[back]

Robinson: Yeah, this was before the civil rights movement. We laid the foundation -- well, in fact, we -- a lot of our information was coming through there. And this is how we would know what the movements were in the library and what was going on, and when they were going to put us out. And they fired one lady up there because they thought she was leaking the information. She worked in the library. She was a liberal kind of young lady and worked in the library as one of the clerks, and they fired her. She tried to say to -- I won't call the other person's name Because this person worked real close to me [laughter] -- and who since has turned.

Freeman: What do you mean "turned"?

Robinson: Well, I mean she --

Freeman: [COMMENT UNAVAILABLE]

Robinson: She was a white woman, and she was working with me as an individual and in support of a lot of things that I've worked for. And then even during the campaign for my election, we had some receptions and things in the white community. She was one of those "Pauls" who had a conversion.

Freeman: Okay.

Robinson: [laughter] And I don't whether that conversion came from some pressure of her board or what. Some people, after they get out from under a certain kind of pressure, you find out that they weren't the kind of people that they acted when they were under certain domination and influence.

Freeman: Okay. So this is the lady who fired the other lady?

Robinson: Yeah.

Freeman: The white lady at the library who is now working for you.

Robinson: Yeah, yeah. And then we were trying to figure out how to get the board to open it up. Well, we found out that the law says that the people who’re serving on the library board, Hamilton County-Chattanooga Library board or the Chattanooga Library board had to live inside of the city limits of Chattanooga. And there were two people on there that did not live inside of the city of Chattanooga. And that was our challenging point. And when it came up time for election, then we thought the time to make our move was at that point, to get a black person who lived inside the city on the library board so we would have a visible person who would champion our cause on the library board. But all of our information, the person who was championing our cause on the library was white, but she was almost a loner in the wilderness with no help on that. So in the...[COMMENT UNAVAILABLE]...Mrs. Patton, Irene Patton, was appointed the library board. And working with this person and a couple of other white persons on the board, they changed the policy, and opened the now Chattanooga-Hamilton County Bicentennial Library. That's how that library was opened.

Freeman: What year was it opened? Do you recall and -- were you at Second District then?

Robinson: Yeah, I was at Second District.

Freeman: You were up there in fifty -- went to Second District in ‘51 I believe.

Robinson: Well, I was at Second -- let me see now, we've been there twenty-three -- I'm not sure whether that library has been -- yeah, it was in the late fifties.

Freeman: Yeah, I remember --

Robinson: We opened that library before, if I'm not mistaken, we opened that library before the Supreme Court decision in ‘54, somewhere between ‘50 and ‘54. 1 think that's when it was because a large number of our accomplishments were made before the court's decision.

Freeman: Right. I can sort of help you because I go back to that same time, see.

Robinson: Yeah.

Freeman: I was in the eighth grade when you came to Second District. Mr. Brown was the principal the first year it opened up after it was new. And I went to Howard in ‘53 and was in the tenth grade when the May ‘54 decision came. So it would have to have been ‘51...[COMMENT UNAVAILABLE].

Robinson: Yeah, somewhere around in there, and we worked -- I don't know whether today the people who are serving on the board with this person know that that was the source of our information. She'd go to the library meetings, and they'd have a library meeting. Then after the library meeting, I believe Lillian and I were living on Greenwood at that time -- she'd leave the library meeting and come out there, her and her husband and sit down and tell me what went on in the library board meeting, so that we through our -- see, this was done through our teachers’ union group. That was the moving force, that was the power base of  those days from which I operated from, with inside of the educational structure. Albert Seay was a strong person in  that movement. As I told you, Julian Brown and Mr. Kennedy, Gussie Hyatt, and all those --

Freeman: And you all weren't getting pressure on your job?

Robinson: Wasn't getting pressure on the -- we had removed the pressure when they found out that we weren't Communists. Add the next thing, we were a part of the movement that brought about the tenure law, and we were operating inside of the tenure law. Now our tenure law -- some people don't realize it only three reasons that you can fire a person for inside of Hamilton  County and that is immoral conduct that was -- I mean after he's gone on tenure, after two year probation –- immoral conduct that has been proven in a court of...[COMMENT  UNAVAILABLE]..., the inefficiency which you have to prove in court or abolition of the job. And it was from our tenure law that the state’s tenure law is patterned because the people in our school system, in the county and city school system, that led the movement to bring about the state tenure law. Wherein we had only three means of which to fire a teacher, the state tenure law, I think, has about seven. We tried to operate a good school, and the people say, "Well, you always ran a tight ship." Well, I tried to stay within the bounds of  the profession of having a quality school doing a good job, not slighting the job, keep what was considered acceptable social behavior, and try to stay out of jail for things that would really reflect on me, the community, and church, and everything, but not ever afraid of a fight if I thought I was right. [laughter] And those are the things that really brought  me through. And I was a strong believer -- I think they termed me as a paternalistic principal. And during the day that you -- year that you were at Second District School and right after when I first got there, I think you might have been aware of the fact that we were considered having one of the best junior high schools in the state of Tennessee and the best junior high school in Chattanooga. And that's why you found all of the workshops held over there, so that they could find out what we were doing, get what we were doing, and at the same time it not being said that this was the posture that we were in. I don't think but one white principal ever gave me credit for it, and that was Mr. Bible who was principal of Brainerd Junior High School. He said, "C.B., this is why I don't mind sending my teachers over here to do a day's study, or to observe your teachers in certain areas that we want them." And so this is one indication that we had that we know we were doing a good job. And I didn't ever intend for them to fire me for not doing a good job and shirking my job. If it took time, I gave it. If it took study, I studied. If it took some of my money, I put it in. And it stood me well, and I always operated a school for the benefit of the students, not for me and the teachers. But I supported my teachers because if they did what I instructed them or what we agreed in our various meetings to do, then I thought that I'm the person that the superintendent ought to jump on and not my teachers, and I always supported them. Then any of my students that I could help then, as I told you all, anytime in my life that I would be able to help the students, then I felt a commitment just through working with them and teaching. And so this is a part -- and then I would say then from Second District School I went to William J. Davenport School, and then I think somewhere they got tired of paying me junior high school's salary, so they tore down the William J. Davenport School, and so I had to go somewhere, so I went to -- Johnny had just become -- that was twelve years ago -- Johnny had just become the commissioner of education, so Alton Park was open. Mr. Jenkins held out for me to go to Woodmore. It was all white at that time. But they'd had some problems out there in Alton Park, and it was felt that it wasn't going to improve race relations for a white person to take Alton Park Junior High School. I don't know who was on the committee or how they worked it out, but I do know that the judge consented that if I would accept, since the people out there wanted me to come back out there, that I could go to Alton Park because they planned to put a white person out there, and a black one in one of the white junior high school. And I am well aware of the fact that a white person going out there at that time would have done nothing but create a racial strife because I had problems. And I know if in a community where I had worked for fifteen years and the people asked for me to come back and everybody was nice to me, that -- and sometimes I would be driving along, and a rock would hit the car, or I'd be walking along through the community and rocks would come near me. I'd drive out to the McCallie Homes and park for a tenants' meeting, come back and the tires would be flat, or the wires stripped off, nothing major but I'd always have to get me a mechanic or somebody to help me get away from out there. For the first two or three years that I was out there, they couldn't have basketball games at night; they stopped all night activities out there. And at that time the school wasn't integrated either. The school was integrated after that, and I stayed through the integration of the school. When I left, I think the community was rather calm, the white kids were acceptable, and we were doing a good job in the school at the time I ran for election. Both the white and black teachers, and all of the children that had come of age supported me. And that brings me up to the time that I served in the legislature, which I think most people are aware of, of my life since then. Now I don't know whether there's any other things in particular that I have missed that might be of interest.

Freeman: Do you have a reason why you think they didn't send you to Alton Park in the beginning? Was there a particular reason or incident, one thing that stands out more than anything...[COMMENT UNAVAILABLE]?

