The Jack Rabin Collection on Alabama Civil Rights and Southern Activists

Series II: Southern Activists

Sub-series 6: Myles Horton

Appendix II.6: Transcript of Audiocassettes 03 and 04

Location: Birmingham, Alabama

Speaker: Myles Horton

Interviewer: Jack Rabin and an unidentified man

Date: November 16, 1974

Repository: University Libraries, The Pennsylvania State University, Special

Collections Department, Historical Collections and Labor Archives

Transcriber: Barry Kernfeld

Item number: Audiocassettes 03 and 04

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.

Rabin: Our purpose as academics is to train our graduate students so that they can go and help record this – what we consider perhaps the most important event in 20th century America and maybe in all of American history. It certainly is the operationalization of Jefferson’s ideas or whatever and presumably is what they founded the country on.

Horton: At least it was an exciting period. It was a privilege to be a part of it. I know that.

Rabin: Let’s see. Then we talked about Aubrey Williams, and I’d like to – the two things I’d like to talk about – I know our time is limited – is Aubrey Williams and the Highlander School. First the Highlander School.

But again, about our organization. I left it incomplete. We’re just a group of college professors, and we’ve collectively spent, just in cold cash, six or seven thousand dollars out of our pocket on this and expect probably to spend a lot more. No foundation grant. No university support.

Horton: Yeah. Just [?].

Rabin: It is a chartered foundation. It has an archives with over 50,000 documents so far, an oral history and visual history project, and also, a new thing, a consulting service [ ? ? ]. We occupy about 400 square feet. The university does provide some space. They provide us lights and space.

The purpose of this group is to collect primary source material, and we’re finding it exceptionally difficult to keep [ ? ? ], and so – but we don’t want to be left in a situation where so many people are left in, of having to go ahead and just read newspaper accounts of newspaper accounts of newspaper accounts.

Horton: Yeah, rewrites.

Rabin: This is basically what we’ve [ ? ? ]. Cliff and Virginia Durr have been very helpful. We’ve gone through about 50 hours with them. They live very close. Mr. Nixon we’ve gone through about 9 or 10 hours. The Montgomery Improvement Association have made us their official historians.

Horton: Oh, well that’s good.

Rabin: All their records are in the archives. Now we have to return all of their own duplicates. We made an agreement with them to – they were in disarray, so we sat down and made an agreement to put their old records in order, to microfilm what we could, and then also give them a duplicate [?] letters, [?] mass media announcement [ ? ? ]. We’ve been put on their 19th anniversary program in December, and they’re planning . . .

Horton: That’s wonderful. There are very few people who know about Reverend Seay and all those people who were after him. [?] they were really [?] in that period, [ ? ? ].

Rabin: That’s what we’re interested in.

Horton: And I’d be very much interested to catch that, because after the SCLC was formed, then that superceded the Montgomery Improvement Association in the minds of many people, and most people have forgotten about that. If it hadn’t been for that, there wouldn’t have been an SCLC. That’s what a lot of people understand. So I’m very glad you’re interested in preserving that bit of history.

Rabin: Just as a side comment, just to show you what we’re up against: Aubrey Williams’s granddaughter was taking an 11th grade history course. She was taking an 11th grade history course in Baltimore, Maryland. Her teacher, in regarding to this period of history, stated that CORE had begun the Montgomery bus boycott, and she wrote Cliff Durr, asking if she could get some information. She wanted to do a paper.

Horton: You see CORE was the organization that had the national ear, because it had been around for a while, and they got most of the press, even though their activities were sometimes started by the [?]. That’s easily understood, if you look at history. As you know, it’s white man’s history. Whoever writes history – Columbus discovered America, because he could write it down. Whoever writes does – gets credit for it. CORE had the writers. They were the people that had the press, so they – it tended to get more credit than some people feel that it deserved. But it’s easy enough to get that story straight, of what happened there.

Rabin: We have it almost [ ? ? ]. In fact, even the five, six days preceding, and the months preceding [ ? ? ], but we just recognize it’s going to take so long . . .

Horton: Have you talked to Rosa Parks?

Rabin: We missed her. We talked to her at the gathering at Tuskegee last year, face to face. But we’ve never been able to sit Mrs. Parks down and interview her.

Horton: Let me tell you. I was – last year, I was offered a honorary doctor’s degree at Columbia College. It’s a college in Chicago, a small college that deals with black people, chicanos, and arts and things like that. It’s more of a bachelor’s college at most. It’s small. But I said, no, I wasn’t interested in honorary degrees and that I appreciated it. Then I was told that this was different, that Rosa Parks was going to be given one, and [ ? ? ] had been given one, and I said, “Oh, what’s this? This is something else. Let’s talk about it some more. If I get a doctor’s degree with Rosa Parks, then I’d be honored, not by the degree, but by the association with her. And so I accept.”

While we were up there, Studs Terkel interviewed us about an hour, and we got Rosa to reminiscing about the early days, and that’s on – I have a copy of that tape, which is Rosa’s own story of that period. Then we got other tapes of Rosa that we did at Highlander, very early, which are in the Wisconsin State Archives in Madison. Some of these – I think there was a tape of Rosa when she came to Highlander before the bus boycott, and then one right after it. So there are records of Rosa, and she’s – I think, along with Mr. Nixon, they’re the two primary sources of the Montgomery boycott before King got involved. Prior to King’s involvement, they were the two principals.

Rabin: You wouldn’t like to let us borrow that tape?

Horton: [laughs]. Probably could make a bootleg. What I – I just have one copy of it. I don’t suppose there are any problems about it. It belongs to Studs. He just gave me a copy.

Rabin: Cliff gave us a few of his [ ? ? ].

Horton: I don’t think it makes any – what he did on his program, I don’t think there’s any problem. I tell you what I – I could – we could make a duplicate of it . . .

