Robert Judkins interview recording, 1994 July 20
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| Tywanna Whorley | Can you tell me when you were born, Mr. Judkins? | 0:00 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Eufaula, Alabama. | 0:16 |
| Tywanna Whorley | What year? | 0:19 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Oh, what year? 1916. July 5th, 1916. | 0:20 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Can you tell me about your parents? | 0:24 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | All right. Mama was born also in Eufaula, Alabama. Marion would have to check the year if you need that, but Daddy was born in Montgomery County, at Waugh, Alabama. | 0:29 |
| Tywanna Whorley | What did your mom do for a living? | 0:50 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Mama was a teacher. And Daddy also. Teacher and part-time farmer, let's put it that way. | 0:50 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Your daddy taught at Tuskegee. | 0:57 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | In agriculture. | 0:59 |
| Tywanna Whorley | What did your mom teach? | 1:02 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Home economics. | 1:03 |
| Tywanna Whorley | High school? | 1:07 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | In high school, that's right. | 1:07 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Was it in Eufaula where she taught? Did she teach in Eufaula? | 1:08 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Several places. For a while in Eufaula, then some also in Montgomery, and then in Macon County. | 1:14 |
| Tywanna Whorley | And your father? | 1:23 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Daddy taught in those same places including Opelika, Alabama, one time. | 1:26 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Do you remember Eufaula at all? | 1:32 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Remember it very well. Very well because we left there maybe when I was around say about seven years of age and we went back occasionally to visit, but I remember it very well. | 1:32 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Do you remember I guess if there were any Black businesses in Eufaula at that time? | 1:51 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | There were a few out in the Black community. I don't know of any in the downtown sections of Eufaula. | 2:02 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Do you remember any of them, names of some of them? | 2:08 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | No, I don't. | 2:08 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Where did your parents live in Eufaula? | 2:08 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | On Forsyth Street, Eufaula, Alabama, Forsyth Street. | 2:21 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Black area? | 2:27 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Mm-hmm. Not far from the Chattahoochee River. | 2:28 |
| Tywanna Whorley | What did your father raise on the farm? You said he was a farmer. | 2:33 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Part-time farmer. General crops, sweet potatoes, corn, peas, butter beans, that sort thing. | 2:36 |
| Tywanna Whorley | So your dad would go to town [indistinct 00:02:45] going grocery shopping? | 2:43 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yes, we would at least once a week. The farm was somewhat out from Eufaula, but we lived within walking distance of the downtown section. | 2:48 |
| Tywanna Whorley | So you'd go into White shops to shop? | 3:00 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yes, we did. They had a few Black grocery stores. Yeah, people that had businesses in the community but just as in most towns, in order to get a nice price and that sort of thing, there were, well, we call them now chain store, one of these businesses of that sort where you could get things cheaper. You had to go to town. | 3:03 |
| Tywanna Whorley | You said when y'all went once a week, you'd walk to town? | 3:30 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Sometimes. And then of course a number of people had buggies and a few T-Model Fords at that time. | 3:36 |
| Tywanna Whorley | What did your parents have for transportation? | 3:44 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Horse and buggy at that time. | 3:44 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Do you remember coming into contact or friends or whatever, coming into contact with White people in Eufaula where you lived? | 3:58 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | In Eufaula? Yes, I do. It was rather benevolent because at that time some of my relatives worked for various ones of them, and I'd help them do things such as carry clothes and that sort of thing that they've washed and ironed. So at that particular age, there was very little strife and difficulty. | 4:14 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Do you remember the schools you went to in Eufaula? | 4:35 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Schools? | 4:37 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Schools that you went to in Eufaula? | 4:37 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | I'm trying to think of the name of the school. No, that's been so long that I've forgotten that. | 4:43 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Okay. So we're going to talk about when you moved from Eufaula. | 4:54 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | All right, good. From Eufaula to Opelika, Alabama. | 4:59 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Why did you move? | 5:05 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Better salary. My parents got a little more for their teaching in Opelika, because Daddy was offered a principalship there in school. I do remember the name of that school, it's Darden High. | 5:11 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Did you attend that school as well? | 5:28 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | In what would now be preschool and first grade also. Preschool and first grade. | 5:35 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Did they ever talk about their jobs? | 5:43 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Ever talk about what? I'm sorry. | 5:45 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Their jobs, teaching. They ever talk about that around you, about teaching? | 5:49 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | You mean experiences and that sort of thing? Yes, they did. | 5:55 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Do remember anything they said? Just specifically. | 5:57 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | About the job in general? | 6:04 |
| Tywanna Whorley | About the job in general. | 6:05 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:06:07] what in general you wanted. | 6:05 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Yeah, and in dealing with school boards and trying to teach your kids and things. | 6:09 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | At that time, if you, say, went ahead and did your job and that was before the time of, say, pushing ahead and seeking equal employment and all that sort of thing. So everything was fairly good and okay, at that time. | 6:17 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Did they ever talk about their salaries? | 6:35 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Salaries, yes, salaries were small, and they actually were smaller than those salaries paid to Whites. That is one thing that they did complain about some. | 6:39 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Do you remember where your mom got her education? | 6:52 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Alabama State. And Daddy received his training here at Tuskegee. | 6:56 |
| Tywanna Whorley | How long did you stay in Opelika? | 7:05 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | I'm going to estimate about three years. | 7:08 |
| Tywanna Whorley | From there you moved onto— | 7:10 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Montgomery, Alabama. | 7:17 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Why Montgomery? | 7:18 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Alrighty, here again, Daddy received an offer of a better job. This time he received an offer to carry mail in Montgomery. | 7:21 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Carry mail? | 7:31 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Mail carrier in Montgomery. | 7:35 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:07:37] Pullman Porters. | 7:36 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | And it was year-round, see. At that time school was maybe— | 7:40 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | Six or seven months. | 7:48 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Six or seven months. And if you were fortunate, nine months, but you didn't get paid year-round. | 7:49 |
| Tywanna Whorley | What about your mom? Was she able to find jobs quickly? | 7:58 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | She taught in Opelika and some in Montgomery, but that's it for a while. Family was growing so after a while she just kept us. | 8:01 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Did you ever talk I guess amongst your siblings about moving so much? Was that a concern? | 8:14 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | That was a concern with I think Daddy a little bit. Mama didn't mind. | 8:25 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Really? | 8:34 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Uh-uh. And Grandmama lived with us. I forgot that. But now I can see why you asked that question because there's an old saying, "Three movings are equal to a burning." We did the moving in order to maintain say our economic status. | 8:34 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Where did you live when you were in Montgomery? | 8:58 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | On South Jackson Street. | 9:01 |
