Robinson: My mother washed and ironed for people in Highland Park to make a living. At that time people preferred that they have somebody to do their washing and ironing rather than to send it to the laundry. And my mother washed and ironed to augment the small salary that my dad made to take care of the seven of us that grew up. There were eight children, one died early, but there were four boys and four girls. And my mother washed and ironed, and she could wash a shirt and iron a shirt and make it look better than any laundry ever made it. And that's how -- and then sometime she would, maybe, as we grew up, she would go and baby sit for some of the families that lived in Glenwood or in Highland Park that wasn't too far away from the house that she could get to us in case of need be, or we could come to her in case of need. And that put us in real close proximity with a number of the white families because if she was baby sitting for them, we were close enough to them that she brought them home sometime, or they brought the children by the house in the afternoon before they went where they were going, and we all had supper together and ate together, and then about time for them to go to bed, she would carry them home and maybe sit with them until the mother and dad come in. By that time my dad was at home to be with us. And so that's how they managed to keep us with food in our mouths and what clothing we had. Now, during that time -- this is very important -- even with that meager amount of money, they were aware of an education, and realizing that education was important, they always urged and insisted that we get what they didn't have, that we get an education. And that if we got it and got a good education, we'd have something that nobody could take away from us, and that would help to prepare us for life. And also they instilled in us that "your mommy and daddy has always worked for a living, and this is what we want you to do. You might not make much, but an honest day's work for whatever you agreed to pay for is what we want you to always do. Then if you find out that you have done a lot of work and you feel you should have more, before you start out on that same job again," you ask Mrs. Barnes or Mrs. Sienei" or some of those people that my mother was working for at that time. "Tell them that you think you ought to have a little more and tell them why. And you notice that they will help you," which we did.

Freeman: Do you remember any racial problems or attitudes that your mother and father had?

Robinson: Well, let me go back to an incident and give you something where some people say it came down to me. When I was talking about the Missionary Ridge Church and that Mr. Shepherd had bought practically all of Shepherd Hills and had purchased all of that property that Negroes had owned on the front streets there -- he had everything except the Missionary Ridge Church. There was an agreement that Line Street was going to come all the way through to the Shallowford Road, and this would allow the people who come around Shallowford Road to turn right there where the church is and go down Line Street.

Freeman: Now when was this?

Robinson: This was -- it had to have been at least, maybe, fifty years. I don't recall. I was quite young at the time. I remember hen all of that was developed. I remember when you got to the top of Shallowford Road at Ridgeside Road, you didn't go around Shallowford Road, you just cut through a path and went around straight across that property there, down where the swimming pool is, all that was a field. So, I was a pretty good-size boy because after we moved to this side, west side of Missionary Ridge, see when we would come home in the evening, my mother would send me back over to her mother on Rockway Drive, maybe just to get milk and something -- maybe some vegetables or something for her to prepare for us in the evening to eat. And he didn't think anything about walking from Watkins and Vine street to Rockway Drive and back home before night. Because when she told us to be back here before night, "I want that milk for supper." But at -- and after they had this Understanding, and they were going to move the church back in the back, down there somewhere -- they had a spot already set aside for the church. And immediately behind that Ridge Church there's a cemetery. Now my grandmother, my daddy's mother, my mother's stepfather, and my daddy's sister, and a large number of my people -– they all were buried behind that Missionary Ridge Church. And so my grandmother on my daddy's side decided that since they were going to give up the church, that maybe they ought to have another lot east of the cemetery so they could put hedges all the way around it, and they would have a cemetery that would last a few years, looking into the future. And so she asked Mr. Shepherd that night, said, "Mr. Shepherd, what about letting us have another of east of the cemetery" -- I don't know whether she said "east" or pointed to the side of the cemetery. And he said to her, "Aunt Julie, we have decided that we are not going to sell blacks any more property up in this area." That sparked something in her -- and she jumped to her feet and she said, "Mr. Shepherd, at this moment we have decided that we are not going to sell you this church." And the people applauded her and stuck with her. And from that day until this day they haven't been able to get that church, even though they have burned it down twice. When they burned it down, well the black people in that area rallied to the occasion and rebuilt it.

Freeman: Now which Shepherd was that? Do you remember?

Robinson: Paul Shepherd. Yeah, I don't know -- one of the Shepherds still living, I don't know whether it's the son or the daddy still living. But they are the people who have the real estate agency now. So that's why that church is still there, and they never got the -- they had all agreements made, but when he made that wrong statement to tell them that he wasn't going to sell -- wouldn't say "black people" -- wasn't to sell Negroes or colored people, because then we wasn't saying "black" at that time. And it sparked something in her. Now Reverend Joe Johnson who was the pastor of Orchard Knob Baptist Church told me about this meeting, because he was presiding. And he was telling me where I got my aggressiveness or activeness because I didn't know. And one day when he was talking with me, I said, "Well, that's just the way I felt" because -- and I hadn't gone to college prior to that. I say, "This is the kind of thing they've been teaching me in history, and I recognized and developed some rather strong feeling about it." And he told me, "Say, let me tell you something about your grandmamma because you are reacting just like your grandma." So that's why I happen to have this side of the story, and I mentioned it in -- I gave the Ridge Church an ad this year, and I mentioned in that ad of the souvenir book that they had for the sake of posterity so it would -- that particular thing would be written down somewhere, because I don't know whether anybody else recalled it. My dad is gone, and I don't know who else now living was around at that time. So this will give you -- and then when I was living over at Vine and Watkins, right where back end of Parkridge Hospital is, well I had the privilege of knowing and growing  up with a number of whites I assume were liberal -- the Jones family that built observatory in Brainerd, the first observatory in Brainerd. And a group of the Ryan family there at Oak and Glenwood Drive. Oak Street didn't go through at that time, and all of that, Glenwood Drive was Dodds Avenue then. And that was -- I was trying to think of the family name that lived right 
there on the corner of Ivy and Dodds Avenue, because that was one of the large houses when I was growing up. There wasn't but three houses in Glenwood when I was growing up. Southern Dairies, Red Food Store, Colonial Bakery, none of those places -- right there where Colonial Bakery is, that branch through there was the baptizing ground for all of the churches around here; that's where we had all the baptizing, right there at East Fifth Street between Kelly and Lyerly Street, where that branch still runs under the Colonial Bakery there. That was the baptizing ground where all the churches baptized, and they had all the baptismal meetings there.

