The Jack Rabin Collection on
Series II: Southern Activists
Sub-series 3: Clifford and Virginia Durr
Appendix II.3B: Transcript of Audiotape 17
Location: ?the Durrs’ home
Speaker: Virginia Durr
Interviewer: John [?Imhoff]
Date: Unknown (probably late 1960s or early 1970s)
Repository: University Libraries, The Pennsylvania State University, Special Collections Department, Historical Collections and Labor Archives
Transcriber: Lindsay Keiter and Barry Kernfeld
Item Number: Audiotape 17
The voice of the interviewer, whom Virginia Durr calls “John” just before the end of the present recording, sounds the same as that of the man identified by surname only – Imhoff – in the interview of Clifford Durr heard on audiotape 20.
In this transcript, “[?]” indicates an inaudible word and “[ ? ? ]” indicates something more substantial—two or three words, perhaps a whole phrase, and occasionally an entire sentence—that is inaudible.
Durr: When I thought of psychological explanations of life, and Freud, and the psychiatrists and all, and – I was telling you that as I was coming along as a young woman – young girl, a child particularly, there were just -- my life was just filled with odd, queer, strange people, but nobody considered them queer. They were all just peculiar, regarded as oddities, but no one thought if they were dangerous maniacs and never thought they should be put away or even sent to a sanitarium. They’re just peculiar. They just accept them as being peculiar people.
And it was a very restful, because you never did probe into why they were peculiar. And they were just – your mother and father always had a perfectly good answer as to why they were peculiar. They were peculiar because – well, I told you about my father – did I tell you when my cousin disappeared? He was a husband and a father and had a business and a house and a child and seemed to be a perfectly normal, hardworking young man, and had a pretty blonde wife and a pretty little daughter; and one day he just completely disappeared. And he never has been heard or seen from since. And nobody probed into it. They just – I asked him why. Daddy said it’s ’cause his wife was a Yankee, fed him white bread. He thought that was enough explanation for any man to leave his home and disappearing, was he had a Yankee wife who fed him white bread.
But it made things more restful because, people accepted. You know what I mean? There were – I think I told you about all the old maids that used to come visit and how peculiar they were, with their fortune tellers and all. And then we had an old maid friend who used to – always being followed. And every time she’d come to the house, she’d – some man had been following her. Now today, everybody would get terribly upset and say that you’re all suffering from a sexual frustration and this, that, and the other, and that their lives were just blighted – but nobody worried about ’em at all, as they were able to make a living. The main thing was if you had to support ’em. As long as they were able to teach school or run a kindergarten or take in sewing or make cakes. In those days it was – genteel ladies had very few openings. They could do – they could take in sewing – fine sewing – and they could make cakes for people. They could do a little lady-like catering, like weddings and so forth. And they could teach kindergarten – teach school. And they were just barely beginning to go into offices. That was considered to be extremely, extremely dangerous and very, very common for a woman to work in an office with a lot of men around.
And the whole attitude about men and women’s relationships was so completely different, because the idea was that every woman was a temptation to man, and that men were just full of so much original sin and lust, and desired women so extremely, and that the women were such a temptation to men, that instead of exciting their libido or their sex drives, the whole idea was to damp it down. So a woman, instead of exposing herself, the idea was to keep herself all covered up, not even show her ankles. And the clothes they used to wear were simply incredible. I remember watching my mother dress, and my aunts, and the amount of clothes they wore were just inconceivable. They would start out with a union suit, and then over that they would wear a very long, stiff corset. And over that they would wear a [?floun ...] petticoat and two or three starched petticoats, and a corset cover. And then over that they’d wear a dress, and the dress would be high necked and long sleeved and down to their ankles or their feet. And great big hats.
But the thing was that after they got dressed up, most all women – and you grew up with the idea that you were irresistibly attractive to men, that you had all – you were just – you were so charming and so attractive, that you had to conceal yourself so that the men wouldn’t just go mad over you. And I’m sure it added a great deal to women’s egos, because, the – it was really very much like it is in Italy today. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Italy or not. In Italy, every man thinks he’s a great lover and that he’s just – the women are wild about him, and he just absolutely is irresistible. And in the South, the women that I knew and grew up among, they really all thought that they were just irresistible to men. And I’m sure they weren’t. They thought so anyway, and they spent hours and hours dressing up and thinking about clothes and whether they would paint their faces or not paint their faces.
