it. Then I think one bought the other two out, and it wound up just deteriorating. It was a big controversy here a few years ago to try to get it on the historical register, but it didn't work. As a result it was demolished completely.

DW: What about the, you talked about the science department being poorly equipped. What about other materials in the way of textbooks or desks or maybe sports equipment. What kind of things did you have there?

GH: Well, the textbooks I feel were adequate. The classrooms were adequate. We had, of course classrooms are different now. But we had probably the same type of seating that the white schools had. I don't know. I didn't go to the white schools to find out. We had the desks where you had a, you sat on a hard seat of course, and you had an arm rest for your writing and so forth, standardized school desk. But I'm glad you mentioned the athletic department. There was a vast difference in that. We had sports department I guess that was totally and entirely different than Tilghman School. The difference being we played in togs for games that Tilghman used for practice togs. They would hand 9:00the togs down. A truck would come over to Lincoln School, and they would drop all these old Tilghman's old practice togs off, and these are the togs that Lincoln would play in, play games in. So it boiled down to and then we had a, we never had an adequate field to play in. We played, we couldn't play on Tilghman's field. So we went out here to a place called Hooks Park, and Hooks Park evolved into a cow pasture, and I remember they would let some of the students out of school. We had to scoop the manure up off the field to play football and line the field off and the yard lines and so forth. People didn't even have bleachers at that time. We had to stand up, and the sports department was really, there was a huge inequity.

DW: Are these games you're talking about in that field, were those the official games like you're competing against other schools?

GH: Right. Right. Right. Exactly.

DW: What are some of the schools you competed against?

GH: Oh we competed with just about, except for Louisville, we competed, we even competed with St. Louis I remembered one time. I remember going to St. Louis. Oh another thing, we didn't have a bus to take the athletes, and we had to pile up like ten to a car, just like sardines in a can. Of course the players were tired when they got ther,e but we played, we played Princeton. We played Mayfield. We played I think let's see--I said Princeton. We played Marion. We played Mayfield. We played--

DW: Did you play Riverview High in Hickman?

GH: Probably so. Yes, we played them. We played, we played practically most 11:00every black high school in this western part of Kentucky, and we didn't go like to Elizabethtown. We played Bowling Green. We played Providence. Played all those towns in the western part of the state, but we didn't go, I don't think we went beyond Bowling Green. We didn't play Elizabethtown or anyone like that.

DW: I'm guessing that you never, sports were entirely segregated during your day weren't they, the athletics?

GH: Totally and entirely segregated. Lincoln managed to win, no one even knows what happened to the trophy cases. It's almost atrocious that trophies got away. Lincoln at one time all the horrendous conditions we played under, they had an outstanding performance. We didn't have the stuff to play with, but they 12:00did it anyway. We had a huge trophy case, and all those trophies disappeared. How I don't know. No one seems to know. School doors were just closed, and I don't know whether someone got the trophies or what happened. No one seems to know. That's a mystery.

DW: Let's talk a little bit about the teachers at Lincoln Schools. What kind of qualifications did the teachers have? How would you describe your education at Lincoln High School?

