Interview with Vernon Jordan, March 17, 1964

WARREN: Let us hear the tale whatever tale you have to tell.

JORDAN: Well, uh, to begin with, I guess, I was a senior in high school at the David Howard High School in Atlanta, an overcrowded, uh, segregated high school. And was one who was considered, uh, a pretty smart boy, voted the most intellectual in his class, active in everything from the student newspaper to athletics, all of the scholastic activities around the school. And also was one who, uh, through the years had no idea, or no thoughts, uh, I guess due to conditions and circumstances of ever attending an integrated school North or South. Uh, it was in the--oh, about the first of November or December of my senior year--

WARREN:--what year was this now?

JORDAN: This was, uh, 1952. The school year 1952, '53 when, uh, a man who was on leave from Howard University came to the high school, representing the National Services Scholarship Fund for Negro Students. Um, his mission was to interest, uh, allegedly promising or scholarly negro students in, uh, uh, attending integrated schools in the North. Uh, my teachers, my principal, my counselors in high school felt that, uh, I ought to talk to this man, uh, Mr. Paul Lawrence.

WARREN: Just hold it now that I can check on voice. Just to be sure we're doing all right.

[Pause in recording.]

WARREN: Yeah, just go ahead. It's fine.

JORDAN: Well--

WARREN:--Mr.--Mr. Lawrence, was it?

JORDAN: Mr. Lawrence, uh, on leave from Howard University, as I understand it, came and spent, uh, a good bit of time, uh, explaining to us what was involved in an integrated school, of what you might expect, and, uh, generally trying to, uh, uh, generate our enthusiasm on the part of, uh, myself and other, uh, of my classmates. Um, I became intensely interested. I guess it was, um, to some extent, uh, it gratified my ego. Uh, uh, it, uh, it substantiated, uh, some feelings of, uh, uh, superiority, I guess, over my fellow students. Uh, this, uh, in a sense to me as a young high school senior made me, uh, uh--well, convinced me that, uh, or helped me to believe 00:02:00that, uh, uh, I was as smart as, uh, my grades or my teachers might have thought I was. Um, Mr. Lawrence recommended to me, uh, among a list of schools, specifically Yale or Dartmouth College and DePauw University. Uh, I was primarily interested in Dartmouth. I had seen, uh, stories and pictures of its winter carnival. Uh, I'd talked to its members of its alumni here in Atlanta. Uh, the president of the local alumni association had, uh, uh, said, "We have ten boys in Atlanta who have applied for, uh, admission to Dartmouth. We have a little scholarship money and we'd be happy to, uh, give you this scholarship money, be it ever so limited, because we feel that if you as a negro 00:03:00could get exposed to, uh, a Dartmouth education that, uh, you might be able to return South and be of some benefit to your people." Uh, now, as I reflect on, uh, what Mr. (??) who was an officer of the Citizens Southern National Bank in Atlanta, I'm not really sure what he meant, uh, by "Come back and help your people." Uh, I'm not so sure that today, uh, having finished school, law school, and college that, uh, I might not, uh, resent, uh, his statement, uh, to come back and help your people.

WARREN: Do you, do you think he knew what he meant?

JORDAN: I'm not certain, uh. I'm not sure if he meant to come back and, and help your people to uh--uh, clean my house better, or to take of my children better, uh, in a better fashion, or whether he meant it to 00:04:00come back, and make democracy really live in the South.

WARREN: You can't--he can't--he probably couldn't know, could he? He could know on reflection, that he was not thinking about making you a better yard man--

JORDAN:--no, but he--

WARREN:--he could not mean that.

JORDAN: I kind of had some notion that he felt that if I'd gone to Dartmouth I would come back, and I could be, uh, uh, an exceptional school principal or a good school teacher. I never, I was never sure that he envisioned my leaving Dartmouth College and going to the Howard Law School, coming back becoming, uh--

WARREN:--but you are a lawyer.

JORDAN: Uh, well, yes. Uh, uh, well, not so much that but, uh, I'm never sure that, uh, even with the Dartmouth degree and a Harvard diploma that, uh, he, uh, would've, uh, appreciated my being, uh--a junior law partner, a law clerk to the general counsel of the CNS Bank. 00:05:00Uh, I, I feel certain that, uh, what he meant by "my helping," uh, "my people" would be to come back and assume some position or some role of leadership in the negro community. Uh, wherein I would of, uh, assume, uh, uh, a kind of Booker Washington role, uh, uh, in the Atlanta community. Uh, uh--do you want to stop this for a while for a moment? UNKNOWN: Do what you're supposed to. We'll enjoy ourselves.

[Pause in recording.]

JORDAN: Surely, uh, get ice and stuff, waters, and helped themselves (??). (pause) I'm just not really certain what the man meant, but he did say to me that, uh, uh, of the ten boys you are the only negro, and we have some notion that if you get up there because of your, your sense of mission that you might do better scholastically, uh, 00:06:00than your white counterparts or classmates would do. Uh, he pointed out also that the scholastic rec-, record of white, uh, graduates of the high schools in Atlanta and Dartmouth, uh, was not very good, uh. And, of course, uh, now in retrospect I attribute this to, uh, the, uh, quality of Southern education as compared with the general, uh--uh, qualifications, and uh, uh, college preparedness of the average Dartmouth student. I think that he was addressing himself more to that than, uh, uh, some slothfulness on the part of, uh, the high school students and of uh, white high school students in Atlanta. At any rate, uh, uh, I, I never went to Dartmouth although this was my great 00:07:00dream. Uh, uh, I, even now, have to hope that, uh, should , uh, my wife and I be blessed with a son that somehow or another I can instill in him some, uh, some notion about Dartmouth. Uh, uh, I have never quite gotten over the notion of not having gone to Dartmouth but during the time of my application my counselors in high school--uh, it seems I was the first negro of my school to apply to take the college board entrance exam and there was some misunderstanding of the procedures. I remember quite vividly, uh, my parents, uh, in conjunction with other parents whose children had applied to schools like Sarah Lawrence and other schools in the East, requiring the College Board entrance exam, uh, trying to find out why their children could not be admitted to the exam to be given at Emory University on the next day, March fourteenth, 00:08:00I remember that, uh, quite well. I, I remember my, uh, my displeasure, and my hurt, my sorrow at not being able to take the exam. Uh, uh, at that time being filled with some notion--uh, having no notion that the college board entrance exam would, would be extremely difficult for me, uh--uh, that I would not, uh, make, uh, a score that would qualify me for entrance at Dartmouth. At any rate, I did not get to go to Dartmouth, Dartmouth being a school, uh, which, uh, has chosen all of the members of its freshman class certainly by April first. I did, however, uh, get accepted, uh, at DePauw University, a small Midwestern school in Greencastle, Indiana.

WARREN: Let me interrupt. You did not take the examination at all?

JORDAN: I did not take the college board entrance exam at all.

WARREN: At all. You didn't--

JORDAN:--that's right.

WARREN: It's obvious not a refusal on the ground of your examination; it 00:09:00was just the fact you had not obtained--

JORDAN:--I had not complied with a condition preceding--

WARREN:--right.

JORDAN: Uh--uh, and the condition preceding was, uh, to take the college entrance exam and I had not done that.

WARREN: Yes, I just wanted to clear that up?

JORDAN: That's right. Uh, I did, however, uh, apply to DePauw and was accepted, uh, and felt that, uh, well always had the impression if I didn't go to the DePauw that the school would go to pot. And, uh, by "go to pot," I mean that, uh, had not I gone to that campus that, uh, the school just couldn't have done without me. Uh, this, this impression you get from the tremendous response that you get from organizations, campus wise and even city wise in Greencastle, Indiana. That the two banks, Citizens, First Citizens Bank as I remember--I'm not certain about the title--I'm certain about Central National Bank because that's where I ultimately opened up my, my checking account 00:10:00with it. Even the banks in town wrote you to say that, "We, we understand that you're a prosp--prospective DePauw student. We welcome you to Greencastle and we welcome you to come in and be a part of not only the school but our bank and the town."

WARREN: Let's check this now, just a moment, may I?

JORDAN: Fine. Okay.

[Pause in recording.]

JORDAN: I, uh, uh, received, uh, letters of invitation from every, uh, Greek letter fraternity on the DePauw campus. Uh, fraternities were given the list of, uh, prospective students, uh, without regard to race. Uh, they wrote me inviting me up for dances, assured me that, uh, if I would come up for the weekend that I could have a date. Uh, ironically, there were no negro coeds on the DePauw campus. And, uh, and I know that had I, uh, shown up on the DePauw campus that, uh, there would've been great consternation, uh, at the Monon Railroad 00:11:00Station or at the bus station that uh, that uh, this fellow Vernon Jordan turned out to be a negro, and it would've created some problems from the fraternity inviting me. However, I did not got but I did go--I did not go for the fraternity weekends, but I did go to DePauw to attend a educational guidance clinic sponsored by, uh, the admissions department in cooperation with the, uh--uh, psychology department and other departments in the school. Well, um, uh, I along with--oh, maybe sixty other prospective college students, uh, spent a week, uh, finding out what the college was all about,uh. Taking the examination, the examinations that one usually takes, uh, as a part of the college orientation program. Uh, it was there that I, uh, became quite 00:12:00disconcerted that here, Vernon Jordan, uh, third in his class, uh, a young man who felt that he'd been everywhere, seen everything, and knew everybody, uh, all of a sudden I found out that on the basis of my test that I couldn't read. And, uh, I was reading, uh, less than two hundred words a minute. And, uh, my counselor at the guidance clinic suggested that, uh, I would probably do very well at a state-supported school, but he wasn't sure as to how well I would do, uh, at a private school, uh, and suggested that although I was accepted that I might even consider going to a state school or that I would probably do all right in, at DePauw if I took a reading course. I returned home and took a reading course at Atlanta University. Uh, it was at that time 00:13:00that I experienced, uh, some little problem with my parents and that having indicated to them that, uh, I wanted to go to DePauw, uh, and I indicated this to them in spite of the fact that I had been told that at the DePauw that, uh, my social life would be somewhat limited in that there were no negro girls and that the dating of white girls was taboo. I had also been told that, uh, I'd have to go forty miles to Indianapolis to get my hair cut because, uh, negroes weren't permitted to get their hair cuts in downtown Greencastle. I did not know at the time that, uh, the most popular barber in Greencastle was a negro who ultimately would not cut my hair because I was negro. And he told me this in the presence of--well, while he was cutting a white student's hair.

WARREN: He told you this? The barber told you this.

JORDAN: Well, the barber told me this after I went to DePauw. And uh, 00:14:00uh, my hair got long and I sought out a barber. And, uh, an upper classmate of mine, a negro, and I went into, uh, Barney's Barbershop- -or Bernie's Barbershop, as I remember. And, uh, there sat a white boy in a chair, a negro barber. I'd come from a segregated society where negroes had always cut my hair, so this was commonplace with me, and I said to him, uh, uh, "I'd come in to see if I can get a haircut." And Bernie said to me, "Well, I'm sorry, but," --well, in effect, he said, "I don't cut colored folks hair." This for me was, uh, kind of--

WARREN: Did he own the shop, or was he an employee?

JORDAN: He owned the shop. It was a shop that he had inherited from his father. Uh, he'd been cutting hair in Greencastle, uh, twenty years before I got there. And, uh, Bernie said to me, "No, I can't cut your 00:15:00hair and I can't cut your hair," he said this in effect, "because you're colored." And uh, uh, my first reaction was to push Bernie through the window. Uh, I, I didn't push Bernie through the window. I just said, uh, "Thank you," and left, uh, uh, with a great sense of embarrassment and hurt. Uh, it was just something I'd never experienced before; a negro telling me while he's cutting a white man's hair that he can't cut my hair 'cause he's--'cause I'm negro. This was a pretty bad experience. At any rate, uh, I suffered through that and, uh--

WARREN:--do you think he suffered through it?

JORDAN: I don't. No, I don't think that Bernie--God rest his soul--uh, suffered through that at all, uh. I think that Bernie, uh, uh, felt 00:16:00that he had to do this, uh, to placate, uh, his white clientele. Bernie was the best, at that time. Uh, the white boys at DePauw were wearing crew cuts--crew cuts were very popular and Bernie was the best barber in town. Uh, and all, the vast majority of students went to Bernie for their haircuts. But also the better, uh, the more elite businessmen in Greencastle, uh, went to Bernie. The students had told Bernie it didn't make them any difference whose hair he cut. Uh--uh, just give them a good crew cut but Bernie felt some, uh, uh, fidelity, a loyalty to, to these students, and he just refused to cut negros's hair. The bulk of his business was student business because Bernie closed his shop in the summer, uh, uh, when students were away from town, away from the campus. They would only go to his shop upon 00:17:00request of the local businessmen in town who depended upon Bernie, as they had depended upon his father, uh, to cut their hair. Uh, all this I told to my parents, uh, uh. And then one day I went home from my part-time job during the summer and found a note on my bed where my mother says to me very sweetly, uh, uh, "Vernon, we love you and we want you to go to college where you want to go to college, but, uh, we kind of feel like, if you, uh, if you went to Howard University, a predominantly negro school in Washington, DC, that, uh, academically, economically and socially, you, you might be happier. Uh, but, you uh, you go where you want to go." And, uh, I took them at their word and chose to go to DePauw.

