Interview with Lyman T. Johnson, March 16, 1978

WRIGHT: Well, what I wanted to do today, I wanted to talk to you--previously I talked to you about, uh, what was going on in Louisville during the early years, when people like Steward and Pash and all those guys were around. Well, this time I had wanted to talk to you about the, uh, drive to desegregate the public--uh, the downtown area in Louisville, which started around 1960. In fact, I, I saw the--in the newspaper that there was a, a picket, uh, of a theater when they were showing Porgy and Bess on Christmas day in 1959, and then after that I noticed where, uh, alderman named Beckett introduced two bills that were t--uh, two ordinances that were turned down that would have desegregated, and I just wanted to talk about that whole thing that happened between 1960 and 00:01:001963, that whole drive for public accommodations in Louisville. And I was just wondering wh--what made you all started picketing the downtown movie theater on ------------(??)? Because Porgy and Bess was playing, since it was an all-black, um, presentation?

JOHNSON: I'm just trying to get my--just throw my, throw my thinking int--into that--

WRIGHT: --um-hm--

JOHNSON: --that time span, because I ------------(??)------------

[shuffling of microphone and indistinguishable dialogue]

WRIGHT: No, I'm gonna start it now.

JOHNSON: And, uh, I'm just saying that, uh, the big thing I wanted to be sure to do is to, uh, not do like some people do, you know, start telling one 00:02:00tale, and they forget that the end of this tale was the beginning of that other tale and not know that they're two separate tales--(laughs)--and they think they're all one. 'Cause I can do, I can go back to 1930, and I can talk with you about what happened in 1930--33--

WRIGHT: --um-hm--

JOHNSON: --just as, just as--almost as vividly as I could '63 to '73--

WRIGHT: --um-hm--

JOHNSON: --or '63 to '65, but I don't wanna get, don't wanna get them mixed up at all, because then you'd say, "Gee, the old man sure is senile." And when I do become senile, I can't--here, you have this. Uh, I ran for the Board of Education, and I handed out a little paper--

WRIGHT: --um-hm--

JOHNSON: --telling people something about myself--

WRIGHT: --um-hm--

JOHNSON: ----and one of my campaign workers came back two days later 00:03:00and said, "Oh, Mr. Johnson, look what I did." And so she took a lot of stuff, and she says, "I hope this suits you."

WRIGHT: Hmm.

JOHNSON: I said, "W--did you say there where I--I raped two women?" "No, we didn't put that in." I said, "Well, okay, you can go ahead." (Wright laughs) "You didn't say--You don't, don't say where I held up a bank?" "No." "Well, skipped that, that's good." So I--she had a few left over, and--

WRIGHT: --oh, yeah, I'll take 'em--

JOHNSON: --gave 'em to me after the campaign was over, and so I'll give you one of them.

WRIGHT: Okay, thank you.

JOHNSON: Um-hm. Now let's, let's turn the works on, and sh--you sh--you ask the questions, and I give you some sort of answer. You wanna pull that chair over a little farther?

WRIGHT: Okay. Okay. So I'd like to know about this whole drive to de--

JOHNSON: --now this, this will get it from here, right?

WRIGHT: Yeah. I wanna know about that whole drive to desegregate Louisville, and as far as I can--public accommodations, I, I know back in those times----

JOHNSON: You want to put--

WRIGHT: Yeah.

JOHNSON: --bring that hassock over there and use it for a little, little table there?

WRIGHT: I know in that time, uh, Negroes could not try on clothes in a lot of places, couldn't eat in a lot of restaurants--

JOHNSON: --well, you, you get your questions going, and if I, if I'm on the wrong track, why--

WRIGHT: --okay--

JOHNSON: --you interrupt and ask another question, and I'll understand th--that I was going down the wrong--

WRIGHT: Okay.

JOHNSON: --avenue for you.

WRIGHT: Okay.

JOHNSON: ------------(??)

WRIGHT: Now, what groups--okay--now, what groups were involved in this whole movement to desegregate downtown?

JOHNSON: Is this on?

WRIGHT: Yeah.

JOHNSON: First of all, uh, the NAACP has a constant ongoing campaign against, uh, discrimination on the basis of race, on color, and in the background, the NAACP was the, was the, uh, stabilizing factor that ran, ran through 00:05:00all of this. Now, I was a member of, of the, uh, Louisville chapter. I was a member of the executive board of the Louisville chapter, and at various times I've been president of the Louisville chapter. As a matter of fact, I've been president four different times, once in the forties, once in the fifties, once in the sixties, and then last time seventy-four and seventy-five. So I have fairly good rapport with the group, and, uh, many of the times, I would be out with a group putting on one of these demonstrations, and it'd be hard to tell when I was working for the NAACP or when I just on a hunch of my own--

WRIGHT: --um-hm--

JOHNSON: --or, or, or whether a bunch of my supporters just sort of, uh, urged me into leadership.

WRIGHT: Um-hm.

JOHNSON: "We're willing to do something, but, uh, come on, Mr. Johnson, you, b--you, you, you, you, you been on this battlefront before," and, uh, the kind of a person I am, that was all the nudging that I needed--

WRIGHT: --um-hm--

JOHNSON: --and I jumped into the--into fracas. Now, you said between what years?

WRIGHT: Nineteen sixty and nineteen sixty-three.

JOHNSON: Nineteen--

WRIGHT: --yeah, we gonna desegregate the downtown area.

JOHNSON: Now you--

WRIGHT: --the schools have already been integrated by then--

JOHNSON: --now you, you said the schools have already been integrated, and I'll say i--integrated after a fashion.

WRIGHT: Right. No, no, I, I can agree with that.

JOHNSON: Okay, okay--

WRIGHT: --yeah--

JOHNSON: --it was token integration.

WRIGHT: Right. Yeah.

JOHNSON: If you were a real good, uh, athlete or an excellent academic scholar, these white schools would, uh, vie for you to come to their schools, 00:07:00and, uh, and, and, and they'd show you off.

WRIGHT: Uh-hm.

