Alexander McAllister Rivera: Yeah.
Mary Hebert: Would you please state your full name and date of birth?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Alexander McAllister Rivera, Jr. And October the 4th, 1913.
Mary Hebert: Where were you born?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Born in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Mary Hebert: Did you live there most of your life?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: No, I lived there until I left to go to college. Yeah, I lived there all my childhood. Yeah.
Felicia Woods: So, do you remember where you began to go school?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Five or six, I don't know.
Felicia Woods: And you went up until which grade in high school?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: I completed high school in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Felicia Woods: Okay. Did they go up to grade 12?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: 12. We had 12 grades.
Mary Hebert: How did you come to live in Durham?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Oh, well, I have lived off and on in Durham. My mother died when I was young. I was two years old when my mother died, and my grandparents lived in Durham. And so, I was immediately brought here until my father remarried. And so, I lived, before school life in Durham, before I went to school at all, I lived in Durham with my grandparents. And then, when I graduated from high school, I went to college at Howard University in Washington DC, and this was during the Depression.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: And about my second year, my money ran out. And so, I started working with a newspaper, the Washington Tribune newspaper, and it was during this time that I got an offer from Dr. Shepard, Dr. James E. Shepard, who was a founding first president of North Carolina Central that was then North Carolina College. And he offered me a scholarship if I would come and organize a news bureau here. And so, I thought that would be a good opportunity for me to complete my education, and so I came, and that was in 1939.
Mary Hebert: How did you know Dr. Shepard? Did you know him?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: That's an interesting question. My father's a dentist, was a dentist. He's deceased now, and my father was Dr. Shepard's dentist. My father started practice in Durham, North Carolina, and shortly after he started, he moved to Greensboro. So, Dr. Shepard used to come all the way from Durham to Greensboro to have his teeth worked on by my father, and of course, when I said all the way, it was an all-day trip in those days, from Durham to Greensboro.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: And so, after I got to know Dr. Shepard. Today, we would've been calling him Uncle Jim, but in those days you didn't take that license, and he was imperial type man anyway, and it had been very difficult to get close enough to him on the Jim. But we were just that close. So, the interesting thing, as I said, to tell it all, my father was not pleased at all with the fact that I had dropped out of school in Washington, but he wasn't able, at that time, to do much about it because I had two sisters and they went in college.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: So, they felt that I should work and because they were not in a position to work. And in those days, you had no federal funds, no state funds, and you made your money by working in the summer and going to school the winter. So, when the funds ran out, you were just out. And so, Dr. Shepard and my father had a little conspiracy, and it was through their agreement that I was offered this position back here.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: The interesting thing about it was that he asked me to come here to organize. Not only he told me he wanted me to head up the office of the news bureau, and when I came here, I found out they didn't have one. So, I said, "I must have misunderstood you, because I thought that you wanted me to head this new bureau." He said, "No, you misunderstand me. I want you to organize one." So, it was then I realized that all of this was a cooked up scheme between my father and Dr. Shepard. So, now you know it all. So, that's how I got here.
Mary Hebert: Was your father one of the few African American dentists in Greensboro?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: At that time, he was the only.
Mary Hebert: What about in the surrounding area? Was he the only one in the general vicinity of Greensboro?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Yeah. Yeah. Shortly after he started practicing, they came to Greensboro, another dentist, Dr. George Simpkins came, but to start out, he was the first one, which meant that he treated people from, he asked the question from around, and all these people, these farmers would come in who couldn't pay or would come in with produce and animals and eggs and everything to pay for it. So, I remember that part of it. Yeah.
Mary Hebert: So, they would barter for dental work.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Yeah, for dental work.
Mary Hebert: You had mentioned that your father cooked up this scheme with Dr. Shepard to get you back in school. Did he push your education the whole way through?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: No, we understood that we were to finish college. I mean, that was from almost birth, we understood that. I mean, it was never any question, but I had two sisters. I had one here and one at Fisk University in Tennessee. And so, we were all in college, but this was a terrible time, financially. I mean, the old Depression, it was people like Vanderbilts were jumping out of windows and things. I mean, it was terrible.
