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	Larry Rubin: [in a southern accent] Howdy y’all. I’m here in a house smack dab in the middle of the rural area of Georgia. Where about 30 miles from Albany, Georgia. There’s no roads out here, just a red clay pass almost. There is no paved roads, I mean. The red clay roads of Georgia. The area around here is rather flat. There’s not too many swamps, although there is some. And there’s real beauty and the land. The, there, there’s many colors. There, there’s the red clay hills and the roads and the sort of shade green color of the fields. This is the pecan and peanut center of the world. Right here. It’s mostly because of peanuts they grow. They also grow cotton and corn. A friend of mine who is working with us, in fact our boss, Charles Sherrod, said that’s why they going to classes here: rich and poor. That is, white and black. There’s, you know, the theory of the unity between the poor whites in the Negroes, that, well this really existed after the Civil War. But there are no poor whites here. The whites of the owners of the vast plantations in the farms, and the Negroes work for them. Very few p- poor whites. There are some fairly wealthy Negroes who own some small farms, who own businesses or who are in the professions: lawyers, doctors, etc. (0:02:38)	0:00
	In fact, the structure, the structure of society is that there is a cast of voters, that is the whites, who through the Negro elite, that is, ministers, the teachers, and the professionals, transmit their system of segregation to all Negroes. Of course, is not as simple as all that. The leaders of the Albany movement are by in large, in fact 100%, Negro businessmen and lawyers and doctors.	2:38
	Larry Rubin: And, also, there’s quite a large group of ministers, who are the, in some cases, unwilling allies of the movement, but a lot of ministers have to do it or they lose a lot of members of their churches. I’m talking about the Albany movement, which is the movement for equal rights for Negroes in Albany. Actually, it was started by SNCC, or rather, it was started through SNCC instigation last year. And the group has now become—well there’s many conflicts between the adults in the Albany movement and the young people in SNCC. You know, there’s always conflicts in any movement. But, I was thinking about the ministers. A lot of them have to go along with the Albany movement or they, they lose members, and a lot of the Al-- ministers in the county’s, Lee County in Terrell County, that is rule areas, live in Albany and have come in contact with movement there and so Linda’s their churches in the counties and help us out quite a bit. The leading minister in the movement is a Reverend Wells. You know, when I say minister they are all Baptist down here, there is nothing else but Baptist, a few Methodist. Most of these people are not full-time ministers.
	Rev. Wells, for instance, who, who, who has four churches, for small churches in, in the counties, is a sandblaster out at the Marine bases here in Albany. I don’t know whether the majority of these have been ordained or whether they are lay ministers, but the, the position of the minister in, in Negro society here is very analogous to, oh the, let’s say union leader among, among workers. I mean, their word is taken [audio cuts out (0:05:42)] to be said, and they’re really, they have quite a bit of respect. Of course, they are losing it now as the young people are—become more educated and, and go to schools more. And, this makes a very uneasy, and this is one of the reasons, I think, why we get as much support as we do from the ministers.	4:52
	Larry Rubin: The school situation out here is just awful. I mean, the Negro high schools are, will you graduate; many people graduate from high school without ever learning how to read or write. Basically, high schools, the Negro high schools, and some of them are called—like in Lee County they call it the Monroe Negro Training School—and that’s just what the high schools do: they train the kids how to be Negroes. One doesn’t come to an overnight. There’s a lot of things to be learned. He got to learn to say ‘Yassa boss’ to every white man that talks—you got to learn to scratch your head and to laugh. It’s quite an art here. It—Negroes to become niggers. It’s quite a—its, its quite difficult.
	Larry Rubin: We’ve been working, well, about half our time in the city and have our time in the counties. There’s been a series of demonstrations the past week or so, the past week and a half in Albany. There’s a big boycott going on downtown, boycotting the downtown shopping centers because they don’t hire Negroes. Well, demonstrations are illegal in Albany and picketing is illegal in Albany. Actually, there is no law as such it’s taken as a matter of course that everybody who demonstrates will be arrested. In fact, the, the leader of the Albany movement sold out at one point and wrote an agreement with Chief Pritchett, who is the chief of police in Albany, that there would be no more demonstrations.
