David Beasley interview recording, 1994 July 21
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| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Beasley, could you tell me when and where you were born and something about the area that you grew up in? | 0:05 |
| David L. Beasley | I was born right here on this place, Tuskegee. Well, we call it Tuskegee, Alabama, but this is Chehaw community. | 0:14 |
| Paul Ortiz | What did your— Oh, I'm sorry. | 0:31 |
| David L. Beasley | I was about to tell you that was 84 years ago. | 0:32 |
| Paul Ortiz | What occupation did your parents pursue? | 0:42 |
| David L. Beasley | Well, I got my grammar education right over there just beyond that trail you see there. I finished high school at Tuskegee Institute, and I also received my bachelor's degree from Tuskegee University in 1937. From there, in 1937, I graduated in June. I got a job and was hired over in Preston, Georgia, Webster County in 1937, July. I was hired as principal and teacher of vocational agriculture. I stayed there for three years. Didn't nobody run me away, but because I didn't like the place because it was a pretty tough place. | 0:55 |
| David L. Beasley | But I stayed there those three years. But I got a better job back in Alabama, in Marengo County. I was assistant to our supervisor down there. That was in 1942. No, that was back in 1940. Back up there a little bit, say 1941. Because, see, I went in the Army in 1942, and I was discharged in 1943. That was another tough place, too. Linden, Alabama, Marengo County. But I got along all right. Being born here in the South, I knew how to get along with people. | 2:16 |
| Paul Ortiz | What are some of your earliest childhood memories from this area? | 3:14 |
| David L. Beasley | Well, from this area? | 3:19 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yes, sir. | 3:19 |
| David L. Beasley | I hardly remember anything other than going to school. Nothing happened here. People just went along with things just like they were at that time till 1941 when Dr. Gomillion started the ball rolling himself, and Mr. Mitchell later joined him. They carried on. Mr. Mitchell didn't go in the Army. Dr. Gomillion, I don't know what kept him out. Maybe he was too old to go in the Army, too. | 3:24 |
| David L. Beasley | But I was in Marengo County. They said if I had stayed in Macon County, I wouldn't have had to go in the Army. But I didn't care nothing about that. I didn't mind that. I went in the Army and stayed there. I wasn't in there but a year and one month before I was honorably discharged. From that time on, I can relate pretty well. But back of that, I can't say too much about it. We went along with things just as they were. | 4:02 |
| David L. Beasley | This isn't the place where the original house was, but it was on this land, this plot about 80 acres in here now. There was a railroad station down there, and we lived very close to the railroad station. Our house wasn't quite as far from here to that, about half the distance from here to that trail you see out there. | 4:42 |
| Paul Ortiz | So your parents were landowners? | 5:17 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah, they owned it. I told you he bought this place 123 years ago, 1887, I think it was, somewhere back then. It has been in the family 123 years. | 5:19 |
| Paul Ortiz | Wow. | 5:38 |
| David L. Beasley | He started that church. My granddaddy did, started that church you see up there. It was always— | 5:40 |
| Paul Ortiz | That AME church? | 5:47 |
| David L. Beasley | Huh? | 5:47 |
| Paul Ortiz | That AME church? | 5:49 |
| David L. Beasley | Yes. The AME Zion Church. That's the Zion Church. They broke away from the AME due to some disagreement way back yonder, therefore, he started that church. That church up there is 100 and— Let me see. What is it? 106 years. I think I got that in this. If you haven't seen this thing, you might— I wanted to give it to you, but the lady promised to give me another one. This is the last one I got. It tells a whole lot about me. | 5:50 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, really? | 6:33 |
| David L. Beasley | Mostly about me. | 6:34 |
| Paul Ortiz | So your grandfather— | 6:36 |
| David L. Beasley | Because they gave me a day up there. They call it Dan's Day. That was June something. June 17th. The pastor, he wasn't the pastor here at that time when all this stuff was going on. But when he read this book here, he read this one and looked at this thing here. He says, "Man, I need to write something about you. We need to have something for you. You haven't been honored here in your own community." I said, "Well, no, I haven't." That hadn't bothered me at all. But they did. They had a fine day for me up there. Excuse me. | 6:38 |
| Paul Ortiz | Your grandfather founded that church? | 7:33 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah, he started the building of the church up there on his place, right back in here. There was a railroad that ran right along there where that line you see is there. We owned on this side, in fact, owned all of it. But they sold off that on the other side. I bought that back recently from Tuskegee University. I bought it for the purpose of owning this little driveway that you came down. It's 50 feet wide, and I wanted to own that. | 7:35 |
| David L. Beasley | Now, the rest of it, I sold it because I didn't want it. I got all the land I want back here. So therefore, I sold that after I bought it from the university— | 8:15 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. | 8:25 |
| David L. Beasley | —and kept this road because that's what I wanted. | 8:28 |
| Paul Ortiz | How did your grandparents acquire that land? | 8:31 |
| David L. Beasley | They were slaves. When they were freed, some Whites helped him and my grandmother to accumulate funds. They bought this land for 50 cents an acre. You can't get it for $5,000 an acre now. That's what they bought it for, 50 cents an acre. | 8:39 |
| Paul Ortiz | Wow. | 9:04 |
| David L. Beasley | All of it, the whole thing over there where those things are and over across the road over there where they had the little school. Didn't have the school there in that day, but they bought the land. Look, I never did see my grandfather to know him that much. But my grandmother, she used to sit down and tell me stories about what happened and how they had to live and how they made it, and they made it. They said, "We always had plenty to eat and decent clothes to wear." That's my granddaughter coming in there now. | 9:06 |
| Paul Ortiz | So she would tell you stories about her? | 9:52 |
| David L. Beasley | She told me stories about the situation that was going on and how it was and how you had to be humble and get along with people. So I learned a whole lot from her. | 9:54 |
| Paul Ortiz | What other kinds of stories would she tell about slavery? | 10:10 |
| David L. Beasley | But she didn't know nothing about slavery, other than— Didn't tell me anything about it, other than they had to work out there in the fields. When they finally got around and were freed, some Whites helped them to save some money. The man who sold them this place was one of them that helped them to save money to buy this land for that cheap price. Yes, sir. | 10:13 |
| Paul Ortiz | What was your grandmother and your grandfather's name? | 10:52 |
| David L. Beasley | Her name was Ellen Beasley, and his name was Jim Beasley. | 10:56 |
| Paul Ortiz | And the plantation that they worked on was around here? | 11:05 |
| David L. Beasley | Right here. Right here. They worked on this plantation. I don't remember the name of the man whom they were working under, who owned them or whatnot. But according to the deed, a man by the name of Bryant sold them the land. I got a rough copy of the deed. Well, I tried to get it up there in the courthouse, but it's written in such a way that I can't read it. Maybe you could read it. It's written in longhand, and it's written in ink. But I couldn't do much with it, not reading it. | 11:12 |
| David L. Beasley | But we did get that man named Bryant who sold the land to them as far as best I can understand. That's my mother on this side, and my wife who's in there on the other side. She was a schoolteacher, my wife was. Now, my mother was nothing but a housewife and worked out here on this farm and whatnot. Yes, sir. | 12:00 |
| Paul Ortiz | So what was life like growing up here during your childhood? | 12:28 |
| David L. Beasley | Well, we enjoyed it. We thought it was something fine to be living out here and the way things were. We had the little school there, two-teacher school. It was a one-teacher at first, then they went to two-teacher. Then they went to a four-teacher, and she was one of the four teachers. She was coming home. We was over here. I built here. I'd come out of the Army and built here. We skipping. I wanted to bring it on down the line so that we wouldn't be jumbling it up. | 12:33 |
| David L. Beasley | But anyway, she was a schoolteacher over there. She got about halfway home here one evening, and the children hollered, "Look back. The school's on fire." She looked back, and the school— No water out here. It was built out of this what we call fat pine. It just went up just like a match out there. | 13:14 |
| Paul Ortiz | What was the name of that school? | 13:42 |
| David L. Beasley | Chehaw School. Chehaw School. | 13:42 |
| Paul Ortiz | And when— | 13:42 |
| David L. Beasley | It was given by, I think, a man by the name of William Rosenwald from Chicago. He used to be connected with Sears Roebuck, I believe. But anyway, you'd have to get more of that from Tuskegee University up there. But he gave the money to build a school. They called it the Rosenwald School because he built— They came down here. He was a trustee over there. They came down, and they saw the condition. And then they began to help people to build these old one-teacher and two-teacher schools all around. | 13:48 |
| David L. Beasley | We had about 20-something of them as I can remember, and now we don't have but about five schools, I think, in this county. | 14:30 |
| Paul Ortiz | Five? | 14:41 |
| David L. Beasley | Something like that. Close to it. Yeah. | 14:41 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, when you were going there, where would the teachers come from coming up? | 14:46 |
| David L. Beasley | They come from Tuskegee mostly, but some of them would live out here with some of the families. They could live for little or nothing. The people was growing their food and, therefore, the food wasn't a problem, just a matter of the little money that they got to buy clothes and things with. Now, that same thing happened— Where I was at? I was thinking. I lost my point there about this school business. | 14:52 |