WARREN: What were their reasons, uh, for trying to steer you from DePauw?

JORDAN: Well, I, I think that, uh, here were negro parents. Both from rural communities in Georgia. Both of whom, uh, had grandparents who were slaves, who were to some extent conditioned, uh, to the Southern way of life and were never, uh, quite accustomed, or could never quite adjust to the thought of, of their boy being even in Greencastle, Indiana, the only negro in a class of four hundred students. And they felt that, uh, their boy, their baby, their, their prize, uh, would, would be happier and would have less frustrations if he went to a predominantly, uh, negro institution. Uh, they just felt that he'd get along better, and that they would have, uh, less problems and fewer problems with him, and he'd have less problems or fewer problems 00:19:00with, uh, his peers, if he went to an all-negro school. I, I shall never forget, uh, my father who, on an occasion when I had brought a white boy from North Carolina home with me. And, uh, I forget Bob's last name, but Bob drove home with me and, uh, another white boy from Dublin, Georgia. And he couldn't get a bus out that night so he spent the night with me. And, uh, he slept in one twin bed, my brother was away at school, and I slept in another. And in the middle of the night, uh, my father got up out of bed and came in the room and cut on the light and, uh, stood there with tears in his eyes. And, uh, cut 00:20:00the light out and went back to, to bed and, and said to my mother that, you know, "This democracy thing is really here, and, uh, it's right here in my house. There in one bed is my, is my own son, and, uh, in the other bed is a white boy from South Carolina with a sharp Southern accent who says, 'Yes, sir,' and 'No, sir' and who eats grits, uh, with the same enjoyment as my boy who likes biscuits and who likes sausage. And says to me, a colored man, 'Yes, sir,' and 'No, sir,' and says to my wife, 'Yes, ma'am' and 'No, ma'am'." This for my, for my father was a traumatic experience, was something that--

WARREN:--could you analyze the experience?

JORDAN: Well, uh--

WARREN:--looking back on it?

JORDAN: Well, I think that, here again, you have to look, uh, at this man's background. He was one of seventeen children--

WARREN:--your father?

JORDAN: My father, yes. Uh, from one of the worst counties in the state, Jasper County, Georgia; that's Monticello. Uh, he had heard stories of people being lynched. I'm not so sure that he had not seen the results of, uh, of brutalities, uh, there in Jasper County. Who left home with a circus because, uh, he worked from sunup to sundown. His daddy got all the money. Who was a boy, uh, from a family of 00:22:00seventeen children. Saw the entire family divide a watermelon when the mama and the papa took one half and the seventeen children divided the other half. A boy who never knew that the chicken had anything but feet or necks until such time that he got, uh, enough money to buy his own chicken. And, uh, he left home out of a great sense of disillusionment, and disappointment, and, uh, and really in a sense out of rebelliousness to the system under which his father found accommodating and--and the way of life in Jasper County, Georgia. I think that, uh, somewhere during that night, uh, after having had dinner and conversations with this white boy from South Carolina who, 00:23:00uh, seemed to have been a good friend of his son.

WARREN: I gather he was a decent, well-mannered, white boy. Well, (??)--

JORDAN:--very, very, very well-mannered. A boy who was, uh, not completely void of prejudices. I'm not so sure that, that I could've gone to his house and spent the night. And I'm sure that this to some extent, um, bothered him. That here is this negro boy from Georgia who can extend to me these courtesies, but, um, I'm not so sure that I would have received the warmth and kindredness of--of--I'm, I'm not so sure that this warmth will be extended to him in my household. I think that Bob felt that, uh, I'm not very sure that I could even approach 00:24:00my parents with the idea of, of bringing a negro home. I'm not even sure that he, uh, told his folks, uh, that he had spent the night with Vernon Jordan, a colored boy who was in school with him up there. Uh, I can't say this with any certainty; this is just a kind of feeling that I had. At any rate, uh, against the mild objections to my parents I went on to Greencastle. My parents took me to school along with my younger brother. We all drove to Greencastle. We did everything that the little brochure says from go to the tent on the other side of Gobin Church on the, on the DePauw Campus. We were assigned housing. My parents stayed with the local Methodist minister, Elmer Harvey, who 00:25:00was very charming and very gracious. And I think that this in and of itself was a, a real experience for my parents. My father who, uh, was a government employee in the mail service and, uh, my mother who paid my tuition by making food tasty and pretty as a cateress and had always been in, uh, a domestic role. Uh, this, I think, for them was a, was a real experience, certainly was unique and different. Uh, but they took me, and they left me, and I shall never forget, uh, my daddy standing out of, in front of the old (??) College saying goodbye, saying to me, "Son, uh, you know, everybody is looking for you to, to do well and, uh, certainly I expect more of you than, than they do. And I, I feel 00:26:00like you're gonna do all right and I'm glad you're here." And I think that after they got to the DePauw Campus, after they experienced the, the friendliness, the warmth of the campus and the, uh, and the, uh, open-kindredness of the people that they were satisfied that, uh, that their boy had made a good choice, and that, uh, they had reared him right. They had reared him to, uh, to do the right thing, to think pretty much the right thing to, to conduct himself like a, like a gentleman. And they were reasonably certain that he would do all right in this atmosphere. And I think they left, they came to Greencastle that weekend curious, and concerned, and to some extent worried, but I think they left satisfied that their boy, although in a situation totally foreign to him, a situation where he was the only negro in his 00:27:00class. Uh, one of five negroes in a student body of, of five thousand, one who would have to live with two white boys whom he had never seen before. I think they left going back down Hwy 41 confident that, uh, all would be well. And that, uh, their boy would, uh, would do all right. They also left confident that though there might be some small financial strain or something that, , uh, that their boy--that they could pay his bills. And, uh, and they did. They did it. They paid them in advance. His tuition was never late, uh, and he never had to be concerned as to whether or not, uh, his funds were forthcoming. His 00:28:00only job was to, was to get his lessons. Uh, I started off certainly behind. I took reading for four semesters. Uh, I shall never forget in a speech course--and I took speech--oh, speech was recommended to me through my faculty adviser because I'd won several oratorical contests in high school, so I took sort of an advanced speech course. And I was really at a loss because in this speech course my classmates talked about plays that they had done, books that they had read, and I was somewhat at a loss because during the whole time I was in high school, I never really read a full novel. And my first, my first novel, uh, was The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy. And I'm not sure that that's a good book for anybody to get started on, it's full of pessimism, and, uh, but that was my first novel though. And I think 00:29:00that early in that speech class I realized that my segregated education had been inadequate, and not only my segregated education, but my Southern education was somewhat inadequate for me to, to cope with, uh, the academic problems that I faced at a school, uh, that's as good as DePauw.

WARREN: Have you thought of what the graduate of Peoria (??) High School would feel in certain colleges?

JORDAN: No, I haven't really, uh--

WARREN:--the same thing, isn't it?

JORDAN: I suspect that, uh, at a school like DePauw that he would feel as almost as insecure as I was, uh, especially if he was the average student. I'm not so sure of what the student who was in the upper 10 percent of his class would have felt.

WARREN: I don't know if Peoria (??) has the point--I don't know what it is like but--

JORDAN:--I understand, sure, sure--

WARREN:--I pulled it out of a million (??) places.

JORDAN: I think there were some students--DePauw is very selective, highly selective as a matter of fact--

[Tape 1 ends; tape 2 begins.]

WARREN:--of a conversation with Mr. Vernon Jordan in Atlanta, uh, March seventeenth, resume.

[Pause in recording.]

JORDAN: Well, I guess as the DePauw story goes, uh, I stayed there four years. Uh, I was active in everything from being headwaiter for two years, or two and a half years at Longden Hall, to, uh, losing the presidency of the student body by--oh, I don't know, six to ten votes. I was on the student senate there for three years. Very active in 00:31:00the, uh, local fraternity that, uh, was acceptable to those who didn't want to be Greeks, those who the Greeks didn't want, uh, and negroes; I was quite active in the Men's Hall Association. Um, I participated in, as, I worked as an orientation counselor. I won oratorical contests. As a matter of fact, I was the first winner of the Indiana Intrastate Oratorical Contest with DePauw since Senator Andrew Beveridge. Uh, I always thought quite a bit of that, uh, having beat polished orators from DePauw--I mean, not from DePauw but from Wabash College and from Notre Dame. I was quite, uh, it was quite satisfying and I went on 00:32:00to place third in the Interstate Oratorical Contest at Northwestern in 1955 and won at DePauw the local Margaret Noble Lee extemporaneous speaking contest my freshman year, and I generally had the reputation around the campus of being a, a big man on campus, uh, an orator. I was active in the athletics, intramural athletics; I played some basketball. I was involved in everything, and, and in the decision- making aspects of student-faculty administration life, having served on the student-faculty administrative council, while there. I did all of this in the background of, of negro students who had traditionally come 00:33:00to the DePauw, most of whom, uh, were Phi Beta Kappa, they were all extremely able students. I was not an able student; I was pretty much an average student but who had a knack for extracurricular activities, spent a good bit of time in extracurricular activities, and tried to dispel to some extent the notion at DePauw that all the negro students were Phi Beta Kappa. I shall never forget the Phi Beta Kappa Chapel of my senior year. Uh, when people looked around and the professor called off the names in alphabetical order, when he got to the J's and the name of Vernon Jordan was not called. There were even some professors who expressed their disappointment that I had not made Phi Beta Kappa. Uh, they should not have been disappointed, rather they should've been pleased that I had not, with my segregated Southern education, 00:34:00flunked out of school. My experiences at DePauw were, were sobering, were enlightening. Uh, I guess one, uh, of my memorable experiences at DePauw was, was that as a thespian having had to lead role in a play called Backwater. Having made the dramatic honorary deux-a-deux (??) as, uh, as sort of a college thespian. This was another breakthrough in a sense at DePauw because most people had the stereotype notion that negroes were all--those who came to DePauw were extremely brilliant. They were not at all a part of the campus activity but, uh, were guys who generally studied and got their lessons. I made very excellent friends at DePauw. I ran around with a bunch of guys who were pretty 00:35:00much, much smarter than I, but always had something to contribute. Uh, my parents were quite pleased with DePauw and my, and my stay there. Um, after DePauw, of course, I left and went-- because of my interest in civil rights I went to the Howard University Law School where I received my LLB degree in 1960.

WARREN: At that point you decided to be active in, uh, civil rights, uh, questions, or to pursue a private career--

JORDAN:--well--

WARREN:--had you made up your mind at that point then?

JORDAN: Well, I was always torn, uh--well, first I was torn between the ministry and the law. And, uh, I gave up on the ministry a long time ago, feeling myself quite unfit to, to preach the Gospel as it were, feeling that, uh, my basic interest was people, more specifically 00:36:00negroes.

WARREN: Are you still a believer?

JORDAN: Oh, I am a believer. Now, uh, the problem is whether or not I am a practitioner of that which I believe. But, uh, uh--well, I'm a practitioner. The (??) question, I guess, this would depend largely upon who is doing the evaluating. But I did, uh, apply to seminary. And, uh, Drew University, I think, had some hopes that I would come to seminary, and some people around DePauw thought that I should've gone into the ministry but I did go to law school. And I went to law school out of some sense of mission. I went to the Howard Law School, in particular, uh, because of its national reputation in civil rights. Because of its, uh, professor there, Professor Jim Nabrit, who initiated the--who's now president of the university--

WARREN:--yes--

JORDAN:--who initiated the first course in civil rights. And who, uh, taught me constitutional law, which is one of the great privileges of my life. Uh, and after law school I had considered staying in Washington in a government job or, or going to Indianapolis, uh, where I felt that I would have a, uh, a better opportunity in politics, but I married an Atlanta girl. I kind of wanted to come home, and I came home out of some sense of mission. Feeling that, uh, I'd come back home, back South I could do something about the problem.

WARREN: Let me ask you a question at this point: what do you think of a person who in your position decides to follow some private mission, some private star, who wants to be a writer, a painter, a lawyer, a doctor--

JORDAN:--well, I think--

WARREN:--who takes himself off from the public profession of, of the racial cause?

JORDAN: Well, I think this is very--I, I think very, very well of this, and I think this is for the reason that, I think that oftentimes negroes can make a greater contribution by becoming specialists in certain fields, and thereby become respected as an expert on, on farming, or as an expert on--on some technical field. Uh, and I think that oftentimes, uh, because of his expertise in a particular area that he can, uh, uh, draw people, as a matter of respect for his knowledge in a particular area. And I think--I spoke once--I'll never forget--at Rochdale (??), Indiana, uh, during the time I was in school, 00:39:00to a men's Presbyterian club. And I said to these men that all of you for the most part are interested in agriculture, and it might be well that rather than ask me to come here as a negro to talk about and to relate, uh, my feelings about race relations, that you need to find a negro farmer in Indiana who is trained in agriculture, who can really be of more benefit to you in what you're basically interested in, and come here and talk to you about farming. And I, I'm not so sure that a negro going to Rochdale (??), Indiana, as an expert in farming would not have been, uh--uh, more helpful in having these people to respect a negro on the basis of--of something other than his color. That, uh, his expertise in the area of farming, uh, would've been the 00:40:00criterion rather than, uh, a criterion rather than, uh, uh, some other superfluous matter such as color, or what-have-you.