Robinson: There wasn't any particular one thing. Because of the fact. That I was dubbed as one of the few people that they couldn't control, then I was scheduled at the first time I went off -- got off base that I was out. We found out that Julian Brown, Johnetta Williams, Mrs. Winsett, and myself, we were scheduled by a Dr. Goss to be fired from the Chattanooga public school system. If they got rid of the four of us, they could develop the black schools any way they wanted to develop them. And so this was a -- something that we found out, and we knew that  this was a -- had to be a part of their decision. Because Dr. Carmichael said that he felt that a person who had not been in a junior high school and wasn't sure that he could do the job, would do a better job than a person who thought he could do it, who knew he could do it, would give to the school. See, and I had said to some of them in a -- maybe in a interview when we'd talked about junior high school, I felt then, and I know now,  that I knew as much about the operation of junior high school and the philosophy undergirding junior high school of anybody in the whole school system, barring none, including Dr. Carmichael, because I didn't have twenty-six years in the junior high school, and one year of experience. I had twenty-six years of experience which I studied every major movement that was had in the junior high school, and also the movers in the junior high school movement across this country. I read every book, major book, that had been written on the junior high school. And I was developing Second District on a pattern similar to Gertrude Knowles' junior high school of today and tomorrow, a junior high school that would serve the children today and would serve the children tomorrow. That's why up there we had the first boys’ home economics class; a boys' cooking class was at Second District School because we were trying to get them ready for tomorrow. We had those various science classes we were trying to develop and trying to get some test tubes and get science tables connected up down there in Mr. Scott's room and those things. We had a year of in-service study among the faculty to see what we could do, and we came up with our own course of study and guidelines and objectives and everything. It was because we were developing a junior high school for today and tomorrow. And had we stayed there, it would, I think now, been equal to any junior high school because it was being based on good undergirders. They had allowed me -- Mr. Derthick was very nice -- to more or less pick the faculty. Then I had Miss Ruth Woods in our math and algebra, Burke in science, and, if you recall, we took the science awards at the University of Chattanooga and also in the math and programs we had -- I think we have a couple of people who left Second District who now have their doctors degree in math, somewhere in the country. We had the one person with a doctorate in chemistry. We were really pushing those students. As I say, that whole school was grouped in both the social studies and English and math and that kind of thing, and generally everybody was taking music and industrial arts, home economics, library science, and things like that.

Freeman: There's one other thing that at times where I think Mayor Kelley's resignation as mayor due to illness was moving some commissioner into the position, and creating a vacancy, and you were nominated or it was petitioned. Do you recall that?

Robinson: Yeah, when Mayor Kelley gave up the mayorship and went to the bankruptcy judge, Chunk Bender became the mayor which left a vacancy in the Public Works Department. At that time -- now I don't remember what group -- a group came and asked me if I was appointed to public works, they wanted to know how I felt about it and if I was appointed, would I serve? And I said, "Yes." At that point I didn't know anything about the Public Works Department, but other than there was a department up there, and I knew what it was and a general idea of it because I had taught civics. And I said, "Yes," and they told me that they was going to recommend me for it. I didn't think too much about it because I wasn't pushing for it, but I did decide that what I needed to do to learn everything I could about the department, which I did. Bookie Turner, if I'm not mistaken, was the person who recommended me officially for the vacancy. I don't recall who recommended Gobby Banks who was at the airport at that time. They thought that they would be able to get three votes so that I could go into the Department of Public Works. And letters enough -- I think I have about three pages in my scrapbook of letters that were written in my behalf. But when time came for the commission to vote, the commission voted 2 – 2. Peterson and Bender voted for Gobby Banks; Steve Conrad and Bookie Turner  voted for me. And I think for about eight weeks every time they voted that's the way it went. Now, I would say every major group that I can think of right now in Chattanooga said to me by  letter or in person or out there in that living room that they were for me, they wanted me to stay in there because they were going to put me in that position, including -- and there were more whites than blacks, and I must say that the whites were beautiful and so were the blacks at that time in their support. After about six or eight weeks, they came up with a compromise candidate, and when they came up with a compromise candidate, Peterson who had said that he wouldn't vote for a black to serve on the city commission and would oppose any person who would run, any black person that ran. So Conrad supported Pat Rose, and so that gave Pat Rose three votes and I had one, and that was Bookie Turner. So that's the reason I said -- one of the reasons why, in addition to having known Bookie all my life, and Bookie had come out of Eastdale too, is the reason why he didn't leave me in that crisis. Therefore, if he had run this time, I would have supported him because I saw him do more for blacks while he was in the Fire and Police Department as commissioner than any elected official that I know. Through that crisis that we were in he -- one of the things he did -- he's the one who made the first public statement that we were going to have a black on our school board, and he wasn't going to support another white until they appointed a black. And he stuck to that. He was in the forefront to open the restaurants, the hotels, and the theaters -- he was in the forefront to take the blacks from midnight shift and bring them to the daylight shift, put the whites in cars and integrate the police cars, and then had a screening committee that was predominantly black to select a number of black policemen that we felt was a matter of upgrading the police department. He supported Bennie for -- Johnny for, first, for the education commission when we ran Johnny against Peterson. We were supposed to run Chubby against Peterson, but Chubby felt so close to Peterson until he kept delaying his decision until it got to a point where we knew if we didn't make our move, then we would be too late to get name recognition which was so important. So the whole group -- we organized what we called the unity group -- pulled all the black factions together, and I think if ever they worked together that was one time they worked together. And naturally I had a motive for working against Peterson because Peterson said he would never vote for a black person to serve on the city commission, and I was the black person that was in contention at that time for the Public Works Department. So I was happy to see Johnny got on there and do a good job. I feel about Johnny as I felt about Bookie. Johnny has gotten on there; I think he has done a wonderful job under the circumstances, knowing that three votes is the name of the game in politics. As far as I am concerned, so long as he wants to stay there and I have any influence at all, I'm going to -- and if I got a nickel to help him, I'm going to help him to stay there. So that's what happened, and how it happened that I didn't go on the city commission as the first black person. Then later on one of my real good friends, the former mayor, said, "C. B., I'm going to tell you why you didn't get on the city commission. You did have enough community support to be elected, and the political structure knew that, so the political structure wasn’t going to let anybody have an election short of a petition demanding an election. Because of the amount of money spent in the Department of Public Works, you could have taken that department and it would have been used by you to highlight what could be done in city government, and they weren't going to give you that opportunity." And then it had been said that I said that if I got in there, that certainly I would be concerned about...[COMMENT UNAVAILABLE].

Robinson: As a mayor, I think that more to bring about integration in Chattanooga than anybody prior -- any public official prior to the -- his regime and two to my knowledge since then, Mayor Ralph Kelley and Bookie Turner who was police commissioner. But Mayor Olgiati, as I recall, opened the memorial library to negroes to come in the front door and to sit downstairs and have the usual run of the auditorium, and it started at a United Nations day program in which George Key as Ralph Bunch. And then he opened Engel Stadium, and the way they went about that was they -- while they were painting the back fence back there, after he agreed to it, they painted the fence back there where it said "colored entrance", that whole area was painted and that sign – that colored entrance was covered, and the next ball season we entered up at the grandstand part of the stadium, as we called it the "covered grandstand."

Freeman: The grandstand, the covered section.

Robinson: Covered section. And then we only had the northern part of it at that time, and then finally we were -- we did move around into the whole section. He also -- prior to that as commissioner of parks and playgrounds, I think, or either director of parks and playgrounds, he appointed the first black policeman, uniformed policeman, who was Theodore Hyatt, Baldridge, and one other black whose name leaves me at this time. So they were the first black policemen in this town. They were not under the police department, but they were under Olgiatils supervision, parks and playground. And then out of his office, he had a black working. Percy Billingsley was inspector of restaurants --

Freeman: Percy?

Robinson: Billingsley -- up until he died -- Billingsley died, I don't know, maybe about twelve or fifteen -- about twelve years ago, he dropped dead down there in the city hall one day, late one afternoon. But he was -- And then Simons replaced Billingsley, and that's a job right now that we have lost unless we get somebody reappointed in the mayor's office for that job because that's a job that was held by Sid Byars back during Mayor Bass' days, and theres always been a black mayor working out of that position.

Freeman: A black mayor?

Robinson: No, I mean --

Freeman: A black man working out of --

Robinson: A black man working in the mayor's office out of that position. I think it was under --

Freeman: [COMMENT UNAVAILABLE]

Robinson: I think it was -- yeah, they called it I think restaurant inspector. But it was a political patronage office to cover a black person who the mayor considered his leading black person in politics. And then when it comes to placing blacks in some of the public works jobs that when Mayor Olgiati was head of the Public Works Department, a number of them were given what we thought then were pretty good jobs in that department. So this was the first movement in city hall that really gave us the feel that there was somebody in there who was compassionate and sensitive to our cause. Whenever there were political repercussions and efforts to "kill off"-- I'll use that term -- or destroy a black because he had played the wrong politics, he didn't act the way certain people wanted him to act, he was always willing to sit down with us and discuss means by which we could resolve the problem and keep down tension. We sat down with him when the sit-in movement started, and it was through his efforts and concern that the citizens committee which was headed by Mr. William Brock, Jr., was set up. Olgiati was instrumental in that and also in resolving the sit-in movement.

Freeman: Were you a part of that committee?

Robinson: No, I wasn't a part of the committee, but I was a consultant for the committee and recommended several names from which two persons was appointed. And I was the person who gave leadership in the appointment of the biracial committee under Ralph Kelley that worked through the integration of this town. The two people who really thought up a few black names and carried to DeSales Harrison. James Mapp and I -- I got Mapp to go with me -- we went to DeSales Harrison in the Interstate Building up there. We talked with him; he agreed that we ought to have a biracial committee to work out some of these problems and maybe we could get around some things without destroying the town. We called in Horace Traylor who came in and worked with us. And then we went then to Kelley --

Freeman: Was Horace Traylor the president of City College?