| David L. Beasley | You got a high school up there in Notasulga, and you got one here. You got two or three eight-grade schools. I think it's around three of them you got scattered around here. But that was similar to the situation that I was in, in Georgia. We didn't have any schools over there worth anything. The little school that I taught in, it was a five-teacher school at first, and then they soon made it six because they put home ec in to match vocational agriculture and vocational education by putting that in. | 15:37 |
| David L. Beasley | They had a little old four-room building when I went there. They put the four teachers that they had when I went— I was the fifth teacher. Therefore, we didn't have four room. They had the teacher in the room. I was in the back room, and the other teacher's in the front. Then when we got the home ec teachers, it was almost the same thing. Before I left there, we built a vocational building to teach home economics and agriculture. As soon as I got it finished, I left. | 16:43 |
| David L. Beasley | I left because it was a better job here. I was getting $100 a month over there, which was good money. Over there, even the White principal wasn't getting 100, and he was kind of raising sand about that. But the reason I got that $100, it was through some maneuvering of the state supervisor who was a Black man and the superintendent who was a very fine White lady, and— | 17:20 |
| Paul Ortiz | This was in Alabama? | 17:53 |
| David L. Beasley | No, this is in Georgia. | 17:54 |
| Paul Ortiz | Georgia. | 17:54 |
| David L. Beasley | When I got to be principal over there and that's why I got— I was just leading up to how I got that $100 a month for teaching. I left that 100 for 120 here, plus travel. That put me up near $200 a month. When I left there and went in the Army and came out of the Army, when I came out of the Army, I came back here, but I didn't come to this place because I hadn't built this house. I built this house in 1949. We were still living in the old shack down there. I call it the old shack, but it's a nice home. We thought it was fine. | 17:57 |
| David L. Beasley | But after I came back, I worked up to the primary airfield as chief of security until it closed in 1945. The war ended. 1945, I built this house then. So I came here, and I didn't do anything but mess around a little bit with politics and whatnot. I got involved in the stuff with Dr. Gomillion and Mr. Mitchell, and we moved on from there. After the Army airbase closed up there, I went to the VA hospital the second time. | 18:40 |
| David L. Beasley | The first time I went over there, I hadn't finished school. I hadn't done nothing but plowed out here in this field. I maneuvered around there and got a chance to go to school and work when I graduated from high school. I was working at the VA at that time when I graduated from high school. Now, when I graduated from college, I didn't go back. Well, after I graduated from college, I went over there and taught school, came back here. And then after I came back and got out of the Army and went back to the VA the second time. | 19:34 |
| David L. Beasley | The first time I went there, I went there as a pot washer and a kitchen helper and whatnot. The second time, I went back as a file clerk, and I stayed there 27 years at that time. Then I retired from the VA, and I came home to sit down and do nothing. But this political stuff that I was involved in, that was in 1969, I believe, when I retired from over there. That's all in here. | 20:19 |
| David L. Beasley | When I retired from over there and came here and messed around for about six months, then I ran for county commissioner, and I was elected. We had six people running for county— I think that's the tax collector's thing up there. County commissioner's thing, I got it. I never did put it in a frame. It's in there now. I didn't serve but four years county commissioner because I didn't like it. Those are some of the medals that they gave me for doing different things and whatnot. | 20:52 |
| David L. Beasley | But after I served as county commissioner, I came out, stayed out about almost a year. Yeah, about a year. The tax collector passed. She was a lady. A schoolteacher, who's still teaching school, called me about this time one afternoon. She said, "Dan, Mrs. Martin has passed." I said, "She has?" I said, "Well, I'm sorry," just like that. I wasn't thinking about nothing. So she says, "You can get that job if you want to. The governor's going to appoint somebody to carry out the unexpired term," which was two and a half or three years. I don't know exactly which. | 21:39 |
| David L. Beasley | Anyway, I said, "Okay, I'll take a shot at it." I called the state senator who lived down here about seven or eight miles. He wasn't at home, and I talked to his daughter. I told her. I said, "You tell your daddy when he comes home—" He's a good friend of mine because he used to work up here in Tuskegee. "Tell your daddy when he comes home that Mrs. Martin passed this afternoon, and the governor's going to appoint somebody to fill out that unexpired term. He going to have something to do with it, being the state senator from this county. Tell him if he doesn't have anyone else that he wants to give it to or recommend, consider me." | 22:39 |
| David L. Beasley | I didn't tell him to appoint me. I just told you the exact words I used, "Consider me." When he came home that night, he called me. It was late. He said, "Dan, what's your address? Give me your full name and address and how you get your mail." I gave it to him. I'm going to try to get this for you right quick. He said, "Can you come to my house?" No, that wasn't at that time. He asked for it later. | 23:29 |
| David L. Beasley | When he went to work that day and came back, he said, "Can you come to my house tomorrow morning at about 8:00?" I told him, "Yeah. Where you live?" I didn't know exactly where the man lived, to tell you the truth. I went down there that morning and went in his house, and we sat down and talked. He said, "You can get that appointment if you want it." He told me the same thing the lady told him, said, "If you want it, you can get it." | 24:19 |
| David L. Beasley | Well, they knew that I was born and brought up here. I hadn't been arrested or anything, nothing but maybe a traffic violation once. I got caught for speeding. That's the only time I might ever got caught there down there in Autauga County. But anyway, so they thought I was all right. Governor Wallace was the governor at that time, and he knew that I fought him. We fought him. Gomillion, Mitchell, and Beasley fought him to get this registration in here. We hadn't gotten it at that time. | 25:03 |
| David L. Beasley | That's why I asked you had you seen this book because this shows you how they were so determined to keep us from registering to vote, all these PhDs and Masters and whatnot in there. They did everything they could to keep us from getting it. But anyway, Senator Perry and I talk just like you and I are talking here. I says, "I don't know whether I ought to be saying all this stuff to you because you taped some stuff on a fellow that's—" He finally got to be representative of the county, Thomas Reed. You read or heard about him? | 25:54 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yes, sir. | 26:43 |
| David L. Beasley | He got reelected again after he served his prison sentence. But anyway, I said, "I don't know what you doing. You may have something you're getting on me that you can take and use, not that I've done anything that anybody would be ashamed of. I wasn't." Anyway, he says, "You can get that appointment if you want it." We sat there arguing and talked about a half hour. He said, "The old man wants you, if you're appointed, to serve because he knows that you'll treat everybody right." | 26:43 |
| David L. Beasley | He said, "You'll be fair towards White as well as Black, although the White, some of them have been a little obnoxious to you." I guess that's a good word to use. "They weren't so kind to you and whatnot." One man told me they going to run me out of this county. I said, "Well, you sure will have to do it because my granddaddy was here and my daddy was here. So I'm here, and I'm here to stay." There wasn't no houses was here at that time. I had a couple of shotguns back there, and I kept those ready. Wasn't nobody going to run me anywhere. They might carry me away, but they wasn't going to run me away. | 27:31 |
| David L. Beasley | But anyway, I finally told him that, "I'll accept the appointment, but I won't guarantee you that I will serve even if I run and get elected." Well, you know if I ran and got elected, I was pretty sure I was going to serve, and I ran. He appointed me, and I took the thing in. I know when I got that. I got that in May of 1977, and I served for 12 years as tax collector. When I left, I retired. I didn't quit. I wasn't fired. Didn't nobody defeat me. They ran against me twice, and I beat them. | 28:21 |
| David L. Beasley | I ran three times. The last time didn't nobody run against me because they figured wasn't doing nothing but wasting time and money. Sure enough, I served about two or three years that third term, and I just quit. I could make more money sitting down here on retirement than I was making up there working, going up there every day, being bothered with trying to keep them folks' tax straight and keeping folks from stealing the money and whatnot. | 29:08 |
| David L. Beasley | In spite of that, they stole some and I had to pay it back. But that was all right. I just wanted to make sure that a Black man could run one of those offices up there and not be accused of stealing the money and taking it because I was driving. I just bought a new car right after I got that appointment. I said, "Now, I had money enough to buy that car before I got that appointment." But that was beside the point. | 29:41 |
| David L. Beasley | We went on. From there, I came out and I've been off ever since. I haven't done anything but messed around here. Well, I do a little notary work and work with the church and work with different people, people like you or like Mr. Norelle who come by. They're breaking into the scene. There was another lady who was interested in the same thing that you were interested in. | 30:18 |