| Tywanna Whorley | I know where that is. [indistinct 00:09:06] How can you describe how things were? Because at this point I'd say you were almost a teen, living in Montgomery. | 9:02 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yes, that's right. Now that is about the time when I started seeing a difference, when I was thrown with the other race. I can recall going to a store very well, and I was about eight or nine years of age, and asking for an item that I wanted to buy. The clerk who was White asked, "Is this the one?" I said. "Yes." He said, "You mean yes, sir." That sort of thing started. Montgomery is the place I first bumped into prejudice where I could actually see it and be aware of it. | 9:20 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Did you ever talk to your parents about it? | 10:00 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Let's put it a little, let's frame it a little different. They talked to me about it. In other words, be careful. About this same incident, try your best to refrain or control your temper because they always said that I had a temper. Incidentally for little jobs, I could work for Blacks but not Whites. Daddy said my temper was too violent that I wouldn't last long. Even up at ages 17 and 18, even here he wouldn't permit me to work for anybody. He always tried to keep a little what we call a patch, small farm, going, so I'd have something to do or work for some of the local people. | 10:06 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Did you ever wonder why, I mean in terms of them, like you say your temper, but in terms of dealing with White people and that incident, did you ever talk about that to your parents? I guess the question I'm asking is when they tell you, "Be careful, watch yourself," do you ask, "Why? Why do I have to do this?" | 11:00 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Well, I knew. In other words, that sort of thing creeps up on you. You knew because there were so many lynchings and beatings and that sort of thing. Even as an eight-year-old, you knew that people were being strung up out there and that sort of thing. And yet there wasn't any great dread or [indistinct 00:11:43] or anything of that sort. | 11:22 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Did your father ever talk about his job, now being in the postal service? | 11:44 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | The job in the postal service? Yes, he did. There I believe they had a pretty much standardized salary since it was federal. He had a pretty much standardized salary. You carried mail in any section, Black or White. That's [indistinct 00:12:11]. Didn't see too much discrimination of anything. | 11:50 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Do you remember the community that you lived [indistinct 00:12:23]? | 12:22 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | The community? Well, for the most part, unless you worked for some Whites, you lived in very definite sections. So there couldn't be very much conflict unless you bumped into some Whites and going from one side of town to the other, something of that sort. | 12:23 |
| Tywanna Whorley | On South Jackson, did you live close to the university, I mean, Alabama State? | 12:47 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Right across the street from Alabama State. Almost facing I believe, I'm trying to think of that hall. It wasn't, I don't believe it's Tullibody. | 12:51 |
| Tywanna Whorley | [indistinct 00:13:00]. | 12:59 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yeah, I believe, not too far, right across the street. | 13:00 |
| Tywanna Whorley | So how long did you stay in Montgomery? | 13:05 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Stayed in Montgomery until I was about 14 years of age. | 13:14 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Where did you move from there? | 13:16 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | From there to good old Tuskegee. | 13:20 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:13:23]. | 13:21 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Mm-hmm. Why Tuskegee? | 13:22 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | Daddy [indistinct 00:13:30]. | 13:27 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yeah, here again, Daddy had decided that he wanted to go back into teaching. Although he earned more money in carrying mail and got along very well, he was offered a job out in what is known as East End, little community out from Tuskegee, East End. There again he received a principalship with junior high school. | 13:31 |
| Tywanna Whorley | So where did you go to school? | 13:57 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | What is known as the Children's House at that time, the junior high school. The Children's House. | 14:01 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Did your father ever talk about, in terms of why he wanted to go back to teaching? [indistinct 00:14:24] | 14:11 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Why he wanted to go— | 14:23 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Yeah, this would be giving up— | 14:24 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yes. In other words he just liked working with people, young people and that sort of thing better than he did the job of handling mail. | 14:24 |
| Tywanna Whorley | When your mom, your mom came too, she also stayed at home? | 14:36 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | She taught. She came and she taught here too. | 14:39 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Where did she teach? At the same place? | 14:44 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | At the same place where he was principal, where he served as principal. Macedonia, it's called, little high school, junior high school. | 14:45 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:14:52], so it made it easier. | 14:53 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Can you tell me a little bit about your grandma? | 14:56 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | Little bit about your grandmama. | 14:57 |
| Tywanna Whorley | About your grandmama. | 14:57 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Oh, yeah. Grandmama had a very good sense of humor. She always made us do right. If you don't mind, I'd like to quote a few things from her. I remember once that I found a dollar and I asked her whose dollar it was. She said, "Well, now, I'll tell you what. I want you to remember one thing. First of all, that is not yours." So when I explained how I found it and all, she gave it to me and said, "Now you always do that in cases like that. Bring it to me or to somebody, and you'll never regret it." | 15:02 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Then sometimes when we would maybe raise our voices or something of that sort, she'd rub her hair that was graying and say, "Now aren't you ashamed to talk to Grandmama like that? And here my hair is flowering for the grave." I thought it was beautiful. "My hair is flowering for the grave, and you talk like that." Had a good philosophy of life in general. My grandfather had passed at that time, but he was a Methodist preacher. | 15:46 |
| Tywanna Whorley | So your grandmama would watch you while— | 16:27 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | That's right. She kept us while Mama and Daddy taught. Certain people not too far away said Grandmama spoiled me. | 16:31 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | She did. | 16:46 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Do you know how you think she might have spoiled you? | 16:46 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Huh? | 16:47 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Do you know how she spoiled you? | 16:47 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | No, I mean, Marion just saying that, kind of catered to me, no special way. She's just kidding. | 16:59 |
| Tywanna Whorley | How was Tuskegee? When you first got to Tuskegee, do you remember how it was back then? | 17:09 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Tuskegee in this particular community out here was great, but now in the downtown section, that's where I encountered all sorts of prejudice. You might find in the records, and somebody might have already told you this, we had the nearest you could get I guess to separate but equal. In the theater down there, we had instead of one being above the other, you remember in talking with your grandparents maybe, that at one time they had the Black people's theater upstairs and White down here. Here at Tuskegee, they were pretty smart. They put them side by side. You were looking at the same film and all that sort of thing, but you were side by side. I think— | 17:15 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:18:03]. | 18:02 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Oh, okay. | 18:08 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | I believe— | 18:08 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:18:10]. | 18:08 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | But now here to get into what I think you are attempting to elicit is the fact that although we outnumbered Whites about seven to one, and they did cater a little bit, but you still had the basic elements of segregation. I can recall when you'd go downtown to a drugstore and put a prescription there, but you could not sit down. You could not actually could not— | 18:19 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | Same thing was true at the bus station. | 18:50 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | You had to stand up and wait until your prescription was filled. That's been a long time ago. But we do remember that. As Marion just indicated, the bus station had two sides. One saying White and the other Colored. I can recall even after I grew up and married that I was back home to see her here again. My wife and children, and the Black, well, the bus station as a whole closed after dark and there was a cafe across the street over there where you could go and buy tickets and all and that sort of thing at that time. I went in there to pick up a ticket, and they told me to get out, and they meant right now. At the time I was young now, and this is the kind of thing I said you can take out if you like. But I walked out slowly because I was just hoping somebody would touch me. I was going to tear that place up. | 18:57 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | You know, if you want to delete that, feel free. But I actually was hoping, young at that time, been to see my wife and family, serving the United States in the Armed Forces. Even a teacher there. Now let me interject this. When I was discharged, this is the kind of thing you hate. When I was discharged, a White fella and I were put in charge. I was to conduct the group, everybody, until we got to a little part of Illinois somewhere, I think East St. Louis, as I remember. After that we had to change over. | 20:05 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | This fella couldn't read and write well, but I had to change, because he thanked me, I continued to help him. But we had changed over, and we got in adjacent coaches. We had to change over where we were all riding together coming from Colorado. We got to this particular place, we had to change over. Blacks sitting in some coaches. I got in a coach next to him so we could kind of talk to each other every now and then without too much attention being attracted. But we couldn't ride in the same coach. | 20:49 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:21:20] really after this. | 21:20 |
| Tywanna Whorley | When did you decide to go to Tuskegee? | 21:20 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | I'm sorry? | 21:35 |
| Tywanna Whorley | What year did you go to Tuskegee? | 21:35 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | What year? Okay, really I started off at the Children's House, but I entered Tuskegee College as such, in college in 1936. I finished high school and everything here at Tuskegee. | 21:37 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Where'd you go to high school? | 21:55 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Tuskegee, Children's House, as I said, all the way, and veterinary medicine. | 21:56 |
