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University of South Florida, Tampa Library

Digital Object Identifier: F55-00012Interviewee: Dr. Benjamin Mays (BM)Interviewer: Dr. Jack Moore (JM)Interview date: October 1, 1982; November 30, 1982Interview location: UnknownTranscribed by: Sharon OstermannTranscription date: March 25, 1993Interview changes by: Mary Beth IsaacsonInterview changes date: December 3, 2008Final edit by: Maria KreiserFinal edit date: February 22, 2009

[Transcriber’s Note: The interview starts as follows. Please note that there is no audio component available for this interview, transcript only.]

Dr. Jack Moore: The main reason I wanted to see you, Dr. Mays, beyond just talking to you, because I've admired you a great deal, were the years—a couple of years that you spent in Tampa, and specifically some of the work that you did when this report—what was called The Negro Life in Tampa was put together with Dr. [Arthur] Raper1.

Dr. Benjamin Mays: Yes.

JM: And, um, just get a couple of your comments on that. Of course, you talk about that in your book—

BM: Yes.

JM: —in Born to Rebel. And I get the impression—well, it's obvious, that things were really quite bad in Tampa at that time as far as the interracial situation was concerned, though Tampa viewed itself as almost a model city. I mean, the power structure thought things were pretty much okay.

BM: But yes, that's the usual pattern. That's the usual pattern. If Negroes are black people.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: I use both because I'm not (inaudible) in my words—

1 A Study of Negro Life in Tampa, compiled in 1927 by Arthur Raper, Benjamin Mays, and J.H. McGrew, also known as the Raper Report. Copies of this document are available in the USF Libraries Special Collections, Tampa campus.]

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JM: Yeah, I do too.

BM: —whether I'm black or whether I'm a Negro—

JM: Right.

BM: —it's the same thing to me. Well, it's the same pattern. If black people accept their role as an inferior group—

JM: Uh-huh.

BM: —and behave that way, and acknowledge that in their behavior with white people, then things are right here.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: So that's the way it was in Tampa in those days. Now a gentleman who met me at the train, Mrs. Mays and myself—I'd just gotten married and went down to Tampa by an accident—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —in a way, because I mentioned in Born to Rebel. It was a very rainy, drizzly, foggy night, you know, and you're sittin' there on the train and everything is goin' on, so you didn't know what was gonna happen next, you know.

[Transcriber’s Note: Interview stops briefly during an interruption from unidentified person coming in the room.—SO]

BM: So I think that I was telling you that as long as that pattern of recognition on the part of the black or Negro community—and they have a special role to play—

JM: Uh-huh—

BM: —and that they're good actors in that role and accept it in their minds—

JM: Um-hm—

BM: —that is their role, then it's a great community. And the white folks praise any kind of a good Negro.

JM: Right.

BM: That type of thing.

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JM: Right.

BM: So it was that kind of a relationship.

JM: Now, was the Urban League fairly strong in Tampa, do you think, before you came down? I mean, why was it that they asked you to come down, I wonder? What was the—

BM: Well, it's a strange story about that. My predecessor was the first Urban League—

JM: Um-hm—

BM: First— It was a— She was a—I don't know about of any—these folks are all dead, I don't know whether to use their names or not, but her name was Blanche Armwood—

JM: Yeah.

BM: —Beatty.

JM: Yeah, she's dead.

BM: Yeah, she was there—you know—

JM: She's dead.

BM: And the Negro community was up in arms against her because she was supposed to have had an illicit affair with a white man.

JM: Uh-huh, she—incidentally, is she the one who was—I sent you that letter of, or that report of Dr. Raper's. She is the one—did you read that? Did you get that in the mail? Is—

BM: Yeah, I noticed the car—

JM: Something that looks like this?

BM: I must have read it all, but gettin' that particular point is—

JM: Okay. Um— Much of the data of this report was collected by the Negroes themselves. This was affected by the use of voluntary fact-finding groups. At one time, however, soon after the study began it appeared for two or three days that the Negroes would refuse to cooperate. The occasion which led to this condition was the casual appearance of a Negro woman's name along with those who had agreed to help make the study. For some years the Negro woman of unusual mental alertness and conversational qualities had been able by one means or another to be recognized as the mouthpiece of the Negroes when speaking to the whites and of the whites when speaking to the Negroes. And then it goes on like that.

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BM: Yeah, well, what you're talkin' about there is that this is a matter of white people choosing leadership for—

JM: Right.

BM: —black people.

JM: Right.

BM: You see? Well, that is gone now. It was kind of natural, I suppose—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —in the days of Booker Washington.

JM: Right.

BM: When he, by accident, became the spokesman for Negroes after his Atlanta speech.

JM: After that speech, right.

BM: And where he wrote, "Lay down your bucket where you are," you know, to—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: (inaudible) shifted to—wanted the—"Lay down your bucket where you are." Then he moved on from that, "Lay down your bucket and buy land and raising sheep and hogs and cows—" And down here you don't have to go north, anywhere, you know. And when he got through with that—that how—that context was issued now. I wasn't there, but he—just an uproar.

JM: That's what I've read. Yes.

BM: This is a man that is a leader. So he became a leader. And give the job, under the circumstances, and that being true, they chose Booker Washington as the spokesman for the Negro race and a spokesman for America.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: Because he was saying what white people in the South were saying, what the white people in the North were saying and he got a lot of money here.

JM: Yeah.

BM: There's an article—my secretary may have it—Mrs. (inaudible) and Booker

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Washington's three wives. See, he had married three times.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: And if she has it she come up with that—a copy for that. And each one of those wives filled a particular role in Washington's life and really are responsible for Washington being what he was because one of 'em was graduated, I don't know. Her—Fisk [University] or somewhere, she could correct his speeches—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —you know—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: And he’d get perfect English. She may have some (inaudible).

JM: Right.

BM: It’s short, you know, but it’s—

JM: Yeah—heh-heh.

BM: —the English is all right.

JM: It’s to the point, right.

BM: One of the wives are kinda—

JM: Right.

BM: —supposed to have done that. So, that being true for a long time after that, the Negro leadership was chosen by white people. I get the reviews who come by here after Martin Luther King. He said, "Who is the next great leader of the Negro people?" And I said, "You don't make 'em, circumstances make 'em."

JM: Right. Right.

BM: I say now, if Martin Luther King had lived a—he wouldn't have been a leader because white people didn't like the fact that he was a revolutionary.

JM: Right.

BM: Non-violent.

JM: Or otherwise. They didn't care.

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BM: It don't—it doesn't matter.

JM: Right. Right.

BM: He stirred up trouble.

JM: Yeah. Yeah.

BM: He was gettin' 'em all riled. And even some of the Negroes.

JM: So this woman in Tampa had been, more or less, chosen by the white power structure to represent the Negroes then?

BM: Yes. One of the persons who was the head there—white person—speakin' of this woman, you know, and she said, "Now, you're on a program with Blanche, you'd better speak first," you know.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: And I remember when she did introduce me. Well, had to go to Mrs. Beatty and ask her not to come to the meeting. I said, "Now, you (inaudible) you're the first executive. Now, if I fail down here, you fail.”

JM: Um-hm.

BM: You see?

JM: Um-hm.

BM: So I said, "Don't you come to the meeting because you'll destroy my effectiveness and the ne—the Negro community will be split almost unanimously against you.

JM: I see. Now, had the request for you—for someone to come down—had the request emanated from Tampa, or—

BM: No.

JM: —from the na—

BM: The reason why I went to Tampa at all?

JM: Yes.

BM: Well, I went to Tampa as I thought I'd indicated that before, my wife and I were teaching at South Atlanta State College—

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JM: No, I understand that. But I was wondering about the request for you to go there, whether that—or anybody to go there, whether people in Tampa had requested. In other words—

BM: No.

JM: —did black people in Tampa say, “Look, we need a new leader here,” or—?

BM: No. No. No.

JM: Yeah—

BM: The National Urban League with Jesse O. Thomas—

JM: Okay.

BM: —as a field secretary—

JM: Uh-huh.

BM: —for the Southern area.

JM: I see.

BM: He heard that we were leaving South Atlanta State.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: So he recommended us to the leadership in Tampa as a person to succeed. You see, in the—Urban League did have the power to—with the national office in New York, they had a Southern Field Secretary—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —maybe Central, Western—all like that. Different kinds of areas. And so the local people did look to them as being in a position to recommend somebody.

JM: Oh, I see. And had he identified Tampa as a place that needed a different kind of leadership then?

BM: Not a different kind of leadership, just a Negro leader.

JM: Yeah.

BM: He knew a—

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JM: But he—did he know this woman was unpopular?

BM: Did he know what?

JM: Did he know that Mrs. Beatty was unpopular, in a sense?

BM: Oh, he knew all about it.

JM: In Tampa. Yeah.

BM: Because they sent for him to come down to pick somebody.

JM: Oh, I see.

BM: And so recommended me.

JM: Okay. Okay. Well, that—I can understand some—

BM: Yeah.

JM: And your wife went with you, and she was a social worker, then, in effect.

BM: She was a social worker; she'd graduated. At that particular time she had a bachelor of arts in social work from the University of Chicago.

JM: Now, probably at that time there would have been—who— How many black social workers would there have been in Tampa, or would she have been it? I mean, I—

BM: Well, she would have been the one person who had training in—

JM: Yeah.

BM: —in social work.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: They had a nurse, you know—

JM: Yeah.

BM: —but that's not a social worker. So she was the first social worker ever to hit Tampa for black—

JM: Um-hm.

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BM: And it wasn't too popular among the white people in those days.

JM: Well, it still isn't.

BM: No, you see, a—

JM: My wife's a social worker—

BM: Yeah.

JM: —and there's still a lot of people who don't know. They think if people can't take care of themselves, then, tough.

BM: Yeah, and that's the Reagan administration's—

JM: Yes.

BM: —idea.

JM: You certainly know it. Yeah.

BM: Yeah. Sure. Right. But these folks out here starvin' or—they're stallin' because they're lazy. In the projects—

JM: Yeah.

BM: They don't deserve—they can't help themselves.

JM: That's his philosophy.

BM: Well, I can't take that position, because I'd have never gotten anywhere if I'd have taken that position.

JM: Heh-heh. Right. Now, um, the idea for this report, The Study of Negro Life in Tampa—

BM: Yeah.

JM: —um, was that something that, was that your idea originally, or—whose idea was it to make a report, and to send people out and interview and so forth? Do you remember who, who started that idea? Was it—now, the Committee on Interracial Cooperation, I guess it's called—Will Alexander—

BM: Yeah.