| Paul Ortiz | Well, yeah. Yeah, actually I work with her. | 30:53 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah? | 30:55 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yeah. | 30:55 |
| David L. Beasley | Mrs. Whorley. | 30:56 |
| Paul Ortiz | Whorley, yeah, yeah. One of my colleagues. | 30:58 |
| David L. Beasley | She was supposed to come out here, but she didn't get it. So since you getting it, I don't guess she'd be interested in it. | 30:59 |
| Paul Ortiz | Well, actually we're all interested. But one thing I was going to ask you, Mr. Beasley, now before we started the actual interview, you told me that you came out of the Army in '43, and you started thinking about registering to vote. | 31:09 |
| David L. Beasley | That's right. | 31:26 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, had you thought about registering to vote before that? | 31:27 |
| David L. Beasley | No, I hadn't. Well, yes, I did, too, because when I graduated from college up there, during the graduation exercise, we called the seniors together. But they separated them. They called the agricultural seniors together. I asked. I guess I was being a little unfair to the instructors. I said, "Why is it that we can't get registered to vote here?" I just asked them. Well, they was slow on that because they wanted their jobs up there at the institute, and they didn't want to say too much. | 31:29 |
| David L. Beasley | They thought that they would get fired about it, but Dr. Gomillion didn't get fired because Dr. Patterson gave him leeway. As long as he did his work, he could do all this other stuff. But that did happen. Yes, sir. | 32:15 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, this was during commencement? | 32:37 |
| David L. Beasley | No, just before commencement. Just before. They were getting us all together to tell us where we were going and this place and that place. I'd heard about registration down in these counties, these Black Belt counties especially. I guess I'm the only one that raised any question about this registration business after we were about to get out of school. | 32:39 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, did students—? | 33:11 |
| David L. Beasley | Now, that was before I graduated now, when I asked this question. But it's my senior year, right along in May or June because I graduated on June 2nd. That's the only time I can remember that Tuskegee University had graduation in June. I graduated on June 2nd. | 33:12 |
| Paul Ortiz | 1937? | 33:36 |
| David L. Beasley | 1937. | 33:36 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 33:41 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah. I thought we had a program of the thing in here. That file you see over there is full of this stuff, nothing but this. This was our annual and— | 33:49 |
| Paul Ortiz | What was school at Tuskegee like during those years? | 34:26 |
| David L. Beasley | Well, if you wanted to learn, you could learn. It's just like now. If those students up there want to learn and be somebody, they can learn. But if they prove to some of them teachers up there that they don't want to do nothing, just get by, the teacher won't waste no time with them, and I don't much blame the teacher. | 34:29 |
| Paul Ortiz | When you were going to school at Tuskegee, were you talking about registering to vote with other students? | 35:02 |
| David L. Beasley | No, I didn't think about it while I was going to school. But around the end of when I got ready to graduate, that's when I got interested in it. I was determined to get registered. | 35:11 |
| Paul Ortiz | What led to your interest? Did you hear about other people at the—? | 35:31 |
| David L. Beasley | Well, I just know— I knew the population of this county better than anybody else, tell you the truth. The population at that time, I think, was roughly 24,000 Blacks. There wasn't but 3,000 Whites, 3,000 and something, between 3 and 4,000. Well, I thought about that to myself. I didn't say nothing to anybody about it. But I did bring it up in this little meeting that we discussed things that folk graduated. I said, "We got a county here of 24,000 Blacks and just 4,000 Whites, so to speak, and we're not registered. Don't have but 81 people registered. 81." | 35:32 |
| David L. Beasley | Some of those were in that book there. They registered only what they call the big folks. One of the big individuals, I have Dr. Moton. They registered him. | 36:24 |
| Paul Ortiz | Dr. Moton was registered? | 36:43 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah, Dr. Moton was registered. Mr. Logan was registered. That's Dr. Washington. I don't know nothing about it. I doubt that he was ever registered. Now, these are some of the executive committee. Now, there's one or two people on this executive committee that was registered. There's one, Mr. James John. All these folks, I think, are dead. But anyway, Reverend Richardson, he wasn't registered. G.W. Johnson, that's the man that if you read that, you'd see where they say he betrayed the Negroes, the Black folks. | 36:46 |
| Paul Ortiz | He did? | 37:22 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah. They say he betrayed them because he vouched for Mr. Mitchell to get registered. And then when they called him down there for this hearing, you see, he, "I don't know nothing about it." Then they called him to court down here. I had to go on the stand down there. He denied that he knew Mr. Mitchell, and Mr. Mitchell was the clerk in his church. He never was anything. He just went down after that. Nobody had any respect for him after that. | 37:22 |
| Paul Ortiz | That was Reverend Johnson. Now, which church was he? | 38:00 |
| David L. Beasley | Huh? | 38:02 |
| Paul Ortiz | Which church was he the pastor of? | 38:03 |
| David L. Beasley | Who? | 38:06 |
| Paul Ortiz | You said Reverend Johnson? | 38:06 |
| David L. Beasley | No. G.W. Johnson, he was the business manager. He taught business. That's what he did. | 38:09 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, he taught business at Tuskegee? | 38:17 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah. Reverend Richardson was the chaplain at that time. He's in that book there. Yeah. | 38:19 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, Mr. Beasley, you talked about registering to vote at this meeting. Who called the meeting? | 38:28 |
| David L. Beasley | Well, now let's see. I was president of the agricultural seminar. That's what we called it. I called the meeting, but we didn't call it for registration and voting. We called it for just to talk about, "We're going out now, and we going to try to be somebody." That's what we talked about. This came up. I brought this up and asked this man. Where that man? I can show him to you. | 38:38 |
| David L. Beasley | He was the agricultural director at that time, J.R. Otis. Let's see now. Where is old J.R. Otis? There's Dr. Carl. I don't know whether you seen a picture of him or not. | 39:04 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yes, sir. Yes, sir. | 39:27 |
| David L. Beasley | J.R. Otis. I don't see Otis on him. I think he was Director of Agriculture at that time. | 39:33 |
| Paul Ortiz | Right. It says here, "Director of School of Agriculture." | 39:41 |
| David L. Beasley | Does it say Otis? Who does it say? | 39:47 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. It says J.R. Otis. | 39:48 |
| David L. Beasley | J.R. Otis, yeah. | 39:49 |
| Paul Ortiz | Director of School of Agriculture. | 39:51 |
| David L. Beasley | He was on here. There he is. There he is right there. That's J.R. Otis. Yeah. Yeah. | 39:54 |
| Paul Ortiz | What was his reaction? Was he—? | 40:06 |
| David L. Beasley | Well, he didn't have too much to say. Then one of my teachers who thought a whole lot of me, W.W. Hayes, I thought would have said something. He said, "Well, we don't know much about that." This man here, let me open this thing here. I'm just amazed [indistinct 00:40:30]. The man here that, Alvin J. Neeley, just about ran the school until Dr. Patterson. They had Dr. Patterson up there. Now, this man here, Alvin J. Neeley, he just about ran the school before Dr. Patterson got there. | 40:08 |
| David L. Beasley | When Dr. Moton was still the president, but this man was the kingpin. He made it pretty tough for some of us, especially me. He put me out of school once about something that I didn't have no responsibility for what happened, between a girl and a boy. You might not want to put that in there. That's up to you. But he just put me out of school for a year. I got off a year, but I got back in. I went to Florida A&M University down there one year. | 40:55 |
| David L. Beasley | I had a brother teaching down there, and I went down there one year and came back. Got put out of school down. Well, we didn't get put out of school. But it was in the summertime, and I wanted to leave anyway. I didn't want to go down there, but my brother was there. He was paying my way then. He paid my way that whole year. He said, "Well, if you go back up there, you can't look for too much from me." I said, "Well, that's all right. I'll make it." | 41:48 |
| David L. Beasley | I came back after they fired us down there during the summer because we was walking up and down the road, and they had one pint of whiskey, and we were drinking it, four of us. Two old guys was from Pensacola, Florida. They were rough cat, and the other two of us was just along. I was just along, and I did take a drink out the bottle. We passed a White deputy's house. He was about as far from— Saw us. And Pinky, "Come on. Let's drink." He turned it up right there in front of the man's house, but we didn't know he was a deputy. | 42:24 |
| David L. Beasley | He got in the car. After we kept on, he told us, "Put that bottle away," on his porch. Pinky said, "Well, hell, he ain't got nothing to do with us." He said, "All right," And he kept on drinking. He got in his car, and the road split up there going up to the campus and going to town. Two went to town, and two went towards the campus. He jumped in his car and came up there and picked up two of us. I was one of the two that he picked up. He carried me up there and said, "Where's Dr. Lee?" I said, "I don't know." | 43:02 |
| David L. Beasley | So we went to Dr. Lee's son first, tried to find him because we knew that he wouldn't do nothing, but smooth it over. | 43:42 |
| Paul Ortiz | What was his son's name? | 43:51 |