Rabin: [ ? ? ] we could send you the tape.

Horton: To do that, let me get it duplicated, and - because I just know I like it to be part of the record. I’d like to get everything on Rosa that I can.

Rabin: We’re trying to figure out, of course, what were the antecedents before the bus boycott, the last 20 years.

Horton: Okay. Let me tell you. There’s a man here, T[?], Reverend T[?]. You know him? He just spoke to me yesterday. He’s – we had him come to Highlander back before the boycott, I think. He was reminding me yesterday about coming up there. He was one of the first people to get involved. That was prior, I think.

Not many people go back that I know of who were – there – Mr. Nixon would know. He would know anybody that was stirring when they . . .

Rabin: That’s what Mr. Nixon said before, and Cliff said so. [ ? ? ]

Horton: Yeah, I know him.

Rabin: I wish [?] would live to a 100, 120, [?] the old expression, and – but I’m worried, because the lack of the primary sources means that if we don’t get the individuals, we don’t get [?] at all. So this is what we’re doing.

Horton: Let me tell you another – something else about this. Prior to the civil rights period, Jim Lawson – ever heard of Jim Lawson? He’s a Methodist preacher. He just left Memphis a couple of months ago and moved to Los Angeles.

Rabin: I don’t know him.

Horton: That’s a name you should check. James Lawson was a pacifist, one of the few consistent pacifists I’ve ever known. Didn’t play games with it. He was kicked out of the Memphis school of religion for activities in the civil rights movement. But prior to the SNCC – prior to the sit-ins. Not prior to Montgomery, but prior to the sit-ins, about the time of the Montgomery Improvement Association, Jim was running seminars in Nashville, and out of those seminars came John Lewis, for example. We were working with the same people at Highlander. At the same time they were at Highlander, so I knew about that before student sit-ins and so on. But Jim is a early source. He’s out in Los Angeles now. He was in Memphis for 10 years [?].

Rabin: One of the things we do – there’s about six of these things. When we hear somebody’s going – we have one person go in L.A. too. At the time we ask him to try [ ? ? ]. [ ? ? ].

Horton: I’m trying to think of some – it’s just hard to remember the – actually, some of the people who were most active in what – they have became talked about as civil rights – were the black people in labor unions.

Rabin: Do you – could we discuss that for a second if we’re going to Highlander, over to Highlander – the role of labor and the civil rights, whoever was [ ? ? ].

Horton: Since Highlander had a strong conviction that move with working together, our involvement in the CIO – what later became the CIO, or in unions before the CIO – always carried with it a concern for blacks and whites. Consequently, we [?] got a prejudiced view, because we only worked and talked to the people who were in – who we thought there was a potential for working together.

In ’32, the only place there was any element of blacks and whites working together was in the miners’ union. Unfortunately Bill Mitch, he’s dead. He was the director of the miners’ union in Alabama. He’s one of the best [ ? ? ]. If you can get some information about Bill Mitch, it’ll be well worth the time. He had a son who’s a lawyer, I think. Bill was a [?] CIO director in Alabama.

In Alabama, blacks and whites worked together in the mines. That was before the ’30s, I think. I wish that somebody could follow that through. That’s kind of a first I know of, in terms of modern times [? ? ].

After becoming the CIO, building on that kind of thing – those who wanted to build on it, like those of us at Highlander, and Mitch – there was an effort to get blacks and whites together in the steelworkers and the ore workers union down there, the mill mine smelter workers. There were some black people who played a big role. There’s a book written by a black named Hudson. He tells the story of his role in Birmingham. Hudson. I knew him slightly at the time, but I don’t – I’d have to look up that book. He’s – he may be dead now, or at least he’s in his – he’s very old. He’s in the East. But that book is a good document source on – he was a communist, one of the black communists in Birmingham, or he worked for the communists at the time. I don’t remember technically. It’s in the book. It’s his story, so . . .

Then there were other people, other black organizers in the Birmingham area, some of them still around, who can tell you the key heroes in the pre-civil rights days. One of the better unions for that was the mill mine smelter workers. It had some very good black people, and it was primarily a black union, because the ore mines was made up mainly of black miners. That carried over – finally, eventually that was taken over by the steelworkers. It carried over into the steelworkers. That’s an area you should [?].

In the heyday of the CIO, when things were in flux, without any formal sort of arrangements, a lot of things could happen that don’t happen when things get more bureaucratically controlled. I organized textile workers in South Carolina and North Carolina in ’37. I organized the first local of textile workers under the CIO in the South. Since there is no – the assumption was you could have separate locals for blacks and whites, but there’s no rigid sort of a – there’s nobody made any rules. So I could go ahead – and this was South Carolina, which was dominated by the Klan and had a curfew at night at 6 o’clock, to get black people off the streets. I’d go ahead and set up an integrated local there and get by with it. [ ? ? ] in McColl and in Lumberton, North Carolina, later on, right across the line there. In ’37 I was able to set up integrated locals. It’s just simply because you just did it, and you could get by with it if you do it and don’t raise any questions about it and you say, this is the way it is, and you fight through the problems.

There’s some written stuff on this period in these files, [ ? ? ] files. Soon this will be in a book that’s just coming out on Highlander pretty soon, called Seeds of Fire. John Beecher is one of the early – quite a lot of his poems . . .

Unidentified voice: John brought some announcements of it yesterday [ ? ? ].

Rabin: [?] That’s a book I’ve got to get.

Horton: In that there’s some bit of this material, the early period of the labor unions. Then some other stories of that – there’s a – some written records of this period in the Highlander files or on tapes.

