Bennie Mayberry interview recording, 1994 July 23

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Bennie Douglas Mayberry	You got it?	0:02
Tywanna Whorley	Yes, sir. [indistinct 00:00:24] Where were you born?	0:03
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	I was born and reared in Elmore County, Elmore County and Georgia, Macon County, on the north. The post office's name is Tallassee, Alabama, which is only 15 miles from Tuskegee. You know Tallassee, Alabama? Tallassee is in Elmore County. Shook up one of my students when he said, "Doctor Mayberry, where are you from?" I said, "I'm from Tallassee." Oh, he just didn't believe it. Then he said, "Are you really from Tallassee?" "No, not really." But Tallassee was the post office. I was 20 miles out, RFD. But since I was RFD, I had to have a post office, the post office was Tallassee. Therefore, I say I'm from Tallassee, Alabama.	0:27
Tywanna Whorley	When were you born?	1:12
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	When? November 7th, 1911. I'm 83 years old coming up.	1:12
Tywanna Whorley	What do you remember about Elmore County?	1:17
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	What's that?	1:17
Tywanna Whorley	What do you remember about that area that you grew up in?	1:23
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	It was an open, essentially rural, cotton and turpentine socioeconomics, both of which very much depressed as of now. So there's nothing big to remember of the area. Employment, other than conventional with the local government and the school, was essentially cotton manufacturing, cotton goods. Which is now gone way down. We import so much stuff from Korea, from Vietnam and so on, we can't compete with them. So just out of business, with plant the farms and pine trees, purple [indistinct 00:02:21] and so on. Nothing really so complimentary that I remember, about Elmore County.	1:28
Tywanna Whorley	Were your parents [indistinct 00:02:31]?	2:27
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Yes. My father was a part-time school teacher and farmer. My mother was just housekeeper, that time.	2:31
Tywanna Whorley	When you say your father was a part-time teacher, [indistinct 00:02:43]	2:42
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	I mean, we had schools over there as low as four and sometime nine months a year. Well, he taught in the rural schools during those periods. But then the farm ran 12 months. We worked on the farm, my brothers and sisters and I. So we were reared in a rural, farm family.	2:43
Tywanna Whorley	Did you go to school where your father taught?	3:10
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	What's that?	3:10
Tywanna Whorley	Did you go to school where your father taught?	3:10
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Yeah, in the lower grades, I went to school. Now later on, my grandfather on my father's side died. Left grandmother on a farm next door to the little farm school, down here in Mount Mix. She owned that farm that extends from the boys farm school outside to five. See? And I lived there with her in the early years, like in the 1926, '7, '8, '9, until she died. And while I was living with her, I attended school at the Montgomery County Training School, at Waugh. W-A-U-G-H, Alabama.	3:10
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Waugh was the next little village coming this way from Mount Mix. See? Well the Montgomery County Training School was there at Waugh, at that time. Later that building burned and the county government combined the Montgomery County Training School with the Georgia Washington High School at Mount Mix, and that became the Montgomery County Training School, which is the case today. And the school, they rebuilt the school down at Waugh, and this of course, is a middle school, middle elementary school.	3:57
Tywanna Whorley	Were you the only one that decided to live with your grandmother?	4:41
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Yeah, just one. See there were nine of us brothers and sisters. So I left home with my parents, to go live with grandmother because she was alone. And when she died, of course I got back with my parents.	4:41
Tywanna Whorley	During that time, did you travel back and forth to visit your family?	5:00
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Maybe occasionally, but that was a long ways by mule and wagon, and that's how we traveled, across the west valley. Sometime a buggy, but for the most part—We could go and come back. Go one day, come back the next day in a wagon, and cross the river. See?	5:02
Tywanna Whorley	I asked you before, I just wanted to get it for the record, that in terms of learning that there was segregation, it was just something that you knew? Your parents—Nothing is—	5:21
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	You know what? In those days, segregation, discrimination was not an open public issue. It wasn't something we talked about. Not because it wasn't there, but it was as late as the forties and the fifties before this really became a big, big issue, on top of the table where we really dealt with it. You see, we didn't have a leader, W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, back in the early years after the turn of the century. Very much concerned about it, made speeches about it, wrote about it, but it didn't become a confrontation. You understand? Until really the 1940s, '50s and so on.	5:37
Tywanna Whorley	When you were growing up, did you ever hear about Black folks disappearing or lynching?	6:32
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Talk a little louder.	6:32
Tywanna Whorley	Oh, I'm sorry. Did you ever hear about lynchings or Black folks disappearing?	6:32
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Oh my God, yes. I heard about it, but I wasn't nearly so sensitive to the issue as I became later. After we became much more vocal about the differences in the way Black and Whites are treated. So we knew about it.	6:52
Tywanna Whorley	Was the Klan a movement [indistinct 00:07:11]?	7:09
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	What's that?	7:09
Tywanna Whorley	The Klan?	7:09
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	The Klan? Oh well, we knew about them, but even the Klan, we had big confrontation with the Klan here on our campus under Dr. Moton. Maybe we don't want to get into that, that's another long story. When Dr. Moton set out to establish the VA hospital here, that was a big issue. Because following World War I, it was really not first class hospital accommodation for Black veterans. And that was a thing that led to the push to get a VA hospital here in the deep south, where Black veterans would be first class citizens. And that led to the establishment in 1923, of the VA hospital here. But the Klan marched on our campus, threatened Booker T. Wash—I mean, Dr. Moton, Washington was dead. Dr. Moton was the president. He was threatened about that. So I knew about the Klan, but at that time, in my age, I was not nearly so sensitive to this as I became as I grew older.	7:14
Tywanna Whorley	What happened—I just want to move on, when your grandmother died and you went back home? How old were you? Do you remember?	8:39
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	I don't remember the exact age, but I do know that when I went back home, things were really difficult for us economically. So I dropped out of school at the 10th grade and I stayed out of school three or four years. Then I remember distinctly, because I had written it up, mentioned it many times, had said before me, that I was in the field plowing, and my county agent—Now you know what that is? In the Cooperative Extension Service, there were county agents who worked with farmers. County had their home demonstration agents who worked with farm families and so on.	8:46