And so in Birmingham, Alabama, you had a society that was a very really crude society. It was a new town, a new city, based on steel and coal mining, and run by the great entrepreneurs and leaders of the town, a pretty rough lot of hard-bar men. I told you about how they worked the convicts in the mines. And there was a very strong class line, actually, between the south side and the north side. Now all the nice people lived on the south side. They were the people that were the – in society, genteel people. All the working people lived on the north side and out in these industrial suburbs. And on the south side, it was like a village in a way, because it was all centered – when I was a child – centered around Five Points. You’ve never been to Five Points?
Imhoff: No.
Durr: You don’t know Birmingham?
Imhoff: Not very well.
Durr: You get on the streetcar at Five Points or near Five Points, and you would go all around Highland Avenue and down by East Lake, and then go into town. And you would know almost everybody got on the streetcar, and you’d know most of the people that lived in the houses along Highland Avenue.
But, as I remember, growing up you felt absolutely safe. It was – you were never warned of any fears or terrors, and you were allowed to – the mountains you see are all around Birmingham, and they were undeveloped in those days, and you’d walk up on the mountains with a lot of girls and pick flowers and have picnics. It was like you were in a village. and you had a feeling of being completely at home and safe wherever you went.
The enormous Negro population that lived in Birmingham in those days, they lived almost unseen in alleys and in – down in hollows, and they were paid very little. I think that four and five dollars a week was the going wage. And of course they had what they called toting. They’d tote food home from the houses.
Imhoff: So you’d get a salary plus toting privileges?
Durr: Salary plus toting privileges, plus all the old clothes. But of course they lived in these absolute shacks, unless they lived on the place. And they more and more didn’t want to live on the place, because of course they had no life of their own there at all. And their hours were long enough. They would be there when you wake up in the morning and breakfast would be ready. They’d get in about 6 or 6:30. Then you’d have lunch in the middle of the day – some people still had dinner, but – and then they would stay through dinner at night, which is around 6:30 or 7. They’d never get out of the kitchen until about – it was about a 14-hour day.
In the afternoons they’d have an hour or two off that they could sit down and rest if they weren’t polishing silver or something. But in addition to the cook, who did some cleaning, you also had a washwoman and a furnace man and a yard man, all of whom were paid about a dollar, a dollar and a half a day. And so, although people were not – only a few people were very rich, every household had one or two servants. And I wouldn’t say it was an idyllic life by any means, but it was certainly an easy life. All the ladies took naps in the afternoon, and nobody had to do any washing or ironing or much cleaning up or cooking or washing dishes. So the ladies used to take drives in the afternoon. They would go to the grocery store in the morning and the market, the shopping. And then after their naps everybody would get dressed up and go out and take a drive in their automobile. Stop someplace for – maybe go to the country club. The country club was on Highland Avenue and that was great center where everybody gathered in the afternoon, not for drinks but for lemonade.
You – I wasn’t really – I wasn’t aware of what an awful snob I had become – a racist too. And I wasn’t even aware of the class divisions until I got up in my teens. Then I began to be aware of the fact that we didn’t have money enough to keep up with the Joneses. We belonged to the country club, but there used to be quite a lot of bitter feeling about the bill. Did we charge too many chicken sandwiches or lemonades or had lunch out there too often. Daddy would fuss about the bills.
And then when all of my friends began to go off to camp in the summer, I wasn’t able to go. because they would go to these expensive camps up in Maine and Vermont, and we were never rich enough to send me off to that. And then I remember too the – I began then to realize that the – both – the class lines first. Now I was – felt sure that I belonged to the upper class, but I didn’t have money enough to keep up with the really leaders.
And there was a – quite a society in Birmingham in those days. There was a woman named Mrs. Maben, whose husband was in oil, a big [?] Sheffield, and she had a Lincoln automobile or a Rolls Royce, and two men on the box, and she used to have a French governess for her daughter. She went to New York every year and got her clothes. There was a Mrs. Barrett, who was her great rival. She was also a beautiful woman. These were really society leaders. They would have great balls and [?], they call them, where you had favors, like the old cotillions.