GH: Well, that's a real sensitive type question that I want to be careful in answering, and I want to be honest too. I think some of the teachers were hard, dedicated type, and incidentally they made less money than the white teachers. Their salaries were different. Some of the teachers, which I look back upon at the time and didn't like, were hard dedicated working people to try to impart 13:00whatever knowledge they could to prepare you to get out and make it in the world. I think some of them had an attitude that well, I've got mine; you get yours the best way you can. I guess the best way to sum it up is like any other school, Lincoln had good teachers and bad teachers. I don't want to go in any name calling because that wouldn't be appropriate to do. But in I think the way I can see it, if you really, really wanted an education, and you really are determined to try to improve your lot in life you'd' have to do a lot of it yourself at Lincoln. The teachers were there for you, but like I say, I'm not casting any aspersions on the teaching staff, but they didn't have the equipment like the science class. I went to Creighton University, and it was a chemistry 14:00teacher named Bowman. He started writing equations on the blackboard, and I thought it was some type of foreign language. I looked at a guy that was from Kansas. He was sitting next to me, and we looked at each other, and we'd never seen anything like this before. The white kids they were just, he said I'm refreshing your high school chemistry and want you to work these problems. We turned around. We couldn't work any of them. So I'm just saying that we were ill-prepared in one sense. But those that applied themselves and really wanted it to get an education, I think some of them were better off than some of the kids coming out of the integrated schools today. Because I look back on my class and while we didn't have any what you might say people who make the national news. There is not anyone in our class that didn't have a fairly 15:00decent job or have some good stable life or do some good in the community or something. That was back in the 1940s. everyone of them, I'm not saying that they ( ) stars or anything but they worked, they were left here. They worked in automobile plants. Some of them went to Louisville and got good jobs in the cigarette plants there. They just all were good stable hardworking citizens for the most part, and I don't think you can say that even of the whole class that finishes today. A lot of them have fallen by the wayside.

DW: Now you've said before, I've read where you've stated that Paducah was a pretty segregated town in terms of getting, going into a restaurant or other 16:00public accommodations in the '40s. But during that time before integration became legal or required, what was the relationship between blacks and whites in Paducah?

GH: Well, that's a very good question you asked because Paducah has seemed like a town that didn't know which way it wanted to go. It, for the most part it didn't want to integrate, but the segregation wasn't as rigid as it was in the deeper south. For example, we've always sat on the bus anywhere we wanted to on a basis of availability of seating. We didn't have to go to the back. That's on the local bus. There was one lawsuit that did occur on the interstate bus, on the Greyhound, a woman won a few thousand dollars because the bus driver 17:00manhandled her and made her get to the back when they crossed the Brookport Bridge coming from Illinois. They only had a short way to go. She had to move back. I think he put her off the bus or something, and she won maybe a ten thousand dollars suit. But inside of the city when you boarded a bus, you just simply sat where you wanted to sit. It was a strange pattern of segregation. When they, back when they had the dime stores and they were busy, ( ) and all. Now you could stand up and eat hotdogs and hamburgers at a lunch counter where that's about all they served at that counte, but they had a more varied menu at the sit-down counter. But you couldn't sit down. Well, you were in closer proximity to the whites standing up because you were, if the counter was just like a horseshoe counter, and you could stand up, rub elbows with them, but you--you sat down you wouldn't even touch them. But at the stand up counter I 18:00think it was just some kind of, it was some kind of a symbol of you can, standing up is not so bad, but sitting down with us is not that good. So--

DW: Kind of a middle ground, huh.

GH: Yeah and then too something else I might mention. It's a shame to bring it on this level, but it's just a fact. There were gambling games all over Paducah, and whites and blacks gambled together. They drank together. They would cuss each other out, and it seemed like that the biggest, the biggest integration if you're talking about between the two races was where there was gambling. You could find a crap game in the black part of town, you might find ten blacks and three whites. The N word was used, and it was like the whites 19:00weren't even there. Even blacks used it. But they didn't allow whites to use it. But anyway, on a, and all the black business establishments accommodated whites, but in the white places you either had to get it out of the window or you had to go into the back. There was a barbecue place downtown, and it was called the White Owl, and they had a black man did the barbecuing. But they had a place in the back for blacks to eat the barbecue. Some people worked downtown. They went to the White Owl. They ate barbecue. So it was kind of a strange pattern. We never had any problem voting. That's always been, no one has ever tried to put on any robes or hoods to keep you from voting. So I guess that's one reason that you didn't have such a rigid pattern of segregation where 20:00you, where everything was so rigid that it wasn't any flexibility at all. Now you couldn't go in, now one thing I do want to mention. There were two parks, the Stuart Nelson Park and the Noble Park. I remember as a child Noble Park had a space for blacks about as big as my living room here with one swing in it. There were no shelters, no picnic shelters or anything. I remember my dad used to carry me over there. It was the only park we could go to at the time. My father was interested, my father was part of the team. In fact he was the motivating factor in getting Stuart Nelson Park here. He gave a large contribution of money to get a black park going. Of course today, it's integrated. There are more whites go there than blacks. A lot of ball activity over there. But anyway, he was instrumental in getting that started. So there 21:00was, the segregation was a fact of life here, and everybody seemed to--I won't say accept it is not a good word--but we were acclimated to it in a sense that we just believed that the two races were apart because that was the order of things. That's the way things were. The one thing we didn't like more than anything else was the fact that we couldn't get good jobs. We were relegated to the worst type of jobs at the railroad shops. We had the grimiest, dirties, life-threatening jobs going. But it was considered a hell of a job. You made enough money maybe to send your child to college at the railroad shops. Then you had at the post office then, even though it was a federal building, we had a couple of black janitors down there, and they were considered pillars of the 22:00community. If you worked at the post office even as a janitor, you were considered a, that was considered a hell of a job. Of course finally it broke down to where I think the first postman was a man named Harold Austin. He's still living. He's got a real estate business now. But anyway, we had black elevator operators, black janitors, and they didn't, the shops and the post office they were the people that we looked up to that really made a lot more money.