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	And the county agent came to fear where I was and he said, "Boy, you ought to go to school." My county agent at that time, was named Mr. Manley. I said, "Mr. Manley, there's no way, no way for me to get the support to go to school." So he said, "Well, if I help you, will you go?" I said, "Yes, sir." He was living in Tuskegee, that was his home. You go back on campus, you know Fourth Emory? You know the job corps lives in Emory 1, 2, 3, and 4. The one furthest down is the fourth. Directly behind Fourth Emory is a two story, maybe three story house that face Franklin Road. The back of it is to the back of the Emory. That one was Mr. Manley's home.	9:36
Tywanna Whorley	Oh, okay.	10:27
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	That's where he lived. So I hitchhiked from Tallassee, because there was going and coming log trucks and so on, from Tallassee to Montgomery. So I hitchhiked to Montgomery and out to the highway to come in, and then hitchhiked up to this traffic light up here where you turn, and then walked into the campus. You see? I found his home. I moved into his basement. That basement door that faces Fourth Emory, that was my front door.	10:27
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	I lived there two years, in his basement. So I lived there and I did chores, the garden, the lawn. Ate from his table upstairs and so on. He supported me for two years while I went to college. So then I got a part-time job on campus. I worked and I milked cows for the school, worked on the school farm. And to make a long story short, I went from a high school dropout to Tuskegee University. But when I got here to see the admissions officer, this lady told me, "See, I never heard of that school where you went. We can't give you credit." 'Cause I came here to Emory school at the 10th grade. Because I was a high school dropout at the 10th. So this lady and I had lots of confrontations and so on, about my getting in school at what age, at what level and so on.	10:59
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	So one morning I walked into her office and she was really upset. So she got up and walked out, and told a little student girl who worked with her, said, "We'll fix it. Give him the examination." She went on her way. Well, in 1933, I was already 22 years old, grown man coming to the 10th grade. The girl looked at me and saw that I'm a grown man, so she didn't ask me exam for what levels. So she inadvertently gave me exam for college. I took it and passed it.	12:04
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	So I entered freshman year in 1933, and it weren't until 1934 before the university discovered that I had never finished high school. What saved me, the dean of men, Captain Neely, who was also a registrar, insisted that the admissions office leave me alone. They were going to put me out of school, accused me of lying to get into college. I was a frightened little freshman. So anyway, I went ahead and finished my work. I finished college in 1937. Entered in '33, finished in '37. Never finished high school. Went out and taught in the country schools, '37 to '40. Then went to Alabama A&M.	12:43
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	That CV I just gave you was—So I studied high school up there a while and then went on. They moved me into the college in 1945. So 1945, I left Alabama, then went to Southern University at Baton Rouge, in horticulture. End of that year, I got a call from Tuskegee inviting me to come back to teach horticulture. 1945. '46 rather, I came back in '46. I worked for two or three years, then Dr. Patterson, who was then the president, and Mr. Parts who was Dean, suggested that I should go to graduate school. Well, at that time, I couldn't go to graduate school in Alabama. Couldn't go to Auburn University of Alabama. They didn't accept Black students in 1946.	13:40
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	So Dr. Patterson, who was the president, helped me to get a general education board scholarship. Then I went and I applied to Michigan State, and went to Michigan State. That time, I had a wife and one child. I worked here—I mean, I went to school to Michigan State. In the first year, I did what they thought was impossible. I earned a master's degree in horticulture. Then they offered me a scholarship to stay on for the doctorate, which I accepted. So 1951, I came out with a PhD degree from Michigan State.	14:46
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	But in the meantime, see my wife was with me. For the six—Yeah, by this time now, I got two children. My children were in national school. Just never occurred to me until I came back to Tuskegee, my kids never saw a Black teacher in elementary school until they came back to Tuskegee. Because in Lansing, Blacks didn't get jobs teaching in kindergarten, at the time, early childhood education. Those jobs for White, in Lansing, Michigan. That's part of what I was telling you about a while ago.	15:34
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	But to shorten this story, when I finished with my PhD degree, Dr. Hannah, who was president of Michigan State, gave me a job as instructor in horticulture at Michigan State. I went to work in June, 1951. Well, sometime later in the summer, I said to my wife—We had never lived in a rent house. Where we worked, we worked in Lafayette and Alabama A&M, and Southern University. We moved to a new place, we'd buy a house. We'd leave, we'd sell the house, buy another one.	16:27
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	So it was only then I discovered that I could not buy a house in East Lansing, Michigan. The city code said you had to be American Caucasian to buy a house in East Lansing, Michigan, where Michigan State was located. The only way I could have bought a house was to go downtown to Lansing, Michigan. I could have bought in Lansing and then commuted out to East Lansing, but I couldn't buy in the city of East Lansing because that was reserved for American Caucasians.	17:11
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	I had a professor working with me, Arthur Ispit, who was a Canadian Jew. Art bought a lot in East Lansing without difficulty, but he couldn't get a permit to build a house on his lot because he was a Canadian Jew, and the code said you had to be American Caucasian. Art sued the city and this called for long litigation. He won the suit but by then, he had left Michigan State. He was no longer there, he was disgusted. He couldn't stand the pressure of discrimination. He had never experienced racial discrimination. That's because he's White. But he's still a Canadian Jew. But I was already back at Tuskegee. So that's part of the south, part of the north, part of segregation and discrimination. Now, most of you will never know, because here's where you think racial discrimination, you don't know it's nationwide. They will never.	17:57
Tywanna Whorley	So you stayed out there—Well, I mean, you taught up there for a while, but you came back to Tuskegee?	19:13
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	I came back that summer because I immediately went back to the president, president's son. And when I discovered I couldn't buy a house in East Lansing, I asked out of the contract. Dr. Hannah said, "Well, why are you go—Where are you going?" I said, "I'm going back to Tuskegee." He said, "Well, that's George Wallace's country." I said, "Great, I love George." "Well, why you love George?" I said, "Because I know where George stands. George doesn't like me and he tell me so, he care nothing for Negroes. But he's honest. He's honest with his dishonesty, George Wallace."	19:19
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	He didn't care for Negroes and he told them. So I knew where George stood. Down here, the sign says, "White only, Negro, Colored". Up there, there are no signs. When I used to travel the state of Michigan with my major professor who was a horticulturalist, I had the experience many times out in the country in Michigan, of driving up in the parking lot with Dr. Whitwater, and I'd stay in the car until he goes in the restaurant and order dinner for two. And once he gets it on the table, then I go in and sit down with him and eat. But if I went with him in the front, we never got waited on, neither he nor I. They were just busy, busy, busy. Just never waited on. You never heard anything like that, have you?	19:58
