Ellihue Gaylord, Sr. (primary interviewee), J. Buffington, and John Kimbell interview recording, 1995 July 21

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Stacey Scales	—name and anything else you wanted to share?	0:00
Dwight Holmes	My name is Dwight Holmes.	0:01
Stacey Scales	Okay. Mr. Holmes.	0:04
F.B. Buffington	I'm a F.B. Buffington.	0:06
Stacey Scales	Excuse me, sir?	0:08
F.B. Buffington	F.B. Buffington.	0:09
John W. Kembell	John W. Kembell.	0:09
Stacey Scales	Mr. Kembell.	0:09
John W. Kembell	That's B-E-L-L.	0:09
Stacey Scales	Okay.	0:09
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, State President of the Arkansas Chapter of NAACP. Pastor Starlights Baptist Church. 14 six Detroit Street, El Arkansas.	0:19
Stacey Scales	So could you tell me how your community was Reverend Gaylor when you were growing up?	0:34
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	How was my community when I was growing up—	0:42
Stacey Scales	Or describe—	0:44
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	I didn't grow up here. I grew up in Marton, Arkansas. And we had a fairly decent community because most of the people that owned their property and we had organization there. See we had the NAACP back there in the thirties and it was functioning. And of course we used that organization to good advantage. Excuse me.	0:45
Stacey Scales	And how early were you aware of that in your community?	1:20
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	I was not aware of segregation.	1:25
Stacey Scales	No. At what age you when you knew that there was a racism in your society and neighborhood?	1:29
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	Yes. I was eight or 10 years old. Excuse me. See, I worked with the NAACP since I was 12 years old. And I've been a member for 60 years. And of course we had a very active chapter and people was a bit more together. See I had a high school at home back in 1932 and '34. We could go to high school at my home. And then while it was up at Blackmore, they transported you there on the bus. Then later on in 36 to build a high school and market, a Black woman gave the rocks to build a school. And we as students went out in the woods to help dig the rocks to build a school, even the walkway, to build out of rocks. Rock walk, put it, build out of walk, rocks the fence around the schools, the front of it. Yes. And the arch were built out of rocks.	1:38
Stacey Scales	And what do your parents do for a living?	2:59
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	My mother was a cook kitchen. She cooked for one family for 19 years, making $4 and a quarter a week. But now they funniest to a place to stay. And it was built out of bricks just like the big house was. It had all the facilities and everything. She paid no utilities, no rent or anything but $4 and a quarter a week was what we had to live off.	3:02
Stacey Scales	And what'd your father do?	3:37
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	My father had left home and he was in Missouri and for a while he was working in a broom factory. He lost his eyesight and he left when I was young.	3:39
Stacey Scales	Okay. Mr. Kembell, how was times when you were growing up sir?	4:00
John W. Kembell	I guess mine's probably not as colorful a story as Reverend Gaylor. However I do being born in 1924 that was the day of Jim Crow of course. But we were kind of a protected family. My father was a man that had very little education. Third grade. As a matter of fact, I'm the first of seven kids born to him and my mother [indistinct 00:04:36]. But my daddy always told me when I was a kid that you worked for me and if it be anybody working for anybody else out it. What he meant by that was we on our own farm, we always have. All we had to do was work on the farm. Before then, we didn't have to work under the pressure a lot of other people did about working White people farms and that.	4:05
John W. Kembell	My dad was and is a very proud man. He yesterday was driving himself at 92 years old. He's pretty active at 92 years old. And he made sure of three things when I was a kid that we had decent above average clothes to wear. That was a priority of his. Even though you might not had a lot of changes, the fact that you wore out was better than most people visible. It was a little better than presentable, above the average I would say. And that's not being very [indistinct 00:05:57]. But that was the fact. He made sure that we had plenty of food to eat and he made sure that we were at the school every day. We didn't—	5:16
Stacey Scales	Did you go to an all Black school?	6:11
John W. Kembell	That wasn't all it was then, an old Black. Everything was an old Black students. There was no integrated schools anywhere in our area. I was born about two and a half miles south of here on highway 79. Out a place called Walker. Now it was Mount Zion Community at that time. My great grandfather gave the land to build the first school and the first church.	6:13
Stacey Scales	What was his name?	6:40
John W. Kembell	His name was William Copeman. He was my great, great grand father.	6:41
Stacey Scales	William Copeman?	6:42
John W. Kembell	William Bill Copeman. Yes, he was of course. He came home in slavery. He was a slave himself. And I heard many horror stories about that time. And my daddy made sure of getting back to that part that we went for school. My mother got an eighth grade education, which in those days was something just about—and that was a source you could go. There was no high schools in our area. If you were going to go to the high school, you had to go to another city somewhere. Matter of fact, around here, I think Hope was about the closest one. There was a Black high school there called [indistinct 00:07:29] I believe. But when I came on, of course by that time the schools that were in our community, four or five students that consolidated and became Walker High School. I was the second graduate of that high school. The second class graduated Summer high school.	6:46
John W. Kembell	It was built in 1940. The high school was. And I graduated in 1942 in the spring. First. In those days we had school set six days a week. We had in order that the farm kids could put in the of time they had put and then get out and then go to field. I finished high school at Walker, all of my six sisters and brothers, all seven of us finished at that one school. My daddy gave each of us the opportunity to college. I went two years Arizona State College [indistinct 00:08:40] I believe.	7:50
