Emogene Watkins Wilson: —had an office down Beale Street, and he was selected. You know he's the one that wrote the Beale Street Blues? 

Stacey Scales: W.C. Handy. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: W.C Handy. And he wrote the St. Louis Blues. And he wrote a lot of other kinds of blues. And so, he was quite a—He was a Duke Ellington of the time, you know? 

Stacey Scales: Excuse me. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: And so, he was commissioned by Crump to write his campaign song. And he wrote this song, "Mr. Crump, don't allow no whiskey playing in here." 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: Mr. Crump was also one of these fundamentalists Christians, so he was a Puritan in a sense. And you found a lot, he was kind of—I tell you who he, Mr. Crump, was a lot like. What's this little fella? There was this little fella that tried to run for president. This rich man who— 

Stacey Scales: Perot? Ross Perot? 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: He's just like Ross Perot, that type of paternalism. He was a tall man with heavy white hair. Perot is a little runt, but they share that philosophy. That's the kind of man, he knew everything about everything, and what he said, this is your morality, this is the way life ought to be. As I say, he didn't just just expound that on Black people, but he expected White people to follow through on that too. So he didn't allow— 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: For years, we had what they called the blue laws. And nothing was open on Sunday but church. Nothing was open on that day. You didn't play ball games on Sunday, you didn't do anything on Sunday but go to church. Because it wasn't Mr. Crump's thing, but Mr. Crump made sure that nothing opened up either. And so, this song, "Mr. Crump don't allow no—something to play it in here. We don't care what Mr. Crump don't allow, we going to play our songs on anyhow. Mr. Crump don't allow," that's the way the song went. It was a whole lot of something. But anyhow, it won the election for Crump. 

Stacey Scales: The song sounded like it was almost against him. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: It does, but it was a play on this thing. Mr. Crump, I used to have somewhere, I can't remember where that is now. But he doesn't allow, no. The refrain was, "We don't care what Mr. Crump don't allow, we going to play it anyhow." 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: But it was almost—It was dichotomy in a way. But that might not have been the song that won him the election, that might have been another one. But I do know that he did write a song that got Mr. Crump elected. That was a campaign song. That was the beginning around here of having campaign songs when the people wanted to run a race of some kind. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: And he didn't allow any Black policeman at all. Didn't believe in Black policemen, only White policeman. We didn't get Black policemen for many years. And then, when they did have Black policemen, they weren't allowed to arrest White folks. The only people they could arrest was Black folks. If they saw a White man over there shooting and witnessed it, they couldn't arrest him. They had to call the White ones to arrest him. That's the mentality. It really wasn't until, let me see, somewhere in the '50s when they began to have Black policemen. Then they just had a hand. Didn't have any Black firemen. And you had segregated schools, and so you had Black teachers. All Black schools and all Black teachers, all White schools and all White teachers. And of course— 

Stacey Scales: Excuse me. Were your children's schools segregated? The schools you sent your children to? 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: Oh, yes. You went through White neighborhoods to get to a Black school. You went through White neighborhoods. I mean, it wasn't any rhyme or reason. You'd pass a big White school to get to a Black school. And we had neighborhood schools, we had neighborhood schools. But like I told you, my neighborhood, the Whites lived just across the main thoroughfare. Well, it was a school that I could get to in five minutes. I couldn't go to that school. I had to go back over here somewhere to another school that was just for Black children. And so, it wasn't until in the '70s that they integrated schools. And that was when they had the National Supreme Court deemed it. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: That is one of the reasons that Martin Luther King came to Memphis was because you only had Black garbage men, you didn't have—And the garbage man were treated just like they were nothing. They weren't paid anything. If they had to stay off, they didn't get paid for that day. And they had to go in the backyard and face dogs, face anything. They didn't never know what they would face going in the back. And they were just treated very poor. If it rained, it didn't matter. They had still go out and pick up the garbage. And we had a mayor at that time who was very unsympathetic to things. The White guy, his name was Loeb, and he refused to listen to the union. And it just began to be so terrible that the union decided it was just not going to take it anymore. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: And that was when they just asked for some simple things like give them some equipment, some raincoats and things to wear in the rain, that type of thing. His attitude was just, they don't need it. He was a commissioner. He had been commissioner of sanitation. And so, then they had to call Martin Luther King in. And so, that was when that changed. The NAACP had done so many things to help turn things around. They turned around the library, the desegregation bit and all that kind of thing. But it was when Martin Luther King had to come and kind of work with that. And of course, he was here when he died. We had a newspaper here, we had a Black newspaper. We had tried to have several newspapers here. 