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:21:02].	20:59
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	That's discrimination northern style. That's what we do up the north. Just don't get to you. They don't ask you out, don't serve you.	21:02
Tywanna Whorley	Were you that disgusted that you decided to go back to—Like you said, you knew where Wallace stood, in terms of racism. But you were in the north and you thought things might be different, but they weren't.	21:17
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	I didn't expect discrimination.	21:17
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:21:50].	21:17
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Hello?	21:17
Tywanna Whorley	I mean, how did it make you feel knowing that you had to go in after he sat down and ordered food, and then—	21:53
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Depressed. You must know how depressing that was. But I'm a graduate student traveling with my major professor and I'm trying to graduate from Michigan State. Did I have to let Dr. Whitwater know how I felt? No, he didn't have to know that. It was only in the fifties and sixties when we got to the place, we the Blacks, that we let it all hang out. You see, what this lady did on this bus down here in Montgomery, maybe she had gotten up and moved and sat in the back, let the White people a hundred times. But she had enough. No, ain't moving no more. But see, that was late. See?	21:53
Tywanna Whorley	So you got back here, did you—	22:41
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	I came back to Tuskegee in 1951.	22:55
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:23:01]	22:56
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Huh?	22:56
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:23:03]	22:56
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	I came back as a professor of horticulture. Taught—Well, I don't remember the exact number of months, but it was a short period. And then the Dean of Ag retired. I was promoted to Dean of Agriculture. So I stayed Dean of Agriculture several years. Finally, I became the vice president for development. I served as vice president for development, for several years. Then director of international programs for Tuskegee University. That's where I got a chance to do a lot of traveling. I've been in six countries in South America, 26 countries in Africa, six countries in the Middle East and four in Europe. So I did a lot of travel in connection with Tuskegee University's international program.	23:03
Tywanna Whorley	How was that in terms of people—	24:13
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Hello?	24:13
Tywanna Whorley	How was that in terms of people responding to you, as a Black man traveling to these countries?	24:14
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	We had no problem, except that was such a depressing experience, to see what was going on in the underdeveloped countries. Example, I was in Guyana, South America, during the period that they got their independence from—See it was called British Guyana. When they got their independence, the Guyanese took over the government. One of our graduates, Solomon Reed from the school of preventative medicine, became the prime minister. That was home for him. First time they ever had a Black prime minister in Guyana. See? But when the Guyanese took over, they nationalized everything. The banks, the farms, the industry, everything. But until then, all of the expertise was British.	24:21
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	The man in charge of the dairy industry was White from Britain. No Guyanese in a professional position. So Tuskegee established a program to help train animal sciences, particularly for beef production. So we'd bring 20 young people at a time to Tuskegee and teach them ranch management. We'd bring 20, let's say one year, we'd bring another additional 20 who would've overlapped the 20 we had, and so on for several years, to get some expertise in Guyana to handle the beef industry. Because all the beef they got there, they import. They didn't have nobody to grow it, nobody to help. Milk, same thing. See? It's amazing what independence did. See, I was down in The Bahamas when they got their independence. You can't imagine what it's like to have no independence. I spent a short period, within a week, in jail in Ethiopia.	25:38
Tywanna Whorley	For what?	27:18
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	And what was my crime? Walking down the street making photographs. They didn't allow you to make pictures of the deprivation. See, I visited places in Ethiopia where there were kids minding cows on the mountainside, who had never seen a schoolhouse or anything. That's Ethiopia.	27:19
Tywanna Whorley	What did you think in terms of comparing that to the conditions of Blacks here, in the United States?	28:08
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	A little louder, please.	28:08
Tywanna Whorley	Oh, I'm sorry. What did you think in terms of comparing what you saw over there and what Blacks faced in the United States?	28:08
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	It really just—There's no comparison. You really need to read "The Story of my Life and Works" by Booker T. Washington, written 1906. When he pointed out the steps—You know how? We were in slavery and when we came out, we never saw, we never recognized progress. You went into slavery, you were enslaved without a language. We came out with—Well, we unfortunately had the king's language, which upsets you. But you go on and on, and on, and on. Except we were in slavery, in chains, we came out with voting rights, which we go on and on with. And that's how Booker T. Washington just went down—Things that most people never thought of. Not good, but improved. The steps, see. Well, W.E.B. DuBois and Booker Washington had some strong opposition.	28:16
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	The [indistinct 00:29:33] to read. DuBois says, "Freedom now." Booker Washington says, "Economic security now. You got to make a living." DuBois never dealt with that. Booker Washington say, "You can't be free unless you can earn a living. Food, clothing, housing, and so on. Those are free." That was Booker Washington. So it ain't easy to compare the two. Now what has that to do to me? You want to talk about me. You see, you asked me to compare. So I travel and it's so depressing today. It's—	29:32
Tywanna Whorley	Wait. Wait.	30:19
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	I forgot.	30:19
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:30:31]	30:19
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Yeah. It's just so depressing to me, daily. On the front page of the Tuskegee News, what happened with Africans yesterday, there's a huge pit of dead bodies. Did you see that? In Africa. Then you ask me about my opinion of Africa, where I jokingly—Sometime my friend said, "What do you enjoy most about Africa?" "Coming home." It's unfortunate. We had a poultry project in Mali, West Africa, northwest Africa. Capital Bomaco. Well, I went to Bomaco to visit Mr. Davis, who was head of our poultry project in Mali. And he asked me to go to the country with him, out on the farm, out of Bomaco, to visit the farm group. And I went over there, went with him.	30:43
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	They had cooked a huge, something like a wash pot, of meat. Now what was in it? I don't know what kind of animals were in there. When it was cooked, it was dipped out into something like a dish pan and that set on a table. Then we'd stand around this table. You never seen eating like that, have you? Hands. And I said to Davis, I said, "Mr. Davis, there's no way in the world for me to eat that." So he called me off to the side from the group. He says, "Donald, you going to either eat that, or you going to take me back with you."	32:10