| David L. Beasley | G.R. Lee, Jr. Lee, Jr. He's a good friend of my brother. But the old man, he never did find out who the other two fellas were. But he put me with the other fella and me out of— He fired us, and that meant we had to leave school. It was in the summertime. I could have gone back in September. I didn't want to go back. I came home and messed around here and went up there on the campus. That same man, Dr. Otis and Dr. Patterson were good friends of mine. They saw to it that I got a job. | 43:54 |
| David L. Beasley | I stayed in school those other two years until I graduated. When I graduated, I never forgot them, and they didn't forget me because I didn't forget Tuskegee University, Dr. Patterson and Mr. Otis, that Director of Agriculture. Of course, Dr. Foster became president, I believe, before I went down. I don't like to remember when, but he became president later on. | 44:33 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, during those years, in the '30s, what were race relations like in Macon County? | 45:06 |
| David L. Beasley | Well, it was about just like you read about. You did what they said. Called you stay in your place and I'll stay in mine. There was no fight or nothing going. When Gomillion got started in this thing and Mitchell didn't care, he came from Birmingham. That was kind of a rough place, too, in there. I wasn't supposed to be rough, but I joined in with them. That's what some of the Whites in Macon County didn't like because I joined in with these fellas who, Gomillion came from South Carolina. Mitchell came from Birmingham. | 45:13 |
| David L. Beasley | The tax assessor, he dead and gone now. His wife is real sick. I worked with her when I was serving over there. What was I talking about? | 45:59 |
| Paul Ortiz | The tax assessor. | 46:23 |
| David L. Beasley | Oh, the tax assessor. Oh yeah, the tax assessor. "Mr. Beasley, I don't know what's wrong with you." I said, "Nothing wrong, Mr. Henry." "You going around here and joining with Gomillion and Mitchell trying to get these folks registered." I said, "Well, we got a right to register, some of us. We've been to school." "Yes, but the people don't want that." He meant the White people didn't want it. | 46:23 |
| David L. Beasley | So we kept on after it anyhow. We used to go out. Didn't nobody bother us even when we went to town during this, from 1943 on up— | 46:50 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. Now you say—? | 0:04 |
| David L. Beasley | Repeating, when I came out of the Army, I was determined to get registered because I knew what we had. I'd been in the Army serving my country, and I'd heard the boys begin to talk about it in the Army there, too, before I left. So that's what made me come here. I immediately got joined up with the Tuskegee Civic Association. I told her about the Tuskegee Civic Association because you [indistinct 00:00:39] told you about the Civic Association up there. I know somebody. That's all they know about the Civic Association, some of them. | 0:05 |
| David L. Beasley | Civic Association didn't do this. Thing we did. I tell them. So this is something that I'm on the Board of Commissioners down at Montgomery, and I got a citation or something over there, I think. | 0:50 |
| Paul Ortiz | So you were—? | 1:11 |
| David L. Beasley | But I was a charter member. I'm still on the board. I'm the oldest member on the board. | 1:13 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. So before the Civic Association really started, you were already— | 1:20 |
| David L. Beasley | I was interested in it before the Civic Association started because you see, I had graduated. The Civic Association didn't get entered in this thing until '41. They didn't, not this registration stuff. That's when Dr. Gomillion took over and started pushing the thing on. After I got back out of the Army, I wasn't here when the Civic Association started, but when I got back out of the Army, I decided that it was time for me to do something. I did something, I thought. They say I did. I don't know. | 1:24 |
| Paul Ortiz | So in '43, what did you start doing? Who else is? | 2:03 |
| David L. Beasley | We started with this registration, rounding up these folks and trying to get them to fill out that. Did you ever see a copy of that application they had to fill out? It was a long thing. You had to fill it out. It was two pages. You had to fill it out and write a section of the Constitution of the United States. When Mrs. Whorley called me the other day, I got this and I just happened to open it up to Dr. Wynn. Dr. Wynn was testifying that he was not registered, but his wife was registered. Chairman Story from Texas was acting chairman of that Civil Rights Commission. | 2:08 |
| David L. Beasley | He asked him, "You not registered, and your wife is registered?" He's joking him a little bit there. He said, "Yes, she's registered. I'm not saying that." Well, Dr. Wynn, have you ever been registered anywhere? He said, "Yes, I was registered in Massachusetts and I was registered in Texas." So those were two of the places that he named. But all in there, you got people that who were registered. If you could get chance to look at this thing and get a copy of it, you'll do fine. But that's the only one I have. You see, I've let people have it around. I still have it. | 3:03 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now after you came out of the Army in '43, how did you beat up with Dr. Gomillion? | 3:52 |
| David L. Beasley | Well, he taught me. | 3:55 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, okay. | 3:55 |
| David L. Beasley | He taught me. I knew him. He taught me. Mitchell was a student here at that time after I had gone to the, left here and went to the Army, after I graduated. When I graduated, I went over there and taught and then came back over here, then went to the Army. Then when I came out, I said I could have gone back to my job in Marengo County. But I didn't want to go back down there because I knew I couldn't do in Marengo County, what I could do here. I felt that I could do a little bit more here. I did do more here at Tuskegee than I could do in Marengo County. | 3:57 |
| Paul Ortiz | Why? | 4:41 |
| David L. Beasley | Because the intelligence of the people were different. The Whites just understood, some of them understood that you just can't continue to keep them folks out. The board wouldn't serve. For 18 months, they went once without a board. The governor and everybody went along with it. You can have no board. | 4:42 |
| Paul Ortiz | Board of Education? | 5:08 |
| David L. Beasley | No, Board of Registrar. | 5:08 |
| Paul Ortiz | Board of Registrar. | 5:12 |
| David L. Beasley | They had no board to register anybody. So they had to. We just kept on after. Now that's what I said. I got letters in that thing there. If I had time to go through them and look them up and show you where I wrote the letter to the governor, wrote a letter to the President of the United States, the Attorney General. This very fine senator from— What was his name? Humphrey. | 5:13 |
| Paul Ortiz | Humphrey. | 5:46 |
| David L. Beasley | From Minnesota. Then I was supposed to have been on with this group. I think they got that picture. It might be in this Reaping the Whirlwind. Did you see a picture in there where a group went to Washington to— Let's see if I can see. I can find it pretty quick in the index here. Group went to Washington, and this committee talk with them. | 5:47 |
| David L. Beasley | There's a book there that Bernard Taper of New York wrote on Tuskegee. I had one of those, and somebody borrowed it and didn't give it back to me. I don't know what happened. I thought I had, I was going to show you those and these others who were in Washington, may be in here here. There's Gomillion, there's George Vaughn, and there's Bentley. There's Gomillion speaking, I believe, that night when we started [indistinct 00:07:14]. Now there's big Jim Folsom up there. I'm trying to see if we could find that picture where those guys were in Mitchell. That's the first city council. Mitchell went in Washington. I guess it's not. He isn't here. But it's somewhere. | 6:21 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah. I came back here and got started on getting a Board of Registrar. That's what we had to have. That's why Judge Johnson, we carried this thing to the Supreme Court and they threw it out at first. Well, they didn't hear it the first time or something. The next time it went up there, Humphrey and those had talked to those judges and told them, "You do something about this thing down. Hey, that's ridiculous. They won't register those folks." That's when Judge Johnson, the attorney general or somebody, whoever had the authority to do it. It might have been the attorney general. It might have been the president. I don't know who the president at that time, whether it was a Kennedy or— Wasn't Kennedy. Kennedy died in when? '60? | 7:40 |
| Paul Ortiz | '63. | 8:42 |
| David L. Beasley | '60-something, didn't he? | 8:42 |
| Paul Ortiz | '63. | 8:42 |
| David L. Beasley | It might have been Kennedy told Judge Johnson, "Now you get a board in Macon County and get them folks registered." That's why he had this two-day hearing up there. When they got through with that thing, Judge Johnson ordered them to register all 64 people, I think, in this hearing thing that hadn't been registered. He ordered them registered and then told them to order all these registered that got the same qualification. | 8:46 |
| Paul Ortiz | So, Mr. Beasley, in the '40s when you and Dr. Gomillion began organizing this—? | 9:23 |
| David L. Beasley | No, we didn't organize this. Well, go ahead. | 9:29 |
| Paul Ortiz | Gotcha. How would you organize it, so you would convince people to register to vote? What was the process of that? | 9:33 |
| David L. Beasley | Oh, well, we didn't do too much organizing. We would get up in the churches and talk. These folks got sick of me getting up in this church, talking about it. I said, "You need to go register. You need to go register." Now every person in that church now I think is. Well, it could be registered more because they register anybody now. They register some people there that— We didn't want that in the beginning, this wholesale registration of people who couldn't read and write. We wasn't fighting. We were just having a part of the whole thing. | 9:45 |
| David L. Beasley | But we'd go to these different churches. I'd go to the church. Mitchell would go to the church. Gomillion would go to the church. Then a few others finally came on. That's why I was trying to find that book that— I know where I can find this book. Well, I had a good friend who, maybe you read something about that, who was— Yeah, here he is, a mistaken identity. If he walked in here, you couldn't tell him from a White person. He's a good friend of mine out there. He's living now in Santa Barbara. He's the only man on there. Dr. Enos is still living. He's a doctor down in— Where is he at? There's Enos right there. I don't know who else. | 10:23 |