Mary Hebert: How did the Depression affect the Black community in, well, you were up in DC at the time, but here in North Carolina, do you have any sense of that?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Yeah, I have a sense of it. They had Blacks, fortunately, as far as the Depression was concerned, were easy to make it, because they had less to lose. I just got through saying that the Vanderbilts were jumping out of windows, because they were be millionaires. They were losing fortunes. Blacks didn't have a fortune to lose. They were rock bottom to start with, and they knew how to, what we call, to make do. And you learned almost culturally, as a race, you learned to make do with what you had. And you didn't complain and carry on about it. You prayed for more and worked hard, and that was about it at the time.
Felicia Woods: Let me ask you, you mentioned two sisters. Were there other family members in the home where you grew up?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Mm-mmm.
Felicia Woods: So, it was the three of you and your dad?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: And mama. See, my daddy remarried, and so I had a stepmother. So, that's when we moved back to Greensboro, when he remarried. And so, I had a sister. She was one year old when her mother died, and then I have a half sister.
Mary Hebert: What kind of work did your grandparents do? Your father was a dentist. I mean, was he also professional?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Yeah, you're getting into a whole lot now. My great-grandfather was the first Black undertaker in the state of North Carolina, and he was in Wilmington, North Carolina. In 1898, they had the riot of Wilmington, the Wilmington Riot of 1898. This was the beginning or head of reconstruction, and all over the country, not just in North Carolina, but they were having these riots. You see, after the Civil War, to embarrass them, to punish the south, the victorious north turned over the cities, the administration and the cities to Blacks.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: So, Wilmington was one of those that everything in the city was run by Blacks. I mean, the judges and postmasters and everything was run by Black. Well, it was doing just what the north wanted to do was them bashing them. So, they decided around 1898 that they'd been punished enough. The south had been punished enough. There was an election called the Hayes Tilden election. You familiar with that, huh? Well, the Hayes still in election, one of the agreements was that this was over and we're not going to punish you any longer, and from now, you can take over.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: And so, the south and these other places didn't want to take over gradually by voting. They wanted to take over right now, and the only way to do it was to riot. And so, those people who were in responsible positions, they were giving them a chance to leave, those people who worked in media jobs and factories and so forth. A lot of them were killed, and enough to let them know that their rule was over. So, my grandfather was an undertaker. He worked not with his father, he had an establishment of his own because he couldn't get along with his father. So, they broke off in the heck. So, he had a business by himself, and when they had the riot of 1898, the Wilmington Riot of 1898, he was told to leave immediately.
Mary Hebert: So, he was warned to leave rather than—
Alexander McAllister Rivera: To leave. Yeah, he was one of those, yeah, rather than killing him, he was told to leave. He didn't leave immediately. The first night he stayed in the graveyard, the cemetery. Well, that was familiar territory with him being an undertaker. He was home free. So, of course, he ran and he spent the night down in the cemetery. The next day, of course, when things had calmed down a little bit, he was able to leave. So, he left, and then he brought his family home to Durham.
Mary Hebert: So, he was married at the time?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Oh, yeah, married with grown children, just about grown children.
Mary Hebert: Did the whole family have to leave, even his children?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Oh, yeah. Yeah, everybody, the whole family.
Mary Hebert: Did he remain an undertaker when he got here?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: No. He tried to. He never got over the horse carriage era. All of his big funerals in Wilmington were horse-drawn. He got here, he just never could make the transition from horse-drawn to automobile. And so, he was afraid here. He just couldn't make the transition.