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	He said, "There ain't no way in the world for you to leave me with these folks, if you don't eat with them." You know what? I ate with them. I had to go from Bomaco over to Paris, from Paris to New York, to Montgomery. I spent most of that time in the bathroom. That stuff nearly killed me. That's Africa. That was then, I don't know what's it's like. I went to Yemen. And maybe you don't know Yemen, that's not African, that's Asia. South of Saudi Arabia, Yemen. You picture Saudi Arabia, south of Saudi, on east side of the Red Sea. And this is Anona Bulls right over here.	33:25
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	The wife of this contractor was working with me. She decided she wanted to go to Yemen. I said, "Yes." And we went to Yemen. In traveling in Yemen, from one town to another, one time, we stopped to eat at what was called a restaurant. Can you picture a restaurant with no silver? No knives, forks and spoons. I mean, they're nonexistent. Put your food on the plate and you eat with your hand. There's a face bowl at the door. When you finish eating the [indistinct 00:35:34], you wash your hands. The newspaper since—Wipe with newspaper, you're not leaving. That's Africa. But that was Yemen, which is not Africa, but Asia. It's the same difference.	34:37
Tywanna Whorley	I wanted to ask you, when you brought up DuBois and Washington, and their two philosophies were different, and there you were in the north, getting an education and a lot of it, which was supposed to bring respectability that you didn't have. What did you think about that?	35:42
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Booker T. Washington explained that. You need to read him. In "The Story of my Life and Works," he had high regard for DuBois. But DuBois born and raised in the north. Booker Washington was born and reared in the South. Booker Washington knew us, he knew our problem. DuBois looking from the outside, never really understood. And that's what Booker Washington explains. DuBois could only see now, Booker Washington could see in the years ahead.	36:07
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	What? You know what I mean? DuBois like those students we have, want to take over the governance of the college. Strike and everything else. But they want it now, that's DuBois. They didn't realize what it took to keep a college open because they're not aware of the discipline that's necessary to bring students together from nationwide and live together, and work for a common cause, for the years ahead. See? But they are students now. You get the difference?	36:57
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:37:50]	37:48
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Right.	37:51
Tywanna Whorley	When you were here in the fifties, were there any racial tensions in Tuskegee?	37:54
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Any what?	38:08
Tywanna Whorley	Racial incidents here in Tuskegee?	38:08
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Unfortunately, there were race related. We had two murders that I don't know the—Anybody, you can ask them about Sammy Younge. Sammy Younge was a young man, one of our students, parents right here in Tuskegee, who insisted on freedom now, by myself. One of the local people shot him, killed him, nothing done about it. Sure. An auto dealer down here in the Ford place, I was talking about him recently, up in [indistinct 00:38:55] killed somebody. But when I came to Tuskegee from Michigan State in 1951, I went down for voter registration in Dakota, to register to vote.	38:10
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	The registrar was a local, uneducated White person who told me that a nigger didn't have sense enough to vote. Here am I, I have my PhD, thinking I'm the greatest like Cassius Clay, I can't vote. I did not register to vote.	39:21
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	There's a person I wish for only on this list, he doesn't live here anymore. He's in Tuskegee, almost 90 years old. Fair active, since he doesn't act like an old man. His name is C.G. Gomillion. You must have heard that name. When the White folks in the city of Tuskegee, gerrymandered the city and ran the city limit line such that it excluded the Negro and took in all the White folks, so that we couldn't vote in the city election, for we are not in the city limit. It was C.G. Gomillion who sued the establishment and won the case, to move the city limit not only where it was, but included all of the areas which made up Tuskegee. That was C.G. Gomillion.	39:45
Tywanna Whorley	What did you think about him as a person?	40:58
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Great. To me, he was great because we never had an occasion to note where C. G. Gomillion was for C. G. Gomillion. He's for the people. It's been well demonstrated. You see? Then Gomillion had the courage to face opposition without any of the—He was nonviolent, of course, just as Martin Luther King. He didn't have the following of Martin Luther King, but he was, for the most part, local. So I have very high regard for him.	41:07
Tywanna Whorley	And were you—In terms of—Afraid that his activities would probably get—	42:02
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Listen dear, I don't hear very well.	42:12
Tywanna Whorley	Oh, I'm sorry. Were you afraid that his activities might end up getting him killed?	42:12
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Oh yes. Just as Martin Luther King, just as Jackie J. Kennedy. Why would we say it couldn't happen to him? It might. That's the chance you have to take. If he gets killed, so what? This is how the big issues are won. It's a chance you take. What else? When the Ku Klux Klan marched on our campus, burned crosses up there in front of the library, did we tell Dr. Moton to stop? Get lost? Don't push for the VA? His objective was a veteran administration hospital for Blacks. And that's what we got. So sure, we may get killed.	42:19
Tywanna Whorley	And in terms of—The question I wanted to ask you was, did you join the TCA?	43:22
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Oh my God, yeah. Who didn't? Sure. Speaking of leaders, when the Blacks marched from Selma to Montgomery, we had a van commuting from our dining hall to that march, Tuskegee University, furnishing food. And when they arrived at the capital, Luther Foster was standing at the brink of them. He could have been killed for that. But it's a chance you take.	43:33
Tywanna Whorley	What about when you talk about the involvement of the school in these activities, were any of the faculty members afraid for the—	44:29
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Black what?	44:46
Tywanna Whorley	Were the faculty members afraid for their jobs and for the school, in terms of getting money?	44:46
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Gomillion was a faculty member, Frank Toldan was a faculty member. I'm talking about—That's silly. The leaders in this, were they afraid? Or you saying, were they afraid it'd hurt the school?	44:46
Tywanna Whorley	Their jobs [indistinct 00:45:03]	45:01
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	How's it going to hurt their job when the president out there with them? [indistinct 00:45:09], he was standing on the steps of the capital, when that march walked in, to greet them.	45:04
Tywanna Whorley	Now, I was also thinking in terms of money too, and getting money for the school. Would that hurt? Did that hurt the school?	45:21
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Maybe. Maybe it did, but that wasn't an issue. That didn't come to the surface because number one, Tuskegee is not a state supported institution, a state assisted. What does that mean? We get a token amount of money from them. 65 million budget, we get about 3 million from the state. It is not like being a state supported institution. We're not state supported, we are state assisted. That's the difference. See, Alabama State, Alabama A&M, Troy State, University of Alabama, Oregon—	45:27