John W. Kembell	And my two sisters went to that same school [indistinct 00:08:51]. I didn't finish college because I went to a service. However, I had a better opportunity when I came out. But it just wasn't my—teaching just in those days everybody knew that you could teach agriculture or some of that sort. You could be a coach. And I wasn't very athletic so I just didn't inspire the teachers. And next thing, my cousin who did finish college, taught me some, I think interviewed him last night. George Cameron. He was teaching and I was driving the truck all over the country making more money than he was.	8:46
Stacey Scales	And what year were you driving the truck?	9:42
John W. Kembell	Oh, from 1947 to 1955. I went to California in 1955.	9:45
Stacey Scales	Mr. Buffington, could you tell me about some of your family history and how it was for you and your parents and—	10:00
F.B. Buffington	To begin with, my first recollection was an oil well with a big gas light in the back, in the yard, in the back of the yard, stayed lighted all the year round, night and day. And the community was—I lived in a community that was—no Whites lived in there. It was a community that was about three miles wide and about six miles long. Nothing but Black and mixtures lived in there. And there were two schools and two churches. Now the practically every family owned their own home. I said there were two churches and two schools.	10:10
F.B. Buffington	St. Matthew School and Early View School lived where I was located in the oil field and had more money to operate with and they had the better class of school. That's where I attended elementary school. Elementary school I left—they sent me to Little Rock after I left the eighth grade and I finished high school in Little Rock. And from there I finished college in Little Rock and then went on to Fisk University and received a master's degree. My father was a teacher. He believed that among the first things that a man should do was always own his own home.	11:34
F.B. Buffington	So it was nobody, they would be able to come around knocking on collecting rent. And that's what he taught us. And so that is another thing that I remember that I used to sit up in the swing and read newspapers. He was a teacher. And every morning a man that drove a paper house at the door, it meant this commercial appeal. And after I got up large enough, I began teaching myself. And between this times I left there, I left that and went to Minnesota and there I received and got a job. There was a lot of, received a lot of information from. I went to work for the Poland company. I helped her elect the first man's labor relation man.	12:52
F.B. Buffington	I was reported on the 61 and I traveled all over the country. All except three states. I saw many noted people travel, many of them. Then when I came back home and got a job teaching school and I've been teaching ever since. Except summers, I went to work for the Miss Pacific Dining Car Company and worked during the summers. And that is all was teaching from then. Long teaching school was the only work I've ever done.	14:26
Stacey Scales	When you worked as a Pullman porter, did you ever have any experiences with discrimination in your travels?	15:36
F.B. Buffington	No.	15:44
Stacey Scales	So it was pretty fair?	15:46
F.B. Buffington	Yeah. It was fair. I had run to down to Chicago, Minneapolis, Chicago. I had a car that used to go to Portland, Oregon in Seattle and down the Kansas City and then back east, back to New York and Boston.	15:48
Stacey Scales	And was the North different from the south as far as the Jim Crow?	16:23
F.B. Buffington	Back in the early twenties and very few Blacks had migrated in that area at all. You take from Minneapolis to Seattle, you could see one or two Blacks and they were at Butte, Montana. You wouldn't see any between. Ever now it filled up all over. And I came back and in 1942 I was around uptown one day and the banker and his pastor was standing on the streets talking in front of his door. And I happened to be passing there and the banker stopped and asked me what was I going to do next year. And I told him, he said, "Let me tell you something, don't you apply for a job because I've got one for you." He said, "The principal here is going retire and we want you to take over the school." And from that day until I retired, 50 years later this school year, I was in charge.	16:32
Stacey Scales	Great.	18:17
F.B. Buffington	And I've seen a lot of children graduating from here that have make good of all types of education, doctors, lawyers. And up until now I've been retired now four years.	18:22
Stacey Scales	What was your inspiration to make it through all of those times? Did you have—	19:02
F.B. Buffington	One of the things that I loved was to travel. And I wanted to see how people in various parts of the country lived. And it's a wonderful thing to travel because you find various types of people in various parts of the country. Especially when the migrations started after the World War. At the close of World War two, when Ford opened up, you take in these other factories, those in Georgia and the Carolinas, they went, they moved up, they moved up in New York and Boston and that have those that there lived in the South went to Chicago in St. Louis's. Those who lived in the the middle south went to Minneapolis and Army Hall and [indistinct] Western. And then to those who went to those. And then in the early fifties they went to California.	19:11
Stacey Scales	When you were traveling then, did people ever tell you why they were going to those places? Why they were migrating?	20:57
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	Here in Oklahoma, they were going to—for various reasons, mostly for economic purposes, for better life. There was more money and most of them were on their first trips.	21:06
Stacey Scales	And I wanted to ask Reverend Gaylor too about your early experiences with the NAACP. What role was the NAACP taking in your community when you were 12 years old? That was an early time.	21:41