I think that period was a period of hope and ferment. I like to think that a lot of the groundwork was laid in the unions which got more or less overlaid before the civil rights movement was still there. I can give you two examples of – that come to mind. We had an oil worker from El Dorado, Arkansas, come to Highlander [ ? ? ]. He said he was a Klansman. And the [?] at Highlander, we had an automobile worker named Bob Jones from Memphis and the other black people there. This Klansman was terribly upset, because he had to stay in the same room and meet with black people. He almost left, but decided to stay, and he had a complete change of attitude there. Before he left, he said that he came as a – he was going to go back and try to break up the CIO, because it had black people in it, but after he’d been at Highlander, he realized he was on the wrong track, and he was going to go back and fight against breaking it up. He changed his position, and I asked him why he had changed. He said, “It’s the damn Bob Jones.” He says, “You know I’m the best poker player in El Dorado.” He says, “That Bob Jones’s a better poker player than I am.” He says, “I ain’t never meet any black person could beat me playing poker.” He beat him [ ? ? ].

This is kind of an oversimplification, but that’s the story he told me. Anyway, he went back and became a leader for integration. Later on he was made president of the state CIO, and at the Little Rock – when the Little Rock school fracus took part, he was one of the few people who took part in the demonstrations. He was publicly identified with the integrationist schools. That’s the change from a Klansmen who [?] to a person who went on record, who was unequivocal on record by his actions and position, as supporting integrations That’s right out of labor unions.

The only person in – only labor person that I know of in – or any – in New Orleans, two people – two friends of mine were active down there in that terrible situation in New Orleans. It was on t.v.

Rabin: [?]

Horton: Where the people were fighting the kids trying to go to school, when they were trying to integrate the school. Father [?Delay], a Catholic priest that worked with Highlander, I saw him on t.v. Another person I saw on t.v. was the head of the Steelworkers’ Union – he’d been at Highlander – who was right out there in the demonstrations. I’m just citing a couple of examples that come to mind of people who I worked with in the early days, not because I worked with them – because of the labor unions, I happened to know [ ? ? ] – who played very big roles in integration. I would say that while the unions as a whole didn’t take a very good position, there were individuals within those unions that stood up.

All though that period – prior to the civil rights period, during the civil rights period – there were people in the labor movement who were doing things that didn’t get any publicity. This fellow named Ed Blair, who was an organizer for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers’ Union. He was organizing in Mississippi and Alabama. [?] Tennessee, came out of Tennessee. Ed always sought to integrate unions in Mississippi, everywhere he could, everywhere he’d need to be. He’d get beat up, and [ ? ? ] he’d always do it. This kind of thing can be overlooked if you’re going to try to access some of the background of the liberties.

There’s another example, an Amzie Moore in Mississippi. That’s the name of another person you should talk to. Amzie Moore was a postal – he worked the post office, so he had some security, in Greenwood. Before the civil rights movement started, Amzie Moore was the one person in Mississippi that you could work with. We worked with Amzie long before the civil rights movement. I worked with him about the time I was working with Mr. Nixon. I used to go down and stay with him. He’s the person that Bob Moses stayed with when he first went to Mississippi. He stayed with Amzie, like I did years before. Amzie was the one – he’s still there, still very active.

Rabin: In Greenwood.

Horton: In Greenwood. He ought to be part of this story. He’s a black guy who really was – he’s one of the best people. I remember he came to Highlander as the civil rights movement got started, and he came down from breakfast, said how happy he was to sleep in a bed so comfortable. My wife says, “Then that’s such a comfortable bed, you should sleep in a place” [ ? ? ] He said, “Man, I haven’t slept on a bed in several years.” It was comfortable.

What happened was, that at his house – he had a nice house, nice brick house. He had a big double bed, a beautiful bed, but the bed was – that was the windows. He always slept on the floor. When I was there, I slept on the floor too. His bed was piled with books and coats and things. Nobody would dare sleep on that bed, because you could shoot right through, but you slept on the floor, where you had the [?], so he [ ? ? ]. In his own house, he couldn’t sleep on his bed. So that’s way he always felt it was a privilege to sleep on a bed. I had been at Amzie’s when this was – I slept on the floor too. So Amzie would be a very good person to talk to. Not so much the union, although he worked for the union, as a early black person.

I think you could make a case for the role of the – particularly the role of the black leaders in the union in the pre-civil rights days. There again we had workshops, 4 or 5 sessions for labor-union people. In our files there’d be a lot of black people who were at Highlander, who were leaders in the . . .

There’s a Mr. Thomas. He and his wife came to Highlander. He was president of a smelter workers’ union in Bessemer. He’s still around. Thomas. I remember that name. I have to get the first name. He was – he’d be a good person to talk to. He’s an organizer down [ ? ? ]. I think he’s still organizes the steelworkers. The name slips me now, but I can find it, think about it.

Rabin: Let’s move to the Highlander School. Was it – I know very little about it. I think it was a – basically set up – it was related to the CIO at the beginning.

Horton: No. It started in ’32. CIO didn’t start until ’37. ’35 was when the unions set up the industrial department. ’37 the CIO got going. Highlander started in ’32. It first became known because of the connection with the CIO. We became pretty much the educational center for the CIO in the South. But part of the CIO – we were working with the miners in the county, the local people and unemployed people, with the mountain people, who were – during the Depression. We helped get co-ops going. We helped organize the WPA union later on when you got WPA. The people who were trying to organize the coal mines – there’s a story in Southern Exposure on a wilders’ strike that tells a little about some Highlander activities in the very early days.

Later on there were strikes in Harriman, Tennessee, out of which a lot of songs came, and Highlander’s early start in is the music business, as part of our educational program. With the local community, local counties, unions that were around, we put together little sessions that people would come, [?] to come and learn more about unions, that they could do their co-ops, things of that kind.