DW: Well, when the Supreme Court made its landmark Brown decision in 1954, do you remember that day by any chance?

GH: I sure do.

DW: Well, what was the feeling, what was your feeling and what was the feeling among the blacks in the community when that decision was handed down here in Paducah?

GH: Well, I was getting ready to come back from overseas. I was in Japan, and I never shall forget it. While I was showing another sergeant, I was a classified security clerk, and there was a man taking my place, and he lived in Mississippi. So when this decision came down, we made talk. I was showing him the ropes about my work. I was getting ready to come home and get discharged, and we talked about that. I didn't bring it up. He asked me what I thought about it. I said, "Well, I think it's a good thing. We've always--." He said, "I think its' a good thing too." He said, "And I told my people that and they told me not ever to come home again." He says, we don't, says, you're not 24:00welcome here anymore ever. I was amazed at how someone could divorce themselves from their own family by the fact of just that simple decision. Well not a simple decision, it was a monumental decision but something where children went to school together, they'll all learn not only about the world in which they live and how to function in it but also about each other. I was really amazed at that. But getting back. I came back to Paducah shortly thereafter and at that time I was, I wasn't married. I was I think twenty-three years old and did a six-year hitch. I really wasn't too concerned with, I was having a lot of fun. I wasn't really too concerned with issues back then. But as time went by 25:00I learned that I can say this, safely say this for Paducah. I watched a civil rights film about Kentucky, and Paducah was barely mentioned in it, and Paducah should've been highlighted in it because Paducah had less of a problem in integrating the schools than any, I can safely say, then any major city in Kentucky. There were a lot of people didn't like it. It was something very strange to the blacks that went over to Tilghman and was a new experience. I remember one incident of somebody pulling a flag down or something like that and stomping it or doing something. I don't really remember any what you call major 26:00violence that occurred here in Paducah over school desegregation. As time went by it seemed to get better. I've been called over there many times. I've been active in a lot of things around here. I've been NAACP president on two terms, and I've received several awards for outstanding service to the NAACP. I've been involved in other things too. But I've been called over to the school on several occasions to try to mediate problems that they've had just recently. It seems as though on the whole the school system in Paducah is willing to go to mediation and to try to work problems out and resolve them rather than they just 27:00be polarized where each side takes a stand, no one gives. The school system here, I think, is approaching fifty percent now black and white.

DW: Really. But it seems to me like you're saying that even in the later '50s that they had that same attitude, there was a, it was a smooth operation when they integrated here.