Freeman: Do you remember the time period when you moved to Vine and Watkins? I guess you were moving then from Hornesville? 

Robinson: Yes. Well, I was very small. I think I was less than a year old. Yeah, it was just a matter that we -- mama -- see, my mother and dad, they kept their connections to the Ridge Church until they died. Therefore every Sunday if we didn't go to the church right across the street from us on Watkins Street, we went back to the Ridge Church. As the children used to say, we lined up like ducks behind the mama duck and we went to church all the way over that ridge. And we [laughter] -- as I say, we went back and forth across that ridge in the evening after school just like we were going two blocks down the street, thought nothing about it. And say, if we went left when we got to the top of the ridge, we're going to my mama's mother’s house; if we went right we were going down to my daddy's people. They both came from over on that side, on the east side of Mission Ridge, but on -- mama would say, "on the south side of Rogers Road," and the other was about a mile back of the Missionary Ridge Baptist Church where I was born. So you both of them came from over in there, and both of them were members of the Missionary Ridge Baptist Church, because that was a social gathering place. And that's where my grandparents and all were part of that church on both sides.

Freeman: And so you didn't go to that county school over there?

Robinson: No. I didn't go. Now my daddy finished the eighth grade over there; that's as far as it went. He did finish the eighth grade from that county school.

Freeman: Well, was it the Lincoln School?

Robinson: No. I don't know what the name of it was, other than it was a county -- Missionary Ridge County School, I reckon. Because when they moved the elementary part of it down there on the corner of Line and South Street, it was called Missionary Ridge Elementary School.

Freeman: Now, where did you go to school?

Robinson: I went to first grade at Orchard Knob Elementary School, right here. I'm almost sitting right where [laughter] I started out, educational-wise. All of us, every one of my sisters and  brothers, all went to the first grade in Orchard Knob, and from Orchard Knob to Lincoln. And then when I left Lincoln in the junior high school in 1926, when it became -- this section out here became a part of the city, I passed out of the junior high school. And that's the year, in 1927, all the  kids from out in this area went to Lincoln Junior High School, that was before they started to call it Orchard Knob Junior High School. And at that point, 1927, I entered Howard High School in  the tenth grade, '27, '28, and I graduated from Howard in '29.

Freeman: So Lincoln Junior High School became Orchard Knob Junior High School?

Robinson: Yes, and they combined the two schools over here where the elementary school was.

Freeman: Orchard Knob and Third?

Robinson: Yes. And they closed the high school section for two or three years, and when they opened back up, it opened as Booker T. Washington High School in the county. So the high school that we had down here as the black county high school, Lincoln black county high school that you -- probably in history you read so much about the football games between Lincoln High School, Red Gaston and all of that group, when Lincoln and Howard was over on the West Side, and that's where the rivalry was. And that's why you had such a keen rivalry between Booker Washington and Howard because the attitude and the spirit was still there. And a lot of the parents who lived in this area in Churchville, Rosstown, and Bushtown wouldn't let their children go to Howard. They sent them out to Booker Washington. So that's why you hear all this background of the children around in this area having gone to Booker Washington, and you wonder why. Well see they went to the county school because that's where their roots were. And the white people wouldn't give them Central High School; see, Central was in this same -- I say situation – being inside the city limits after they annexed this area. But they held to Central up until about fifteen years ago, and then they gave up Central and moved out there in Harrison. But they maintained a Central High School, and all of the white kids from even the city schools around went to Central. And the guys that I'm serving in the legislature right now with, most of them went to Central. Mr. Nelson was the principal down there, followed by Hobart Millsaps. So I knew all of the people at Central, most of the football team, and Dean Peterson and his brothers, and Izzy Smith and all of the star Central football players. I recall when they purchased the property where the Presbyterian is on the corner of Derby and East Third Street, that was the Central High School first football field, practice field. After they developed a strong team, and then when the church bought that property, then they bought what they termed as Frawley Field. And Frawley Field was the area they bought over in Rosstown, where Parkridge Hospital is now, that was Central High School's football field. And they built a wood stadium there.

Freeman: This was prior to 1927?

Robinson: No! No, this was about -- when they bought –- when they bought that property, now that might have been early sixties, somewhere in the sixties, because it hasn't been too long that –- just when Central bought that property. See, because it was in the thirties, maybe when they were down here in Glenwood. Then they shifted from down there in Glenwood up to Frawley Field, and  they maintained Frawley Field for a number of years. And they kept it up until Parkridge has been there. Whatever the age of Parkridge is, it might be fifteen years or twenty years, but somewhere just like that. See, because I was out of college and married when they started with Parkridge, and when they bought Frawley Field I was in college, so it had to be in the middle thirties and late thirties. Because when I came home, they had developed Frawley Field, because they took fifty feet of the back part of our lot in order to build Frawley Field. 

Freeman: Over there on Watkins? 

Robinson: Yes, over on Watkins Street there, and they closed up Vine Street coming across there, because Vine Street went all the way through. See, I remember that because the Jenkins family -- if you remember Chester Jenkins, Jack Jenkins, the Kings, and a lot of people that along with my group who are still here in Chattanooga. All that came out of Rosstown, and right where Parkridge Hospital is now, that was our ball diamond and that's where I learned to play ball. And it was in baseball that I had planned to make my livelihood. I thought -- I read about all of the baseball stars and what they were making and everything. And then that's another thing that taught me the difference between what blacks could look forward to and what whites had at their grasp, because I felt at one point that I could play ball, and I could play as well as any of the whites who were growing up around there. 