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	It was a very strong role. At that time you could get people from the national office attorneys to come down and try cases. And once the NAACP got in town, everybody got a little shakey because of the record that we had and the record that we made. And we had some very healthy experiences with that. But I didn't give you any of my background history for education. I want to give you that.	22:00
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	One of the highest ambitions I had with the graduate from the ninth grade and quit school and go to work and stop my mother from working. And the night I sat down and talked and told her that she waited till I got through and said, "Boy, don't you ever talk like that again. I'll bust your head wide open." She said, "Not only are you going finish high school, but you going to finish college." Well, I didn't see it cause we had left the farm. Now my grandfather had farm land and houses on the land. Whenever one of his child got married, they could move into his house. But farming took a turn. And hill farming wasn't too profitable unless you had a big family where you could gather your own crop. And of course we started moving from the farm to the city. And there we found it a little rougher. The most popular piece of money when I was growing up was a penny.	22:43
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	If you put a penny in one hand, a quarter of another, the child would take the penny because you could get a big bar candy for a penny. And my mother instilled in me, and I'm an only child, she say, "You are going to college." I went back in the bread room and I said, "Lord, I don't see it."	24:06
Stacey Scales	Was she educated, sir?	24:31
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	No. She could have. Her father was able to send her to school, but she didn't go. And that's why she stayed on me. My uncle stayed on me. He was able to send all his children, but they wouldn't go. And my grandfather had a wheat mill on his farm. He not only mill his meal, but he milled his wheat.	24:32
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	And of course he was a successful farmer. Of course they died. When they died, that changed. The boys didn't stay on the farm and take care of the farm land. They went else places. And I went to A&M College. I went there in 1946 and graduated in 1949. But when I went, I never did take my name off the role. I went summer and winter and I finished in three years and three months. And why it took me extra three months because they put 27 more hours of education on a degree if you taught. Now, if I didn't teach, I could have graduated. I said, "No, when I leave here, I want my transcript to be validated."	24:59
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	So I stayed there and got the other three hours. Between that time when I finished high school, now I was in World War II. I had one battle star that meant I was on the front line during a period. And of course when I come back, the money that I got and we wasn't getting with $50 a month, I saved it. My mother and I bought a lot with a house on it, tore it down. When I got home, we built a five room house on that lot. And when I got through, I owed $1,100 and I paid that out while I was in college. When I finished college, the house was clear of debt.	26:00
Stacey Scales	And what gave your mother the encouragement and the push and the vision to push you in with college and while she hadn't did the schooling?	26:57
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	She always said that she blew her chance. Her daddy was able to send her, she wouldn't go. But she said, "You going." And my uncle did the same thing. Her brother. Now, after I finished college, I went to work for the Agriculture Extension Service. And the first year I worked there, I had a first place state judging team at Judging Lifestyle. I had been working for eight months when that happened. But we had that and I worked there while they passed the law in Arkansas that if you were a member of the NAACP, you couldn't work for the state, county or federal government.	27:11
Stacey Scales	When did they do that?	28:11
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	That was in the fifties. No, it might have been an early forties. Bruce Bennett sponsored that bill. You wasn't here then, Mr. Kembell. I don't think. Were you?	28:13
John W. Kembell	Possibly, but I wasn't involved in the NAACP.	28:25
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	All right. He passed that bill. What we did, now I wasn't teaching school then, but the Arkansas Teachers Association got one man when he go up to sign his contract to say he was a member of NAACP. Now they knew that they were going to fight a man. So each teacher had pledge to give so much a month to make up that man's salary. You remember that case?	28:29
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	28:57
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	Right. Then we took the state to court, the NAACP, and we won it. This man got a year's vacation with pay. Yeah, they had to go back and pay him for from day one. And of course that was the Arkansas Teachers Association. And so I finally had to resign working for the extensions. They knew I was a member of the NAACP, but they couldn't come out and say it. And they just kept messing with me. I resigned and that's why I'm down here. And then taught school two and a half years at Walker. Then I left Walker and went back to Pine Bluff. To Pine Bluff, Arsenal as a lab technician.	28:59
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	And when I got out there, I found out that the segregation was in a plus stage. Most of the people working out there that had degrees with Blacks, but Whites wasn't. So I filed suit against the federal government for to make better things better. And it did make it better.	29:57
Stacey Scales	And what year did you file that suit?	30:20
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	I filed that suit, must have been in '61 or '62. And of course overnight they promoted five Blacks. I didn't get a promotion, but that's the tactic in which the White man used. He'll go out there and pull out somebody that's not saying nothing and promote them and say, "I promoted them." This person's a troublemaker. And so they called me a troublemaker, but they didn't bother me. I got the promotion from a four to a five. And then after that something else happened. I filed another suit against it. Then something else happened. I got 10 people to file a group complaint.	30:23