WARREN: There is a lot of pressure on talented and energetic young negroes, uh, uh, to go into something that involves race relations rather than to follow some personal, uh, preference or personal talent. This happens, this happens all the time. One thing, the pressure is usually from white people--what I can make out--to do this--

JORDAN:--well, yeah--

WARREN:--not from other negroes--

JORDAN:--well, I think, I think that this is part--

WARREN:--does that make sense?

JORDAN: I think that this is partly true. I think that the white people when they see, uh, able negroes, uh, want to direct them into the area of, of the betterment of their race. They think they ought to teach, 00:41:00uh, or work--

WARREN:--Go back to Mr. (??).

JORDAN: Beg your pardon (??)?

WARREN: Go back to Mr. (??).

JORDAN: (laughs) That's right, that's right. Uh, uh, to take this education and, and become creative and--and making things better, and I, I'm not sure that I subscribe to this because, uh, number one, I think that every man must be the, must determine his own destiny and I don't think that anybody can do this for him. If, if a negro wants to, uh, choose the road of, of the Metropolitan Opera that I think that he should do this unqualifiedly and, and unrestricted.

WARREN: You don't think less of Ralph Ellison then for not, uh, being, uh, uh, an organizer in Mississippi?

JORDAN: Precisely, precisely. And I, I think that Leontyne Price, who comes from Mississippi, uh, uh, has done far more for race relations, 00:42:00uh, from the stage, uh, from--of the opera all over the world than she could ever possibly have done as a voter registration worker in Mississippi. There might be persons who would disagree with that. One of the great tragedies, uh, comes out of a highly volatile racial change situation where I saw a little girl whom I thought had an excellent voice, an excellent potential, but she chose to be a demonstrator and to make her witness by--by really putting her, her body, offering her body as a, as a sacrifice for freedom. And I'm not so sure that that young lady should not have left the black-belt county from which she came and, and gone onto, uh, some person who could 00:43:00have cultivated her voice, and I'm not sure that her singing from the concert stages of the country, of the world that she might not have been able to do more for the cause than, uh, by staying where she was, doing, demonstrating and doing things like voter registration.

WARREN: A few young negroes whom I have known have suffered greatly over this point, though.

JORDAN: Oh, yes. I think that, I think that this a great dilemma, really, for young negroes who, who feel a sense of obligation, uh, first to, uh, to the race or to the cause, and they subjugate this obligation to their own personal desires. I think that this takes tremendous courage and fortitude. Uh--and I think that to some extent that they are caught up, uh, in the, uh, tempo of the times. And 00:44:00certainly, uh, caught up therein they are not necessarily the best judges of, of what they ought to do. And then, uh, who can say in any given situation what any person ought to do? And this becomes really an individual decision. And I'm not sure that these individual decisions are necessarily based on rationale. I think the movement is--is largely an emotional one, and some people feel that in order to have a--a peace of mind or, or a sense of obligation that they must forget, uh, about their personal ambitions.

WARREN: Let's, let's, uh, take that as a starting point to something else. You know what DuBois pointed out many years ago, which is sometimes called the split in the negro soul, or a split in the negro 00:45:00psyche, the two basic pulls--according to at least this diagnosis--for the negro in America. On the one hand, the pull for--whoever the negro is toward the African tradition--whatever that is--toward the American negro tradition, that tradition which might distinguish from the other, toward some sense of, um, black blood, toward some sense of, of mere biological continuities; all of these things on this side which leads in the extreme present-day statement to black Muslim attitudes, as one manifestation. Uh, but not the only one; there are many variants. On the other hand, the impulse, uh, toward integration with, absorption 00:46:00in, and absorption of the Western European, neo-Christian, American democratic world, at the price, perhaps, of total absorption, total loss of identity, of cultural identity, of, uh, racial identity, of blood identity. Now, these are extreme positions but, uh, for some people, for some negroes, this--this tension is very acute and very real and very real problem. Do you feel this is a problem?

JORDAN: Well, let me say that I think that the negro, uh--

WARREN:--let's talk about you, not the negro, this--this hypothetical character.

JORDAN: Well, for me it's not a problem. Well, for me it's not a problem. Uh, uh, it's not a problem because, uh, uh, I personally can never lose my cultural identity. Uh, I still get a great joy and love to hear the negro spiritual. Uh--and I think that during the revolution the negro spiritual, uh, means more to me now than it ever has. Uh, because I think that, for example, the spiritual, "Tis the old ship of Zion, get on board" is as applicable now as it was prior to emancipation because I think that, that negro leaders now, as a negro tenor did in slavery, is crying out to--to negroes that "tis the old ship of freedom," and the old ship of Zion was sort of a symbolism.

WARREN: Now, where is "the ship of freedom" going? Let's put it this way; this is a cry, a crying out about leaving something. Leaving what? Uh, leaving the negro condition to move toward, uh, freedom. Now, what does the freedom mean? Does this mean the loss of the negro identity to merge into a culture and a bloodstream which is different? Or does it mean something else?

JORDAN: Well--

WARREN:--is the ship of freedom in--freedom is now--if there is a word (??). Now, what does it mean in, in terms of--of the analysis of freedom?

JORDAN: Well, I--I think it means that--I don't think--

WARREN:--or do you (??)

JORDAN: Well, to me it does not mean that you cast off your cultural identity, but it does mean that you take advantage of all of the rights 00:47:00and privileges that are yours as a citizen. That, uh--if the buses become desegregated or if the buses are not desegregated that you exercise this right. And you exercise this as--as a matter of right that, that you have under the Constitution. But this is not to say that upon exercising that right, that while sitting next to the white man on the bus, this, this does not mean that you need to feel any, any inhibitions about humming to yourself or thinking about the negro spiritual.

WARREN: And I don't want to nag this question but this--

JORDAN:--yeah--

WARREN:--morning I was talking with Mr.Young--

JORDAN:--yeah--

WARREN:--now, to him this problem is a very acute problem. You see, that it (??) is a question--well, this, uh, this cultural--well, spiritual divisions. He says it's a very acute problem. He says it's 00:48:00so acute that, uh, he doesn't have a real way to formulate the problem to himself yet. Now, this is--over and over again, this brings very different responses from different--you see, it's very hard to, to sort this out, for me to sort it out. For some people it's very, very acute. For some people it is to resolve like the buses, as you're resolve it, you see. And I, there is no; I have no the moral of the stories, it's--it's very acute to some people. Now, Richard Wright, for instance--is divorcing from the negro situation in America and divorcing from American civilization, and goes to France, and feels Africa is the answer. You will find the great truth in Africa, the, the identification with Africa. We know what happened there. He was an honest man, he said. He wrote, he wrote the disastrous encounter, which I won't read to now (??). But--oh, this is a--Jews will say 00:49:00the same things. Some Jews will say an--an acute problem, you see, of a loss of identity, if they're absorb into a total absorption (??) with, with American gentile culture. Some feel, some feel, who are not Orthodox feel this, others who feel, feel--take the move into it. Now, and let's, let's say that, that's one other question. Do you see a parallel between that situation, which you don't feel, very acute anyway, and the Southerner, who also belongs to a subculture, a defensive subculture, who is defending an identity over against the great, uh, modern, industrial, uh, finance, capitalistic setup. He's also trying to join it, too, but. And also he has a, he has a problem 00:50:00there.

JORDAN: Well, I--

WARREN:--do you see a parallel there?

JORDAN: Yeah, but, but I think that, that like myself--

WARREN:--yes--

JORDAN:--that, uh, that the average white Southerner will retain, although he would take on certain aspects of the capitalistic, the--the, uh, ongoing market society, I think that he would take on some characteristics of this, and I think he has to take on these characteristics to survive, economically, uh, in this country, but I think that he will still maintain his uniqueness as a Southerner, that of courage, that of being a gentleman--

WARREN:--that's segregation for some people.

JORDAN: Well, I'm not sure--he is going to be able to maintain this.

WARREN: Do you think, do you think this is a part of his identity then?

JORDAN: Well, I think that this is a myth. And I, and I think that--

WARREN: He doesn't think so--and this is the (??) point now--this is behavior--he thinks that to be himself he must maintain this system.

JORDAN: Well, but--

WARREN:--in the same way.

JORDAN: But I think that also that as--as a national impulse, uh, reaches a point that, uh, you have to recognize now this black man as- -as a person, as a citizen, as an individual, that as to this, that he will feel some gentlemanlike responsibility. And it will be a matter ultimately of--of his, his ability to live up to this gentlemanlike stand, and I think to, to lose, uh, this--to lose the prestige of being a gentleman would, would--to lose that would mean more to him than to, 00:52:00to lose, uh, the segregated system, if, if I make myself clear.

WARREN: Yes, I see what you're, what you're driving at.

JORDAN: What I'm saying is--

WARREN:--yeah, yeah--

JORDAN:--that I think that, that though he, he's not gonna like it, and though he's gonna say, let's, let's integrate the school by three rather than by three hundred, that even about the three that he's going to be a gentleman and try to, uh, try to operate a bad plan in good faith.

WARREN: You mean after he's crossed a certain line?

JORDAN: After he has come so far, and he's gonna have to come to a point, I think. Uh, uh. But now, back to your point, uh, about negroes being caught up in a crisis, of being completely immersed into the, uh, into the white culture. For me, it's no problem because, uh, 00:53:00right here in my own house, uh, when I entertain interracial parties, there is no question I suppose that, uh, that these people know that they are in Vernon Jordan's house, and not only is Vernon Jordan a good fellow but somehow it comes out that he is a negro. He, uh, he doesn't play, uh, the records that he is not accustomed playing. By that I mean, he's not playing Mozart and Beethoven exclusively because he has white guests, but he is playing, uh, the blues by Ray Charles not because, not to please his guests but because this is a part of him, that he likes this.

WARREN: I went to a, uh, a meeting where Dr. King spoke a couple of weeks ago in Bridgeport. The music was, uh, there was some of the, the white, um, high school girls' choir with, uh, guitars played, uh, the 00:54:00spirituals. Then they had a clearly, uh, a very accomplished trained and talented negro singer, a man, uh, singing the most ghastly songs I ever heard in my life--

JORDAN:--and I suspect that it should've been in the reverse.

WARREN: Yes.

JORDAN: This is, this is--

WARREN:--it was embarrassing, I thought.

JORDAN: Yeah. This is my, this is my personal opinion and I--

WARREN:--total cultural confession--

JORDAN:--and I'm not so sure that the negro would not have been happier singing "Go Down, Moses."

WARREN: I wish I was sure, as you seem to be, but I'm not sure. I don't know.

JORDAN: Yeah. No, because I think it largely depends upon who is--

WARREN:--I don't see, I don't know anything about you see (??).

JORDAN: Yeah. It's, it's some problem of who he is trying to please.

WARREN: Yes. Uh, uh. That's exactly the point, himself. Who's responsible for this?

JORDAN: That's right.

WARREN: This is ghastly.

JORDAN: That's right.

WARREN: It's obscene.

JORDAN: Sure.

WARREN: The language of these songs, it's, it's something unbelievable 00:55:00awful. You couldn't believe how awful. It's not playing, it's not Mozart, it's not--it's, it's terrible, terrible--it's sort of, uh, Tin Pan Alley gospel freedom--

JORDAN:--sure.

WARREN: Unbelievable. It's, it's--you want to vomit. And this man of talent is singing this stuff.

JORDAN: Yeah.

WARREN: To five thousand people.

JORDAN: Yeah, and I, and I think that, that negroes can never, ought never get away. And I believe this. I believe that even that negro who is, for all practical purposes, completely immersed into the white culture, I still believe that though he refrains from giving, uh, vent to his appreciation of the rhythm of the negro spiritual--

WARREN:--why should he refrain?

JORDAN: Well, I, I think that many do because they're trying to please 00:56:00but--

WARREN:--please whom?

JORDAN: I'm not sure. But I think that there is a desire to be accepted, uh, on, uh, a common basis with their white peers. But what I'm saying is that I think that even that negro, who--who fails to, to vocalize or to evidence an appreciation, say, for the negro spiritual, I really think that, that he is kind of unhappy not really being true to himself. It's just like the hillbilly who becomes president of the Chase Manhattan National Bank because he was smart. I think he'll always like hillbilly music. Uh, this is--

WARREN:--and he wouldn't (??)--

JORDAN:--this is, this is not to say that he would not, uh, begin to like Bach, and Beethoven, and what-have-you, but this is to say that he will never lose appreciation.

WARREN: I'm not trying to say--just to make myself clear--that, uh, this man, this singer, should not, uh, do any music in the world--

JORDAN:--that he would like to do--

WARREN:--that he would like to do--

JORDAN:--yes, and this is not to say that he would do the spiritual better either.

WARREN: No, it's not to say that.

JORDAN: That's right.

WARREN: It's not to say to (??) be anything.

JORDAN: Right, right.

WARREN: It's a question of--of some defect of judgment is entered in here at the wrong level.

JORDAN: And I really think that ultimately it becomes a personal decision, uh, uh, as to what A or B wants to do. Uh, now, I think that in the revolution there has been a revival by negroes of interest in--in basic African music, which to, which to the twentieth-century negro is to some extent foreign, but I think there is an effort now to re-identify the--the wearing of the hair au naturel, so to speak. There's an effort to re-identify. And I'm not sure that this is not, uh, to some extent unrealistic, uh, because oftentimes I think the 00:58:00history proves that the negro has to some extent rejected his African brother and his African heritage.