	Anyway, since there can’t be demonstrations, what we do is, kids walk through town, not in a line, just wander individually wearing T-shirts saying “don’t buy uptown or downtown.” SNCC people, and when I say kids I mean 13 and 14-year-olds from the high schools, SNCC people don’t take part in these because we don’t want to get arrested, we don’t want to stop our work. When we get arrested, our, our, our work is stopped. We can’t canvas we can’t go from door to door in the rural areas getting people to vote. We do everything we can to avoid arrest, in fact. Every time we are stopped by the police we are very polite. We, we avoid situations. We try not to drive in cars in an integrated group. We try not to walk through strange towns (there’s a lot of little towns around here) in an integrated group. Our main job is talking to Negroes and getting them to register to vote. There’s a lot more to it than that, I mean, I look at it in terms of this is, this is the first level of any real movement for social change. I hope, of course, that there will be unionization down here of the workers. They were very careful to, to not arrested. We take many safeguards. We’re, we’re, with were eating regularly. We, when we live out in the counties, we live with people who, well you know, give us a lot of whatever they got. When we live in Albany, we have good food, it’s not extravagant, but we eat three meals a day and we get a lot of sleep. The work isn’t that hard physically. For one thing, we can’t work too much during the day because people aren’t home from, aren’t home from work, so we have to go for three or four hours a day. That’s all we can work. The rest of the time we write reports to the central office or we read or talk or do research. This past week has been pretty busy, working on this demonstration behind-the-scenes. But, see, every move we take, every fart we make, we have to write a report. I carry around a little green book, and I mean, every time I, I blow my nose, I have to write this down this book.	8:15
	And, each day we write up reports for the central office in Atlanta. And each week we make a summary of these daily reports. And we also have to fill out an activity chart, that is, where were going to be every second of every day. So, everybody, you know in Southwest Georgia, in Atlanta, knows where everybody is every second of the day that way if something happens, they get on it right away. I mean, for instance, when we were put in jail, Atlanta heard about it within an hour. Atlanta knew that we were in jail. And, it’s done this way. I mean, it’s not a haphazard thing.	11:04
	Larry Rubin: The people that are in charge—one thing that really tickles me down here is the attitude that people have towards Jews. You know, it’s no exaggeration to say that every Jew down here is rich. Albany was founded, evidently, by a group of Jewish businessmen back before the Civil War. In fact, Albany was named after Albany, New York in the hope that it would become an industrial center of the South, which it never did become. It’s becoming a, the transport center if anything. Anyway, everybody down here—I mean the concept of Jew is totally out of people’s thinking. Everybody maybe knows one Jew, and they work for him. Everybody has worked for a Jew. I was, I was—when I hitchhiked to Albany, I was—I got a ride from a truck driver, and he was telling me that the owner of this truck company was a full-blooded Jew, and that this was the only Jew he had ever seen in his life.