JOHNSON: But if you were mediocre, you were not wanted, and if you sub, uh, if you were mar--if you were a marginal student academically and had no athletic or other especial talents, then, uh, you found it--a student would find it very rough and very likely would be, uh, punched out in, uh, in the first semester.

WRIGHT: Uh-hm.

JOHNSON: Maybe the first two, two months.

WRIGHT: Right.

JOHNSON: So what integration we had in the schools was grudgingly admitted, and it was token--

WRIGHT: --right--

JOHNSON: --uh, before 1960, but you asked between 1960 and sixty-three on public accommodations, and I have to get a running start to tell you that, uh, before the people in North Carolina had their sit-ins, we had already opened 00:08:00up the ten-cent stores, the, uh, uh, Walgreen and Taylor Drugstores, and, uh, some of the, um, uh, other smaller, uh, type restaurants--

WRIGHT: --before--before--

JOHNSON: --between--in 1930--1957 and fifty-eight. So our machinery was already--(clears throat)--concocted. It was just a matter of, uh, what would be our thrust in the sixties. And in the sixties, we, uh, decided to take on bigger things. Down in the main thoroughfare of our town, we now call the s--uh, the, the street, uh--

WRIGHT: --River City Mall--

JOHNSON: --River City Mall, but at that time, it was Fourth Street, and before there was a great rush of, um, of, uh, businesses to the suburbs, 00:09:00Fourth Street was the main commercial center for this area, all the way from Market to Broadway. It was the commercial center. Now, along that strip, we had, uh, as I said, uh, uh, done our sit-ins and, um, brought to terms all of the little eating establishments, uh, department store, uh, lunchroom counters, and, uh, and, and certainly, uh, uh, all of the, uh, drugstores and, uh, and, uh, things like Woolworth's and, and that sort of thing. Now, in 1959, as a continuation of this that I say is a, is a running start for the sixties, in 1959, in the fall, we took on the, uh, theaters. There were any 00:10:00number of first-rate theaters down on Fourth Street at that time. They've all just about folded up now and gone to the, uh, suburbs, but in those--in, in, in, in the sixties, early sixties, Fourth Street was the place for the first-rate, uh, theaters, and we were not permitted to go there, or, perhaps, those that did permit us, we had to go up in the balcony. Well, we, uh, didn't choose to go to the balcony, so we picketed hotels, restaurants, motels, uh--I mean large, well-established restaurants, and, and theaters. And then in the very winter at Christmastime--I think it was fifty-nine, sixty--at the very Christmastime, uh, the main opera place, theater place, uh, uh, live, live theater--the 00:11:00main opera place was called the Brown, Brown Theater, and they put on Porgy and Bess. Now, it was ridiculous that, uh, it was a pri--uh, uh, uh, an all-Negro cast performing, to which Negros could come. So we, we started out a new direction, a new push, a new shove on--on this demonstration business. And, uh, it just turned out that that was one of, one of the coldest spells we had that whole winter, that week that, uh, Porgy and Bess was here, and, uh, we almost froze out there walking around in front of the place, uh, but, uh, we, we did. That was, uh, Christmas of fifty-nine--Christmas to New Year's Day.

WRIGHT: Uh-hm.

JOHNSON: We had some of the students from out at the U of L, who had helped me when they were in high school, uh, walk up and down Fourth Street 00:12:00back in fifty-seven and fifty-eight. Now they're over at the U of L, and, uh, they called me up and said, "Mr. Johnson, you used to help us. Now come on, come on." I said, "Okay," so I got out and I was the connecting link between them and the NAACP. Now at times many of the older people in the NAACP just, just figured, uh, "Well, Lyman is halfway crazy anyhow, so he'll go all the way if we try to stop him, so we might as well just let him go ahead, and if he doesn't get too far in trouble, why, we'll bail him out and all his--all these contingents." Well, uh, it was an easy thing, um, Brown Theater was on--faced out on Broadway. Now, all of this earlier demonstration, the time when, uh, back in fifty-seven or fifty-eight, when we had something like 600 students arrested, that was done on the Fourth Street side.

WRIGHT: Hmm.

JOHNSON: But, uh, now we were tackling the--we were enlarging our, our area to go out on Broadway. And, uh, then we doubled back in sixty--in, uh,January of sixty and, uh, February and March, then we opened up our big guns on anything they had down there. We just, we just decided that, uh, piecemeal was, uh, was too long. Let's just take on anything that says Negro can't come in here. We'd wanna find out why. You know, we, we just took on everything. So that was in the--in, in sixty. Now, there was to be an election for Board of Aldermen, and for mayor. Now, before this, there was, uh, there was a Board of 00:14:00Aldermen that we appealed to to pass an accommodation ordinance. Now we had been working on this for about five or six years. There was a Negro on the Board named Beckett--

WRIGHT: --William Beckett--

JOHNSON: --William Beckett, an undertaker. Now, we tried to get Mr. Beckett to introduce a bill that we had sort of put together outlawing discrimination in public accommodations--theaters, restaurants, hotels, motels, all of, all of that kind of business. And Mr. Beckett was quite a politician, so he knew the old trick of, uh, log rolling, and he knew that, uh, if he introduced a bill that the other eleven aldermen would be opposed to, if he campaigned for it, if he made a big issue out of it, then, uh, they wouldn't support 00:15:00anything else he brought up, and in, in any legislature, you don't get a bill passed if you don't get--if you don't go along with them. If you don't go along with, with somebody, then nobody will go along with you, and your bill will die, not because it's a bad bill, but because you just didn't play the, um, play the politics with them. So for years, uh, maybe a couple of years, we tried our best to get, uh, Beckett to introduce the bill, and he said, "Well, fellows, the, the other members of the, of the, um, board of aldermen just say frankly they're not gonna pass it. They don't wanna be embarrassed by defeating it, and so they tell me that if I introduce it, that'd put them on the spot. They will be embarrassed. They will defeat it, but, uh, but I'll be a, a dead duck from then on. So I'm not going to introduce it." Well, we sent a committee around to Mr. Beckett, uh, one afternoon. I was in the group. I won't say 00:16:00that I was a leader of all these things, but, uh, very likely I was right in the center of the gang that did it. In this case, I remember my little remark was, "Well, Mr. Beckett, you go down and tell these other people that we are putting pressure on you to the extent that if you do not introduce this bill, we will not only, uh, demonstrate against the city, uh, uh, uh, Board of Aldermen as a whole, but we will come down in front of your funeral home, and we'll, uh, encourage, uh, uh, our, our supporters, even in death, to boycott you." And he said, "Now, now you, you, you interfering with my livelihood now." And we said, "Well, catch a hint, and get busy." He went down and introduced the bill the next night, and sure enough, they voted eleven to one against it. Six months passed, and, uh, we got on him and asked him to carry another bill 00:17:00down, somewhat--just enough different so it'd be a new bill, but including the same general substance. Again, eleven to one against it. But he got himself on, on record with us--