Robinson: Yeah, Horace Traylor was president of City College. It was a black college that was formulated by Lee Roberson, and it was known that time in the very beginning as Zion College for blacks and Temple College for whites. We went down and talked with Ralph Kelley about establishing a biracial committee, and at that time Horace was having -- we had a citizens coordinating committee that was meeting every Saturday up at the Zion College or Chattanooga City College up on East Ninth Street, 1014, where the Kap house is now. We met up there and this is where we drew up what we called a "white paper." And this white paper was suggestions as to goals that blacks should strive for in Chattanooga from every major black organization in Chattanooga that would send us back a questionnaire that we had sent to them. After we talked with Ralph Kelley and Mr. DeSales Harrison, they decided to call in some whites that, as I said, Mr. Brock, Felix Miller, Mitch Crawford, John Bonner who is now over at St. Paul's Church, who became chairman of the committee, William Raoul who at that time was the head of Cavalier, Major Jones, pastor of Stanley at that time, and Bennis Harris. And Bennie became the vice-chairman of the board. Bennis was Ralph's number one counselor in the black community, and at that point I think Bennie had been appointed as assistant attorney general for the city. So that's how we got that committee, and we worked without publicity night and day through many situations, dangerous situations, to try to keep this city on an equal keel. We even, during the time when Bookie was commissioner, we even got garbage trucks and went up and down Ninth and Tenth Street and picked up the Molotov cocktails that they had placed in various places around the city to burn Chattanooga down one night. Our people on the inside who knew what was going on, our informers, had told us where these cocktails and bombs and things, Molotov cocktails, and we rode around in non-marked cars until after all of these things were picked up -- that kind of situation to diffuse. Then we have sat out, say, in Fehns over in North Chattanooga, in that parking lot at nights at two and three o'clock, when it was said that certain elements were -- people were coming in here from Texas or from some other place, and this is where they were going to meet certain of our people here to get together. With blinking signals on the cars, we were sitting in the dark, and we would know when a car pulled in, and that kind of thing. Then I have been put in a situation where I had to stay practically all night because a group of blacks wouldn't trust anybody but me. They thought they would trust Chubby and one time they did. And when they wouldn't trust Chubby, they said, "Well, we'll talk with Prof."

Freeman: Meaning you.

Robinson: Meaning me. And I went; I thought that I could talk with them and they wouldn't hurt me or destroy me.

Freeman: These were whites you mean?

Robinson: No, these were blacks.

Freeman: Local blacks?

Robinson: Local blacks because they were so pent-up at one point that there were two blacks here in this town, both of them are living now, that they intend to burn their houses down because they felt that they had deceived them, betrayed them. And when they got wind of it, well, we tried to get to those people and talk to them. And that's how I got into that picture. They called me after they said that I was the only one that they would talk with and would believe, and I went and stayed with them. See, the Lord works in mysterious ways. About two-thirty that morning we had one of the awfulest storms, and when that storm subsided, everybody decided we'd better go home. [laughter] And that storm calmed that situation, and it never rose again. And I don't know, even today, whether those persons -- those that their homes were scheduled to be burned or bombed that night.

Freeman: And these were people the homes who -- were they considered Uncle Toms?

Robinson: Well, that's what -- yeah, they were considered -- this was during -- and this was right there during the time that you all were in operation activist.

Freeman: The black activist movement?

Robinson: Well, it was in operation, but these persons -- I won't say what really made them so angry with these persons because you'll know who it is, because this person is still around, one of them. So, these are some of the kinds of situation that we had to diffuse. While on the white sides, theres a many nights when people would call Lillian and tell her that if I came home that night they were going to shoot me or they were going to kill me. And she would worry, and she'd call me and tell me not to come home, stay where I was. But I came on home anyway. Then sometime when I'd get home, the Fire Department have records of it -- at least half a dozen times, the fire engines came here around two or three o'clock in the morning, and I'd wake up and I'd see these firemen all around the house and lights flashing, and they'd ring the doorbell and I went to the door, and they asked me what happened, where was the fire? I told them I didn't know anything about a fire, I said, "I don't think it's in here. There doesn't look and no smoke or anything in here."

Freeman: This was black harassment by blacks?

Robinson: Uh-huh, but I don't whether it was by blacks. I considered this harassment. I think this came –- this harassment was from the whites. It could have been a black calling in, but I can't pinpoint that. I wouldn't imagine they would do it. Then I also -- because what I was doing and the kinds of things that I was working for was the improvement of blacks and to get blacks in the mainstream. So I don't think that they would have done that to me because of that. The other situation that I was sent into where blacks was concerned was because they felt betrayed, and they come to the point where they wasn't going to trust certain people, and they were just bent on doing something to destroy that particular person, or two persons at that time. And I was used to diffuse it because they said that they would talk with me, and I went. Bennie Harris and I -- when Wallace was in town -- we --

Freeman: [COMMENT UNAVAILABLE]

Robinson: Wallace, Governor Wallace, yeah during the time of Bookie was really wonderful then -- when they set up protection so that we could keep the black community calm and the white community calm, and kept Bennie and I in the street up there sometime between city hall and the auditorium, and around back out to the airport, so that if anything should get out of hand, we would be there. And then when Martin Luther King came to the auditorium and spoke, Bennie and I gave general supervision and helped to lay out what we considered the very sensitive  areas that should be staked out so that nobody would rise up in those spots. Now, we weren't as familiar with the white sensitive area; they had whites who were doing that for Bookie. But we did know the black community, and we had talked with enough blacks to know where we'd better take precaution. Some of these -- now these things I'm telling you right now, some of the things that Bennie says one of these days, he's going to tell the people all of the involvements that I was involved in. We had meetings down in the lower floor of the Hamilton National Bank with the whole city commission so the press wouldn't know where we were. The press tried to find the city commission, and they couldn't find the city commission, but we were meeting down there. And then another time we were over on the West Side. We just moved about in order that the biracial committee could keep the city commission informed as to what was happening. We met with Jo Conn Guild. Probably you heard the story back there when we moved the colored signs off the bus. When the idea came up that the way to move the colored signs off -- you know if you take it off the bus and then put that sign back up there, there was a spot up there that would tell you that there was something moved from up there. So all of the buses were painted on the inside, and the signs was taken down to paint the bus, and they never went back up. And every bus had been painted and all the signs had been taken down when the Free Press found out what had happened, and they published it in their paper. It was on the lower corner of the front page in the Free Press. They were speculating, but it had all been done at that time. Another instance wherein was something very similar to that -- oh yeah, when they found out what had happened, then the Ku Klux or somebody burned a cross at Jo Conn Guild's house up on the mountain, and they sent the fire halls to put out the cross. And when the people tried to find out what it was, they used some kind of excuse to -- used some kind of, you know, other excuse so that they wouldn't know, yeah, that it was a cross, and that it wouldn't get into the paper, which it never did get into the paper. Then when they had one cocktail, Molotov cocktail, was thrown into a building right there where Beck had a shining stand on Ninth Street, if you remember where it was, and they had to call the fire department for that. When the fire department got there and put it out they got there before the paper, press got anything about it and we got the Molotov cocktail out of there and everything cleaned up, and all the press was able to learn was that a neon light exploded. It was thought it might have been something else, but it was a neon light exploded that was hanging close to the window, and that's what broke the window. Things like that! [laughter]

Robinson: Black business during my early childhood, as I can recall it, when I was very small I don't remember very many businesses in the immediate vicinity of what we call Rosstown where I lived, except for what we might have called Aunt Millie's Dairy Herd at that time.

Freeman: Aunt Millie?

Robinson: Aunt Millie, that's what everybody called her, Aunt Millie. She -- I can't think of her last name right now, it'll probably come to me in the course of time. That was -- most people who would be thinking in terms of it would be thinking that that was Mary Smith's aunt who is one of our teachers in later years. She had a herd of about twenty-eight cows, and the fellows around in this area always after milk –- after they had milked the cows every morning would get them and carry them out into what is now Glenwood, up around Memorial Hospital and up in that area, and take care of them all day, and in the evening they'd bring them back in for milking in the evening, which after that time they'd put them up. Now Aunt Millie owned not only that herd of cows and things which provided her with a livelihood, but she owned a number of houses between McConnell Street and Lyerly Street, and from McCallie Avenue to East Fifth Street. Most of the property in that area belonged to her.

Freeman: Was it McKown?