GH: Well, I don't want to--the word smooth is a little strong. What I want to say is that of course there were isolated incidents of prejudice, and there were pockets of prejudice right here in the school system. I remember, my memory's not as good as it used to be. But I remember an outstanding person who went to college and made all As telling me that the teacher just told them they would 28:00never get a good grade in their class no matter what they did or something to that effect. I'm not quoting this exactly right. But there were incidents--I guess what I'm saying is--even though there were pockets of prejudice, teachers were prejudice, students were prejudice, there was never enough of it to polarize groups to say it's us against them. I guess that's what I'm saying. It wasn't smooth. Nothing, social change is never smooth. But it was, there were pockets, little hot pockets here and there, but it was never what you call massive enough to say hey, we're going to do this and do that. You didn't have any violence that I remember, any major violence. You might have had a few fights, but I don't remember major violence or people going to tear the school up and all this.

DW: Was there any presence of the Klan or any other opposition here?

GH: No, no. Not during, the Klan came here one time, but it was back when 29:00David Duke was head of the Klan.

DW: Oh in the last like fifteen years or so, you mean.

GH: Excuse me. The Klan came here. I think Reverend Harvey went out to the meeting to show them he wasn't afraid of things. He, but they came here in, they came to the civic center. But anyway, they didn't have any violence or anything when the Klan came here. David Duke came here and made a speech. I don't think he had an overflowing crowd . The mayor wasn't going to give David Duke a permit to, I kind of protested that because I believe in the first amendment. I didn't want the Klan to be down at the city hall ( ). So I said 30:00well, go ahead and give them a permit. They finally did. I wrote a letter to the paper about it. They went on and gave them a permit to operate. But in the schools I don't remember any, I don't remember any Klan activity or any major violence in the schools.

DW: Do you feel when you are maybe perhaps when you were in high school or in the years before Paducah schools became integrated, do you think the black community wanted to attend school with whites at that time?

GH: No.

DW: Why not?

GH: Definitely no. Well, we had been conditioned, what we wanted was to have 31:00an equal education. We didn't, we had some polarization . You know, if a white came to a black neighborhood sometimes they would get robbed and vice versa. We felt like that blacks were supposed to be with blacks and go to school with blacks, have little black businesses and so forth. We did not have any lingering desire to go to school with whites because we just felt that there was supposed to be a white school and there was supposed to be a black school. That's the way it had been for years and what we were ( ) for was why can't we have the same thing that whites have. Why can't we have a good football field? Why can't we have more than a Bunsen burner in a chemistry class? Why can't we 32:00have this and that? I'll tell you something else interesting. Although we didn't desire to go to school with whites, we did root for Tilghman to the extent that we'd go over and sit on their, the big fence that they--. They had a big brick wall up there. We would sit on that wall to root for them playing a team from another city. Later on they put another layer of concrete on that wall and embedded glass in it where we couldn't sit on it anymore. That's a fact. That's over there now. You can go see that. They put another concrete, about three or four more inches of concrete on it and embedded glass all the way around it where we couldn't sit on it.

DW: Why do you suppose that happened?

GH: Well, I can give you an opinion. It's like the fly in the buttermilk I 33:00guess. It just didn't look good to have blacks sitting up on that wall and they had, in an all white situation.

DW: Do you think the players and maybe the students felt the same, or do you think they welcomed you if you were supporting the Tilghman team?

GH: No, I think they just felt like, at the time they felt like why have we got to put up with this. Damn, this is our thing. Here they've got to come over here and mess it up by sitting on the wall. That's what I think.

DW: But you were supporting the Tilghman team.

GH: Oh definitely so. I tell you even after that, we were so supportive of the team there was a place called Pumpus Hill, and we would get these fifty gallon drums, and we'd build fires in them and we'd stack them up. You could get boxes and things and stack them up a certain way and you could still watch the game. 34:00So after they put the glass in we'd go over there because while we didn't want to necessarily go to Tilghman, we felt like, it's like every Thanksgiving Tilghman and Mayfield would have a grudge game, and we would be ballyhooed up. It was almost like you had to fight to get a place on the hill to watch Tilghman and Mayfield because it was such a fierce, ferocious game. There was a lot of ballyhoo and we're going to beat--

DW: Big rivalry.