Stacey Scales	So were you working as within a group or were you acting as a lawyer?	31:17
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	No, I was acting on my own at first. But the last time I got a group to go with me and this group, five of those people in that group got promotion. Then I left there and started working for the Farmer's Home Administration. And while working for the Farmer's Home Administration, I was the author of a First in the Nation Loan. A First in the Nation Loan is a loan that hadn't been made nowhere in the Countryville United States. And what I did, I took EEOC money, four and 8% interest and formed an association, dug a well and put up a 20 foot tank and pipe water to nine people houses that didn't have.They had to go to town and buy water.	31:22
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	And the supervisor said, "How are you going to do that when this loan is supposed to increase payment and you've given another payment?" Oh I said, "When I get through with it'll be right."	32:29
Stacey Scales	So you created lines—	32:40
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	So what I did—no, I came in the back door. I showed a cost where they had to go to town and draw water. And I charged so much to that. And then I said, by putting down this well, they will not have to go. Consequently, this will increase the income. And we did that. And after that I got numerous of letters from other supervisors, "we want to know how you do that." I said, "I'll never tell you how." Supervisor was a very, very racist person and he didn't want to put that in the paper about this First in the Nation Loan. And of course then we proceeded to make housing loan. Not only did we make housing loan, but we proceeded to bring in Black contractors. Black contractors wasn't doing any work.	32:42
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	And we brought in Black contractors and a Black man come down from the state office and looked at the record and asked me, did I know I was making two housing loans of the supervisors loan? I said, I didn't know that. "I'm just trying to make loan." And of course that's what we were doing, man come down from Washington DC and looked at the houses we had built and said he wanted to have open house. Supervisor didn't want to do that.	33:45
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	But we had a lady in the community named Carrie Dilworth. The Justice Department had sent for her three times to Governor Washington to testify in these segregation suits and how people were being segregated. And of course we did hold the program, we had the program. And of course, later on I was transferred, went over to Lewisville, we built a number of houses there. But where I did my most I think productive work. They transferred me to Malvin. And one year I made 107 housing loans. A loan better than $3 million that year for housing alone. But when they transferred me from Lewisville, I didn't like it. And I filed suit against Farmers Home Administration.	34:19
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	And the supervisor didn't like me, but I load the boom on it.	35:14
Stacey Scales	Did they ever try to—did it ever turn out in a racial compensation?	35:26
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	It was. But I got the promotion. The county that asked for was the next joining county from here. So they transferred me to Melvin and they asked me to make application for the county. I told them, No, I'm not going to make application no more. You all messed over and whatnot. But I made applications. They gave me the county. So I retired from up here at Camden where I was making better than 80 housing loans a year and farm loans, land loans and whatnot. But I got my motivation from my mother. My grandfather was like that. He even though back in the thirties when thing was tough, he just didn't take nothing because he was on his own farm. He owned it.	35:31
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	And a lot of that rubbed off on my mother and she rubbed a lot of it off on me. Now it is not a good road to take because you have to stay on your P's and Q's all the time. But people would call me and ask me, "How do you file suit? How do you this and how you do that?" And of course John Walker was my lawyer and he's the best. He's the best. He's just the best. He won more than one $3 million suit. And the other day he won a $5 million suit. Y'all might have read that in the paper. Did you? And when he walk in the courtroom, I've seen him walk in the courtroom and had the judge and the prosecutor in the book before court started. And he said, "I knew they didn't know what they were doing."	36:33
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	They went back in the back, hella comes, and John come back out and stated what ought to be done. That's what the judge did. Because a little boy that walked up behind a little White girl put his hand down in her blue jean and she didn't say nothing. And some of the kids saw it and they went and told us. So the daddy carried him to court. But that boy went back to school that day after court.	37:33
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	And the mother walked up to me in the cafe, she walked up to John, looked at him, she said, "You a good lawyer." And said, "You know what you doing." He said, "Well, my daughter, but you had a job to do and you did a darn good job." And he did. And that dropped it.	38:08
Stacey Scales	And what year did that take place?	38:30
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	Oh, that's been about 10 to 12 years ago up at Camden, Arkansas.	38:32
Stacey Scales	Okay.	38:41
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	See, this man was one of my borrowers when I was working up there. And he knew me and he called me and I said, Okay, let me just call John and just have him. John wasn't tied up and John could get down there that day. And I met him in Camden. And that's what we did.	38:41
Stacey Scales	Okay. And I wanted to ask Mr. Kembell your family was landowners, right?	39:04
John W. Kembell	Yes.	39:09
