Arthur Kinnard interview recording, 1995 January 01

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Arthur Henry Kinnard	Okay. My name is Arthur Henry Kinnard Jr. That's K-I-N-N-A-R-D.	0:01
Stacey Scales	Okay.	0:10
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Because my dad is Arthur and my son is the third.	0:11
Stacey Scales	Oh, so you got connections?	0:13
Arthur Henry Kinnard	So I always use the junior on my name so it won't be any mistakes.	0:17
Stacey Scales	Okay. And where were you born and raised, Dr. Kinnard?	0:27
Arthur Henry Kinnard	I was born in Williamson County. That's the city. Town is Franklin, Tennessee. That's adjoining county. Williamson County is adjoining to Davidson County where Nashville is. So Franklin was a bedroom community of Nashville. 18 miles away.	0:29
Stacey Scales	Oh, okay.	0:47
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Yes.	0:47
Stacey Scales	And could you describe your neighborhood while you were growing up?	0:47
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Yes. It was a rural community. As a matter of fact, as far back as I can remember, my dad was a tenant farmer on the—we call it the Old Matt Dobson Farm. They re renamed it Harpeth Westover Farm. It was really bordering on a river called the Harpeth River in Williamson County. And because it eventually was nine of us in the family. I have five sisters and three brothers. My daddy was always a very hard worker. My mother worked in the house and maybe she did—she helped with the gardening.	0:52
Arthur Henry Kinnard	We always had a plot to do a garden. We had all kind of vegetables and fruits in the garden. And then my mom did some work. Other than that, she worked in the home. We had cows and hogs. The owner of the farm always provided us with one or two cows and some hogs and this kind of thing. And so we never were hungry, anything like that. Matter of fact, during World War II, I recall when they rationed certain kinds of things like sugar, kerosene, gasoline, and shoes, automobile tires. We had some of those tokens that they issued.	1:32
Stacey Scales	Oh, really?	2:13
Arthur Henry Kinnard	To give to some of our friends and relatives in the town of Franklin. We lived in rural so we raised everything that we needed basically.	2:15
Stacey Scales	What type of relationship did your family have with the neighbors?	2:25
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Well, because it was about four families on that farm. One was a White landlord and he lived in the big house with a bell to tell us when to go in and come out of the field.	2:29
Stacey Scales	Oh, really?	2:42
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Yes. And because we knew the people on the farm and we saw neighbors. But I guess my best recollection is that my daddy always had more children than any the rest of them. So really, and so many of us was in family until, I guess playing with each other was sort of like enough. And these homes, these houses that were on the farm were spread out.	2:43
Stacey Scales	Oh, okay.	3:14
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Sometimes a mile apart or more. This farm was about—this first farm was about 500 acres. Yes. My dad eventually moved up to sharecropping. Actually, we lived on that farm for, oh I guess about 10 or 12 years. And we moved off that farm. And at that time we were far away from school and my two older sisters went to live with my grandmother for their first two or three grades in school. And when I got old enough my mom taught me at home. So when we moved off that farm to another farm where we were closer to school, my mom told me to tell the teacher I was already in the 2nd grade. That was after Christmas. And in those days they didn't pay too much attention to records. If you knew the work you could go on. So after the teacher tested me out, I went on in 2nd grade and was promoted to the 3rd at the end of that year. Yeah.	3:15
Stacey Scales	So she told you to say that even though you hadn't gone?	4:14
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Yeah, although I hadn't gone to school. Oh shoot, we were—my mom and neither my dad finished 8th grade, but they were sticklers for us learning stuff. They always told us they wanted us to do better than they did. But they were smart people, now. Not to say that they didn't have that much book learning, but they were smart. My dad could figure stuff in his head much better than I could. That arithmetic we called it. And now the thing about it, the reason we were far away from school was because there were White schools that we had to pass by to go to school. We were in walking distance of a White school. But back in those days, in the '40s, all through the '40s and the '50s, it was strict segregation in the south and in Tennessee where we were. So I recall this actually on one side toward Franklin, there was a White school that was about a mile from us, but we couldn't go.	4:14
Arthur Henry Kinnard	And on the other side there was a school, I had a White school I had to pass by to get to the Black school. And my dad's first cousin, my second cousin let us ride with her to school. Now, in those early days. Now, next thing is there were no buses for Black folk to ride at all. Those yellow buses?	5:10
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	5:33
Arthur Henry Kinnard	But eventually my dad and some other people in the community talked to the superintendent of schools and they finally allowed us to ride the Interurban bus. And they paid for our fair on the buses. That was after a while. But the first four or five years of school—	5:33
Stacey Scales	—how old were you then?	5:50
Arthur Henry Kinnard	I must have been, I was in high school, probably about 9th or 10th grade then when that started to happen.	5:51
Stacey Scales	Okay. Now, did all the Black children have to walk to school?	5:58
Arthur Henry Kinnard	They either—we walked or their parents got them to school if they were in the rural area. Of course, in town the kids always walked anyway.	6:03
Stacey Scales	Okay.	6:12
Arthur Henry Kinnard	But Franklin was about 5,000 people I guess, at the time.	6:13
Stacey Scales	And how long was the session for school for the Blacks?	6:19
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Well, oh that's another thing. I don't exactly remember the exact details, but I know Whites always were in school longer than we were. And sometimes we were in school for five or six months and while the Whites were always in school for nine months. So we were at a tremendous disadvantage from that standpoint. Now, because in Tennessee it was a little different from in Mississippi because in the Delta here in Mississippi, when I came to Mississippi, they still had what we call the split session. And they had that specifically for Blacks. What that meant that after the farmers laid their crops by in the summer—have you ever heard about laid by time? You know what that is?	6:22
Stacey Scales	What is that?	7:07
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Well, that is the time when the last time you plow your fields out, when let's say cotton and everything is fruiting out and you don't plow it anymore and then you lay it by until harvest time. You call that laid by. Usually it comes in July around the 4th of July. And sometimes that's a big celebration for some people. But in Mississippi what they had happening is that they had split session whereby Blacks would go to school for about a month and then when cotton picking time come, they would be excused from school for about a month or two to pick the cotton. And so they wouldn't go back to school until something like I guess December. They would get out say at the end of September, the middle of October to pick the cotton and then they wouldn't go back until say December or something. And you call that the split session.	7:07
Stacey Scales	And when you came here, what year was that?	7:58
Arthur Henry Kinnard	I came to Mississippi in 1956, but I was not here at Valley.	8:00
Stacey Scales	Okay.	8:06
Arthur Henry Kinnard	I was down at Utica, Mississippi and it was a high school there called Hinds County Agricultural High School. I taught in junior high and high school there for five years. Now, when I came to Mississippi in '56, they had just started the junior college there. They stacked it on top of two years, the high school. The two years. And really that junior college went in operation two years before I came in 1954. As a matter of fact, they opened the doors in August 1954. You recall that was the same year the Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation from the school. And because when I left Utica, I was acting president. So I had an opportunity to read the previous board meetings of the board of trustees. And I found out that they started talking about opening another junior college in the state of Mississippi. They started talking about in 1950.	8:06
Stacey Scales	Four years before?	9:10
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Yes. And of course, I'm assuming that the handwriting was kind on the wall and they were trying to stave off integration as long as possible, because it had been out in the Southwest and the Midwest that the NAACP had won several suits permitting Blacks to go to professional and graduate schools. Out in Oklahoma and I think Missouri and some of the other states out there. And so the people all around the South, I think were watching this because what they started doing in the '50s, they started opening other schools. For instance, Mississippi Valley State was open in 1950. And then they started improving Black schools, building new schools for Blacks, because they had been under this separate but equal doctrine. And then all of a sudden in 1954 the Supreme Court decision was handed down. And then down at Utica it appeared to me they got in a hurry because that decision was handed down on May 17th, 1954.	9:12
Arthur Henry Kinnard	So the next board meeting in June, the board passed a resolution and sent it to the legislature, state legislature asking them to pass some enabling legislation to open another junior college in the state for Blacks, a public junior college. They had one up at Clarksdale, up at Coahoma. And that was originally opened up in 1949. And so Whites had been talked about opening another school for Blacks in the southern part of the state, a public institution for Black, because you see Hinds Community College was right down there. And then several other White community colleges. Now, Mississippi sort of like pioneered in having junior college districts. That is having junior college in strategic locations in the state and having certain counties to support it with taxes. Mississippi, I think and California sort of pioneered in that kind of thing, district junior colleges.	10:29