JM: —that's—they sent down Raper, but whose idea was it to put the report together? Do

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you, do you know that?

BM: Well, it's nobody's idea. It's just expected. If I was directed to study—and if I was to get into the people that help get the data together—to work out the questions that would be askin' them. I thought, goin' in to Tampa, for me to know what to do—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —I had to know the community.

JM: Okay. Okay.

BM: You see? So I put that together. And Arthur Raper comes in because W.W. Alexander knew—somebody asked him who to send, and he got Arthur Raper, who came out of the University of North Carolina.

JM: Carolina. Right.

BM: At a time, those fellows there were considered liberal people. And Raper came down at the suggestion or the—Will Alexander is—

JM: So Alexander's organization paid for Raper?

BM: No. No.

JM: No?

BM: No. W. W. Alexander was a man who was a United Methodist administrator.

JM: Uh-huh.

BM: At that time anybody who could move in and out of a (inaudible), why, he became a great man overnight. He didn't have to know any more than anybody else. Not as much as Negroes.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: But he was sent to (inaudible), and to Yale [University] and Harvard [University] to talk about the Negro situation. You know?

JM: Okay. Yeah.

BM: But W.W. Alexander was a very timid man, as I pointed out—

JM: You seem ambivalent about him in your book. I noticed that.

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BM: Yeah.

JM: He wouldn't take up your case—

BM: No.

JM: —in the Pullman porter situation.

BM: That's right. That's right. He would buy the parts from many of the younger Negroes.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: People'd latch on hope, like (inaudible), like H.L. Hunt down in Fort Riley—these people, W.W. Alexander, they thought—he's wise of people. See, I was just a youngster, you know.

JM: Yeah.

BM: I didn't know much.

JM: Yeah.

BM: So when I would go in and raise questions they'd listen and then they'd move on. I didn't count.

JM: Hmm.

BM: You see what I mean?

JM: Yeah, I know that feeling.

BM: Yeah.

JM: Yeah.

BM: But sometimes these youngsters got somethin' on the ball, you'd better listen. I think—does that answer the question?

JM: Well, the question was, who actually supported Raper? Who paid for him when he was down there?

BM: Why, the loc—the Tampa Welfare League and Community Chest.

JM: Okay.

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BM: They paid for him.

JM: Okay, so, in other words, Alexander and the Interracial Commission, they just identified Raper as—

BM: That's correct.

JM: —someone who could do this kind of study.

BM: That's correct.

JM: So he was a sociologist. Now, your training was not in sociology?

BM: How's that?

JM: Your training is not is sociology?

BM: No.

JM: And so you felt, at that time, that you needed someone who by academic profession was trained to set up this kind of a—

BM: No.

JM: No? Okay.

BM: A sociologist, he goes out and studies a community, but he doesn't have a recommendation, though.

JM: Right.

BM: But he couldn't make any recommendations. But, me—

JM: Uh-huh.

BM: —I am the executive—

JM: Right.

BM: —of the Tampa Urban League. I picked the workers—

JM: So you picked the workers—

BM: —and I—

JM: —for this?

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BM: Yeah.

JM: Okay.

BM: To make the study.

JM: Were they all black?

BM: Every one of 'em was black.

JM: Okay.

BM: Except Raper, and he was under my direction.

JM: Okay. Who, um—so, you decided to who these investigators would be.

BM: That's right.

JM: And what kind of—what did you look for, just a—

BM: Well, I looked for data that would help me understand a new community.

JM: Oh, okay.

BM: I knew nothin' about it.

JM: Okay.

BM: So, in order to know whether I should turn right, left, or back or forward, I needed to find out what is in this community.

JM: Okay.

BM: And I need to know.

JM: You see, we didn't know that before. Nobody knew that.

BM: Yeah.

JM: Or, nobody knows it now.

BM: This is the only way that I knew that I would get a hold on the Tampa community.

JM: So you designed the questions. You said, you know, what questions we’ll ask and who will ask them.

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BM: I designed it with a smaller committee of the Negro community—

JM: Okay.

BM: —or the so-called Negro leaders.

JM: Okay.

BM: And also with the advice of Mrs. Ruth Atkinson—

JM: Yeah.

BM: —who was the executive of the Tampa Welfare League and Community Chest.

JM: And she was white?

BM: Oh, yeah, she was—

JM: Yes, that's what I—

BM: —white.

JM: She's mentioned in your book.

BM: Yeah, she was the executive secretary of the Tampa Welfare League and Community Chest. She had to be white.

JM: Right.

BM: Lily white.

JM: Right. Well, she was the one who questioned you when your wife was calling people—

BM: Yeah.

JM: —Miss and Mrs.

BM: That's right.

JM: Right.

BM: Yeah.

JM: Okay. Now, you—so you selected the interviewers.

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BM: N—

JM: You selected the people who went out to—

BM: I selected the interviewers.

JM: How did you do that?

BM: As I said a moment ago, I called together a small group of Negroes in the community, went over the questionnaire with—

JM: Okay.

BM: It was refined it over and over again till we thought we had a perfect instrument for this particular community.

JM: Oh, okay.

BM: It might not have been a good instrument for Jacksonville.

JM: Uh-huh.

BM: But I think anybody could go into any community to make a study. You don't have to be a sociologist, just have the good common sense.

JM: Okay. Well, I think you're right. But that's because I'm not a sociologist.

BM: Yeah.

JM: I think you're right. So, Raper wasn't in on it at this point. Was he here when you were going over that, or did he come in later?

BM: Well, he came in—come in later. And, of course, when he came in later, why, he was a part of the plan.

JM: Oh, okay.

BM: Yeah.

JM: Okay. So there was—Raper says there was some difficulty at first with the people who said they were gonna do the interviews, because this other woman had also volunteered to do it. Is that your recollection, too?

BM: You mean that—my predecessor?

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JM: Yes.

BM: No. She hadn't recommended anything.

JM: No. No. Not that she had recommended anything. Um—let me see what he says here. "They tried to rid themselves of her reign, but could not until she killed her husband,” it says. “This took her into court. She doubtless would have been sentenced except that she employed the best possible legal advice in Tampa," and so forth. Anyway, it says, "The entire Negro community asked for her removal from the secretaryship of the Negro social agency." Um— And then, when they found that she was—they thought that she was gonna work on this report, then a lot of the—it says a lot of the Negroes didn't want to work on it because she was associated with it.

BM: Well, the Negroes was right up in arms against—

JM: Yeah.

BM: That's why I went Mrs. Beatty—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —and asked her to stay away—

JM: Okay.

BM: —from any meeting in the community.

JM: Okay.

BM: That the Negro community would rise up. And if she wanted her work to live—

JM: Uh-huh.

BM: —she must stay away.

JM: What was her attitude towards that?

BM: Her attitude towards what?

JM: What was her attitude towards that? What was Mrs. Beatty's response? What did she say to you then?

BM: She said, “You and I can make the study and let the others, but move on—we, you and I, could make it.” That’s when I said to her, “I don’t want you to make it.”

JM: Oh.

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BM: I said, “Now, if you want your work to succeed, you stay out of it.”

JM: Um-hm.

BM: And I said, “Now, this meeting that’s comin’ up tonight, I want to beg you not to go, not to be there, because the Negroes have such passion that they may have—they may put you out, and it may not be too pleasant when they do that.”

JM: Um-hm.

BM: She finally agreed not to come.

JM: Uh-huh. So then, after you, um, got the reports back in from the investigators, the—Now, the people that you sent out, they were just, like—were they men and women?

BM: They were men and women—I don’t know how many women—but they were good intelligent people. And if you can get a good questionnaire, almost anybody can ask the questions and write down some answers to these questions.

JM: Right. Now, um, when I was doing research for the book that I wrote on W.E.B. DuBois2, one of the books of his that I read was The Philadelphia Negro3. And that was a study—he lived there in Philadelphia. It's a brilliant book, I think. And a—

BM: Almost the first social study in sociology by anybody—

JM: Pretty much. It's certainly the first one [about] a Negro community.

BM: The Negro of Philadelphia.

JM: Yeah.

BM: Just for the—of the Negro.

JM: Yeah. Had you read that at the time that you were thinking about this Tampa report? Did you know anything about that book? I'm wondering where you—you know, where you might have gotten some of your ideas from?

BM: If you're doin' any thinking—

JM: It's just sens—common sense. Okay.

BM: Yeah.

2 W.E.B. DuBois, published in 1981.3 The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study.

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JM: Yeah.

BM: If you get in a situation you want to know how to —

JM: Right.

BM: —make the thing. I don't remember having read—

JM: Okay.

BM: —that book before.

JM: Okay.

BM: I can't recall.

JM: So, was it mixed men and women fifty-fifty, or more men than women, or—?

BM: Oh, I don't whether it was fifty-fifty or not but it was men and women—

JM: Men and women.

BM: —if that's important.

JM: Okay and so they were—they were grown men and women and they were—

BM: (inaudible) man and his wife, you know.

JM: Yeah.

BM: And sometimes it was some women who were not married and things of that sort.

JM: Okay. And did you interview them? I mean, did you talk to all the people who were going out and—?

BM: Oh, yes. I indicated that a moment ago.

JM: Yeah.

BM: That is, we had an evening meeting—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —a breakfast meeting, and go over the questionnaire and refine it and refine it until we had a perfect instrument which we thought fitted the Tampa community.

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JM: Okay.

BM: So, you needed to do that just because you needed the cooperation—

JM: Right.

BM: —of—particularly of the Negro community.

JM: Right.

BM: Now, a Negro must understand that he's the leader—white folks accept his leadership as long as he can pull other Negroes along with him. You see?

JM: Yeah, okay. About how many were there, do you remember?

BM: Where?

JM: I mean, fifty or twenty, or—

BM: I don't know. I think fifty would have been unmanageable. I don't think so.

JM: Okay, and then brought back in the results. Now, by this time Raper was working with you. What did you then do with the results?

BM: Raper was working with me during the whole time. Raper was with us when we was refining the instrument—

JM: Okay.

BM: —and setting limits of the investigation.

JM: Okay. Okay.

BM: So Raper didn't come in to find something new.

JM: Okay. Do you—so the other people that you worked with were, like, people on the executive board of the Urban League, or something like that? Other black people?

BM: No, they were people in the community.

JM: Okay. Do you remember any of their names, or—?

BM: Oh, no, I don't remember.

JM: Okay.

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BM: I do remember Dr. [J.A.] Butler, who was a physician. If Negroes needed any help—

JM: Yeah.