At the time the CIO came along, we had already been working with unions, all the kinds of unions around that were doing anything, and basically [?] were the only community where we worked in our own county. So we were kind of in on the ground floor of the CIO. When the CIO started, we knew probably more people in terms of potential leaders for the CIO than other groups that [?] out, so the CIO tended to come to us, and then when they get up – get far enough [?] local unions, people are going to know how to run the unions, [?] the experience. They had come to Highlander for training. We – what we did, and still do, is to use the people who had experience as teachers for the people who had less experience. It’s always the ones who had more experience for the people who had less experience. So it isn’t a matter of somebody was learning out of books. [?] it’s somebody who had the experience, relating it to people. Not that we didn’t read books. Not that we didn’t try to learn everything we could from all over the world and then talk about things all over the world, but it was simply that we felt that people could learn best from their peers, somebody that was close to the situation, than some academic approach. So we parleyed this beginning into an educational program.

Highlander’s gone through several program changes. The purpose of Highlander – Highlander’s been written up as a community school. It’s been written up as a labor school. It’s been written up as a civil rights school. It’s been written up as a farmer labor school, and so on. But actually – Highlander has been all of those things, but the purpose of Highlander from the very beginning was to try to bring some democracy into the scene, and that mean industrial – economic democracy, as well as political democracy, and we tried to demonstrate by the way we lived and what we did when we organized unions or did anything, that we believed that we had to bring black people and white people along together and not spend time trying to change the hearts of white people so they out of their nice paternalistic generosity would do something nice for black people. We always rejected that approach. That was what I was touching on lightly yesterday, because everybody that knows, it would probably be hypocritical of me, not to say, we’ve differed. So Highlander has carried that idea along. We believe that only through participation of people in decision-making can we have real democracy. We don’t believe in top-down decision-making. We don’t believe in bureaucratic controls for people. We believe that people have to learn to speak for themselves, take responsibility in making decisions.

So Highlander’s always been involved that way, working with unions, with civil rights, with farmers, or education. I wrote a chapter on radicalizing education for a group of – the book was put out a couple of years ago – in which I talked about people making decisions. They had to make their decisions. Instead of letting top-down decisions, they had to learn to do it. We’re never going to get anywhere with schools or this society as a whole until we just tackle that problem of people making decisions. That means everybody. Nobody can be excluded from that. So we don’t – in our philosophy, we don’t get into this business, do you leave women out? Do you leave blacks out? Do you leave Chicanos? We say you leave nobody out, and not even young people out. We don’t believe in leaving anybody out.

That’s been the basic idea of Highlander all along, and our efforts have been to try to formulate programs that would maximize our educational opportunities to get these ideas across. When we felt we could no longer get these ideas across effectively in labor unions – it wasn’t that we thought labor unions weren’t worthwhile, but they weren’t worthwhile for Highlander to work with, because we didn’t have the maximum freedom to carry out the kind of program we wanted to carry out.

The time came when the top leaders in automobiles, textiles, and rubber workers, with whom we had worked all along, said, “Look. We want Highlander to help us to carry out policy decisions made for the national organization.” We said, “No. We’re interested with the rank and file, the shop stewards, the chairmen of education committees. We aren’t interested in talking about top-down policy, and we won’t do that. If you want to do that, you’ll have to get it yourself. We don’t do that.”

So the break came with the unions when they started trying to tell us to carry out policy. That’s the broader aspect of the break. The more technical aspect is when they kicked out so-called left-wing unions, and they told Highlander we couldn’t work for these left-wing unions. We have to carry out the policy of the national CIO, which was to arrest those unions and put them out of business. I said we wouldn’t do that to any group. In fact, the mine, mill and smelter workers, one of the local unions that – one of the unions that was supposed to be on the purge list. They were supposed to be a communist union – was made up in the South all of black people, and a majority of the black people who came to Highlander were preachers, black preachers. The smelter workers was the only union that ever came to Highlander where you opened every class and every meal with a prayer. They said, you can’t deal with those people, because they got a communist union. [ ? ? ] It was absurd. We not going to tell these people that we can’t associate with them, because somewhere in their system there’s supposed to be some communist. We said, the hell with that stuff. We just – we went right ahead working with them of course.

One of the things about Highlander is we’ve always been independent. We were independent even when we were endorsed by the national CIO as the educational center in the South – officially endorsed. We were not part of the CIO. We were independent. Highlander has always had an independent board. Highlander has always been independent. We never had a connection with any organization, political organization, religious organization, anything in the sense that we were part of them. We said our services are available to each group, and we’re going to work hard. We’re going to identify. We’re going to have solidarity with each group [?], and we’re going to do everything we can to promote it, but we’re going to be independent. If the time ever comes when that violates our principles, then we’ll make the decision, as we did, and have done several times.

So Highlander has – is – it identifies – right now we’re working, trying to do something about our own Appalachian region, trying to get people conscious of their responsibilities and opportunities and heighten the consciousness of people – of our own people. Secondarily, we’re trying to keep in touch with the multi-color groups we’ve been working with: Chicanos, Indians, blacks, Puerto Ricans, looking at the time potentially when these groups can get together and form a minority power bloc in this country, which we’d like to see happen.

Rabin: You’ve spoken about a lot of education courses, whatever. Do you know of any – we would appreciate if there are any duplicates of anything, especially newspapers – [ ? ? ] newspaper, anything, to get our hands on, just to microfilm, or if they can be let go, we’d put it in the archives. We could even microfilm them, which is the cheapest way, or we can, if you’d like, accept a donation. It’s very important.

Horton: We – see, what we’ve done – unfortunately, from your point of view, when Highlander was closed down in ’61, because of – our charter was voided and the property confiscated by the state, because of civil rights activities. After that time, we gave to the state – Tennessee state archives, copies of all of our material. They’re in Nashville, the Tennessee state archives, and they can be – you can get access to those, and mimeograph, photograph, whatever, records and material. We kept duplicates of all that.