WRIGHT: --um-hm--

JOHNSON: --that--and he did introduce the bill, so it wasn't his fault, now. We had got up--we, we, we got up off of a postmortem, uh, boycott idea. The chairman of the Board of Aldermen was named--

WRIGHT: --Milburn--

JOHNSON: --Milburn. I forget his first name.

WRIGHT: William Milburn.

JOHNSON: William Milburn. Now, Mr. Milburn had carried the ball against any accommodation bill. He had, he had been a standpatter for status quo. 00:18:00No change, no change. We are--we have segregation in this town, and we gonna keep it. It's good for the blacks, it's good for the whites, it's good for the pe--general peace, and therefore it's our business to look out for the general peace of the community, so we're not gonna--not going to tamper, not at all, not going to give it any encouragement. He voted twice in sixty days' time, eleven to one, against any in--any, uh, uh, public accommodations ordinances. A bunch of us, uh, met at, uh, at the Zion Baptist Church up there, just a little group of youngsters, and they said, "Mr. Johnson, why don't you run for Board of Aldermen as a candidate from the tenth ward," right here where I live. Said, "Now, you can't win with all the, uh, reputation you have, um, we don't want you to think we think you can win, but we can build a campaign around you 00:19:00to attack Mr. Milburn, who wants to step up now from being president of the Board of Aldermen to become mayor of the city of Louisville. So when the election comes for the mayor, you be campaigning for alderman, and we'll build all of your campaign for public accommodation, and that will be in contradistinction to Milburn's campaign, and that'll make him campaign against him." So then, uh, we, uh--I agreed, and, uh, in our little campaign, one of our tactics was to invite Mr. Milburn down to talk to a Negro audience on, uh--he was to talk on what, uh, what sort of, uh, legislation he'd be in favor of, if he were mayor, favorable to the black community. So, uh, in the--in 00:20:00just about the middle of the discussion period, out comes this main question: "If you were mayor of the city of Louisville, Mr. Milburn, would you, uh, encourage the, uh, adoption of legislation to provide for public accommodations for all the citizens of Louisville on an equal basis?" And he flushed real quick, and he says, "Why, why, why, why, why bring that up?" So several people from the floor said, "Well, well, because we, we're interested in it. We're citizens, we're entitled to all these public accommodations, but we're shut out, and we just want to know before we vote for you or even vote against you, we wanna know where you stand on it." He said, "Well, in this community, it ought to be well understood that I have already led a, uh, vote in the 00:21:00Board of Aldermen, which was eleven to one, twice, not to have anything to do with any such legislation. So you know where I stand. Furthermore, you can't help me, and you sure can't hurt me, so I don't--you already know where I stand. I don't need to entertain--I, I won't even discuss the subject anymore." And we considered that an insult, an absolute insult, and we fanned it out across the town. In campaigning for me, the, the, the general education of the community got the idea that he was a racist of the worst sort, and don't elect him, and Milburn was so sure that he would be elected that he resigned from his job as principal of Male High School . He had a high, had a high position. He 00:22:00was well-respected as a excellent, uh, uh--did I say Male?

WRIGHT: Male.