Stacey Scales	How did the community work or did they work together back when you were growing up and in the forties and fifties?	39:09
John W. Kembell	Well, I grew up earlier than the forties, fifties. But in the area in which we lived like Mr. Buffington it was all Black home—all Black homeowners. There were no White people in the area. Eric Farmer owned his own ground land. And of course they had to work together and much closer than we think of working together now. Maybe that's not good terminology, but to the point that each farmer would help the next farmer if that farmer would have to get in into some kind of difficulty. Each farmer each year was, we didn't have refrigeration and that kind thing in those days, but one farmer would kill this year, cow, and they gave it to the community. They didn't sell it, they just put it on the wagon, have this package for this farm and this for that farm and so forth.	39:20
John W. Kembell	And this was one of my jobs was delivering packages to different farmers in the area. I don't know if that's what you meant when you said they were together, but we weren't exposed in our area to NAACP or any of those groups because to my knowledge, there were none. That was something we heard of later years. Because as I said, I was born in 24 and wasn't any NAACP in those days. Not down here.	40:20
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	It was NAACP but it hadn't. Nobody had taken it up down here.	40:51
John W. Kembell	But as far as we knew that were none. I'm sure that might have been. But again, if you're not exposed to it, you don't know about it. You don't even know it's there available to you. You don't do anything about that.	40:55
Stacey Scales	You all, would the community meet or how—	41:07
John W. Kembell	Oh no, we had—well, when you say meet—	41:10
Stacey Scales	Did they talk about things that were going on?	41:11
John W. Kembell	Not on a formal basis, but sure, yes, they would meet to discuss problems and how they would go about to do it and to take care of those problems. But there were no pioneers in that. They march on downtown and that kind of thing. Just these older heads, they knew how to survive and they knew how to protect their kids to keep them from having to face it if that might not have been a good policy. But after all, that was the only thing they knew to do at that time. As far as—excuse me.	41:15
Stacey Scales	I'm sorry. I was going to ask if is that land still owned by Blacks over in that area?	41:52
John W. Kembell	Not a hundred percent, but I would say 60% of the land is still owned by Blacks in that community. Our farm is still our farm. Been down to the year and I guess it'll be from hopefully long after me, but there was not a lot of education in our family. I did have three brothers who finished college and went on to earn a degree. On matter of fact we had a situation in Los Angeles County school board that where my brothers were the only three sitting brothers at the same time who were principals of schools. Two of them. Are one retired now. But in the school history, the only three brothers were principals at the same time. I'm not saying that to just—	41:57
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	In the same district.	43:05
John W. Kembell	Well, they weren't in the same district, but—yes, same school district.	43:06
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	Yes. Same school district.	43:09
Stacey Scales	And you mentioned earlier that you did trucking.	43:14
John W. Kembell	Yes. Right.	43:18
Stacey Scales	Now, was that difficult during the time of Jim Crow as a Black man?	43:19
John W. Kembell	For sure. Yes. It was difficult in the sense that you ate out of the grocery store because you couldn't go into the truck stop and you slept and you cared because you couldn't get a motel. And if you could find a Black motel, you couldn't get the truck where it was. It was always cross the tracks and so forth. As we laid down in the little snare streets, you couldn't get a 18 wheeler down this places like that. Many times someone would tell you when you, Yeah, you can get a room and such a place. Probably have to leave your truck here and walk. But you didn't go to the motel across the street? No. We all went through those same things. There was not an awful lot we did about it.	43:23
John W. Kembell	I remember once when I was discharged from the service on my way to be discharged, there was the rule at the highest ranking officer in each car was the car commander. And I happened to be the highest ranking officer in that car that was coming to Separation Center here in Arkansas. And of course that made me the car commander and everything was well and good the first day because they were still—I was still the top ranking officer in that car. But then as we get closer to home, everybody liking me so much wanting to protect me was always coming around, slapping me on the shoulder and saying, "If you need a place to stay, if you need a place to go to work from your district, I got a farm."	44:18
John W. Kembell	It was always kind of [indistinct 00:45:15]. Sometimes I would just fake them and not say anything else. Then once in a while, I guess I would get the devil and then I would ask maybe, "How much land do you own?" Oh, I got 40 acres. I got three times that. And of course they was reluctant to believe me at times, but I didn't prove figure. I had to prove it to him, but which I did have, I wasn't lying about that.	45:14
John W. Kembell	But as far as the difference then, and now I don't want to say right now is that people just will not take then what they took. I wouldn't take now what they took there and their reasons might have been different. I'm not sure about that. But I know my great reason was that I took it because I was remembering that my father was Hal Kembell who lived in night New Arkansas and everybody knew how, and I was afraid of what repercussions it might had to him had I gone out of my way to not accept something. So what I would do is say, "Yes sir, and no sir", and go about my business—	45:49
Stacey Scales	To protect him.	46:40
John W. Kembell	—to protect him because I didn't want anybody saying, "Well, that's how Kembell was." But everybody knew where everybody was. And I had a sister that was a little bit—she was a little bit different than we were.	46:41