	It, it, it was amazing. He said that this guy looked amazing. He was kind of short with dark hair and a big nose. There’s no a—there’s no real anti-Semitism as such. It’s just a Jew is an oddity. Jew is considered somebody who is very shrewd and rich. I’ve attended to Jewish services here, I took your advice Ma, and the first thing I did when I got here was go to synagogue, they’ve got a lot of people of the Jewish faith. And, the stereotype is [unsure: (0:13:57)], they’re rich and they stick together. They stick together because they have a real moral superiority. Remember that the Jews here are not second or third generation. They’re, they’re not peoples whose parents were immigrants. Jews have been in this area for hundreds and hundreds of years. A lot of them, a lot of their parents fought in the war for the South. Its—you run across people named Stonewall Cohen. There, there’s somebody in the phonebook named Abner Israel. They’re part of the Southern tradition. They have a southern accent. They, by in large, consider themselves outside of the southern problems, and, and they don’t associate the South, really, with themselves, although, I mean, they, they do in the historical sense that they’ve been here a long time.	13:17
	But, they’re, they, well they consider themselves above the whole situation. They consider themselves above both white and Negroes, you know, the typical white southerner and the Negro. You really can’t discuss the problem with them. They’re much wrapped up in their own affairs. They tend to be much more intellectual than most people here. And they, of course, are very proud of, of being Jews. And, like I said, they have this superiority complex. I spoke to the Rabbi. I became pretty good friends with the Rabbi, in fact, of Albany, Rabbi Friedman. And—well he’s, he’s only been here about three years. He’s from Connecticut, and he says he believes in separate but equal, and that he doesn’t understand why people are coming down here to—you know, why they are so interested in the problem. And I told him why it’s an important problem, and, you know, we discuss it. I went after services—he invited me over to his house one night.	15:07
	Larry Rubin: Well, I’ve got a lot more to say but the tape is running out, so flip it over. It’s, it’s going. I’m going to stop now. Oh, you know, to put this thing on three and three-fourths rotations per minute there.
	[no voice (0:16:43) –(0:17:02)]
	Larry Rubin: Interesting that a lot of the Negroes here feel that the situation would have been a lot worse if the Ne—if the Jews hadn’t been the bosses because they still feel a sense of identification with the concept of Jews, because the Jews, they feel, were an oppressed people just like they are now.
	Larry Rubin: Ma and dad, I’m going to have to do something that I know is going to upset you very much, and I can only hope that it doesn’t upset you too much, you’re not overly upset by it. Remember I told you that I need to stay here extra weeks to make up credit for school, that I didn’t spend enough weeks at my other jobs. Remember, I’ve come home after every job. I even came home when I was in San Francisco, and—you know, I, I cut some time off my jobs because I stay home longer than I should have. Well, I’m going to have to stay here straight through until school starts to get this credit.
	I’m going have to do that, and I, I will be able to come home. I know that, under the circumstances, that it would be better if I came home, and I know that this is—I know that you both had a very hard time of it while I’ve been down here, and I—you, you know, I just can’t tell you how much it hurts me that you are going through this. I mean, every time I speak to you I, I can’t do anything for the rest of the night. I just sit there and, and, and—I mean, every time I even hear from you, when you—when Ma called Faith and Penny, Faith I think she spoke to, and told her to write—I, I just couldn’t do anything for the rest of the time. I just had to sit and, and, and worry. I know, I know this hurts you, and I wish I could come home, but I just can’t. And, you know, I love both of you very much. It’s the truth, but I just can’t do it. I, I hope that you are, that you’re not disa—you know, that you’re not any more upset than you are upset now. And Ma, please don’t worry. Everything is, is fine here. This—I’m doing something which I feel is, is very important. I’m getting a lot out of it. And tell the Greiber’s that I’m, I really am sorry that I can’t come to the wedding, it just can’t be done. I can’t do everything. And, I have to live up to my responsibilities. It’s very important.	18:22
	Larry Rubin: Oh, I’m sending, in this package here, the movie that I took so far. Actually, I made a bad mistake.