Robinson: McConnell, McConnell Street, M-C-C-O-N-N-E-L-L, McConnell Street. A large part of it was in what we would call a truck Garden kind of a situation. Now, according to my dad and my mother and her brothers,, some of those older ones, they talked about Aunt Millie's business that was down in town somewhere there around Dome Building where she ran a saloon. She was one of the blacks who had a saloon in downtown Chattanooga, and after they -- around about 1914 or something when prohibition came in, they prohibited them from having the saloons on the street. That's when she resorted to this dairying kind of business, as crude as it was at that time. Another what I would call a business -- my mother's sister and her husband operated a grocery store in Churchville at the corner of  Willow and Walker Street.

Freeman: Who did that?

Robinson: My mother's sister, Eunice Loving and her husband, William Loving, Sr., operated a store there, Loving's Grocery Store. During the week they sold groceries, and at the close of  business on Saturday night, as you know, there was no stores opened on Sunday for selling the merchancise. On Sunday they had a section of that building that was a sundry kind of thing where on Sundays they sold ice cream, soda pop, cookies, candy, and popcorn, and the like. It was more or less a gathering place for both adults and youngsters going back and forth to the many churches that were in that section. Also, in that area about a block away there was another grocery run by Ben Cawon, Sr., I think was Mr. Cawon's name, but it was Cawon's Grocery. And on Lincoln Street between Cleveland and Sharp there was a meat market, I think, Johnson's Meat Market. That was one of the better class markets that was out in this area. Although it was in a predominantly black community, the quality of his merchandise was such that he had several white customers who would come to get their weekend meats. Then up on Citico, Citico and Kelley, this business wasn't owned by a black, Royal Coal Company was owned by a white person, but it was predominantly run by Mr. Hogue. I think his name was A.B., I'm not sure of that, but I know his oldest son was named A.B. so I think that was his initial, and that was before he had cars and they would deliver the coal to all of the people in the community, and Mr. Hogue on Sunday would -- his horse and buggy which was a landmark at that time would go round from house to house and collect for the coal that had been delivered to the people in the community. On Holtzclaw and Third Street -- I didn't get into that area very much, but there was what many refer to as a foundry, right in that section. Some of the fellows who were in my class -- Homer Tatum, Sam Richardson, and all of those fellows, they used to tell me about it. I knew where it was -- I'd pass there on Sunday on my way to Lincoln Park. So there was a foundry. At the corner of Blackford and Kelley Street, Mr. McBryan, who was black, had his coalyard. Mr. McBryan was the father of Mrs. T.A. Rue who was one of our leading teachers at that time, and who lived there on Blackford Street between Dodson and Arlington Avenue, in the brick house that's still there, one of the finer houses that was built in that community, and still has opposing type of architecture still there. 

Freeman: That's at where, which corner?

Robinson: On -- Mr. T.A. Rue -- that was Henry Jackson who recently passed, his uncle, they, are the ones who reared Henry, the Rues, Henry and Marie Jackson. And Mr. Rue was industrial Arts teacher in public school system and was the son-in-law of Mr. McBryan. On East Third Street, on the corner of Highland Park and East Third, there were two black stores, Carroll's Grocery Store and Andy Waters Grocery Store, both of them on the north side of the street now where you turn to go down to Orchard Knob Junior High School. On the other corner -- I think it was at Holly and East Third Street –- and, incidentally, it wasn't East Third Street then, it was Harrison Avenue.

Freeman: Harrison Avenue?

Robinson: Harrison Avenue, all East Third Street hadn't been given the figure name at that time. It was called Harrison Avenue, and it was a dirt street with a streetcar line running right down the middle of the street, which was the Boyce and East Chattanooga streetcars, over which they traveled.

Freeman: Do you know about what time it became Third Street?

Robinson: I think it must have become East Third Street somewhere round about 1926 or ‘27 when that section of -- when all of this section of Chattanooga out here became a part of the city.  East Third Street possibly ended up there about Erlanger Hospital at Central Avenue. Central Avenue at that time was East End Avenue. At that corner I think there was a store,  Freeman's Grocery Store. I don't know too much about Mr. Freeman's background, but I know that I knew some of the members of the -- one or two of the boys I met after I was out of high school somewhere. They went to Detroit finally, the younger part of the family, to live. Then there was a photographer that had a photographer shop there and a shoe shop; Reverend William Green had a photographer shop and a shoe shop, and also there was a barber -- he owned a barber shop there. All three of those businesses were on the north side of Third Street there at Holly. The restaurant -- I think it was Hollywood -- came at a later date there at East Third and Holly Street was owned by Paul Tatum. Up until about four or three years ago there at Holtzclaw and East Third, you had the Utopia Grill that was owned by Sam Richardson.

Freeman: How long had the Utopia Grill been there?

Robinson: Well, Sam owned the Utopia Grill -- I don't know -- I'd say ten years, ten to fifteen years. At Hawthorne and East Third Street, you had a drug store owned by Dr. Millender, and at Roberts Street and East Third Street, on the south side of the street, you had O'Neal's Grocery. There was a dry cleaner there that was owned by Mr. White –- I think his name was Frank White, I'm not sure of that name right now. His wife was a cousin to William Days. They had a dry cleaner also on that corner. When I was in the first grade, I think it was, that must have been round about 1916 to '17, there was also a little sundry kind of a business on the corner of East Third and Orchard Knob, diagonally across from Orchard Knob School that was owned by the Days family.

Freeman: William Days?

Robinson: No, it was a different family of Days. Thomas Days was the oldest boy's name, I don't know whether his father was Thomas Days, Sr., or not. His mother, most of the time, ran that little confectionary kind of place there. I think someone told me that Jim Knox who lived in the house there, stucco house there, before he went to Ninth Street with his barber shop also had this little –- started this place. Then diagonally across the street there in the other corner, there was a filling station that was built there by Bill James, William James, Jr., on that corner.

Freeman: When you were a little boy, this was back in --

Robinson: Well now, when Bill James had his filling station there, that's been just about thirty years ago, between twenty and thirty years ago, somewhere right in there was the filling station. When this confectionery place was there, that was between 1917 and 1921, somewhere in there, in that area.

Freeman: Did you notice anything about the black businesses in that day in terms of growth and development or failure of the black businesses?

Robinson: One of the things -- inasmuch as we didn't have the "mom and papa" stores among the Jewish communities in that neighborhood, well then the "mom and pop" stores were owned and run by blacks. They provided a livelihood for the black children until they were able to get out on their own, and some of them went into business for themselves. As they grew older, they began to venture into other businesses, and about that same time the industrial development of what we called at that time "up north" -- which was Detroit, Chicago, Pennsylvania up in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, those jobs were open and a number of the black people who had operated businesses, the younger people were siphoned off into those areas. They moved into  those areas for more lucrative jobs, and this pulled some of the black businesses out. Then when the people from the Jewish community began to operate stores in the black community, for some reason or another, the black business gravitated to those stores. Some of the black businesses weren't able to meet the competition, and so a number of them went out of business at that time. It's only been in recent years that a number of people realize that the backbone of our economy is the small business. For that reason, we began to try to get back into some of the businesses that we knew at that time because in the black community the monies that we have made outside of the black communities, in industry and other places, that money only goes through about one hand, two at the most, before it gravitates back into the community where it came from. This  is one of the big differences between the majority of white community and the minority black community, because the money coming into the white community generally goes through four or  five hands before it goes back to its original source, thus triggering jobs for many more people and gives them a stronger economy. This has been what has happened to us; we haven't provided jobs for our people because we got away from the small businesses that we had. There have been numerous beauty parlors in this area out here which came along later in life, well in my life. My wife operated a beauty parlor for forty odd years, the Lidara Beauty Salon, and she was always business-oriented. Her grandfather, who at that time they called a blacksmith, who worked with one of the construction companies and made all of  the tools, iron tools, steel tools, that they used in their construction business along the road, always preached to his children that he wanted them to be business people. He opened stores for his children. He always told her he wanted her to be in business. I think her major desire was to be a pharmacist, but when he died she dropped out of the school of pharmacy and went into beauty culture, and remained in beauty culture until she retired. She was very successful, not only locally, but nationally as a beauty operator, consultant and stylist.

Freeman: What was her father's name?

Robinson: I said her grandfather. Her father was Wilbur Davis. She did get a part of that business acumen from, him because he was an undertaker in Chicago. At one time she went to take study embalming, but because of her age they wouldn't allow her to take embalming. So that moved her away from that particular field, because she stayed with her grandparents most of the time, who was William Cross.

Freeman: Up in Chicago?

Robinson: No, William Cross was here. She stayed most of the time with him because they moved about because he was with this construction company. You can see how that really fitted the fancy of a young child, grandparents moving about and got you with them. They give you everything that you think you want, not what you want, but everything you think you want. And so she was interested in doing what they wanted done, and they wanted her in business.

Freeman: Where did you all meet and when?

Robinson: Who, Lillian and I?

Freeman: Yes.