The town was money-mad, really. The values became – as I got older, more and more the values in Birmingham became money values, because more and more new people came into it. And it was absolutely wracked by labor troubles, which I didn’t know anything about. I lived a very protected and ignorant sort of life, and while I went to public school and went to the public high school for two years, I was still isolated in a small group. This group I belonged to, we were perfectly sure – we never discussed it, but we were perfectly sure we were the top group in the whole city. But within that group I was always conscious of the fact I was – seemed to be poorer than any of the other girls, so while I could brag about my ancestors, I couldn’t brag about my income, and it created rather great feelings of inferiority in me, because my clothes didn’t come from Fifth Avenue. I didn’t go to Dobb’s Ferry. I wasn’t able to go off to these great fancy camps.
Interviewer: What was Dobb’s Ferry?
Durr: That was a very fashionable boarding school. The Castle, and Dobb’s Ferry, and Foxcroft. The girls were sent there by – up there, and really – I think one of the reasons they were sent there was to meet rich men, because the South still had the idea that their daughters were their best investment, that if they could just get a rich Yankee, that that was the best investment they could make.
But I did go off for one year to boarding school. First I went to New York for a year. My mother had a – my mother and father had a friend, a relative there who took girls. She had a big apartment, and she would let girls come up and stay with her, and give them a taste of New York culture. They’d go to plays and theater and opera, and she’d introduce them to eligible young men. When I was about 15, my mother sent me up there, to Aunt Mamie, because she was in despair of me then, because I was getting very tall and I was extremely nearsighted, and while I – I was a fairly pretty girl. I had really lovely hair. I must admit I had beautiful blond-gold hair. But I wasn’t – I was too tall and too thin and too nearsighted. But more than anything else, I loved to read. I had an absolute passion for books and for reading, which – so mother was terrified I was going to be a wallflower and an old maid, and that was the most awful fate could visit anyone, to be a wallflower and old maid. So I had some beaus, but not any of them that were just great catches, so she thought if I went to New York, that maybe Aunt Mamie could rub some of the rough edges off of me.
So I went and stayed there and went to Miss Finch’s school, which was a boarding school where you were taught to pour tea and walk properly and enter a ballroom. Then I also got quite a good education while I was there too, I must admit. And then I was taken to the opera, which bored me to death, and a few plays, which I liked, but even in those days New York was – that was about 1918 – New York was just as safe as it could be. I’d walk back and forth to school and walk through Central Park. There again, you felt perfectly safe. Nobody warned you about being knocked in the head or anything of the kind.
Then I came back and stayed a year at home, and my – began to improve. My beaus began to get more eligible. Mother used to hide my glasses when I’d have a date, because she thought that glasses would drive any young man away.
I must have told you all this before though.
Imhoff: I heard part of it.
Durr: Well I won’t repeat myself, but the thing was, in Birmingham at that time, I began to be aware then, more and more, of the fact that my role in life was to get a husband, a rich husband, and that was the role that all other girls I knew played. We weren’t trained for anything. We weren’t trained for – to do anything. We were just trained to be charming and get a husband. But – and also, a rich husband. That was unspoken, but very much to be desired.
And then I began to be aware more and more of Birmingham as a city and realized the terrific competition there was between the girls, the eligible young men. And then the young men at that point were pretty drunken lot, they were. Some of them, awful sods, and you’re still supposed to be awful nice to them still, whether they’re drunk or sober.
But the thing I think that really made me get some idea of what the world was actually and get me out of this provincial attitude of being just a Southern girl and trying to get a husband, was when – I did get to Wellesley. So all my reading had some effect, because I passed examination and went to Wellesley. And the two years I spent at Wellesley was really an eye-opening for me. I began then to see the world in a much broader light. But then the money ran out and I came back home and made my debut and got a job. Oh, that was a terrible blow to my family, when I got a job. I got a job as a law librarian, and that was genteel enough. Still, the very fact that I had to get a job was a terrible blow to them.
But then I married, and I got into the Junior League, and I did all the proper things. We had a nice little house, and Cliff was working for the Alabama Power Company. And then the Depression came. And it was exactly like all of the trappings of a stage stripped away, and you get down to the bare bones, because there in Birmingham – have I told you this before?
Imhoff: Haven’t heard much.
Durr: There in Birmingham – we had about 300,000 people in Jefferson County, and over 100,000 got on relief. They were literally living on Red Cross relief. There was no government relief, you see.