Later on we found that the Tennessee state archives wasn’t really making that stuff as available as we wanted. They were making it very difficult for people to use. It was a violation of their agreement.

Rabin: Par for the course.

Horton: We were pretty sick about having material there, because it’s just not available. We want our stuff used. Hopefully it gives other people some ideas, or at least it would be part of the record of the period. So we looked around for a place that would make it available. We checked out places all over the country about who would really get to work on this material, make it available and also provide services people had wanted. We decided on the university – the state archives of Wisconsin, for two reasons. One, they agreed to make that a priority and put a staff to work on it and get it ready for use, so it wouldn’t be out of circulation. They agreed to do that and have done that. It’s now processed and catalogued. They also agreed to make the material available to anybody, at cost. So the two arrangements, two things that we were most interested in, they agreed to do. The University of Wisconsin has not only the things they have at Tennessee, but they also have material into – up into three or four years beyond, and they will eventually have all of the material at Highlander. That material you can get by writing to the state archives – it’s Madison, Wisconsin. It’s right on campus there – a copy – a listing of the – a mimeographed listing of the material there. Then you can get – like if you want Rosa Parks, then you can get from them this material.

See, we don’t have any more. We couldn’t handle that, because it’s too much of a job, as you know, handling that material. That’s a job of a staff, and Highlander wants to be in – we want to make some more history. We don’t want to start just talking about what we’ve done. And an interpreting of history is not our job. I worked with Frank Adams on this book, and my wife did her doctoral dissertation for Chicago, at Highlander. The dissertation you can get on microfilm for seven or eight dollars, a history of Highlander, for the Chicago library. Aimee Horton’s dissertation. That’s our primary source. That’s the best information that’s put together. And there’s been a lot of pamphlets and books and things like that were written on it. But those – that book with Frank Adams will be out soon and the doctoral dissertation.

Then there’s – a fellow named Jim Thomas did a master’s dissertation at Vanderbilt on Highlander, on labor theory. So there’s been quite a bit of stuff done, but it’s not available. It’s not – you have to be a – to dig for it. But all this stuff, it’s – the best way is to – is Wisconsin – for written stuff on Highlander. Of course the best thing, if you could get live people hired. Jim Dombrowski was with Highlander for a year.

Rabin: We interviewed him for three hours down in New Orleans. It’s great.

Horton: He a [ ? ? ]. There are other people likely to remember. People – there’s a Septima Clark. She played a major role in the civil rights period at Charleston, South Carolina. And Bernice Robinson was on the staff in the civil rights period. They were prior to the Montgomery situation. There’s a woman. Her son is on the staff of [?] – George Harris, a black guy. His mother, from Huntsville, Alabama, was one of the early people in civil rights activities. She’s still there. You can talk to George here. George came to Highlander when he was a kid at a camp. He’s a – you can – I can show him, George, point George out to you.

Rabin: I’d appreciate that.

So the Highlander School itself is now in Knoxville?

Horton: It’s out at Newmarket.

Rabin: Newmarket.

Horton: That’s out from Knoxville, overlooking – it’s on Bay Mountain, overlooking the Smokies. It started in the mountains, down near Mount Eagle. Then we were confiscated and moved to Knoxville for about 10 years, the only place we could survive. We had a lot of black friends and a lot of our labor friends, people that we worked with in the labor unions there, so the combination was enough to keep us afloat until the storm blew over. Then we – the opposition tapered off to the place where Highlander was no longer a terrible thing, a place where black and white people came together, because black and white people were coming together in a lot of places. So there was no longer that bad situation that brought on our demise as a legal entity. I guess we’ll move back to the Knoxville [?]-acre farm out there. Now they’re rebuilding

Rabin: [ ? ? ]. I guess we have your addresses.

Horton: Yeah, I can give you some material and information on that.

Rabin: Now, of course, Highlander activities led to your being subpoenaed by Eastland down in New Orleans – to New Orleans. I talked with Jim, I talked to Cliff, and I talked to Virginia. The only person I couldn’t get a hold of was Mr. Smith, the attorney. I couldn’t get a hold of him. I was down in New Orleans. Can we talk for a moment about that, the New Orleans hearings?

Horton: Cliff was my lawyer. What happened was that Eastland subpoened – subpoenas to appear before that committee were the kind of a John Doe sort of thing, without any charges. At that time, if people would take the First Amendment – no, take the Fifth Amendment, they’d end up in prison for contempt. It was pretty much the going sort of situation. That was the time when people – they were trying to get people – to get people’s names and so on, turn people into stool pigeons and – or put them in jail, or harass them or scare people. So I had to make a decision as to what I would do. I decided I would just say I refuse to [?] the information about anybody except myself. I would talk freely about myself.

There’s a wonderful fellow, Alexander Meiklejohn, who was a teacher and a writer on constitutional problems. He developed the idea that when this country was formed, people had all the rights. The revolutionary people had all the rights. No government had rights. So they delegated certain of their rights to the federal government, certain of their rights to the state government, but they reserved certain rights. They never did delegate them. One of the rights they didn’t delegate was the right of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and so on. People still held those. I built on that [?] idea. That was my philosophical basis. I said – I reasoned, if you have a right to speak, you have a right not to speak, because to speak when you don’t want to is a violation of your right. So I’m going to take the position that I speak when I want to, and I don’t speak when I don’t want to, and that’s my right. It’s not based on any kind of law. It’s based on the fact that people still have had it. They didn’t have to have an amendment or anything to say that’s theirs. They never gave it away. So you don’t have to have any legal basis for it. It’s all – it doesn’t belong to anybody. Therefore it isn’t a technical legal question.