Robinson: Oh, I reckon -- well, we were in high school. She and my sister used to run together, and at that time there was no relationship. I was a little older than both of them, and so I knew her. Then when we got to Nashville in school, I was out at Tennessee State, and she was at Meharry studying pharmacy. I knew -- sometime we would go to a dance, I'd date her and carry her to dances. But after -- well, in my senior year when she didn't come back to school of pharmacy, well then, when I came home we went out one or two times, and I reckon that was more or less the point that really brought us together then after I got out of school. Then it just led on to our marriage. So that's how I –- until that came up I never had any idea that I would ever marry her because at one point I thought that she and my sister -- you know how you look back on girls -- and you don't realize that two or three years there's not much difference once you get -- the closer you get to adulthood, the narrower that span becomes. Some of the other businesses that didn't happen right here, but around in this area, and again, let me see, one was in the Rosstown area. That was a man that we -- I can't think of his name -- he had a taxi service. That taxi service was a horse and buggy kind of thing wherein he would -- when people wanted to go somewhere, he would pick them up just like the regular car pick them up and carried them wherever they were going in a horse and buggy. Right now the kind of --

Freeman: Is this what we know as the jitney now?

Robinson: Well, we'd know it as a kind of jitney service, but it was a regular horse and buggy carriage, and there was an enclosure. Now, you've seen them in the show -- we used to call them hacks. That was to keep them out of the weather and that kind of thing, and then when it was summer well the glasses -- well, it wasn't glass either some kind of celluloid that they put up to the sides. In the summer they'd take them down and the air would blow through it. Well that was the transportation service that was operated out of the little section over here where Parkridge Hospital is, where we call Rosstown. Not only Rosstown, but if anybody in Bushtown needed to go to the train station or pick  up somebody somewhere, well they would always call -- I think his name was Charlie Williams. They'd always call him, and he would pick them up just like you'd call a taxi. Then we did have the undertakers in that day and time. You had Franklin Funeral Parlor, the Trimble's Funeral Home, and Hardwick's Funeral Home. And then following that you had the Buchanan Funeral Home and Crombie Funeral Home and the mortuary that you have out there on Main Street now I don't recall the name.

Freeman: Cox?

Robinson: No. Well, Cox took over Trimble's Funeral Home after the Trimble -- after Trimble died -- so that was because Cox was Trimble's leading embalmer. That's how Cox came into the funeral business.

Freeman: That must have been in the thirties.

Robinson: It was way back then. [laughter] See, ‘cause probably when you grew up, Cox had a funeral home over on Main Street, right there at Main and College Street.

Freeman: Yeah, right at Main and Pine.

Robinson: Yeah, Main and Pine.

Freeman: At Main Street and College was the Main Street School.

Robinson: Yeah, Main and Pine, on this side, and then they moved from there out on Central and East Fifth Street.

Freeman: That's when Mr. Trammel --

Robinson: Yeah, uh-huh, that's when Trammel joined them. Now Trammel and Hardwick's is more or less combined.

Freeman: What about the businesses on -- was Ninth Street the street then for black people or --

Robinson: Yeah, Ninth Street was the street for black people. East Ninth Street there were more blacks possibly on East Ninth than on West Ninth. You had a pharmacy there next to the Congregational Church which is black, and that was -- that pharmacy was run by Dr. Douglas. You know we call all pharmacists "doctors" so that was known as Dr. Douglas', Douglas' Pharmacy.

Freeman: That was in about what year?

Robinson: Well, it was, I'd say, between -- in my recollection between '25 and '35 he was there, because that entire block between Georgia Avenue and Lindsay there were about four or five black businesses in that block, in addition to that pharmacy. That pharmacy, you know, it had its sundry items and all of that, and it was the center for congregating on Sundays after church. You had a couple of pool rooms in there, one of which was run by Jim Knox, and also both Knox brothers had barber shops in that block.

Freeman: Now that's between Georgia Avenue and Lindsay?

Robinson: Between Georgia Avenue and Lindsay.

Freeman: Was the post office there then?

Robinson: No, the post office wasn't there then. The Grand Theater was immediately behind the Volunteer Building, and that was the black theater at that time. On that side you had one of the pool rooms, and on the side where the post office is, right where you go into the post office driveway, if my memory is serving me right, that's about where Knox's barber shop and the pool room was on the side of the barber shop. That was -- I can't recall -- it was also a black restaurant in that area. Then another restaurant that was one of the top restaurants for workers and people who frequented Ninth Street was Lowe’s Restaurant. I don't know whether you remember the Lowes -- Wilma Lowe, do you remember Wilma Lowe?

Freeman: I remember the name.

Robinson: Her daughter was in school with you up there at Second District. Mr. Lowe had a -- she was a sis --

Freeman: [comment unavailable]

Robinson: No, she was secre--

Freeman: [comment unavailable]

Robinson: No, that's Lowe--

Freeman: Miss Moody was --

Robinson: Well, she's a Scruggs. No, she didn't teach up there at that time. She's married to Newton Scruggs right now and just retiring from the school system as secretary. You probably -- her name will probably come to me shortly. It was her father -- the two main restaurants over there, one was white and one was black. One was Lowe's Restaurant and -- I'm having a mental lapse right now -- and incidentally, back there in 1934, '35, '35 yeah, 1935, it was a group of us had a Iroquois Club, an Iroquois, Iroquois Club, and we bad a vegetable market down on Ninth Street next to the Liberty Theater, which I ran up until I took the job in the school system.

Freeman: Also, I read where you were in the life insurance business, is that --

Robinson: Yeah, I was in the life insurance business around -- during the years -- part of the time between operating the vegetable stand and working regular in the school system, and I was underwriter for the Atlanta Life Insurance Company. Then after I got a school job, and I was in insurance business maybe a couple of years, and then after I got in the school system, I continued to write ordinary on the side for Universal through H. E. White. So I had experience in both mercantile business, or grocery business, and insurance, writing and collecting insurance. Then during the summer and things like that when I was trying to get through school, I worked with Crane Enamel plant, all of the hotels waiting tables, and all of that kind of thing has been a part of my experience to get money to pay for an education.

Freeman: What have been some of the longest lasting businesses? Are they any businesses or business families that was in business when you were a kid growing up, and they still maintain the continuity of business operation?

Robinson: Well, it comes right to me, and that was Franklin's Funeral Home. See, its been operating -- it was there at Chestnut and Sixth Street, back in those days. See, all down through there, blacks lived down in there. Over on that side, you had a restaurant over there. Chief Restaurant was on Ninth Street. Chief ran on the road; they called him "Chief" but he was a Douglas, Dr. Douglas’ brother.

Freeman: Which --

Robinson: I didn't get to the res--

Freeman: Do you remember the doctor, Dr. Douglas?

Robinson: Dr. Douglas was the one that I was telling you was up there at -- was the pharmacist. Then you had a hotel, Dent Hotel, down on -- I think it was at Eleventh and Carter, which -- I'm not sure, but I think the lady, Mrs. Dent, who was I think a widow of -- married Dr. Douglas. When they were not at a hotel business, they started that restaurant business. That's the way I remember it, but they did own a hotel down there. Then you had the Martin Hotel which was owned by Mamie Martin's uncle, and she still has some interest of that hotel there at Ninth and Lindsay, upstairs there. That’s been there a good forty years. There was another black pharmacist that ran a drug store there on the corner of Cypress and East Ninth Street out in -- I wasn't familiar with that section of town, but you know some of the kids in school, they were always talking about what happened when they were up there. And then there were a number of chili stands on both East Ninth and West Ninth Street, barbecue places. Roland Cloud, I remember, had one of the outstanding barbecue places on East Ninth Street. Roland Cloud's name was Miller; that was Roy Vaughn's wife's father, Juanita Miller Vaughn.

Freeman: His first wife?

Robinson: Yeah, no, his wife now.

Freeman: Oh that's right.

Robinson: Yeah, Juanita, they had a place out there on East Ninth Street. Oh yeah, in that same block there was a black grocery down there, Griffin's Grocery Store.

Freeman: Was that the block where the hotel was?

Robinson: No, this is right down there between Douglas and Frost. In that block you also had T.L. Kelley had a whiskey store, a sundry, a dance hall, and I know something else in that building. And up in the 200 block there where Martin Drug Store is, under there, Herbert Kelley had a kind of a combination restaurant, sundry, up there where everybody congregated on Sundays.

Freeman: Is that why they call one of them the "upper Kelleys" and the other one "lower Kelleys"?

Robinson: That's why, yeah, one of them was upper Kelleys and one of them was lower Kelleys.

Freeman: Were these brothers?

Robinson: They were brothers, uh-huh.

Freeman: Now where upper Kelleys, I mean the lower Kelley is down near Douglas, didn't a doctor build, some doctor, Dr. Wheeler or somebody have a building?