Stacey Scales	So they were converting high schools into junior colleges?	11:35
Arthur Henry Kinnard	In a lot of instances. Many of the junior colleges grew out of agricultural high schools.	11:40
Stacey Scales	Okay.	11:46
Arthur Henry Kinnard	So Utica grew out of Hinds County Agricultural High School. And the corporate name was Hinds County Agriculture High School for Colored. Now, it's interesting that school, the high school, Hinds County Agriculture High School was the original corporate name was Utica Normal & Industrial Institute. Now, it may be a familiar cooperative name because it was patterned directly off of Tuskegee Institute. And matter of fact, the founder William H. Holtzclaw was a pupil of Booker T. Washington. He originally went to Snow Hill, Alabama and taught a while. And then he said he had a vision that he to do something for the people in Mississippi. So he actually started up here somewhere in Bolivar County to try to organize the school. Now, in reading the history of Utica, I found out that it was said that Whites told him Blacks already knew enough about picking, harvesting and cultivating crops, especially cotton.	11:48
Stacey Scales	Right.	13:04
Arthur Henry Kinnard	And they didn't need any more education. And of course, they didn't allow it. And so Mr. Holtzclaw eventually found himself down at Utica and he—first thing he would do was, I suppose this was a natural thing to do to ask White folk if it were all right to establish a school. But see, down at around Utica was a little different from up here in the Delta. The Blacks were not as numerous. So in my opinion they were not that much of a threat. So with that thought in mind, then it would be all right to establish a school. So Whites welcomed him to organize a school down at Utica. And the first name as I said was called Utica Normal & Industrial Institute. It was in cooperated, that is it got a state charter, in I believe it was 1903. And this man almost single-handedly, William Holtzclaw, almost single-handedly ran that school until 1943 when he died.	13:05
Arthur Henry Kinnard	And I think it went up to the 11th grade. From elementary on through 11th grade. Then his son, William Holtzclaw Jr. took it over and he was, they called it I guess—I think they were calling him superintendent. He was superintendent for three years, I guess. Well anyway, a few years. And the school was sort of like going down. And so the county did not have a public high school for Blacks. They were looking for a place in the county to open a Black high school. That was 1946. So the Holtzclaw family told—well, the county, that if they would make it an agricultural high school, they would donate the buildings and the whole shooting match to the county.	14:12
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Because the old man, Holtzclaw, who founded the school had supported organizing agricultural high schools all over the state. So they accepted the family's wishes on that. And so they named it Hinds County Agriculture High School For Colored. That was a corporate name of that high school down there. Because they had another one at Raymond 18 miles away called Hinds County Agriculture High School. And that school of course was a White school.	15:14
Stacey Scales	Did you attend the agricultural school when you were—	15:52
Arthur Henry Kinnard	—no, no. See, I came to Mississippi after I graduated from college at Tennessee State.	15:55
Stacey Scales	No, I mean when you were in Tennessee, was your high school an agricultural—	16:01
Arthur Henry Kinnard	—no, it was not an agricultural high school. It was a city school.	16:04
Stacey Scales	Oh, okay.	16:07
Arthur Henry Kinnard	And of course, the first school I attended was a wood frame school. They had no [indistinct 00:16:14], didn't have music at first. And when I was a junior they tore the old building down and built a new building and we went to school in cafes, churches, any place we could go to school. They didn't even have all the basic college preparatory courses. As a matter of fact, well, they didn't have music. And so in my junior year they instituted music and I was enrolled in chemistry. And they came around and asking all of us how many people wanted to change to music because they were trying to get the music program started.	16:07
Stacey Scales	Right.	16:54
Arthur Henry Kinnard	So you know what I did? I act a fool and I dropped chemistry and got into music. So I never had high school chemistry. I had high school physics.	16:54
Stacey Scales	So you became a musician at that point?	17:04
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Nah, no, never. I never musician. I do a little freelance singing, but I don't know one note from another. No, I don't know. I guess I was curious about music and I guess behind that I really developed an interest in all kinds of music. I appreciate all kinds of music.	17:07
Stacey Scales	What type of things would you do for entertainment when you were coming of age?	17:27
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Well, it is interesting. I guess we just made ourselves happy. We made our own toys a lot of times. We got at Christmas time, we got one toy. That's the only time we got toys and all that kind of thing. And we just made our toys. We would get old rims off of broken down wagons and fashion a pusher out of a coat hanger and we'd go down the street rolling that wheel off that wagon. And we made our sleds and all kinds of things for toys. And so, but course the point of it is, I guess we worked more than anything else. From sun up to sundown, basically. When we came out of the field, we had to go to work in our garden and so on and so on. I started out working at 50 cents a day when I was about nine, I guess about nine years old. And when I left that farm in 1951 to go off to college, I guess I swore I never hit a lick out at anything from that point on. But I discovered that after I got out and got out of college that I guess you say you can get the person out of the country, but you can't get the country out of the person. So I got a little garden right now.	17:35
Stacey Scales	Great. And at what age did you realize that Whites and Blacks were different?	18:44
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Well, I guess it was somewhere around six or seven. I'll tell you an incident. We lived on this farm. And as I said at first, the owner was an absentee landlord and his wife and he would come out to the farm maybe once or twice a month. He would come out to bring the payroll every two months and then maybe they would come out some other times. But they were avid horseback riders.	18:52
Stacey Scales	Oh, yeah?	19:23
Arthur Henry Kinnard	And then they had a little daughter that was the same age of my sister. And when they came out she would allow my daughter, my sister to play with their daughter. I guess it was sort of babysitting. But they were the same age and everything. And at one point when she got I guess about nine or ten, this lady, White lady of course, told my sister that she had to start calling her Ms. Lillian, the young lady's name.	19:24
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Her daughter's name was Lillian Dobson. But my sister said that made her angry and she said she really never did call her Ms. Lillian. But it was little things like that that caused you to believe. And of course, we are all along, when we rode the bus, it was an Interurban bus between Franklin and Nashville. It was sort like a Greyhound or Trailways bus.	19:57
Stacey Scales	Right.	20:20
Arthur Henry Kinnard	And of course we had to ride on the back of the bus. Of course, back in those days, in the '40s and early '50s. We had to always start from the back and fill in. And just, it was a little different. I found out it was a little different when I came to Mississippi in '56 because when I was going to college and riding the city bus, everybody rode the bus. Rich folk, poor folk, Black folk, White folk and everybody.	20:21
Arthur Henry Kinnard	And I worked in Belle Meade for this couple for four years and stayed on the place with them. And because it was understood that we had to ride on the back. But quite frequently, like I was coming out of Belle Meade and all the White folk would be coming out in the morning. And there was maybe about five or six other Blacks working on place like I was. And the bus would fill up and we'd be sitting on the back. And if there was some vacant seats, the Whites would come back and sit beside us and hold conversations with us. But I found out in Mississippi there was no such thing as riding beside any Whites or carrying on a decent conversation with them. So there was a difference. And I tell you an amusing story that happened on the Interurban bus between Franklin and Nashville, when we used to go to the movies and things like that. We would dutifully go to the back of the bus and sit down and all our friends come back and we'd be just having fun on the bus.	20:53
Arthur Henry Kinnard	And so that was some friends of ours who were—actually, their daddy were White and their mom was Black, but you couldn't tell them from Whites. They had the keen noses and blue eyes and everything. But apparently the bus driver did not know that. He thought they were White. So he looked back in his rear view mirror and saw them back there holding conversations with us and just laughing, talking, sitting with us. And he made a comment, he said, "You people come—" to this effect, "Come back from among those niggas," the bus driver said. So they dutifully got up and went on up to the front. And then on occasion when we went to the movie, they would go in the front door of the movie and go and sit among the Whites. But we'd have to go and sit in the balcony just because of difference in skin color. Right?	21:53
Arthur Henry Kinnard	So it was always, and we knew that White folk got better treatment than Black folk. And of course, I know a lot of friends and my wife knows some friends that lived in Yazoo City. And of course, we know that these river towns was always populated with all these different colors of folk because Whites and Blacks mixed up in the cities. You had the field Blacks and the house Blacks. They used to call them Field Niggas and House Niggas. And what would happen in many instances, Whites in the cities would have slaves and they would work alongside them. They would be maids and yard boys. And quite frequently they mixed up from that standpoint. Whereas, on the plantation they had the overseers and unusually the overseers didn't fool with the Blacks.	22:49