JOHNSON: --principal--principal of Male High School, had a high, uh, reputation as a, a, as a, as a stickler for academic--high academic standing for all of his students. But he was so sure he'd become mayor that he, uh, resigned. Now, when he resigned, he was counting on, generally speaking, sixty-five percent of the Louisville vote would be Democratic, and maybe thirty percent Republican, and the other five percent, uh, just, uh, fence-sitters. But he was counting on thirty-five--at least sixty-five percent Democrats to stick with him, but he ignored the, the, the general idea --he, he just seemed not to 00:23:00recognize that in that sixty-five percent, at least twenty percent, uh, maybe, maybe fifteen percent would be black, and five percent would be disgruntled, uh, Democrats. Now, it was our Negro strategy to wind up as many of that thirty or thirty-five percent Republicans, five percent disgruntled Democrats, and fifteen percent Negroes and, and, and wipe out the whole Democratic slate. Now, I was running as a Democrat, but that meant to wipe me out, too. I, I wouldn't have a chance, but that was in the strategy to begin with. I was running as a Democratic alderman. Couldn't make it if I had already planned to wipe out all the Democrats. And sure enough, when the election was counted--all we were hoping for was fifty-one percent, and I guess we got fifty-two, fifty-three, but that was enough to stop Milburn. Then, at, uh--they went into office 00:24:00in sixty-one, and in sixty-one, here's a new mayor, new, new party--Republican Party--twelve new aldermen--Republican aldermen. We then go down and ask the mayor and his new board, "Will you pick up the bill that we gave Beckett and pass it?" And when they started to sort of, um, drag their feet, they were in office now, and we couldn't kick them out, so they were not too, too anxious to jump on this. They tried to stall. They said, "Well, let's don't do it this--not, not, uh, the first month or two. Let's just, uh, see how we can get along with, uh--" and we said, "No, start now," and they started, uh, uh, trying to be dilatory, and, uh, we insisted that they act now. And, uh, when 00:25:00they, uh, let too much time pass without any positive action favorable to what we wanted, we started gearing up and--or lubricating our machinery for further demonstration. And the mayor called me over at Central High School--I was a teacher at Central in those days--he called me and said, "Mr. Johnson, I understand that you're planning to put on a demonstration tomorrow." I said, "That's right." He said, "Well, now, you know, the demonstrations looked mighty bad back here during the, the time of the last, uh, administration, and it, it was very embarrassing to the, to the previous mayor, and, uh, to the city. It was, it was embarrassing to see all those six hundred children being shoved into paddy wagons and hauled off. Now, we don't want that, Mr. Johnson. We don't want that in my administration." I said, "Mr. Mayor, you don't have to have it. You don't have to have it at all. But you bear in mind, one thing sure, 00:26:00you wouldn't be in office if the other bunch had, had, had promised to do any better than they had done. You in office for no other reason than that, uh, we organized a coalition to put you in office, and we knew what we were doing." He said, "Well, Mr. Johnson, ca--if you can just hold the, the demonstration off, I'll see what I can do with my, um, Board of Aldermen." Well, here again, I wouldn't say that I was the, I was the only one in all this stuff, but I just, I just know what they said to me. "If you can hold it off--" Well, I talked with the, with the bunch that were ready to go. They would--they would've gone out on the street that day, not, not wait until the next day, but I, I suggested to the group that, uh, the strategy here. I suggested it would be, it'd be better to give them a chance to make up their minds and, uh, just, just keep our guns well, well, well oiled and loaded, but just don't, uh, let our powder 00:27:00get wet. So--and don't use it. Don't, don't, don't blast the cap. So, uh, the next two days passed. The mayor had a chance to talk with the Board of Aldermen, and about four days later, he called me again at, at the high school, and in those days I was fairly well-known by some of the big shots out in town. Whenever they called, the principal had left word in the office, "If anybody calls for Mr. Lyman Johnson, get him out of class real quick, and, and, and, and, some--one of you clerks go up there and hold the class until I send somebody up there to, to hold the class. You just get--you just get the man out. Don't ever--" You see, one time, uh, Senator Thruston Morton called down there and wanted to speak to me. He was calling all the way from Washington, and the clerk told him, "Uh, Mr. Johnson--" she didn't know who he was--said, "Mr. Johnson is in class, and he--we have strict orders here that, uh, we 00:28:00don't disturb teachers when they're in class. Now, he has a lunch period at a certain time, and, uh, uh, he'll be out of school at a, at a certain time, and he has a planning period at a certain time. Now, you call him either at the lunch period or the planning period or after school." And, uh, the man said, "Well, uh, just tell him that Senator Thruston Morton wanted to speak to him, and I was calling long distance from Washington," and after she had hung up--she said, "All right, I'll tell him," and after she hung up, she told the principal, "Oh, Mr. Johnson j--uh, uh, had a, had a call from, from Washington." Principal said, "He did? From whom?" "Senator Morton." He said, "Well, well, well did you get him down here?" "No, you, you said don't interrupt any class and so we, we just told him when he could talk to him." He said, "Well, my God, that isn't the way to do it when, when, when a senator calls." So she got back on the phone, called Washington--one, one, one clerk called Washington, one clerk called upstairs for me to come down, and, and in about three minutes, I was 00:29:00talking to Senator Morton. But the main point is, um, from that time on, if, uh, if somebody, some deadbeat wanted to borrow fifteen cents from me to buy him a another, another, uh, shot of rotgut liquor, they'd get me out of class to come answer it. So in this case, the mayor was calling again, and I come down. "Mr. Johnson, we have five aldermen for your bill, and we've got five set dead against it. Five said they will have nothing to do with it except to vote against it. They're deter--they said they're not gonna change." I said, "Mr. Alderman--" I mean, uh, "Mr. Mayor," and see, his name was Cowger.

WRIGHT: ------------(??).

JOHNSON: I think his name was William. I don't remember what his first name was.

WRIGHT: Cowger.

JOHNSON: Cowger. I said, "Mr. Cowger--" no, "Mr. Mayor, there are twelve aldermen." He said, "Yes, but Mr. Johnson, two are on the fence." I 00:30:00said, "Mr., Mr. Mayor, you don't want any demonstrations out on the street, and we don't particularly want them out there, either. All we want is that accommodation bill." He said, "Well, I'm doing all I can." "But, Mr. Mayor, until you get those other two, you need, you need two more, and until you get those other two, you haven't done as much as you need to do. That's your, that's your baby, Mr. Mayor. They're your gang, and we put all of you in office. Now, you can--we can embarrass you, just like we did that last mayor." He said, "Well, Mr. Johnson, don't, don't, don't, don't bring them out on the street again. Uh, let me see what I can do." So, meeting was to be on a Tuesday night, Board of Aldermen, and this bi--this, um, uh, aldermen's--this bill 00:31:00was, was, was to come up for a vote that Tuesday night, and I was seated down in the aldermanic chambers, out in the audience section, when one of the reporters came over and said, "Mr. Johnson, will there be a demonstration tomorrow?" I said, "Those twelve people down there will answer your question. You just wait, you just wait until they take a vote." I said, "Now, I have two news releases in my pocket here, and I'll--if, if they vote one way, I'll give you one. They vote the other way, I'll give you this one, and you'll get your answer." I said, "Answer's already written, but which one of these will depend on this," and they voted seven to five in favor of what we had, and I pulled out this, and we complimented the mayor and the Board of Aldermen, and there'd be no 00:32:00demonstration. And that's how we got the thing passed. Now, uh, that was in sixty-one--sixty, sixty-one, sixty-two, leading over into sixty-three, then we had a kind of a little lull, and, and, and, and we shove off into, into higher things--I mean, other things in, in that connection.

WRIGHT: Um-hm.

JOHNSON: But, uh, we, in sixty-five, sixty-eight, we go into the business of, uh, public housing.

WRIGHT: Right. Yeah.

JOHNSON: But the, but the public accommodations was right there.

WRIGHT: Right.