John W. Kembell	I didn't say Black. I said Colored. White.	0:02
Stacey Scales	The water fountain.	0:06
John W. Kembell	Water fountains, drinking water fountains. And when we would go D downtown and have to get water, we would go to the courthouse while the rest of it line up to get water out of the one that said Colored, where we thought we were supposed to be. We were at that time. My sister would drink out of that one too. And then when she'd go past the other one, she would drink out of it also.	0:06
Stacey Scales	What gave her that?	0:36
John W. Kembell	She was just dar—I don't say daring, she was a sweet person, but she was just different that way. She went to the post office one time and I forget that, and to buy stamps. She asked the lady, she wanted some of the stamps, and she said, "How many did you say?" She said, "Six." I think it was. She said, "What are you going to do with six stamps?" She said, "I don't think that's your business." Said, "Who do you think you talk?" She said, "I'm talking to you." And she was at that time not—well she was in high school of course, but she was just that way and she would do it very lady like. But you knew though when she said it, she wasn't kidding. I think she was a classmate though.	0:37
Stacey Scales	She's my classmate in college.	1:31
John W. Kembell	Oh yeah?	1:33
Stacey Scales	Yeah. Yeah. So she was fired.	1:33
John W. Kembell	She was just kind of was a fire bird. You never guessing that she was fired? Cause if you didn't say anything, you didn't bother her. She wouldn't go out of her way to do this. But if you just rubbed the wrong way, it was different than that. And—	1:35
Stacey Scales	Mr. Buffington, do you ever remember people resisting the system of racism when you traveled around through the different places, or—	1:53
F.B. Buffington	No.	2:05
Stacey Scales	People just stay in there in their place to be safe? Or how would they make it through those times?	2:07
F.B. Buffington	Well, during those years, car was picked up or Black person riding in the foreman car. And didn't have a common—	2:15
Stacey Scales	Oh, okay.	2:31
F.B. Buffington	Now I have two children. I didn't get her around. That's a boy and a girl. My son lives in Los Angeles. He worked for the federal government. He worked for our administration. And he's supervisor, and my daughter lives in south, or St. Paul in a suburb called Roseville. Roseville, Minnesota.	2:33
Stacey Scales	Okay.	3:13
F.B. Buffington	No Blacks live there, and she's been living there for 20 something years.	3:14
Stacey Scales	Would you have to teach your children about the society when they were growing up? How to make it through those barriers?	3:21
F.B. Buffington	Yes. We were taught, I didn't have to teach my children cause their segregation had been gone for good. They didn't know anything about their segregation year.	3:32
Stacey Scales	Okay.	3:47
F.B. Buffington	When they left here, see they went to college in various places. So my daughter went to University of Minnesota and his son of first went to State College, Philadelphia. And then he went into service. When he out of service, he never come back here. And—	3:56
Stacey Scales	So by the time they were growing up, those things had changed would you say?	4:29
F.B. Buffington	Yeah, things had changed.	4:34
Stacey Scales	And when did you start seeing signs of change?	4:38
F.B. Buffington	I—change, It began to take place in the sixties, or—and gradually like the wind, it would come upon you without knowing, without you knowing anything.	4:51
Stacey Scales	Did Blacks have their own businesses and their own things during those times?	5:13
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	More so when they do now. Yeah. You had more Black business then you have now. People did quite well on them.	5:21
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	You were talking about the NAACP. I brought the NAACP to this area. See I worked with it since back in the thirties.	5:31
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	And—my community was very strong. Sticking together in 1946, they built a homemade building at the school in Martin. Superintendent sent an old stove, old refrigerator and old chairs over there. The PTA and the students loaded up the equipment, and carried us back over there and said, "We want new stuff. We tired of your handing down stuff." And you know what they got? They got new stuff.	5:41
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	They carried a new bus over to the school and after the inspection was over, they come over and got the new bus and bought the old bus over there. They filed suit against it, and they brought the new bus back over there. Now that was the kind of community that I was reared up in. People would kind of stick together. I know one night, a boy said something to her later on the window of a theater. And she was White, and they were going gang up and get the boy. The people went home, got their guns, and come back and sat in the cafes and let 'em come on. That's just the kind of community.	6:23
Stacey Scales	And what was that? When was that?	7:04
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	Oh, this was back in '46.	7:06
Stacey Scales	And they get their guns.	7:09
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	They sure did. And nobody showed up. But see there were a lot of Black communities in my county where we had seven Black school districts, and they had their Black boards and everything. Teachers in the country was making $75 and teachers in the city making $40 cause of the second.	7:12
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	But that's the kind of community that I grew up in. And I had always—well, I corresponded with Thurgood Marshall. I con with Mr. Mitchell. I may have some letters of home from them. And Mr. and Mrs. Days Bates, who ran the State Press, both of them are jail. And I said when I got a dollar, I was going to Little Rock Meter. And I went to Little Rock and walked over on ninth Street and met him. And of course we've been friends ever since.	7:44
Stacey Scales	And you talked with Thurgood Marshall about—	8:22
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	No, I said wrote it.	8:24