| David L. Beasley | But that boy, name of Dorsey, now, he didn't get out in the forefront to amount anything because he had a high job over there at the VA Hospital. I think he was assistant registrar. They tried to get him fired. I was working over there actually at the time, too. They tried to get me fired. There was six of us that they tried to get fired because we were encouraging people to go register. They said that we were teaching, telling the folks who to register. We wasn't telling them who to register. We said, "Get registered and go vote for somebody." That's what we told them. | 11:14 |
| David L. Beasley | The TCA did that usually on that second Sunday meeting. Now TCA, I don't even go to TCA meeting, nor the NAACP. I was president of the NAACP for 12 years and on the executive board of the TCA for I don't know how many years until they didn't want elected officials to be on the board because you could influence the people to vote for you when some of them wanted to be run for. | 12:06 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, your supervisors at the VA didn't like your activity? | 12:34 |
| David L. Beasley | Oh, yeah. That boy I showed you a while ago, he was the assistant to a man by the name of L.A. Green. L.A. Green is living, too. He's 80-some odd years or 90-something years age himself. Now they didn't bother us, didn't bother me. That's the reason why I never got above a file clerk out there because I could do, I did my weight, but I could do anything else that I wanted to do and didn't nobody bother nobody, just like Dr. Gomillion, Dr. Foster let Dr. Gomillion do. You do anything you want as long as you do your work. So that's what happened. | 12:46 |
| David L. Beasley | So when they tried, they came down here, sent a man from Washington down here and tried to get us fired. I got the letter in there there that they wrote down there to tell us to— Well, they said in so many words, "You came very close to violating the Hatch Act." If you ever heard anything. You heard about the Hatch Act. Well, the Hatch Act came out just about that time and said that government employees couldn't get in this stuff. Gomillion was the only free one they could get in it. But the rest of us were working at the government hospital. That's what they couldn't, the Whites didn't like downtown because they couldn't get to us. | 13:30 |
| David L. Beasley | You let them guys do this and they going to tear this thing up. Senator Engelhardt, who finally took over down there in Montgomery, he says, "You're going to rue the day when those Negroes get that ballot." Hell, I don't know whether they rued the day or not. But anyway, we got the ballot and of course, I don't like the way they're running things up there. But nevertheless, they're running them. | 14:23 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, Mr. Beasley, in the 1940s when you began working with Dr. Gomillion and Mitchell, were there other Black people in this area that were beginning to think about politics, about registering to vote? | 14:56 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah, in the '40s, in the last of the '40s all the '50s, when they start, when they gerrymandered— You heard about them gerrymandering Tuskegee? | 15:12 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yes, sir. | 15:23 |
| David L. Beasley | I think it's in this Gomillion thing, isn't it? | 15:23 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yeah. | 15:23 |
| David L. Beasley | Ought to be in here. Where is that thing? They got a picture of that thing in there. Well, I don't see it, but— | 15:36 |
| Paul Ortiz | Does it have an index? | 15:42 |
| David L. Beasley | Hmm? I don't know. Might be in there. No, it's not in this Reaping the Whirlwind. Oh, this is what I wanted to, go ahead. This is that same, that boy that I was telling you about out there that you can't tell him from a White person. There's Mitchell. There's Senator Humphrey. See, Humphrey is right next to him. Now, I don't know who these two senators are, but the names are down there. They're the ones that— Now, I was supposed to have been with that group that went to Washington. But I told them I wasn't going to fly to Washington. I ain't never flown on a plane before and I decided I was going up there in it. | 15:43 |
| David L. Beasley | Well, that's the group that went to Washington and got with Humphrey and some of the other liberal senators up there to try to help us to get this thing. As we went out with these different little groups, we'd go to the church meetings. We didn't go to the school houses because that was messing with the Board of Education. But they couldn't bother you if you went to the church. So if you went to the schoolhouse, well, they could get on the teachers and talk about it. Now, one of the teachers got fired. He's living now. He delivered the first address of "Trade With Your Friends". Did you ever see any of that stuff? The Trade With Your Friends? | 16:40 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yeah, I read about it in— | 17:42 |
| David L. Beasley | You read about it? | 17:46 |
| Paul Ortiz | [indistinct 00:17:47]. | 17:46 |
| David L. Beasley | Can you cut that off a minute and take this? See, there's that Civil Rights Commission, asking all those questions of those folks. | 17:47 |
| David L. Beasley | That's right. This is what you see. There was a crowd that went down to the courthouse to register one day. That's the crowd. | 18:04 |
| Paul Ortiz | 647 people went to register in one day? | 18:25 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah, they went to register and that's the sign that they had put up, this sign here. | 18:27 |
| Paul Ortiz | 647 Negroes who appeared in Macon County, Alabama Courthouse November 6th, 1960. None of these people were allowed to vote? | 18:34 |
| David L. Beasley | None of them were allowed to even make an application. Just that's what he told them. No registration today. This office invaded by the agents of the— What? Injustice department. This is the Supreme Court that ruled and— Yes, sir. Yeah, that's Gomillion over there, isn't it? Over here? Yeah, that's Gomillion. These are some of the TCA executive committee over here. I was on that. I don't know whether I'm on that picture or not. | 18:45 |
| Paul Ortiz | Is Mrs. Beulah Johnson, is she? | 19:34 |
| David L. Beasley | She's still living but she's out with her daughter. She's way down. Yeah. I didn't know I was on there. | 19:34 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, there you are. Okay. | 19:41 |
| David L. Beasley | I thought I was on there. There's Dr. Smith, who was president of Johnson C. Smith. But Johnson C. Smith, no, that's some school in Raleigh. That's where he was president. Shaw, wasn't it? | 19:44 |
| Paul Ortiz | Shaw. | 19:58 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah, he was up there somewhere. | 19:59 |
| Paul Ortiz | We're trying to get ahold of Mrs. Sullen. | 20:06 |
| David L. Beasley | Sullen? Yeah, Ms. Sullen. I bet she could give you. Sullens. Well, Mrs. Johnson was active, but she was a school teacher and she couldn't do but just so much. She didn't want to get fired. Of course, he's a school teacher for the Institute. There's Reverend Martin who delivered the fine address that set them on fire. That's George Busbee, who's waiting to come after Reverend Beauford, who delivered some of the vow speeches. There's Dr. Ken, isn't it? No, that's Frank Toland. | 20:08 |
| Paul Ortiz | Frank Toland. | 20:44 |
| David L. Beasley | Frank Toland's over there now. Now, Frank came on later. Well, a good many of these people came on later. But there's Mitchell and Gomillion. Reverend Beauford came on earlier. Martin came on earlier because he delivered that speech. Sullen came on because she worked for the government hospital. | 20:44 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, now here this says James Woodson. | 21:08 |
| David L. Beasley | James Woodson. That was the alumni secretary, isn't it? | 21:11 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yes, sir. In fact, we talked. | 21:15 |
| David L. Beasley | You talked with him? He couldn't tell you much about this, I don't think. These are the first some that applied or did something. I don't know where it's from. I don't know whether they're graduates or they applied down there to that school. It says something down there. I can't. Oh, yeah, here's the city limit saying. That's it. See, they drew it in from a square to just this side and put all the Negroes outside with the exception of 10. | 21:18 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, this was the gerrymandering. | 21:53 |
| David L. Beasley | So yeah, that's the gerrymandering map itself. | 21:54 |
| Paul Ortiz | 1957. Now this was the area in here. | 21:58 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah, that heavy line area in there is what they brought the city down to. Brought the city down and they went around. They made sure that they put all of the Blacks out with the exception of 10. | 22:03 |
| Paul Ortiz | 1957? | 22:21 |
| David L. Beasley | Mm-hmm. I kept all these old books out of there. Yeah, somebody will look at them one day. | 22:36 |
| Paul Ortiz | These are incredible books. These are really— | 22:42 |
| David L. Beasley | You got any? | 22:49 |
| Paul Ortiz | No, sir. | 22:52 |
| David L. Beasley | You can take that one home, unless you see it's the same thing. I don't need— There's another here. You might find somebody else you might want to get on here. Now, I got a bunch of these. | 22:54 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, these are great. | 23:01 |
| David L. Beasley | Yes, sir. I got one here. So that's all I need. Sure. This is the Supreme Court picture that they use. That's Reverend Beauford that they're interviewing there. | 23:05 |
| Paul Ortiz | Wow. Do you have an extra copy? | 23:19 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah, that's an extra copy right there. Let's see now. Yeah, take it. That's another one. Let's see. I got one here of that. Now, the Supreme Court, I don't know whether you want one of those or not. There they are. You can have them. I know you. Let me see. I got this. This, I got there. | 23:23 |