I checked it out with some lawyers. I was working with the packing house workers’ union and running an educational program for them. I had to be [?]. I checked it out with them. They said, “You’ll go to jail. You can’t do that. Maybe – you may like the idea, but you can’t do this. You can’t just say you’ll talk when you want to and don’t when you want. You won’t talk about anybody but yourself. You’ll talk about yourself, but you won’t talk about anybody else. You can’t do that, legally.”

“Well, I can do it morally.” “Sure you can do it morally, but that illegal.” So I talked it over with the family. We decided I would probably go to jail. The kids got kind of excited about bringing books to me. We just assumed that this was going to happen, because I just couldn’t bring myself to talk about anybody else [ ? ? ].

So I came down to New Orleans and [ ? ? ] got with Cliff, and Cliff says, [ ? ? ]. He says, “You know this is going to get you in jail.” He said, “You can’t do this. It’s not legal. I have to tell you as a lawyer: you can’t do this.” He said, “I know, as a person, I mean, you’ll do what you please. I’ll help you do what you please. But legally I have to advise you that this is – can’t be done.” I said, “All right, Cliff.” I said, “I know that.”

Meantime I’d called up Carl [?], who’s here. Carl’s gone through this before. When I called him up and asked him if he’d give me some – give me the name of a good lawyer or give me some advice, Carl just laughed over the phone. He said, “It’s a little different when it’s you, isn’t it?” I never will forget that. I said, “Yes, it takes on a different [?].”

Anyway, I went into New Orleans, and I made a statement. I wrote a statement out that I believed. I mimeographed it up, and I – that was my position. But Eastland tried to get me to take the Fifth Amendment. I told him I had lawyers. I didn’t need to do that. He said, “You can’t do this. You take – you can’t [ ? ? ].” “It’s my right.” “What are you basing it on?” I said, “If it isn’t legal, I’ll just do it anyway. If it isn’t – if I don’t have the backing of the Constitution, I have a moral backing. I . . .” He said, “You can’t – you don’t have any basis for doing that.” I said, “I’m going to do it anyway.”

So he put me on and started – he read two things. Then he put me on, and the first question he asked was, did I know Jim Dombrowski? Jim is sitting right there. Jim had testified all day the day before. “I ain’t saying nothing.” He said, “Was Jim Dombrowski at Highlander?” “I ain’t saying.” He said, “You have to answer this question or plead the Fifth Amendment.” I said, “I’ll answer any questions about myself, but none about anybody else.” Then he asked about my wife, Zilphia, who was the one that started “We Shall Overcome,” got it started, not that she wrote it, but she’s the one [ ? ? ]. I said – didn’t say anything. He said, “At least you can talk about your wife.” I wouldn’t talk about anybody. I said, “Look, if you ask about me, I’ll tell you anything about me, what I believe, what I’ve done.” But I said, “I’m not going to talk about anybody else.” He got – he just got – started blowing up like a toad. He said, “Throw him out. Throw him out,” and a couple of marshals came up. I was prepared to tell him anything he wanted to know about me. They grabbed me and got a hammerlock on me and carried me out and dumped me on the marble porch of the Hall of Justice. They literally threw me out. That was that. That was the end of that.

He said he was going to cite me for contempt and announced he was going to cite me for contempt, and I was in contempt. I told him I was in contempt – contempt of him and the law, the investigation, everything. I didn’t argue with him about that. The whole thing was contemptuous to me and un-American. I didn’t believe in it, wasn’t going to be a party to it. So they threw me out. So he was going to cite me for contempt

I went back home, back to Mount Eagle, and I called Estes Kefauver, who was my Senator. Estes was an old friend of mine. In fact he had been a lawyer for Highlander before he got into politics. I had known him for years. I called Estes, and I said, “I’ve asked you to do a lot of things, but I’ve never asked you to do anything for me, all for Highlander.” But I said, “I’m in trouble. Need your help.” Estes says, “I don’t think so.” He said, “I saw the proceedings. I saw him throw you out. I saw the whole thing.” “And,” he says, “I don’t think Eastland could even get a contempt citation through his committee after he behaved like he did.” He says, “I was proud of what you did.” He said, “I think it’s going to work.” He said, “If he does and he goes to the Senate floor,” he said, “I’ll take the responsibility for fighting on the Senate floor.” He said, “I’ll fight it through the Senate floor.” He said, “Just forget it. Go ahead about your work and forget it.” And I did. That was the end of that.

Rabin: Did you see a [?] of the famous Clifford Durr vaulting the rail to get at Paul Crouch.

Horton: I was there, right there. I was sitting right next to him when it happened. That was the same thing. I was right . . .

Rabin: Could you describe that for a couple seconds?

Horton: I can’t remember the details of that so much as when Paul started lying about Virginia – actually, lying away – and all of us knew he’d been lying – even convicted of lying a number. Some of us knew him personally. He’d been a communist organizer in Tennessee. He hated my guts, because when he was in Tennessee, he was trying to organize some of the people at the TVA and other places, and I made the statement to a communist friend of mine that they ought to have a – the organizer has half as much intelligence as the people he’s trying to organize. It got back to Crouch, and he always hated me for saying that. I don’t blame him. But it was true.

Anyway, I didn’t know he was a stooge at that time. I thought he was dumb. He’s smarter than I thought he was. He was playing a double role. We all thought Crouch was very – just about the way he felt towards us. There was a pretty bad feeling there, I guess. Cliff – he was lying there. It was about Virginia. Cliff just couldn’t stand it. He said something. I guess he was talking about someone had been a communist, and Cliff challenged him, and he wouldn’t answer him. Eastland wouldn’t let him answer. So he just started hitting him. He was going to die right there. [ ? ? ].

[ ? ? ] was Cliff and I ended up on the front page of New York Times. There was a picture of the two on the front page of the New York Times. One part of it was me being thrown out, and the other part was [ ? ? ]. [ ? ? ] in good company in the New York Times. The only time I ever made the front page, in pictures anyway. Another exciting period.