Mary Hebert: Was your father—
Alexander McAllister Rivera: He started and tried to here, but he just didn't do it. When my father started working with him, his father and son—
Mary Hebert: As undertakers?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Yeah, but that started in Wilmington. They had an agreement. They had an agreement that there would be no whiskey left in the undertaking [indistinct 00:14:01]. One day, when my father went, there was a keg of whiskey there, and he told his daddy, he said, "I thought we agreed that there would be no whiskey in here at all." And he says, "Yeah, I know we had the agreement," he said, "but don't you forget that I'm your father." So, from there on, my father said, "I'm leaving and we are not going to be mutually respected and on the same level." He said, "I'm leaving." So then, he left and went to Howard University and took dentistry. And that's how he got—
Mary Hebert: What was the whiskey all about? [indistinct 00:14:38]
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Okay, yeah. It's just somebody had come by then, and it was not illegal in those days. Somebody just, "May I leave this here for safekeeping or something," just left a keg of whiskey. Nothing illegal about it, but my father was against it, and he said that they had this agreement when they went in the business that they would have no whiskey on the app premises.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: And see, in those days, an undertaker, one of the biggest things he had to do, they made the caskets by hand. The undertaking establishments usually was a cabinet shop, and they did a whole lot of work on the caskets themselves. And back in that back area somewhere, somebody left this keg of whiskey that my father—But he left and went to Washington and went to Howard University. Now you got that background, I guess, huh?
Mary Hebert: Yeah. Yeah. What was Durham like when you were here? Do you remember much of Durham when you were here as a child, the neighborhoods, those kinds of things? Or do those memories come from when you were older?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Both.
Mary Hebert: What was it like when you were [indistinct 00:16:11]
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Both. I don't remember that, but the impressionable stage for me was the big business success of Durham, and it meant for a type of living that I had never seen before. Big cars, big homes, chauffeurs, this type of thing, and where they had, I mean, big cars and where they had at least two of them. And in those days, women didn't drive automobiles. That was unladylike, and they didn't smoke even. But so, if you had a car for your wife, you had to have a chauffer for her. And so, where I had been in Greensboro, where I'd been before, I mean, this was not the case.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: But here, all these people here had the various businesses and there were a lot of them around here, because the Blacks had learned how to organize businesses, and it seemed like every time they turned around they were organizing another one. And they were very successful because one would support the other, and, I don't know how familiar you are, they had interlocking boards, and they could have a board meeting, they wouldn't like for me to say this, but they could have a board meeting of four or five businesses without opening the door, opening or closing the door. It's just changing seats at the table.
Mary Hebert: So, you mean several people owned several businesses as a corporation type thing?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Well, they're all corporations, but I'm saying, yeah, they were all corporations, but the managerial administration part of it was controlled by the same people. And so, if you had a meeting of one board—
Mary Hebert: Now you can start talking.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: If you had a meeting of one board, I'm saying without opening the door, you could just change. Now we're going to have a meeting of this other board. So then, the chairman of that committee would move to the head of the table, but ostensibly, they'd be the same people.
Mary Hebert: So, the same people controlled most of the wealth within the city?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Most of the businesses, yeah. There was never any great wealth. The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, by virtue, being a mutual company. The stockholders were the people who owned the insurance policies, unlike a stock company. A stock company, then they would have shares, and you could get power. There was no way to get rich. You made a lot of money, and they lived on good salaries, and the salaries were larger than other salaries around, White or Black.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: But the one thing I think that saved them was the fact that these were not stock companies. They were mutual companies, almost all of them were mutual companies, and it's just the opposite from a lot of other places. The Atlanta Life Insurance Company was a stock company. North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company was a mutual company, and I remember one day I was in Winston-Salem and Mr. Sparlin called me to come back here immediately. I was a newspaper man then, and I said, "But I'm busy."
Alexander McAllister Rivera: He said, "Listen, come back right now because I'm in trouble." So, I got back over here and a magazine had written him up as one of the 10 richest Black men in America, and he said, "Now this is an indictment," he said, "because there's no way for me to be one of the richest Black men in the nation because I've been on salary ever since I've been here, and the only way for me to have been rich was to have stole something." That's the reason why he wanted me to come back immediately and write this correction, rejection, or whatever.
Mary Hebert: And you did that?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Yeah.