Tywanna Whorley	What were some of the activities that you were involved in when you came back here in the '50s? In terms of—	0:01
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	What, activities?	0:06
Tywanna Whorley	Mm-hmm. Besides voting. And that's what I wanted to ask you. Like you said, here you are a PhD professor coming back from Michigan, but weren't registered to vote. And this guy wouldn't let you vote. I mean, how did [indistinct 00:00:25]	0:07
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Of course, you know I ultimately did.	0:25
Tywanna Whorley	Yeah.	0:26
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	When Gomillion got in there, '52, all of us could register to vote. I was not a flag bearer in the parade for integration. I was a member of the NAACP, I paid my support, I voted, but I was not a leader. My effort was concentrated more on work for the university. Between the university, private philanthropy, the university and the federal government. Maybe you don't understand this. Let me see, can I find anything here to help me with this? No.	0:27
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Maybe you don't have time to do reading, but while I'm looking—See, that's part of my collection, what I talk from. All right. Well, I don't want to throw you off and get you reading.	1:26
Tywanna Whorley	No, it's fine [indistinct 00:02:42]. Well, do you think it could've been a combination of both?	1:56
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Yes.	1:56
Tywanna Whorley	That you could have economic [indistinct 00:02:57]	1:56
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	It could, if that's your philosophy. But you got a one-track mind. I wanted to get elected. [indistinct 00:03:08] That's what [indistinct 00:03:10] do for us.	3:02
Tywanna Whorley	But even though Blacks were attaining some economic rights, they were still being lynched.	3:08
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Still what?	3:08
Tywanna Whorley	They were still being lynched and being cheated out of their—	3:08
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Well, you have to deal with what year you're talking about.	3:37
Tywanna Whorley	Well, I would say, okay, when you had Roosevelt in office, when you had all those programs for Blacks, they were able to get land for them to farm. There were still White people trying to cheat them out of their land.	3:42
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	That's still today. But not only White people. Black people. If you're willing to be realistic.	3:59
Tywanna Whorley	Mm-hmm [indistinct 00:04:13]	4:13
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	If you don't think Black people can do you in, go to Nigeria. That's Black on Black. Haiti. I visited Haiti. Black on Black. Mm-hmm. I visited all our developments in Lagos. Black on Black. Yes. You see, we haven't come to the realization that it's haves versus have-nots, color notwithstanding. But we don't believe that. We believe it's White on Black. We don't believe it's haves on have-nots. We're unwilling to be honest. When you talk about what's going on downtown. I was trying to see—See, I had something. I had some stuff here. No, that's not it. See? When I told you my address—	4:13
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	No, that's something I don't want. Take a quick look at this. No, that's something else.	5:31
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	We have 17 institutions. Historically Black land grant colleges, commonly called the 1890 institutions for Blacks.	5:31
Tywanna Whorley	17?	6:15
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	17. From 1890, when they were first established, until 1967, they didn't get one dime of federal formula money to support research extensions. In 1967, due to some fighting we did from 1960 up to '67, we got the first $283,000 divided among the institutions.	6:17
Tywanna Whorley	The 17?	7:01
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Huh? Yeah.	7:03
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:07:19]	7:03
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Huh?	7:03
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:07:21]	7:03
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	But didn't you study at one of them? Petersburg?	7:21
Tywanna Whorley	Mm-hmm. [indistinct 00:07:31] Lincoln and [indistinct 00:07:31]	7:31
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	No, that's not one of us. Lincoln, Cheyney, not a [indistinct 00:07:38] school. All of these in the South.	7:35
Tywanna Whorley	Okay. Hm. [indistinct 00:07:49]	7:41
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Now this is how much each one of them got for the current fiscal year. Fiscal year 1994. This the amount that each one got of formula money for this year. See, there's a million five. Tuskegee got a million and five. A big school like A&T got two—Where is A&T? North Carolina A&T?	7:56
Tywanna Whorley	A&T [indistinct 00:08:29]	8:26
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	See what I mean? Prairie View got a large amount. See? But a small school like Delaware State, look at what they got. See? But all that's beside the point. I told you that I wasn't working with the political side. I'm working with the financial support for Black colleges. So the first thing we came up with was $283,000 in F1 in 1967.	8:30
Tywanna Whorley	Divided among 17 schools?	8:59
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Yeah. That's just about $17,000 a campus. But that amount has continued to increase. By 1990, the amount divided among them was $49 million. You follow me? Versus $283,000. But over this period, see, now I've done another table here which carried this to 1995. See this goes to 1990. This is sheets I used making a speech. 1990. At 1990, where were we? $685 million. [indistinct 00:09:47]. Now the amount up to 1994, you see, including our projections for F1, '95, is $1 billion, that these Black colleges [indistinct 00:10:11] The same list of colleges. So, I was working with the president.	9:00
Tywanna Whorley	How did you go about—You started doing this in the '50s?	10:16
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	1960s.	10:16
Tywanna Whorley	'60s. Okay.	10:16