Freeman: Did they play ball with you?

Robinson: Oh yeah, we used to play ball together. We really didn't have any real racial upheaval until later on. Sometime we might get mad and get in fights and they came over on our side of  McCallie, we'd run them back, and if we went over on their side, they'd run us back. When those boys that lived in East Chattanooga would leave school, trying to go over to East Chattanooga, we’d cut them off. But we got to know one another, and we began to -- we could live with one another, and I know a number of them right now and basically some of the friendships that we developed then, even though we were in two different cultural pattern or social pattern, as we look at race relation, we got to know one another. Even now we are still pretty good friends. When Raymond -- 

Freeman: [COMMENT UNAVAILABLE]

Robinson: Yeah. When I went to college and was playing baseball in college, well they had some scouts that came my senior year, and they came to talk with me about playing baseball with the  Pittsburgh Crawfords. There was a little fellow by the name of Griffin who was working real close with me. I played in the infield or I was pitching. And they offered us nineteen dollars a week and our traveling expenses. But we had to leave school at spring quarter and finish school later. And when I realized then that I was going to have to interrupt my education for nineteen dollars a week with no assurance of anything that was going to be daily -- and I had studied a little bit about how they got stranded out and everything -- then I gave up the idea of a baseball career. I thought that -- earlier I thought maybe I might be able if I didn't make the kind of money that Babe Ruth made, I would make money like some of the other lesser stars were making at that time. And I felt that I could throw a ball about as well as Satchel Paige, that I had watched play, come here and play with the Black Lookouts. But my mother would never let me quit school to play because that barnstorming thing was something that they couldn't see me interrupting my education. As I told you, they instilled in us that you stay at home, we'll feed you and give you a place to sleep, and we'll help you to go school. Now, my dad said, "I can't spend a lot of money on getting you out of jail; stay clean and we’ll help you."

Robinson: ...I’ll start at this point because my mother and father Always had me to evaluate everything in terms of completing my education. And so that was the end of a professional baseball  career, and that was thrown out of my mind. And I thought then that I should turn to personnel work in government. And when I immediately came out of school, I tried to get work in government, which I failed to get, in the personnel department. So the next thing for me to do was to turn to teaching. Now I didn't -- I want to close that gap in there -- I mentioned the fact that I was in my senior year when baseball interrupted. But after I finished Orchard Knob Elementary School, where I started, and then on to Lincoln Junior High School, now my high school was completed at Howard High School. Then my undergraduate four years was done at Tennessee State University.

Freeman: Where was Howard then?

Robinson: Howard, at that time, was on the corner of Tenth and Carter Street.

Freeman: Okay that was around 19--

Robinson: 1929 when I finished Howard High School. Then while in college I majored in history and political science, with practically a major in English and industrial arts, because I had a knack for industrial arts. There's a human interest in why I carried English and history; I started off with a major in sociology, but the teacher gave me what I considered an unfair grade because they didn't charge me with cheating by looking at somebody else's paper, but they thought that the answers that some other people had, that the other people didn’t know those answers and the only place they got it from was from me, and that I told them, which I didn't tell them. They probably saw  my paper. And so that made me change majors, and I lost a quarter toward my major. So I decided at that point that I wouldn't be caught in that trap again, and so I carried English  along with history and political science, social studies major which political science was a part of it. So that if anything happened in history, I could shift to English and not lose any time. In history it was under Merle R. Eppse in history where I became interested in politics. He was more or less a very strong person politically because he wanted to give us a basis that in the future, if we got a chance to work politically in government, that we would be prepared for it. And so that's  where the development and the early basis now -- 

Freeman: That was at Tennessee State.

Robinson: At Tennessee State. And I think the first time that I ever registered was during my senior year while I was in Nashville. I don't recall of having voted in Nashville; I may have but I  don’t recall having voted in Nashville. But the first time I  voted was as soon as I got back to Chattanooga in 1934. I voted in the first election because the teacher I had said that we  should involve ourself politically and we owed a certain part of our life to civic endeavor.

Freeman: You mean blacks had the right to vote.

Robinson: Huh?

Freeman: Blacks had the right to vote in Chattanooga then?

Robinson: Oh yes.

Freeman: In the 1930s?

Robinson: Yes, in 1930s. We organized in 19-- -- somewhere around 1936, we organized the Young Black Democratic club, and that's when we shifted the politics from the Republicans to Democrats. In Chattanooga at that time all black people were voting as Democrats. My mother and dad and grandparents, all them, They never voted as Democrats, and they thought that I was  practically crazy to come back to Chattanooga and start talking about the Democrats. We knew one person who voted as a Democrat, and that was Mr. Taliaferro who was principal of Lincoln High School and lived right there on the corner of Kelley and Oak Streets where his daughter, Genevieve Taliaferro, lives right today. That's where Genevieve was born there. Now, Mr.  Taliaferro was a registered Democrat, as we always said, and learned later that we didn't have registered Democrats. He just was known as a Democrat, therefore he went to Glenwood to register and vote. All of the other black people who live out here, regardless of where they live or that they live right in the middle of a white community in Highland Park, which some did live over on Highland Park, they all came to this side of McCallie Avenue and voted in what was known at that time as "12, 4." And all black people voted in 12, 4.

Freeman: Where were...[COMMENT UNAVAILABLE]...located? The polling station you're talking about?

Robinson: Yeah, the polling – this was just one precinct. All black people who lived in the city east of Central Avenue was in 12,4. That meant -- that's how those people up there right opposite the ball-field got into be 12,4, because that wasn't a part of the city at the time. And only -- oh, I’d say in the last ten years has this been cleared up completely, because I think up until about two years before Mr. Jenkins here died, Mr. Jenkins continued to vote in the white precinct, which he was registered in rather than into the black precinct. But in the last ten years, they've got --

Freeman: Which Jenkins is that?