Felicia Woods: You mentioned newspaper man. Was that your first job?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Yeah, of any consequence. See, when I went to Howard University, I was on the yearbook staff of my class, and I was writing for the class and taking pictures and carrying these two. A newspaper company was also a publishing company. So, we'd carry our stuff down to this newspaper company, and they were publishing the yearbook, and they saw the material that I was bringing in, the writing and pictures, and then when I gave out the money to go to school, they asked me if I would like a job, and I said, "Yeah, I need a job." So then, that's how I started as a newspaperman with the Washington Tribune. I started out taking pictures and writing, and I was one of the first, one the early Black photojournalists in the country.
Mary Hebert: How'd you get interested in photography? Was that just—
Alexander McAllister Rivera: I don't know, it was just part of it.
Mary Hebert: When did you start taking pictures? Was it in Washington?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Yeah, professionally, and I mean, everybody was taking some snapshots. No, but professionally, that's when I started with the yearbook.
Felicia Woods: I was just going to ask, were you interested in photojournalist career, maybe in your teens or before then?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Not that I remember. No, of course, there was nothing available to me to suggest that that would be a career—
Mary Hebert: What did you major in at Howard?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: —at that age. History.
Mary Hebert: History?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Because none of these schools had journalism at the time. They have some kind of creative writing or something over here now, but full-fledged journalism class, they didn't have them, because there was no outlet. There were no opportunities.
Mary Hebert: Was there a Black-owned newspaper here in Durham?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Yeah, the Carolina Times.
Mary Hebert: You mentioned before we started that you got interested in civil rights when you were in your teens?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Yeah.
Mary Hebert: In the thirties?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: This was a case here in 1930, Judge John J. Parker was nominated for the United States Supreme Court, and my father considered John J. Parker a racist. And he was determined to defeat him, if he could. Well, that was almost unheard of. It was even more difficult because the Black leaders, especially those who were heads of educational institutions, felt it imperative that they support Parker because they were afraid to go against him.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: And so, it meant that my father was out there virtually by himself. But Walter White, that's the man, and Walter White was executive secretary and a friend of my father, and my father contacted him and told him that Parker should be defeated. And he asked him, would he work for him, and he said yeah. So, they started working to the defeat Parker, and it got real, real nasty, and it got rough. We had to string lights in our backyard for my father's safety.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: And this is the time when Walter White and members of the NAACP came to Greensboro to discuss this case, and I was in my teens. There was no place for them to stay, no hotel, no anything, no place to eat or stay. So, they all stayed at our house. So, at dinner and around, I heard all the conversations and I wasn't in the battle, but I was in earshot of it, so I could hear what they were talking about. And Lynn, for the first time, I actually saw strategizing people, making plans, and so forth for this, and to get the feel of the importance of this.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: This was 1930. And James Shepard, I've already told you, was one of my father's closest friends, and they almost broke up, broke friendship, because Jim Shepard was for Parker because he was trying to run this school, and he needed his support and the other White support and money and so forth, and he felt they should go along, and my daddy said, "I'm very sorry Jim, I can't go with you." And they had some difficult times, but their friendship was strong enough to overcome this, and the friendship lasted.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: But the first thing I remember was Walter White, who came down, executive secretary. He's the Whitest Black man I ever saw in my life. He had blonde hair, blue eyes, blonde mustache, blonde eyelashes, and when he came in and he was going to live there in the house, I was a little afraid because I thought that he might be passing, might be an imposter.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: I couldn't understand, in those days, why a White man would want to pass for Black, and he certainly didn't have to. He married twice. The first time he married, he married a Black woman. Second time he married, he married a White woman, but he could've done anything he wanted. I never seen anybody as White as that in my life. And they was White too. But at any rate, this is the beginning. You asked me about the beginning of this.
Mary Hebert: You said that it got really nasty when your father was opposing Parker. What kind of things happened?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Oh, well, my father was threatened physically, and he was threatened ostracism by the Blacks.