Stacey Scales	Oh, yeah.	23:47
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Where you had small numbers, where they didn't have an overseer, the same kind of thing happened. So in the river towns, the large towns in Mississippi, you're going to find there's a difference in color of people. Generally speaking, in rural areas like Itta Bena.	23:48
Stacey Scales	Yes.	24:03
Arthur Henry Kinnard	You're going to have more people that are darker hue than you would in the larger cities. You can notice the difference.	24:04
Stacey Scales	So in the larger cities, were the rules different?	24:12
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Well, they may not have been any different, but the point of it is people didn't always go by the rules. For instance, in the early days it was against the law to teach a Black child to read in many of the southern states. But all of the Whites didn't go along with that. Some of them realized that teaching the slaves, they would be better slaves then they could accomplish more for them. And so they allowed them to learn some things. But as a general rule, it was a kind of threat to them if Blacks would learn what their rights were and would be more prone to not go along with what the norm was in society at that time.	24:17
Stacey Scales	Well, I'm wondering about the relationship between a White man and Black women, and Black men and White women. Was there—	25:01
Arthur Henry Kinnard	—well, we always felt that there was a hostile attitude toward Black men. And of course, there's an unwritten law, people don't talk about it, some writers write about it, but it's some kind of psychological kind of thing that White men are always afraid of Black men because they always perceive that Black men are after their women and there's some kind of feeling that Black men are more viral than White men. And that's a threat. I think it permeates this whole society even today. And I think that's part of the reason why Black men are scorned. And we always say that Black women and White men are the freest people in society. They may be the slaves but they always mixed up.	25:06
Stacey Scales	Could you give an example of that when you were growing up?	25:50
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Well, as I said, there were a lot of Blacks in the community that was a lighter hue. And we knew that they came from White men and Black women. And that was one stuff. And the rule that if it was known that you had any inkling of Black blood, you were Black. And I never could understand why we used that as separation of races, because I say we all human race and many White folk who think they're White are not. There was a man, J.A. Rogers, that wrote a history book one time called Five Black Presidents. And he pointed out four of those guys that might have some Black blood in their background. And if it was officially known they would be considered Black. Thomas Jefferson was one of them. Abraham Lincoln was another one. And I believe it was Andrew Jackson was another. Warren G. Harding. That fifth one he left unsaid because I think it might have been too close to somebody.	25:56
Arthur Henry Kinnard	But there is evidence, plenty of evidence. And there was a case in Jackson, Mississippi though it was saw like a reverse case where it was said, and it came out in the paper several years ago. This happened in the—I think it was either late '40s or early '50s where this White lady fathered a child, she was married to a White man. But eventually they found out that the child was not the husband's child and had a dark hue. And it was generally known that she had been flirting with Black men and they eventually put the child up for adoption. And when I went to Utica, this lady, Black lady, she was very high yellow too. She was running this restaurant and she always had a lot of White friends. And this guy who was driving a beer truck between Jackson and Utica asked her if she knew anybody Black.	27:09
Arthur Henry Kinnard	She had any Black relatives or friends who might want to adopt a child. And I think he was one of her friends that lived in California that eventually took that child to California. He was scorn in schools and I think he started in school in Jackson. Then they had to withdrew him from—withdraw the kid from school because he was scorned by other Whites. But he was, for all practical purposes, Black because apparently his daddy was Black. So that was kind of difficult. But generally you didn't find that kind of thing. I imagine what happened, it was a lot of that. The other thing. But they might have destroyed the babies either before they were born or after they were born and they found out.	28:24
Arthur Henry Kinnard	But on the other hand, if Black women had kids, they usually raised them and went on about their business. Matter of fact, in Yazoo City there was two families, a White family and a Black family. And they were O'Reillys. You had a Black set of O'Reillys and a White set of O'Reillys, but they were all kin. And then there was another family, my wife was telling me about that it was a Black family, but many of them were very fair skinned and you couldn't tell them from White. And she says that some of them are up North now passing for White.	29:05
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	29:51
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Yeah.	29:52
Stacey Scales	And what was your first job that you had? I mean, you worked on a farm?	29:54
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Yeah. Well, I worked for this same man my daddy worked for, he was a tenant farmer at the time. And I started out with 50 cents a day. And when I left that farm in 1951, I was actually making, I believe it was a dollar and a half a day in 1955 when I graduated from high school. And that was in '55. And I believe it was shortly after that they set a minimum wage of, I think it's 75 cents an hour for I believe for employees who employed I think more than 20 people or something like that.	30:00
Stacey Scales	Okay.	30:33
Arthur Henry Kinnard	And so I can recall even when I was staying with these White folks that I was going to college, they paid me $7 a week, but I had all I could eat and a place to sleep. And I sort of basically got my fees out of that. I was a day student, so it was only $36 a quarter at Tennessee State. At the time when I left it was $40 a quarter for the two—well, really it wasn't too issue, because I wasn't staying on the campus. I was a day student for fees. But when I left that farm I was making a dollar and a half a day in 1955.	30:33
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	31:13
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Yeah.	31:13
Stacey Scales	And where did you go? You went to college from—	31:14
Arthur Henry Kinnard	—I went to Tennessee State.	31:15
Stacey Scales	Okay.	31:16
Arthur Henry Kinnard	And then that's when I started staying with these—my sisters, two older sisters before me had gotten similar jobs. So I sort of followed in their footstep and I got a job in Belle Meade. It was a rich section of Nashville. I think at that time it cost 500 something dollars to belong to the country club. And everybody out in that area, it was a suburb of Nashville, I think probably unincorporated area. They were paying about $500 to belong to the country club. Of course, no Blacks could belong to the country club. And at that time they had their children enrolled in private schools.	31:17
Stacey Scales	And you made the decision to go to college from the farm?	31:51
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Well, my dad and mom encouraged all of us to go to school. And in spite of the fact that the owners of the farm didn't care too much about us going school, my dad and mom were determined that we were all going to go to school and they encouraged us to go. And all nine of us eventually went and all nine of us got the first degree. I think five of us had master's degrees and three of us have PhDs. And so the point of it is.	31:56
Stacey Scales	Did the grandparents encourage education?	32:22
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Yes, they did. Of course, all my grandparents are dead now, but they encouraged us to go to school too. They always told us they didn't have a chance to go and they always had to stay home and help the mom. Back in those days, they were large families. On both my sides, let me see, on one side of the family, my dad's side, I think it was 12 of them. On the mom's side, I believe it was 13 children. And of course, when we came along it was nine of us. Now, in my family now we have, me and my wife, have four kids. And my other eight sisters and brothers, the highest number they have is two. Some of them have one. So we just sort of drifted downward.	32:24
Stacey Scales	Right.	33:12
Arthur Henry Kinnard	It's too expensive nowadays to be trying to raise a big family and really make it.	33:12
Stacey Scales	And your grandparents were farmers too?	33:18
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Yes, they were. Yeah, they were.	33:19
Stacey Scales	Did they ever tell you—	33:19
Arthur Henry Kinnard	—they were tenant farmers like my dad was before.	33:20
Stacey Scales	Did they share experiences of racism or just the hard times with you?	33:28
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Well, I can't remember too much of that. I know my granddad on my dad's side worked on a farm called the Old Dr. Polk Farm out there in William County. And back in those days, you see they didn't, and even when I came along, we thought that's the way it was and it wasn't nothing else for us but being subservient to White folk. And we thought that's the way it always was. That's the way it always was going to be. But after I got out and got in college and then I recall some of my teachers who were from other places other than Tennessee in the south, they were not quite accustomed to going to separate theaters, where we going up in the back of the theater. When they went downtown in Nashville to the Paramount Theater the first time they had a rude awakening and they swore they would never go back to the theaters downtown. They had one rich theater out on Jefferson Street was a Black street. But what would happen, the Black theaters would get the movies after they would be old.	33:35