| Tywanna Whorley | When you went to high school here, did you have a chance to see Dr. Carver? | 22:01 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Not only in high school, in college, I knew Dr. Carver and talked with him just as you're talking with me. While I'm on that, if I may, here again you judge whether or not this comes in, but most people thought of him just being all scientist, this and that. I want to give you something about his sense of humor. Sometimes we would be walking along, coming from the ag side and coming up on the other side there, and somebody would ask him what time is it. No, they'd ask if he had the time. He said, "Yes, I do, son." But just keep walking. So finally they said, "Well, Dr. Carver, what time is it?" "You didn't ask me that," and would tell you the time. Then another, this sounds like day after tomorrow. | 22:08 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | A group was walking along there, of ag boys here again. And Dr. Carver asked one fella a question, he answered it, just like that. So then he said, "Son, you're smart." The boy replied this now and it's hard for you to see maybe the person replying like this to a scientist. He said, "Sure, I'm smart. That's why they call me George Washington Carver Jr." Dr. Carver said, "Talk, son, talk." That's why I said, it sounded like day after tomorrow. You don't see that in any of the books written by him. | 22:53 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | You see him as a stern, kind of solid person. Again, he said that, and I believe he told this himself, somebody called from up the way somewhere and wanted him to speak. They said, "Now Dr. Carver, we don't mean to malign you in any way, but please put on a different suit." Because he always wore shiny black suit. Dr. Carver replied and said, "Well, if you want a suit, I'll send it to you. If you want a man, I'll come myself. If you want a suit, I'll send you one. If you want a man, I'll come." | 23:29 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | This is true, too. He was invited to speak at a convention center there once that was entirely segregated. He agreed to speak. But when he got ready to go up to the fifth or sixth floor there, he got on the freight elevator. They tried their best to get him to go up on the regular. He said, "No. Until my people can go up on the regular elevator, then I'll just ride the freight elevator." | 24:20 |
| Tywanna Whorley | How was your [indistinct 00:25:00] in terms of high school? Did you learn the same thing as people in college? | 24:58 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Well, in high school, Tuskegee had one of the best high schools around in this area. But now let me bring up a point here that hurt us all. I lost three grades because at that time we did not have a public high school. You had to pay $55 entrance fee. At that time men were working for 50 cents a day. So I stayed out of school and worked on farms until I could get that money together. Then after getting it together, I could attend Tuskegee Institute High School, it was called then, and work every other day. Go to school, and that way keep enough money to continue going. But I want you to see the point there that though there wasn't that much lynching and carrying on around here, you see by the very fact that they had no Black— | 25:03 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | Public high school. | 26:08 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Public high school. So now that hurt, although it's a kind of a tacit, it wasn't just something flaunted out, but that hurt. That cost me three years. I was supposed to finish— | 26:09 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:26:24]. | 26:22 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yeah, I had stay out of school three years and work before I could pay that kind of money. | 26:25 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | And he had to skip grades [indistinct 00:26:34]. | 26:30 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Who did you work for, trying to raise the money? | 26:30 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Worked for local farmers around here. Doing things such as chopping cotton, picking cotton. Sometimes when they were harvesting potatoes, I'd pick up the potatoes. They would pay me off in potatoes and I'd sell them for so much a peck or pound, and that way save the money to go to school. | 26:41 |
| Tywanna Whorley | I'm sure your parents stressed education for the family at that time. Was that a choice of yourself, to go to college? | 27:04 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | My choice. They wanted me to very much. I told you Daddy always did a little farming. In high school there, sometimes I wanted to stay out and help him because I don't want to flaunt my greatness or anything. But I mean I had an A average, I might as well come on out and say it. I wanted to stay out sometimes and help. He said, "No. I had to do that sometimes. I don't want you to ever have to do it." He wouldn't let me stay out one day. I even let my son stay out. Because we backyard farm, we have six acres here. I even allowed my son [indistinct 00:27:46] to stay out and help me. But Daddy would never do that. I let our son stay out one day. But we called the principal, and he agreed that he might help me. | 27:12 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | Our strawberries. | 27:57 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yeah, we were selling our strawberries. You remember well. All the principal asked, jokingly, to send him a few strawberries. A friend of ours, and all that sort of thing. | 27:58 |
| Tywanna Whorley | What did you take up in high school? | 28:13 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | In high school [indistinct 00:28:14], known then as vocational agriculture, but with enough general electives so that I could go into any field I wanted. | 28:13 |
| Tywanna Whorley | So once you finished high school, you decided to stay there and go on? | 28:28 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Go on to college here. To me, Tuskegee is the greatest. Now I've attended Colorado State University and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. But if I had to give up, I'd give up those two for what I learned at Tuskegee. That was the greatest school in the world. | 28:32 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Where did you stay when you were in high school? | 28:52 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | My parents were here. | 28:58 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Oh, so you didn't have to stay on campus? | 29:01 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Not in high school. And I didn't have to, but I elected to after I got income. | 29:02 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:29:09]. | 29:07 |
| Tywanna Whorley | You mean ROTC? | 29:16 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | It was required. | 29:19 |
| Tywanna Whorley | It was required? | 29:19 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | It was required. | 29:19 |
| Tywanna Whorley | I didn't know that. | 29:22 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | Yes. | 29:26 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Now let me tell you something else here, if I may. This may be very new. I was with the debating team here at Tuskegee. | 29:28 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Oh, okay. | 29:36 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Okay, now, but this is what I want to tell you. We debated against Kentucky State. All right. Things seemed so good out there. We were walking around. Everybody, we had our uniforms on, Booker T. Washington boys. Now we were out in the country there, and a farmer walked up to us and said, "I can tell from your uniforms that you're from Tuskegee." "Yes, sir, we are." He said, "Well, that's so wonderful. It was founded by Booker Washington." I want you to listen to this now. "That's so wonderful, because Booker Washington was a good boy." With all of that, the kindness and all that, there was still the shade of segregation. Not a good man, a great man. Booker Washington was a good boy. | 29:37 |
| Tywanna Whorley | So you said that you were going into veterinary medicine. | 30:51 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:30:58]. | 30:57 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Well, yeah, you can tell. Not when I finished school. See, it came many, many years later. | 30:59 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:31:04]. | 31:04 |
| Tywanna Whorley | So when you graduated from Tuskegee, what degree did you have? What was the degree in? | 31:05 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | The first time? The first time in 1940, agriculture. Agricultural education, preparing you to teach young fellows how to do work on the farm and that sort of thing. All right. Then I taught for several years, went to service. My wife saw at one time before I even went to service a statement to the effect that they were going to put on a vet school here at Tuskegee. I believe in the Pittsburgh Courier. I applied. That was just about the time when we were having some reverses over there overseas. They had accepted me. But the draft board said, "I'm sorry." I went away. | 31:22 |
| Tywanna Whorley | [indistinct 00:32:11]. | 32:11 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | So I stayed in the army about a year and I came back. They still accepted me in veterinary medicine. I went into that, did four years there, and have been here ever since. Taught here for 40 years in the School of Veterinary Medicine. | 32:15 |
| Tywanna Whorley | When you graduated from Tuskegee, when you graduated first time— | 32:32 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | From Tuskegee? A place known as Elba, Alabama, down in south Alabama. | 32:38 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | He was a principal and ag teacher. | 32:43 |
| Tywanna Whorley | You taught ag [indistinct 00:32:50]? | 32:49 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yeah, I taught ag. Now that wasn't the regular vocational ag school, but they wanted a little agriculture taught because it was a rural community. So I served as principal and taught agriculture. | 32:50 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | That's where our present governor's father had a [indistinct 00:33:04]. | 33:00 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Now let's see some of these subtle things that are benevolent and all that sort of thing, and yet they make you want to tear your hair out when you think of them. The salary wasn't up to that of the White principal. Okay. So many of the people were in—Let's say house servants and that sort of thing. Now this is the benevolence. | 33:19 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | To go to a movie in the same building now with the Blacks up here and Whites down here, the Whites had to pay, I believe, a quarter, and the Black, a dime. See, that's an attempt to be good to you. But yet you resent in a way. You feel like saying, "Pay me." See, what I want to bring about here now is that everything isn't, "Take him out and lynch him, beat him up." But there's some of these things that are done maybe because a person wants to be kind and yet what you want is to be free and given the same opportunity. The same opportunity. | 33:45 |
| Tywanna Whorley | How did you hear about the job in Elba? | 34:39 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | He applied [indistinct 00:34:43]. | 34:40 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yeah, we had personnel department up there that you could apply through. I sent my name to them, and they recommended me for that job. | 34:43 |