Mary Hebert: Did people boycott his business?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: No. Well, it would've been difficult because he was one of two dentists there, and no, the ranking five Black was supportive of him. It was those who had some ax to grind or felt that they needed to support them because of the positions that they have. But here, it's an interesting thing. About a month ago, Julius Chambers, who his chancellor of North Carolina Central University, won the John J. Parker Award, and I knew he didn't know the background, because it was 65 years ago and Julius Chambers is not 65 years old.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: And so, what I did, I wrote him a letter, and I congratulated him on receiving the award, but I also gave him the background of much of what I have told you. He's sent this little brief letter that I wrote to Julius, and I sent him the documentation so that he would, I'll give you a copy of this if you want.
Mary Hebert: Yes, please.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: And, of course, the letter is confidential, but at any rate, John J. Parker was defeated by one vote. This was the first major national success of the NAACP. The NAACP was about 20 years old at this time, 1930, it was about 20 years old.
Mary Hebert: Was there a chapter of the NAACP in Greensboro?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Oh, yeah.
Mary Hebert: So, your father was active in the NAACP?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, but you see, here's the thing about if you don't understand the NAACP, a lot of people contributed, teachers and all, but they would not ever let it be known that they did. They would send money, but they didn't want a membership card or anything that would divulge the fact that they were a member of NAACP. To be a member of NAACP could have caused a loss in their job, or some reprisal. Yeah.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: So, what I'm trying to say to you is there a whole lot of people who were members that nobody ever knew they were members, and my father was different because he was self-employed. He was a dentist, and nobody could hurt him, and he got a lot of his strength from the fact that he was, and the Blacks knew that he was fighting their cause. And so, they would support him, even in doing that dentistry. But they used to have a joke around in Greensboro that said that the old doc would your mouth wide open and the telephone would ring, and he'd say, "I'll be right back," and he'd leave you with your mouth open, and he's fighting these racial battles.
Mary Hebert: Yeah.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Yeah.
Mary Hebert: So, he fought him all of his life, I mean?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: All of his life until after the Depression. He moved. He said down the way, he lost property and everything, and he said, "Now, if I got to start over, I'm not going to start over in the south. I'm just not going to start over." So, he started looking around and found that he was going to New York, and my mother, being South Carolinian, she was from Florence, well, Florence and Charleston, all around.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: But anyway, she said she didn't want to live in New York City and she didn't want live anywhere that she didn't have a little garden and a porch. So they found a house in Yonkers, New York, and that's just about 14 miles by New York City, and that was close enough. Anyway, so, he moved to New York.
Felicia Woods: Do you remember what year it was that your father moved?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: No. What year it was he moved?
Felicia Woods: Mm-hmm, to New York.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Middle thirties, that's best I can put it.
Mary Hebert: You mentioned that he lost his property. Did that have anything to do with his opposition, departure and that [indistinct 00:33:35]
Alexander McAllister Rivera: I think the Depression just got it.
Mary Hebert: It just got it.
Felicia Woods: The type of race that your father ran against Judge John J. Parker, what type of race was it?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: No, he didn't. Parker was nominated for the United States Supreme Court.
Felicia Woods: Okay.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: This was no race, but Parker was nominated, and you have to read the story, but to get the nomination, you have to get a certain amount of votes from the legislation, that is the United States Congress, and that's why this is so important, that they were able to convince the United States Congress that this man should not be in the Supreme Court.
Felicia Woods: So, that's why your father opposed him?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: My father opposed him because he felt that he was a racist. John J. Parker had made some statements. Yeah.
Felicia Woods: Now, I know you told us that your father opposed Parker.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Parker?
Felicia Woods: What type of steps did he take to oppose him?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Contacting NAACP.
Mary Hebert: What was the campaign against Parker? Did they write letters to senators?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Oh, yeah. Telegrams, letters. A lot of this is—Oh, yeah.
Mary Hebert: Okay. So, these are all letters that were sent to all these senators.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: That's your background material.
Mary Hebert: Okay.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Is he going to do it?
Mary Hebert: [indistinct 00:35:44].
Mary Hebert: What kind of steps did your father take to oppose the White power structure, say, in Greensboro? It seemed like he was active in opposing segregation in any way that he could. Did he instill that in you, this opposition to the system of segregation?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: He didn't do it within any program. I got it from just being at home, and in among it, observing it.