Imhoff: What about yourself? Did you keep your job?
Durr: No. What happened there was this: my brother-in-law – my sister had married Hugo Black, and he’d gone up to Washington as Senator. And Cliff was working for the power company as a lawyer. My father lost everything he had. He lost his house, and he lost – he had to mortgage it to the hilt. Finally lost it. He lost all the real estate he owned and property he owned. And he really – the plantations down in Union Springs, he had to sell them for taxes. They’re the ones that Maytag bought. And now they hold the field trials over them, sedge fields. So everything he had was just gone, and he finally and my mother had to come live with us, and that was a terrible . . .
[Side A of the tape runs out here, in mid-sentence. Side B resumes, also in mid-sentence.]
Durr: . . . in the past, so that – but you just look around, and – wherever you go, and see who it is that pays the piper, and then you’ll find who it is that calls [?culls] the chickens, but in Alabama I think that the corporations control the state. In fact I don’t think there’s any doubt about it. I think that – not all Northern corporations, but the Russell mills and the [?Coleman] mills. The – there’s a worship of money. The legislature’s controlled by the moneyed interest, don’t you think so? And they don’t want you all to know too much. I think they want you to be well trained and know how to work for a big corporation, but I don’t think they want you all to be really well educated. You might want to share some of the power.
Imhoff: No I think – of course when you talk about power, I think that – public office, there’s too much emphasis placed on that in terms of what you can do, because so many times public office is nothing but a front for carrying out decisions that have already been made.
Durr: I couldn’t agree with you more. But what are you going to do when the economic power is so much more powerful than the political power? How are you going to get around that?
Imhoff: That’s a good question. [ ? ? ]
Durr: They’ve tried it in other countries, and then the economic and political power joined. It looks like you have a – you may have a dictatorship. But I think it’s going to happen. I think in this country though it’s happening all the time, but I think it’s happening not that the – for the masses of people, as it is in a revolutionary country, but I think that the business interests and the government are coinciding more and more. And I think that – I don’t know what’s going to be the end result. I have no idea. I wish I would know. Wish I could live long enough to hear the end of it and see what might happen.
Next time you come, I’ll tell you about the New Deal in Washington and what we tried to do there. But I was trying to tell you the [?] way I felt about the Southern society. I don’t know whether I got it over to you or not, I ever made a clear statement of it. But I did try to tell you how deeply I feel it’s just an insane society. By and large, really crazy.
Now Cliff, I remember, [?] he often says things that are very interesting and wise. We came back here, and I was [?wanting] to leave so, and I kept saying saying to him, “But this society. It is absolutely insane. It’s crazy. Just crazy.” And finally one day, he said, “Look. I know it’s crazy.” He said, “It’s just as crazy as can be.” But he said, [?] society in Washington by the time we left – you see that was when McCarthy was raising. “I think it was crazy too.” But he said, “What you’ve got to realize is, is that insanity of a society or a person, there’s a reason for both. You’ve got to find the reason [for insanity]. You can’t just say, ‘people are crazy’ and [?]. You’ve got to find why they’re crazy and try to do something about the causes of this.” But that you’ve also got to accept insanity as a fact of life. You know what I mean? Did that make any sense to you or no?
Imhoff: Yeah. Sure it does.
Durr: Um-hmm. And then he said, “You just tell – you’ve got to stop this protesting against it and accept insanity as a fact of life, both insanity in people and insanity in the society. And you have to cope with it as best you can.” Well, I think that’s the only sensible approach, because if you . . .
Unknown voice: I just put another [?]
Durr: And it may be it’s better to go back to the way it was when I was young. You just said, “Miss Bessie was just queer.” [?] go into that.
Imhoff: I think I see what you mean. It’s like if you’re a doctor or a nurse, you don’t want to faint when you see a trickle of blood. You have to be . . .
Durr: Exactly!
Imhoff: . . . objective enough to look at it so you . . .
Durr: Exactly. You got the [ ? ? ] than you do, John. You get the point exactly. In other words, if you live in a society, a crazy society, you’ve got to accept it as it is and not keep on saying, “It’s insane.” [ ? ? ] up, or try to run away.
Okay. That’s all for today. If you’re interested in that, I don’t know whether I did a very good job.