| Tywanna Whorley | How was it being principal at Elba? | 34:53 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | All right. Good. I enjoyed the work. You could see those handicap, little handicaps there that the Whites at that time had a better shop for the boys to work in, had better buildings. They received coal and wood to burn for the winter. All the winter, regardless of how long it was or whatnot. What I'm trying to get at, we received maybe a certain number of tons of coal. After we received that, well, we couldn't get anymore. I had to go out, take the fellas out and cut some wood to burn it at one time. Those are the little things. Nobody's bothering you. They're praising you. "You doing a good job, 'fessor." You know what that means? Professor. Mm-hmm. "'Fessor, you're doing a good job down there at that school." | 34:56 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | I've had to, and I did this and I'm not trying to make up anything, but we actually have had to go out and cut wood. So finally I appealed to the superintendent's secretary, Mrs.— | 35:53 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | Ms. [indistinct 00:36:12]. | 36:10 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Miss. Thank you. Walker. And believe it or not, there were almost tears in her eyes. She sent us out, when I told her about it, about three tons of coal from the office. But there was no regular budget to get coal on anything. So I want to give her credit. The name I believe was Netty Ruth Walker. | 36:12 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:36:35]. | 36:32 |
| Tywanna Whorley | So those sort of things, you had to do that as principal? | 36:32 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Had to take the boys out and cut wood. So we have—Thank you. Oh my goodness. We'd have something to burn there. | 36:55 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Any other things that you had to do in terms of trying to make compromises at the school at Elba? Maybe they needed something, and you had to [indistinct 00:37:14] | 36:58 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | I can't think of anything except the school was only seven months, while the White school I believe had nine. We only had seven months there at the school. | 37:14 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | He'd come up here and do— | 37:24 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Substitute teaching, supplying at the high school here at Tuskegee. | 37:29 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Oh, you only had two months off? | 37:35 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | See, the school only ran seven months. That's five months. So I would substitute teach here at Tuskegee during that part of the year. After that I painted, see, after Tuskegee would close down, I would paint around with Physical Plant, they call it now, Building and Grounds then. | 37:37 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Oh, wow. How long were you principal at Elba? | 38:02 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Two years. | 38:02 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | Then you worked at the [indistinct 00:38:14]. | 38:02 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | You heard about the Tuskegee airmen. They have an air base. I worked out there too. I served as clerk out there. | 38:18 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Oh, just going back to when you were principal, were you, I mean, was that common, talking about how you were treated being a professor? [indistinct 00:38:41] Were you treated okay? | 38:30 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | See, now I didn't quite— | 38:41 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | Were you treated all right, Whites and Blacks the same way? | 38:41 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yeah, basically I'd have to tell the truth about Elba. Look, that's a good question. | 38:46 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | Yeah, tell her about the wells. | 38:53 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yeah. They had overflowing wells, pipes that were drilled into the ground, they hit water, and the water would come up. They didn't even have segregated water fountains at Elba at that time, believe it or not, though they had them all around Montgomery, Tuskegee. | 38:55 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:39:16]. | 39:14 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yeah. A number of the people who knew each other. I have a great feeling for Elba. Black and White would call each other by their first name. The father of the present governor, known as Big Jim Folsom, met with us, the teachers and whatnot and trustees of the school at Elba. When we told him that we needed some lumber for our shop, he told us that anytime we needed lumber, just come by and tell the people what we wanted and sign my name and I'd get it free. | 39:18 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Do you know why he was like that? | 39:54 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | All right. He was reared by parents, I understand, from one of my trustees, now Fent Stinson, I remember his name, Fent Stinson. I believe he came up with parents that just didn't believe in this outright hard-and-fast segregation. I believe he and Fent or some of Fent's relatives worked together on some job down there on a farm or something at one time. So Folsom grew up, that is, Big Jim, they called him, the father. | 39:58 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | He was ostracized because he could never play the town going South in Alabama to Montgomery. | 40:46 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Sure did. Now there was something else. I'll try to think of it that I should have mentioned too along with that. So many of the people down there believed in treating people right. But it's just that these little formalities and laws and that sort of thing kept them from maybe doing a little different. | 40:46 |
| Tywanna Whorley | So you came here, and you worked over at the base. [indistinct 00:41:30] | 41:26 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | After I left the base, I went down in the same county to a place known as Enterprise, Alabama. Enterprise, and taught agriculture there. | 41:35 |
| Tywanna Whorley | How long? | 41:44 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Two years again, seemed that I was on two kick. Two years. Drafted from down in that area. Discharged about a year later, then went into veterinary medicine on the GI Bill. | 41:47 |
| Tywanna Whorley | When did you get drafted? | 42:07 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | It must have been, this is roughly about, somewhere between '94—I mean, no, '44 and '45. | 42:15 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:42:27]. | 42:24 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yeah, yeah. | 42:28 |
| Tywanna Whorley | When you found out that you were drafted, do you remember what went through your mind, knowing that you were going to fight for a country that didn't give you any rights? | 42:32 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | That crossed my mind, certainly. It did. | 43:08 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Then why did you go overseas? | 43:08 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | I didn't go overseas. | 43:08 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Oh, you didn't? | 43:08 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | I'll tell you why. | 43:08 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | They drafted him [indistinct 00:43:08]. | 43:08 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | All right, now let me tell you a little something about segregation in the army. Treated very nice. They gave me a job, asked me to do a lecture once while some educator wasn't there. I gave a lecture. They had me on KP at first. Once I gave a lecture, the commanding officer said, "No more KP for you, we're going to give you a key to the pass box. We can't make you an officer unless you go to OCS." I didn't want to go because I wanted to get out. But I was in charge of all the teaching in this particular Black outfit. Now this is the kind of thing here, delete if you like. One day one of the officers got up in a meeting we were having. I was just a private, although they gave me a lot of privilege. | 43:15 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | That's Lowry Field [indistinct 00:44:08]. | 44:07 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Lowry Field in Colorado. So he got up and he said, "You know what? A young White lady reported this to me and I just don't like it." He said that he wrote a young White lady a note and said, "I've never been out with a White lady and I'd just like to go out with you." So then he's talking to a Black outfit now. He says, "I think he should have been taken out and whipped. Don't you? Well, don't you?" Nobody said anything. | 44:08 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | So finally I raised my hand. "Sir, I'm a private and that's the other thing. But I know maybe I shouldn't say this, but I've got to say it. You see, what you're saying, I said no, he shouldn't have been taken out and whipped, because that sounds instead of like Colorado, like a lynching back there in Alabama where I came from." Everybody sit down. Everybody sit down, sit down. He said, and this will tickle you, he said, "You know, Private Judkins, I don't believe in lynching because I'm from Indiana." I'm using his accent now, Indiana. | 44:44 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:45:24], they had to change when they got there coming south. | 45:24 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yeah. So you see there, I stood up and I threw this "sir" on him, to use a correct protocol. But I let him know. Then after I said, you can hear murmurs all around. "He's sure right." But nobody would say a word. And we had people in there with higher positions than I had. Now there we go again. I was treated fine, given a good job and all that sort of thing, but that little segregation had to rear its head, even in that. | 45:31 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | When I first [indistinct 00:00:05] I would [indistinct 00:00:07] caddies, they paid you [indistinct 00:00:18] compared to Whites. And it seemed that the Colored people [indistinct 00:00:18] be you green, yellow or whatever. We knew that the Whites tended to receive more than we did for the same thing. It'd be normal, two years of being certified, the exact same years. But they had [indistinct 00:00:31] downtown. [indistinct 00:00: 37] hadn't gone to school. And two years ago it was printed in the Atlanta Constitution that they paid Blacks, voted in the legislature, that they paid Blacks two dollars less than Whites for the same amount [indistinct 00:01:10]. | 0:16 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Now, while I was living in Montgomery, I forgot to tell you this, we used to carry, I always had particular golf club. You've seen it, all right. Now, they had a place where the caddy stayed, they called the caddy pin on Black and White, Black over here and White over there. And sometimes we would knock boards off it so we could slip over there and shoot marbles with each other, going from one to the other. Here at Tuskegee I was about, I'm going to estimate 16 years of age, they had some sort of little pool downtown there that was made naturally at one time. And I don't know whether it had something to do with the water supply or not at one time, but there was a