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Now, do me a favor since you're not hooked up. Hand me those books up there. Over there, there's a yellow one and—Yeah, pick up that stack. Yeah, bring all that down there. Now sit down. The complete story of how we did this is in this book. I'm going to bother you once more. Get me that other one on top. That one there.	10:39
Tywanna Whorley	This?	11:21
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Yeah. That [indistinct 00:11:23] Yeah, that one. Bring it over here.	11:22
Tywanna Whorley	Hm. When did this come out?	11:24
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	What's that?	11:24
Tywanna Whorley	I said when did this come out?	11:24
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	When? I believe it's '90, isn't it?	11:24
Tywanna Whorley	Yeah, it is '90.	11:24
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	That one. This one's '89.	11:24
Tywanna Whorley	Really? And you go into detail of how—	11:24
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	The detail of how we did this is in this one.	11:24
Tywanna Whorley	Okay.	11:24
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Some of it's included in this one, but it's more [indistinct 00:12:11]	11:25
Tywanna Whorley	I mean, why did you choose that route?	12:15
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	That was this one. Everybody got some interest. This is mine.	12:20
Tywanna Whorley	Mm-hmm. How did you find out that there were supplement in terms of getting money from the federal government?	12:26
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	From whatever.	12:38
Tywanna Whorley	You've been busy.	12:39
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Huh?	12:39
Tywanna Whorley	I said you've been busy.	12:39
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Now if you read that one, as of 1965, we had two Black professional foresters in the United States. Two.	12:55
Tywanna Whorley	Two?	13:02
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	There were three here now. Jim Johnson, Williams and [indistinct 00:13:03] I just happened to get interested in a look see. So [indistinct 00:13:37] that's research. That's extension, that's forestry. Big question, where do we go from here?	13:02
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:13:54]	13:52
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	That's why I mentioned to you, it kind of shakes me sometime. See, these studies recapping what happened to us. You know what I mean? As if this is something new. I haven't told you anything new today. Now maybe you didn't know about what was happening to us in the North. I just [indistinct 00:14:30] but you read about the bus boycotts, the strikes and so on in Pontiac, Michigan. Oh, come on.	13:59
Tywanna Whorley	I know that strikes went on back in the '40s. '40s, '50s.	14:41
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	But I mean, it was in Michigan. But it's [indistinct 00:14:51]	14:48
Tywanna Whorley	How long did it take you to do this work?	14:58
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	What now?	15:00
Tywanna Whorley	How long did it take you do this work?	15:01
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Well, it's hard to say how long because you don't just sit down to a table and do one of those. You do a little now and you add some more and you write some more and so on. It doesn't come all at once.	15:01
Tywanna Whorley	I know what I wanted to ask you. Did you ever get a chance to meet Dr. Carver before he passed?	15:30
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	I overlapped Carver by 10 years. I came here in '33. Carver died in '43. At least half of that time, I was here at Tuskegee.	15:34
Tywanna Whorley	Did you get a chance to meet him?	15:54
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Oh yes. I met him. He was not doing regular classes when I got here. But he did a lot of lecturing to classes. He was brought in. His office was right down there in the Ag Building. His lab was in Milbank Hall.	15:55
Tywanna Whorley	So you think that may have been one of the reasons why you went into the field that you did? Because—	16:12
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	No, I went into agriculture really before I knew Carver. Just trying to see—	17:45
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	You might want to finger through that a little.	17:45
Tywanna Whorley	Is it a history [indistinct 00:17:54]?	17:46
Tywanna Whorley	So were you part of the museum that they have [indistinct 00:18:31]?	18:28
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	No.	18:31
Tywanna Whorley	Were you part of the [indistinct 00:18:35] museum?	18:32
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	No. I was here. I helped provide a lot of information, a lot of stuff I had was turned over to them. See.	18:44
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	[indistinct 00:19:24] Look like I might pull out a lot of junks here which gets us off the track.	18:45
Tywanna Whorley	He wrote [indistinct 00:20:03]	18:45
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	What's that now?	18:45
Tywanna Whorley	I said, he wrote this stuff?	18:45
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	That's his autobiography, isn't it?	18:45
Tywanna Whorley	Yeah.	18:45
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Yeah. Brief Biography of George Washington Carver. That's by him.	20:15
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:20:31]	20:24
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	I just didn't have the mentality and the foresight to recognize with whom I was dealing. That came later.	20:37
Tywanna Whorley	See, when I first got here, that was the first thing I did, go to the museum. Have you seen a lot of changes since you first came?	21:25
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	What was that?	21:28
Tywanna Whorley	Have you seen—	21:28
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Oh my God. Come on. 50 years? You know where the library is now?	21:29
Tywanna Whorley	Mm-hmm.	21:36
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	1928, we played baseball out there where is the library. You can't picture that, can you?	21:38
Tywanna Whorley	No.	21:44
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	The Poetry Yard was where Chappie James and School of Engineering. You know where the School of Engineering was? That was the Poetry Yard. You know that little building where the security is—Excuse me, next to Kresge.	21:47
Tywanna Whorley	Mm-hmm.	22:01