JOHNSON: Now, any number of people, um, reporters in particular, uh, picked us and me--when they came to me in particular they would ask, "Why did you jump on public accommodations, when there were other things so important, like employment, uh, housing, and, uh, uh, things like, uh, uh, education. Why'd you jump on public accommodation?" And I said, "We want all of these 00:33:00things. We consider each one equally important with all the others. But we're practical enough to, to, to grab at the one that we think we can get at this particular time and use that as a lever to reach over and grab at something else, and so we're nibbling all around the periphery, and we'll pull in, as we look around, we see which, which battle can be won the quickest and easiest, and we, uh, we--we're stratis--uh, uh,"--stratesticians, is that the word? "Uh, we, uh, we work on the strategy that, uh, the least casualties we--"

WRIGHT: --um-hm--

JOHNSON: "--suffer in one battle, the more recruits we have for the next encounter."

WRIGHT: Um-hm.

JOHNSON: So, uh, when it was--it--when the iron was hot to hit on , on 00:34:00public accommodations, we, uh, centralized on it. Not saying that the others are not important.

WRIGHT: Um-hm.

JOHNSON: So, when we accomplished this, then the next, we moved into housing and pulled on the same thing.

WRIGHT: You've outlined it, and, and that's the basic general chronological order of how it happened. I, I would just like to ask you about some of the various people who took part in it with you. Uh, who--what were the groups? The NAACP, CORE, NAACP Youth Council?

JOHNSON: Well, uh, when you say Youth Council of NAACP--and NAACP, you talking about the same thing.

WRIGHT: Um-hm.

JOHNSON: It's all, all under one roof, but--

WRIGHT: --um-hm--

JOHNSON: --uh, CORE and, um--

WRIGHT: Now--

JOHNSON: Wait, there's another group--

WRIGHT: --Ewbank Tucker--

JOHNSON: --Ewbank Tucker--

WRIGHT: --um-hm--

JOHNSON: --was in a--he was with CORE.

WRIGHT: Um-hm.

JOHNSON: Now, CORE never really, uh, got into the, into the nitty 00:35:00gritty of the battle. They, they were a bunch of liberals in Maine who were largely intellectuals and, uh, and whites, and, uh, they had not been--they, they just didn't show much of what, what I'd call the indigenous stuff that makes for leadership in a group. And, uh, it was hard for them to get, uh, uh, respectability. Uh, they, they were suspect in the sense that first, they were white--

WRIGHT: --um-hm--

JOHNSON: --and second, uh, they were intellectuals, and third, um, they, to a large extent, represented those who had obtained, now, economic affluence, uh, in the economic and social and cultural levels. Now, what did they 00:36:00have in common with all of these, uh, proscribed people, mainly blacks?

WRIGHT: Um-hm.

JOHNSON: And they hadn't been with us before. Where'd they come from? Now, that was just about the idea. Uh, they, they'd just wonder, "What makes you so good now, right now? Is this a trick, or are you, are you pulling, pulling something over us?" So CORE never really got to, to, um, first base on these things in this town.

WRIGHT: Um-hm.

JOHNSON: Uh, any number of times, right here in this room, um, on two different occasions, a representative from the national office of CORE arranged to come and talk with me to see if they could get my support to aid the, the, um, recruiting and establishment of a chapter of CORE in this town, and I, I told him, "No," I said, "We already have the NAACP. NAACP is doing an excellent job. Why should I dilute what I'm doing with the NAACP to start a new organization? Now, if they wanna help us, okay, but we already going. There's no 00:37:00use to, no use to have two wagons struggling going down, two telephones, two presidents, and two all these things, uh, going down the same street. We've got one wagon already going--"

WRIGHT: --um-hm--

JOHNSON: --"and, and I'm not gonna take energy off of this wagon and dilute its effectiveness to, to establish something else." Well, uh, it never got going. Now, uh, Bishop Tucker was one of the leading Negroes in that group, and in spite of him being, uh, a, a black, and a very influential black, he still didn't pick up any blacks to, to go along with him. So, uh, several times, uh, um, Bishop would, uh, branch out and start one of these, uh, projects, one of these demonstration projects, and he'd have maybe five or six young people with him. And on two occasions, he called me and said, uh-- he called me 00:38:00Professor--he said, "Professor, Professor, I need some, I need some adults to come down and help me. Will you come down? Will you come down? Uh, these children are so active and anxious and willing, but, but--and I'm so old, and, and there's not much connecting link between me and them. Will you come down? They, they said they'll, they'll stand here all day long, you get Mr. Johnson to come down." So, uh, I said, "Yeah, Mr., Mr. Tucker." So on two occasions--maybe three--uh, I went down to help Bishop Tucker. Turns out, though, that, uh, maybe to a large extent, uh, uh, to the outside world they, they thought it was one of my projects. It must have been Bishop Tucker helping me. It was really his project.

WRIGHT: Um-hm.

JOHNSON: One at the telephone company, and one at, uh, one of the department stores down there called, uh, Stewart's.

WRIGHT: Um-hm.

JOHNSON: Now, on a third occasion, he was definitely helping me. Now, 00:39:00there was a Mrs. Rabb, uh, Dr. Rabb's wife, uh, Mrs.--

WRIGHT: ------------(??)

JOHNSON: --uh, Jewel Rabb and then uh, uh, a fellow who is now deceased, uh, uh, J.A. Bishop. Now, those three, uh, and myself, we three grown people representing the NAACP just about, uh, were the grown people who were the advisors and leaders and, and, and connecting link with those, with those young people who represent what you re--refer to as the Youth Council. Now, the Youth Council of NAACP was only in name. Uh, there's hardly any real organization. They were under--if there's any authoritative connection, it was with the senior branch and, to a large extent, through me, and, uh, of course I got, uh, Bishop and Mrs. Rabb to go along with me and, uh, they were both 00:40:00members of the branch. Now, when, uh, Bishop Tucker would tie in with us, uh, it, it gave a, a bigger appeal across the community, and Bishop Tucker was a well-established civil rights leader here in this community for a long time, and, uh, although he was getting rather frail, he was still--his name meant quite a bit.