BM: —why, they would go to Dr. Butler.

JM: Okay.

BM: He was—I guess he'd gotten a—maybe he got a little stipend from the city. I don't know.

JM: Okay. Well, in other words, these people here—

BM: Yes, I don't quite remember who (inaudible) Stewart was but [R.G.] Griffin was a real estate man. Dr. Butler was military (inaudible). Dr. H.R. Williams, I'm sure that he was probably on the executive—executive—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —board. Mrs. C.D. Williams was Dr. Williams' wife. And Hall, he was on the executive board. Father Culmer, Episcopal minister, he was on the board.

JM: Is he black or white? He would have been white.

BM: All of these people's name I'm calling are black.

JM: They're all black? Okay.

BM: Father John E. Culmer, Episcopal minister. Dr. A.J. Shoots, I think he was a—I think he was a professor at one of the black schools.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: R. Thomas, I can't place him right now. Edward McRea was an undertaker. A.E. Ashley, I think he was an undertaker. Mrs. Lilla B. Robinson—mm—can't place her right now. Mrs. J.E. Williams was the wife of Dr. R.R. [Reche Reden] Williams. So these I'm sure were on the executive board.

JM: Okay, now, there's a list of people called sponsors4. What were the—on the next page, what would the sponsors have done?

BM: The sponsors?

JM: Yeah.

4 JM is looking at a copy of the report, in which there is a list of the board members and of the sponsors.

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BM: Well, you know, you make a study, it's nice to have the sponsors. They were somebody who would say, “This is a good thing.”

JM: Oh, okay.

BM: Now, [J.A.] Griffin was the president of the Tampa Welfare League. Mayor [Perry G.] Wall was the mayor of the city. He was the president of the Tampa Urban League. And Dr. [E.C] Levy was the city health officer.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: R.J. Ritter, I don't quite remember him.

JM: Let me ask you about Dr. Levy. There's a letter in there from him and it says, in effect, in the report, and he says, "Well, we’re really doing a lot about all these problems, and things are getting better." Now, I’ve lived in Tampa long enough. I’ve lived there since 1962, and of course things are much better there now than they were when you were there—but my guess is that Levy, who was the health officer, was not really very sympathetic to what you were doing.

BM: Well, I don't think he was unsympathetic. He was simply saying that—some of these things we are doing. He didn't know what needed to be done.

JM: Th—

BM: No white man knew what needed to be done.

JM: No.

BM: Because you were moving in two worlds. So he, he didn't know.

JM: But as a health officer, if I may interject my own opinion here, he should have known what needed to be done.

BM: Yes, but he's white. You're moving in two worlds.

JM: Yeah. Okay.

BM: Keep that always in your mind.

JM: Yeah. It's hard to remember, but certainly today he would have to know.

BM: This is reality.

JM: But today, if he—even if he were white, he would be expected to know what is

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happening in that section of the town.

BM: No, he wouldn't be expected to know. He's not a Negro, he doesn't—

JM: Yeah. He still wouldn't know.

BM: —move in and out night and day.

JM: Well, that's true.

BM: He can't know.

JM: I see your point. Yeah, I understand.

BM: Ritter is a—no, I can't place him. Now, Judge [E.C.] Darlington, he was juvenile court judge and we had a good relationship with him. I think that he was an unusual man. We got him, before sending any boy who got picked up for stealing—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —got picked up for fighting or something, instead of sending him to the—what's you called it then?

JM: Reform school, or—?

BM: Reform school.

JM: Yeah.

BM: —why, he would send for me and Mrs. Mays. And we rescued a lot of those kids—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —by makin' this little sand dune volleyball thing—

JM: Yeah.

BM: —you know. And some of those kids—

JM: I think there's a picture of it in your book. I've seen it.

BM: Not only did we get them a—but we also got some of the sons of the better families—

JM: Um-hm.

22

BM: —so they were not out there just by themselves as juvenile delinquents. And I think that made it a great difference. Darlington always sent them to us. I don't remember who Mrs. Whitman was. Dr. (inaudible), I don't quite remember him. Omar Carmichael, I think he was a wealthy man. I don't remember [L.P.] Dickie, V.V. Sharpe, (inaudible) or H.P. Macfarlane—H.P. Macfarlane—I think he was a Negro undertaker. I think—Isaac Maas, I remember he was white. [W.D.] Bailey was a Negro restaurant man. I don't know who (inaudible). 5 Peter O. Knight was a very wealthy man.6

JM: You mention his wife in your book.

BM: Terrible—

BM: Yeah.

JM: Unbelievable—well, it's believable, but it's just dreadful.

BM: Yeah.

JM: Telling you not to sit down at the concert in her house.

BM: Yeah. And I had brought them there. So the only thing that I could do, if a woman doesn't want me to sit down in her house, is to go outside—

JM: Go outside—

BM: —and wait.

JM: —I guess.

BM: See, you got to do somethin'.

JM: Yeah.

BM: You see, you can't take it.

JM: Heh-heh—

BM: Yeah, Peter O. Knight, he's the guy who had his tombstone way before he died—

JM: Oh, I didn't know that.

5 BM appears to be going down the list of sponsors in the report. As the Oral History Program does not have the recording of this conversation, we were unable to confirm some of the names that the original transcriber could not make out. 6 Knight (1865-1946) was an attorney and businessman. His law firm was one of two that merged to create Holland & Knight in 1968. He also served as mayor of Fort Myers and represented that area in the Florida legislature in the 1880s.

23

BM: —you passed by a road that say Peter O. Knight, that's where he's gonna be buried.

JM: Oh, really? I didn't know that.

BM: Sure.

JM: They've got an airport named after him now, Peter O. Knight Airfield in St. Petersburg, I think it is.

BM: Yeah, that's right.

JM: Yeah.

BM: He was a great Georgia citizen—I mean, Florida citizen, you know.

JM: Yeah.

BM: And, particularly if you had power and money and white, you had it made.

JM: Yes. Yeah.

BM: D.B. McKay was the mayor.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: And at the same time, I think he was the editor of the paper. I think he was. And he was—always remember the Urban League, in getting food for Negroes.

JM: Uh-huh.

BM: But he’d set aside so much. And Mrs. Atkinson, of course, is in this group of sponsors. Mrs. Amos Norris, she was another one that Negroes thought was very liberal along with Mrs. Atkinson.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: And, I think really she was more liberal than Mrs. Atkinson, but anyway she was one of 'em. I don’t know who Lykes was, though. Mrs. H.T. Lykes7. Mrs. John H. Ireland (inaudible).

JM: Lykes? L-y-k-e-s?

BM: L-y-k-e-s.

7 This may be either Almeria McKay Lykes, wife of Howell Tyson Lykes, Senior, or Stella Long Lykes, wife of Howell Tyson Lykes, Junior.

24

JM: He owns a big meat prod—he’s a big industrialist.

BM: Yeah.

JM: Meat processing, shipping, stuff like that.

BM: Yeah, right. Right. John Ireland. Mrs. D.B. Givens. Miss Kathryn Jessie—Jessen, I don't remember. Miss Eva Mae Bowman, I don't quite remember her. Mrs. J.A.M. Grable, Sr. (inaudible) [Reverend F. Barnby] Leach (inaudible).

JM: Well, that's okay. I was just— Were any of the, um—other than Mr. Raper, were there any whites in the community who, other—and in the power structure—who really seemed to you particularly helpful or who were really interested in this thing? 'Cause, you know, my—my guess would be that most of the—politicians would rather not have had the report made up. I mean, did any of them really seem committed to what you were doing—in any sense or were they pretty much a—cracker racists, as far as you could tell?

BM: Well, anybody at that time was—

Side A ends; side B begins

BM: —I think he did—he's a—McKay was one of those more benevolent. Mayor Warren8—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —was another one. I think a lot of those same people, if you took them out—

JM: Yeah.

BM: —of that environment it would be different.

JM: —be different people. I understand that. I understand that.

BM: Don't know whether you got it down there or not, but you mentioned lawyer, you know; his name was—

JM: Fowler? Cody Fowler?

BM: Cody Fowler.

JM: Yeah. Now, this woman was from Georgia, from a school in Georgia and she was waiting for the streetcar—

8 Tampa did not have a mayor named Warren. Mays may be referring to Perry G. Wall, who was mayor from 1924 to 1928, immediately after D.B. McKay, the mayor of another city, or possibly to Florida Governor Fuller Warren. No audio is available for this interview for confirmation.

25

JM: Yeah.

BM: —and she had driven about a block—I mean, the length of a car. She stopped—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —and then we went to the jail to see this woman, Mrs. Mays and I, then we went to Mrs. Atkinson's, and Mrs. Atkinson—you know, all we want is justice. She was speeding and hit this man, let her pay the price, whatever the price is. But if she wasn't speeding, then you ought to defend her. So Cody Fowler—we went to Cody Fowler, and Cody Fowler said, "I'll take the case for $150, but if I have to go further it'll be at least $500.” So when he a—He was doin' all he could to find somebody—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —preferably a white person, because no Negro—

JM: Yeah.

BM: —persons were comin'. So Fowler found that woman, and Fowler asked her, did she see it, and she said, “Yes.” Was it this woman's fault? She said “No, I don't think so.” She stopped about a car's length and she couldn't have been speeding. And then Fowler, under those conditions, took it. So we went down. Sent for the husband to come over from St. Petersburg—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —to be there. And, um, talk to him beforehand. And told him what Fowler said under $150—nothing. I told him find less than five, and he said, “Well, I don't want to waste my money.” I said—

JM: (laughs)

BM: “You don't want to waste your money.”

JM: Oh—

BM: I said, “You mortg—and you mortgage your home and everything else to save your wife.” So we kind of scolded him, you know.

JM: (laughs)

BM: So he went back Petersburg, brought the $150. She's still in jail. And then Fowler had that money and at the same time was tryin' to find someone who saw it, some white person who had credibility because the Negro woman wouldn't had any standing in court.

26

JM: Um-hm.

BM: And he found her. So when they took her—went down to the court—and Fowler, you know, was very dramatic. He said to this white woman, "Do you think any of this—Negro woman's fault?" She said, "It could have happened to anybody."

JM: Yeah.

BM: And he says, “Judge, I move the case be dismissed.” And they dismissed it.

JM: Hmm. Well, that's interesting. After you had got the interviews assembled, after the data came in, then who actually—who wrote up the report? What did you do with it at that point? After the people had gone out in the community and with the questionnaire and—

BM: I wrote it up.

JM: You wrote it up.

BM: When I wrote it up, I had some of the sponsors to hear what we they were saying.