Robinson: James L. Jenkins who's principal of East Fifth Street School. But he was a Republican, Mr. Jenkins was and always. But after we started to shift over in 1936 with Young Democratic club which Walter Parks was one of the first presidents of Young Black Democrats. Ted Bryant was a part of that Young Black Democrat; Julian Brown, Mrs. Jerry Winsett, and a few others,  quite a few others coming out of school around that time, and we organized the Young Black Democrat club. And seeing what they did, instead of us being bona fide Young Black Democrats, they called us Communists and really tried to put us out of business.

Freeman: And who is they? Whites?

Robinson: The whites, the white political structure, and the black people who were Republicans and who had control of the Republican votes and the Republican people. See they were buying and selling black people then because they had to pay poll tax, and you couldn't vote without paying poll tax. And they'd buy up a lot of poll tax and pass out to the people and give to them, and  then they voted them the way they wanted to vote. Well, when we didn't fall for that, having come out of school and finished college, we were a new breed. Therefore, being as progressive as we were, we were considered Communists, and especially since we were working with Estes Kefauver, whom they called "pink" and Stanton Smith was considered "pink," and Stanton was one of the organizers of the teachers' union. We tried all of those things along at that time. George McInturf -- we worked very closely with George McInturff, and the two Bean brothers in their  political...[COMMENT UNAVAILABLE]. Joe Bean, being well entrenched in the political struggle to his brother, ran against Estes Kefauver when they opened the Democratic primary in 1936, and Joe Bean beat Estes Kefauver for the state house. And we felt a little bad over the fact because Kefauver led the movement to open the Democrat party to all of us.

Freeman: To blacks.

Robinson: To blacks, and particularly out here in 12, 4, and it was a 12,4 box when it was finally counted, it was the one that made -- was the deciding factor in whatever vote it was at that time, and it carried a large vote. It was Sid Byars was the chairman out here; Sid worked for Mayor Bass and was considered a truant officer or an inspector of restaurants or something of that nature. But we vowed from that day on that we were going to change a lot of people, and from that day on, Kefauver never lost a black vote in Chattanooga.

Freeman: And so you all just took over the town.

Robinson: [laughter] Yeah, we took over the town, so to speak, and changed it from Republican to Democrat, because we were all young and very active, and what we were doing was doing what we thought was our constitutional rights. Even we just got jobs in the city school system, and all of us in the city school system -- John Pitts was in that group –- we were called in by the new commissioner who was McMillan at that time, who had come in as commissioner of education. That was the first commissioner of education. And we were somewhat reprimanded about our political activities and we were checked out very carefully as to whether we were Communists.  And they put the FBI on us and started to checking us out, and up until about thirty years, the FBI  followed us everywhere we went. And every summer when we went to get a job, we would have to clear through all of those channels. I recall last time Mrs. Winsett went to Northwestern University, it was the year I was building this house, the FBI came out here to question me about Mrs. Winsett who was entering Northwestern. They wanted to know about her affiliations and everything.

Freeman: What Winsett was that?

Robinson: Mrs. Jeannie Winsett who is a teacher at East Fifth Street. I think, at one time, was assistant principal to Mr. Jenkins. But they never did find any of us to be Communists. We did lose one person to the Communist party -- Welch; I can't remember Welch's first name, but he went on to New York, never did come back to Chattanooga. But we felt that instead of them influencing us,  that we were able and strong enough and had as much education as they had, and we would change them to our way of thinking, and let them help us as blacks to gain our rights to vote and to participate here.

Freeman: You mean there were white -- there were Communists in town?

Robinson: Oh yeah, there were some scattered here and some scattered in the teachers' local and in what we call the Southern Negro Youth Movement. I think this is the one thing that I learned  later on that made the FBI know that I really wasn't a Communist because Walter Parks, John Pitts, and a group of us -- when we found out that there were Communists in the Youth Movement, we went to Birmingham to the Southern Negro Youth meeting and offered candidates that we knew wasn't involved in a foreign government, or with a foreign government as we looked at it at  that time. We offered candidates to put them out of office, and if necessary we would try to put in people from here or some of the persons who were working with the bean pickers group from  down in south Georgia and north Florida and South Carolina. Then the FBI had gone up to the YMCA, it was USO club first and YMCA, there on the corner of Magnolia and Ninth Street, and went through all of our files, because we didn't have any files with locks on them. When Lillian -- right after I married after coming out of school, well, I told Lillian that the FBI was investigating me, and they were coming out to the house -- we lived on Greenwood then, 414 North Greenwood -- and they did come out to investigate me and talk with me. They all got quiet and they were all back in the kitchen, and they -- and the tension was there -- the thing that broke the tension, they say that when they heard me laugh in there, they knew that they weren't going to carry me to jail. [laughter] And what caused me to laugh, as I recall, they asked me, "C. B., what kind of" -- it wasn't C.B. -- "Clarence, what kind of Communist are you all? You don't have any locks on your file cabinet." I said, "Well, we don't consider ourselves Communists; we are citizens' committee just  like we said. We don't have anything to hide, and all we -- I was born here in Chattanooga," and Nashville is almost as far as I had been at that time. "But we’re just pursuing what we thought was our rights, and we were pursuing it right here under what we had been taught by our teachers were our rights." And we were controlled to a great extent at that time, because we were still under the domination of the heavy influence of our parents who didn't want to see us hurt by getting too far out and maybe getting killed, and this kind of thing. And we had to realize the fact that there were a lot of hostile people who wanted to hurt us and didn't mind hurting us. And some of us -- I reckon they were kind of like me -- I never felt that anybody was going to kill me or that I was going to get hurt because I wasn't asking for things that was contrary to Americanism. And when I did get in some very close places, was surprised and maybe sometime astonished because I'd -- it was hard for me to feel that those white persons that I didn't know were of that nature, and one or two times I found some of  them that I thought I knew were of that nature who wanted to hurt me or stop me at any cost because I was getting maybe a little bit what they called "out of my place." And there were some of them who took exception to the fact that while I was in high school, in school, I studied quite a bit with a number of students who went to Central. We got our lessons together. I was a fast student in math and foreign languages and science, and the girls there, the Scott girls where I worked at their store in the evening and in the summer, and one year when I was out of school.