Stacey Scales	You wrote him, okay.	8:24
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	Communicated Walter White. You don't know anything about Walter White?	8:28
Stacey Scales	No, sir.	8:33
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	Walter White came down to Heller and investigated the case. Coming back on the train. A man said a man in town and said "by God, and we find that we going kill him." He said he was talking to Walter White. He looked like a White man.	8:34
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah.	8:53
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	But he it and—	8:53
Stacey Scales	Then he was talking to the man?	8:55
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	He talking to the man. Walter didn't say, he got out of town. He got the information he wanted. He got out town. You see and write today, the White man is afraid to mess with NAACP people because he doesn't want to, well they just don't know the law like we do.	8:57
F.B. Buffington	I used to drive Thurgood Marshall downtown every time he came in Nashville.	9:21
Stacey Scales	Oh yes. What type of things would you all you talk ever?	9:29
F.B. Buffington	Oh yeah. You tell me about some cases.	9:36
Stacey Scales	And what about this time period? I guess I'll ask each of you that do you think is very important that people should know, or young people should know? Out of all the things we talked about, what should be stressed.	9:44
John W. Kembell	Sense of degration. It's difficult to get our people together. Some schools, superintendents talk their personnel that you don't go to any meeting that's segregated, to keep them out of Black meetings. But through it all, I think we have organized and kept pretty abreath.	10:02
John W. Kembell	You see, since I've been state president of the NAACP while Bill Clinton was governor, I filed three suits against the state, and won all three of them. One was on voter registration. We settled that out of court. The other one was on redistricting. And where we had three representatives and one senator when I took over, we now have three senators and 13 representative. We also have about 16 municipal circuit and chancellor judges in the state.	10:31
John W. Kembell	And the first judges we had in the state, the state passed the law where they could hire 17 extra judges over the state for 18 months. When I read it in the paper, I picked up a telephone and called the governor's office. I said, "I want four of those positions." They said, "Send us the name." I got three. I got three. And even before, back in the fifties, before they hired state troopers, when Rockefeller was governor, I was given 20 positions to put Black troopers on the highway.	11:19
Stacey Scales	When you, so are you saying that since segregation, it's been harder to organize people?	12:05
John W. Kembell	Harder to get them together. Harder to get them together.	12:12
Stacey Scales	So it has plus and minuses, would you say?	12:15
John W. Kembell	Well, it has some pluses and some minuses. Integration that don't write this, is hurting us now. Our childrens are being abused in school. The teachers are not teaching them. And I'm not talking about what I heard. I've been to the school—other day, I went to Lake Hamilton and that's where holler "no negros are." They had put a Black boy out of school, put him off the bus. His daddy had to get up and drive 10 miles every morning to get him to school.	12:18
John W. Kembell	And they called me and we went over there and after we got through discussing it, I said, "Mr. Principal and Mr. Superintendent, if all you have is what you told me, it won't stand up in 40. So your best out said to let that boy back in school and put him back on the bus." I said, "I'm strongly making that suggestion. I appreciate the time that we met. I appreciate you taking the time out and meeting with us. But we got a young man here today." Tuesday, the father called me and said they put him back on the bus and took him out of the detention hall and put him back in school.	12:56
John W. Kembell	So we've had to do a lot of that. We've had to do a lot of that. But whenever it come up, we know how to handle that. And we have one of the best lawyers in these United States on those cases. He's good.	13:45
Stacey Scales	John Walker?	14:04
John W. Kembell	He's good. John Walker. And when I mention, I don't mention John Walker's name. But if they asked me who, what lawyer, I said, "Well, it's up to the parent who they get." I don't have to tell them. Now, that's my thrust as state president of NAACP. It puts you in a lot of places and a lot of close corners. But you have to go.	14:06
Stacey Scales	Okay, I guess we're going to wrap up. I was going to ask them too, Mr. Kimble, could you talk about what do you think is very important about that time and also the significance of Black land ownership? If you will?	14:42
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	Well, the significance of it. We all know how important that is. It even more so maybe now and then even then. Cause in that time, even though it was difficult, you could survive on somebody else's property. Cause it was very difficult. And it was much easier if your parent was fortunate enough. I had worked hard enough that they own their own.	14:59
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	But you know your question about what I know—I guess I might not be a good person to ask this question because I don't speak as an educator. I speak as a citizen who have had a lot of experiences out there. And it bothers me tremendously when I see the opportunities that weren't open to me as a child that my father couldn't teach me about because he was the one open to him either. So he couldn't teach me about them.	15:33
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	But with all the exposure we have now, and even though we have made tremendous progress, understanding, we see it everywhere. Fine. But until such time as we get our kids without the threat of somebody going to protect me here, we got this lawyer here. I understand what Reverend Gaylord is saying, but it's going to have to come from within these kids. How you going to get it there?	16:11
Stacey Scales	All right.	16:46