JM: Oh, okay.

BM: I didn't just write it up, and didn't consult them about it because it was group activity.

JM: Okay.

BM: See? I couldn't get along, but I did get enough members of the executive board, white and colored—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —to hear it, and they okayed it instantly.

JM: When you write, incidentally, do you type, or do you write longhand? You?

BM: Oh, I write longhand.

JM: You write longhand.

BM: Yeah.

JM: And then you give it to a secretary and—

27

BM: And then the secretary in the Tampa Urban League.

JM: I see.

BM: She isn't employed as a secretary, but she could type.

JM: Okay, I see. Did Raper go over it?

BM: Oh, I'm sure he did.

JM: Yeah.

BM: And he's gonna do the study with me.

JM: But—

BM: I can't exclude him.

JM: Right. But the writing of it was essentially your writing with this other group of people who were sort of advising you.

BM: Yeah.

JM: Yeah.

BM: And, of course, he—Raper could make suggestions.

JM: Yeah.

BM: Like that, you know, but he didn't compose the documents.

JM: Would you object to its publication now? Some people would like to publish it, because it was a very valuable report that was never really printed up except in this form. And it's felt that it's an important local document, because it does say what the life was like then. Would you—what would your feelings be about that?

BM: It's fact.

JM: Well, that's—okay. Well, that's what I thought. Then, after you got this report, now, you discussed this a little bit in your book, and Raper mentions it in the letter here. What did you do with the report then? Did you give copies of it to the city officials or—what was done with it? This, this here.

BM: Well, I think that—I think it's stated in the report (inaudible). They (inaudible). There were Negroes, were living in seven or nine—

28

JM: Um-hm.

BM: Different parts of Tampa, seven or eight different parts of Tampa. And the plan had been—and, now, understand Mrs. Beatty had approved that.

JM: Yes.

BM: She had approved it, of taking all of the Negroes and puttin' 'em together in one spot. And I objected to that.

JM: Um—

BM: I said, “Now, anytime you've got all the Negroes in one place, [the] racial situation being as it is, anytime anything happens over there, you could go over there and wipeout the black community. I'm opposed to that.” So, they said, “Well, Mrs. Beatty approved of it.” I said, “Well, I don't approve of it. It isn't right just because she said it.” So what I did, I opposed combining the Negro communities, and the man who was planning these subdivisions—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —stated that he had offered me—

JM: Two lots.

BM: —choice lots.

JM: Yeah.

BM: I could choose my lots. Choice lots. And I said, “I don’t want any lots.” I said, “First of all, I just got here. And what I think you ought to do, you ought to let me bring some of the Negroes who own property and let them speak.”

JM: Yeah.

BM: So one man who owned—at this time, I guess he—at that time, he’d have been considered very rich. He was a doctor. Somebody, his name is—

JM: Yeah, you mentioned it in the book.

BM: And I went down to this citizen group, you know, of white people. I took them down there. Had two carloads of 'em.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: And I said, “Now, ladies and gentlemen, I think you’ll understand that I don’t own

29

any property in Tampa and I don’t think that I have a right to speak for them who pay taxes. And those Negroes who, they’re (inaudible).”

JM: Um-hm.

BM: Somebody come in as sponsor of their cause. And the—in [the] black community I have moved on as that—and some of them I became a very close advisor for, the (inaudible). Did I mention that?

JM: Yes.

BM: The Tampa Bulletin. And um—even for the colored, you know. I got him only because Culmer—oh, he's a man, he's gonna be on the winnin' side if he can, you know.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: And he was one of them.

JM: Who was that now?

BM: Father Culmer.

JM: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

BM: The Christians for Ministry.

JM: Oh, yeah. Okay.

BM: Yeah. So he was the one who the night we was stated what to do, you know.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: A great crowd came out to see who this leader was, you know. And he got up and he floated (inaudible) our little white angel.

JM: Yeah. (laughs)

BM: (inaudible) when I responded I didn't make any reference to that.

JM: (laughs)

BM: I said that I was very glad that race relations were so good in Tampa. I hoped I would be able to confirm what you said about this—I had a big hand, you know. Of course, when he left we wouldn’t have had so many people there.

JM: (laughs)

30

BM: And if I hadn’t gotten out in two years, I think they’d have run me out.

JM: Yeah. Yeah. So then you issued the report. Was there a meeting with the town officials, or any kind of formal recognition?

BM: Some of the sponsors, like Mrs. Evans and D.B. McKay.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: And the city attorney and Dr. Butler and a few others when I made the report.

JM: Now, what was their response? Because this was really a very—

BM: Well, you—

JM: —unflattering view of what Tampa had done with black people, and it was a very strong report.

BM: Of course, the arms started to spread. Everybody.

JM: The white people did?

BM: White? Here it is; here’s the data.

JM: But did it cha—Yeah.

BM: Here's the data. This is what you have in your community. It wasn't just something I went out and got.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: It is a community of people who's speaking, but you also remember—also, that I made the report—

JM: Yeah.

BM: But the paper said Raper made it.

JM: That was—you mentioned that. So—because he was the white man.

BM: He's a white man.

JM: Yeah.

BM: He's a white man. And the community would take it better.

31

JM: What was Raper's response to this? Did he disavow responsibility for it, and—?

BM: Well, he didn't disavow it, but I said, "Raper, this is very ridiculous of me not to make that report." He said, “I know.” I think—I said, “I don't want you to do anything about it, because according to their pattern, a white man's word is—”

JM: Um-hm.

BM: “—is more responsible than a black man's word, however true the black man's word may be. But they hooked it on you because they think the white community will accept it.”

JM: Now, Raper went on to do some very good work. Um, he investigated lynchings. He did that, and he worked—he wrote some very fine reports about black workers in the South and so forth.

BM: I think we gave Raper his first opportunity—

JM: That’s—

BM: —to be a free white man in the South.

JM: Yeah.

BM: See, he worked with Howard Oldham and other people up at the University of North Carolina. And they was supposed to be a—Howard Oldham, and a fella by the name of Johnson—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —and they were really finding out things about the South, and they were all Southerners. And so, they were acceptable to the South.

JM: But I have the feeling that he was really very inexperienced9.

BM: Who was that?

JM: Raper.

BM: Oh, sure.

JM: With the realities.

9 When BM and Raper were working on the report, Raper was twenty-seven years old. He had earned his master’s degree in sociology in 1925, and had only one professional position in his field prior to coming to Tampa.

32

BM: Not only a—um—he didn't understand. You know, I mentioned that when I went to this community meeting to get this thing together, Raper insisted that “This is for Negroes; I don't need to eat in there.” I said, “Oh, yeah, you have to eat. You won't have any credibility if you come down here and don't eat.”

JM: Yeah.

BM: And he let the whole cat out when he was over here. He said, “This is the first time I've ever eaten Negro.” And I didn't feel funny.

JM: (laughs)

BM: (laughs)

JM: Did you—but you did develop a fairly good relationship with Raper then, as you were working with him?

BM: Oh, sure. Sure. Sure.

JM: Did you ever correspond—?

BM: Not only that, I offered Raper, as I recall, that I would—to put—work with me at Morehouse [College] and at Emory [University]—

JM: Uh-huh.

BM: —at both places. I thought he had something to offer. But what happened, I really don't know. He went out on his own. It's natural. He died not too long ago10.

JM: Just a couple years ago. I was, um—he had the only copy of the report.

BM: Yeah.

JM: We—people wrote around and we could not find a copy.

BM: Yeah.

JM: And there was a copy in his files, which is this copy.

BM: Yeah.

JM: And, um, did he take the pictures? There were some pictures at the back of that report, like this. We have only Xerox copies of them. The originals exist up in Chapel Hill and I've seen 'em, but who took the pictures for that, do you know? There are about

10 Raper died in 1979.

33

fifty pictures in the back. Did he take them, or did your people take them, or—? Did you take them by any chance, or—who took them, do you know?

BM: I imagine when we were goin' around getting—exploring—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —what the community was like. Do you remember I mentioned the fact that when Raper and I were riding in the same car—

JM: The police stopped you.

BM: —they stopped us and—

JM: Yeah.

BM: —he had a temporary license, you know, and—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —but he snatched it off and said, “You're riding up here with a Negro.” And he was furious, you know. And he pretty much unnerved Raper. You see, Raper hadn't had any experience. He didn't know his own people.

JM: Yeah.

BM: And I guess you can't know if you only live with people in your community.

JM: Um-hm. Um-hm.

BM: Just as I couldn't know. The Negroes couldn't know how he was. They didn't know what they were getting. They get a pig in a bag.

JM: Yeah.

BM: Bu, anyway, some talked—expressed his ideas and things of that kind. So, I imagine that it was a great educational experience for Raper. And he did go on to do—one thing about Raper: he was fundamentally, I think, honest.

JM: Yeah.

BM: And if the data revealed this, if you made a careful research done on it, he would stand by that.

JM: Let me tell you a story about Raper, which I found out in his files, because I read files, his—he gave all of his papers to the University of North Carolina [at Chapel Hill].

34

So I went up there this summer. And it was very interesting. He was doing some field investigation, I don't know if it was for the NAACP or who it was for, but this was in the late 1930s in, um, South Carolina. And he opened up an office and he was interviewing black people, the kind of thing he was—that he learned with you here—

BM: Yeah.

JM: —and the grand jury convened in this county. The grand jury convened and they called Raper before it. Now, this was in the late thirties [1930s]—

BM: Yeah.

JM: —and they said, in effect, “We heard you've been stirrin' up trouble.” And, of course, he was apparently a very quiet man; I don't think he was at all an angry kind of person. And he says, “No, I'm just asking questions,” and so forth. And they also asked him if he was a communist agitator, as they asked you. But they said, you know, “We've been hearing that you've been calling black people—”

BM: “Mr. and Mrs.”

JM: “—Mr. and Mrs.”

BM: (laughs)

JM: And he says—

BM: That was anathema.

JM: He said, “Is that so?” and they said, “You know, we don’t do that here.” And Raper said, “Well, you know, I was born in the South and my father would refer to a black woman as ‘Mrs.’ if she was Mrs. or as ‘Miss’ if she were—” So, he says, “I don’t think that this is foreign to your community.” And they said, “Well, we don’t do it here and if you don’t want to have any trouble you’d better not do it here either.”

So what he did—and this is what kind of intrigued me—he said, “All right, I won’t use titles.” Like, if a black physician were a doctor, he wouldn’t call 'em “Doctor.” But what he did was he wouldn’t use any titles for white people either. So it was kind of a strange compromise, I thought. You know, a militant person would say, “Look, I’ll call people what I want to call them and you’re not gonna tell me,” and probably would have gotten kicked out of town.