| David L. Beasley | I got a plenty of the injustice department. I ran into so many of those. Then finally this was the— Here's the anniversary. This still ain't the Trade With Your Friends book. But I've gotten older now. But this is the anniversary's time of the Civic Association. That's what this is. It's all right. | 23:45 |
| Paul Ortiz | Thank you so much. | 24:22 |
| David L. Beasley | You're welcome. | 24:22 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, do the archives at the university have copies of these, too? | 24:32 |
| David L. Beasley | I don't know. I'm pretty sure that they have. They should. | 24:35 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yeah, they should. These are historical. | 24:42 |
| David L. Beasley | You got what you wanted, did you? Yeah, you got the here and there. You got the injustice department. | 24:51 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yes, sir. | 24:59 |
| David L. Beasley | I don't know what these students are. I got some more there. You can take that one on. | 25:00 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, I agree. | 25:05 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah. I'm telling you, brother, it was tough. But we waded through it. | 25:10 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, Mr. Beasley, one thing, another thing, were there Black people in the area who might have thought that what you were doing and what the Civic Association was doing was too radical? | 25:21 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah, plenty of them. They'd tell me, "Man, you're going to get run away from around this county." I said, "Well, they'll just have to run me out. I don't plan to go. They just have to run me out." Yes, sir. We had Blacks here that thought you're doing the wrong thing. You ought to go slow. I said, "We've been going slow for 100 years. You're talking about going slow?" Yes, sir, we did that. Some of these same staff members were mad with Gomillion because he took part in this stuff. Yeah, they didn't like about him taking a part in that. | 25:45 |
| Paul Ortiz | What you mean? At the Institute? | 26:35 |
| David L. Beasley | Hmm? | 26:35 |
| Paul Ortiz | At Tuskegee Institute? | 26:35 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah, at Tuskegee Institute. Some at the Institute. Plus, out in the community. Some of those same folks, some of them are living today. I tell them something. Sometimes I rub it in and I hate to do that. | 26:39 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, you told me that you had taken classes with Dr. Gomillion. | 26:57 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah. | 27:01 |
| Paul Ortiz | What kind of a teacher was he? | 27:03 |
| David L. Beasley | Good teacher. Brother, if he taught you something, you didn't forget it fast. Now, my first classes with him were in ancient history and the Battle of Hastings 1066, I'll never forget it. He was here a couple of weeks ago and I talked with him. I said, "I'll never forget the Battle of Hastings 1066 that you taught me when you were teaching ancient history in second year high school." That's when it was. I don't know what grade that was, around about the eighth grade, eighth, ninth. Around about ninth or tenth, eleventh, twelveth. About ninth to tenth grade. One or the other. I don't know which one it was. One of them. He taught that. | 27:05 |
| David L. Beasley | But he also taught me later in college psychology. Yeah, he taught me when I got over in there. That was after I went into the Army and came back. After I graduated, we took some classes where the government was paying us to go to school. So we just went to school at night, and we worked at the government hospital in the daytime. | 28:02 |
| Paul Ortiz | You started working on a college degree during that time? | 28:31 |
| David L. Beasley | No, I had my college degree. I was working on a Master's then. I got 18 hours on a Masters up there. I don't need but six more hours. Well, if I don't write the thesis, I'll have to get 24 hours. But I can get six more hours. I believe it is. No, it's 24 if I write the thesis. But I don't know how many. But 24 is one of those figures that I had to get. But I got 18 hours up there. | 28:33 |
| Paul Ortiz | So Dr. Gomillion was an outstanding teacher? | 29:08 |
| David L. Beasley | He was an outstanding teacher. He was a good teacher, man. It didn't get no better. I'm telling you. They might have gotten as good, but they didn't get any better. | 29:13 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, would he ever talk about civic issues in class? | 29:25 |
| David L. Beasley | Well, in the high school, he didn't. He might have said something about it. Yeah, he did say something about it in college because we had gotten out of the high school and we were working at the VA and couldn't nobody touch us. He could teach whatever he wanted. He was there to teach what was going on and therefore, he did it. Of course, most of us knew what was going on. Especially those who was around here like me, knew what had gone on and knew all about this stuff. Yes, sir. He's 94 years old. He was here the other day and sat there an hour and a half and talked to me. We talk now once or twice a month. | 29:34 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, really? | 30:29 |
| David L. Beasley | I call him up. I say, "You write me, Dr. Gomillion, because I'm not going to write." He's still writes. I may have a letter over now. But I said, "I'm going call you and talk to you, and I don't care how long we talk. I can pay for the call." But I don't write so well. My writing days are about over. Yes, sir. | 30:29 |
| Paul Ortiz | So do you think taking his class might have had anything to do with inspiring you to bring up the issue of voting in '37 at that meeting? | 30:56 |
| David L. Beasley | No. See, his teaching to me in that class was after I graduated. So that didn't inspire me. I had already graduated. Well, I didn't get my certificate until 1949. That's when I think I was going to his night classes over there at the university. See, at that time, he didn't have a chance to bring it up to me because I already knew about it. | 31:15 |
| Paul Ortiz | When he would teach his courses, do you know of other people who were taking his classes who as a result of studying under him, became active in? | 31:58 |
| David L. Beasley | Well, I don't know for sure whether this man Bentley, who runs the undertaker place up there. I'm satisfied there are several in there that took classes under him. Went on and got active in the same. But I know Bentley. Bentley got real active in it. I'm satisfied that he took some classes under Dr. Gomillion. He might have taken some before he graduated from college because Bentley was behind me, way behind. Yes. But there were a few others I saw, pictures of some of the others that probably took some of the classes with me. I don't [indistinct 00:33:11] is open here. | 32:18 |
| David L. Beasley | Doggone it. I don't know to be sure now, if you walk in that door. That's 1958. Oh, man. When the thing first started, they packed those churches every Tuesday night. I believe it was headed every Tuesday night. The White people wanted to know, "Why you having so many? You don't need that many meetings to get this message over." But the people were listening, some of them. You know that Trade With Your Friend thing that I was trying to find for you in there? It's in there, unless I let somebody have the whole bunch and they didn't bring them back. But I think I got them in there. | 33:14 |
| David L. Beasley | He would put them out every night before the meeting. Trade with Your Friend. That's all it was doing. They carried a scope out that thing. Judge Will Walden said in one of these books, I think it's Reaping the Whirlwind, that there's nothing wrong with anybody telling you you can trade with your friend. Oh, and they got mad at Judge Will Walden and finally got rid of him. Poor fellow. Yes, sir. | 34:24 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was that a difficult decision to make? | 35:00 |
| David L. Beasley | What? For Walden? | 35:02 |
| Paul Ortiz | No, the Trade With Your Friends campaign. | 35:06 |
| David L. Beasley | Oh. | 35:10 |
| Paul Ortiz | Who was on the the inside decision-making for that strategy? | 35:11 |
| David L. Beasley | Well, I don't know. Dr. Gomillion later and of course, Mitchell was in there. I didn't have so much leadership in that trade with your friends thing. But I was for it because I even took my money out of this Alabama machines bank and started banking in the Opalee county Opa-locka because I thought that it was wrong. Yes, sir. It was wrong. There's Will Walden's picture here. I saw it in there a while ago. | 35:19 |
| David L. Beasley | That's when they closed up the high school now, the White high school. This man was superintendent at that time. See, you got the state troopers and all around. No school today. Yes, sir. I can find it. I'm trying to find Judge Will Walden. Let's see, he's in something here. I don't know what. I don't know what this is I got here. People who appeared to register, I guess. But we kept them. I got that thing full of all the people who attempted to register and couldn't get a chance to register. | 36:20 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, when you went down to register for the first time, do you remember what year that was when you registered? | 37:22 |
| David L. Beasley | No, I don't know what year it was, but it was in '43. Ms. Wright, I don't know whether I even got a chance to go before Ms. Wright. Ms. Wright knew me. Some of those board members knew me well. They said, "No, David, you didn't quite make it." So I didn't get registered until 1949. I think that's when my certificate showed that I got registered, 1949 when Bentner was on the Board of Registrars. He seated, he was on the Board of Registrars. | 37:29 |
| David L. Beasley | But it was 1949 when I got registered. Herman Bentner. It was 1949 when I got registered. After I got registered, I began to help the others to get registered. They didn't like that at all. They said, "You got your. You ought to go on home and be satisfied." I'm not satisfied. I can't do enough with it, that vote by myself. I need some help. | 38:17 |
| Paul Ortiz | What would that help be, when you say helping people? | 38:56 |