Freeman: Where was this?

Robinson: Down on Dodds Avenue, Dodds and Duncan, a family of Scotts.

Freeman: They were white?

Robinson: White, oh yeah. I used to study with them, and I used to also study with Inez Kimball whose parents had a florist there at corner of Derby and McCallie. And then I recall another girl  from down in East Lake, I think it was Jewel Strong, and Kirkland Rose. I don't know whether I ever studied with Kirkland or not, but I knew Kirkland very well, and we talked quite a bit. And Ernest Sheridan and a few of the people who went to Central I knew most of the children in high school. And I would get the math most of the time, math and science, and work those problems out, and chemistry problems, and they would do the reading of the stories and literature and write  the book reports, and we would get together and exchange, and I'd show them the math and we'd go through it until they were really familiar with it. And the same thing where they would orientate me as to the book, the story, and the book report and I had it pretty well. So I and some of the Jones children -- so I was pretty close, and I couldn't imagine whites all, you know who weren’t like those people. And when I did, I had a little time adjusting and sometime it made me very angry for maybe be coming along sometime and some of them wanted to push me off the sidewalk, and didn't want me to strike back. My mother was telling me, "Well, try not to bother them, they have  the advantage of you." But I wasn't trained to be non-violent, so sometimes I would strike back. Then my mother and dad would whip me. Whether it was black or white, they'd whip me, and I  didn't know whether I was wrong or right. So I didn't intend to get but one whipping, and I [laughter] -- so they'd say, "Well, brother you started it." Well I might not have started it, but  I was going to get a whipping, so I knew that, and so since I didn't know who was to be judged as starting it, I did my level best to be on the topside when somebody bothered me. But I  didn't lose any friendship as results of it, and some of the friendships that I have now, some of the strongest friendships that I have right now in the city of Chattanooga were people that I knew back there in those days, who are now lawyers, bankers, and the like. We have maintained those friendships, and they stood me well. I feel that by working with them and I worked all my life. If I wasn't working in a grocery store, I was working, I was digging basements. I worked at Crane  Enamel factory, and I used to tell people -- and I worked to wait tables and bus tables -- whatever was necessary to earn a nickel or a dime honestly. I picked up somewhere that when they’d say, "Well, we see we've got a new kid on the block who's working." I say, "Well, I'm here not necessarily for a season, I'm here for a reason." And that reason was to get some money for an education. I always kept that foremost in my mind, and that was one of my guiding -- 

Freeman: This group you were telling me about, political group --

Robinson: Yeah.

Freeman: Is this the same group that went into other areas like your suit? Was it your suit against the school board -- what year was that? 

Robinson: I filed suit for equalization of teachers' salary on the tenth day of June, 1941, and it was in the District Court. Now that was -- a little more about the background. The white teachers under direction of Stanton Smith of the -- presidents of Stanton -- had a union. I think it was Chattanooga-Hamilton County Teachers' Union 246. The blacks had a union, the Mountain City Teachers' Local, AFT 428. I came into presidency after I started to teaching in 1937. I came into the presidency of that same local in 1939. Booker Scruggs who was in the city of Chattanooga at that -- he lived in the city -- but Booker was teaching in the county school. Booker Scruggs left the county school and went to work for the Chattanooga Housing Authority that had just built College Hill Courts. Well, when he left school, he engineered the election of C. B. Robinson to the presidency of  the Mountain City Teachers' Local, and that's how I got started. And I went with Booker to a kind of a coalition committee meeting that was established at that time between the white county -- city and county teachers, white union teachers – and the black union teachers. Two persons or three people that I remember very distinctly were Mrs. Margaret Locker, Annie Laura Millsaps, Miss Josephine Hamilton, as I said Stanton E. Smith, Willard Millsaps who died recently in Florida, and – another person who just retired from a principalship here. Also at  that time in the union, I think George Key and William Jackson up here, they were founders of that union, but William had gone out of Chattanooga, and I don't think George at that point was working with the union closely. But Julian Brown, Frank Jones, Napoleon Pattent, Theodore Kennedy, Gussie Griffin Hyatt, Mrs. Callie Myers, Rosa McGhee, Alberta Hyatt, and a number of others in that group were very strong union people. And Ruth Woods -- I bring her name in there because when we first decided that we were going to file suit for equalization of the salaries, there were about eight of us who were going to file suit. But when they came down to the day to file suit, they had some reason for backing out. Some of them had horror for courts, some of them found excuses that was just outright fear that they might get killed in so doing, which never crossed my mind that I could get killed as being a plaintiff. We got around and collected money from the various teachers to help sponsor the suit. Right here before our founders, I need to say that from 1937 to about 1939, the white union filed suit to establish equalization of salaries by means of setting up a single salary scale. But in 1939, they lost it because the court ruled that it was a class action suit, and it was improper. So for the next two years, with this coalition committee they worked with us. Then on the tenth day of June we got Mr. William Henry Elmore whose two sisters -- one worked at, maybe both of them ended up working at East Fifth Street, and their mother at one time worked in the cafeteria of Orchard Knob school, and a sister, Genova Elmore worked at Orchard Knob school in the elementary grades. They lived on East Fifth Street; their daddy was a dentist. Well, Mr. William Henry Elmore had just returned home from, as we say "up North," and had established a practice on East Ninth Street in the James Building. That's right next to the Congregational Church. He was the lawyer -- 

Freeman: The James Building? 

Robinson: I think that's what they called it at that time. 

Freeman: Odd Fellows. 