BM: Of course, the other thing that Raper didn’t understand—you can call a Negro physician “Doctor” and you could call a Negro minister “Reverend.” You see what I mean?

JM: Yeah.

35

BM: That’s been acceptable all the time. You see. But don’t call him “Mr.” “Mr.” is social equality.

JM: Okay, well, that’s—that may be it. Yeah.

BM: "Miss" is social equality. "Mrs." is social equality. You're recognizing these people as equals.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: You see, now, Raper should have known that, but I think his compromise was a phony one.

JM: It was—I couldn't— Now, here was a man who devoted himself, obviously, to trying to better relations and yet he would do something like that. Do you think he took those pictures, then, or did someone else take them? Do you have any idea?

BM: I think he might have taken them.

JM: He might have taken them.

BM: I think he might have taken those pictures.

JM: Um, did— So, what did the—was this a controversial report, then? Did people get angry about it? Did the newspapers get angry, or did they just say—?

BM: They couldn't get angry, because a white man made it.

JM: Had done it. Oh, I see.

BM: I made it, but a white man "made" it.

JM: Yeah. Yeah.

BM: If a white man made it, it's okay. If I had made it the paper said—the executive of the Tampa Urban League. They thought that the people wouldn't have taken it.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: Now, whether they would, I don't know.

JM: Yeah.

BM: Nobody tried.

36

JM: Did it cause any stir, then, because—I mean, did—?

BM: No, no. No, no.

JM: No?

BM: No, no.

JM: Now you were there—

BM: Two years.

JM: You were there two years. And this was done, I guess, during your first year?

BM: Not only during the first year; it was getting things off the ground—

JM: Oh, okay.

BM: —so that I would know what is in this community. I'm New Tampa.

JM: Right. Now, obviously, in addition to educating you in terms of what the community was like, the report makes some specific—more or less; at least implicit—recommendations. For example, there were no playgrounds, and obviously you're suggesting that there should be playgrounds. There were inadequate libraries. Raper says, um—well, Raper said that after the report was released there were a number of committees set up in town and that [they] were gonna try to do something about these conditions. Is that so? Did it have that effect?

BM: I think that's true. But, unless somebody locally were to see that these committees functioned—

JM: Yeah.

BM: —to form the committee doesn't mean a thing. To form the committee if people don't work.

JM: Yeah. So, when you were there—during your time there, people tried to do something with this report, but my feelings are, after you left your recommendations were not implemented.

BM: I think probably that's right. That's right. Like so many studies like that—

JM: Yeah.

BM: —just gather dust on the shelf.

37

JM: If people don't want to do anything about it they don't—was there any official recognition, that is, from politicians who said, “Yes, we see these things and we’re gonna try to do something about it?”

BM: Well, I don't know about that. The only thing I know is the report was accepted because Raper—they thought that Raper, a white man, had to make it. Now, whether they said, “We’re gonna do somethin' about this,” I don't know.

Now, let me give you another incident.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: You see, they didn't have any Negro police.

JM: Yeah.

BM: They had one Negro who hung around—tryin' to remember this; I don't remember the street—and he would arrest Negroes and beat 'em up and all that, you know.

JM: He was a Negro?

BM: Yeah, he was a Negro.

JM: He was a Negro.

BM: Just appointed to parade around and ride around and—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: And the worst part of the Negro—what you would call the Negro slum part—

JM: The "scrubs"? That's what—that was one term for where a lot of black people lived then is called the "scrubs." Do you remember that?

BM: Yes, sure.

JM: Ybor City. It's where Ybor City is today.

BM: Well, Ybor City, that isn't the same there—I'm talking about—

JM: Yeah.

BM: The "scrubs" is where Negroes live in the slums. Not because they want to live there; many of them live there because they can't help themselves.

JM: Right.

38

BM: And I went into several of those homes where the inside was immaculately clean.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: Moved down there in—it's 44 Quarters, they used to call it.11

JM: Yeah.

BM: And they—and that's what it was, forty-four. Build by (inaudible) charged rent and make money. And these people hadn't moved down there because they wanted to be there—They had nowhere else to go. Some of the immaculately clean places, but a two room shack.

JM: I think there's a picture of it here. Yeah.

BM: Yeah.

JM: Oh—Like, there—Living quarters like that.

BM: Is this the 44 Quarters?

JM: No, I don't think that's the 44 Quarter—but there is a picture of a 44 Quarters there.

BM: These are great pictures.

JM: This group of two houses is called the Red Quarters12. There's a picture of the Red Quarters here. Did you write the captions for those pictures, do you know, or—who did that?

BM: I don't know. Raper may have, I don't remember.

JM: Is that your handwriting there, or his?

BM: It isn't mine. I don't know.

JM: Okay.

BM: What does it say?

JM: Uh—

11 This was a 210 by 215 foot lot that contained forty-four three-room homes rented to African Americans, referred to as the 44 Quarters.12 This was a group of twenty-two houses located between Lafayette Street and Union Station, which the caption describes as “some of the most unsatisfactory rent quarters available to Negroes in Tampa.”

39

BM: “There ain’t nobody goin’ to git my picture at no washer-tub!”13 No, I didn't take those. It's not mine.

JM: It might have been Raper's, then. Where did you live? Where did you live when you lived in Tampa?

BM: I lived in the Tampa Urban League headquarters.

JM: Oh, it—

BM: Upstairs.

JM: Oh, I see. Oh, I see; they had an apartment there. Do you, by any chance, remember the name of the housing development that—it was wanted—that—where all the black people were supposed to live?

BM: I don't know whether it had a name.

JM: The reason I ask is this, um—this is a picture taken in around 1924, twenty-five [1925]—

BM: I didn't go there until twenty-six [1926].

JM: I have to use a— You see there where it says "Christina," can you? I have to use this myself to read that. It says here, "Christina." "Christina, a city for colored people." Do you—did you ever hear of "Christina" when you were there?

BM: No.

JM: We've never been able to find out where that was. It was taken in Tampa right around the time when you were there—

BM: Well, you can see that it was right at a railroad crossing, you know.

JM: Yeah.

BM: Just "across the tracks," you know.

JM: This is not the best place in town, right. Right.

BM: Yeah.

JM: Right. Do you remember this woman at all?

13 BM is looking at the last page in the report, on which there are two photographs with handwritten captions.

40

BM: Oh, yes, that was a day nursery. What was her name?

JM: Let me see—somebody said Clara Austin?

BM: Austin. Austin. Clara Austin.

JM: Yeah.

BM: This is her daughter.

JM: Is this Clara Austin?

BM: That's the daughter of Clara Austin.

JM: Oh, that's—oh, I see.

BM: Clara Austin was a big—she was a big woman, a large woman.

JM: Well, she's pretty big. But that's not—she—that's her daughter?

BM: That's her daughter.

JM: Oh. Was she bigger than her daughter?

BM: Well, she was big enough that if she came after me I'd run.

JM: Ha-ha-ha. This picture was a—apparently this nursery set up while—either while you were there or just before you got there.

BM: No. No. No. No. No. No. That was set up under Mrs. Beatty, I'm sure.

JM: Oh, okay. But this is Mrs. Austin's daughter, then.

BM: Yeah. And that's Clara.

JM: Was she—oh, I see. That's a good picture of her. This picture was taken while you were there too. What's always interested me about it is all the people carrying the bananas are black and the people directing them are white. It's a good photograph showing the division of labor at that time.

Dr. Mays, the kind of report that you wanted here, to educate yourself about Tampa, I would assume that the Urban League was sending out, around this time, a number of directors to different cities.

BM: No.

41

JM: No?

BM: Not to make studies.

JM: That's what I was gonna ask.

BM: Not to make studies. They were called upon to send somebody down there to be an executive—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —of the Tampa Urban League or an executive of the Jacksonville Urban League—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —or the executive of the Richmond Urban League, but in the national office. This is the national office of the NAACP—

JM: Oh, I see.

BM: —who had office all over the country.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: And see, the Urban League is the oldest or the second oldest national organization for Negroes.

JM: Yeah.

BM: You see? And I think the Urban League was 1910 and I think the NAACP was 1911.

JM: Yeah. It was around then. So your study actually was quite unique—

BM: Oh yes.

JM: —at the time. See, that's why we think it's so valuable. Um, did you send a copy to the national office, of this report? Do you remember?

BM: No, I don't know. (inaudible)

JM: I could write them. When you left Tampa, did you have a feeling of fulfillment, that you had really accomplished something? Or did you feel, “Gosh, there's so much to do,” and—

BM: Yes. Yes. Yes, I felt that I had opened the eyes of white people and Negroes. I had the—shown them that all Negroes were not (inaudible). And this is what white people

42

ought to know.

JM: Yeah.

BM: And they—as I told you, when I say—you know, I'd been packin' all day, we were tired and (inaudible) we down to get a Pullman and when passed by white people just parted the way—let us by, but they looked to see what were doin'. We were goin' to get on the Pullman, on the (inaudible).

JM: Yeah.

BM: (inaudible) ride out of Tampa in a Pullman car. One thing, the train (inaudible) youcan't say (inaudible) the train.

JM: That's true.

BM: Ha-ha-ha—

JM: The railway station is still there.

BM: It is?

JM: The train station is still there. When we moved to Tampa, which was in 1962, it was still—it was divided. It was a—there was a thing right down the middle—

BM: For black and white?

JM: For black and white.

BM: But the whites' was bigger, though.

JM: Huh?

BM: I bet you the whites' waiting room was bigger.

JM: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

BM: It had to be somethi—

JM: It had better facilities. It had better facilities.

BM: Sure, they had to have some discrimination.

JM: And in fact, now the section that used to be the white waiting room is still the waiting room, and the section that used to be the black waiting room is a—

43

BM: Warehouse?

JM: —luggage. Yes.

BM: Luggage. Yeah. Baggage.

JM: It's a luggage. But of course, hardly anyone travels by train anymore.

BM: No.

JM: Did you—have you gotten back to Tampa often since you left it?

BM: I have gotten back to Tampa when I preached there [at] some of the black churches. And I went in another affair where they invited me to Tampa because I had been in the Urban League. What I mentioned the kids like Cody Fowler.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: So he was at that meeting.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: And I made this reference to him and always respected him and all this—say—in his presence. Then I told what he did, you know. And he was very glad that—proud of that. I don't know whether Cody's still livin' or not.14

JM: I don't think so. I'm not positive. He's a legendary figure.