| David L. Beasley | I needed them to help put some of us or put me in office. In fact, I wasn't thinking about running for office at that time because I didn't even think about running for office while I was at the government hospital and could have run for a tax collector and got it, if I quit my job or whatever. I said I wasn't quite ready to quit then. But after I retired, a boy encouraged me to run for a county commissioner. I ran for county commissioner and got it. I beat six other fellows, plus the incumbent. Five of us. I was the sixth one that were running for that same office. | 39:00 |
| David L. Beasley | The next year, I beat, I believe it was four. When I ran, the first time I ran for tax collector, I beat four, beat three. Cliff Johnson, Ms. White. I beat three. The second time I ran, didn't nobody run against me. The third time I ran, didn't nobody run against me. | 39:42 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now before we started the interview, you were telling me about Mr. Herman Bentley, who was a registrar, who was different than other White people in Macon County. | 40:13 |
| David L. Beasley | Well, he was. He was a minister, too. It's in this book when you read it, that he was a minister. He taught Sunday school and served as the pastor to the church on occasion. He was a very fine man. He lived right up the road here. I used to go up there. I'd go to his house at night. That's the way I had to go because he was trying to help us. This isn't in any book and I guess I better leave it out of the book. But he did help us a whole lot to go along. | 40:25 |
| David L. Beasley | Of course, Gomillion went up there one night, but I don't think Mitchell ever went to his house. But Gomillion and I went to his house one night, and he would take the applications from us. We'd fill out the application with the people and make sure that, because we knew what was right and what was wrong, where to put a period and a comma. We'd take them and he'd take them and bring them back to the office the next day. | 41:10 |
| David L. Beasley | He had an old fellow working with him by the name of Jack Rogers, who was looking. He looked to see how many. "When did all these folk come in here and make all these applications?" Bentley wouldn't answer him. He went on to keep on getting busy with his feet. He smart. I'm telling you. | 41:46 |
| Paul Ortiz | So that was quite a risk for him. | 42:11 |
| David L. Beasley | Huh? | 42:13 |
| Paul Ortiz | That was, in a way, that was quite a risk for— | 42:13 |
| David L. Beasley | Oh, yeah. Yes, sir. | 42:16 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, did you know Mr. Bentley before that time? | 42:19 |
| David L. Beasley | No, I didn't know him before he got on the Board of Registrars. When he got on the Board of Registrars, somebody told us that, "You got a good man on Board of Registrars." I think the very first day that he got on that Board of Registrars, I went down and got registered. I got registered, I think, the first day that he came down. Then we began to push a few others. Jack Rogers was trying to make him do all this writing and be technical about it. He said, "Oh, that ain't nothing. Let the people register. They qualified. Got more sense than you got." | 42:24 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, Mr. Beasley, you said that somebody told you from the outset that now you had a friend on the Board of Registrars. Do you remember who told you that? Was that common knowledge that Mr. Bentley would have a different policy on registering Black people? | 43:22 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah. Well, that's the truth. When Bentley got on the board, you had a different policy altogether. Well, you didn't have all this writing to do. They charged the people to writing after Bentley was put off the board. When he was put off, then they charged them to write. He didn't make them write all that mess that they had to write. I didn't have to write nothing. All I had do fill out that form that you saw. I got some of them in there. Some of them, you've seen it. So that's good enough. | 43:40 |
| Paul Ortiz | So when they would reject you, what would they do? Would they just—? | 44:17 |
| David L. Beasley | They didn't reject me. I was never rejected. They didn't take my application. Now Ms. W.D. Tommy was on that board with another man. I don't know who that other man was, but that man soon got off the board. Now I made an application under him, but they didn't process it. But when Bentley came on the board, he went over some of them forms that they already had and registered them. On my certificate, he marked through some of those dates that they put in there and gave them my certificate. I got the certificate still here. Then with my deeds and things, I keep that to itself. Yes, sir. It was fun, but rough. It was fun and it was rough. | 44:22 |
| Paul Ortiz | Sounds like a hard road. | 45:31 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah. I'm telling you the truth. | 45:33 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, Mr. Beasley, during this time that you and Dr. Gomillion were doing this work in the Civic Association, did you have a connection with Black people who were trying to organize the political change and other parts of the state? Like, say, Montgomery or Birmingham? | 45:37 |
| David L. Beasley | Yes. Yes, in Birmingham, we had connection with Arthur Scholz and a man up there who ran the newspaper by the name of— I think his name was— | 45:58 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, Emory Jackson. | 46:11 |
| David L. Beasley | Emory Jackson. That's his name. Yeah, Emory Jackson. Then down in Montgomery, Robert Montgomery was connected with us. Lawyer Green was in Montgomery when he first started his business. He came over here to be this lawyer for this gerrymandering thing. When he got over here, he saw that this was a good thing. So he moved and he got a big golfers down there and got a whole lot of land and property here. I'm telling you. He fought that syphilis thing. I never didn't know too much about that syphilis thing. But he fought that for them people and won it. $6 million, I think it was. | 46:12 |
| Paul Ortiz | And you mentioned a couple people, you mentioned one person in Montgomery. Did you have a contact with people in the NAACP chapter there? | 0:01 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah. Robert Montgomery?. He was president. He was president there, and I was the president here. We had another chapter. I think we had a chapter— No, we couldn't get far with those people in Bullock County. Although, there were a few down there wanted to come out and try to get registered, but didn't any of them get registered? We got Judge Johnson that rule that all these folks must be a resident according to the way they had registered the other folks. Yeah, all these kind. Even Lee, Lee had registered a few, I don't know whether they had register any in Bullock County or not. Barbour County had a few. They'd have a few. Montgomery had a few. They didn't have no. Birmingham had a few. They didn't have a whole lot of people. No sir. Although they outnumbered them. They very well outnumbered them. Yeah. | 0:12 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yeah. I want to go back before I forget and ask you some questions about your earlier life. | 1:22 |
| David L. Beasley | Let me see how my wife is doing. All right. | 1:34 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. I was going to ask if your parents ever talked about politics. Father? | 1:43 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah. They didn't never say anything about that. They know nothing about it, politics. All they knew that the sheriff was elected up there. The judge was elected and the mayor was elected. They just knew that they were elected up there. They didn't have no connection with them. Nobody in the community, Black, had any connection with them. And the Blacks up there around university, they didn't have no connection with those people of [indistinct 00:02:24]. | 1:54 |
| David L. Beasley | Only those 81 that I told you that were registered, and they had connection with them because they bought stuff for the university, food and stuff. And therefore, they had to kind of do a little something for them. So they would, just like that man. I told you that they kind of blackball because he used to be the business agent and bought from them down there. And then when he went down there and said that he didn't know Mitchell, well, they turned their back on him. | 2:24 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now the people at Tuskegee University would deal with, you mean farmers? | 3:01 |
| David L. Beasley | Huh? | 3:08 |
| Paul Ortiz | You said that there was some connection between people on 81 who sold things? | 3:09 |
| David L. Beasley | On 81? | 3:17 |
| Paul Ortiz | I misunderstood. | 3:20 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah, it was them. | 3:21 |
| Paul Ortiz | You said that. Let's see. | 3:22 |
| David L. Beasley | No, nobody on 81 sold anything. | 3:22 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 3:27 |
| David L. Beasley | 81 wasn't even known being the mountain. It was there, but it wasn't nothing to it just like 199 out there. It was out there, but wasn't nothing like the road it is now. Yeah. | 3:30 |
| Paul Ortiz | So the people, during these years that you were organizing the Civic Association in the '40s, would other faculty or other members or students at Tuskegee Institute, do they begin to become involved? | 3:48 |
| David L. Beasley | No. They weren't, not when they organized it. now the students got involved later, way later, after we got the ball rolling. That's when they can go around and register now. Students can, which is the thing that I didn't think they ought to do. I thought they ought to let student register at his home and vote at his home, vote absentee. But they let them vote here, didn't let them go home and vote. They do it. But I didn't go along with that. But it was done and still being done. | 4:06 |
| Paul Ortiz | What was the impact of Tuskegee Institute on farmers around here like your father? | 4:49 |
| David L. Beasley | Well, it helped some of them, some of the Black farmers, the Institute did. But we had one farmer, now this is up on 81, by the name of Pollock. He was a big farmer. He was a big farmer in our group. And he had much more of a farm than we had, had people on his farm, Lucius Pollock. And they did well. | 5:00 |