Robinson: Well, it was the Odd Fellows hall, that's what it was. He was practicing at this place, and he was the local lawyer of record, and he guided the suit. At that time, and still, not as active as I was then, I was a very active person in the NAACP. Dr. Stevens, I think, was president of the local chapter. We were able to get Thurgood Marshall, who was a young lawyer at that time -- that’s the same Thurgood Marshall that's now on the United States Supreme Court -- Thurgood Marshall served as our attorney for that equalization of salaries in the federal court here. I don't recall the judge's name here, I know it when I hear it or looking at it. I have the document over here in this file cabinet now that we ordered -- Reubin Taylor got it from me last year -- and it's the first time I had read that document. And some of the things that I said, or supposed to have said, it was really amusing, because it says, "Clarence B. Robinson, a colored man." [laughter] And it goes on to tell me all about my -- about it and my signature is on there, so I had to be the one to sign it. But Thurgood Marshall handled it, and Mayor Bass, who was the mayor of Chattanooga at that time, and the city attorney –- I don't remember his first name right now -- his name was Anderson. They got with the judge and they -- and after judge said that the suit was proper and everything was in order and everything, then they agreed that we settle it out of court. And they told the parties to get together and arrange -- or agree upon the settlement. On -- I think it must have been -- I think it was the seventeenth of September, 1941, they filed with the court, the agreement which constituted the decree or whatever you -- the final action. They agreed that they would establish a single salary schedule for the city of  Chattanooga, and that the money to put the schedule in operation would be done in three steps, so much of '42, so much of '43, and the final step in '44. And they did that. In 1944, the salaries were equalized and that salary schedule was based upon training and experience. Everybody who had the same amount of training and experience would get the same salary. 

Freeman: Regardless of color.

Robinson: Regardless of color. And for the next ten years the city was required to give me a copy of the salary schedule every year with the names, experience, and everything so that it could be checked out to see whether there had been any violations. The thing that was, I reckon, a unique thing that was noted, that there was a greater difference within each group, the black group and the white groups, there was greater disparity in the salaries within the group than there was the difference between the two groups.

Freeman: Oh, in other words, everybody got paid differently regardless of race or color.

Robinson: Everybody was getting -- your base was twenty dollars above what -- see, the white teachers start off with eighty dollars a month, the black teachers were starting off with twenty dollars a month. Now, prior to that many of the black teachers even made less than sixty dollars a month. Some of them didn't make any -- made as low as thirty-seven dollars a month. They were under a political agreement wherein they'd take one teacher's job or salary and split it and give two people a job. So, really, the black teachers ranged from thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents up to sixty dollars.

Freeman: Twenty dollars less than the whites.

Robinson: Yeah. I don't know whether any whites ever got back under eighty dollars or not, but I imagine the thing was so politically corrupt at that time until some of them undoubtedly was on that same basis. Now, I know they did publish the salaries back then, but being only interested in the black side of it, I don't remember all of the salaries. But the Chattanooga Times published all of the salaries at one time, and for a number of years I kept that. And I should have it now as a matter of  record. It's probably –- the Times probably could find it, but it’d be because it was just before 1941, somewhere back then in  that era. But we did have the cooperation of the white teachers’ union, along with blacks, and that was the Mountain City Teachers’ Local and the Hamilton County Local 246 working together, and both checking, working together over those next ten years. Through that, not only did we equalize salaries, but we were able to bring back into the black schools the same textbooks that were being used in the white school. Up until that time most of the textbooks that we used were hand-me-downs that had been used in the white schools, and was out of date or out of print, some of them, but then we got them. The desks that we got –- had in schools were desks that were used in white schools, and they’d give the white children new desks, and they’d send the other desks to the black school. We didn’t have any black supervisors, which we got in after we fought that, and we finally got Johnetta King Williams as a black supervisor to work with us in the schools. The first time they gave us a white supervisor to work, then we got a black supervisor. I think from that time on, we’ve had several black supervisors. We got music and art put back into the black schools, which had been -- 

Freeman: Now, at this time you were still the leader of the teachers’ union?

Robinson: Yeah, I was the head of the teachers' union for nineteen and a half years, say approximately twenty years I was the head of the local. Even after I became principal, when it was against the national A.F. of T.'s rule that principals hold office in the A.F. of T., but see I had come from the teacher to principalship, and I had come from -- and I was a teacher when I started off as the head of the union, and my point of view, and still strong point of view, was always from a  teacher's position. I followed the educational tie with teachers rather than the legal tie that said that you are no longer a teacher, you are part of the administrative structure of the school system; therefore you're supposed to think administratively with the superintendent, new school board -- I was in the middle of that fight, too, to establish a city school board. See, we didn't have a city school board; we had -- as I told you, we had a commissioner and a superintendent. When Commissioner McMillan was the -- commissioner of education, Commissioner McMillan and Superintendent Walter T. Robinson, I think his name was, ran the school -- no school board. Between the Chattanooga Educational Association and the Chattanooga Teachers Association, the seven years in which I was head of both the union and the teachers' association, we got an elected -- I mean we got a school board which was a perpetuating kind of thing, and I was glad. We always wanted an elected school board, and this is one of the things that Johnny in his leadership John Franklin, in his leadership as the commissioner of education must have the credit of breaking what was one of the most vicious type of perpetuation that we’ve seen in Chattanooga. But it was done with a good motive to get good people, a blue ribbon kind of people, on the board of education because they wouldn't run for election, to you wasn't going to get the caliber of people on the school board. And that was the era -- and I must say that during the time of this perpetuated board we did in Chattanooga grow into national recognition for the kind of school and the quality of education that was being turned out here in Chattanooga under Mr. Derthick, and with Mr. Frank Trotter, chairman of the school board at that time. Under their leadership we did have a school system that was nationally recognized for the caliber of  education that we were turning out here. And we have slipped a little bit since then, but we still don't have what I would consider a bad school system; it's still much better than it was, and we have a lot of potential there to relate to it. In those forty-one years that I was in the county, thirty-nine years in the city school system and two years in the county school system.