BM: Yeah. Yes, sir.

JM: But now he'd be an example of someone who was not really what you'd call a civil rights advocate but had a sense of fairness; is that what you would say?

BM: He was fair as a justice; I don't care whether it was civil rights or not—

JM: Yeah.

BM: —if you have a sense of justice.

JM: Yeah. But you felt good when you left Tampa, and one of the reasons for it was the report that you had done?

BM: Well, it was two of the most valuable years of my life.

JM: Yeah.

14 Cody Fowler died in 1978.

44

BM: I was learning. And I was opening the eyes of black people and ignorant people. So I had—I think it was good. I wouldn't have wanted to stay any longer.

JM: No.

BM: But I think the two years was very rewarding.

JM: Now, you seem, to me, a basically realis—a very realistic person, but a kind of an optimistic one too. Would you say that's correct to say?

BM: Well, yes. You see, a man, if you don't be a realist you get knocked off before they start.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: If I go around there and try and change all the rules and regulation to break up segregation they'd have got me out of town quick. Now, being a realist, if you're gonna work in there, you've got to adjust yourself within limits to the framework.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: You're not gonna stop—try to destroy Negro schools and white schools—that had to come along in 1954—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —and still they're segregated. But yes, I made—I think I made a great contribution.

JM: Um—Let me ask you— Did—

BM: That is, my wife and I.

JM: Yes. I teach a course in racism at the University of South Florida there. I've taught it for a number of years. And when I go back there I'll tell them—Wednesday night when I teach them—that I was speaking to you. What should I tell 'em?

BM: Just what we talked about.

JM: Okay. Well, maybe I'll play some of the tape then for 'em. Okay. Um—I won't keep you much longer. But can I turn to another subject now? Can I ask you a few questions about something else and then I'll—I won't bother you anymore. Or are you gettin' tir—you would rather have me leave off a second?

BM: Well, go ahead. I still got the (inaudible).

45

JM: Okay. Okay. I wrote a book on W.E.B. Du Bois. You obviously—you must have met him a number of times. I know you refer to him in your book, and you were a contemporary of his for a number of years. Um, my book was mainly about what he had—his writing—and it was only a little bit about his life. And I just—there I try to set the events straight and so forth. It was very difficult for me to get a feel for him, because he seemed like a very—I don't know how to put it. He did a lot of good things. He was a very, very brilliant man, and at the same time a cool—he seemed to be a kind of a—it was hard for people to relate to him. Certainly white people, but black people, too. I think after he died a lot of people were more respectful of him than they were when he was alive.

BM: Yeah, you become a hero when you're dead.

JM: What was your attitude? What were your feelings about him?

BM: I think Du Bois was one of the most brilliant men that this century ever produced.

JM: Yeah, well, I would agree with that.

BM: He is a man born up there in Boston, in—what's the name of the place?

JM: Um—gee, it's outside of Boston. It's a—is it North Hampton, or—it's in the Hussitonic Valley. I can't think of—the name of where he was born escapes—it's in the Berkshires. It's in the Berkshire Mountains. It's right around Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in there.

BM: And something about—

JM: I wrote—that's terrible, I wrote the book and I can't remember where he was born. But at any rate, up there. I didn't—

BM: Well, downstairs, my secretary can get it. Ask Mrs. Warner to come up a minute.

Unknown Woman: She was not down there.

BM: No, it was closer to Boston than that.

JM: Was it South Hampton?

Unknown Woman: Yes, Dr. Mays would like you to come upstairs for a minute.

BM: That Mrs. Warner?

Unknown Woman: No, she's not down there. The other stuff is down there.

BM: I don't know whether she knows.

46

Unknown Woman: Gracie can look it up.

JM: Somebody can look it—I wrote a book on the man and I can't remember. It'll come to me.

BM: No, it wasn't Pittsfield.

JM: Well, it was close to—yeah, it wasn't Pittsfield. It was close to Pittsfield. North Hampton—

[A woman walks into the room.]

BM: Yeah, could you—there's an Encyclopedia of Negroes; I think Johnson Publication Company put it out. It's over there where the [Encyclopedia] Britannicas are.

Unknown Woman: Um-hm.

BM: Now, where Du Bois was born. W.E.B. Du Bois. And I want to know what that place in Boston was he bor—

JM: Where in Massachusetts was he born?

BM: I don't know. Do you have a—and bring with you Born to Rebel. Let me see if I made reference to it there.

JM: I've got Born to Rebel here. You don't say where he was born in here.

BM: Did—you looked back at the index in there?

JM: I looked in the index. Yeah. You mention him several times but you don't say where he was born. It'll say in the encyclopedia.

BM: Yeah. Okay. Either in the encyclopedia (inaudible) the publishing company, (inaudible) Negroes living and dead. Du Bois. I think Pittsburgh—about fifty miles away.

JM: It's—isn't this strange? I just can't think of where it was. It wasn't North Hampton.

BM: How's that?

JM: It wasn't North Hampton, but North Hampton is around there. At any rate, what was your—?

BM: That's near Boston.

JM: Oh, yes, it's not too far from Boston.

47

BM: I mean, North Hampton.

JM: North Hampton. North Hampton is ri—I know there's North Hampton, there's Pittsfield, there's—

Side B ends; side C begins

BM: —but Du Bois, anyway, whether he came from Pittsfield, wherever he came from—he went down to Fisk University to do his graduate—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —undergraduate work. And he graduated from Fisk. And he didn't have go colored; he could have went as Spanish, you know.

JM: Yeah. He had blue eyes.

BM: Yeah.

JM: He had blue eyes and very light skin.

BM: But he was obviously a man who had an inborn instinct for justice, white or black.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: But I think his thesis was The Suppression of the African Slave Trade.

JM: That was his Ph.D. thesis, yeah.

BM: His Ph.D. thesis. Then he studied in Berlin—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —and came back and got his Ph.D. at Harvard. Now, if Du Bois had been tryin' escape anything he had every right in the world to escape it, but he didn't. And in 1903 he said, "The curse of America in this century is the color line—”15

JM: Yeah.

BM: “—the black people"—something like that.

JM: He could have done that, but he was considered by some Negroes and by some white people as a snob.

15 “The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line,” from The Souls of Black Folk.

48

JM: Yeah.

BM: But if you knew him, he was a very nice man.

JM: Well, that's what I was wondering about. Yeah.

BM: He was a very nice man. You see, when he a—he didn't get along too well with a—with the people in the (inaudible), you know; he was a (inaudible) for a long time.

JM: Yeah. Yeah.

BM: And those men (inaudible) as the crow flies.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: It got to the point where it was sticky and penetrating, you know. So he wasn't just— (to secretary) Did you find anything?

Secretary: Um-hm. Born February (inaudible)—

JM: Great Barrington.

Secretary: Yes, Great Barrington, Massachuetts.

JM: (laughs) Oh, I was try—I wrote a book on him and I've been—

BM: And that is right there in Boston.

JM: Right.

Secretary: Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

JM: Right.

BM: I knew it wasn't far away.

JM: Thank you. (laughs)

Secretary: Uh-huh.

BM: Yeah, thank you.

JM: (laughs) Isn't that's strange? Isn't that strange the way the mind works? (laughs) I knew if I thought about it long enough.

BM: Yeah, I knew it wasn't Pittsfield.

49

JM: No. No. But it's not too far from Pittsfield.

BM: I know, but is it closer to Boston?

JM: Probably a little bit closer, yeah. You're right. You're right.

BM: Yeah.

JM: Well, I guess he was to general people, black or white, a little bit cool, but when he got to know you he was a warm friendly person, and affectionate and—

BM: Not only that, he had a sense of humor.

JM: Yeah. Oh, he's very funny. Yeah.

BM: Yeah. So I—when he was at Atlanta University he and John Hope16 had been friends and I think he was (inaudible), he organized the NAACP in Niagara Falls.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: And um—Sadie [Mrs. Mays] and I became good friends of Dr. Du Bois and so Sadie used to call him up and say, “Dr. Du Bois, Bennie and I would like to have you to dinner.” He said, “What you gonna have?” She said, “Dr. Du Bois, now, you don't do that. You don't tell a lady who invites you to dinner—ask her what’s you gonna have. Now, if I'd asked you what you like to have—”

JM: (laughs)

BM: —but you tell me—(inaudible). She said, “Well, what do you want?” He said, “Well, I want a duck.”

JM: (laughs)

BM: And I said, “Dr. Du Bois, I don't have any duck. Then you cook one.” He said, “Sure, I'll bring you the duck.”

JM: (laughs) And he did?

BM: So he brought the duck.

JM: Oh, great.

BM: You know, a delightful—

16 John Hope was president of the Atlanta University System and member of the NAACP board of directors.

50

JM: Yeah.

BM: —company. So we were friends. And that's one thing. But another thing, you know, he was very stern, even when he was wrong. Now, he and Rufus Clement17 didn't get along.

JM: Yeah. I know.

BM: And when he had to—he was a—(inaudible)—

JM: Uh-huh.

BM: And when he reached that age, he wanted only to stay there with a little office space and continue his research—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —his (inaudible) and Rufus Clement wouldn't let him. But I remember he wrote an article and he said that Rufus Clement would never be (inaudible). He said he didn't have any insight. And in a way—he didn't say it that way, but he was an intellectual snob—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —and he was an educated Uncle Tom.

JM: Yeah.

BM: Don't use that word—

JM: Right.

BM: —because it may not be accurate.

JM: Yeah, I understand. I understand.

BM: But I do know that when Mrs. John Hope wanted to get the papers of Dr. Hope out of (inaudible) office, she couldn't get 'em.

JM: Really?

BM: And she said even when I sent an envelope—(inaudible) arrested. So he never did like (inaudible).

JM: Where are your papers? Do you have your papers collected here, or—?

17 Clement was the president of the Atlanta University System after Hope.

51

BM: No, (inaudible) go to Howard University in Washington. So that's the way it was. And so he—another time we went (inaudible).

JM: Um-hm.

BM: And he and I were sittin' down there talkin' to (inaudible). She said that when the—(inaudible).

JM: (laughs)

BM: Well, that kind of embarrassed (inaudible).

JM: That's good, yeah.

BM: And another time—

JM: (inaudible)

BM: Another time when we were on that same place—well, here were are here—and over there it was Jackson Davis was the Southern representative of (inaudible).

JM: Yeah.

BM: And they come over and, “Dr. Du Bois, why—you come over and join us?” He said, “Quite comfortable, thank you.” And he withdrew.

JM: Yeah.