place that was about up to your chin here where we could swim. Now, I got to know some of the White fellas down there. | 1:35 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | When they would see me coming to go swimming, because my daddy's little patches, I called it, was over across town. They would get out and yet they would watch to see that nothing happened to me, but you could not swim together. The average one of you young people may get the idea you just live constant in fear of your life. That was so sometimes, but not all the time. See, I have seen some after we grew up and we talked about it, White fellow would all get out, we followed the law. If I was in when they came up, they would just sit around, wouldn't say, "All right, get out." But they would talk to me, I'd climb out so they could get in and swim. I remember once in caddying at the golf club there in Montgomery that I was telling you about, that one of the golfers had a White caddy and of course, I'm the Black one. | 2:37 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | So I handed the man I was caddying for the wrong club and we were standing down what is known as the fairway, watching so you could see where the balls went. And I made the statement, I said, "Uh oh, I can tell from the way he hit that ball that I gave him a brassie I believe, instead of driver." So the White fellow with me said, "Well, don't tell him, because if you tell him he might want to hit you or something. And so I'm going to tell him I gave it to him. If he hits me, then I'm going home and get my shotgun and kill him." Tell you how little things, some people will not admit to those that everything was just, we hated it, it was bad. | 3:34 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | But I think of a few benevolent things like that, that occurred and we'll forget that guy said, huh? "Tell him that I gave him—" A brassie is for a shorter distance and without looking at it, he hit the ball with the brassie. A driver would carry well away, so I gave him the wrong club. He said, "Uh-huh, I'm going to tell him I gave it to him." And he said, "If you do it, he's going to hit and kick you or something, but if I do it and he kicks me, hits me, I'm going home and get my shotgun and kill him." | 4:23 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | So, those are some of the little, like I said about Dr. Carl there, those are some of the little untold things. We all get in the movement, but I'm not going to forget those things and I'm not content even to the day, are happy with the way some of the treatment we getting yet. I have to look at some of those things. When Marion was telling you about the state not paying what they should, while I was out there when funds were running kind of low at Colorado, the head of the Department of Anatomy gave me a special job working, helping teach and told me if I'd clean up my own office, he'd pay me a little more. I told Marion that wouldn't be fair because they had a janitor to do clean up, but was going to pay me even some more. | 5:00 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Why did you decide, can you tell me about that? Why did you decide to go to Colorado? | 5:48 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Couldn't go to Auburn or University of Georgia. See, I wanted a masters in veterinary anatomy and just couldn't go to any of those places. | 5:56 |
| Tywanna Whorley | How did you go about—I mean, [indistinct 00:06:08] working, back then when you wanted to go school, when you wanted to go to [indistinct 00:06:15] state, what's the process of trying to get money to go to college? | 6:05 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | You apply, you would apply to the state for aid. Colorado gave some aid and Tuskegee gave me half salary, I believe. But now, there was a transportation out there and maintenance and housing and all that that ran above what half salary would take care of. | 6:18 |
| Tywanna Whorley | You have to be accepted first to the school? | 6:40 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yeah, had to be accepted at Colorado State and I received a masters in one year in anatomy. | 6:46 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:06:53]. | 6:49 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | I've forgotten [indistinct 00:06:54]. | 6:53 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:06:54] '64 or something like that. [indistinct 00:07:24] overkill, [indistinct 00:07:50] most of your classmates worked from the South. You had somebody from Texas, Prairie View. You might have had somebody from Virginia [indistinct 00:08:15]. | 6:54 |
| Tywanna Whorley | How was it going to school in Colorado? | 8:14 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Very good, very good. You'd bump into a few things, but for the most part they were good. I can tell you one incident that you might like. The whole family, we took the whole family out there. One day, just before time to leave, about a month maybe, I was walking by a house there, dwelling, a little boy sitting on the porch and his parents were sitting there to him. And he waved at me and said, "Hey, nigger." So I said to myself, "Boy, they have this everywhere." Then my daughter who went to school not far and said something to him and the parents looked funny. I just happened to look back and then she told me what she said. She came by and he said the same thing, "Hey, nigger." So she stopped, picked him up, "Come here, honey. Who taught you to say an ugly word like that?" And said, "I never heard that anymore in passing by the house." Yeah, picked him up. Do what? | 8:22 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | Your thesis? | 9:29 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | I don't know, Mary. There are a number of little things. What I have tried to do is to kind of give you both sides of it, that nobody wants to be segregated. I mean, even if they had paid us higher salaries, I would've resented that because we want to be given the same opportunity that others—Somebody told us at a farmer's conference here at Tuskegee. He said a Northerner was down here traveling and he questioned a sharecropper. He said, "You know what? I've been walking around here and I've found that some of you will kind of curse the White man you working for." | 9:30 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Black man said, "Yeah, he'll take that, too. He'll take that." Say, "I saw one of you kind of push one slightly." "Yeah, you take that, too." Say, "I saw you once and you failed to reply to a question he asking. "Yeah, you'll take that too." And then he say, "And wait, Mr. Reporter. Before you go any further, you make a good crop, he'll take that, too." So that is a kind of benevolence in here again. | 10:22 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | It was our what anniversary? It was 25th or whatnot anniversary [indistinct 00:11:40] Anyway, we was getting ready to go. Classmate that was out there, he see [indistinct 00:11:44] | 10:58 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Now, there's something else here. Oh, I'm sorry, Mary. All right now, we were invited to a church there. Okay, we went to the church in Colorado. They introduced us, kind of lorded over— | 11:45 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | Timnets. | 12:05 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Timnets already invited us to visit them, various ones of them. The next thing, two questions were asked, though, that just hit right to the heart of you. Now, here I was out there, doing graduate study and somebody asked me if Tuskegee had gave a degree. In other words, we're a junior. Because here I am studying and then somebody else came up, benevolent and invited us to dinner. We didn't go but they asking, "Now, who do you all work for?" As if we were serving, see. I was out there working. "Now, who do you all work for?" | 12:06 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | So, some of those things that can hurt and yet, they don't hurt your body as such, but they kind of bother you in the head. The great Tuskegee and they wanted to know if we gave BS degree or were we a junior college? And then here we are, then I'm pretty sure we were rested all right. When they ask us to say something, I'm pretty sure we didn't say, "We is," or something like that. And yet, "And now, who do you all work for?" | 12:46 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | The interesting thing [indistinct 00:13:17] and they adopted somebody. [indistinct 00:13:41]. | 13:17 |
| Tywanna Whorley | You left there and came back to Tuskegee? | 14:04 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yeah, I intended to come. They told me, the Dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine told me that when that degree was received, I was expected to come back to Tuskegee and nowhere else. And I thought that was such a tribute, that I was really wanted. So you couldn't have gotten me to work for any other place. In fact, I received an offer when I made—Now, this was money then. I was making, I believe $6,000 here a year. Now, if somebody mentioned that to you, you'd run and just laugh. But then that was good money and Colorado offered me $10,000 to come back out there, $10,000 to come back and I refused it. I just think that much of Tuskegee. | 14:07 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | We were coming back from [indistinct 00:15:04] and the train had an accident [indistinct 00:15:22] | 14:50 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | It's close to Aurora, I've forgotten the name. | 14:50 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | Anyway, [indistinct 00:15:34] and when we got there [indistinct 00:15:50] | 14:50 |
| Tywanna Whorley | How long did you teach before you went to [indistinct 00:16:39] here in Tuskegee? | 14:50 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:16:42] | 14:50 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yeah, right. In other words, went to Colorado after I'd been teaching here seven years. Then in the next about seven or eight years, I got another what is known as sabbatical. This time with full salary at the University of Michigan. Tuskegee gave me full salary to go. | 16:42 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | They was real impressed with him. [indistinct 00:17:06]. | 17:05 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Knox College. | 17:05 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:17:06] if you were an old Black man, so it was interesting. | 17:05 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Do you remember your experiences when you first came here to teach at Tuskegee? When you left Colorado and came back to teach here at Tuskegee, how was that? Was that veterinary school? | 17:13 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Veterinary school, yes. Everything went fine. Yeah, they sent me off, so I to get some more training in anatomy and structurally, body of animal and everything went beautifully. Even gave me a raise. | 18:33 |