Freeman: That's what I was going to ask you about. You started in the county?

Robinson: Started in the county and --

Freeman: And you were active in the youth movement, the black youth movement.

Robinson: Oh, yeah.

Freeman: Did they call it the youth movement then, just the youth movement?

Robinson: Well, I reckon we just called it the young peoples -- well, it was the colored movement because it was made up of just young blacks.

Freeman: Young blacks. How did they let you into the city school system, and how is it that you got to be a principal and all this part...[COMMENT UNAVAILABLE]...about all these constructive changes?

Robinson: Well, in coming back to Chattanooga I thought I was going to Get a job, and it was so tied up politically until I reckon I didn't see the right people. Therefore, I came home with the expectation of getting a job, and superintendent said well he thought he was going to give me a job. But when the time came to school open, I didn't get it. And I couldn't quite understand that. I was later told that I didn't see the right people, and I didn't make them an offer. I didn't know -- I was so naive -- I didn’t know that you had to buy a job at that time. It was through some of the employment agencies where you put your money down, and they would try to find you a job, that I learned that I was being blocked because of the fact that I didn't see the right people. You couldn't get in unless you committed yourself to certain political obligations, and put down some money and offered to pay a certain amount out of your salary, that little sixty dollars you're making. Then I got in the county by Charles Neal who recently passed -- left a job up in Soddy and went to Nashville to work in agriculture. And I went to Soddy and lived with the Ramores for a few months and worked at Soddy Elementary School. Well, Charles Neal decided he wouldn't stay --

Freeman: Is that the Soddy-Daisy now?

Robinson: Yeah, yeah, the same Soddy, up here -- I was about two blocks north of the mine entrance, entrance of the mine up there on the side of that mountain. That was the home that Miss Ardella Graves -- that's where they all came from -- Gail Chambers and Glenn Chambers and all of them came from up there, and Frank Ramore who retired as principal of Summit School. It was his parents that I lived with when I first went up there.

Freeman: Soddy elementary was a black school?

Robinson: Huh?

Freeman: Soddy elementary was a black school?

Robinson: Oh yeah, Soddy elementary. Well, everything that I was in up until I got to Jefferson Street, that I was principal of or teacher in was all black school. Then when Charles Neal came back, I had to give up the job at Soddy, and as it happened, they had a vacancy opening at the Summit Elementary School, up here at Summits, Tennessee. Wendall Collins' mother came out on leave of absence with him, and that's the reason I always felt an obligation to Wendell to help him any kind of way [laughter] that I could, because had he not been born at the time he was, had come along at that time, I might not have had a job. So I went to Summit and worked under Chunn, his first name is James, I think. Chunn used to be there on East Ninth Street, there at the building just above Dr. Bynes’ building, upstairs there, and he was the principal at Summit until he retired. He stayed up there as an income tax...[COMMENT  UNAVAILABLE].

Robinson: [COMMENT UNAVAILABLE]...Summit Elementary School for a year teaching the third and fourth grade. Then the next year they moved me to Chickamauga Elementary School as principal-teacher. At Chickamauga Elementary School, where I taught the fifth and sixth grade there, as well as be the principal of the school. And during that time I worked with Mrs. Mamie Walden who was industrial arts teacher at that time at Chickamauga Elementary School. Mrs. Strickland, Margie Strickland, was the other teacher that worked there with me. The Chickamauga Elementary School at that time was on the Airport Road; it was a white frame structure just before the Airport Road crossed the railroad track, right there where the overpass now comes over to the airport. If you go down the Shepherd Road -- Shepherd Road came into the Airport Road right there at that junction. And this is where the school was. I think there was -- the church, St. James Church, Methodist church, is, I think, is still there, and the school was on the south side of the St. James Methodist Church. That was before they moved it up on The Shepherd Road there by the Highland Cemetery.

Freeman: Now this was the Chickamauga School that you're talking about out in Shepherd?

Robinson: Yeah, it was Chickamauga Elementary School, that's the name of it, but it's in Shepherd, Tennessee. All that section out in there used to be called Chickamauga, Tennessee.

Freeman: Oh, did it really?

Robinson: Yeah. And there was a substation out there that was -- it picked  up the name "Shepherd" after the family of Shepherds which is a part of Paul Shepherd's family moved out in there, and that whole area, you know, took the name of Shepherd. And that's the background to why it happened to be Shepherd rather than Chickamauga. And then after working a year at Shepherd, well Mrs. Collins came back into the system, and they had to create a place for her, therefore the place that was closed -- that was open would had to have been at Chickamauga Elementary School. And there's a human interest story there -- Mr. Rankin, who was superintendent at the county schools at that time, moved me to Chickamauga Elementary School because I had a degree, and I went there to work with another person who was, from all indications, a good teacher. But that person refused to work with me because I was much younger than she, and she couldn't work with me. Mr. Rankin felt that inasmuch as I had shown some promise and had a degree, that he couldn't leave her there over me, because they were trying to upgrade the principalship of the school. When Mrs. Collins came back into the system, well they had to make some kind of adjustment. Well, in the meantime, I was trying to get into the city. And Irvin Boynton had been suspended from Alton Park -- no from Calvin Donaldson and Ox Clemming went in one year for Irvin Boynton, and Ox Clemming had been selected as coach for Lane College, and so he left. When we learned about that vacancy, I contacted the Chamberlain on the ridge that my father was working for. They got with -- Mr. Rankin wasn't superintendent that year -- there was a -- I can't think of that woman's name now who was -- 

Freeman: In the city?

Robinson: No, she was superintendent of the county school. They talked with her, and she talked with the superintendent of the city schools, Superintendent Robinson, and they got together with Mr. Craven -- I had talked with Mr. Craven, and they got together, and so I was given a job at Calvin Donaldson Junior High School. And so that created the vacancy at Chickamauga school, and they moved this teacher from Summitt back to Chickamauga school, and gave Mrs. Collins her old job back at Summitt, and that's how I got back into -- got into the city system.