Stacey Scales: What was the newspaper? 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: Memphis World was the first one that I can remember. And yet, it came out of Birmingham. And they had the Birmingham World. And so, it had usually had the same news that was in the Birmingham World, except they had a first page, a society page. They had a woman writing on a society page, all Memphis Society. And then, they had all of the things that were happening in the Black community. Not all of them, but most of them. Many of them. 

Stacey Scales: So the Memphis World came out of Birmingham? 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I forget who the man's name, who was over down there. Name was Scott, that's what his name was. And he was the editor down in Birmingham. And so, what we would do would was just send the stuff we had here and they would just make a new front page. That was it. Around in the '50s, knowing that we needed more than just a page, because Memphis has always been on the cutting edge of a lot of things. And you have two colleges at that time here. It had LeMoyne College and you had had little college called Roger Williams College. 

Stacey Scales: That was an African American institution? 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: Mm-hmm. It was small and it was really to help train some of the ministers. And eventually, we had a prominent minister here named Owens. He was very revered, very well thought of as a minister. He was educated and he was quite a speaker. He was a Baptist. And they named the college in his name, changed from Roger Williams College to Owen College, and they called it Owen Junior College. And so, between LeMoyne and Owen Junior College, you had a Black institution. And of course, LeMoyne had been a high school before that. And a lot of the people sent their—Well, they only had two high schools in Memphis for a long time. One until, and that was the one on the north side and one on the south side. 

Stacey Scales: What are the names of those? 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: The one on the north side was called Manassas, M-A-N-A-S-S-A-S, Manassas High School. And all the people in north Memphis went to the Manassas. And the one in South Memphis, well, first they had a school called Kortrecht, K-O-R-T-R-E-C-H-T. Now, I don't know where a name came from, but obviously, it was a White benefactor of some kind. K-O-R-T-R-E-C-H-T. So then, they established a new high school in South Memphis called Booker T. Washington, named after Booker T. Washington. And then, Kortrecht was no longer the high school. Booker T. Washington became the high school. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: It's for the south side. You had north side and the south side. And for years, until the war, until World War II, those were the only two high schools for Blacks. The Whites had about five or six high schools, but all Blacks in South Memphis went to Booker T., as we used to call it, and all the Blacks went to Manassas on the north side. Well, I had an aunt who taught at Booker T. Washington and my mother sent me to Booker T. Washington, so that's how I happened to get on that bus every morning and to come to Booker T. Washington. You had to get a transfer. And so, I got a transfer from my north Memphis elementary school to that. There was something I started to say by bringing up those high schools. 

Stacey Scales: You were talking about the Roger Williams College and how those came about. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: Okay, and so, well— 