| Tywanna Whorley | How was the school during that time? | 18:46 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Tuskegee? Fine. Accredited and everything. This is still one of the best veterinary schools in the world, yeah. And at that time it was- | 18:48 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | Nice [indistinct 00:19:09] One girl, Mary Ortead, she's from Maryland and she makes sure that people get a chance [indistinct 00:19:21] to come up here to Tuskegee and all the alumni members are very good. | 19:13 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Now, I don't know whether this will fit into what you are doing there or not, but I'd like to tell you something. We sometimes can mistake a subtle type of applause and think that we are being mitigated against. I want to give you an example. When I went to Michigan, there was a little store around the corner from us there and the fellow asked me to come and trade with him. I went in there once and he said, "I'll have some things you like." So the next time I went in there, he asked me. He said, "Now, we've got chitlins and we've got pork chops and we've got Black Eyed peas, canned and all that. And I told Mary, "What the devil does he think I want? I don't even eat chitlins that much." So he kept that up and then one day I was in there and a fella from another culture and he started to say with the Italian. | 19:30 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | At that time he wanted to tell him he had pizza, he had other things that may be Italian. And here, the man was favoring me and I thought he was more or less looking down his nose. I've had that happen in anatomy. We went to a convention and at this convention the fellows in small animals came to sign up. "Yes, small animal. All right, doctor." Guy came up, "Large animal, all right, doctor." Black and I came up and, "What is your specialty, doctor?" | 20:33 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | Auburn too, wasn't it? | 21:08 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Auburn. "What's your specialty?" I said, "Anatomy." He looked at the other one ans whispered something, this and that. And so he fixed out everything but he kept smiling and looking. So I got the thinking and I said, "Now, what's wrong?" Then I thought a few days later, there were only at that time, three Black anatomists in the United States, from veterinary anatomists, I should add that. See, there he was amazed to see a Black person in anatomy because they claim it's a kind of technical area anyhow. But you can look around and you can count 50 or 60 or more maybe pathologists in other areas right to this day, as far as an American Black anatomist since a Dr. Ray Williams who taught with me over there during that 40 years, has been retired, too. He worked long longer than I did. | 21:10 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | But Mary, I don't know if two Black veterinary anatomies. Now, you can find those human anatomies at Meharry and Howard and all, just any number of them and at other schools, even schools up the way. But as far as veterinary anatomy, Black veterinary, I'm going to just take a risk that there may be some we don't know and say I doubt if you'll find over three in the United States. In other words, he was saying, "That fellows up there, isn't he something?" And I was there thinking I was being slighted or maligned. So that's something that along with me, there's been plenty of that too, now, maligned and all that. | 22:13 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | But sometimes we are a little overly sensitive. One more thing, now. Several times I've been riding with people from here to Montgomery on further and they look out and say, "You know what? We don't even have many Blacks working on the road and digging ditches." You might have even heard something they even take. But here, I said this to them and their mind all of a suddenly shut after I had observed it. I thought that myself. But now, I went somewhere to a store and wanting some corduroy trousers and they say, "You'll have to see the head of the clothing department, men's clothing." I went over there, looking for a White person and then up come the young Black fellow about 25 that said, "Sir, I understand you want some corduroy trousers?" | 22:56 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | "Yes. Are you the head of the department?" He said, "Yes I am." And I've had that happen any number of times, so that accounts maybe in part for not as many of us being out there. We've got to look at both sides of it. Then I continue to hear this and I don't agree with it, that we haven't made any progress. And I'm still not throwing up my hands, saying, "Lord, we there. This is it." But my Lord, when we were around your age, as I said, you couldn't stand up. I mean, couldn't sit down in a place and eat. Now you can go anywhere you want. If you and a young White fellow decide to go biking up on the campus, nobody's going to say a word. We've had them come out here and one tell when they looking at plants, I think we taught that together. | 23:57 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | And one see a White young lady and Black young man. One told the other, I've forgotten which is which, "I bought lunch yesterday, you're buying it today." See, those sorts of things, don't tell me. I of served on the committee that makes up the veterinary examinations for the country. Just two of us were there, but if you could qualify, you could be there. Just happened to have one or two Black anatomists there, that sort of thing. You can look around you at any number of jobs or things of that sort. And we forget when we say we haven't made any progress, we've made a lot of progress. But we still—Yeah, yeah. But we need to be fair every time. | 24:51 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | Need to have people in this [indistinct 00:25:58] South Carolina [indistinct 00:26:20] | 25:42 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | All right. | 25:42 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | Most of the ladies that color, but I said, "I'll let you have a choice." | 25:42 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Can you tell me as much as you remember about what took place here during voting? | 25:42 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Voting? | 25:42 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Yeah, voting. | 26:45 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yeah, I can tell you about that and I want Mary to tell you something, too. But they would use all sorts of tactics to keep you from voting. When I went off to graduate school at Colorado, I qualified to vote after I'd been there for about a year. We were leaving so I didn't bother, but I could qualify to vote and all sorts of things. But here, they would make you read and try to interpret a part of the constitution. Use every rules they could find to keep you from voting. So there, I think you saw the little, did you see the article there concerning me? | 26:50 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | All right, that's where we had to actually sue back here some years ago. Actually sue, as Marion told you. They moved the pole from one place to the other so that by some trick of chance, had been one of those routine few they let through. You couldn't even find out where they were voting or where they were registering and all that sort of thing. That was one of the toughest things we had here. Here, I could qualify every place that we'd been up the way and some places in the south and still couldn't vote. And we couldn't vote until we actually sued the vote, we won the case. | 27:38 |
| Tywanna Whorley | How did you find out that they were actually moving? | 28:20 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:28:35] | 28:34 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yeah, they actually just would, when you took the test, they would— | 28:34 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:28:44] other folks, they did this or that [indistinct 00:28:59] | 28:36 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Dorsey? Yeah, by the name of Linwood Dorsey. And he really, I don't believe he had—Well, he was more than an Octoroon. I mean, I think he had very little. He would go around there and they would, "Come in young man, it's so good to see you young people coming out to register." Then he found out where they were and he'd come back and tell us and we'd rush the place and come down maybe out of 10, but two, they one or two, they did that. Sometimes if you do a token something, you can get by. Even then if you refuse everybody, if you can get enough in so you can say, "Hey, here's our one of them." | 29:13 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | So, they would let a few. Now, when our first dean, I'm going to call, we had somebody before him in veterinary, but when our first real dean was assigned, oh, he got registered right off, right away. And so they would have a token number so you couldn't say. See, out of his town when we outnumbered them seven to one at that time, I doubt if out of that whole each seven, I doubt if you got one if you figure that percentage-wise one, but just enough so they could holler out to federal people, "Oh yeah, we have some of them voting, the others just don't know." | 29:58 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | And a lot of people are [indistinct 00:30:49] | 30:43 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | But I'm glad you asked, that was one of the last hills we had to climb. That was hard, it was really hard. | 30:54 |
| Tywanna Whorley | At the time that lawsuit was pending, Black people in Tuskegee turned up [indistinct 00:31:22] | 31:09 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | No, that's one thing here we have had little trouble with because of the outlook and attitude of our people here. Let me give you an example. The Klan paraded through Tuskegee one time and this is what one student said, and this is the truth. They were throwing rocks at the guard. He said, "Have you ever seen a Klan parade at 50 miles an hour?" That's the way they went through, 50 miles an hour. The kids up there on what we call it, the block, throwing rocks. "Come back, stop, fight like a man." 50 miles an hour Klan, that was the only parade. | 31:21 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:32:12] | 32:00 |
| Tywanna Whorley | And then also [indistinct 00:32:25]. | 32:00 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:32:35]. | 32:00 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Do you remember when you were first voting here in Tuskegee? | 32:00 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Oh, let's see. That was after we came back from Colorado. We came in '58, wasn't it? The date may be in that book, whatever year that book is. That book is dated. | 33:22 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | '59. | 33:30 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | '59, okay. Okay, just about then. | 33:40 |
| Tywanna Whorley | How was the relationship between the Whites and Blacks [indistinct 00:33:48] and everybody knew what was going on? | 33:42 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Well, that's a strange thing but people are conscientious. You're not going to have too much controversy. I'm going to give you a kind of [indistinct 00:34:03] or something. The first time we rode in sleeping car, Pullman, because I'd been in service and I'd met one, what are we going to call him, porter? Once when I was there, he saw the two of us together there once and we easily got accommodation. But I'm saying once you got over there, a number of the people seemed to have been glad. So we had a number of people here at Tuskegee that offered no opposition. Some actually helped, some stood by, but we didn't find any real rabid. | 33:50 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | We had no trouble. [indistinct 00:34:57] because he got segregation in school and in Tuskegee, they could get away with all over the state. He had no trouble because he had [indistinct 00:35:03] off of the road because they resented it. [indistinct 00:35:10] granddaddy was [indistinct 00:35:21] and then when you come and think that he's a grandson of the old Confederate general. I'm just saying [indistinct 00:35:49] Children where they had to take the college entrance exam. They accepted them on that basis and they accepted 13 [indistinct 00:36:54] | 34:56 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Well, more or less a police woman. Let's put it there, because [indistinct 00:37:35] | 37:27 |