Robinson: Dr. Wheeler's building was right there -- I think Dr. Wheeler's building was torn down and the "Whole Note" was built there.

Freeman: Okay, that's in the 500 block.

Robinson: Yeah, that's where Dr. Wheeler's building was, right there. And I was trying to think of the guy who had a barbecue place and a hot dog stand and a -- Pete Casoloma I think is what they called him. See then, the hospital -- this brings me to the mind that on the corner of Eighth and Douglas was the Wheelers Hospital. I think the first, and possibly the only, black-run hospital, and also Mrs. Wheeler had a nursing school in connection with her hospital.

Freeman: Was that in the thirties, twenties, forties?

Robinson: It must have been in thirties and up into the forties. See, Mrs. Wheeler is the one -- is the person after whom the Wheeler Homes was named. I had the distinction of having submitted her name and profile, a biographical sketch of her, that won out to name the project after Mrs. Wheeler.

Freeman: That will bring us to the area, mentioning Mrs. Wheeler is probably one of the prominent blacks in that day.

Robinson: Yes, she was one of the prominent medical doctors of that day, and she -- I think what you call them "Pediatricians" that specialize in doctoring on children, child care. She was outstanding in that, although she was a general practitioner also. Everybody believed in Mrs. Dr. Wheeler, and at that time we had a number of other black doctors. They finally dwindled down to where we had only a handful of them, and that's all we have today, a handful of black doctors. They began to increase again, but we went a long time before we got any in here. Most of the black doctors who practiced in Chattanooga came from Meharry Medical College in Nashville.

Freeman: Using you as an example, you were probably one of the most prominent persons in my lifetime. Who would be some of the most prominent black people in your lifetime who came to Chattanooga, and what roles did they play in the community, in the city as a whole?

Robinson: Well, when I go back to kind of think about it off the top of  my head, one of the most prominent persons, and probably from a financial standpoint and general knowledge, was Mr. Levi Young who was the father of Dr. Young, who had what we call a hardware store where he sold general merchandise, I mean hardware, and it was down on Main Street. He owned a large bit of the property on the south end of Missionary Ridge, and I maybe imagine a third of the homes that were on -- that blacks lived in in Fort  Cheatham. Then there was Reverend Bell who was the pastor of the First Baptist Church, who made his mark in this town, and after whom the Bell Elementary School is named after Reverend Bell. Joseph E. Smith School -- Joseph E. Smith was the father of Stevie Smith who was with the Atlanta Life Insurance Company. They lived there on the corner of Maple and East Eighth Street. The mere fact that Joseph E. Smith was named after him tells you that he made his mark in this town. Calvin Donaldson who was --

Freeman: What was his mark?

Robinson: In education. Calvin Donaldson after whom Calvin Donaldson School was one of the first members of -- black members on the school board in the St. Elmo area. And the other Donaldsons taught in the school system; I know two of them taught in the school system. One of them taught me in the second grade, I think it was, first or second grade -- first grade, she was teacher of the first grade, taught me half a year. That was Miss Etta Donaldson. You know something -- and as I say there was Mr. Franklin, George W. Franklin -- that was Johnny’s father -- and J. F. Trimble. They were in the undertaker business, but they were quite civic minded and contribute quite a bit to the civic life of Chattanooga and in the development of Chattanooga. Reverend Joe Johnson who contributed a lot to the religious and civic side, he was pastor for forty years or fifty years at Orchard Knob Baptist Church. Dr. Tadley, J. C. Tadley, was one of the monied doctors here, who built the building there on the corner of Ninth and Douglas Street. When it was built I think it was called the "Wigwam" because on the very top floor there was a dancing hall up there, the first black-owned dancing hall that we had.

Freeman: Now is that on -- is that next to the Kelley Building?

Robinson: Yes, just below the Kelley Building.

Freeman: Where the Bowles Liquor Store is now?

Robinson: Yeah, yeah, that was it.

Freeman: Part of the Tadley Building?

Robinson: Yeah, that's in the Tadley Building. See then the building between Kelley and the Tadley Building was the building that was owned by the Byrd family. I know the younger -- one of the young fellows of that was Tommie Byrd, and I'm not sure whether it is Byrd or Burge.

Freeman: B-Y-R-D?

Robinson: Yeah, you'll find there if you pick up a Chattanooga history, you'll find both of those names -- you'll find Byrd’s a name in there, because they owned -- not only do they own -- oh, another thing that we want to -- when we come to thinking in terms of business -- the first straightening combs that was used to straighten, maybe blacks' hair as well as white or anybody,  was the Eureka straightening comb, and it was invented by Mr. Higgins.

Freeman: Here in Chattanooga?

Robinson: Here in Chattanooga. Mr. Higgins was Billy Dorsey's mother's father, and they had a patent on it. But being black, he was never able to exploit it to the point that he could develop it beyond what he could do manually. But it was the straightening comb that was used by black beauticians all over the South, as well as in the North, and he sold them as fast as he could make them. You didn't have to throw the comb away, you could take it loose, remove that tooth, put another one in there, and you're ready to go again. Now, I'm not sure whether that was made out of grass or copper, but some hard metal.

Freeman: He heated it on the stove?

Robinson: They heated it on the stove. He became quite wealthy from the development of that comb.

Freeman: They used to stay on the West Side, somewhere there.

Robinson: They lived, I think it was on Cypress Street between Ninth and Tenth, and you know they built a pretty good size brick apartments there that they owned, and that they lost -- more or less, they took them from them when they developed the West Side and brought the thoroughfares through there. They didn't get nothing like the amount of money that they should have because we compared it with -- they had more in the way of building and fine looking structure than another majority -- person who belonged to the majority race -- had just about a couple of blocks away, and he got nearly three times as much for his as they got for theirs.

Freeman: During this period, were any of these people involved in the Marcus Garvey movement back to Africa? What was the social climate, the racial climate, here for blacks during that time period?

Robinson: During that time period, the racial climate, you know, in Chattanooga when you compare it with other places seemed to be good. Dr. Hasken Miller, a professor at the University of Chattanooga, he said that the people in Chattanooga, the whites, practiced religious religiosity because the racial climate was only surface. Him being a white man and getting into the community, he found out that on the surface, everything was good, but when he maneuvered in the community, he found out that there was quite a bit of racism in Chattanooga. Now, during the Marcus Garvey time, I think I must have been in junior high school. I recall when Marcus Garvey was here and used to have his tent and his meetings somewhere up there in Fortwood, maybe right in that area where Erlanger Hospital. I wasn't permitted to go, so all I know about that was hearsay. I remember of having him pointed out to me once or twice when we would go to Lincoln Park on Sunday. But I don't know much about the movement and wasn't much written about it, and as Julian Brown say, "We weren't interested in that type of information in the paper; therefore, we were a part of the non-reading public." Read headlines and knew that there was a paper because there's always been a paper in my house as long -- from all my life, theres been a morning paper out, daily paper at my house, so we had the privilege of knowing what was happening, whether we picked it up or not. When we had to carry in a -- every day in school the teacher required us to bring in a news article. And those articles that we could read and understood, those was the ones that we carried in. We didn't know very much about what was on the editorial page because the editorial page didn't mean anything. It was just hard reading without a lot of pictures on it, and most of us didn't read it.

Freeman: What was the first black newspaper that you had?

Robinson: The first black newspaper that I recall, and I can't -- I don't know the name of it really. Lillian had a copy of it here and gave it to Chattanooga City College, and it had all of the black people who were in business in those days. She had it framed and put into a frame of about twenty-four by maybe twenty and gave it to Chattanooga City College. When they closed the school, we don't know what happened to it. She thought about it some years after and asked about it, but nobody knows what happened to it. And that's some information that was lost there, some history, and the like that was lost. The next newspaper that I recall -- I don't know the name of it at the moment -- it was the Oaks Brothers had a newspaper here. I probably do a little research and find out --

Freeman: They were black?

Robinson: Yeah, they were black.

Freeman: So these two newspapers came long before the Observer?

Robinson: Oh, yeah. The Observer was started here round about 1935 by Patterson, Pat Patterson who was the brother of the president of Tuskegee at that time. He brought a fellow here by the name of Turner, and I can't remember Turner's first name, but Turner is living now in St. Louis. During the time he was here, he married a girl here, the sister of the girl lived right down right in the house on Central Avenue -- the Hagens, one of the Hagens, Doug -- do you remember Doug Hagen? Well, he married, I think it was Doug's sister or Doug's wife's sister that Ison Turner married. And then -- I worked with him and helped him to distribute the paper and writing articles when I came out of school before I got a job round about 1935. There was another fellow that they brought here to work with that paper, and that paper was published by Scott's newspaper syndicate. And then after -- when Turner left, Patterson sold the paper to Mr. Walter C. Robinson, when he left city hall as a truant officer and took over the Chattanooga Observer. Turner left and went to -- I think he told me St. Louis. I talked with him last year after about thirty-five years of not seeing him. He called me one morning.