Stacey Scales: Or LeMoyne High school and Owen Junior College. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: That's where I got off and I backtracked to [indistinct 00:12:28]. LeMoyne High School preceded LeMoyne College and you had a lot of benevolent Whites from the east who were congregationalists. And they came and many of them volunteered their services. And they began to make a real good college out of it. LeMoyne was a background for a lot of the prominent people. Black people who are in big jobs today came through LeMoyne College because it was quite a nice college. Hold on. Here from Tennessee State, the people who come here from—You had Fisk was right up the line there in Nashville. And Fisk used to be—Oh, it was equal to Howard and it's prestige. I would've liked to have gone to Fisk just as much as I wanted to go to Howard. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: But Howard, well, my father had gone to Howard, and so I wanted to. And he talked about it in such fond terms, so that's how I happened to have that ambition to go there. But so, LeMoyne had spawned a lot of the people who—Well, we had an educated crowd. And so, it was foolish for us not to have a newspaper that represented the community, the Black community. And so, the Chicago Defender sent representatives down here to see about establishing a paper down here and they took the editor from the Memphis World and he was the first person to edit the paper. And that was something like 1950. That was about 1950 or '52, something like that. It was 1951 or 1952. But he had been so entrenched in the ways of the Memphis World and the Birmingham World that it was he didn't really do what they expected of him. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: Some of the ways that he had of doing things were quite alien to what the Defender publications had been used to doing. They had publications down in Kentucky and in Detroit and in different places. And they wanted to establish this, the same kind of publication in Memphis on a larger scale. The big papers around here with a Pittsburgh Courier, which came out of Pittsburgh. And it was national paper that had a very good readership. And the Chicago Defender, and then there was the Afro-American, a newspaper that came out of Baltimore. And so, they needed a paper here of the caliber of those papers. And so, after Mr. Swingler, he was L.O. Swingler, had been the editor for years, 20 some years of the Memphis World. And so, when they decided to do this, he was already made editor and naturally it was an opportunity for him to expand. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: But as I say, after about six months when he wasn't really working out, they sent a person here to troubleshoot. More or less kind of give him some assistance. And eventually that person became the editor of the paper. They sent him down here as general manager. And so, then he began to bring the paper up because he had been a foreign correspondent and his name was Alex Wilson. And of course, I was writing. I had already been involved in journalism and I was asked to write for the paper on the social level, the society news. This is him. I married him. I have been trying my best to get this thing written, but this more or less— 

Stacey Scales: So you married the editor? 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: I married the editor, and this is he. And of course, that opened up a whole new chapter. And so, I had gathered stuff. He was involved in a lot of civil rights cases and, of course, he was the editor. He brought the Tri-State Defender a long ways. And by the time they were trying to get Little Rock integrated, he was dispatched to go and be in charge of the Black journalists that was sent over there. And so, he took care of all the civil rights things that were in this area. He traveled all over Mississippi for the Emmett Till case and all that kind of thing. And of course, by the time Little Rock came along, which was in 1957, he was beaten and from the blows that he suffered at that point, he eventually succumbeded to that. After all of that was over, they promoted him to Chicago as editor to the Chicago Defender. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: But it proved to be a little much for him. It was a daily paper and, of course, he died in 1960. But the newspaper was another business. When you asked me about business, it took me a while to consider all different things that we did to keep our community informed and to—It was insurance businesses, of course, all kinds of hair businesses, barber shops and beauty parlors. We had two drug stores. We had a drugstore, the South Memphis Drugstore, which was—Oh, what is that? What is that man's name, doctor? You had one that located on Mississippi Boulevard, Mississippi and Walker. And you had one out on Florida Avenue, that was one of the Martin brothers. You know, I told you that one of them was a pharmacist, Dr. Martin, had that out there. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: My father had an office together with one of the doctors, with one of the brothers who was a Martin down on Beale Street. Oh, that was another thing, on Beale Street you had all the major doctors, Black doctors down there. The insurance company was down there, the bank was down there, photographers were down there. Oh, we had some excellent photographers. The best pictures that were ever made in Memphis were made by the Hooks brothers. And the Hooks brothers, they're the parents and relatives of Ben Hooks, who is the director of the NAACP. The pictures that they took in their day are just as good today as far as even the quality of the paper and everything. They were very talented in art for their talents, and they could pose pictures so very well. And they took the major pictures of the day. 

Stacey Scales: Were they the photographers for the newspaper? 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: No. You had a fellow named Ernest Withers, that's another one that could tell you more stuff about Memphis. He's a contemporary of mine. He went to Manassas High School. While I was going to Booker Washington, he was going to Manassas. 