Mary Hebert: Would he do any specific things like not drink out of the Colored-only water fountain?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: No, because my father looked White, and except people who knew him, would not know who was drinking out the fountain to start with. But he just fought any kind of discrimination, and he was always doing it, any kind of injustice, and that's racial injustice, any kind of discrimination. So, I lived among this, lived in it, seeing as I was telling you, people from NAACP, they came down and always stopped at the house, and they just felt that was an open door for them.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: And so, I heard it all, but nobody encouraged me. I don't think my father actually wanted me to bother with it because he realized how much that would take away from your life, normal life, and things that you want to do. So, he never encouraged me to do it. I just was in it all the time.
Felicia Woods: Would you describe the neighborhood that you grew up in?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: I grew up in a neighborhood near Bennett College. It was a quiet residential neighborhood. Across the street from me was a church. On one side, there was vacant property that was owned by us or there was nobody close on that side. We had a neighbor on the other side who was just a friend. But it was nothing unusual, just a quiet residential neighborhood.
Mary Hebert: Who were some of the other NAACP leaders in Greensboro? Or is it all in here also, in this article?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Not in that fight, because he was almost alone in it.
Mary Hebert: Were there any ministers involved in it or churches involved in opposing Parker?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: I don't remember, but I'm sure there were. I'm sure there were because he had grassroots support. He did not have the support of the establishment, so to speak.
Mary Hebert: So, he had, say, the support of the farmers and the sharecroppers.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Yeah. And teachers and all. I mean, even those people who could get hurt, he had their support, but they weren't out singing "We Shall Overcome."
Mary Hebert: Right.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: No.
Mary Hebert: Not in 1930s.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: No. No. They were hoping to overcome, but they weren't obvious about it.
Mary Hebert: Now you came back to Central in—
Alexander McAllister Rivera: 1939.
Mary Hebert: Two years later, World War II breaks out. Were you involved in—
Alexander McAllister Rivera: 41.
Mary Hebert: 41.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: On that Sunday, [indistinct 00:39:58] 1941, we were returning with the football team from Columbus, Georgia, and somebody on the train said that we'd been attacked. So, it really didn't dawn on me the seriousness of it at that time. But that whole football team, virtually the whole football team, was disbanded and went somewhere, and they were drafted. And those who came back to school, came back to school, it was about 45, 46. Some of them on the GI bill, which was one of the first governmental educational bill that they had and so forth.
Mary Hebert: Were you there drafted?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: No. I left here and went to work in Norfolk, Virginia for the Journal and Guide newspaper and—
Felicia Woods: I apologize, what was his name of the journal?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Journal? J-O-U-R-N-A-L, Journal and Guide, G-U-I-D-E newspaper.
Felicia Woods: Newspaper?
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Mm-hmm. It was a highly-respected newspaper. It was mainly in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia.
Felicia Woods: How were you made aware of that job between [indistinct 00:41:42]
Alexander McAllister Rivera: Look, I had job offers. I never had a resume in my life. I never had one. I've never applied for a job, none. But, from the time I was in school here, by virtue, see, by me running a news bureau, all of the newspapers and magazines got releases and pictures from us. So, they knew the work that we were doing here. So, I was always getting offers, and I had a falling out with Dr. Shepard. He told me that he was going to put over me a man with a PhD, a Dr. Charles Ray. He says, "I'm going to appoint Dr. Charles Ray head of the news bureau." Well, for a university, the more people that you can have heading up departments with PhDs, the bigger your school is.
Alexander McAllister Rivera: So, I said, "Well, I'm not going to work. I mean, you can appoint him." I said, "But first of all, I don't plan to sit in and do the work and have some PhD sign his name to everything that I do." I said, "I'm not going to take that." He told me, "Oh, you would like him," said, "he's a perfect," said, "I just knew that y'all would get along perfectly." I said, "Well, we might, but I'm not going to work here." So, that's the reason I left, and he was exactly right because Charlie Ray and I became the best friends we could possibly come. So, you can ask my wife, so I went on to the Journal and Guide to work.
Mary Hebert: I need to flip this tape over.