Stacey Scales	Oh, okay.	34:41
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Yeah. If you wanted to see what was going on, what was just coming out, you'd have to go downtown and go sit in the balcony above the White folk. We used to throw popcorn down on them and stuff like that.	34:41
Stacey Scales	Was that your form of protest?	34:54
Arthur Henry Kinnard	I guess it was. But see that's when I found out, when I really went off to college, how bad things was, because the teachers, my history teacher, my advisor name was Merl Eppse, he was head of the history and geography department. He had written a book called The Negro In American History. And he would talk about the NAACP. That was in the early '50s then. And of course, at that particular time, I had not grasped how important it was and everything, but I began to realize things then. I recall when I was a junior in college, there was some older students that had been veterans that were in our classes. And I was not old enough to vote at that particular time. I think I was, must have been 20, but he was, and we were sitting waiting for the teacher to come into the class. And it was a 1952.	34:56
Arthur Henry Kinnard	And that man we were talking about, "Well, who you going to vote for? Who are you for in this 1952 election?" At that time it was, let me see, Eisenhower running against Adlai Stevenson. And of course, Eisenhower was a Republican. And he said, "Well, I'm going to vote for Eisenhower." And I said, "Why you going to vote for Eisenhower?" He said, "I'm voting for Eisenhower because Eisenhower is a Republican. Abraham Lincoln is a Republican. And we should never forget what Abraham Lincoln did, free the slaves." And that was his reasoning behind that. Of course, all of that was kind of exploded because we found out that Lincoln was a politician and he just happened to be in the right place at the right time. And he didn't go all the way anyway because he—actually, he just issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed theoretically some slaves, not all. No slaves in those areas that were not in rebellion January 1st, 1863. And it remained for the 13th amendment actually, after Lincoln was assassinated really to free all of the slaves.	35:58
Stacey Scales	So did that cause a dispute in the class, that conversation?	37:11
Arthur Henry Kinnard	At the time, I don't think it caused any confusion because I was talking to the man. And like I say, I wasn't all that knowledgeable then. And then even in 1954, Supreme Court decision, we all were euphoric about that thing. We said, "Oh, now Blacks are going to get their just rights." And then we find out Whites did everything to get around it.	37:17
Stacey Scales	Right.	37:40
Arthur Henry Kinnard	I think Tennessee was one of the first deep South states to decide on a desegregation plan. They were going to desegregate, I believe two grade, one grade a year until eventually over a period of 12 years everything would be desegregated. That was when I left Tennessee in 1956. They started that plan and there was a lot of riots in different cities in Tennessee because people didn't want it. But when I came to Mississippi, Mississippi had not made any attempt at all to desegregate. As a matter of fact, that year before 1955, before I came to Mississippi, they founded the White Citizens Councils in Indianola, which is about 25 miles from here, with express purpose of preventing any integration on any level in this state. And then the Sovereignty Committee was also organizing. It funneled money into the White Citizens Council with that expressed purpose, prevent integration on any level. And they signed the manifesto I think in 1956 or '57.	37:41
Stacey Scales	What are your earliest experiences voting?	38:55
Arthur Henry Kinnard	I was voting before I came to Mississippi. I think a year before I came, at the time it was 21 was the age of voting.	38:58
Stacey Scales	Okay.	39:06
Arthur Henry Kinnard	But when I came to Mississippi I was already voting. And there was no overt attempt on the part of Whites to prevent Blacks from voting where I lived in Franklin. Because frankly speaking, I guess the ratio of Blacks and White was not enough to have any kind of threat of Blacks gaining political office at that time in Franklin. You see, because I think Franklin might have been 20% Black. So there was really no threat. But when I came to Mississippi, and see the ratio, Mississippi was the last stage to lose its majority Black. And I think according to 1940 census Whites then out numbered Blacks. But there were pockets of Blacks in the state where there was a possibility of Blacks getting into office if they could vote wholesale.	39:07
Arthur Henry Kinnard	But what happened when I came to Mississippi, I did not vote until several years after I got here. And I maintained my residency for voting back in the state of Tennessee. Now, for the simple reason, they still had the poll tax, they still had the literacy test, and you had to live in the state two years and pay your poll tax two years before you could vote. Because in 1965—	39:56
Stacey Scales	—two years before you could vote?	40:22
Arthur Henry Kinnard	That's right. And then there was always that threat when you went to register to vote, all of the voter registrars were White and you had to interpret a section of the Mississippi State Constitution and a section of the United States Constitution. And then the White registrars would determine whether or not you pass or not. And generally speaking, from what I gathered, they would always let the Whites pass it and the Blacks failed it, even PhDs failed it. And then even the few Blacks who were voting, many times they would change the voting places at the last minute and you couldn't get to vote anyway. And then I understand that as a matter of fact, when I came to Mississippi Valley in 1976, I polled some of my classes to ask them how many were voting. And then some of them, I discussed the reason why they weren't voting.	40:24
Arthur Henry Kinnard	And I found out this one young lady who said she didn't vote because she didn't believe in it. And I said, "Why?" She said, "Well, I live on a plantation with my grandparents and they have to always tell a White man," who were on the plantation, "Who they were voting for." And they would always have to vote for the man that the Whites preferred. And if they didn't, they'd have to get off the plantation. That was some other kinds of things that I noted. Some kind of subtlely, not so subtle things that they used to prevent Blacks from voting. Even when the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act were passed by Congress, they would always publish in the local newspapers, all the people who qualified for voting. And if it was known that John Doe over here would registered to vote, if you on the man's plantation, he would put you off. Or if you were working for a merchant in town, you would lose your job. So there was a threat.	41:25
Stacey Scales	They would put the names of people that voted in the paper?	42:31
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Yes, the people who qualified for voting. Before the voting time came along. Once they got on the voting rolls, they would publish him in the local papers. Stated in local papers, newspapers. And that was definitely a threat because people didn't want to lose their livelihood and working for this man on this plantation. And man, it was kind of terrible. Now, we didn't have that problem in Middle Tennessee where I'm from. Now, I understand it was some pockets in Mississippi and in some places in West Tennessee, like around Brownsville. They used to tell jokes about different places.	42:33
Arthur Henry Kinnard	They had a joke out that a Black man driving a new car could not drive through the city of Brownsville. If he did, he would most certainly be arrested for just driving a new car. And there was some places and some towns that they told me about it, especially in Mississippi, that they had curfews back in the '50s, '40s and '50s, that Blacks had to be off the street at certain time. But their curfew were not for Whites, but it was for Blacks at seven o'clock at night. And then if you would walk down the street and some streets had narrow pavements for walking on, that Blacks always had to get off pavement and let the White folk walk by.	43:14
Stacey Scales	Were you ever affected by any of those?	44:00
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Well, I don't recall affected by that, but I recall an incident that happened to me when I was in Jackson early on after I got to Mississippi, probably a year or two after I got here. I guess it was a traffic jam and the police were directing the traffic and he would go a certain way. And so apparently I missed seeing which direction he told me to go. And I went another direction. He came up to the car and used some kind of threatening and foul language to tell me that he was going to do a certain thing to me if I didn't back the car back out. Of course, I dare not say anything back to him.	44:03
Stacey Scales	Right. Were you involved in voter education?	44:49
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Not really early on. In late years I have been. But early on, let's say when I came to Mississippi in 1956 and voter education started probably in the early '60s, teachers, that was a threat that teachers would lose their jobs if they participated in anything remotely related to politics, voter registration or what have you. You couldn't even talk about the Civil Rights movement in your classrooms. If the principal found out about it, then you could lose your job. I heard of people losing their jobs. And as a matter of fact, it was one of my friends who came to Valley the same time I came, he told me he lost his job because he allowed a Civil Rights worker to come into his classroom. He was teaching high school at that time. I'm not sure where it was, but somewhere here in Mississippi. And of course, it was pretty rough back in those days. Because like I said, teachers and principals and whatnot in schools, they could not participate in the movement. If they did, they lost their job.	44:55
Stacey Scales	So did a lot of—	46:21
Arthur Henry Kinnard	—it's that simple. And a matter of fact, it wasn't no such thing as getting due process. If a principal said you were fired on the spot, you were fired with no hearing.	46:22