WRIGHT: Um-hm. What about--

JOHNSON: --and, uh, let's see, now, when the thing spread out and got bigger and bigger and bigger, when we started getting away from, say, from fifteen to twenty-seven, uh, very seldom did, did, uh, that little group that did things at those ten-cent stores, fifty-eight and fifty-nine, very seldom would we take more than, um, twenty-five--twenty-seven on one occasion. Twenty-five 00:41:00was just about the tops, and when we had only about thirteen or fourteen, I might be the only adult out there. Uh, when we had, uh, Bishop and Mrs. Rabb, we had twenty-seven, and, uh, now, in the sixties--uh, that is, uh, uh, fifty-nine and sixty, when we were working on that, um, Brown Theater and aimed then to launch out and take on the big things, then it, it got rather popular. See, at first, even the blacks in this community, the, uh, adults, they thought that we, uh, we were just down there trying to get our names in the paper. It looked like we were just trying to, uh, uh, show how radical we could be. Uh, we were going to disturb all the good relations between us and all these good white folk in this town, and why would we come all the way, and--"We don't wanna eat downtown, anyhow. We don't wa--we don't, we don't need nothing. He just--" 00:42:00Well, I took quite a bit of a drubbing from the, uh, from the black community for upsetting the race relations--such good relations. Such good relations that we couldn't eat together downtown ------------(??). So, when sixty came, it got to be fairly popular, and more came to get in on the, on the kill. And when we got up to, uh, sixty--no, six hundred--one time we had 675 people, uh, single file on one side of the street going from Market to Broadway and coming up on the other side of the street. Uh, and then we, we definitely had any number of grown people. Uh, Frank Stanley, Jr., then was--he was very 00:43:00articulate. He's a, he's a master, uh, strategist, and he, he, he was bold, and he was, uh, as I say very, very fluent in his expression and very logical, and, and, and very young as compared to me and Bishop Tucker. So, uh, it was in keeping with the, with the, uh, general spirit of things for him to come into the ascendency and, uh, to all intents and purposes, it looked as if he was a spokesman for all, all the business. Frank Stanley, Jr., I give him a l--a lot of credit, uh, but, uh, on the other hand, I must throw in that, uh, he didn't rise to the occasion until there was an occasion. He didn't help 00:44:00build up the occasion. He could have given us better publicity in the fif--fifty-seven, fifty-eight, and fifty-nine, but, uh, you know, he was a editor under his daddy, who was the publisher of the Louisville Defender. Uh, they could have given us better coverage, and, uh, we called any number of times to come down and--have a photographer come down and see that we are actually, uh, seated, uh, at these places. Photographers never came. White photographers, uh, for the, for the daily paper came, but, uh, the Defender didn't, uh, didn't come in on the show until we actually began to get to first base, and then--(laughs)--there was the niche cut out for this young man, and he stepped in to it and served a very, very good purpose. Uh, let me see, so in that--

[Pause in recording.]

JOHNSON: --I would, I would highly, uh, recommend to you that there was, uh, Frank Stanley, Jr. and, uh, Reverend, uh, Bishop Tucker, and Reverend 00:45:00W.J. Hodge and Dr., uh, Maurice Rabb and, uh, oh, Mrs. Rabb, and, uh, Mr. Bishop and myself. Uh, there might be some more if I had a chance to go to the records, I could tell you more.

[Pause in recording.]

WRIGHT: --churches, how did they act toward all this, and what about white leaders, uh, or white community people? Did they become involved, or were they just more or less apathetic to the whole thing?

JOHNSON: There were many, many whites that came in through some sort of connection with CORE. Now, uh, I don't think they were members of CORE. They, perhaps, may have been recruited to come out and help in some of the demonstrations. Uh, may have been recruited largely through CORE. Uh, I highly, I highly respect the cooperation we got from the, uh, some of the 00:46:00professors and many of the students at the Presbyterian seminary. Any number of them came down to take part, came off the campus out in the affluent east end of the community, came down and took part in the demonstrations, and some of them were, were quite surprised when they found they got arrested, too. But they, um, they, uh, were game sports. They, they didn't renege when, when it came--when they saw these, all these blacks being arrested, they didn't duck. They stayed right there, and went right on through the business, went on and got fingerprinted, mugged, and everything else. Um, I highly respect the, uh, the seminary people. Uh, a few from the Southern Baptist, but the 00:47:00Southern Baptist is a little more traditional, uh, Southern Baptist--they're more Southern than, uh--(laughs)--then the Presbyterians seem to be. Didn't get too much cooperation at, at the Southern Baptist. Um, many of the, many people out in the city sort of agreed with us but, uh, didn't, uh, think it was quite the dignified thing to come out and, and parade up and down the street and sing all of those We Shall Overcome songs, and all that kind of business. They, they, they wanted us to win and, and gave their support by ri--

[Pause in recording.]

JOHNSON: --the editors to write some nice editorials about us, and, uh, we got, we got quite a bit of support from some very influential people like that-- influential white people.

WRIGHT: Um-hm. Hmm. What kind of pressure--uh, I noticed Blue Boar was one place that you hit pretty hard, and, like you said, Stewart's and Kauffman's, type of thing. What kind of pressure thing--was that an economic boycott type of thing? I noticed one Easter when you all decided to--