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	I think it goes—	16:47
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	If you had about a month, I could tell you how it feels, but it goes so deep that it is going to have to be done at home on that level. Every time you turn on the television, whichever house has three or four now, most of the things you see are negatives. Look at your talk shows each morning. All you see on there basically are kids who are having problems. They're fighting with mama and they're fighting with the daddy or they've been abused, and this kind of thing. And right away everybody want to say, "Well that's why kids are bad because the parent abused them or this abused them." I know different from that. I know three people that is way up in government who had no father. One was raised by his grandmother, and they went to public schools and they worked night jobs, and worked here and there to get, but they wanted to do it.	16:48
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	The point is, and if kids can't—we always say that if we don't learn from our mistakes, all the mistakes of others that we see around, we are doomed to repeat that same mistake some way. I don't know how they're going to do it, how it's going to get done, but it's going to have to come from a then instead of legislating laws, it's going to have to come from then in the individual to pick himself up and get up and get it done. Because it's there for them. Most of the kids these days, they want wear their clothes way down here about to fall off and they want to—if you say anything to them, they want you better. They've got something to shoot you. And maybe I'm not a good advocate.	17:54
Stacey Scales	I think you are.	18:42
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	I don't see this. Cause most times when we talk with lawyers, Reverend Gaylord's position, I understand his position, yes very well. But when we are talking to lawyers and that thing, that's the result of something that's happened, I mean you only need, that is the result of what happened down here. But if we avoid that in the first place, getting in that position, if you know, discrimination is, it wasn't, it was then. And it's now. They're just do it in a different form now. Cause they don't say, they can't tell me that now on my face. Cause he said to get his eye dotted.	18:48
Stacey Scales	Right.	19:23
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	But back then he could tell me. Now he does it in another method.	19:27
Stacey Scales	Right.	19:32
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	I got to.	19:32
Stacey Scales	Okay. I need you to fill out these forms, if you will, sir. And this is three of us.	19:33
Reverend Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.	Do I have to leave fill them out now or do I send them out?	19:38
Stacey Scales	I think you could do it in just a few minutes if you will. Please. And I wanted to make sure I got Mr. Buffington's response to that question about what's, what should young people remember or something they should learn from about your experiences during the times of Jim Crow. And what do you think is very important about that time that people should remember?	19:41
F.B. Buffington	What young people learn now?	20:11
Stacey Scales	Something that you could relay the message?	20:12
John W. Kembell	You don't—excuse me? You don't sign them do you?	20:25
Stacey Scales	No, no. Just the bottom left, sir.	20:25
John W. Kembell	Bottom left.	20:27
Stacey Scales	Yes.	20:30
John W. Kembell	Okay.	20:30
Stacey Scales	Okay. Something that you think is very important about how you are struggling to make it as a teacher, and some of the struggles that you went through. What about those experiences? Should young people really try to understand?	20:31
F.B. Buffington	There are several things that you should begin with. Number one is there's a separate thing. When you talk to people, always looking in their eyes. Never feel—that's the thing that my father taught me when I was a young one. When you talk to people, always look them in their eyes.	20:51
F.B. Buffington	And number two, it's always be straight with them. Tell them the truth. And then number three, never try to dress like the other good dress, but always be neat. And always now, are always addressing correctly. And you do that by them, you do all right.	21:10
Stacey Scales	Okay. I'd like to thank you Mr. Buffington, Mr. Kimble, and Reverend Gaylord. I really learned a whole lot from talking to you all. It's been really interesting to learn about those struggles.	22:11

Item Info

Title:

Ellihue Gaylord, Sr. (primary interviewee), J. Buffington, and John Kimbell interview recording, 1995 July 21

Date:

July 21, 1995

Creator:

Contributor:

Scales, Mausiki Stacey

Description:

Name: Ellihue Gaylord, Sr.; Date of birth: 1928-01-08; Place of birth: Center Ridge, AR; Occupation: unknown; Residence: Magnolia, AR. Name: J. B. Buffington; Date of birth: 1921-11-03; Place of birth: Stephen, AR; Occupation: unknown; Residence: Magnolia, AR. Name: John W. Kimbell; Date of birth: 1952-11-08; Place of birth: Magnolia, AR; Occupation: unknown; Residence: Magnolia, AR
Informant ID: 1052;Informant ID: 1054;Informant ID: 1053; interviewed by: Stacey Scales.

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Behind the Veil

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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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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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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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Ellihue Gaylord, Sr. (primary interviewee), J. Buffington, and John Kimbell interview recording, 1995 July 21

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1. Ellihue Gaylord, Sr., J. Buffington, and John Kimbell administrative file, 1995

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Ellihue Gaylord, Sr. (primary interviewee), J. Buffington, and John Kimbell interview recording, 1995 July 21

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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