But I’ve been investigated a number of times, but that’s the only time by a Federal [?]. I’ve been investigated by the state. There was a special state investigation of Highlander for the state legislature that was instigated by Bruce [?Minute] from Arkansas primarily, [ ? ? ] Nashville, Tennessee, [ ? ? ] to harass for three or four days. I just laid the basis for legal action that followed later on when the attorney general who prosecuted Highlander was asked by the judge, “Why have so many charges?” He said, “All these charges against Highlander. You don’t have evidence for most of these things. I’m not going to hear all these charges.” He said, “The state legislature said they couldn’t find a way to get rid of Highlander. They authorized me to find some way to get rid of them. I just made all the charges I could think of.” He said it right out – it’s in the record, in the legal record. George [?Escher] was saying last night that he was going to try to find some way to get somebody to put up some money to go through this case, this Highlander case, and really analyze it and see what happened in this court case. But they did get us. That’s how the thing works.

Rabin: Are those records at the Wisconsin archives?

Horton: All those records is there, records of the trial. By the way, there’s records of that trial. A broadcast – a local station at Manchester, Tennessee – a radio station taped all those trials. It’s four or five days. Taped them all. I got hold of some of the records, but not many of them. Out of the ones I got, there was put together a – about an hour and 45 minute special excerpts which has played dozens and dozens of times on radio stations – different radio stations in the country. That’s an edited version of the trial. I think it’s the only thing anybody could listen to much, because the others are too long. That’s a matter of record, [ ? ? ] trial. And then the transcript, the written transcript, unedited. The transcript covers four or five volumes. Most of that stuff is documented.

Rabin: Was Aubrey Williams ever at the Highlander?

Horton: Oh yeah, Aubrey was on the Board. I knew Aubrey. I’ll tell you when I first met Aubrey was when he spoke at the founding conference of the Southern on Human Welfare in Birmingham when Judge Louise Charlton was the chairman.

Rabin: That was the one where Bull Connor came in? [ ? ? ]

Horton: Yeah.

Rabin: Could you describe that? Describe [ ? ? ].

[interruption of recording]

Horton: . . . Mrs. Roosevelt. I remember Bull Connor had come and sent his people in to unscramble the audience. He got whites on one side and blacks on the other [ ? ? ]. I remember it very well, because I had been down trying to help organize the smelter workers, working with some of my black friends, much earlier, and when Bull Connor was a policeman for the steelworkers – I mean, a steel company down there, I got chased off, chased out of a meeting and got hit in the head with Bull Connor long before he was known. So I had a little kind of personal feeling about him. I knew what he was or who he was. I think it was about that time or a little later that Bull Connor had run for some office, to an elected office. He said he wouldn’t want any niggers and whites to segregate together in Birmingham.

Anyway, my memory, as I say, is very hazy, but as I recall it, Mrs. Roosevelt came in and sat down. Before she was on the platform, on the black side. Somebody came up to move her, tell her she had to move. She was shaking her head in protest. I can’t remember whether I was sitting there with her or across from her, or – I can’t – I just remember that the chief turned to me, or somebody, and said, “What’s this all about?” About that time, the problem was resolved by their having us come up on the platform. I’m trying to remember that situation. That’s about all I remember about that. But I used to know it very well, because later on Paul Robeson gave a benefit concert for Highlander in Riverside Stadium in Washington. We broke the color line there in the early ’50s, the first time an integrated thing was done, and I remembered the situation in Birmingham, and I said, “We’re going to fix the thing so it can’t be unscrambled. We aren’t going to talk about it.” We sold tickets in general, and anybody, first come, first serve basis, black and white. We had a lot of black friends in Washington. The thing was so complicated by the seating arrangement that when they came in and tried to segregate us, they just gave up and walked out. So that was the first . . .

[The recording stops in mid-sentence as side 2 of the audiocassette runs out. Side 3 resumes, again in mid-sentence.]

. . . Hugo Black [?] some kind of a [?]. And Hugo was the big name speaker down there. Aubrey wasn't a – he was working with Harry Hopkins, and he wasn't too well known. He wasn't a big shot particularly, just a government functionary. He was an Alabaman, like Hugo, and he was beginning to get known. Aubrey made a very stirring speech in which he talked about the sharecroppers’ - tenant farmers’ plight, and how it was – how bad it was, and how he under the feeling of – remember, at that time there was – the Southern tenant farmers’ union was active, and the sharecroppers’ union in Alabama. Aubrey said he – that he couldn’t blame people like that from trying to overthrow the government or have a revolution or use violence. I don’t remember what term it was. But anyway, he kind of said he could understand that. That – Harry Hopkins, when he got back to Washington, it hit all the newspapers, and that really was the – according to my understanding of the situation, really the thing that stopped Aubrey’s career. He stayed on for a while, but he never got promoted. It was always used by politicians to keep him down.

Aubrey was finally – got out of government, and he had no money. He was looking around for a job. He got a job with Jim Patton. National Farmers’ Union gave Aubrey a job, kind of made a job for Aubrey actually. He didn’t have one. I was working with Jim at the time. We were organizing the farmers’ union, and I was Jim’s – I did educational work for the farmers’ union, along with the other unions. So I know about that. Aubrey was supposed to go to their insurance co-op and be an insurance executive. I used to stay with Aubrey in Alexandria when Aubrey was boning up on insurance, reading all these manuals and things like that. I can remember that.

We went out to Denver. Cliff knows that story very well, that whole period out there, much better than I do, because he was involved in that. I had a connection that I was working in the South with the farmers’ union at that time.