Stacey Scales	When you were talking about the police, what was the relationship with Blacks and the police? Could they go to them or—?	0:01
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Oh, we always felt that the police were our enemies. And we would dare not let's say exchange any words or differ with them in any way. If we did, we got a club upside of the head. And of course back in those days when I came to Mississippi, there was still lynchings also going on in the state. As a matter of fact, I remember when Mack Charles Parker down in Potterville was lynched. He was accused of raping a White woman, and apparently the jailers left the jail open conveniently for a mob to go in and get him out and they lynched him. That was, I think, 1959. I had been in the state approximately three years. But back to the police, I guess you would say we were frightened of the police. And we felt that police were not there to protect us at all, but to harass us basically.	0:10
Stacey Scales	So with that lynching, for instance, would the police be connected with that or was there a question?	1:26
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Well, there was probably evidence that police were in collusion with, let's say the mobs that would lynch people. And of course, very seldom did any Whites speak out against it. They would acquiesce with what the mob would be doing. Now, the so-called good White folk, they would not say anything, they would just allow things to happen. And the rarely would they speak out. There were a few who would like, it was a man named Oliver O'Emrick, who at one time published a newspaper called The State Times. I think he published for about 10 years. He spoke out some, and for that matter, I think he was beat up a couple of times. He had a newspaper called a McComb Enterprise also, and it was published down in McComb, Mississippi. And I think it was reported in the newspaper once that he was beaten up for something he said in his newspaper, some editorial he wrote in his newspaper.	1:37
Stacey Scales	How did Blacks get their news during that time? Was there many Black papers?	2:53
Arthur Henry Kinnard	We would buy some of the regular newspapers and then there were some Black newspapers basically out of Jackson. I can recall, it was one called the Jackson the Advocate. And then one called the Mississippi Enterprise early on when I came to Mississippi. And I recall this guy named Percy Green who published the Jackson the Advocate, but people later found out that he was being actually paid off by Whites and he would go to all of the Black gatherings and then he would probably go back and inform the Whites what was going on in the Black community and who was saying this or who was saying that when they started the mass meetings in the late fifties and early sixties.	2:59
Stacey Scales	I'm wondering what type of reactions did Blacks have toward when the mob would come and get someone out of the jail or Percy Green who would go back and snitch.	3:50
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Because we would be frightened to death about all of these lynchings that took place. And people was all careful what they said, where they went and what they did because we felt that was no—as a matter of fact, as that lynching of Mack Charles Parker that I mentioned a while ago, you see that's what would happen sometimes with Blacks, you wouldn't get a hearing at all, but it would be just a lynching. People would take the law in their own hands. And what happened eventually when people discovered that Percy Green was apparently being paid by the Whites to publish the paper, many of them stopped subscribing to the paper. But what would happen, he would throw the papers on people's lawn anyway and then they would claim there was so much circulation of the paper when the White folk would actually be supporting him. And yes.	4:03
Stacey Scales	Were there ever times where Blacks took the laws in their own hands?	5:07
Arthur Henry Kinnard	I guess you would say rarely ever did that happen because there was so much repression of Blacks. I recall before I came to Tennessee, it must have been in the late '40s, right after World War II when Blacks came back from World War II, and I don't know what started this, but there was an uprising of Blacks in about 25 miles from my hometown, from Franklin in Columbia, Tennessee. And I don't remember all the facts there, but occasionally I guess there would be some other uprising of Blacks, but usually Blacks had no guns, no weapons and so it would usually come to naught because White folk generally had all the guns and the money. And so whatever little uprising would happen after they quelled a ride or whatever it was, then they would come in and have a kangaroo court and find the Blacks guilty or whatnot, and then sentence them to long sentences.	5:12
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Now let me give you an incident happened in Mississippi since I've been here. It was around 1959. It was a guy named, he's not related to me, but his name was Clyde Kennard. He applied to go to the University of Southern Mississippi. Back in those days, '59, no Blacks were enrolled in any White colleges at all, but he lived in Harrisburg. As a matter of fact, he had been in service, I don't know whether it was Air Force or something, but he was living in Chicago and I think his daddy fell ill or somebody in his family that was running a farm down near Hasbury. And he came back to Mississippi to run the farm, and then he applied to go to the University of Southern Mississippi. He was denied entrance of course. And what happened is that Whites apparently set some traps to get him to do some offenses.	6:24
Arthur Henry Kinnard	They accused him of having liquor in his car when at the time Mississippi was dry. But the guy didn't even drink, he was a very religious person. Then the next thing is, there was a feed store I assume, which he was buying chicken feed from. Well apparently the Whites planted one of the guys who was working in the store to offer him some chicken feed at a reduced rate. So what happened, this guy apparently got—I don't know whether he stole the chicken feed, and he sold it to this guy at a reduced rate, this Clyde Kennard. And so they arrest the Kennard man and they sent him to Parchman. I think he was five or seven sacks, but they sent him to Parchman, that's the penitentiary up here in the Delta. They sentence him for two years on each count of the sacks of chicken feed to Parchman.	7:24
Stacey Scales	Two years on each sack?	8:23
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Uh-huh. And so while he was serving the time in Parchman, that was 1959 I believe it was somewhere there about right after that, but anyway, apparently he may have had cancer or he developed cancer. Some people thought that they may have injected some cancer cells. And anyway, they discovered he had cancer and eventually they paroled him out and he went to Chicago. And he died about a year after I think they discovered the cancer. But it was kind of rough.	8:25
Stacey Scales	And you were telling me the other day about when you came here in 1976 eating someplace or being—	8:58
Arthur Henry Kinnard	To Valley State. Yeah, we came to town, and of course we didn't know very many people here, and when we first got in town, we decided to stop at a restaurant. I don't know what it was called, it might have been called the Rebel Restaurant, but we wasn't paying any attention. So we got out of the van, which we were riding in, started to approach this restaurant and some Blacks told us, "You can't go in that restaurant to eat. That's White folk restaurant." And then we didn't eat there. We later went on to I think, I guess a Kentucky Fried chicken or some other known place that wasn't no problem. But that workplace is here in Delta. In Greenwood, Mississippi at that time, Black folk could not eat there.	9:05
Stacey Scales	In '76?	9:57
Arthur Henry Kinnard	In '76. As a matter of fact, in some recent years there was some restaurant in Greenwood that I don't think Blacks actually frequented. It was called Crystal Grill, I believe, is up on Carrollton Avenue. You may want to go in that grill while you're here, you can go in now. But some of the Blacks who were on the city council protested when they decided to pay for the meals of some White people on the council that were eating in that meal for—I don't know, it was when they got together something for something. And so the Blacks on the council didn't want to pay because they said Blacks couldn't go in. So they finally said, "Well, Blacks could go in it." So after that flap and that published in the newspaper and TV, then I think they kind of opened up and they allowed Blacks to go in there now, I think. But at the time, I don't think any Blacks were going in it. Crystal Grill.	10:03