Freeman: So you didn't have to buy your job.

Robinson: I didn't have to buy a job coming back in, and so I worked there at Calvin Donaldson School as a teacher for about nine years. Then I went from Calvin Donaldson School to Spears Avenue School as a principal to replace Mrs. Morrisee, who is a very good friend of Mrs. Billingsley who was principal of Calvin Donaldson at the time. And then when Mrs. Billingsley retired the next year, I went back to Calvin Donaldson as principal to Calvin Donaldson Junior High School. And then they'd had some changes up here at the Second District School; the school had burned and they had built -- finally built a new school, and Julian Brown was up there. Julian decided he preferred elementary, and he went back to Joseph E. Smith School, and Mr. Derthick urged me to go to Second District. I didn't want to go because I had Calvin Donaldson really moving at that time, and that's the reason why he said he wanted me to go up there. And so I did, and he made a statement that, really, I reckon if there was anything it was a challenge, and said, "Well, this is a principal that you ought to move by." He said to me that you can help me if you'll take it, after I had turned it down six different times. The thing that hit me one night I was thinking about it: if I don't help him now when he needs me, what right will he have to help me when he has something that I want? And so I went on to Second District and stayed at Second District until the problem came up with the superintendent that sent me to William J. Davenport as a demotion.

Freeman: What problem was that?

Robinson: One of those, you know, as you say, I have always been forward and said what I felt about education, worked for black student and for the best interest of black student and black people, therefore that wasn't the kind of colored boy that everybody wanted. And so the best thing -- if you ever get a chance, you demote him, fire him, or get rid of him. And so when they built a new junior high school out in Alton Park and the freeway came through there, and they had to close Second District School, well then the logical person to go to Alton Park Junior High School, they didn't send me to Alton Park School, they sent John Franklin to Alton Park and sent me to William J. Davenport, an elementary school, from the junior high school. Now, Johnny showed himself to be a man. He came out here, sitting right here in this room here, this part wasn't over here, and he said, "Now, if they're doing this to hurt you, I'm not going to take this job." I said, "Johnny, you can't afford to do that because your future in education is in front of you, and there'll be a lot of things that you will want, and they'll use this against you. This what they're doing, or attempting to do to me, is not of your making. So, you go ahead and take the job, but with that attitude that you have, if I should go to court and they give it back to me, you won't be hurt." I said, "Because I don't know whether I'm going to accept this." But when they agreed to give me the same salary for going to Alton Park, an elementary school, as I was getting for the junior high school, well then, I -- some of the attorneys say, "Well, you probably come under the same classification now that some of the county teachers, when they went to court and the court ruled that it wasn't a demotion because it wasn't a demotion in salary." So I went on to Davenport School and I found an opportunity there to do something for a lot of children. That was the lowest census crack in Chattanooga. There were that next year after I got there, white children from up on Mitchell Street, now they all were in school. And when I started to seeing those children benefit from my being there, then I became adjusted to it and since the salary wasn't making any different, I began to enjoy. Then I proceeded then to try to improve the quality of school. I took as a slogan "Better instruction of reading, better reading through better instruction of reading," and that was our slogan. Every teacher who was committed to that -- we didn't have a library, therefore we had what I could see as a few extra feet in the back of that cafeteria over there, I had it petitioned off and built me a library in the back of that cafeteria, and had the people down at Kirkman to build some shelves. Then the next year we got a part-time librarian to come to the school, and prior to that I had every teacher with a library center in their room. So this got me into the library work. Now, this is an interesting story that parallel some of this other activity. During those early days, we couldn't go to the Chattanooga Public Library. When they built it up there on McCallie, we tried to get in, but they wouldn't allow us. They had a -- 

Freeman: Do you remember what year that was?

Robinson: I can't remember the year, but it was three or four years, maybe, before the old Howard moved into the new Howard. At that time the Chattanooga colored library was in the basement of the Howard High School. Mrs. Hunter was the librarian there. We were even having our teachers' union meeting down there, and particularly our executive committee on Saturdays because it was a nice warm place to go and we didn't have very many places that we could go that wasn't, maybe, in some place that was questionable. This is where we got the idea that every time we wanted something, or to study or something, we'd have to send up to the other library and get it. So being head of the union and every thing, we made that as one of our goals, that we were going to open up that library up there. We had a couple of meetings with the librarian that was up there, and they didn't want us to use that library. When they realized that we were meeting over in that other library, they ordered Mrs. Hunter not to allow us to meet anymore in that library, that we  weren't going to -- I'm assuming they took the idea -- took the position that we weren't going to meet in their building and fight them too. So we had to find another place to go and meet, and we met round in the I think the basement of one or two churches to carry on our movement. Then we were more determined then that we was going to get in that library than ever before. And at that time I was working with the CRC, Community Relation Committee. It was an integrated group of whites who through this connection that I had been a part of through the years who was working to help us integrate and get into integrated life of  Chattanooga. Only two places we could meet in the white community was at the St. Paul's Church over on Seventh and  Pine and Reverend West's church which finally moved to Baldwin Street right off of McCallie and Baldwin. Those were the only two places that we could have an integrated gathering.

Freeman: You did have a Community Relation Commission of blacks and whites?

Robinson: Yeah, had a Community Relation Committee --

Freeman: In the forties or fifties?

Robinson: Yeah, in the forties and fifties, and we used to meet round at various houses. Dr. Livingston was living down here in Glenwood at Fourth, I think it was Fourth, and Kilmer, right in there. And Leah James was the head of the Family Service Unit, who was a very strong person in the movement at that time. The former pastor of Pilgrim Congregational Church here at Dodds and Third Street -- I can't call his name right now. Reverend Moore who finally left the Unity Church and went to Greece to work. These were --

Freeman: Now this was before 1960 though, this was before the civil rights movement?

[next]