Stacey Scales: We've interviewed him. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: Well, he's one of those who worked for the paper. He took pictures. He took this picture, Ernest Withers did, and he used to accompany him. Ernest Withers was one of the early policemen. Something happened, I don't know what happened, and he didn't remain on the force. But with the training that he had gotten, it fitted him well for getting around doing the work that he was doing. And he had an office down on Beale Street and my husband used to have him to go with him when he went on these dangerous missions out. When Emmett Till was killed, they had all those—Then they had a lot of lynchings down there in Mississippi. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: They had a lot of the civil rights stuff down there. But he had a man named Dr. T.R.M Howard, very well known Black physician who established a clinic down in Mound Bayou, Mississippi. And he and his wife were quite active in the community civil rights wise. And of course, the Whites could not stand that. And they did everything they could to run him out of town, and did run them out of town. Man had a thriving business, but the climate of the area was if we don't want you to thrive and do well, we are going to run you out and we are going to trump up things on you and make it hard for you. We had one of the biggest ballparks where all the Black baseball players played. Was owned by one of the Martin brothers. 

Stacey Scales: Where was that located? 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: That was down on Crump and Lauderdale, which is now—Let see. It was on Lauderdale near what is now called Crump. Actually, the street was called Iowa at that time. And of course, A. Philip Randolph was quite a union man and organizer in the east. [indistinct 00:24:07]. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: Can I—can I— 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: [INTERRUPTION 00:24:08] 

Stacey Scales: We were talking about where Lauderdale was and Iowa. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: Okay. What is now called E.H. Crump as I tell you, the whole town has different things named after E.H. Crump. One of them is Crump Boulevard, that's one of the main thoroughfares of town. At one point, the name of that street was Iowa. And what is now is E.H. Crump was where the ballpark were. That was not far from where Booker Washington is. And Booker Washington is on Lauderdale. And so, so the stadium was right—It was a big ballpark and all of the baseball games were there, all the Black players. It was just a popular place to go. I never went. I was younger, and so I never saw. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: And by the time I was old enough to go and enjoy, I left Memphis, so I never did. But I passed it going to school sometimes when I was out in that area.And the Dr. Martin hosted the political. They were trying to elect Dwight Eisenhower, I believe, or was it before Dwight Eisenhower? The Republican Party was the party that, as I said, Blacks felt allegiance to. And so, Lieutenant Lee had invited and Dr. Martin and all of them were the Black political figures here. Then you had another benevolent person, a very rich man named Bob Church. Bob Church was about nine tenths White and one tenth Black. And he was quite powerful and he was quite wealthy. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: And in fact, at one point, his father had been the one to—We had a big, before my time, had a yellow fever epidemic and the town was bankrupt from dealing with it. And in order to do something, I don't know, to get enough money to foster something that had to be [indistinct 00:27:17]. He had to pull the town out of its poverty. And of course, that was quite a thing. Old man Church had built a big park for Black people down on Beale Street because Black people could not go to the parks. All the parks were closed to Black people. They couldn't go to the parks. They have a big confederate park on the river, on Front Street, you didn't even walk through there. 

Stacey Scales: Why? 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: You were Black. 

Stacey Scales: Would something happen to you if you walked through there? 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: You arrested. You'd be arrested. 

Stacey Scales: So you just wouldn't be caught down there? 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: You wouldn't get caught going through there. If you were a maid and you were taking a little White child through there, you might could go through there. Then there was a park. Let's see, where else? There was another park they had that you didn't go through. Oh, yeah, they had Overton Park. That was named for one of the White benefactors, one of the White forefathers. And you only went to the zoo one time a week. You went to the zoo one day a week. 

Stacey Scales: Which day was that? 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: Thursday. Went to the zoo one day a week, Thursday. And that was usually the major day off in the White community. They gave Thursday off. 