Stacey Scales	Crystal Grill.	11:11
Arthur Henry Kinnard	You might want to check it out. It's up on Carrollton Avenue.	11:12
Stacey Scales	What did those signs mean to you when you were growing up or as you got older?	11:16
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Well, signs like 'White only' for drinking fountains and whatnot? Oh, I recall all those quite well. And I recall this about those signs: you see in many instances the fountains that Whites used, it was cool water, but in the fountains that Blacks used, it was attached to the White fountain, but it was warm water. And that was the way it was. And we went to the Colored fountain. And in many instances when you were traveling, say across the country or something, in the South especially, there were no restrooms for Blacks in, we call them service stations.	11:23
Arthur Henry Kinnard	And then if there was a restroom for Blacks, females and males would have to go in the same restroom and then they would never be clean, anything like that. And then in the bus stations, there were waiting rooms for Blacks and waiting room for Whites, and they always allowed Whites to get on the buses first. And you couldn't eat in the restaurant, in the bus stations. And then when they finally desegregated those, they took all the seats out and you could stand around the table, but you couldn't sit down. I remember in Nashville, Tennessee, in the Woolworth store, you could and the Crystal's, these Crystal hamburgers, you could order your hamburgers there, but you couldn't eat. You couldn't sit down and eat.	12:12
Stacey Scales	So they had Crystal's back then.	12:58
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Yeah, Crystal's. That's right.	12:59
Stacey Scales	So how'd you feel about being treated like that?	13:03
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Well, at first I didn't really think anything about it. I thought that's the way it always was, and that's the way it was always going to be. But eventually then our consciousness was raised, especially after the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama when all the protests started about all of these things. And it broke out the city and started in 1960. And then we became conscious of it was all wrong and that we should do something about it. Actually, as I said, all during that time, I was in Mississippi from 1956 on, and I never really was in any protest marches or anything during those early years because as I said, I was teaching. And then teachers could not participate.	13:08
Arthur Henry Kinnard	And matter of fact, your principals would urge you not to participate in those kinds of things. Now, I recall when I was down at Utica, I think I was the dean of the junior college at the time, and it was another man that was the business manager of the junior college. Well, the president was another person and he asked his business manager to go to some of those mass meetings that they were holding in the churches. And so when he decided to resign to go to Alcorn State University and he recommended the business manager to be president.	14:00
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Well, the Board of Trustees of Utica Junior College found out that this business manager, whose name was Stokes, had been frequenting some of the mass meetings. And so he asked the president, "Well, did you know Mr. Stokes was going to these mass meetings?" And he told him yes. And he said, well, he didn't send him there to particular participate in what was going on, but to find out, so if was anything going to affect the college that he would know about it. So that's where you answer them. So actually if they had gotten an inkling that the business manager was participating in any way other than an observer, they wouldn't have named him president. They eventually did name him president.	14:42
Stacey Scales	Did anybody vote on campus? Did anybody just take—?	15:34
Arthur Henry Kinnard	I tell you, when I left Utica, I was voting, as a matter of fact, I guess after. I can't exactly remember when I registered vote in Mississippi, but it was probably after the voting rights was passed around the middle '60s when I actually registered to vote in Mississippi after they got rid of the literacy test.	15:36
Stacey Scales	So during the time when that pressure was there, did anybody—?	16:00
Arthur Henry Kinnard	I voted absentee back in Tennessee. And there were few people voting. I recall when I came to Mississippi Valley, some of the older people told me, actually one of them was a minister who was a university minister, said that he and then another man named John James, he's retired from Valley, he said they went up to register to vote and they were asking them silly questions like, "How many bubbles in a bar soap?" That was some of the questions they were asking them to qualify them, some just unheard of things.	16:04
Arthur Henry Kinnard	And then he said, once they qualified to vote, sometime they would change the voting place and tell them, well, they're not voting here today. They would see Blacks coming and they would close down the polls. And then sometime they would, at the time—in the early days, in the early '50s and '60s, they didn't have voting machines. And sometimes they would say they would vote by paper ballot and then they would take their ballots and put them elsewhere rather than put them in the real ballot box. So a lot of times their vote didn't get counted.	16:44
Stacey Scales	Did the NAACP ever play a role in trying to get you all that privilege of voting [indistinct 00:17:31] teaching?	17:22
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Yes. I tell you this, when I came to Mississippi, when I first came in, I joined the State Teachers Association. And we would meet in Jackson that was—so they had a headquarters in Jackson. And Medgar Evers who was, Field's secretary, you recall him, he would be on a corner there. There was a service station that on a corner that was owned by Blacks. And actually it was one of the principals in Hines County that was co-owner of the service station. Well, this man Medgar Evers would be there at the service station. You know how sometimes you hang out at service station and people just get in conversations and things. There was a drug store right by that too. And he was buttonholing us teachers there who were coming by and asking us if we were registered to vote and was encouraging us to go and register to vote, this Medgar Evers was.	17:31
Arthur Henry Kinnard	But the point of it is—as a matter of fact, I don't know. When I was at Utica, I left Utica in '74 and there was not strong movement. There were some mass meetings at churches and some of the ministers and a few other people were urging people to register to vote in their churches, different places, but they were not allowed to come and talk about that at the schools. But in social and civic organizations, they were. And of course we remember churches, some ministers would not allow these people to come into their churches either.	18:32
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Some wouldn't allow the civil rights workers come into their churches for fear that they would be bombed. As a matter of fact, down at Utica where they had these mass meetings in one church, it was bombed. It was fire bombed, burned up. And then I recall even at Utica, one morning we got up and observed that there had been a cross burn at an intersection on the campus. And a Molotov cocktail had been thrown against the sign at the entrance of the campus that was, I guess in around 1965, somewhere in that area.	19:18
Stacey Scales	And those were threats against them?	19:55
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Well, apparently, threats against Black folk.	19:56
Stacey Scales	What type of impression did Medgar Evers leave on that group of teachers? Did people—?	20:01
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Well, we all endorsed what he said, but at the moment, at that moment in—	20:07
Stacey Scales	Watch the microphone. So you're saying at the moment?	20:11