	I should’ve brought the, you know, camera, the regular camera, to take slides or snapshots. For one thing, I’m not always around a place where I have electricity to take indoor movies. Most of my movies is indoors instead of outdoors. And, it’s really a pain on the people that I take it, too, when I do find electricity, because a movie has to be on a long time in the light is very bright and it breaks up the meetings, you know, that I take it from, and I have to make more of a big deal out of it that I wanted to. Also, it’s, it’s too big. If I had just a little camera, it would be a lot better. And, anyway, there is no projection down here to see them. A lot of people want to see the movies that I took and I, I don’t have anything to show it on. But, be that as it may, I would appreciate it very much if you would develop these pictures. I’m going to, of course, take the rest of the films and use up all the films that I have. There’s plenty of things to take pictures of down here. And, it’s fun. It’s a lot of fun for me to use the movie camera. I’m experiment with different things. I’m experimenting with the telephoto lens and with taking pictures from automobiles and with close-up shots. That’s why a lot of the pictures, I guess, won’t come out because this is the first time that I’ve done it with this. But it is a heck of a lot of fun, and the telephoto lens adds quite a bit to things that I can do. I’ve also experimented with taking slow, slow-motion movies and things like that. So, if you could develop them, don’t send them down here because there’s nothing we can do with them, and as I take more movies, I’ll send them back. I would, you know, I would love to see them, but there’s no way to do it. But I’ve become known for taking movies of things, and, you know, this is what I do. And they requested that I take some movies for them; that is, the officials of SNCC requested that the movies I take be used for SNCC.	20:37
	Maybe they’ll pay for the film, I don’t know, if I get anything good. But, like I say, a lot of the things that I’ve done our new and experiments. So, so I don’t know how it’s, how it’s going to be, and if you could develop, develop them I, I would appreciate it. I would like to take the movie camera with me to Antioch to take movies there. You know, I really get a kick out of this. I, I really enjoy it. Oh, but, I remember that dad want remember that dad wanted, dad wanted to take movies of the show. I could mail the camera to you, I could send it, if you could give me the name—the, the time synagogue show will be. And, then, when you’re finished with the camera, you could just mail it back to Antioch. Once I get finished here there will be any rush, you know, to take movies at Antioch. In fact, I could just take it—you know, even if it just got there in the last week or so, even if, even if I just had it at Antioch a few days, and then I could bring it home when I come home after next quarter, you know, next quarter at Antioch. I will be home then. So, I, you know, like I said, if you just tell me when the date is, I could send it back.	23:17
	Larry Rubin: How is everybody? Is Graham okay, both grandmas? Would you please, please give my regards and my love to grandma Rubin and grandma Pauline. I know I should write to both of them, and I haven’t written to anybody, you know the way I am, and it’s especially—the way I am about writing letters, it’s hard, and it’s especially hard down here when I’m so interested in what I’m doing; I’m so engrossed in the whole atmosphere down here.
	Well, give, give them my love, and be sure to tell Goldie and Bobby that I’m sorry that I can’t come to the wedding. I’ll, I’ll send them a card or a gift or something. I am very sorry.	25:32
	Larry Rubin: Oh, speaking of the camera. I’m very glad that dad bought that filter holder for the telephoto lens. I’ve used that quite a bit. I’ve taken a lot of outdoor movies with my indoor film. Like I say, most of my film was taken indoors.
	Larry Rubin: Good news! A lot of good news. I got the Antioch record today, and it said that the NSA—remember that’s what I fought so hard for last quarter—won. They said that the Antioch committee to abolish NSA didn’t even form this quarter, and NSA isn’t very gratified to that, because of that. I think that NSA, the National Student Association, is a very important thing for Antioch, and could serve a very good, a good purpose there. Speaking of the record that I got, I want to read an editorial to. It said—I, I want to read this—it says—this is the editorial column:
	“Southern salutes”—that’s the name of the, the headline—it said: “Larry Rubin”—that’s me—“is doing something useful this quarter, and he didn’t have to spend four days in jail to know it. We had to hear of his arrest to know that he was doing something useful. We salute Larry. The unfortunate aspect of our salute is that it’s become ritualized and disbelieved. It’s hard to be taken seriously, but we mean it. We salute Larry. It’s heartening to know that Sheriff Zeke T. Matthews, called all sorts of names by the New York Times and even more reputable sources, did not try any funny business this time. We refuse to question people’s motives. We also salute sheriff Zeke T. Matthews of Terrell County, Georgia this week.”