Stacey Scales: Was there a connection between that day and the zoo? 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: That was it. That was the reason they chose that Thursday because that was usually the major day off in these White homes, so they figured that that would be a good day for the Blacks to go. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: I'm also told that if a holiday like the 4th of July fell on that Thursday, then you went on Tuesday, and so that the White children could go on Thursday. And then, when you went to the zoo, you didn't ride there, you didn't ride the little ponies. They had extra little ponies and things that little White children, they had for them to ride, and concessions. But you went there, Black children couldn't. It was just pitiful to think about how deprived. It was all calculated in the south to keep the Black person down because I think they didn't want to admit it, but once you give a Black person an education, they can do what you can do. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: And they didn't want that, so they made life just as deprived and miserable as possible and to keep you back. They didn't have schools for a long time. That's one of the reasons that LeMoyne High School was there because a lot of the doctors and the professional people wanted their children to be educated. And so, after LeMoyne was started, they started a high school there and you had to pay to go to it. But then, they established a Booker T. Washington High school and then Kortrecht, and then people were able to go free. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: But the whole thing about this desegregation thing—Not desegregation, but segregation, was to keep you separate and to keep you from enjoying the benefits of life the way Whites did. You just weren't supposed to do it because you were inferior. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: But if in your family they say, "Well, honey, you're not as good as a White person," you grew up thinking that. In my family, we were always told that we were as good as anybody. I never have felt secondary to a White person. I felt equal to any of them and above many of them. And that's the way we were given that assurance and self-esteem. And a lot of Black families gave that to their children. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: But when all a person ever sees is negative vibes coming back from a situation, either fears that thing or feels subjugated. And so, you always have had people who felt that thing, especially if all their lives, all they ever did was serve White people. They felt like this is it. And a lot of times, you find them more loyal to the White people than other people because they were convinced. Well, you got that right here in 1995 where you have Black people who will do anything that a White person thinks that they ought to. But it started back in those days. 

Stacey Scales: Were there women's groups that organized against some of the— 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: There were women's groups who organized for the good health of Black women. You had the National Council of Negro Women, you had numerous clubs. My mother was one of the founders of a club that I'm in today that is, well, that club is about 70. It was established in 1923. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: And all of these women were either wives of professional men or they were themselves professional. They were either teachers or something like that. And they used to organize to read, to cultural kinds of things. And this is one of the ways that Black women, you had clubs that were organized among Black women or Black nurses, women who were nurses. They had a nurses group. That was about the time that Jack and Jill Club of America. Have you ever heard of that? 

Stacey Scales: Yes. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: The National Jack and Jill Club organized for that very reason because of all of this lack of outlet for the Black children of middle class America who had the means to go places but were deprived of going places. 

Stacey Scales: There was a Jack and Jill here? 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: Oh, yes. This Jack and Jill has been here for years. I was a member when my daughter was born. And after a period of time, you outgrow it when your children outgrow it. And it's mostly for young parents, somewhere where you know the families, you know the parents. You have three or four friends who have children and you'd like for your children to play with those children. And so, the club was a good outlet for that. And people who thought alike about going places and doing things, so they would travel to where the conferences were. If they had a conference in a given place, then that was your chance for you to meet people from all over the country. It's kind of an elite kind of thing, but at the same time, it was another way for Black women to get together and share a lot of common things. 

Stacey Scales: What did the National Council of Negro Women do? What sort of things would they do in the local area? 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: They sponsored cultural events, they sponsored lectures, they sponsored things that people wanted to do but couldn't do in the White world, concerts, fashion shows. They're still doing that. They're still doing it. Mary McLeod Bethune was one of the founders. You're familiar with her? 

Stacey Scales: Yes. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: She was one of the forerunners of women who tried to bring up the educational level. And that was one of the ways that she had of getting women to get into lecture groups and anything that's uplifting, anything that promoted women. A lot of women were also second class citizens and a lot of women needed to go beyond just rearing the family. In some cities, maybe it was the cooking of foods that brought women together. Some women, sewing was the thing, so it depended—Now, since the early days, things have shifted where women are more into working, women are more into going to school and being educated, so the emphasis of this National Council of Negro Women has escalated into a voter rights kind of thing. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: They do education among the groups on voter education, civic kinds of things, showing them how to be organized for political purposes. Sometimes it's a religious emphasis. It depends on what is necessary in the life of women in that community, what that focus is on. And they raise funds many times to fund up things, focuses on children, sociological kinds of things. But it depends. The National Council of Women is just that it's something to help women to come into the forefront and come into their own rather than be Mrs So-and-so, rather than just follow husbands. 