| Tywanna Whorley | These are the things where you see the bad side in it and every culture [indistinct 00:37:52] | 37:39 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Do you know what a cattle prod is? Mary mentioned they used the cattle prod. I thought you would need to know that. It's a rod like structure and it has batteries in it, very powerful batteries. And if you want to turn cattle and move them up, it gives them a heavy shock, jolt. And they have something now for you, you read about them probably, that people protect themselves with. Well, that's what they used and used it on the man's testes. Now, that's horrible, isn't it? I mean a shock. I've seen a steer jump a five foot fence when somebody hit him with one of those things. Yeah, it's horrible. | 38:08 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:38:56] he was one of the ones that, he had two sons. And after the kid [indistinct 00:39:21] | 38:56 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Well, they had three here, too. They had three White schools in the county. And when they talked about pulling out the Whites from all but one, I mean, in other words they were going to one. Then we divided up the Black students. See, we sent one of our children down to Tuskegee Town, then another one down to Shorter. And where was the other one, Mary? I've forgotten. It was Tuskegee Charter. | 39:20 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | Tuskegee Charter in Tuskegee. | 39:51 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Tuskegee. Well, did anybody go to over there in Elmo, what's his name? Not Elmo, but what's that school? | 39:53 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | Notasulga. | 40:00 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Notasulga, yeah. That's Notasulga, Shorter and Tuskegee. And then they did this, they burned the school. Have you heard about it? They burned the school, White school here at Tuskegee down. | 40:02 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:40:16] had flowers all up and down the step and they said [indistinct 00:40:26] Judge Johnson. | 40:15 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yeah, they had little Black figures hanging around, they burned them in effigy, all around little Black and hang them in effigy. Little Black figurines all around, Black with ropes around their neck. | 40:28 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | Okay. The justice department people told us, because [indistinct 00:40:49] that they felt Mr. King was laying down over here to Notasulga this. And the man down here at Shorter [indistinct 00:41:10] tell them, "This is for Negroes to drink out of." | 40:41 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | And he called them together and told them this, as if we did this. "We ain't going to have no," I mean, that's the way he said, "Corn chunking." Like some people throw [indistinct 00:41:28] in school. I guess kids are doing that out there when we was—But anyhow, evidently they would throw corn in the room. I grew up in the room, but I don't ever remember this in any Blacks who were throwing corn, shutting off some corn. "We ain't going have no corn chunking." Chunking, it was very [indistinct 00:42:18]. | 41:17 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:42:18] anything, whatever you need, I'm going to get. [indistinct 00:42:39]. | 42:22 |
| Tywanna Whorley | [indistinct 00:42:39] | 42:38 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Well, we did. At one time they sent guards with him. In other words, the government sent guards to kind of patrol. Then for some reason they pull— | 42:40 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | They decided that the children could not have us going with the school president, therefore [indistinct 00:43:01] | 42:53 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yeah, we started a company and then a group of us started a company. And I've had people get out of a car, there were three of us and it was Palmer Southerns? Who else was there? | 43:07 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | Willie. | 43:18 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Willie, all right. And I think Detroit Lee went once or twice, too. But anyway, the main ones was the three or two named, they Palmer Southerns. But anyway, they would get out with an old-fashioned tire jack or something like that. They stopped us once or twice and said that we'd run a red light. And when the officer came over, these guys with these old jacks and everything else came over there, we didn't bat. And now this can be told, Palmer Southerns, and you may get a chance to talk to his wife if you haven't already, Southerns, yeah. All right, Palmer Southerns, after we left the area, he reached in his pocket and he had pulled out a long knife. He had it opened in his pocket, said they had to do that in as Rangers and some phase of the service, have your weapon ready when you're doing a little espionage. Had his knife open, he's ready. A number things you would never suspect. | 43:20 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | Never know these things. And then sometimes they would [indistinct 00:44:39] | 44:28 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | It was a broom factory, I believe. | 44:43 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | And nighttime about 1:00, somebody White parked out there in front. People with chickens lived right down the road from it [indistinct 00:45:01] So then the guy came. Oh, that's right. When the guy came back [indistinct 00:45:45]. | 45:00 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yeah. | 45:00 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Did y'all send them to school each day? | 45:00 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Hm? | 45:00 |
| Tywanna Whorley | You send them to school each day? | 45:00 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yeah, each day. Yeah, we had to go out of town Shorter, just between here and Montgomery? Not far. Oh boy, yeah, I'm [indistinct 00:46:13] All right. | 45:57 |
| Tywanna Whorley | What's the date? | 46:18 |
| Tywanna Whorley | When did you first meet Dr. Gomillion? | 0:03 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Here at Tuskegee. | 0:03 |
| Tywanna Whorley | What did you think about him? | 0:03 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Great man. | 0:08 |
| Tywanna Whorley | In terms of socializing, can you talk about things in Tuskegee, politics, problems? | 0:13 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Not only at Tuskegee, but all over the country because he's been known to travel from here and there and work with the students just as you folks are doing now and all that sort of thing, and trying to get the rights of individuals. He's the first one that started unofficially now, the actual boycotting that was done here at one time. You probably heard of the boycott in which we traded out of town. Even before the official boycott started, Gomillion would trade only with the Black merchants here. He was an outstanding teacher, and I do mean outstanding. He would make things so clear, real down to earth. He didn't go in for a lot of high sounding things. | 0:20 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Now, he had a little system of telling you about what we weren't doing right and he used the word, I kid him about it even now. "Sam down on Railroad Avenue," talking about one of us, meaning somebody who wasn't following along. "Now, I would expect that out of him, Sam down on Railroad Avenue, but you here at Tuskegee, you should know better." And he would quote things like this. He said, "So many of us have to think of this, that they all say about us, that we buy what we want and beg for what we need. I don't want you folks to do that." | 1:16 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | He could bring it right down there way you could see it. And on his exams and whatnot, he had so much on there and there were so many possibilities of your work that if you had a good overall view of the main points he was trying to get over, you could pass his exam. He made it real down to earth and yet, he didn't give anybody anything, he didn't featherbed. And he's risked his life many a time here, and not only about what he said, but what he did. Yeah, great man. When I saw him the last time he was here a few months ago, Gomillion's a great man, one of the greatest I've ever known. | 2:06 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Did he ever talk about [indistinct 00:02:57] | 2:51 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | He didn't talk about it, but there were times, and he's been in danger here and elsewhere. I always like to bring a little anecdote, but this is true. He was carrying us to a meeting in Tennessee. I think he was carrying us in his car and I think he must have gotten a little tired. The car jerked a little bit and one of the fellas in the car asking him, "Dr. Gomillion, how long have you been driving?" Now, this is an actual fact, this is the truth. He said, "Three months." Fella said, "Please, just stop the car and let me out." I'll never forget he'd been driving about three months and had just gotten his driver's license in the car. | 2:57 |
| Tywanna Whorley | What did you think about the change that he was trying to do at Tuskegee and trying to get everybody else mobilized to help them? | 3:41 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Great. You always have that, I want to quote you something here now that's often used. A group of sheep led by a lion would do better fighting than a group of lions led by sheep. I'll repeat that if you want. Yeah, so he was a great leader, great man. And I'm not looking down on those who hadn't had a chance. Some didn't know, didn't understand, and he made it plain because he plain old country boy that grew up. And so with that strong leadership, that's why I quote that little parable to you. Strong leadership is necessary. | 4:01 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Just two more questions I wanted to ask you. | 4:43 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yeah. | 4:48 |
| Tywanna Whorley | What changes have you seen? You've had opportunities to see changes here in Tuskegee. | 4:48 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Changes? | 4:55 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Yeah. | 4:56 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yeah. | 4:56 |