GH: Big rivalry thing. So we stayed loyal to Tilghman. We wanted Tilghman to win. But they put that glass on there, and that was kind of, I don't know whether, I don't know whether they would've done that in Georgia or Mississippi 35:00or not. I just don't know. But that was a terrible thing.

DW: You mentioned your involvement with the NAACP a few minutes ago. Can you kind of elaborate on that? Tell me a little bit about the NAACP here in Paducah and when you became involved.

GH: Well, I was a member of the NAACP for all my life ever since my youthful days. But I became involved in it as time went by and I matured more, I began to see things happening that I didn't think were right. Of course I'd been in the service. I began to look around town and I didn't see any blacks couldn't be on the police department, and of course I, like I told you I was the first one on the fire department. I began to see where we didn't get the good jobs. 36:00I mean we didn't get the, we just didn't get equality. So I became interested and became an active member of the NAACP. Then there was a lady in town, in fact it was Mr. Coleman's wife, Connie Coleman who urged me to be a president of the NAACP. Well, I never wanted to be president of anything and wound up being president of the NAACP, the Firefighter's Union and I don't know what else. So I turned her down at first, and then she kept right after me until I went on and accepted it. I found out it's hard if you do a decent job, it's hard, hard, hard thankless work. I'm not poking my chest out too much, but while I was president, there were several things were accomplished. Several jobs were obtained in different places. We went to plants up in Calvert City and around 37:00in the area. We saw several little problems where they had friction on the job, and I got some awards and plaques over there for having some outstanding service things on this thing over here you might see. This is, if I can get some light here, this is a, this is the last thing I got, the Freedom Award.

DW: November of 2001.

GH: Yeah, and this is outstanding leadership award. That was in eighty--

DW: '86. Yeah.

GH: Then I got another award here in '92. This is something here, I don't know what. That's from the city of Paducah. That's for my fire service I think. This is the mayor's award here that they give. I got that. That's my wife's 38:00award from the post office. So we, I like to say I try to do a few things.

DW: Now were you involved in the NAACP when Curly Brown was president of it?

GH: Yes. In fact I'm glad you brought that up because you're refreshing my memory on some things. There was a humorous incident that happened. Curly Brown and a lady named Osceola Dawson, they were both passed. I'm the only one alive out of these three people. We went down, Curly and Mrs. Dawson and myself went down. The theatres were downtown then. They didn't have them out in the mall like they do now. It was a man named Kyle that owned the theatres, and his manager was named Strader. So we were paying twenty-six cents to go up in the 39:00gallery, and it was on a third floor in fact. Whites were paying a dollar, and we went down to talk about getting the movie integrated. I was on this particular committee and--

DW: When do you think this was roughly?

GH: Oh gosh. Oh, let's see. It must've been, it must've been in the '50s somewhere. So anyway, we argued with Strader about integrating the theatres, and Strader tried to say it wasn't because we were black. It was an economic factor that it was like this. We argued a point well, let us decide on the 40:00economics of the issue. Let us decide on whether we want to go to the balcony, we can still go. If we don't, we can pay the dollar and go downstairs. Well, that, we go that done without having any, they relented. They said they would try it because things were happening around the country then. Well, the post office at that time were right across from, so we started paying a dollar and going downstairs because you mentioned a while ago did you ever want to go to school. We didn't really, we wanted to see how the movie looked downstairs--what was--than where we'd been sitting. The white guys over at the post office, they found out about it and said, damn tell them all to go downstairs. We'll pay the twenty-six cents and go upstairs.

DW: It wasn't that much better, huh.

GH: Well, they looked at it like, they looked at it like why in the hell are they paying twenty-six cents, and now they've got to pay a dollar and they can still see the movie. So what's the difference. They kind of made a joke out of it. We'll take the upstairs and pay the twenty-six cents.

DW: Now what, Miss Dawson, I've read about her in the NAACP papers. Wasn't she over the branches or something?

GH: She was a secretary, and she was very devoted person of NAACP. She was a good member and secretary and she did everything she could. She devoted a lot of time, made a lot of sacrifices.

DW: Was she from Paducah?

GH: Yes, she was.