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	That was the head house for the [indistinct 00:22:04] garden. And going down behind that building on over to the School of Veterinary Medicine, that's where we grew vegetables. Where the chapel is now was where we had irrigated strawberries. That was part of the farm. Have I seen changes?	22:02
Tywanna Whorley	Did they still have the same things going on in terms of being in the ROTC program?	22:32
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	ROTC, yeah, just upgraded. But we had ROTC then. But when I hear we had ROTC, we now have a Space Administration program. Evolving out of that, we trained the 99th Squadron. What's that? Do you know? I was in Mobile, day before yesterday. I went to the—They have something down there called the Alabama Battleship Park where the USS Alabama is anchored in the Bay of Mobile. It's a tourist attraction.	22:39
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Now when I went down there where they dedicated a plane to one of the members of the 99th Squadron who was killed in Vietnam in a plane like that. And there was a big ceremony by the state [indistinct 00:23:52] in the honor of this man. His mother, 100 years, old was there in a wheelchair. [indistinct 00:24:00] In 1940, there were no Black pilots in the Navy, Air Force, Marines, nowhere. Negroes couldn't fly a plane. Tuskegee got a grant to train Black pilots. Out of it came the 99th Squadron which you really need to know more about.	23:34
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Chappie James lived to be a general. He was up in the Pentagon. And that plane that's mounted right there by Chappie James Building, you've seen it? Have you read the inscription on that plate there in the front? So many of our students and others just never know what we've done. Why? We don't stop to read. That is frustrating. The plane is there for us to see. Well, why is the plane there? It's on a plate right there on the ground, a little plate. Black pilots. Let me see this one. I don't guess you may not even heard the name T.M. Campbell. Does that name ring a bell? Huh?	24:33
Tywanna Whorley	No, sir.	25:40
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	And how long you been on our campus?	25:44
Tywanna Whorley	Around three weeks.	25:46
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Been here three weeks and you haven't heard the name T.M. Campbell? Let's see. I wanted to find something here and show you. [indistinct 00:26:24] Something [indistinct 00:26:41] I want to see if I can turn to that monument. 15—Anybody talk to you about the Movable School? Well, they must tell you, incidentally, the charter I was trying to show you, there it is in the—	25:57
Tywanna Whorley	Oh, okay.	27:13
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	That's in this book here.	27:13
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:27:28]	27:23
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	What's that?	27:29
Tywanna Whorley	I'm just saying, when you was telling about the one billion.	27:31
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	About what, honey?	27:32
Tywanna Whorley	The one billion.	27:32
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Oh yeah. Campbell. He was in '32, '33. Let's see what's—'32. That's what [indistinct 00:27:58] Booker T. Washington on his horse. Somewhere I got a monument to him. I don't know where I put it. '71, '72, '73. That's the Movable School I was thinking about.	27:36
Tywanna Whorley	Mm-hmm.	28:19
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	See that in the museum.	28:19
Tywanna Whorley	Mm-hmm.	28:19
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	You haven't seen this [indistinct 00:28:35]	28:33
Tywanna Whorley	No, sir.	28:34
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	You know where the Chambliss business house, School of Business?	28:38
Tywanna Whorley	Mm-hmm.	28:42
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	If you standing out in the front, facing the building, you see your left is a big cedar tree in the yard.	28:43
Tywanna Whorley	Uh-huh.	28:52
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	This monument is installed under that cedar tree. And this is T.M. Campbell. That's where he was under that cedar tree November 12th, 1906 when he was employed as the first Cooperative Extension agent in the nation. 1906, November 12th. And that story is in this yellow book. This one.	28:54
Tywanna Whorley	Are these in the bookstore?	29:30
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Huh?	29:30
Tywanna Whorley	The book, is it in the bookstore?	29:33
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	No. That one is not in the bookstore. But if you promise me that you will read it, I'll give it to you.	29:38
Tywanna Whorley	Oh, yeah?	29:49
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Huh? That's a masterpiece, even if I did do it.	29:56
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:30:03] I know the Student's Union for freshman year has an orientation plan. Is any of this taught in [indistinct 00:30:18]	30:12
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Theoretically, all of that comes up in a class called Orientation.	30:19
Tywanna Whorley	Yeah.	30:24
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	For freshmen.	30:24
Tywanna Whorley	Right.	30:24
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Yeah.	30:24
Tywanna Whorley	Orientation. [indistinct 00:30:30] You said theoretically.	30:24
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Huh?	30:24
Tywanna Whorley	You said theoretically.	30:24
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	They profess to do it.	30:24
Tywanna Whorley	So Tuskegee is considered the first place to [indistinct 00:32:07] Cooperative Extension. [indistinct 00:32:09]	30:24
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	First national [indistinct 00:32:11] Yeah.	30:24
Tywanna Whorley	One last question I wanted to ask you. Do you see any major changes that Tuskegee needs to undergo in order to be prepared for the 21st century?	32:27
Bennie Douglas Mayberry	Now Tuskegee University is so well on its way and so much was done in the early years to establish the pace, I'm not sure that it should be anything so much different than what it is doing. Just enhancement and strengthening of its ongoing programs.	32:43
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:33:33] Thank—	33:33