BM: He wouldn't go. And another time (inaudible). The first article I ever published was (inaudible) in Crisis.

JM: Oh, I didn't know that.

BM: We were makin' a study of Negro churches in the United States—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —(inaudible) I don't know right now, but anyway, he came in and I was in New York, and I said, “Dr. Du Bois, I have a (inaudible) of Negro college students. I was wondering if you would publish it in your (inaudible)?” He said, “Yes, I'll print it.” (inaudible). And the next thing I saw was his article and he gave me credit. The first article I think I ever wrote.

JM: That's a thrill, isn't it? The first time—

52

BM: Yeah.

JM: —you see your name in print. I—

BM: And the next time was the Century magazine—

JM: Uh-huh.

BM: —out of Chicago—

JM: Yeah.

BM: —which is very prominent as a religious journal.

JM: Yeah.

BM: And at that time (inaudible).

JM: Right. Where your (inaudible). He felt during the 1950s, I think, when—somewhat bitter—at least he wrote that he was. When the government was really interfering in his life and then brought him to trial, and he wrote then that he felt somewhat—betrayed, almost, that a lot of the black intellectuals didn't support him.

BM: Well, I think that's right. Du Bois was considered a snob by many Negroes.

JM: Yeah.

BM: And all white people (inaudible).

JM: And he—like Walter White. He didn't get along well with Walter White at all.

BM: No, they didn't get along.

JM: Yeah.

BM: No. I guess Walter White was (inaudible), so finally the Negroes turned against Walter White because he very (inaudible) black woman and he divorced her and married this white woman (inaudible).

JM: Oh, I didn't know that.

BM: And Negroes and white folks turned against him. In expressing his attitude toward them didn't affect the work that he'd done.

JM: Uh-huh.

53

BM: But (inaudible) several times, you know.

JM: Really? Yes, I'm not surprised.

BM: (inaudible).

JM: Now, Rayford Logan18—do you know—?

BM: I know Rayford, yes—

JM: Now, he—

BM: —he was down here (inaudible).

JM: He said that he had organized, in fact, a dinner in support of Du Bois and trying to show him that a lot of people were still behind him in this, but Du Bois apparently for a while there felt very badly that his—he had lost his electorate, in a sense.

BM: Well, I think that, um, the contradiction is the statement that I'm makin' to you. I think that Du Bois went through three stages—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —in his—kind of a (inaudible) he talked about. I think that he felt that if (inaudible)—had about a tenth of the Negroes—any Negroes—and the white people—and this is my own interpretation—

JM: Yeah.

BM: —that the white people would see that the Negro had the intellectual capacity and they, they wouldn’t discriminate (inaudible) the Negro. Now, Booker Washington was (inaudible). In his speech in 1895 when he said, (inaudible) he felt the Negroes did better in time—the white man would give him (inaudible) on a silver platter.

JM: Um-hm. Um-hm.

BM: But he was wrong, too.

JM: Yeah.

BM: No people get (inaudible) on a silver platter, they’ve got to earn it.

JM: No. No, you’ve got to take it, that’s what some people say.

BM: Yeah, you see (inaudible). In essence he said that if a man is on your back, property-

18 Logan was a historian and member of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Black Cabinet.”

54

wise, he’s not gonna get off except when the (inaudible) his position, it seems to be a profitable position—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —or you knock him off.

JM: Yeah.

BM: You see what I mean?

JM: Heh. Hm. Hm.

BM: And I think on that point, Du Bois was right. But he felt that you’ve got (inaudible). Washington (inaudible) give your—you buy a farm—in time you will get better. (inaudible) The conflict had to be, yet it did not. Now, that's a contradiction.

JM: Yeah.

BM: But, Washington—Du Bois (inaudible) after he was (inaudible). Then he talked about black reconstruction—

JM: Yeah—

BM: Now, in that period, he felt that Negroes ownin' enough—buyin' enough puttin' it all in the white man's pocket—but if they would collectively get together they could build their own.

JM: Um-hm.

BM: They—well, I think they didn't have enough capital even then. So I think he was wrong there. And the third place he was—they was beginnin' to hound him as communist. Then he became disillusioned. (inaudible)

JM: Yeah.

BM: But Du Bois was never a communist.

JM: No, I didn't think he was a communist either.

BM: He was no more a communist than I am.

JM: No.

BM: And the Committee on Un-American Activities, I think I'm listed about thirty-three times.

55

JM: Yeah.

BM: So any man at that time who really opposed segregation—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —is a communist.

JM: Is a communist. I know it's ridiculous, but I know that's what they did.

BM: It was a reflection on my intelligence. I don't need anybody—

JM: Right.

BM: (inaudible).

JM: Well, I thought it was a gesture that he made that his heart wasn't in— He apparently really disliked Booker T. Washington. And I don't know if you ever read in Du Bois' last years, in the 1960s, he published a trilogy of fiction called The Black Flame trilogy. I don't know if you read that.

BM: No, I didn't.

JM: It was three books, Mansart, Mansart Builds a School19—you'd probably find it interesting because a lot of it is about Atlanta. And obviously, a lot of it is autobiographical—that is, Du Bois uses a lot of his own experiences in that. And he writes about Booker T. Washington in there in, um, a very mean way, which Du Bois had a mean side to him. I mean, he could be vicious.

BM: Oh, boy.

JM: I mean, I just get this from reading his—

BM: If you were in his wrong, he—

JM: Oh, gosh. I mean, I just get this from reading his letters and I respect him and my book is very sympathetic about him, but you wouldn’t want to be his enemy because he was a sharp—

BM: You were if you weren’t on his side.

JM: Right. And if you weren’t with him—

BM: You were against.

19 The three volumes are The Ordeal of Mansart, Mansart Builds a School, and Worlds of Color

56

JM: —you were against him. And he really, I think, had great anger for Du Bois.

End of first session

Second session begins

[November 30, 1982. Interview conducted by phone.]

[Transcriber’s Note: There is no formal start to this interview.]

Ms. Warner: Okay. Dr. Moore is on the line. It's ringing now.

Dr. Jack Moore: Okay. Okay, good speaking to you, Miss Warner. Hello, Dr. Mays. Fine, thank you. I hope you're not an Atlanta Falcon rooter, are you?

Dr. Benjamin Mays: I'm in Atlanta.

JM: I say, I hope you're not rooting for the Atlanta football team the way you rooted for the baseball team. I think they lost over the weekend, didn't they?

BM: The football team?

JM: Yes, I remember—

BM: The only team that I'm concerned about is the University of Georgia.

JM: Oh. Oh, well, then—

BM: Herschel Walker.20

JM: Well—

BM: He’s in there already.

JM: They did pretty good. They did pretty good. Have you met Herschel Walker?

BM: What is that?

JM: Have you ever met him?

BM: No, not personally.

JM: Well, he's apparently a very fine young gentleman and writes poetry, apparently, in

20 Herschel Walker played football for the University of Georgia in the early 1980s, winning the Heisman Trophy in 1982. He played for several professional teams between 1983 and 1997.

57

his spare time. I understand that you did read my book on DuBois. I do hope that you didn't find too many mistakes in it.

BM: No, I haven't quite completed it—

JM: Uh-huh—

BM: —but I have read it.

JM: Well, I hope you enjoy it.

BM: Yeah, I did.

JM: Well, listen, Dr. Mays, let me ask you a question here. Is it okay with you if I tape the phone call the way I taped our conversation so I don't have to take notes on this? Is that satisfactory to you?

BM: Just a minute, let me get my glasses.

JM: Okay.

BM: Hello.

JM: Yes, Dr. Mays.

BM: Yeah.

JM: You okay there now?

BM: Yes.

JM: I was asking you if it would be all right to tape our phone call.

BM: Yes.

JM: Okay. I'll make it quick so I don't keep you hanging on the phone too long. I just had a couple of questions and they're really trivial. But just for completeness sake, I wanted to ask you about—something about the report. Okay, the first question: I justwanted to run over once again, if you could explain to me the procedure for organizing the work on the report that you wrote. At what point, for example, was Dr. Raper—at what point did he join your team, let's say, the team that put together the report?

BM: Well, he joined us in all of the meetings that we had, (inaudible) meetings.

JM: I see.

58

BM: Raper had never eaten with black people before—

JM: I remembered that, yes.

BM: And he was always there and—

JM: Okay.

BM: And we went over what we were going to do before we constructed the schedule—

JM: Okay.

BM: —which was the Negro Life in Tampa.

JM: In Tampa, right.

BM: Yeah.

JM: Okay.

BM: So he was there. He knew—he was always there.

JM: He was—

BM: And we drove around lookin' at Tampa—

JM: Uh-huh—

BM: He was in the—I was in the car with him and when the police—he had a temporary tag on it—he pulled it off and said, “You're goin' around here drivin' niggers.”

JM: Yeah.

BM: And so we went on and he was there all the time.

JM: Okay. Okay. Let me ask you another question now about the volunteers, the people who actually went out in the field to ask questions. Did you ever do any of that yourself? Did you ever go out into the field and ask questions?

BM: Well, no. I framed the questions.

JM: Okay, you framed them, but—

BM: What they should ask.

JM: Okay.

59

BM: Because I could not have gone to all the places—

JM: Right. I understand.

BM: —that they went to.

JM: Okay. Um—were the people who went out, were they paid?

BM: What?

JM: Were they paid? The people who went out, where they paid any money for this or did they simply do it free, as volunteers? The people who asked the questions?

BM: I understand. I don't recall. I don't think we paid them.

JM: Okay.

BM: I don't think so.

JM: Okay. Were there any reports of resistance to the questions that you were, that your people asked? I know sometimes when people do oral history and they send out interviewers, sometimes the people who are being interviewed don't like it or there's a feeling that they're keeping information to themselves. I know it was felt on some census questionnaires that people in the black community were filling, there was some feeling that they did not want to divulge all the answers because of, you know, fear of reprisal or suspicion of authorities. Were you aware of any—?

BM: No, I was not aware of any of because most of the people knew that I was trying to get a lay of the land as I was sent down to study Negro life in Tampa—

JM: Right.

BM: —so that I would know what to do.

JM: Okay.

BM: (inaudible) the Urban League makes its own program—

JM: Uh-huh.

BM: —then goes out. But it is the Urban League directed to the needs of that particular community.

JM: Okay. Okay, well, that's an interesting answer, then. Now, when the reports came back to you, when the volunteers submitted their statistics, you then sat down and would

60

write sections of the report based upon their information, and apparently, then youwould read these sections at other meetings of that group that was organized and they would comment upon what you had written, is that the way—is that—?