Freeman: [COMMENT UNAVAILABLE]

Robinson: Yeah, Lillian's coming in, I know I heard her. And so that was the beginning of the Chattanooga Observer, and I think when Turner left Mr. Robinson kept ownership of it, and Ruth Millender, who was Ruth Williams at that time, came in as Office manager of the Chattanooga Observer. He ran the paper then up until he died. Then you had Chattanooga Chronicle, which didn't operate very long. Then one other paper, one or two other papers that functioned about a month or two around election time. For the last year we've had the North Star which is a black paper published by Clarence Scaife.

Freeman: Let's talk about the development of the NAACP here in Chattanooga. Is that something that was always here?

Robinson: The NAACP, as I recall, the first president that I recall of  the NAACP was Dr. Stevens, who is a medical doctor who lived on Walker Avenue between Willow and Lincoln Street. For years he was the president of the NAACP. Mrs. Lampkin, who is one of the owners of the Pittsburgh Courier, used to come to Chattanooga and conduct annual membership drives. During that time and during the development of the NAACP, and during the time when they had some of the largest membership, the secretary, two of the secretaries, as I recall, who were very instrumental, worked with Dr. Stevens and got the NAACP moving, was Miss Rosa McGhee and Julian Brown. And a Reverend Thomas who was the pastor of the Congregational Church, First Congregational Church, on East Ninth and Lindsay, was for a while the executive secretary of the NAACP. H. E. White, who was manager of the Universal Life Insurance office here, the district -- the Chattanooga district -- was the chairman of the membership committee and one of the leading membership getters, along with Joe Howard. Joe Howard, probably by far, solicited more membership annually than anybody that I know of during that time. That was Mrs. Dr. Wheeler's son. He assisted his mother in the operation of the hospital, and was very instrumental in the development of the NAACP.

Freeman: Was his name Joe Howard Wheeler, or just Joe Howard?

Robinson: Joe Howard, that was his last name. Dr. Wheeler, as I understand, was his stepfather. There were several heads of the NAACP after Dr. Stevens' tenure of office. If I could -- if my mind was clear -- I could think of them right now. But as I saw in working with the NAACP back in about in 1936 or '37, and from that day up until now I have remained a member of the NAACP. I am a life member of the NAACP.

Freeman: When you were a kid the NAACP was already in existence?

Robinson: Yes, but I don't know whether there was an established chapter here or not, because I -- my interest in the NAACP stemmed from activities, but I can't -- after coming out of college, then I learned about the NAACP. And then coming home after college, well then I began to become civically involved. From being a history and political science major, I involved myself in all of those things that -- and movements that my supervisor had told me that I should become a part of. That was Merle R. Epps, who at that time you know wrote the American -- wrote "The Negro, Too, in American History." Most of the things that he pointed out to us that we should be involved in, I got into it. And as a teacher at Calvin Donaldson School, I think I was the first person to invite the Urban League to come to Chattanooga and work with us. I invited them to come to Chattanooga to do a study on blacks' participation in the mainstream of American life or Chattanooga life. That document or study is in the libraries here now.

Freeman: As you grew up, Jim Crowism was in effect -- white only, for you mentioned Lowes a little while back as a white part of it and a black part. Is that correct?

Robinson: Yeah, Lincoln Park was a black park and Warner Park was the white park, and we had to pass by Warner Park going to Lincoln Park.

Freeman: You mentioned the Lowe's Restaurant.

Robinson: Yes.

Freeman: Was that a "black only" restaurant?

Robinson: A "black only" restaurant. You know the peculiar thing about the "black only" anything that we had, if it was public out like that, a few whites would go in and eat. Whites could go in "black only" restaurants and eat, but blacks couldn't go in a "white only" restaurant and eat.

Freeman: Right. On the NAACP, were there any problems like lynching they had to deal with back then?

Robinson: Well, locally there was no lynching during my lifetime. There seemed to have been one lynching of some Johnson fellow prior to my -- I don't know, it was just before I came on the scene or right after I came on. But I was too small if it was during my lifetime to know anything about it. It happened at a time when I was among the nonreading public, and incidentally I haven't, in all my reading, gone back to read really what happened.

Freeman: Do you remember what some of the issues that the NAACP was dealing with back then? Why were they getting membership drives?

Robinson: Well, the biggest thing -- one of the large issues police brutality and discrimination at public affairs, and trumped up charges -- let's say mostly social injustices that we had to endure. And consequently we started asking for social justices because all in every area of social problems we got the end of the stick and especially in schools. The NAACP even had to intervene long before the suits to integrate the schools because integration, I mean discrimination was quite bad. Now, because we were limited and so many of our people adjusted to their fate, and because there were a number of liberal whites that my mama would say were good white people, Chattanooga had this surface climate as a fairly good place to live. And I must say even in my life there have been a number of whites who have been instrumental in encouraging me and helping me to get ahead.

Freeman: You know today we have some issues like police brutality, police shooting a fleeing felon -- how were those kind of things viewed back in your earlier days, say in the twenties and thirties, thirty-six after you finished college?

Robinson: Well, the people viewed them as being wrong, and blacks resented it very strongly, but there was very little to be done because we didn't have black lawyers who had any standing in court. The judges were the kind of judges who would say that there is no discrimination, even though they -- as far as we were concerned there was discrimination. They had made a different -- but somewhere they had done these kind of things in perpetrating the black people so long until they felt that what they were doing was right. Even though now they wonder how they ever arrived at that feeling or that interpretation or understanding of the way some of them arrived at it, but when you're taught something over a long period of time, well you become brainwashed and you don't see the other side of it. That's why a lot of racism is practiced today, and they never realize the fact that to us it's racism because they can't realize the hurt that we have to absorb and take. So this is -- while we're just walking along the street and some little white child will walk along and push you off the sidewalk, and you're supposed to have such control of yourself that you don't strike back. If you strike back, although they pushed you off or slapped you or spit on you, well they're going to arrest the black one and nothing is done to the white child, or the white person, because this was their world. We bad to adjust to all of the indignities, and they had no indignities, they did no wrong.

Freeman: Did you personally ever have a confrontation, racial confrontation that hurt you deeply?

Robinson: Well, I'd say yes. I happened to be one of those persons that they hadn’t preached nonviolence to me, but they taught me that I was supposed to stay out of trouble. There was a strong discipline hand in my family wherein if we allowed ourselves to get into trouble, so to speak, why we were going to feel the -- my mother and dad didn't spare the rod. Therefore, we weren’t spoiled and we knew that. When we'd meet some confrontation, we took it as long as we could, and after awhile the other person whether you're white, black, red, or blue was going to feel our -- the rage of our frustration, and mine in particular, because I had a many fights with whites. Some I won, some I lost, but they weren't all of that serious because we wound up as friends, and we're still friends today.

Freeman: What about as an adult, did you -- were there any problems that you encountered as a black man where you were discriminated against and it bothered you?

Robinson: Oh, well, yes. A number of them bothered me, and this was the thing that possibly led to my commitment to work for, to bring blacks into the mainstream of American life, so that the young people wouldn't have to endure the insults and the hurts that I had to endure during my lifetime. And then...[COMMENT UNAVAILABLE]...to some extent; you don't see much of it, but every time a black person was accused of doing something, it made headlines in the paper, and it didn't point up a name. The whole black community was charged with the crime or misdemeanor that one person did, and we all suffered it because it was used to discredit all blacks. These were some of the kinds of things when you knew very well that you had nothing to do with it. You resented it, but there wasn't much you could do about it because the system was so organized that you couldn't get a fair hearing. You couldn't develop your case and put the facts on the table, and have them considered on the basis of the facts. They were considered upon the emotion and the way the other group felt toward you. Many a person that I grew up with, maybe went to the workhouse, spent some time in jail for things that he wasn't guilty of at all. Some things that he might been provoked into that he never would have done if he had been treated as a human being.

Freeman: But you never had anything like that happen to you?