Arthur Henry Kinnard	At that moment in time, in the say the late '50s and early '60s, we were reluctant to say anything or to really join the movement. And most of us did not join in the movement at all. Actually, I got involved in the Voters League meetings and things after I came to Mississippi Valley State. I was not active in any Civil Rights organizations before I came to Mississippi Valley in 1976. And see, when I left Utica, I was an administrator and administrators dare not do anything. I was administrator. Actually, as a matter of fact, I became the Dean in '62 at Utica, so I dared not participate in any activities. Some of the teachers could on the side, but administrators usually got pointed out. They watched administrators. And so from '62 to July '71, I was a dean at Utica. And from '71 to December '73, I was acting president at Utica.	20:12
Stacey Scales	Was there a conscious effort for you to go there and listen to Evers or was that for people that just happened—?	21:32
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Well, in Jackson, we did go to some meetings in Jackson, which was actually about 35, 36 miles away from Utica. And actually I met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr in 1978 at a mass meeting at the Masonic Temple in Jackson.	21:39
Stacey Scales	Was that '68?	21:57
Arthur Henry Kinnard	That was 1958. '58. '58. As a matter of fact, I met his dad back before I left Tennessee. It was really the summer before I came to Mississippi in '56, he was running a revival and the bus boycott was going on over in Montgomery. And so Dr. King's daddy, they called him Daddy King was running a revival in Nashville. And I was living with an uncle in Nashville at the time just before I came to Mississippi. And so my uncle asked me if I wanted to go to the revival one night. He would like to meet all the big folk who came in town. And so I went with him over to the church that night. And it's interesting, after he preached the sermon and he had the last words, he was telling us how the Montgomery boycott was going on over in Alabama, Dr. King's dad.	21:59
Stacey Scales	Oh, okay.	22:55
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Yes. That was 1956 at the height of the bus boycott.	22:58
Stacey Scales	So did they, in the church sessions, talk about the political issues?	23:00
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Oh yeah. Oh yeah. In the churches, in many of the churches they did. But then in some of the churches, the ministers were not allowed, but in some they would.	23:06
Stacey Scales	So you had mentioned that that church got bombed. Was there ever any further insight that was gained on as to who and why?	23:16
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Well, I don't know whether an official investigation or not, it was assumed that it was part of the radical White group. Either the Klan or some White folk who didn't like that they were holding protest movements in that church. See, it was one minister that was the, let's say the ring leader of the protest movement in Utica at the time. He was a member of that church. He was passing some other churches, but he was a member of that church where he was holding protest movements and the mass movements. And so Whites knew that they were holding protest movements. And so that was happening all over Mississippi, burning up Black folk churches.	23:28
Stacey Scales	So that was the fear and—	24:10
Arthur Henry Kinnard	To stop the meetings and whatnot. Yes, indeed.	24:12
Stacey Scales	So how did people survive during times like those? What type of mechanisms would people use to just get through those rough times?	24:17
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Well, the people I understand who were actually directly involved in the protest movement, some were killed, like Medgar Evers. And then it was a guy down in, I think he was in McComb named Vernon Damer, he was killed too. And then three civil rights workers, two Whites and one Black was killed over in Philadelphia, Mississippi, putting in that earth and dam, I know you know about that. And so people always feared for the life and always watched out. I understand some Blacks kept their guns under the pillows at night and then some Blacks didn't participate for fear that something would happen to them. It was a scary time back in those days.	24:30
Stacey Scales	In that time period in your life, the Jim Crow times, is there something that you feel has been neglected in history and if so, what should be included?	25:22
Arthur Henry Kinnard	I'm not sure what I understand that question fully.	25:36
Stacey Scales	Often history as written by historians has been somewhat slanted or biased.	25:42
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Oh, certainly. I see what you mean. Something left out. Well, in many instances, the whole story hasn't been told. More and more today it's being told, but early on, let's say the time I was in college in the early '50s, we had access to certain material and a certain of our textbooks. Most of our textbooks of course at that time were written by Whites. We had a course called Negro History course, and that was written by Blacks and that was pretty inclusive. But all the other history books like American history and World History, either they screened out things about Blacks or they either spoke about them in derogatory terms. So it was not what I call the real history because Blacks either were left out or whenever they were included, it was usually in derogatory terms, talking about slavery or something bad that Blacks had done. And the accomplishments of Blacks or contributions that Blacks made was not really considered, basically.	25:48
Stacey Scales	And my question along with that would be: is there something in your experiences that you think could add to that contribution in light of them, an emphasis, something that you've experienced that you think others could learn from?	27:06
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Well, I think the generations that's coming on today doesn't really fully understand the problems that we experienced. And when we talk about it in our classes today, it's just like, "Oh, did that really happen?" And sometimes I said, excuse me for saying it like this, but the Civil Rights Era sort of hurt us some in that there were a lot of permissiveness. And then it destroyed predominantly Black schools, all Black schools. And you find that discipline was not enforced. And I said people just ran wild. And sometimes kids were pushed on out of school and didn't really get a good education. So sort of like social promotion. And from that standpoint, I think we've lost some men of the businesses that Blacks operated are no longer in operation.	27:24
Arthur Henry Kinnard	And then you had the welfare state coming on. And not to say that that Blacks are only one that participated in the welfare state because Whites getting much more. For instance, Jim Eastland up here who was a Senator in Mississippi, he had a lot of farmland and soil bank and got subsidies for it. And those people getting much more money than that little crumbs that people get on welfare. And I think what has happened is that the way the welfare system developed, it has hurt Blacks and minorities in particular in that, for instance, from this standpoint, people I don't think appreciate when there's little handouts. And I think the welfare system has made people complacent and satisfied and they're going around in a vicious cycle satisfied with that little money that they get from the government. And it's sort of like it's kept many of us quiet, and it has hurt us I think.	28:33
Stacey Scales	I'm also wondering, like you said, elaborate on lessons that could be learned from your generation to future generations.	29:42
Arthur Henry Kinnard	I think especially speaking of students in the school in college and university, even down in the grades now, I think they take things a little lightly. And what has happened in a lot of instances, I think if they could really understand, and some of them, when you talk about what happened to the movement, some of them don't even want to hear it. And they don't appreciate how far we have come, and they think they've always been on easy street and accepting handouts and things when we've had to struggle. And some instances I said, before the welfare system came up in some instances we were doing better than we are now. Because if you look at what's happening to many of the youth of the day, you have this problem of young ladies having the babies over and over. Once they made one mistake, they continue to make them. And they're getting a little money and they are accepting the money and they're just going on.	29:53