WARREN: He was, uh, he had no choice for a long time, didn't he? The American negro, he had no possibility of connecting with it, did he?

JORDAN: That's right.

WARREN: He was snatched away from it.

JORDAN: And he was snatched away from it, and he was taken from, from his basic modus operandi and he was given this new Messiah called Jesus. He was given this new religion. He was given this completely new way of life. Uh--and there was no, there was no return to the--to the tribal kind of African existence.

WARREN: Well, was there one tribe? There were many tribes and many actual physical types and many psychological types, weren't there?

JORDAN: I'm sure there were.

WARREN: So, we don't have a, a thing called the African.

JORDAN: That's right, that's right.

WARREN: And not that (??) that means you have such a thing called the American; you have, uh, distinct and, and very competitive, and even 00:59:00violently (??) , murderously (??), competitive cultures scattered, and very different, different physical types, uh, scattered over (??)--

JORDAN:--and I think, for example, that the negro spiritual is--is a very basic part of American culture, uh--just, just as much as Stephen Foster. It's a very basic part of it, I think.

WARREN: Now, on the, the question of, uh, the African, uh, relationship, there, there are some historians and some sociologists now who say that in the discovery of Africa, the American negro has a great asset and a great risk. He takes on the burden of the advantage--let's put it that way--it's a double, double thing. That--

[Tape 2 ends; tape 3 begins.]

WARREN: Number 3 of an interview, uh, with Mr. Vernon Jordan, Atlanta, Georgia, March seventeenth. Uh, you were talking about Richard Wright and his, uh, disillusion of Africa as being, as belonging to a (??) colony a very powerful moment (??), how was that?

JORDAN: Yeah. Well, I think that, uh, the bitterness and, and the rejection that Mr. Wright expresses, uh, must be weighed as against the time that it was written. I'm not certain that if Mr. Wright were writing in 1964 that, uh, he would have expressed the same sentiments. Uh, as you've just indicated that the generations change, uh, as much as five years, five years as a time span can, can cause great changes. I experienced, uh, this myself to some degree. I finished college in 01:00:001957. In 1960, the sit-ins broke out. In 1957--'55, '56, '57, I was going forty miles to get my hair cut, and maybe rather than do that I should have done what, uh, what the sit-inners did in 1960, but I, uh, that--

WARREN:--and last week in Indiana or Illinois, I forget which.

JORDAN: That's right.

WARREN: A barbershop.

JORDAN: That's right, that's right. Now, that's right. Now, my problem is, uh--uh, I was of a different generation. Uh--uh, between '57 and '60, things had--had build up to such an intensity that now you have negroes demonstrating. And I also feel certain that if I was, had been a student, uh, in 1960, a college student, uh, that I, too, would have been involved. Uh, that I would've been amongst the first group from my particular school--

WARREN:--let me ask you, interrupt to ask you something. Uh, reading the papers the other day I discovered, uh, the sit-in demonstrators, uh, and other demonstrators at, uh, this barbershop somewhere over the Ohio River, uh, were mostly white college students. Would any white college students in DePauw seven years ago have demonstrated on this matter of your haircut?

JORDAN: Absolutely not. Uh, I think--

WARREN:--something's (??) happened then?

JORDAN: Yes. I think that there were those, uh, when I was there who were concerned who, uh, who thought it was a pretty terrible idea but at the times that their hair was long, that they needed a crew cut to go the dance or, or to take their favorite girl out, that, uh, this was not a issue. The issue was whether or not how fast I could get a haircut. There was, however, a professor, uh, Dr. Correll (??), in the physics department, who very quietly, without any fanfare had his wife to cut his hair and he cut his boy's hair. And this was in a sense a silent protest against, uh, the situation in, uh, in Greencastle, that he never communicated, uh, publicly to, to the students or to negroes on the campus.

WARREN: Well now, what's happened? This is not many years, only six or seven years. What's happened? Now, you have hundreds of college students demonstrating in front of a barbershop in some town, uh, in Ohio, Indiana--I forget which town it is--uh, about the fact of segregated haircuts.

JORDAN: Yeah, well--

WARREN:--what's happened now since that time?

JORDAN: I think, I think, number one, the ridiculousness of it, uh, has been dramatized.

WARREN: How is it dramatized?

JORDAN: Uh, well, I think that, uh, the sit-ins beginning February 1, 01:02:001960 when, uh, four boys sit-in in Greensboro, North Carolina, and for the first time white people began to think that here are negroes whose money is green, who pays the same price for a bar of soap in the ten- cents store, or, or the ribbons for the little girl's hair, or for the comb, or what-have-you, that here they are spending the same amount of money for the same articles, and merely because of the intensity of the blackness in their skin they cannot sit down to eat a hotdog rather. I think the ridiculousness of it was, uh, was dramatized with the beginning of the--of the sit-ins, and, and if you really think about it, and I think that many white people in the South and certainly in the North, after the sit-ins, began to think just how ridiculous it is.

WARREN: Well, now, a long time ago in the eighties, a Charleston newspaper--I forget the name of the paper--said the same thing about the possibility of segregation. 'If this nonsense goes on,' this paper said, 'we'll even have two Bibles to kiss in court or two waiting rooms in railroad stations.' This is all very recent, this segregation. This not an old story. It's a fairly new story, a seventy-five year old story.

JORDAN: Well, of course, I'm not sure that, I'm not so sure that the Charleston paper was not right if things had continued on.

WARREN: They couldn't believe it was going to happen. The segregation was going to happen, our, our version of (??) segregation, the modern, the modern Southern version of segregation. They couldn't believe it was gonna happen. Said it's too preposterous to believe, they said, but it happened in five years after (??) had written it.

JORDAN: Well, and I think that was has happened since 1960 is, uh, some 01:04:00sort of, of realization of the prophecy of the Charleston paper in the eighties.

WARREN: That's right.

JORDAN: Sure.

WARREN: This is a very funny thing, though, how you have, uh, two generations can condition a whole social system with the minority doing the conditioning. Nobody in the Civil War generation could've, could've conceived the modern segregation. Now, they had their vices but that wasn't one of their vices.

JORDAN: Well, maybe the--the real tragedy stems from the Hayes-Tilden Compromise of 1876 when, uh, the deal was that the federal troops would withdraw and here they left--

WARREN:--well now, let's go to that, that's an interesting question. What would've been a decent, reasonable, and far-reaching Reconstruction? Let's assume we start in 1865 forget Lincoln's death, 01:05:00one way or the other--let's say, just suppose good and wise men had run the Reconstruction, what could've been done?

JORDAN: Well, that's hard to say.

WARREN: It's hard to say but there are some theories about it.

JORDAN: Uh, well, number one, I guess, I must profess some ignorance as to the theories. Uh, certainly, uh--uh, I forget exactly what Lincoln's theory was but, uh, I get some notion that it wasn't quite adequate, and certainly Johnson was, uh, totally incompetent to deal with the situation and--

WARREN:--now, Lincoln would've been impeached probably within a year.

JORDAN: That's right. Uh, I also think that, uh, probably Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens to some extent, uh, alienated many of the moderate people by their very radical positions, uh, but I think you have to take note of the fact that their radical positions culminated in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. I, uh, I would hesitate to speculate on--what the proper course of Reconstruction would've been. I'm not certain that, uh, the, uh, negroes getting extraordinary positions in government, though incompetent was the answer, certainly--

WARREN:--let me read you what Myrdal said would've been the reasonable, though impossible, Reconstruction policy.

JORDAN: All right.

WARREN: One, federal remuneration for all slaves after the war. Pay for the emancipated--pay the, the property value of, at some, you know, (??) price for all emancipated slaves. It's the Myrdal theory, step one. Two, expropriation of plantation lands, uh, as far as necessary, 01:06:00but full federal payment for the land to the Southerner planter, to the Confederate planter. Three: distribution of the land, uh, to any who needed it, negro or white, for a long range mortgage basis. Not a gift but a very long range, uh, mortgage basis--

JORDAN:--kind of FHA loan--

WARREN: --yeah, a very indefinite, indefinite, uh, thing but carried by society, but a payment required. So, it's no, it's no gift; payment required. Backed by a twenty-year mortgage--

JORDAN:--thirty-year mortgage--

WARREN:--thirty. I've got a twenty-year; I've been wronged.

JORDAN: Yeah. No, you just paid more down, you see.

WARREN: But four, supervision of freedmen and property plus vocational 01:07:00training and other training as, you know, some sort of skill (??) that. Five, national taxation to pay costs, figure that being done. (both laugh) Six: encouragement of negroes for migration to the West. This vast amount of--uh, free land, federal land which was being given away to railroads. That was mighty fine land. Millions of dollars were taken off that land with some kind of, you know, not just thrown to the far West, you know, building communities. And so forth. You see the, that, that line. Just offhand, emotionally, how do you, would you respond to such a?

JORDAN: Well, I tell you, the first one, that of compensating the, uh, slaveholders for their slaves, I think is sort of an, uh, an indirect 01:08:00sanction, uh, to pay them after emancipation for those persons, uh, whom they held enslaved, uh.

WARREN: Isn't that, this one of the things, this is one of the several things I'm getting at now. Do you feel an immediate moral revulsion, an emotional revulsion to that idea? To this--

JORDAN:--oh, yes--

WARREN:--this learned Swede proposes?

JORDAN: Uh, uh, I think you're saying to them that, 'This was really right but you lost the war but we'll pay you for this.' I'm not sure that you can, uh, compensate a man for, uh, doing something that, uh, is legally and morally and by all standards wrong--

WARREN:--not lega--not legally, not--

JORDAN:--well, legally it was not--

WARREN:--no, no--

JORDAN:--no, not legally; you're right.

WARREN: -- (??) legally (??).

JORDAN: Of course, you've got the Dred Scott decision and what-have-you. But--

WARREN: Yeah, the American Constitution, too; not only the Dred Scott--

JORDAN: Well, you got grandfather clauses and what-have-you. The, the idea of, of compensating the slaveowner--this is one of Lincoln's theories; that, uh, you ought to compensate him, as I remember vaguely. Uh, this--this nauseates me.

WARREN: Well, I mean it would probably have nauseated the Yankees on several accounts. One, money; two, and, uh, less importantly, moral revulsion.

JORDAN: Well, of course, on, on the other hand, I'm not so sure that money in and of itself would have appeased, uh, the Southerner plantation owner who was accustomed to services and, uh--uh, serfdom.

WARREN: How, how many plantation owners were there? How many--the, the 01:09:00figures are very small of people who had over, over five slaves--

JORDAN: Yeah, yeah.

WARREN: So you're dealing with a very small fraction of society.

JORDAN: Even so, if you're only dealing with one man it seems to me--

WARREN:--it's morally wrong, (??)?

JORDAN: It, it does not justify paying, uh, uh, a man for slaves because I think this substantiates Dred Scott, that, that this man is not--

WARREN:--well, let me ask you another kind of question then.

JORDAN: All right.

WARREN: Suppose by doing this one might avoid Reconstruction, segregation, and all the difficulties and degradations that have gone on for a hundred years since; suppose, uh, that by having a, a settlement, which a learned Swede proposes--too late--of, uh, expropriated land paid for, remuneration for emancipated slaves, and, uh, a general 01:10:00educational system as part of literacy and, uh, supervised, uh, education in terms of land handling and other educations for, uh, negro and white. All this is one package, and Western migration, and also, I should've added if I were called on, Northern migration training, training in--in crafts and industries, you see, to head off, uh, some of the European immigration, exploited very brutally. I think this- -and trying to protect the immigration from the South. Let's take all this, let's take it as a possibility. Now, would that--would the moral nausea have been too great a price to pay for, uh, peace by, uh, 1890.

JORDAN: Well--

WARREN:--and a reasonable integrated society?

JORDAN: Of course, I--I think that, uh, this is purely speculatively, number one.

WARREN: It's all speculative--

JORDAN:--yeah--

WARREN:--but now, I am talking your emotions (??) rather than anything else. Is this a sort--

JORDAN:--I would still, I would still have a great problem.

WARREN: Even if you had peace by 1890 and reasonable, a reasonable 01:11:00integration in the South, at, at least, uh, humane relationship and, and a public education system that would work for, for negroes and whites, you would still have an emotional problem about accepting this?

JORDAN: Well, I still have some--the emotional problem stems from the fact that, that I--I don't think that to, to pay for it, uh, would have, uh, done or reaped the thing that you're talking about by, by 1890.

WARREN: Now, listen, this, this isn't my question, sir. (both laugh) My question is, let's assume that, uh, that his, that this proposal would've been effective. Of course, it wouldn't, it wouldn't be possible to begin with that--

JORDAN:--that's right, right.

WARREN: You can't turn a Thaddeus Stevens loose in the world and have a settlement like this, you see. So, we can--or--or Sumner. So we can say it was, it wasn't possible but it's not possible. But let's assume that it's possible and assuming it worked. You see, by 1890 or 1900, you'd have had a reasonably balanced society, some (??)--

JORDAN:--I still--I'd still have a problem with it. I'd still have a problem with it, yes.

WARREN: You'd still have an emotional problem with it?