Robinson: Well, not to a major degree. See, my mother and father, all of  us, always was concerned about who we went around with, who we ran with; they knew where we were and most of the time we had  a certain time we were going to be at home. We were there on  Sundays; we were going to be at church. And these kinds of  things, more or less, controlled our lives. I feel that you don't stray very far away from the teaching, if you've had good strong teaching. They might not have had educational training, but what they didn't have as educational training, but they had what we call -- what they call "mother's wit,"  and commonsense. They tried to protect us. My mother was one of those persons who probably had that feeling of for her children, and particularly the boys, that she knew that we were in more dangers than the girls, and she always tried to protect her boys from being picked up by a policeman and charged -- trumped with trump charges placed against us. She tried always to know where we were and keep us out of those kinds of situations, so that we wouldn't be charged. And say well, "If I know where you are, then I know I can say I know whether you are guilty or not." And she would tell sometime even after I got out of school, she would say to me, "Well, you remember if you stay where you are supposed to stay, then you won't get into these kinds of things." You know you've heard where they used to say, "Well, stay in your place." That was a certain place that blacks were supposed to have been. Sometimes you didn't know where your place was, or what your place was, but you were supposed to be so smart and have such feelings until you would know that this is the white man's world, and you're not supposed to intrude into certain areas because you were off limit when you got into those areas. And all the time you didn't know, and if you got over in there sometimes, they'd just arrest you. "Nigger what's you doing in this community? You must be going to steal something. Where do you live? Who is your mama and daddy?" And see, in not having a background of professional parents, not having parents who maybe at all times worked for people who were in the limelight, when they'd pick you up, they wanted to rush you right on off to jail. I can see why my mama said, "Well, if you stay where we know where you are, then we can protect you." So this is how we dealt with some of those problems, stayed in our community, and at night we went home. We congregated on a rock pile and maybe made fires in the middle of the rocks, and stayed there until about eight o'clock. Then we'd go in and study. Most of the time my mother required us to study and get our lesson before we could go out and play. And if night came and we hadn't gotten our lessons, we didn't stay out there with the boys; we came in. See, there was three boys of us who lived to grow up, four boys in the family, four boys and four girls.

Freeman: In '54 the Supreme Court moved to declare separate schools unconstitutional. What was your reaction to that, and what was your role in that process?

Robinson: I don't know whether I had a role in the process of the Supreme Court decision except through the overall working with the NAACP, but I had a very strong feeling that it should come about. At that time I had been president of the teachers’ local for a number of years, and as was probably said somewhere. In 1941, which was three years after I became president of the Mountain City Teachers’ Local, I had filed suit for equalization of salaries because I felt at that time it was one of the things that we could do. We had certain rights, and so we filed and went into a federal court. As I stated, Thurgood Marshall, who is now a member of the United States Supreme Court, was my lawyer because the NAACP, working with Mr.  Elmore locally, processed the case. Whatever we did on the local scene that helped to strengthen NAACP nationally possibly was the role that I played. And at that time I did attend  practically all of the national meetings of the NAACP; every summer I would go to the NAACP national convention and vote in the proceedings. So, to that extent I probably helped to mold a sentiment in the direction of the Supreme Court decision. And as I think I said that in 1936 we organized a Democratic party here, a black Democratic party, in which we voted in the Democratic primary with the help of Estes Kefauver and Joe Bean and Stanton Smith, a few others at that time.

Freeman: Was there anything happening in the school system after between '54? I noticed a school board meeting up on Dickinson Junior High School up on Eighth Street. Were you or were the principal black teachers and black principals involved in working out a system of desegregation? Was there any pressure brought on you to not talk about it, not get involved, or anything of that nature?

Robinson: Well, I'd say I didn't feel any pressure because at that point in my life I was well committed, and it was no use of saying to me not to talk about it, because I had very strong feelings that I was being unjustly treated. It was round about that time when we organized what we called the "principals roundtable" to deal with the problem in the black schools. We -- well, all the schools operated their own cafeterias at that time, and we had to all drink white milk, and the milk that was sold by black people was white. Haslerig had a dairy, and there was an effort on the part of some to see to it that we purchased milk from white distributors. We wanted to patronize Haslerig. In that roundtable this is one of the things --

Freeman: Haslerig was black.

Robinson: Yeah, Haslerig was black, and there's one of the times I saw that that roundtable came together, and we decided that if we were going to drink any milk at all, it was going to be Haslerig's milk. When the superintendent realized that the black principals were together and we were going to boycott anybody else's milk, then we worked out something. I think Haslerig's milk stayed in the schools until Haslerig joined with somebody else and went out of the dairying business. So that was -- but you know there are those who weren't as committed as some of us who were much younger than some of the older ones. They succumbed to the memorandums that might come around and more or less tell you how to act or what not to do. I don't remember whether I got any of them or not, but it didn’t make much difference. If I got something, I felt that I had a right to do, and I always tried to first decide whether I was right, and whether this was my right to do a thing. Then if I felt that way about it, then I practiced it. That's another thing -- maybe if they didn't want me to do some of the things, maybe it was wrong to teach me to read. Because I recall the Times had a black column for -- in the obituary for black people, and I was one of those who in the leadership of the movement to get rid of that, get the Times to integrate their obituary page and to stop sensationalizing the black crimes and charging the whole community with it. I was chairman of the citizens' grievance committee. [laughter]

Freeman: Is that what the name of it was?

Robinson: We had a civic club and I think Walter Parks was the president of it at that time; it was round about 1936, '35 or '36, '34, '35, '36, '37, right through there. We were trying to put down the kinds of things that we felt could be changed. And then we did have a biracial committee, our interracial committee, they worked through the YMCA. We got some things done; we didn't get into the white YMCA at that time, but we did get a better YMCA than we had. We improved the physical side of it because we went from upstairs in the -- Dr. Douglas' pharmacy building, the Odd Fellows Hall -- from there to behind Rose's Drug Store on Ninth Street and Houston, and from there to the USC building on the corner of Martin Luther King Boulevard and Magnolia now that is owned by Mayfields. See the USO --

Freeman: Jack Mayfield?

Robinson: Jack Mayfield. The USO club was there, it was run by the armed forces.

Freeman: During the war?

Robinson: Yeah. When they moved out, then we moved the YMCA there, and it was there that I led the movement to get money from the Benwood Foundation. [COMMENT UNAVAILABLE]...after making the move that I made. Then Mr. Wasson was the chairman of the board at the YMCA and also the mayor of the city of Chattanooga. The Benwood Foundation had just been established, and I thought it was a fine idea if we make a move right then to ask them to give us a YMCA, a structure that would house the kind of activities we needed, gym, swimming pool, and so forth, and that we could employ a professional YMCA director. I wrote a letter asking them for that, and they answered our letter by asking me to expand on the idea and some of the things that I had placed in the letter. Julian Brown was a good writer and had a lot of ideas, and could say it in words much better than I could. I went to Julian and we sat down and rewrote the letter, and expanded it from about two pages to about four pages, and we sent it back. The Benwood Foundation approved it and pledged a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars to build the James Henry branch there on Park. Dr. James Fowle, I think was the name, was made chairman of the building fund committee to solicit other funds. I was one of the three -- I was one of five that was on the major building committee. I think we had to raise twenty-five thousand dollars more because it was... [COMMENT UNAVAILABLE]. The building I think cost two hundred thousand dollars. And then the idea was proposed by the committee that in order that the building not deteriorate and fall down for lack of drive and effort on the part of the community, that they establish an endowment. I think it was about twenty-five to fifty thousand dollars endowment solicited in order to have funds for the maintenance of the building. So that's how we came into the building. I was working with Mr. Collins, who at that time was a very strong YMCA worker. Mr. --

Freeman: Edgar Collins?

Robinson: Ludie Collins from the West Side. He used to operate a blacksmith shop there on Cowart Street right off of Main Street. So they were older men than I at that time, but I worked very close with them. Although I was working hard, I didn't have the kind of money that when you work with people like that, that you should put in. I did put in my what you'd call "widow's mite." I remember Joe Traylor saying, "Now if you're going to serve on those committees you've got to measure up when time comes to put the money on the line." I think it was Bliss White, who was a lawyer at that time, who went with me to the American National Bank. I borrowed two hundred dollars and put into that building Fund as I had pledged. I paid the bank back in installments, but I paid it back. But I did realize that that was a responsibility and if we as blacks were going to make demands, we were going to have to pay for it. So I got baptized early that if you're going to be a part of something, then you had to, as the boys said, "Put your money where your mouth is," and I did.

Freeman: That was in the fifties when the Park Street YMCA was built, wasn't it?

Robinson: Yeah, somewhere back there at that time, yeah, because we hadn't gotten in nothing. Mr. Pennybaker was the chairman of the YMCA -- direction of the YMCA down on Georgia Avenue and East Eighth Street, right in there. That's during the time when I started working with Ray Evans. Ray Evans had come in here from Chicago and came into the Y on Georgia Avenue, as the boys' work secretary. That's where I met Ray Evans and got to know him. I was in Y work at that time.

Freeman: Ray Evans who is now?

Robinson: One of vice-presidents, I think it is of Chattem's Drug.

Freeman: Who used to work for the YMCA?

Robinson: Yeah, he came to Chattanooga from Chicago as a boys' work secretary for the YMCA.

Freeman: That's interesting. I was going to ask you, being one of these people who spoke your mind and practice what you believe to be right, when did you become friends of all these powerful white people who support you in being a legislator, and come to you for advice and counsel on keeping the peace and other activities of the community?

Robinson: Well, as we were growing up, those things that brought about confrontation...

Interview concluded when tape ended at this point

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