Arthur Henry Kinnard	And I think that's gotten to be a moral problem that I think that needs to be worked on. And young men today, and I'm not saying that they are more, I believe racial wise, young Black men who were falling through the cracks, seemed to me. And somehow or another, we're going to have to do something to turn that thing around. I was looking at some statistics last night on that. And we can't hide behind that and say, "Well, racism has caused it." I tell my students there's always going to be racism. And the majority group and the people who got the means are always going to discriminate on the minority group. And I said, "You're going to have to struggle for everything you get and don't hide behind that they are discriminating against us. Do what you can to alleviate the problem of discrimination, but go on and do something to better yourself."	31:04
Arthur Henry Kinnard	And it seems like that a large segment of the youth today are not subscribing to that and they're falling into the drug scene and all of that kind of thing, and it's a big problem. So let's say this about the church now: in the earlier days, I think racial wise, more people attended churches, and the churches did a good job of keeping people together. And that's where a lot of the protest movements were. But so many people today, and I think a lot of people going to church, but they're not taking things seriously from a moral standpoint. And you don't have to go to church to have good morals from that standpoint. But we just lost something. The family and people hop on the family. And of course my wife was from one parent family and she did all right. And there are a lot of others who are doing all right and I glory in those people who were from one parent families.	32:18
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Now I was not from a one parent family. My family, my mom, my daddy was always there all through my growing up. And I think that was a plus. But I do think sometimes one parent families, the kids, they're now that second parent. They're to help support financially, that does cause some problems. And then you don't have two people together to counsel with the children. As a matter of fact, I say many of the kids today are growing up like weeds because parents are not there. And sometimes you find they're out on the street just as well as the kids are. And the kids are just growing up like weeds growing up themselves. And when they get up, they have no morals and no sense of right and wrong and they go astray. And it's a problem in this society. I'm talking about with the Blacks now.	33:28
Stacey Scales	Okay. Is there anything else you'd like to say?	34:29
Arthur Henry Kinnard	I really think that I've said probably everything that I need to say. Unless you have some other questions. I've enjoyed talking with you and I hope there's something that you can glean out of what I said.	34:32
Stacey Scales	I think so. I enjoyed talking to you too.	34:48
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Thank you so much.	34:51
Arthur Henry Kinnard	I stayed in Mississippi and I'm from Tennessee. And so what happened was that after I was here about a week, that's all, I became relaxed. I found out that was some difference in the state of Mississippi from the state of Tennessee, but it wasn't like some people talked about it. I went to a professional meeting one time in 1962 up in Chicago Association of Higher Education at a banquet. At the meeting, I was seen with a lot of dignitaries including [indistinct 00:35:21]. And the lady was the editor of the MBA General. And I had my name tag on, they found out my state was Mississippi, and boy were they crazy about everything they wanted to know. Black folk could own cars, own their own homes.	34:51
Stacey Scales	And this is in '62.	35:44
Arthur Henry Kinnard	And how they were treated down there in Mississippi. And so I said, "Well, we a long way from Mississippi, it may a little different, but it's not like they killing somebody every day." And when I first went back to Tennessee after I was in Mississippi for about three or four months, I went back to Thanksgiving. I was not married. And boy, everybody [indistinct 00:36:16] Mississippi. Some of my cousins said, "Have you ever been to Mississippi?" I found myself defending Mississippi. I said, "How can you talk about Mississippi when you've never been there and you don't know what's going on?" They were saying everything I just said. But I found out there was a difference in Mississippi. But it wasn't to the point like some people characterize, it wasn't quite as bad.I used to have a lot of guilt about Mississippi. Let's say even in Mississippi, you couldn't walk in front of a white mule.	35:44
Stacey Scales	Couldn't walk in front of a white mule.	36:45
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Yeah. I had to walk behind. And of course it is a lot of little subtle things that I guess actually happened to some people. It never happened to me. But there was a custom in Mississippi that when a Black man was talking to a White woman, he never could look her in the eyes straight because you got the idea that he was trying to flirt with her. And this kind on thing you called reckless eyeballing. They said they arrest Black folk in Mississippi for reckless eyeballing, looking at White women. You recall the Emmett Till case?	36:46
Stacey Scales	Yes.	37:26
Arthur Henry Kinnard	That happened one year before I came to Mississippi. Interesting thing happened. There was a guy, one of my college professors, when he found out that I was coming, he said, "Don't go to either bend." And so at the time I was thinking that he said, "Don't go to either." He said, "Where you going?" I said, "Bude." He said, "Well, don't go there." And so I wondered why he said don't go to intervene. And I was thinking it was because it was close to where Emmett Till was killed, which is about 20 miles away from there, over in the Tallahassee County. Well, I later found out that he worked at Lane College under James White who was the first president of Mississippi map here. And apparently he and James White did not get along well. And that was why he was telling me, "Don't go here," because James White was president at the time. So that was an interesting thing.	37:29
Stacey Scales	Mississippi has always been a—that word I think evokes fear.	38:34
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Fear in people. And people say, "I never go to Mississippi, I never work in Mississippi." All this kind of thing. And because it's interesting, they used to tell us about Bilbo. You've heard of Bilbo?	38:38
Stacey Scales	Bilbo?	38:48
Arthur Henry Kinnard	Bilbo. He was a Senator and Governor of Mississippi. And when he died, he was a United States Senator, I believe in Mississippi. And he was known as probably the most racist senator in Congress. And it was known fact back in the early days before Blacks started voting en masse, that the more you could say about Black folk, calling them niggas and this kind of thing, the more votes you get. So Bilbo used to get up and say, "Nigga, nigga, nigga, nigga," just to get White counterparts voting. But some people who knew Bilbo real well said Bilbo treated his Blacks as well or better than anybody in the state. But he just used that—they used that part to get elected. All White folks were doing that. When Blacks started voting en masse, they started using courtesy titles and started coming to Black mass meetings like the Voters League and everything and recognizing Blacks because of those votes. But one time before Black voting, they would never come to any Black ghettos or anything.	38:51

Item Info

Title:

Arthur Kinnard interview recording, 1995 January 01

Date:

January 1, 1995

Creator:

Kinnard, Arthur Henry

Contributor:

Scales, Mausiki Stacey

Description:

Name: Arthur Henry Kinnard; Date of birth: unknown; Place of birth: Franklin, TN; Occupation(s): educator; professor; Residence: not recorded
Informant ID: 1144; Interviewed by: Stacey Scales.

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Location:

Mississippi

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Language:

English

Digital Collection:

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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Provenance:

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

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CC BY-NC 4.0

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

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RL00170-CS-0756
7da605d0-1b1a-4ecc-92ba-875ae993790b
behindtheveil
a14593d2-4be3-4684-8c8c-40a72e2b1653
ark:/87924/r42f7x10f
a14593d2-4be3-4684-8c8c-40a72e2b1653

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Arthur Kinnard interview recording, 1995 January 01

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1. Arthur Kinnard administrative file, 1995

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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