	Larry Rubin: And you asked me why I love Antioch so much. Antioch is undoubtedly the greatest place on earth. I just miss a lot. Wherever I go I miss Antioch. I’m always talking about things.
	Larry Rubin: As I was making this very serious recording, one of my fellow coworkers, Jack Chatfield, bust into the room and rudely interrupted this recording. He’s, he’s pushing his way forward and insist on saying something to you, some going to give him the chance before he socks me over the head with his [unsure (0:28:40)] which he suing over his head in the air right now.	28:16
	Jack Chatfield: Hello, Mrs. Rubin, I’m certainly glad to be speaking with you from Southwest Georgia. Things are required around here now. I just got out of jail, myself, [unsure: (0:28:52)]. Things were all right jail. First, I believe in equality, of course, I believe that one people is as good as the next.
	Larry Rubin: Jack, Jack is our interpreter of the southern mind. He does a very good imitation of our good white brothers down here. He got put in jail during the demonstration. He was walking down the street and he stopped to talk to one of the girls that had a T-shirt on. When the police stopped him and asked for his identification and he refused to give it, he thought he was being a big civil rights—you know, that this was a terrific civil liberties position. Myself, I thought it was idiotic: it wasn’t necessary for him to go to jail. He was put in jail for refusing to obey a, obey an officer. You know, these cops don’t put you in jail unless they have something on you. Now, I was stopped also. I happen to be driving down the street during this demonstration. But they let me go because I was very polite to them, and, you know, I’m not interested in going to jail. Jack, I don’t know, maybe he likes it in jail or something.
	Larry Rubin: Well, anyway, I hope you have a very good Thanksgiving weekend.
	We’re going to Nashville, Tennessee this afternoon. This is—today is—Wednesday, and were going to Nashville. There’s going be a big conference in Nashville over, over the Thanksgiving holiday. Can be a lot of fun. People from all over the country are going to be there. This can be parties and dancing around, and everybody kind of lets loose, let’s all their tensions out. And, of course, there serious business too. I’ve never been to Nashville. We’re leaving pretty late tonight. We have a meeting to go to tonight and then were leaving. So, I’m looking forward to it. You know, it sounds like a lot of fun. Everything down here isn’t work.	30:13
	Larry Rubin: You know, while I’ve been down here, I’ve read quite a bit and I’ve written quite a bit too. I’m really trying to get over my phobia against writing. You know, all these reports I have to write—is what I’ve been writing, and I think it’s helped me. And I, I have read—I’ve read this collection of books. Dad might be interested in getting this: it’s a book called The Nonconformers. It’s a paperback put out by, by Valentine. I’m sure you can get it on any newsstand. It’s a collection of about 40 essays on all sorts of different subjects. They have things in here by Martin Luther King, by James Reston, by Bruno Bettelheim, by Basil Davison, and he goes on and on Carey McWilliams wrote something. And on all sorts of subjects: on, on the European situation, on the American situation. It’s, it’s very good and its encapsule gives a lot of the, not radical, but liberal interpretation of national and international affairs.
	Larry Rubin: I know that dad wanted to discuss with me the possibilities of my future, I guess generally, and staying down here. I’m very interested to discuss this with him. I would like to do it. Sorry that I will be home to do it. I, I guess the best way, dad—I would appreciate very much if he did it—would be to tape your ideas and send them down here.
	I hope you have enough tape up there. If not, you can just buy some or erase this and send it up. If you can tape your ideas to me, see, then I could send back a tape back and forth, and we can discuss it like this. It’s better than doing it over the phone or through letters. And is the next best thing to doing it face-to-face, to me being home.	32:44
	Larry Rubin: Well, it’s getting about the end of the tape. I’ll be signing off. We’re, we’re going to Nashville. I’m sorry I had to cut you off the telephone so, so abruptly last time, but the—everybody was yelling at me, and I, I just couldn’t keep talking. Well, everything down here is okay, and I’m happy and doing a lot of good work. I’ll be home at the end of next quarter.
	[end of audio]