Item Info

Title:

Bennie Mayberry interview recording, 1994 July 23

Date:

July 23, 1994

Creator:

Mayberry, Bennie Douglas

Contributor:

Whorley, Tywanna

Description:

Name: Bennie Douglas Mayberry; Date of Birth: 1914-03-04; Place of Birth: Tallahassee, FLA; Occupation(s): educator; Residence: Tuskegee, AL
Informant ID: 670; Interviewed by: Tywanna Whorley.

Occupation:

Educator

Location:

Format:

Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

Source Collection:

Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South interviews, photographs, and project records, circa 1864-2011, bulk 1990-2004

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Provenance:

The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired the Records of the Behind the Veil Oral History Project from the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies in 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2002.

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Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

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Copyright for content created by the Behind the Veil project is held by Duke University and made available to the public using a Creative Commons Attribution / Non-commercial (CC-BY-NC) license.

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RL00170-CS-1600
8684ec3a-94b1-464e-93ce-086643c7f6d5
behindtheveil
2e32f18d-4c4a-4bb5-9fdd-2a15ea3bcf55
ark:/87924/r4hq44765
2e32f18d-4c4a-4bb5-9fdd-2a15ea3bcf55

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Bennie Mayberry interview recording, 1994 July 23

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1. Bennie Mayberry administrative file, 1994

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Bennie Mayberry interview recording, 1994 July 23

Transcript

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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