Stacey Scales: Oh, yeah. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: Time has changed where women now are more oriented into work life and careers, and you have so many women who are divorced and you have so many—They just need some other vehicle other than their children to [indistinct 00:38:30]. 

Stacey Scales: Did the men respond well to that when the ladies of the town would decide to join those organizations? 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: Most of the time. Most of the time those women were women who were already out there anyway. It wasn't a thing where ask my husband, "Do you think I ought to join that club?" type of thing. It was they're already out there and they're meeting these women, so this was an interest. And the men themselves were involved in whatever endeavor that they were in. A lot of the women were single women. And you found a lot of single women are the ones who do things with the Girl Scouts and the Y. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: They're the ones anyway, so they needed a group that would give them that vehicle through which they could operate. The women who were married, most of the men were probably involved and many of them were professional. Many of the women were teachers or their husbands were in their own world of business, so I don't think that, it has never been a conflict between whether a woman—It wasn't so private, but there wasn't anything men wanted to join. And it was just like you have women who were busy in their churches and in charge of things, and so it was just a second kind of activity. 

Stacey Scales: Did people ever address the visual icons of Jim Crow like Aunt Jemima bottle, the images associated with, I guess, mammies and sambos and things like that? 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: We've always tackled that within the groups and the sororities. I think for the most part we're the forerunners of—You have to have a concerted effort to make an input road. And a lot of the club groups, a lot of the time, this was discussed among ourselves. And I know in the sororities, that's one of the things that sororities have long tried to address. Also, NAACP has always been acted that way, so this is the way that they—They were not confrontational about it. Generally, there would be a discussion somewhere and somebody would decide that they were going to take action this way. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: For instance, now, my husband was editor of the paper here and unbeknownst to me, he and a group of his cohorts were behind a campaign to cause the White paper to start using titles. They would always—See, I write about it in here. I don't know what it's in this article or not. I'm trying to see whether I ever—Oh, here. Well, I may have an extra article in which this was published that addresses that. But this was being an example of how they tackled it. When he came to town, he tackled a lot of that. And as a newspaper, he had to keep in the background. Let's see. Here it is. Now, this is a part of the thing where Blacks here came together. The newspaper was— 

Stacey Scales: About what year was that? 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: This was in the '50s, late '50s. What you were talking about was taken up a lot by the newspapers, the Black newspapers. Typical of other local issues pursued by the Tri-State Defender was the censure of the Peabody Hotel for its discriminatory practices against Black guests. Well, yeah, you couldn't go to a White hotel. You didn't think. And that's one of the reasons Martin Luther King was down in the Lorraine Hotel because he had been staying at the White hotel and they shamed him and said, "You should be staying at a Black hotel. You shouldn't be staying at a White hotel." But I think the people that killed him lured him down there where they could find him. They didn't want to do what they were doing in the White hotel. I will always feel that they lured him down there. But the Peabody was one of those places we could not go into. It says typical of—In here it tells about a lot of the local issues. Now, we're talking about in the '50s. Now, I don't know whether that's a period of time that— 

Stacey Scales: Yes, yes. 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: Explain Peabody's policy as regards Blacks attending national meetings there after several had been asked to leave sessions of the national conference on government. When they had these nationals, there were a lot of Black people who had been from other parts of the country who were integrated already. And when they came down here then, because the Peabody didn't want Black people in there except as waiters and things, they wouldn't let them attend sessions. And so, the newspaper took up that. I had been asked to leave sessions of the national conference on government. 

Stacey Scales: That says 1956, huh? 

Emogene Watkins Wilson: Yes. Uh-huh, this happened in '56. Said, "We will not serve any Negroes any food, and we will not house them. There are some scientific and professional groups who have less than 2% Negroes, which we've accept." If the organization had just 2% Negroes, they'll accept them. "We don't want to take it." It's just like Jackie Robinson would go and they would never let him stay with the team. He would always have to go find somewhere where he could room. Now, can you imagine having to do that? He's the only Black one on the team and everybody else can go and enjoy, but he'd have to go out and he's humiliated that way.