DW: Did she live in Louisville at any point?

GH: I said she was from here. I don't know if she was born here. But she spent most of her life here.

DW: So she didn't have a state office in the NAACP. She had a local office.

GH: She could have at one time. I don't know.

DW: Okay. Okay. Was Curly Brown the first NAACP president here.

GH: No, he wasn't the first. He was the most popular. I think Manual Bowling was the NAACP president. I remember him. He's been deceased for years. They had a, I can't remember the case too well. They had a black guy killed a white man here. The NAACP went to keep him from being electrocuted. It was some kind of an altercation, and it took a lot of money and a lot of effort to win that case, but the NAACP won that case.

DW: How would you, I've read a bit about Curly Brown and integrating Paducah Junior College and later on the schools here. How would you describe him?

GH: Well, Curly was a man who, although highly opinionated, he was a very charismatic, forceful type of individual. He could almost, he could almost draw 43:00you into his thinking plan, and to put it another way, Curly didn't take too much crap off of people, white or black. It's the bird.

DW: That's okay.

GH: Curly, I remember one time in city hall we had this particular mayor and this mayor, Curly would stand up on the floor talking about something, and this mayor told Curly to shut up and sit down. He'd heard enough of him. Curly left his seat. He says, "You had no business telling me that. I'm a citizen here. I'm going to come up here and make you shut up and sit down." The mayor quietly just eased back and sit down. Curly just got ferocious, just foamed at the 44:00mouth. I would say that when it came to, when it came to the ability to draw people and to of course dues were just two dollars. Curly would roar out and make everybody pay their dues and you just dare not pay them because he had a way of looking at you that meant said, I didn't get your NAACP dues. That's about all he would ask you, and he'd look at you in such a way that you'd probably hand him the two dollars. He was a dynamic type of fellow. I would say that he, and he was a close friend of Joe Freeman's. Curly had a way of being the type of leader that you were just drawn to. He was just charismatic. I would say he was the strongest, about the strongest NAACP leader we've had and 45:00the longest serving leader we've had. So I have a high regard for Curly. We used to have a few arguments, but Curly did a heck of a job with the NAACP. He did very well with all of his children too. They are all class people who got big jobs. One, Donald was a major I think in the Air Force, and he's got a big job with a computer outfit now.

DW: In Virginia.

GH: Yeah.

DW: I met, I think he was in town just the other day and I missed him. I talked to his daughter Marilyn, and she said that, I think by about a day I missed talking to the one that integrated--Donald's the one that integrated Tilghman, I believe, right.

GH: I think so. He was one of the early--

DW: Then his older brother was the one that integrated Paducah Junior College.

GH: Right.

DW: Is he around anymore? I think the son, the oldest son.

GH: Two of them died.

DW: Okay.

GH: One got killed in a car wreck. I think two of them got killed in a car wreck.

DW: That's right. I believe so. Mr. Humbles, you had some children that went through the Paducah system in the '60s and '70s. How would you describe race relations during that time and what was their school days like being fully in an integrated setting?

GH: Well, my children came along in an era, and they think different than I do. They went to school that I'm very fortunate in my wife and I, this is my second marriage. We had five, well, one son is retarded, but we had four kids in the school system, and they never got in any trouble. We, they came home, and 47:00sometime they would gripe about they didn't feel like the teachers were doing them right or something, but surprisingly they all made good grades. They've all, in fact I have a daughter who I'm so proud of, Joan. She was named student of the year at PCC, and she got five high honors out there. She's forty-three years old, forty-four years old. She's going on to complete Murray State to be a teacher. But anyway, they think a little bit different than I do. They don't look, they're not as sensitive to what I consider, I'm prone to holler you're doing it to me because I'm black because I've been through it so much. But they're not as prone to do that as me. They came up with they had some white friends they talked to on the phone. They didn't hang together to use a term, 48:00but they did talk, and they felt like that we're okay, and they're just less of that in them than there is in me. Because I came from such an old school it's hard for me to really adjust completely. I went through all this fire department too. But I believe in the philosophy of treating people as I want to be treated. I'm comfortable in integrated settings, but I just don't feel as comfortable as my children do in having real close white friends. I've got some, but I still wonder when are they going to slip up, you know. It's kind of like that with me, but with them, I don't really remember too much trouble they had going to school. They came home and griped about the teacher not treating 49:00them right, but white kids did that too, and so they looked at it more or less like it wasn't a white and black thing. It was just a--

DW: Teacher-student problem.