JORDAN: I think so, yes.

WARREN: Emotional resistance to it?

JORDAN: That's right. Uh--uh, I have to think about that a little more but, uh--

WARREN:--well, this--this question, this question, I think, you can turn this around in many ways and the emotional resistances, uh, would, would strike, uh, many a Yankee the same way. And you can reverse propositions like this and find emotional resistances in Mississippi of a parallel order to a rational solution of things. Do you see what I'm getting at?

JORDAN: Uh-hm.

WARREN: Now, we all have, we all have, uh, your emotional resistances, whether right or wrong, uh, to--

JORDAN:--well, I--

WARREN:--like these, these settlements.

JORDAN: Yeah.

WARREN: German (??)

JORDAN: Yeah. I think it boils down to, uh, to really asking, uh, the emotional question, uh, is it peace at any price, kind of question.

WARREN: What is the price we're paying? "We" being all of us. Let's assume that Myrdal's, uh, program would've worked. It could have been accepted and it could have worked. That by 1900 we'd be over the hump. Is that too big a price to pay?

JORDAN: Well, I guess, I guess maybe not if you operate on the assumption that it's gonna work--

WARREN:--that's, that's--

JORDAN:--yeah, yeah--

WARREN:--that's part of my question--

JORDAN:--that's the assumption.

WARREN: Part of my assumption--

JORDAN:--yeah--

WARREN:--that's the assumption.

JORDAN: But, but even so, I still have a great deal of a problem with that.

WARREN: You'd rather have it the way it is now and--and no compensation for, uh, uh, slaves like expropriated (??) land?

JORDAN: Uh, I expect so.

WARREN: You'd rather, you'd rather have it the way it is?

JORDAN: I expect so and that's kind of a terrible thing to say.

WARREN: Well, I mean, this, this (??), let's be honest; let's just be honest.

JORDAN: I expect so.

WARREN: Now, look, let's turn this thing around.

JORDAN: All right.

WARREN: You would take somebody to Mississippi right now, who would pull down the temple. Do anything to maintain--I mean, it (??) purely an emotional, uh, uh, emotional attitude, is totally irrational.

JORDAN: Um-hm.

WARREN: To maintain segregation. It's against his image (??), he knows that.

JORDAN: Um-hm.

WARREN: It's against his image (??); it's against his (??) morally, you see. He feels the moral disturbance (??), yet, he is committed to it in some legal (??).

JORDAN: Why don't you ask that again? Why don't rephrase it?

WARREN: All right. Now, you, uh--(laughs)--uh, you see, say--and I must praise you as an honest man, and some may even praise me as one. (laughs) By giving you a chance (??). That you would rather have if the, the actual settlement that occurred in Reconstruction, which meant 01:14:00no compensation for emancipated slaves to the Southerner slaveowner with all the troubles that we have had then to now--

JORDAN:--yeah--

WARREN:--and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, too.

JORDAN: Yeah.

WARREN: Than to have had a, uh, a Myrdal's proposal having to put in practice with the compensation for slavery, compensation for expropriated land, and all the other things we talked about, but you (??) the compensation--

JORDAN:--this is, this is--

WARREN: --as moral nausea (??).

JORDAN: This is my great problem and, uh, maybe if I could get over that I would have, you know, less problems with it, but I, I just have, I just have real problem because I think that there is some justification in the compensation for what happened. And, and I don't think that this can ever be justified on any basis.

WARREN: Is the question whether slavery is a moral good, the real question here or not?

JORDAN: Well--

WARREN:--is the question of slavery is morally defensible, is that the real question?

JORDAN: Well, I think that it is--there is no defense for slavery; um, there's no excuse.

WARREN: Well, let's just--

JORDAN:--there's no, there's no, no reason to, to be.

WARREN: Now, I'd like to explain my reason to ask the question.

JORDAN: Yeah.

WARREN: Uh, several years ago, uh, uh, a play of Euripides was done in the New York Theater, and an eminent theater critic wrote, "The Greeks are vastly overrated as playwrights. In fact, they held slaves." (pause) What about Greek slavery? Just jump way back. Or, Egyptian slavery? How do we feel about their slavery? This, this make, uh, Plato a fraud or Socrates a fake?

JORDAN: I think their real value to society, in terms of their real 01:16:00value to society, no. But I think that, uh, uh, even so it does not justify, uh, slavery in any stage of civilization.

WARREN: What ends--how could, uh,--how--justification is a strange thing here, uh. What--what knocked slavery out?

JORDAN: Well, I'd think, I think--

WARREN:--now, of course, we, when we talk about slavery we're not talking about--about the slavery of negroes, we're talking about slavery of anybody--

JORDAN:--slavery, yeah. Well, I think that historically, uh, the thing that caused the dissipation of slavery was that it was economically unfeasible.

WARREN: What made it economically unfeasible?

JORDAN: Well, here was--

WARREN:--machines?

JORDAN: Sure, sure. That's what I was about to get at. Here you are with a bunch of people who, uh--uh, because of their ignorance, their, their inability to do, uh, only that which they, they have to do that 01:17:00which they're told. Uh, uh. They are robots in a sense.

WARREN: A slave is a, is a human machine?

JORDAN: Sure. That's right. Now, when you get something that can do what that machine was doing then, then the system--and I think that slavery even in America, uh, prior to emancipation (??), the cotton gin, for example, had a--a (??) effect on slavery, certainly, uh, as you were getting, uh--

WARREN:--if they had just invented the cotton picker, instead of inventing the cotton gin, it had been fine.

JORDAN: Things might have been different.

WARREN: Things. (laughs)

JORDAN: Things might have been a little different; that's right. (Warren laughs) That's right; that's right. And, and I think that, uh, uh, automations, uh, the advances in technology, and what-have-you make the civil rights crisis, uh, extremely crucial at this very point.

WARREN: Now, let's--what I am driving at is this. You see, I was horsing around. Is how of a moral question is, is always in historical 01:18:00perspective. It's conditioned by historical perspective.

JORDAN: Um-hm.

WARREN: Do you see what I'm getting at there? And I don't have any bill of goods to sell about this. It's just something that's awfully hard to say, the Greeks shouldn't have held slaves; they're bad.

JORDAN: Well, this is where you get--and you talk about justification-- this is where you get into the--

WARREN:--just, I, I just--I don't what to say about it, you see.

JORDAN: Yeah.

WARREN: Here is a, uh, the whole problem, historical perspective. Let's take something else. Oh, if I read you a, this little passage. This is a, you know, sort of a nasty way of doing things, reading you a passage and say, 'Let's talk about that,' you know. But. But I don't have a way to, you know, gauge certain questions. I have some beautiful quotes from Lincoln, which you probably know. (pause) "I 01:19:00will say that I am not nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of a white and black race." And I won't go on with the rest of these quotations--

JORDAN:--yeah, I've seen this--

WARREN:--there's a whole (??) of them, you see.

JORDAN: Sure.

WARREN: They both, uh, an interesting one is given after the Emancipation Proclamation to a group of free negroes who called on the White House to--to thank Mr. Lincoln, the President.

JORDAN: Yeah. Well--

WARREN:--now, how--how does this affect you?

JORDAN: Well, uh, number one, I believe about Lincoln, uh, that Lincoln was not necessarily a, a great advocate, as is indicated in your statement, of negro equality and negro rights. I think that Lincoln primarily acted to--to save the Union, and this was, this was his, uh, his real value. Now, to me, as a negro a hundred years later, I'm not interested in why's and the wherefore's of wars of what Lincoln did because, you see, the only thing that I can see a hundred years later is--is that, is that Lincoln signed the Freedom Paper. His name is on it. And, in so far as I'm concerned this is his only value.

WARREN: A symbolic value, not, a, not a personal value, then?

JORDAN: That's right, that's right. He put his name on the paper and, and this to me is a great triumph.

WARREN: What do you think of Robert E. Lee? Let's just sort of throw these things around a little bit. What about Robert E. Lee in this connection?

JORDAN: Well, uh, uh, I think Robert E. Lee, uh, has a reputation. And- -and as I think about him, of, of being a Southern gentleman. He, he took defeat--

WARREN:--he was an emancipationist. He had slaves and he emancipated them very--

JORDAN:--yeah--

WARREN:--soon because he didn't think it was--he thought slavery was 01:20:00evil.

JORDAN: Yeah. But by the same token his loyalty, uh, to his--his native Virginia--

WARREN:--not to--his loyalty to what now? His, his loyalty to what? Uh, what--what is the nature of his loyalty?

JORDAN: Well--

WARREN:--he's, he's a thorough emancipationist. He's--

JORDAN:--yeah--

WARREN: -- (??) slavery and Lincoln did. And much more than Lincoln; he horsed around for years and years about it.

JORDAN: Sure.

WARREN: Lee just said, 'It cost me money, but, you know, I cannot participate in this.' You (??) a great (??).

JORDAN: Yeah.

WARREN: Grant held slaves until after the Civil War.

JORDAN: Yeah. I'm not sure that, that, uh, Lee, uh, could have fought against the people from the South, uh, even though--what I am trying to say is that, that the cause of the South for Lee might have been greater than the cause of Lee. Uh--I just don't know.

JORDAN: What (??)--

WARREN:--I just see Robert E. Lee, uh, uh, as he's depicted pretty much in the, in the Southerner high school history books--

WARREN:--let's forget those.

JORDAN: Yeah, well, all right.

WARREN: We are not talking of that level (??).

JORDAN: Yeah. Well, the only significance that I can attach to Lee is that, uh, after defeat, uh, he was a gentleman, and, as you indicated, he--he was an emancipationist, and that he, he freed the slaves and this kind of thing.

WARREN: What was he loyal to? Can we, can we--I doubt that anybody knows necessarily but--

JORDAN:--yeah.

WARREN: What was he being loyal to here, and how would you evaluate, uh, this loyalty?

JORDAN: Well, I think it's really kind of a, a regional loyalty. That the South was more important to him, uh, than the Union, uh. And, and 01:22:00maybe for some reason or other he did not see slavery as the key issue--

WARREN:--like many--

JORDAN:--in the Civil War as Lincoln did.

WARREN:--like many--

JORDAN:--that's right.

WARREN: Lincoln did not see (??).

JORDAN: That's right. And this is not to say that I know what he, what he envisioned as the key issue. But, uh--uh if you move from the premise that it was--that, uh, he, you know, did not believe in slavery, then, uh, he saw something, uh, more important in the Civil War. Maybe he felt that, uh, maybe it was economic where the South was concerned, or something like that. Uh--uh, I'm just not, I'm just not certain.

WARREN: I don't, I don't know that anybody is certain. I guess my point behind all of this is that the world has changed very decisively, hasn't it? Issues seem clearer to us now than they, than they did. Over time, 01:23:00can we judge the past in terms of our present vision of issues?

JORDAN: Well, I think not. Uh--I think that the past must, you must look at Lee acting in, uh, 1965 or acting in 1960, 1965.

WARREN: What would he do now? What would he do now, in 1965?

JORDAN: Well, I suspect that Lee in 1964 would be a Terry Sandford of North Carolina.

WARREN: Do you think so?

JORDAN: Uh, yeah.

WARREN: Uh, I think he probably belong to (??) the Southern Regional Council.

JORDAN: That's right, that's right. That's right. Uh, and I think this largely depends whether Lee was, uh, a politician--

WARREN:--he's too classy a (??) man to be a politician.

JORDAN: Or whether or not he was a, a successful lawyer as a part of a big firm, or a successful businessman. But I think that, that you are 01:24:00absolutely right, that Lee very probably would've been on the board of the executive committee of the Southern Regional Council, had he lived, uh, assuming that he was living now. But I think that you have to look at Lee, uh, in his time.

WARREN: That's a, it's a very hard thing to do imaginatively, isn't it? Without reading these things and making them sort of labels for out time projected backward, and then, uh--the reason I'm hammering at this, uh, in a rather unpleasant way, I guess, is because these things seem to have some reference to the way we behave now.

JORDAN: (pause) Well--

[Pause in recording.]

WARREN:--this is the end of tape 3, uh, of a conversation with Vernon Jordan.

[Tape 3 ends; tape 4 begins.]

WARREN: This is tape 4 of conversation with Mr. Vernon Jordan, continue.

[Pause in recording.]

WARREN: Let's turn to another topic. Uh, some, uh, weeks ago I was talking to, uh, a lawyer, successful, prominent lawyer, who is a negro, who said to me, "Suddenly I find myself spending a lot of energy, uh, inverting symbolisms in the society around me. When I find anything that's white or bright equal in value, I'm turning this around--

JORDAN:--right (??)--

WARREN:--"and to myself. Living in a, in a white culture where the 01:26:00symbolic values are white and bright and light, uh, equal good and valuable, dark and black, these things, uh, equal the opposites. I find myself defensively turning these around to, uh, in my own mind, all these hidden symbolisms." How do you respond to that?

JORDAN: Well, I--

WARREN:--his condition, how do you feel about his condition?

JORDAN: I think that, uh, this is a problem that many negroes are having, uh, uh, rejection of, uh, and I guess what he means to some extent is a white man's standard, uh.

WARREN: White equaling good, as (??) a symbol.

JORDAN: For me, I don't have that problem, because--

WARREN:--white has (??).