BM: They came to the Urban League and we went over every bit of it.

JM: Okay. And was Dr. Raper in on those sessions, too? Was Dr. Raper there at that time also?

BM: Yeah.

JM: Okay. Was there a response at all from Mrs. Beatty—um—

BM: Mrs. Beatty?

JM: Mrs. Beatty. After you had done the report, after you had sort of warned her not to participate in it, or requested that she not participate in it. Did she respond in any way after that, or did she—?

BM: Not after that.

JM: Uh-huh.

BM: She just said that—well, could get it done. “You and I could do the whole thing.” I said, “Oh, no, Mrs. Beatty.”

JM: Right.

BM: I said, “You all (inaudible) in the country—in the city among Negroes. If you and I did that, I would be repudiated before I started, in the black community.”

JM: I see.

BM: Right.

JM: Then after the report was finished, did she comment at all on it?

BM: Did she?

JM: Did she? Yes.

BM: Not to my knowledge.

JM: Oh, okay. When you got the report up—I wanted to ask you some questions about—Did you have it duplicated, or was it mimeographed or—do you remember how you reproduced it for distribution?

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BM: I can't answer that. I don't know—

JM: Okay.

BM: —whether we distributed it or not. I know when we made the report we made it to the black and white citizens.

JM: Okay. Was this a meeting of the Urban League at which you—?

BM: Recalling it, I was the president of the Urban League.

JM: Yes. Well, was it at a meeting of the Urban League that you submitted this report?

BM: I'm saying it was at a meeting of the Urban League—

[Telephones were disconnected.]

JM: We were just disconnected.

BM: Yeah, you're on another phone now.

JM: All right. Okay.

BM: Okay.

JM: Okay. Sorry for the interruption. Just a few more questions and then I'll be through. And, as I said, I'm sorry to bother you. But, you know, this is a very important report and people in Tampa are really very interested in it. So—

BM: The white folks and colored folks, too.

JM: Both of them, yes, of course. It's a extremely historic account. What we're trying to do is to see how far Tampa has progressed, if at all, as a matter of fact, in some ways from the time you put the report together. Let me ask you know about—there was another question I wanted to ask you about the report. There were some pictures at the end of it, some photographs, some snapshots. Did Dr. Raper take those snapshots, or did anyone take them that you know of when this report was submitted to the Urban League? Were the pictures a part of the report?

BM: No.

JM: No?

BM: I don't think so. I think what you'd have to do there is to take Born to Rebel—have you ever read that?

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JM: Oh, yes, of course. I've got my own copy.

BM: You could take the picture out of that and have it blown up.

JM: Yes. I unders—

BM: I think that's about the only way you could get a picture.

JM: Okay. Did you take other pictures of Tampa while you were there?

BM: I don't take pictures. I don't use a camera at all.

JM: Oh, okay. So someone else had taken that picture for you at that time, the one that was in Born to Rebel?

BM: Yes.

JM: Okay. So the pictures that are in the report on black life in Tampa, those pictures you had nothing to do with?

BM: No.

JM: And they were not in the report when it was first given to the Tampa Urban League?

BM: No.

JM: Okay.

BM: There was in the Tampa Urban League a Mrs. Atkinson, a Mrs. Bell Ward—

JM: Uh-huh.

BM: —and a D.B. MacKay.

JM: Okay.

BM: And a—a physician—

JM: Yes. Right.

BM: —a good many Negroes—

JM: Right.

BM: —they all went down together. I carried the Negroes down, because they had set

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aside a Negro settlement which Mrs. Beatty had okayed—

JM: Yes.

BM: —and I was to get two choice front lots—

JM: Uh-huh.

BM: —and I said I couldn't do that, because if you took all of the Negroes from different sections; West Tampa, from Tampa proper—from about seven or eight different sections of Tampa—and put them in one place it'll make it easy for a riot or anything to wipe out the Negro community.

JM: Right. Right.

BM: And I opposed it.

JM: Right, I can understand that. Okay. Now, I have just one more question to ask, Dr. Mays, and then I'll—I think I have just one more question to ask and then I'll let you go. Did you feel when you left Tampa, did you feel fulfilled? Did you feel satisfied that you had done what you could do?

BM: In this sense: I had done what I went there to do but I don't think it was satisfactory to the white people because I was not bowing and scraping and kowtowing.

JM: Right.

BM: Because I remember once we had the American Legion had rented the Tampa—the Tampa Bay (inaudible)—

JM: Um-hm.

BM: —and they observed five hundred seats for white people and Negroes were standing upstairs packed and jammed and they couldn't come down, they wouldn't let me up there.

JM: Unbelievable.

BM: So, Sadie, my wife and I, sat down in the back. And sixty-eight white people came. So leavin' over four hundred people—seats empty. And so they still tried to get us to go—leave. I said, “We’re not leaving. We're gonna sit right here.” And then I went home and Sadie and I discussed what we were gonna do. We said, “Well, we won't promise anybody we won't run.” They started to run then they'd be shot and killed.

JM: Right. Right.

BM: Then I went to the ministers' union and explained it to them and got their

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commitment and I went to the editor of the Tampa Bulletin, got him committed, and all of that came out in the paper before we left. And that is one thing that they couldn't say, that the black people were not with me.

JM: Right.

BM: I had anticipated that. So when we went down to leave—when we went there the place was packed and jammed when we went down there. A man by the name of Mr. Hall, he met us—but they're talking about what good relations they had in Tampa—and in that meeting introducing me to the Tampa community Mrs. Atkinson was referred to as "our little white angel." And I said (inaudible). I said, “That won't do.”

So in the meantime Jesse Thomas, who was a Southern representative of the National Urban League, they came—they sent for him, after we'd been there for a while, and asked him to get me out of Tampa. Now the reason was I was calling the—a wife—when he called up and wanted to speak to Sadie, I said, “Oh, yes, you mean Mrs. Mays, just a minute.” I didn't slap him down. I just did it very courteously. And Miss Romar was the employment secretary, understand. “I want to speak to Catherine Romar.” I said, “Oh, yes, you mean Miss Romar, just a minute.” And then we were reported downtown. Sadie was with the Family Welfare Association and I was with the Urban League. Her office was in the Urban League headquarters. And we were called—

When we got ready to leave Mrs. Atkinson, a woman in Atlanta, wanted Mrs. Mays to head up study of Georgia Negro child welfare. And she wrote me that this lady, Mrs. Atkinson, had her letter. She said, "You know why I hired (inaudible) your letter—her letter." I said, "No, I don't." She said, "Well, I didn't want to give you my bad reputation. See, she's not qualified in temper to do social work in the South." And, I said, "Mrs. Atkinson, you tell the worker in Atlanta, Mrs. Fitzsimmons, you tell her the truth. Now, if we get the job we’ll get it. If we don't get it we just don't get it, but you tell her the truth." She did that, and Mrs. Mays and Mrs. Fitzsimmons became the best friends.

JM: Oh, (laughs) that's wonderful. That's wonderful. Let me just ask you one final question, just something that might save me a little bit of time. Do you remember about what time of year it was that you released the report to the Urban League—?

BM: Oh, it was in the summer. It took us about five or six weeks—

JM: Okay.

BM: —to get it together.

JM: Okay. Well, I wanted to look it up in the newspapers to see what accounts were written in the papers, and I thought that would restrict my—

BM: Well, there was one thing. When we left Tampa we had been busy all—for the last two days packin' up, and I was goin'—they had to be with the National YMCA visiting

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colleges in the five Southern states. And, of course, when we left there were a lot of white people down there, and they just came right down to the Pullman to see me get on. It was a surprise. It caused an issue. So when the—evidently they notified the Pullman company or something. But when the man came through to pick up the tickets he said, "Now, you lock this door, and don't you let anybody in here." And I understand after that that a Pullman representative slept in an upper berth outside of the drawing room, that—

JM: Oh, for heaven’s sakes.

BM: —that—who protected me. And as we went on makin' stops at Nashville, and other places such as (inaudible) or that—Jacksonville, I mean—why the conductor was tryin' to foment trouble and told 'em, "There's two niggers in the drawing room."

JM: That was after you left Tampa?

BM: And when we got off in Jacksonville the man said, "I'm gonna let you know if anything happened." But they was really trying to stir up trouble. So that's a—

JM: That's terrible.

BM: —that's about the (inaudible).

JM: That's terrible. Well, listen, Dr. Mays, I really appreciate your taking the time to talk to me. And you're just an inspirational figure that so many people down here still remember and respect very greatly. And I just want to thank you again for taking the time to answer my questions.

BM: One thing—

JM: Yeah?

BM: (inaudible) There's a lady by the name of Turner-Pollard or something like that.

JM: Yeah.

BM: I went back some time ago and I—she was there. And I said there was one bright spot in Tampa, an attorney, I think it was Fowler, but attorneys would call his name—And I said he was the one man who did a job and kept a black woman from St. Petersburg—

JM: Right. Cody Fowler.

BM: Cody Fowler.

JM: Cody Fowler. Yes, you write about the incident very nicely in your book. It's—

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BM: I went to Mrs. Atkinson—that there's a black woman in jail and she'd been locked up for speeding. I said, “Now, if she'd been speeding, then let her take the consequences.” And then Cody Fowler said he'd take it for $150 and that was all needed that would be it. But if it had to go further it would be $500. So I said to her husband in Petersburg that—he came over and he said, "Do 1 have $100? I don't know whether it's worth it or not." I said, "You must be crazy. If it's a hundred thousand dollars to keep your wife from being in jail for twenty-five or fifty years."

JM: Right.

BM: So I went to Mrs. Atkinson and she said, "Well, no." I went to another lawyer and he said, "Well, you know I'm not supposed to—" No, it was a judge. He said, "No, I'm not supposed to recommend anybody, but if I were in trouble I'd go to Cody Fowler." Well, that was a good lead, you know.

JM: Yeah.

BM: And that's how Cody Fowler came into it.

JM: Well, that's interesting.

BM: So I've been back to Tampa several times.

JM: Well, we—I wish—

BM: You didn't talk about Mrs. Atkinson as long as she was alive—

JM: (laughs) I got it—Right.

BM: (inaudible) her business.

JM: She was the little—was she the "little white angel"?

BM: Yeah, that's right.

JM: (laughs) Well, very interesting. Well, thank you again ever so much, Dr. Mays, and I hope sometime in the not-too-distant future maybe to get up to Atlanta and drive by and just chat with you again if it's okay. But I'll call first. Thanks again, and give my very best to Ms. Warner, would you please? Okay. Bye-bye.

End of interview

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