JOHNSON: --that one store downtown--I don't remember what was the name of the store, but it was one of those little, uh, storefronts. (laughs) It was just a, just a modest little business. But they usually made a big profit at Easter time. And this particular time, they had bought up thousands and thousands of these little pretty, real nice, pretty women's hats for Easter, just a one-day affair, that they could sell for $2.00 or $2.50, $2.49 and all that 00:49:00kind of stuff, $2.98, and for one day, they served a purpose, and many people liked to put on their finery and show off on Easter Sunday. So this, this, this company stocked up six weeks before Easter, put just about all their fluid capital in, in these hats, and we came out with a campaign, "Nothing New for Easter," "Nothing New for Easter," and, and we practically bought nothing for eight weeks before Easter, and this little place had to dump all of those hats. They went bankrupt. Went out of business. They went bankrupt on not being able to dispose of those hats. Now, that was just one illustration. Uh, they were the only ones that, uh, it was ------------(??)------------, it was, uh, not a well-heeled, uh, business to begin with. But, uh, as long as they could sell those hats, it would be good for one day, and if you get caught in 00:50:00the rain on that one day, you might have to get the scissors to chop it off your head. Uh, it, it just wouldn't stand up after that one day. But, uh, it would serve a purpose, and people would buy them. Uh, yeah, the other, other department stores, uh, sort of, uh recognized that they were, uh, losing some trade, because it was very effective. We just preached it around from church to church, every kind of Negro organization, uh, "Don't buy anything new for Easter. Just let this be one Easter that--" ------------(??)------------. As a matter of fact, as a matter of fact, it's more sensible. Why do you just wait until Easter to, to dress up? You don't have to be dressed up on Easter. That's something we gotta get away from anyhow, and, and, and let's start right now and, uh, and get in the habit of, uh, you buy you some clothes when you need your clothes. Don't go ragged all year waiting for Easter to come then go down and spend, uh--go broke buying stuff for Easter. So we used all the economic reasons why you shouldn't do it in addition to this pressure, uh, 00:51:00tactic that we tried to pull. And it was very effective. Yes, uh, now, you mentioned, uh, um, the Blue Boar. I must tell you this, uh, it looks like, uh, it looks like I'm saying quite a few things about what I did, but, of course, nobody knows what I did but me as well as I do. Uh, one night, before we got into that big shove of hundreds and hundreds of people on the street, there were twenty-one of the young people parading around in front of the Blue Boar. Now, there were two Blue Boars downtown, one on Walnut Street, and one on Broadway, just about three blocks apart, but, uh, this was the Walnut Street one, and we were parading around in an oval sort of a fashion right in front of this place. Now, I am a--at that time I was a schoolteacher, and at that time, the president of the Board of Education was the principal owner of Blue Boar. His 00:52:00name was Johnson--Eugene Johnson. Now, the young people--to show you the contrast in age--the young people were just as spry--when I say young, they were from, say, seventeen--sixteen, sixteen to twenty. I don't think anybody was over twenty-one. May have been on in the group twenty-one. And, uh, they were marching, but, uh, in that spry, gay cadence. They were marching like troopers, and they were looking like they were on their way to a fire or something. But, uh, I was getting up in years, of course, and it was cold that night. I had my overcoat on, had my hat on------(??) on the side of my head, and I had my arms folded, something like this, and I was just strolling along, just in, in, in the line, but it looked like--you know at a track meet, sometimes the, the fellow who is slowest in the track meet, when you, when it's a--when you got to go down the track several times, and the fellow who is the slowest, looks 00:53:00like he's leading the bunch, because others have lapped on him. You know that expression. Now, one time, I came down this long picket line, and here I am just strolling along, and these kids had, had, had--I was really at the tail end of the thing, but they had already caught up with me, and they were about to pass me. And this man, Mr. Johnson, waited until that very time. He'd seen that happen two or three times, and they'd catch up and then pass on by. I said, "Go ahead, young folk, go ahead, I'm still going. I'm here, I'm with you, go ahead, just go ahead, go ahead. I'm not gonna keep up. I'm gonna run out o--of gas here trying to keep up with you guys. Just go ahead, go ahead." And then all of a sudden, here they are, and, and here I come walking down, and he was on a eight-foot stepladder with one of these great big box cameras beamed right down, and he waited until I came down that stretch, and I was at the head of the list, and he yelled at me, after he'd taken two pictures of me. When I got a little closer to where, where his, uh, stepladder was, out in the street.

WRIGHT: Um-hm.

JOHNSON: We were on the sidewalk. He said, "Hi, Mr. Johnson." I said, uh--I recognized him, president of the Board of Education, schoolteacher. He recognized me, I recognized--I said, "Hello, Mr. Johnson." I said, "Hello Mr. Johnson." He said, "Mr. Johnson, how do you feel, being out here with all these young people walking in your footsteps?" And I said, "Well, Mr. Johnson, if at any time I look back over my shoulders and see anybody thinking that my footsteps are worthy places for them to put their feet," I said, "I feel good. I just feel elated. Now, Mr. Johnson, how do you feel up on that camera--up on that, uh, stepladder, taking my picture? Now, how do you feel?" He said, "But, Mr. Johnson, look at the big mob of people across the street." Oh 00:55:00there was a big crowd, down on this side of his place and up on this side people had stopped to watch all of this show that we were putting on, and him out there taking our picture and all that kind of stuff. And across the street on the sidewalk, just, just a great big gang of people, blacks and whites, and he p--he, he swept--made a sweep with his hands like this, and he said, "Look, now you see all those Negroes, all those grown peop--all those adults? You the only adult over here. Now, don't you feel like you a kind of a fool, at them--and standing out here and, and seeing all these--knowing all these people are seeing you make a fool of yourself? Don't you, don't you, don't you feel rather silly?" I said, "Mr. Johnson, I feel just about as comfortable as you do on that stepladder taking my picture." Two weeks later, we--no, five days 00:56:00later we were putting on this march that I said had 675 people in it. Twenty-one on the stepladder thing. I was the only grown person there. Five days later, 675, and, and we had agreed when we got to a street, at an intersection, if the streetlight was against us to just stop single-file, and that would, that would stop, and since we were about three blocks long anyhow that meant that for a whole block we'd be a line just standing, waiting for the first person to step off when the, when the light changed. And one of those times, we were down on the--this was on Fourth Street side--one of those times when we stopped, I was right square in front of Mr. Johnson's Blue Boar on Fourth Street, 00:57:00and, uh, Mr. Johnson was standing on the inside watching all this orderly procession, and, oh, I never was so pleased to see how, how our people could, could put on something grand and glorious and, and orderly. No yelling, no noise. We'd all de--all decided we, we wouldn't be up there, we wouldn't be chanting and singing. We'd just be in this silent march. It was, it was lovely. He stepped out of his door and motioned to me and said, "Mr. Johnson, would you break ranks just a minute? I'd like to speak to you." I said, "Why, sure, Mr. J--Mr. Johnson. What's up?" And he pulled me off to the side. He said, "Mr. Johnson, this is the most dignified thing I have seen in this town." He says, "I want to compliment it." He said, "And, and you in particular." He said, "You know, last--one night last week, I was as furious as I could be, and I feel like a heel now, being on the Board of Education, to figure out how much I 00:58:00was planning to b--to be your undoing when I got back to the Board of Education. " He said, "But you have whipped me to my socks." He said, "This is marvelous." He said, "Tell you what, now, you go on with your regular demonstration, put it on, and, and, and just, just, just complete this. But just as soon as you get through, you tell anybody in your ranks to stop in any one of my seven Blue Boar stores and eat whatever they please. You have won your battle right now. You have won the battle." I stepped back in line--now, if I ever need to prove--I, I, I hope people'll take my word for it when I tell that to you, but if there's anybody who wants to doubt it, the man who was the director of the YMCA, William Coleman--do you know him?