JORDAN: Yeah, sure. I think it, uh, requires some sort of, uh, 01:27:00decision-making on the part of the individual Negro concerned, and I think it's a part of a value system that, that he sets up himself, despite whatever evaluation, uh, uh, is placed by the use of that particular symbol on what it means in the white community. Uh, uh, for me, it's a matter of individual choice, uh, uh, and I, I don't attach any, uh, uh, significance to a particular thing because, uh, it's characteristically white or characteristically negro. If it can serve my--my self-interest or the self-interest of my wife and daughter.

WARREN: You don't find, you don't find that the, uh, symbolisms of the blaze of light equaling truth, uh, offensive. You don't find the 01:28:00white robes of God offensive. Uh, these are the white, and, and values somehow being equated in a whole symbolism in the society in which you live?

JORDAN: Well, it doesn't bother me.

WARREN: It doesn't bother you?

JORDAN: No, uh.

WARREN: It does some people to the point of almost, almost, you know, of physical stress.

JORDAN: I think it does. Uh, uh. It doesn't bother me, uh, because I feel secure enough, uh, to feel I can determine my own values, uh, uh, in terms of not what they mean to my peers or to my neighbors or to-- but what they mean to me. And, and those persons, uh, uh, whom I must necessarily immediately relate--my wife, my daughter, uh, my mother, my father, or my in-laws, uh, uh--

WARREN:--or your white friends?

JORDAN: That's right. Uh, uh, if these values have meaning for me, and, 01:29:00and there might even be some conflict here with my wife.

WARREN: You actually, uh, don't--you wipe out the symbolic structures around you entirely and, and say what it means to me in literal terms?

JORDAN: That's right, uh, for me. Now, uh, I think that there are, are some people who are not so disposed--

WARREN:--oh, indeed, yes--

JORDAN:--and I think that many negroes have problems with this. I've been exposed, uh, to the white culture and its, and its level best, and as a result of my college days.

WARREN: Sure. The red shirts (??) that's full of it.

JORDAN: That's right.

WARREN: And the Bible, the King James Version is full of it.

JORDAN: But, but I did not take on these things as being, uh, sacrosanct, uh, because they were white. Uh, uh, I compared the two cultures, compared the two systems of values necessarily, and--and 01:30:00arrived at my own.

WARREN: That is, you went behind the symbolism to your personal realities.

JORDAN: That's right. And evaluated them on the basis of that which is most advantageous, and that which mostly pleases me. And, uh, this to me is the most important thing. If I'm pleased and happy, then to hell with what John Doe thinks, uh.

WARREN: The--the fact that truth is given a white robe or a blaze of white, this--this doesn't strike you as anything.

JORDAN: Well, it's not going to be repulsive to me, but this is to say also it doesn't mean I'm going to like it or love it. Uh, uh, it depends upon how in a given set of circumstances, uh--uh, or what in a given set of circumstances this means to me. Maybe that's talking in circles.

WARREN: No, it's not. I don't think it's talking in circles at all. In this connection there's and--I don't want to talk as an anthropologist, 01:31:00the way--but you have some strange facts. The same symbolism of white equaling, uh, truth or good and dark equaling, you know, uh--

JORDAN:--bad and dirty--

WARREN:--untrue and bad, are African symbolisms, too. It's a strange anthropological fact. Uh, there are some, uh, dances--I won't go into all this--there are some, uh, dances where you have, uh--uh, a struggle between virtue and vice. These are native dances, traditional dances. Uh, virtue is, uh, white plumed headdress, white robe. There's no make-up, you see, both the faces of both, you see, are the natural, untinted faces. Yet the--the vice or, or evil is clothed in black. 01:32:00These are, uh, traditional tribal dances going back before European contact--

JORDAN:--well, uh--

WARREN:--the Chinese the same way--

JORDAN:--yeah--

WARREN:--although they paint their faces white for this, this traditional dance.

JORDAN: Yeah, maybe this follows through in our, in our own culture. Uh, uh, we drape things in black with death, uh, but we marry in white as a sense of purity. But I don't--I don't associate the, uh, lady in the wedding gown in white, uh, with necessarily with any value of the white man.

WARREN: Now, what, what I'm getting at--you don't, some do--what I'm getting at is this. We have a strange situation where a regular contrast between the Negro and the white man in America, has led to, uh, a whole kind of symbolisms which is no problem to the African 01:33:00and no problem to the Chinese. No problem for the, for the Malay. We have--we have enough traditional stuff as far as the anthropology I read to carry over, uh, where day and night are carried--without reference to complexions. Yet this is said to have become a real issue for many, for many American people.

JORDAN: Well--

WARREN:-- (??)--

JORDAN:--well, I think one manifestation of that is that, uh, uh, the old blue blood or blue vein notions, uh, that used to exist in the negro community, that the, that the light skinned negroes are better than the dark skinned negroes. I think, I think that this is a manifestation to some extent of what you're talking about. But to me this is, uh, tommyrot. Uh, uh, that, I guess the indication is that if you are light--and certainly this is biologically true, that, uh, 01:34:00somewhere or other there is some white blood or white ancestry here. But this to me means nothing. Uh, uh, the only significance that I would attach to it is that there is some white blood somewhere, or some white ancestry, and, uh, what does this determine for me? It determines nothing except that there is some white ancestry somewhere.

WARREN: Yeah, (??) Let me, let me--I'll just make a statement here: a revolution aims at the liquidation of a regime or a class. There's always been somebody who had his head chopped off, literally or figuratively. At least the liquidation of the power of that regime, 01:35:00it does not have to set itself, uh, with a mutual way of life, a modus vivendi, after victory. The revolution looks forward to a crucial confrontation. kill us all, you know, aristocratic, whatever revolution British, um (??). But the negro movement must look forward to a settlement, not a liquidation. Therefore, there must be new techniques and new objectives if, to be a revolution. Does this make any sense?

JORDAN: Well, um--

WARREN:--let me go back over it now.

JORDAN: Well, let me say this here, as I see, as I see the revolution, 01:36:00uh, the revolution is a revolution fought, uh, number one, not to take over, uh, but it is a revolution--

WARREN:--that's one difference.

JORDAN: Yeah, um--

WARREN:--no liquidation, in other words.

JORDAN: That's right, that's right. But it's a revolution wherein you assume, uh, or that you take unto yourself, not anything superior, or not anything less than, uh, uh, what is already given, but you assume, assume some equal stature or equal recognition or equal opportunity or equal chance. This is not to say that, uh, you're going to hog the show, but this is to say that if two apples are being passed out, that you're going to get your two apples right alongside the next 01:37:00fellow. And that because you are, uh, uh, negro that you necessarily are limited to a half, a apple. And I think that this is what the revolution is about, is that a half a loaf, uh, uh, or 99 of 100 percent is not enough, that you've got to have all of it, in terms of your equal share, uh, or in terms of your share. And, uh, uh, what goes on, in the opportunities and in the privileges--and also with this, the rights and privileges that you also share in the responsibilities.

WARREN: This does not conform to any previous, uh, social movement so 01:38:00far as I can make out. There's no parallel in anything in history, I'm inclined to believe--I don't want to be dogmatic about this--this is new. Now you may say (??) this is therefore not a revolution, that is a word. If I follow you right, this is, this is not at all like any revolutionary event that ever occurred before.

JORDAN: Yeah.

WARREN: It does, it does not aim for liquidation of a class or a group of people, only, for a change of idea, is that right?

JORDAN: A--a change of idea and a--and a change of status, from one of number two to an equal place, and moving into this you do not usurp anything that the people who already have these rights have.

WARREN: In other words, this, this might be represented as the first democratic revolution to the world? Do you see what I'm driving at?

JORDAN: Yes, I'm--I'm not sure that I'm in a position to substantiate this--

WARREN:--I can't driving at here (??)--

JORDAN:--but I do think that the most important thing about this revolution is that it is not a revolution geared to liquidate, as you used. It's not a revolution that, that builds street barricades. It's not a revolution that's fought with arms. Uh--uh, but it's a, it's a revolution, uh, uh, I think that operates on a very human level whereby you try to, uh, to get people to do things on the basis that people are people.

WARREN: Well, uh, going back, then, this would seem to be the first, uh, democratic revolution that's ever existed by this definition, where 01:40:00it's not aiming to liquidate a, a class or regime but merely to, uh, reinterpret the light of a whole society.

JORDAN: That's right, these--uh, overthrow is a good word. That--um, there are some people in the society who say they're trying to overthrow us. Uh--uh, but I think that, uh, this thing, uh, is a matter of presently the white man being in the, in the driver's seat and saying, 'Gee and haw,' pulling both reins, but here is a negro who is saying, 'Let me too get up there in the driver's seat, and let me have some of the say about which way this horse is going to gee or which way he's going to haw.'

WARREN: That is, the--the white man, uh, you're talking about misinterprets the whole, uh, movement then, is that right?

JORDAN: That's right.

WARREN: He doesn't understand the nature of it?

JORDAN: I think this is partly true, especially in the South. He doesn't understand that, uh, uh, when a negro gains this right of first-class citizenship, he doesn't understand that when the negro gains this, that he does not lose anything.

WARREN: Right. There's the--there's the formula right there, he doesn't lose anything.

JORDAN: He doesn't lose anything, uh, uh, because you can't lose that which you, uh, uh, in a sense don't have a right to exclusively.

WARREN: That is, he does not conceive of the nature of this revolution. He thinks it's the same as the previous revolutions, if we called it a revolution, what did we call it?

JORDAN: This revolution is not a coup--

WARREN:--it's not a power play (??), put it that way,

JORDAN: That's right, that's right.

WARREN: Undoubtedly I think we must submit this, for some negroes it is.

JORDAN: But I think that even those negroes--

WARREN:--some, (??)--

JORDAN:--this is a myth, uh, it seems to me, uh.

WARREN: For most people outside the actual, the actual social process, I think, yes. But for some it is clearly, everybody (??).

JORDAN: Yes, and there is, uh, some, uh, vindictiveness involved in this, but I think that--

WARREN:--vindictiveness, you say, some people would say in identifying revolutions of the past, they would say there are two dynamic forces in a revolution: hope and hate. You can't have a revolution until you have the hope for change. Some guarantee of, of success, until you beat them down you can only have a servile revolt, which would lead nowhere. A revolution means a, a dynamic hope for a change that is (??) envisionable. Plus a hate. Now, here is--

JORDAN:--I think you have to address yourself to hate of what? I think it--

WARREN:--all right, good. Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.

JORDAN: I, I think it has to be hate of what, whether it's a hate, uh- -uh, of the system or whether it's a hate of the people who perpetuate the system.

WARREN: All right, now we have a distinction which has never been made before in any revolution. This is the first time. Always before it has been of the perpetuators and not of the thing perpetuated.

JORDAN: Yes. And I think that this revolution, uh, if you're going to use the word hate, hate here must be used as--as hating the, the, not the perpetuators, but that which is perpetuated--the system itself. Uh, because I think that to hate those people in power or those people who perpetuate it would lead to the overthrow or the liquidation, uh, 01:43:00necessary.

WARREN: Well, you are now, uh, talking like, uh, Dr. King.

JORDAN: Well, I don't mind talking like Dr. King.

WARREN: I'm not saying that as an affront to you at all, I'm just saying you are.

JORDAN: Yeah, yeah, but now, of course, I think you also ought to understand that, uh, uh, personally, uh, I'm not out to redeem the soul of America either.

WARREN: Well, wouldn't you just in passing perhaps, with your left hand?

JORDAN: Well, uh, I think that, uh, uh, you see, I take the position that when I exercise my constitutional rights, uh, I don't care how the man sitting at the next table next to me feels about it, or whether my presence there changes his heart or, or not. I don't give a damn if he regurgitates or if he gets up and leaves, or if he turns over his glass 01:44:00or spills his coffee on the waitress. That's his problem.

WARREN: Wouldn't you have a slight preference in that matter?

JORDAN: Well, uh, there's nothing like, uh, eating your meals sort of, uh, in, in some quietude or some tranquil situation. But by the same token, uh, if this man is uneasy, if he gets, he gets ants in his pants, that's his problem. And it only becomes my problem at such time that he comes and stands over me or disturbs me in the peaceful or tranquil enjoyment of my meal. Now, uh, uh, by that I mean, my presence there is not geared to--to redeem him. Uh, uh, it's not geared to redeem him, uh, to love me or to--to think well of me. But I 01:45:00also feel that if I sit next to him in a classroom long enough, or that if I sit next to him on an airplane long enough, that somewhere along the way he's going to come to the same realization that my classmates came to who had to live with me. Uh, without their consent. That this guy, uh, uh, he's just another guy. That, uh, he has, uh, basically he does many of the same things that we do, but, uh, he doesn't like asparagus and I don't like Brussels sprouts.

WARREN: Well, how different are you from Dr. King, then?

JORDAN: Well, I, I think that Dr. King's philosophy is, is such that through this, uh, creative, uh, suffering, I think he calls it, that 01:46:00you--you reach out and you make this man love you. You cultivate--and I'm not--I've never been quite sure what he means about love because when he talks about this love, he says that, uh, I can assure you that you can't like everybody. Well, uh, I agree with him on that. A lot of folks, white and black, I don't like. A lot of folks I don't want to live next to door, a lot of folks I don't want in my house for dinner or collecting my bills or for anything else. So I have no problems with that. But this business of--of redeeming the soul and I guess this is through some sort of spiritual revelation as to the goodness and to--to some sort of perfect situation where the negro is concerned. I'm not interested in that. Uh, when I send my child to 01:47:00school or when I go to school or when I use a public conveyance or when I pay my taxes, I just don't want anybody to disturb me in the free exercise of my constitutional rights. Now, how he feels as he sees me exercising my rights, it's his problem.