| David L. Beasley | Then we had another man who just died a couple years ago by the name of J.D. Lewis. Now that was a man that didn't have no education, but he was interested in this thing. And he would come out here at night and visit me. Whereas he wouldn't— He liked Dr. Gomez and Mitchell, but he figured he was closer to me than he was to them. Because they were in town and up there at the university and whatnot. So he would tell me, he said, "Be I come out and talk to you because I know you and you know me and we understand one another." I said, "Yeah, Mr. Lewis, we understand one another and therefore we can talk." And he'd come down. If he didn't come at night, he'd come in the daytime, late in the evening and park his car out there and talk. He didn't want some of his folks down there to know that he was coming up here to see me. But he did it. Now that's another one that I can't recall. | 5:32 |
| David L. Beasley | But Pollock, this man, Pollock and Lewis. Let see, we had a man down, oh sure. The [indistinct 00:07:14] was down in Rehobeth, Alabama, were beet farmers and were somewhat influenced. But they were very quiet. They didn't have too much to say until we really got our numbers. When we got our numbers and they come on out. All of them came out then. But the university didn't have too much influence on them before we got this vote. And I don't know whether we got too much influence on them. None. | 6:54 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, in your opinion, why do you think that was so? That the university didn't have much influence? | 7:56 |
| David L. Beasley | Well, the people just didn't know. They thought that the university was for those university people. Some of them even think it now. They don't want to have meetings out at the university. Not these outside folk, they don't want to have meetings up there. They think that that's for those college folks, university folks, not for us out in the country. And they just lately started going up there and everything. They used to wouldn't come to our, you couldn't get them to come to a civic meeting on Sunday. But I'd go because it didn't bother me. Ain't nobody bother about going up there because they couldn't reach me. First place, I've had my own place and work for the government during all this time. You see, I stayed with the government till 1968 or '69 and the fire had been started then and they couldn't put it out. So it didn't make much difference. | 8:06 |
| Paul Ortiz | If you could think of the most inspiring thing that happened to you during those years, what would it be? | 9:22 |
| David L. Beasley | Tell you truth. I don't know. I enjoyed a whole lot of things or some things. But the most outstanding thing, I don't know. I can't think of anything special that it happened that I thought a whole lot of, I appreciated those victories that I had up there and they appreciated me. | 9:36 |
| David L. Beasley | Because the probate judge, who was ahead of this man, was a very good friend of mine all through this fight that we talking about. He was a sheriff at one time and he later became probate judge. But his folks didn't particularly like it, but they couldn't do nothing about it. Especially when he was sheriff. And then when he got to be probate judge, we had gotten where we could put him in and therefore it didn't make any difference whether they liked him or not. | 10:21 |
| David L. Beasley | So that happened and he stayed in there until age. Put him out there that he got 70, he had to come out. But I could have stayed on after, I did stay on until I was 78 when I quit up there. Yeah. They have no limit on the age for tax assessors, because they don't have a tax. Our last tax collector had they changed the law and made it a revenue commissioner. And Mr. Corbett, the boy who worked in there with me, took over and he was sure glad to get that job and get the $10,000 more. I said, "Well I'm glad for you to get it, boy. Glad for you to get it." He was nice to me the whole time I was in there. Yes, sir. | 10:57 |
| Paul Ortiz | When you would get up in front of church audiences and you would try to talk to people about the importance of registering to vote in these early years now, what would you try to tell people? What would be the themes? | 11:58 |
| David L. Beasley | Well, the main thing I tried to tell them, I says, "You know once we get this vote, we can put some of our own people in office. And that's what we'd like to do." Get some of our own people. I wasn't talking about myself. I was still working at the government hospital when I was getting up saying these things. And some of them finally caught on after we had one or two to get registered. | 12:20 |
| David L. Beasley | To get Reverend Beauford that you got on one of those papers there, and Stanlis Smith, they got elected for the city council. Reverend Edwards got elected county commissioner and Mr. Webb got elected county commissioner. Just a few then. But brother, the next two or three years, they really came on in. Had some folk that was running for office didn't have no business running for office, tell you the truth. That's why I didn't want all of them registered. I really didn't want them all. But see the people, the White people had done us so bad till we didn't mind sitting back and them let this no good folks go in there and take over. Because some of them aren't worth a cuss. | 12:51 |
| Paul Ortiz | Wow. | 13:55 |
| David L. Beasley | Some of them not worth cuss. No. Yes, sir. | 13:59 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, I'm sorry. | 14:04 |
| David L. Beasley | I didn't say anything. | 14:06 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. Here it says that you were a member at large as the Tuskegee Civic— | 14:07 |
| David L. Beasley | Civic Association. | 14:12 |
| Paul Ortiz | And did you have particular responsibilities as a member at large? | 14:17 |
| David L. Beasley | No. No. I just voted. That's all I did in that. I could vote for anything that they brought up in the Civic Association. But I couldn't go out and campaign for anybody. | 14:18 |
| Paul Ortiz | So you had 17 people who could vote on issues? | 14:32 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah. All of us could vote on issues, with the exception of a few of us couldn't vote for candidates who were running because they said that we were abusing our influence to get those fellows in there. And which we would be in some cases. Because I supported Judge Hunker every time he ran. He knows it. His son know it down there. Who is Commissioner of Agriculture? Commission of Human Resources because he the one that hired my granddaughter. Yes, sir. | 14:37 |
| Paul Ortiz | Well, Mr. Beasley, I know I've taken up a lot of your time. | 15:25 |
| David L. Beasley | Well yeah, about time my ball game now. | 15:32 |
| Paul Ortiz | One more thing, sir. Now my tape stopped at one point. I just want to make sure I have down that episode that you told me about 1937. Can you tell me one more time about the meeting that you had where you—? | 15:38 |
| David L. Beasley | 1937? | 15:56 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yeah, at the Institute, at the school? | 16:01 |
| David L. Beasley | Oh, the school? Yeah. Oh yeah. The seniors were about to graduate and I was the president of the agricultural seminar. And as we were talking, we had the agricultural faculty member was there with us, Dr. Otis, W.W. Hayes. I don't think Mr. Woods came up. Because Mr. Woods was one who never took part in any of this. He stayed back. And, let's see, I don't know whether Mr. Miles was there or not. He was, fellows had kind of stayed back. But we had agricultural fellows who would come out. What did I do with that darn thing? Oh Jesus, I've forgotten all my Ag teachers. Most of them. Let me see now. And Dr. Paterson didn't come out. And you know Dr. Carvin never took part in any of this kind of stuff. | 16:01 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh really? | 17:29 |
| David L. Beasley | Oh, brother. We had Dr. Otis and who? Hell the man. And Mr. Hayes, W.W. Hayes. Now they had only two that I see here that I can recognize that was here as Mr. Otis and Mr. Hayes is on this. He was just a teacher. Yeah. All these others. Now some of the others taught me and you take up, Mr. Harford taught me and Mr. Dawson didn't teach me anything. Mr. Davis taught me. But that was just something that I had to come over on this side from the Ag side and get. | 17:31 |
| David L. Beasley | Now Mr. Woods, not Otis and Mr. Hayes were the two fellows who were there. Now, they used to have a little thing out there at the campus that they call, we called it play politics. Now this man, A.J. Neer was elected as the mayor out there. Wasn't nothing, just something to pacify. He was the mayor. Let me see who else on here kind of steward on that? Well, I don't know whether they had anybody else there then. That's A.J. Neer. And Jimmy Johnson may have been on that thing with him. They had another man, but he wasn't on here, I don't think. There's Cleve Alvin, who's course— Jimmy Johnson, this man is, his name is Johnson too. G.W.A. Johnson. That's the man that we said portrayed us. Yeah. But those are the fellows that I can recall. | 18:25 |
| Paul Ortiz | So at that meeting, which was shortly before the graduation? | 19:47 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah. | 19:49 |
| Paul Ortiz | That was the graduation for normal? | 19:49 |
| David L. Beasley | No, that was for college. '37. See, they started this college graduation back in 1931, I think. I'm not too sure about that. And from then on they went to the Masters after we started, got the Bachelor's. Then I don't know whether we had any Master's at the time that I graduated or not. I'd have to look at my program that I got down there. | 19:54 |
| Paul Ortiz | But at that graduation you received your Bachelor of? | 20:24 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah. This one we just received a Bachelor's. Now back in '32, when I graduated from high school, we received a Bachelor's and high school diploma. I got the high school diploma up there somewhere. | 20:28 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, one more question about the meeting where you talked about voting? | 20:45 |
| David L. Beasley | Yeah. | 20:49 |
| Paul Ortiz | '37. About how many people were at that meeting? | 20:49 |
| David L. Beasley | Which one? | 20:53 |
| Paul Ortiz | The one where you encouraged other students to vote in 1937. | 20:54 |
| David L. Beasley | Oh, at the shooting. Oh, the area. Oh, I got list of the— I don't have it here. We had about 15 to 20 Ag students. They were graduating. About 15 to 20 hours. Yeah. Wasn't many. Well, wasn't many graduating from college, the whole thing. Yes, sir. | 20:59 |
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