WRIGHT: ------------(??)

JOHNSON: William Coleman, he's getting--like me, he's getting to be a 00:59:00little frail now, and he can hardly hop around, but he--his mind is still good.

WRIGHT: Hmm.

JOHNSON: When we, when we got to the intersection just before we, uh, started down by this, this particular, uh, new, this other Blue Boar store--I mean, uh, cafeteria--when we got to that intersection, and we were coming down, he was standing on the side, looking off, and when I got by--when I, when I came by, he, he came up and said, "Hi, Lyman." I said, "Hello. Hello Bill." He said, "Lyman, I feel convicted." I said, "Convicted? What's up? What's up, Bill?" He said, "You've got as much to lose as I have. As a matter of fact, you got more to lose of the job than I have, and I'm standing out here watching you." He said, "I want to get in that line so bad, but I hate to break the line." I said, "Well, Bill, this the time to break the line." I said, "You wanna get in this line, you, you, you just get in the front of me or behind me, I don't care which." He says, "I wouldn't dare get in b--uh--b--b--in front of you, but would you let me get in behind you?" I said, "Yeah." And we'd 01:00:00gone about five or six stores after he got in line, and then there we were, man at the--the fellow at the e--at, at the head of the line down there at the street corner, at the intersection, stopped for the light. I stopped here right in front of the man's place. Coleman is right behind me--

WRIGHT: And he heard it all.

JOHNSON: --and he heard all of that--

WRIGHT: --Hmm--

JOHNSON: --and he says, "Lyman, this is marvelous."

WRIGHT: Is Eugene Johnson dead now?

JOHNSON: No, no, no.

WRIGHT: No?

JOHNSON: No. He's still making--he's not on the Board of Education. As a matter of fact, I'm on the Board of Education now. I don't know whether you knew that or not. I was elected to the Board of Education this year. Uh, but, uh, no, he, uh, he, he stayed on the board, served out that term, and I think he went off the Board about 1968 or sixty-nine. But he still--I haven't heard of him, uh, dying yet.

WRIGHT: Oh.

JOHNSON: I think he's still living.

WRIGHT: Right. Now, as a way of summing up--(clears throat)--what do you think you all accomplished, uh, desegregating downtown? Uh, was it just something that would be used as a stepping stone to other things, or did, did it 01:01:00bring people here closer together, or what about--what do you think about when you think about that whole period of desegregating downtown Louisville?

JOHNSON: Well, it, it, it was a part of a movement that ------------(??), part of a movement that wasn't just, uh, just downtown Louisville.

WRIGHT: Um-hm.

JOHNSON: It was very much, like, like, uh, like I said about public accommodations in itself. It was a stepping stone to other things. And public accommodations downtown was a stepping stone all the way across town and out in the county and all across the state. Uh, if we could use a, if we could use a restroom up there on Fourth Street, why couldn't we use a restroom right on Broadway? If you use a restroom Fourth Street and Broadway, why can't we use a restroom way out in, uh, in, in Indian Hills?

WRIGHT: Um-hm.

JOHNSON: Why can't we use a restroom, a restroom all the way up on Bardstown Road?

WRIGHT: Um-hm.

JOHNSON: Uh, if we can use a restaurant all over the county, why can't we use them up at Lexington? Why can't we use them up in Ashland?

WRIGHT: Um-hm.

JOHNSON: Where'd we go? What's wrong? What's wrong with this joint?

WRIGHT: Um-hm.

JOHNSON: And, uh, it's, uh, it's, it's--I guess, I guess it's a mushrooming effect, and I guess the best way to, to, to--best illustration I can 01:02:00give you is the little boy--I tell this tale all the time if I get a chance--uh, a little black boy went into a ten-cent--uh, into a hamburger restaurant--White Castle restaurant. He bought him a hamburger, one of these great big double decker hamburgers, and, and I stood on the outside and just watched him eat that all--oh, he just, he just got so much joy out of eating that hamburger. And when he came out, I said to him, I said, "Son, uh, how'd that hamburger taste? I saw you eating that hamburger." He said, "Oh, man it was good." I said, uh, "You, you like you--" He said, "Oh, no, yeah, it was good. It was good." I said, "How much did it cost?" He said, "Oh, regular price, I don't know, twenty-five cents or something like that." "And you--" I said, "Son, you look like you just had such a--" He said, "So what? So what?" I said, "Son, how old are you?" He said, "I'm eleven years old."

WRIGHT: Um-hm.

JOHNSON: I said, "When, when you--how long before you get home to see your mother?" He said, "I'm going home now." Now he still had mustard all over his face, still had crumbs all around his mouth, and his fingers were 01:03:00still greasy. I wanted to tell him to wipe all that mess off his face, but, uh, I couldn't get my point over, so I just let all that stay. I said, "Son, when you get home, as your mother if the day that you were born she could have eaten a hamburger in that place. Just ask. Ask her if she knows how it is that you can go in there and have such a good time eating hamburgers." I said, "I guess you don't know. I guess you don't know. " I said, "Just ask your mother," I said, "because I can remember eleven years ago, your mother couldn't have gone in there, not even to be a waitress--"

WRIGHT: --um-hm--

[End of interview.]