WARREN: Tell me this, suppose we had all matters of constitutional rights clearly defined and clearly settled, so there's no friction on that, on that level, the civil rights, constitutional rights, what remains?

JORDAN: Well, I think if you had this thing clear--

WARREN:--all clearly settled.

JORDAN: And you had the behavior of folk as a result of this clarity controlled--

WARREN:--controlled by what?

JORDAN: By the law itself, by the operation of the law, to say that, uh, uh, when this man comes to register to vote, that you cannot, uh, impose upon him arbitrary standards because he's black. That, that 01:48:00when you get these kind of things, uh, uh, dissipated, that somehow or other as this negro operates freely in this situation, that even the most prejudiced white man will, will come to see, as he sees him operating freely. And this has been his problem. He's always seen him operate under given set of circumstances and can only appreciate him for him acting under this given set of circumstances, uh, dictated by custom, mores and uses. But when he sees him acting as a free agent, and at that time he will come to, I believe, ultimately, some appreciation of this person, not as a black man but as an individual.

WARREN: That is, you are putting your faith then in, uh, a legal, uh, framework which allows the human free play after that.

JORDAN: That's right, that's right. And once you get this free play, 01:49:00once you get this intercourse, uh, once you find that when you sit next to this man that, uh, uh, he reads a newspaper, that he's tired, uh, on the bus going home, that he's anxious to get home to his wife and a, and a warm bowl of stew just like you are, that you find here similarities. You find his similarity of hope to some extent, a similarity of despair, uh, uh, and these are common bonds.

WARREN: This is the human community you put your trust in--

JORDAN:--that's right--

WARREN:--once the legal framework is settled.

JORDAN: That's right. But now until such time that the bus driver knows that it's illegal for him to crack me across my head, or that he does not have the sanction of the state to hit me across my head because I sit on the front seat, then we can never reach this point of human community because he always sees me, uh, uh, in a servile or--well, a 01:50:00different situation. He cannot see me as I really am. He sees me in a condition imposed upon me by (??) circumstances.

WARREN: What happened, what happened in Germany--and I don't know the answer to this--

JORDAN:--I hope you don't expect me to tell you--

WARREN:--in the late twenties, about the Jews, where total legal protection and, and apparently, the, uh, full participation in a society, for all, all practical standards.

JORDAN: Well, I think that you have to look at the leadership there, a man who take this certain group of people and exploited them, um, because of their, um, religious difference, uh.

WARREN: That was a small matter, though, wasn't it, something else was involved. Religion was just something that was--

JORDAN:--he had--

WARREN:--a difference, in other words, not a religious difference.

JORDAN: Yes, uh, here were some people different, and if I attacked them on the basis of that difference, then I can ride the, the crest of power.

WARREN: Let me ask the question, shifting abound a little bit: when James Baldwin writes that the Southern mob, that is, the street gang, you know, or the cops in Jackson, act as way they act, they do not represent the will of the Southern majority. Does that make sense?

JORDAN: Well, it makes sense, uh, in that I believe the vast majority of Southerners, for white Southerners for some reason or other, uh, uh, would be reluctant to be identified with this lunatic fringe. And I also believe this, that you got on the one extreme maybe 20 percent of 01:52:00the people who are totally opposed to it. On the other side this other 20 percent--

WARREN:--opposed to the mob, you mean.

JORDAN: Opposed to the mob and the tactics of the mob, this kind of thing. Uh, and who also believe, uh, in the complete equality and freedom of the negroes. And then you have the other 20 percent that composes the mob. But then you have a 60 percent who, uh, will go pretty much the way that the populace goes, so long as it doesn't involve them having to make a--a personal witness, um--uh, a testimony. Uh, and this is why I think leadership is so very important.

WARREN: There's no leadership in the South now except for, uh, the segregationists, is there, no real leadership? There's some, a little spotty, but there's no fundamental leadership there?

JORDAN: Because I think that the real fundamental leadership is silent and the people

WARREN: (??)

JORDAN: That's right. And their silence makes them, uh, ineffective, and once you can give, uh, once a guy like Chuck Morgan in Birmingham who vocalizes--uh, this takes an awful lot of courage and ultimately it resulted in Chuck's having to leave Birmingham, uh, and it takes a great deal of courage because what the man is faced with or what he thinks he's faced with is a very bread and butter matter. He's a lawyer who must necessarily depend upon white clients for business, and this business depends upon his house mortgage or, or his house mortgage and the grocery bill depend upon the business. That he's got considerations. And maybe if you can dispel these fears, uh, uh, you 01:54:00can get more people to act.

WARREN: One historian said to me sometime back, "Fear is the curse of the South." That is, the fear of the white man for the white man.

JORDAN: How do you want me to respond to that?

WARREN: Whatever you say, want to respond (??).

JORDAN: I think that, uh, the white man is afraid, not only of his white brother but of himself. He's not sure how he's going to act, uh, uh, in a given set of circumstances. And then the laws, the customs and the usage is of--of the community, uh, uh, make him feel, uh, compelled to act in a certain vein. Because, uh, as Reisman says, we all like to belong. Uh--um, and nobody wants, uh, everybody wants the pleasure of 01:55:00his brothers and of his peers.

WARREN: You just said a big thing there, and let's stop at that point. He's not afraid of his neighbor but he's afraid of himself.

JORDAN: Well, I think this is--

WARREN:--I think it's right, too; it's a big thing.

JORDAN: Sure.

[Tape 4 ends; tape 5 begins.]

WARREN: Resuming the conversation with Vernon Jordan. Continue. This will be tape 5.

[Pause in recording.]

WARREN: We were talking earlier with Mr. Jordan about, um, divisions of, um, policy and, um, temperament in negro leadership. So we pick up where we left off this morning, before we got on tape.

JORDAN: Well, um, I think the one problem of, of leadership that we're 01:56:00experiencing, uh, not only in the South but nationwide, uh. I guess, it's peculiar to the South. And that is that historically, uh, white people in power, political or what-have-you, have been accustomed to, to calling on two or three negroes in a given community.

WARREN: That was the old (??) Hartsfield, wasn't it?

JORDAN: That's right; that's right. I was--I was just about to get to that, uh.

WARREN: In Atlanta.

JORDAN: That's right.

WARREN: Who were--who were these, uh, negro leaders who were called on as ritual leaders in Atlanta? Who were they?

JORDAN: I don't think that you can ever exclude, uh, an old man that I, I revere, um, whom I love and have a great deal of admiration for, 01:57:00as/is, as/is a practicing lawyer, and that's the present Judge A. T. Walden who's just been elevated to ad hoc, ad hoc judge of, of the recorders and traffic courts (??) of Atlanta. The colonel (??) has always been, uh, an active Democrat. Uh--a real politician. And I think that during the four terms, as I remember, the Hartsfield administration that he could go to in Atlanta, Warren Cochran at the Public Street (??) YMCA, or, or call Walden, or even Dr. Clement at Atlanta University. Um, Mr. Milton at the bank, the president of Citizens Trust Company. Uh, these men who have, uh, considerable influence in the negro community of Atlanta--

WARREN:--wasn't the, uh, Martin Luther King Sr.?

JORDAN: Very much a part of that same--

WARREN:--part of that same--

JORDAN:--very much a part of it. And--I personally feel that he would still be but for the stature and place in the sun that, that his, uh, his boy has, uh, in the area of civil rights. But I think that Hartsfield's modus operandi was to call these selected negro leaders who pretty much controlled what happened in the negro community. Uh, they could keep, uh, John Doe quiet if John Doe was talking out of line.

WARREN: Could they--was this a vote delivery that was involved here who--

JORDAN:--well, there was a vote delivery here but, uh, it's always been my opinion that, uh, the negro leaders delivered the vote but never delivered much in return to the negro voters by way of compensation.

WARREN: You mean, you mean it wasn't a bribed vote, it was a vote in terms what, seeking mutual interests, is that it?

JORDAN: That's right. That you take a relatively moderate stand. In other words, that you don't cry "nigger, nigger," or with Hartsfield, it was negro policemen who were limited in their arrests to, to negroes. Uh, about in 1948--I forget the year now--uh, the appointment of negro policemen or the avocation of negro policemen, uh, uh, was a major advance, uh, to some extent. Now, I, I think that Mayor Hartsfield could not very well operate, uh, as mayor of Atlanta in 1964 because he would be certainly disillusioned at once he called the, the traditional negro leaders for delivery on a particular project, i.e., demonstrations that he would find that they do not, they cannot control.

WARREN: But didn't Mayor Huntington (??) found that out?

JORDAN: He found that out, uh, uh. He found out that he could not, number one, operate like Hartsfield. He found out, uh, uh, even prior to his election that though he had the backing of the traditional negro leaders that there was some 'young Turk's in the negro community here who, uh, who, number one, rebelled and repudiated the established negro leadership, and in a few weeks were able to deliver to another candidate ten thousand votes or more that would traditionally, but for the rebellion and repudiation, have gone right along with the traditional or established negro leadership.

WARREN: Now, what happened to the, uh, the splintering of the present day negro leadership in Atlanta and elsewhere? There's the problem of, uh, control and unity in negro leadership.

JORDAN: Well, I, I think that, uh,, uh, as in most situations, uh, the 01:59:00young people, uh, as they become more exposed to, to education and educational opportunities, as they become more aware of what's going on in their society, uh, and as they attempt to, to project themselves, to project their ideas, the--I think it's kind of a natural, there is a natural repudiation on the part of the, a whole lot of people who have been in power for so long, that they think that the young folk ought to wait their turn.

WARREN: You were talking this morning of your participation in the Summit Conference in Atlanta last year?

JORDAN: Yes.

WARREN: Before the, the disturbances in the city (??)?

JORDAN: Yes.

WARREN: And you diagnosed for me the basic split in the Summit, uh group. Will you do that again, please?

JORDAN: Yes. Well, I think that, uh, basically in the Atlanta Summit, uh, Leadership Conference that you have three basic groups. You have the--the direct actionists, uh, those people who feel, uh, that demonstrations per se, uh, are necessary, not only to dramatize the situation, but to shake the, the so-called power structure out of its apathy, and out of its intransigence, and out of its adamancy, uh, with regard to the status quo. I think also that there is a second group, the moderates, who believe in selective direct action, who believe in, uh--uh, concerted direct action at a particular target at such, at such, at such time that negotiation with that particular target, with 02:00:00the people who control that particular target has failed. But I think also that these moderates believe in, uh, prior to an onslaught of demonstrations or direct action, they believe in taking the approach of discussing first what the problem is with the people involved. Uh--uh, a sort of sustained process in negotiations and what-have-you, and then at such time that has failed, then I think they would take the position that negotiations are the only way to solve the issue.

WARREN: Let, let me ask you a question here. The second group, the moderates, are they moving in terms of limited objectives each time? Is that the idea?

JORDAN: Yes, I think they take the position that--

WARREN:--a limited objective?

JORDAN: That--that's right. That none of these situations are, are all or nothing. That--that you might have to make a concession here but this concession here is necessary, so that you might, uh, be able to move on another front necessarily. That, uh, you cannot in 02:01:00your petition ask for everything necessarily but that you that it's important that you concentrate on target A until such time as you completed this and then you move to B. And a third, I think a third group would, would be the established leadership, put some faith in the conference table. Uh, everything can be worked out. And I think that they use the term "worked out" because over the years things have been worked out, and generally been worked out, uh, not necessarily to the, uh, disadvantage of the negro but, uh, oftentimes they have, uh, get themselves to, to maintain things as they as, on a status quo basis. I think that the magic of the, of the whole thing is to find some formula 02:02:00whereby you--you give into each of the, uh, procedures of--of the three groups. I think maybe there is room for, for all of these things to operate. But I think that you have to assess it, like a quarterback assesses moving his team toward the goal line. Uh, Roy Wilkins made some reference to this in his speech to the annual dinner of the Southern Regional Council. There are times when it is appropriate for the quarterback to do a quarterback sneak and other times he needs to kick on third down. Uh, but it does not mean necessarily he would, uh, he would kick a field goal from his own two-yard line.

WARREN: Who are the people, uh, and which organizations are identified 02:03:00in the Summit, uh, Conference with these three positions? How do you align them or the persons up or the organizations up in terms of these three positions?

JORDAN: Well, I think that Jim Forman, uh, was executive director of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, uh, would stand out as the leader of the action group, uh, the first group that I mentioned. He's joined in that group by the, uh, Committee on Appeal for Human Rights who is presently led by a young fellow named Larry Fox, a student at Morehouse (??) College--the student--

WARREN:--at what college?