| Tywanna Whorley | What changes have you seen in Tuskegee specifically? | 4:59 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Well, some of the main changes that I've seen, the main ones are in city government. We can recall when we had our first Black sheriff years ago, how everybody rallied right behind him. Then of course, now we have a Black mayor, council and all that sort of thing, so that has helped out. Then maybe I shouldn't even mention this, but we have grown closer as a group. At one time, certain ones of the Whites in town would kind of put in some of the very outstanding rights to work and kind of featherbed things a little bit, but now we are more or less all the same. Not only racially, but by class, too. There are a few things I won't go into that would kind of get you a little bit disgusted about how we weren't quite together here, that it was kind of class stratification here. Oh yes, there used to be that, it's true. And somebody might- | 5:00 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:06:18] was not race as the feature. Black man meant Black, if he was a doctor, he was in a high class. | 6:18 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Yeah, that's right. We had that kind of— | 6:25 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | It wasn't a color sort of thing. | 6:27 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | No. Yeah, those who climbed up the ladder there, yeah. | 6:30 |
| Tywanna Whorley | What other changes do you see that need to be made for Tuskegee? | 6:36 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | That need to be made? Well, at the risk of maybe somebody disagreeing greatly, I feel that we need better city government, all around better city government. There's still a little too much, oh, shall I say, certain people getting together and showing favoritism and that sort of thing? I think we can do better. I think things need to be more democratic and down to earth here. Now I said this here, and this is no bragging or anything about your—I'll give you an example on my part, all right? I don't like the matter of a dog track, I don't expect everybody to agree with me. As a retired veterinarian, I believe I could go out there now and get a job [indistinct 00:07:45] something, but they couldn't pay me $100 an hour to go out there and work, because I think that it's a form of gambling and I'm not being goody-goody with you. | 6:43 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Don't get me wrong, okay? I want to show you an example of my gambling. When we have our reunion here, some of us old timers have gone down to the bowl and be 10 cents on whether or not our team is going to make first down or something like that. We do that, about a dollar's worth and we're through. But out there where we have all of this money being spent and some people are not paying their mortgage and rent and all that sort of thing. At the risk of your thing, you young people may be thinking I'm goody-goody. | 7:59 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | I'm not, I don't mean if you could afford right now, you kids here. Excuse me, young people, but you could afford to go out there once a week and pay $5, I mean bet $5. If we could restrict it to that, it would be all right. But when people go out there with families and all that sort of thing and are spending all of this, I think we need to police up on that. Every time you look around, somebody's talking about bringing in such great industry here. I feel that we could use some additional kind of in industry here, but not just get carried away by finance. | 8:34 |
| Tywanna Whorley | What about with education? | 9:15 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | With education, all right. I think we're doing a reasonably good job. I think Tuskegee is doing that, but my kick concerning all phases of education is that often, we go overboard for the degrees instead of learning. Some people are hollering even over at my school, school of veterinary medicine and I still give lectures over there occasionally. When I hear everybody, "We should go up and get higher degrees," I want to tell you something here and I hope this is right along in keeping with the question you asked. | 9:18 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | My daddy graduated from here during the time of Booker Washington. He said that when the first graduate member of Tuskegee staff came back with a PhD in dairying, dairy farming, he was sitting down, talking to Booker Washington about calories and that information had just come out, balanced rations and all that sort of thing. And Washington looked at him and said, "Well doctor, I don't know anything about calories, I don't know anything about balanced rations and all that for animals, but what we need a Tuskegee is more milk and butter and better milk and butter." I think that we need to stop thinking too much and I do have a master's, BS, master's and DVM, but I think we need to consider treating animals more over there. I mean at the vet school, instead of what degree does he have in this and how much research is going on. | 9:57 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | There's a story told about research and I've done some time, the microscopic anatomy of the deer antler, but they told us about research. They said a man got ready to do some research and he trained a flea to jump over a pencil on command. The first time he commanded the flea to jump over, the flea jumped over all right. Then he pulled two of the fleas legs and commanded the flea to jump over the pencil, the flea jumped. Then he decided to pull all of the fleas legs off and commanded the flea to jump and the flea didn't jump, of course. And he wrote his findings of his research. "When all of a flea's legs are pulled off, it becomes stone deaf and can't hear a thing." | 10:56 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | So we want to stay away from that kind of research and do some (laughs)—teach something that a person can use or that will give some benefit. As I said, see, if I hadn't finished high school or something, you could say, "Well, he is just trying to build himself up." But I received a master's from Colorado State University in one calendar year. I believe in education and research and that but make it real. We had a fellow around here that we used to call Al, that could cut all of these famous rafters that you see in buildings like the chapel and all, hip rafters, jack rafters and that sort of thing. Could do any of it, but he only had a certificate from one of these very good trade schools, he didn't even have a BS. And do you know at that time he couldn't get a job on the campus because he didn't have a BS in building construction and the people would have to hire him, call him in and kind of hire him and pay him special? | 11:46 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | But now, he couldn't because he didn't have a BS degree. What I'm saying, if you can handle something and really do it, then that's what education should be trying to bring about. I've seen somebody pass that little test. What is it, the English proficiency test? And then had a good average and passed that test and then would come out and say something like, "We is." Well, he passed the test now, what good did it do?" | 12:53 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Kind remind me of a little kid who was in the first grade, always said, "I have went." Was a very kind teacher, didn't spank him. She had him to sit down and write, "I have gone," I have went, "I have gone." So he sat down, he wrote, "I have gone," 100 times and the teacher told him that, "If I'm not back in the room, I'm going to run to this other room here to see another teacher, you just leave me a little note and I trust you." So he wrote, "Dear teacher, I have written, 'I have gone,' 100 times and I have went home." So the situation didn't go over, did it? I mean, yeah. All right. | 13:28 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Okay, I got one more question. | 14:15 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | All right. | 14:15 |
| Tywanna Whorley | During the depression. [indistinct 00:14:29] during the depression time, the '30s? | 14:15 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | During the depression time? Ask that again. | 14:15 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Oh, I just want to know if you had any experiences during the depression? | 14:15 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | During the depression? | 14:28 |
| Tywanna Whorley | And how you were able to survive. | 14:29 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | All right, yeah. Even as jobs were short, things were cheap, less expensive. For instance, you could get maybe a pound of butter for about 40 cents and that sort of thing, it was cheaper. Now, some of us worked on farms. I did farms, some maybe delivered groceries for a store. Others caddied golf clubs and that sort of thing. During the time I was a teenager, I did most of my work on farms around here and the like, mowed lawns and that sort of thing. | 14:42 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Then finally, the majority of my work from about 17 on was for Tuskegee University and they would say, "Put your name down," and at the end of each month they would put you so much credit. You didn't get any cash, but you could register with that and do anything up about this new get meal books and that sort of thing. So the two of us, my wife and I worked for the school. Then the government had a little program for the NYA. | 15:24 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | They called it NYC [indistinct 00:16:21] it was a certain amount of allowance. [indistinct 00:16:21] | 16:21 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Well, mine was kind of like this. One of the fellows in my class said this, I've forgotten who it was, but he says parents wrote him from the farm. Said, "Dear Bill, we're surprised at you. Generally, you are good and worthwhile son, but you've been up there in college three months and haven't sent us any money yet." That was about how the way I was. Mine was tough, I had to work all of mine and my parents wanted to do everything they could. Very good to me, both were teachers. But those younger ones, I was the oldest. Those younger ones, I kind of stood back so they could go to school. | 16:23 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | I had to work all of mine, but things were reasonably good, even then. I'd like to say this, so often we holler out now, you young people have all the opportunities. We had some too, because then, almost anybody could qualify for working its way through. If you really wanted to work now from the way where this tuition is and all this sort of thing, a person wouldn't dare come up here. I've seen people come up and maybe bring $50 and start working. You can't do that now people. To me, it's harder on you folks than it was on us. Excuse me, go ahead. | 17:00 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | [indistinct 00:17:55] five year plan and worked extra and got a chance to go to school. | 17:42 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Work the day and go to school today. | 17:42 |
| Marian O'Neal Judkins | And thank God [indistinct 00:18:06]. | 17:42 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | Now, when you folks make $1 million off of this, I want just $1,000 in $1 bills. (laus | 18:44 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Do you have anything else to add? | 18:46 |
| Robert Lavender Judkins | I don't believe I do, but it's certainly been a pleasure to talk with you. | 18:55 |
| Tywanna Whorley | You too, thank you. | 18:58 |
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