GH: Teacher kind of ( ).

DW: Yeah.

GH: By the way in the background, that's my bird. I used to be a magician, and that noise for the benefit of whoever listens to this, I've got a bird that talks when I don't want him to talk and he doesn't talk when I want him to talk. So that hello and all in the background is a yellow-naped Amazon parrot named Gigi who has been in this family now for eighteen years and is part of the family.

DW: Okay. How would you summarize race relations in Paducah since the days of integration?

GH: Well, to give you a summarization of things, race relations reached a peak when African Americans were gainfully employed at the plants. Of course back in 50:00those days they had quotas. The plant would try to get, the plant and they were getting governmental benefits and all types of mess. So the plant would say we want to get enough blacks here to work where we won't have any problem with the government. We had jobs pretty much all over town. You didn't have too much problem getting onto city in one of its departments. But now the things have retrogressed slowly as blacks have kind of put to sleep to think everything's pretty good and whites are saying what else do they want. The employment situation, which is the most important, the economic situation, has diminished. For example, I've been very active and vocal at city hall about hiring, and the 51:00paper had a front page news article on "City of Paducah to hire a black policeman." Now you would think we'd never had a black policeman. But it meant they hadn't hired one in so long and it had been so much controversy over it it was front page news. So we have been retrogressing on the good jobs, and unfortunately we've been relegated to the McDonald's and Hardees and Burger King jobs, which don't pay very much. But I tell young black people to stays in school, do the best that you can in school, go ahead and use the white man's English because the I be's and she be's and he be's are not going to get it. They operate the society. You've got to function in it. So therefore, under 52:00the circumstances if you want a good paycheck, you've got to do what they want you to do. That's what I impart to a lot of young people. But unfortunately it's a fact that the ones that do the things that they're supposed to do they leave town because they think the opportunities are better. So therefore, it's getting difficult now to even get a job with the city workforce. It's and up to the plants is almost out of the question because it's a thing up there, it's a good old boy network where we've got to ( ) once on here and the government is no longer pushing anything or pressing anything. So therefore, the good old boy gets on. So that's about the way it is.

DW: Is there anything you'd like to say in closing here? I'm pretty much finished with my questions.

GH: Well, I've enjoyed this. This has been kind of a enlightening experience. 53:00It's brought back a lot of memories to me. I'm seventy-one, almost seventy-two and look forward to seeing the day that race relations will be greatly improved. I don't think we're where we should be. I don't think Kentucky is at the bottom of the scale on race relations, but I think it still has a long way to go. We're, we still have a lot of subtle discrimination. We still have a lot of, the big thing I see is we don't really, blacks are looked at more carefully when it comes to employment than whites are. I'll give you a good example. We had a black police applicant that made a hundred on one division of the test and a ninety-eight on the other division of the test, which is the highest score ever made in the police department. Then they found out he loaned ten dollars 54:00to somebody in high school, and they bought some drugs with it, and they disqualified him for this. Then we had a young black man who had to fight like hell to get on. They found out he had some traffic tickets back when he was a kid, and they were going to say well, if he's got traffic tickets, that's what policemen do, stop people. They wanted to disqualify him for the tickets. But they let a white boy in that had admitted using drugs, said it was youthful indiscretion. So I'm just saying the ball bounces the way they want it to bounce. They can use something like that in one case and to put it in a finalization blacks almost have to have a halo on their head now because they look at them real careful. You've got to have a halo with no breaks in the ring.

DW: All right. Mr. Humbles I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. This has been a very good interview. Thanks.

GH: Okay.