JORDAN:--the Morehouse (??) College--

WARREN:--Morehouse (??), yes--

JORDAN: The Committee on Appeal for Human Rights, uh, uh, is a continuation of the student coalition of schools here that, uh, led to the sit-ins of 1960. Uh, I don't think that the Committee on Appeal has the kind of creativity and imaginative leadership that, uh, its first leaders had. Uh, I think that the students, they suffer some frustration, uh, from what their older brothers or their, their classmates in high school who were a year or two ahead of them did. And, uh, they too want to join the crusade but I think they, they have not quite realized that the situation in 1964 and 1963 is not as it was in 1960. And the novelty of the sit-ins is not the same or the uniqueness of the sit-ins is not the same in 1963-64 as they were, uh, in 1960. And I think that your, your moderate leadership in Atlanta would come from, uh, uh, I think that you would really have to put SCLC, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, to some extent, though not wholeheartedly in the, uh, group with the direct actionists.

WARREN: What about the NAACP with which you are associated?

JORDAN: Well, I think the NAACP here is a, uh, pretty much the, would have to be classed in the moderate group. They did here advocate the, uh, sacrificial Easter (??), an economic boycott for Easter, uh, as an appropriate direct action technique. But I think that for all practical purposes that the local branch the NAACP here, under the leadership of Dr. C. Miles Smith, would have to be, uh, classed as a, as moderate in this classification as would the, uh, the Urban League. The, uh, Clarence Coleman who is the co-chairman of the Summit Conference and also director of the Southern region area for the, comprising several states in the South of the Urban League, National Urban League. I think that they too would have to be classed as moderates. Now, I would put the Atlanta Negro Voters League, which 02:05:00historically in Atlanta has been a very powerful influence, I think that we would have to class them, uh, as a part of the established leadership. Led by Colonel Walden, C.E. Scott of the, the editor of the Atlanta Daily World who believed that, uh, if you go to the white people, uh, and sit down, and talk with them, that these things can be worked out. I think, however, also that they have come to realize that, uh, that this, uh, is not enough. That, uh, it takes more than just sitting down and talking to get the kind of results. Now, the one thing, the one area where I think that Summit leadership has failed that is, there's been some failure to realize the, the power potential, or certainly if they realized that--to implement this realization in--in into the mobilization of the real political power and political strength of negroes in this town. You have an all-citizens registration committee, which does, uh, but registration and voting but registration and voting in the negro community has never been a completely total negro project. Uh, preachers preach about it, people talk about it, uh, and, but it has never been a total--uh, and I'm sure that this has not been achieved in many, many other communities.

WARREN: What about this thing you mentioned this morning about the split in the Summit, uh, Conference, uh, that, uh, Mr. Walker, Wyatt Walker, uh, had a memorandum--

JORDAN:--Wyatt Walker--

WARREN:-- (??)--

JORDAN:--my friend and one in whom I had--

WARREN:--for provocation of, uh, of a little bloodshed to point things 02:06:00up.

JORDAN: Yeah, well, Wyatt Walker, my good friend and one whom I have the utmost respect for, but one whom I reserve the right to disagree with. Uh, in his battle plan, uh, had something to the effect that, uh, we need to create an incident, and, uh, we need to show the policemen to be exactly what they are--bad and mean and evil. And there was something in his plan whereby there's a need to deliberately provoke them into action.

WARREN: Provoke a negro policemen into action against negro demonstrators (??)--

JORDAN:--no, no, no, no, no. This is, this--I'm sure that this does not, does not relate to the negro policemen.

WARREN: But they were there. They, they were--

JORDAN:--they were there.

WARREN: They were the spearhead, weren't they--

JORDAN:--and I'm not sure why--I haven't really given this any thought- -but this was a, this is a part of the astuteness of the local police force here, Chief Jenkins (??), uh, who was the chief of the police 02:07:00force here to thinking that, uh, the use of negro officers would have some disconcerting effect on the demonstrators. That, uh, they might not, not act quite as bad. Whether this proved to be true I, I'm not in a position to say.

WARREN: It removes one grievance, though, doesn't it?

JORDAN: Well, it's kind of difficult to raise the issue of police brutality because I think that, uh, uh, by nature the negro policemen are in sympathy with what the negro demonstrators are doing, but by the same token, they have the responsibility to do, uh, their duty, and if given orders to arrest, they have some responsibility to do just that, just that.

WARREN: But no roughing up?

JORDAN: Of course not. Uh, and I doubt seriously if you'd find any real instances of negro policemen roughing up demonstrators.

WARREN: Did you find any instances of white policemen roughing up demonstrators in this, uh, last affair?

JORDAN: There were reported instances. I cannot attest one way or the other as to the accuracy of these instances because, uh, I did not see them. I think that, uh, only those persons who were present, uh, could attest to that. I, I can speculate, however, that, uh, the very presence of negroes attacking the systems could engender some sort of, uh, retaliatory effort on the part of white policemen.

WARREN: Uh. (pause) If a memorandum exists to provoke some roughing up, isn't it likely that somebody on his own provoking some roughing up?

JORDAN: I beg you pardon.

WARREN: Isn't it likely that if the policy of provoking roughing up 02:08:00has been discussed, uh, that you may very well find some individual provoking some roughing up even against himself?

JORDAN: I think so. Uh, and they (??) provoke as a part of, uh, well, I think it's deliberate and I think that this is an error. I think that, uh--the, the protest is enough, that you don't have to deliberately, uh, provoke policemen to do oftentimes things that they might want to do, uh, but would not do by exercising some restraint under normal circumstances, and I think you push them. Now, uh--uh, it needs to be pointed out that, that I think that the demonstrators saw the fallacy of this position of, of deliberately provoking the police, and there were indications that they had refrained from so doing.

WARREN: How serious--and I mean by the word serious here--but how serious, uh, is the divergence of view, the fractures, not merely in the Atlanta Conference but of, of negro, negro leadership in general? How much of a problem is this?

JORDAN: Well, uh, I don't see it as--as a terrible problem because I think that no group or organization has any monopoly on the panacea. I think that each group can show where, uh, its particular method or its particular emphasized method has worked in a given situation. I think the problem that the civil rights organizations have is that of 02:10:00assessing a particular situation for exactly what it is, and on the basis of that assessment determine what is the appropriate action, uh, uh, that can possibly bring about the, the quickest possible result, that being desegregation.

WARREN: Human nature being what it is, isn't, um, there bound to be an element of mere struggle for power, too, in all these matters?

JORDAN: I, I should think that you can never, uh, subtract the--the glory aspect of it, or, or the struggle for power, or the struggle to, to take credit for, for that which has been accomplished. And I'm not sure that this is not healthy, uh, in--

WARREN:--all human anyway.

JORDAN: That's right. People are people. And, uh, uh, people want 02:11:00credit. Oftentimes people want credit when they're not, uh, due it. And I just know, what do you, what you do about a situation that's quite human. And, uh, uh, it's likely to recur again and again.

WARREN: There's one thing that--speaking historically--always, as far as I know, in, um, revolutionary situations, the leader, the single man has emerged, has taken charge. He has dominated the scene. Now, there is no single man who has emerged to dominate, or to control, to be the focus of, of the negro movement--using that general term rather than civil rights? The general, general focus for, uh, negro revolt, resistance, unrest, movement, whatever you choose to call it.

JORDAN: Well--

WARREN:--the nearest person in Martin Luther King--

JORDAN:--that's right.

WARREN: But he is far from, uh, uh, having an undivided support--

JORDAN:--well--

WARREN:--to capture the whole movement.

JORDAN: Well, it think there is no unanimity necessarily. Uh, but I think that even those people who would disagree with Dr. King's, uh, uh, method of operating will acknowledge that he is the titular head of the rights party, so to speak. Uh, and I think that the negro movement has, uh, historically had a one person who was a rallying cry. A Frederick Douglass during the abolitionist time or--and into the, the post was, post Civil War period--(coughs)--you had two people to rise to national prominence immediately following the turn of the century, DuBois and--and Booker Washington, who you had conflicting views. Uh, and then following DuBois and--and Washington, certainly there was James Weldon Johnson who served for a long time as the executive secretary in the NAACP. And, um, rising in the late thirties was Charlie Houston, uh, who was really the brain trust of the suits the Fourteenth Amendment. And during the war, Walter White who was a rallying cry. And after Walter White, Thurgood Marshall.

WARREN: And, uh, A. Philip Randolph. Randolph.

JORDAN: A. Philip Randolph, historically, is--is considered even today, I think, and is, in my opinion, the oldest statesman of the, of the movement.

WARREN: But now, here's, uh, a moment of, uh, of what appears to be a decisive conflict and the focal leader has not emerged. This may be 02:13:00another difference from all previous such movements. But the resistance to, to Dr. King is very great in some quarters that we know.

JORDAN: That's right.

WARREN: Very great.

JORDAN: It's quite great, uh--

WARREN:--people are stuck with him because there is nobody else to take his place, put it that way, in many cases.

JORDAN: Of course, in my personal opinion I think that, uh--and I think that history will prove me, will bear me out ultimately--that Roy Wilkins, who is quiet, uh, very efficient, uh, extremely able, uh, and capable man. Um, who in the NAACP circles and nationally and internationally is respected as an able leader, will probably come out as one of the unsung heroes of, uh, of the negroes' cause. Um, he leads and heads the largest and most powerful civil rights organization, uh, to some extent which, whose name itself perpetuates, uh, a kind of head but, uh--and I'm not sure necessarily Roy is, is associated as the leader. Uh, I, I wished he were because I think that he actually is. In my opinion, I--I consider Roy my leader and I consider Roy more important to the civil rights movement, uh, uh, in many aspects than, than Dr. King. You need to understand that I say this because I have an NAACP background, having worked on Mr. Wilkins's staff. Uh, uh, but I am not so blind as to not be able to recognize the real value that Dr. King has played in this movement. And that is of rallying negroes--I think you have to have a rallying 02:14:00cry. You have to have the cheerleader, the man out in front who, who's gonna get the crowds in, and, and who's gonna inspire them. I think that it was very appropriate that at the Washington march that, that Dr. King be last (??) because he was the, the personification of the emancipated. He was the Moses; he is the Moses for this era.

WARREN: What do you think, what do you think of (??) Bayard Rustin?

JORDAN: Well, I think that Bayard Rustin is probably a good thinker and a good organizer but, uh, not a leader in the true sense of the word. He--he is the administrator, the man who implements.

WARREN: Do you know the story, which is fairly common, that he was, was protected and called the great organizer of the March on Washington that could close ranks?

JORDAN: Well, I'm not terribly familiar with that.

WARREN: See, he came under fire. There were moralistic (??) things. 02:15:00And to protect him, it was said that he is "Mr. March on Washington." He is the, he is the indispensable organizer. It was a cover-up (??) to protect him, to, to prevent a split of the whole program.

JORDAN: I'm not aware of that.

WARREN: This is what a tale is, what it is, (??) you know.

JORDAN: Uh-hm, uh-hm, uh-hm. I'm, I'm just not aware. I understand he is a very competent man with very definite ideas.

WARREN: Also one of the things one hears is this, that he--his presence in the boycott, the school boycott was one of the causes of the split, uh, among the various organizations that supported the boycott.

JORDAN: Well, I, I have some--

WARREN:-- (??)--

JORDAN:--I have some hesitance to, uh, express myself in that because I'm--this is really the first time I've heard this.

WARREN: Well, I mean it's a story one hears, you know.

JORDAN: Yeah.

WARREN: In this (??) conversation.

JORDAN: Yeah. (pause) Well, I--but I--

WARREN:--please--

JORDAN:--I am not terribly disturbed, uh, at the competition, uh, by the numerous organizations that are now on the scene because I think that they all have a role to play. I think that the NAACP plays a major role. I think that it is still a guardian protecting, defending negro rights in this country. And will always be.

WARREN: Here's, here's the old--historically speaking, looking back, as well as we can with limited knowledge, there's always been this moment of a vast number of organizations as far as principles operating in, uh, such a social movement. By-and-large, there's always been one that has achieved, almost always achieved dominance, in order to carry things through to a settlement. Now the question is whether, uh, the 02:17:00negro movement can, uh, proceed without one policy achieving dominance. Of course, this may be different again from any previous situation, and history may show things that I don't know about offhand this way, where you have a multiplicity of voices. This is campaign (??) that many voices, operating (??).

JORDAN: Uh-hm. Yes, yes.

WARREN: And no single (??)--

JORDAN:--yes, yes, that's why you have so many churches.

WARREN: That's right.

JORDAN: Sure, sure.

WARREN: So (??)--

JORDAN:--and they all have their role to play--

WARREN:--all have their role to play.

JORDAN: And I, and I think that, uh, they all satisfy, uh--uh, certain, uh, notions and attitudes that people have. It gives, it gives people, uh, uh, a legitimate, uh, uh, place to express--

WARREN:--now, this is more like the rise of (??) proclamation like, say, the Russian Revolution where one thing where one they takes over (??) 02:18:00when one man takes over.

JORDAN: Well, now, there was, there was no taking over here. I think there was a sharing of responsibilities. Wasn't anything, as of the moment--

WARREN:-- (??)--

JORDAN:--the next two years, I don't know. Heroes are created in strange fashions, uh.

WARREN: They certainly are.

JORDAN: That's right.

WARREN: They sure are.

JORDAN: That's right, that's right.

WARREN: (??)

JORDAN: Now what will create--

WARREN:-- (??)

JORDAN: I've not for sure that by going to jail will create the next national hero.

[Tape 5 ends.]

[End of interview.]