Then Aubrey – that didn’t seem to work out, and Aubrey came back Next time I saw Aubrey, he had bought this paper. He came up to Mount Eagle, came up to Highlander. He worked with it. We had an attic, a big kind of dormitory attic thing. I remember Aubrey slept up there. It was kind of cool. I used to eat – he was up there typing, writing some stuff [? ? ]. He didn’t have any money or any – he just had that paper. He was trying to find ways to get subscriptions. He was running around looking for his old people that he had employed when he was in government, to see if he could get them to be agents for him. I went with him down to see – I remember going up to Knoxville and seeing somebody that worked for him, try to persuade him to sell. He tried to get me to take, help push – we all did try to help to try to get subscriptions for him. It looked pretty dismal. [ ? ? ] a picture of that period.

Then through Harry Snyderman he got - he really got publicity. Harry set up a program, prizes and so on, that put Aubrey on his feet. Incidentally, you ought to talk to Dee Snyderman for their background. She’s in Chicago. Dee Snyderman – Harry’s widow. She worked as Aubrey as a secretary before she married Harry. Dee Snyderman. But he finally got going, and the paper started. Then Aubrey got pretty well off. It started moving, and he got in the housing business in Birmingham. Built some black houses. So his financial problems were over. In the meantime he got quite active in the farmers’ union in Alabama. I think Aubrey wanted a political base. He wanted to get into politics. He was never quite – he never quite made it, but he’s always – he never lost his interest in politics, and he became very active in the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, SCHF, an outgrowth of [ ? ? ] that Jim Dombrowski started. He was very active in that.

That was the period when he was – that I was telling you earlier, when he was all upset about – he went down to – he was on a trip, went down to Memphis, and he couldn’t get a porter to carry his bag. He had a big, heavy bag, and the porters would pay no attention to him. They’d ignore him, a white man. Aubrey felt hurt, because he had – he felt it was too bad that they felt that way towards him. He finally called one porter over, and he said, “Look, I don’t [?] - do you know who I am?” He said, “I’m not a [?].” And he said to him, “Did you ever hear of the Youth . . . “ What the youth?

Rabin: National Youth Administration?

Horton: National Youth Administration. The porter said, “Yes, I was a part of it.” He said, “I’m Aubrey Williams. I was the director of the thing.” This fellow was delighted to meet Aubrey Williams and carried his baggage for him. When Aubrey came back, he came in, he came by Highlander, and he said, “There ought to some kind of button or something that we get the blacks to give us so they see it and know we’re all right.” I could never – I never will forget that. Later on he actually talked to [?CIF] about legally changing to a black person.

Rabin: He asked [?CIF] about it.

Horton: He was terribly disturbed the not – black people not recognizing decent white people. He understood the problem, but he personally was very disturbed.

Aubrey was a mixture of a strange qual – strange. He was a politician, and he would do things as a politician that – he tried to play the political game, and he never could get back into that end of the business, so he settled for into going into business, running a paper, building houses, and things of that kind, and carrying on activities, as you know about. A very complicated person. Been one of the unusual people, very unusual.

I hope you could get some of those records from [ ? ? ]. I don’t see – since he was a [?], maybe – I said maybe you can get some of his publishers to – Maury is – might be able to help. Maury and Vivian met at Highlander during the farmers’ union period. I’ve got pictures of them, sitting and looking at each other.

Rabin: Our theory is that the farmers’ union, the unions in industrialized towns, Pullman porters, laid the groundwork for the [ ? ? ]. This is our theory.

Horton: Yeah. I think you’d have to add to that the Negro Youth Congress, which never has gotten much publicity. There was [ ? ? ]. The leaders were communists who could plant a lot of seeds in that same period. I tried to get some of the people in SNCC – I worked with SNCC [ ? ? ] – I tried to get some of those to do some research on that period, because I kept telling them that they weren’t the first to do this kind of thing. So there’s some work been done by some of those people on that period. I don’t know how far they got. But there’s a – Ella Baker. Does that name – did I ever tell you about Ella Baker? Okay. Ella Baker’s a prime source. Ella Baker was a YWCA worker in the South for years, way back before the civil rights movement. She knows this whole labor period. She was a executive – administrative assistant to King for a while. She worked very closely with SNCC. She – Ella is retired now. Somebody’s doing a book on Ella, trying to interview [?]. They’ve been interviewing her. She’s now retired to North Carolina. Ella Baker is the person you should talk to.

Joan Grant, who wrote a book of – you’ve seen Joan’s thing on civil rights in the South, a little book of excerpts. They got some stuff about Highlander, about Rosa Parks in it, [?] in it. Joan, I think herself, if she isn’t working with somebody who’s been working, trying to get – they’ve been taking a lot of stuff from – see, Joan’s a key to this. She’s a – Joe Liebovitz. You know the Liebovitz Foundation? Benevich.

Rabin: Oh, the Benevich Foundation.

Horton: The Benevich. Joan is – the lawyer at the head of that foundation – there’s a lawyer?

Rabin: Victor?

Horton: Victor. Joan’s his wife. Joan Grant. That’s her writing name.

Rabin: Cliff had mentioned raising some funding.

Horton: You get in touch with Joan. You get in touch with Joan and ask her about Ella Baker. I don’t know what she’s doing. I don’t know what we’re – I don’t know about this – whether she [ ? ? ] the book, [ ? ? ] give it to you. I don’t know anything about those things. I just know she’s in touch with Ella. Ella, as I say, Ella is one of the soundest, one of the best people to – She knows Highlander. She knows the CIO. She knows civil rights. She knows everything. She’d be a person who would be multi-informational.

Rabin: One of the things that helps us is that . . .

Unidentified man: We operate just like the Columbia Oral History Program and the Air Force Oral History Program, in having accessions {?}.

Horton: Yeah. I know those things you have to sign. You have to do them on radio and television.

Rabin: In this way, anybody who is interviewed or photographed has complete control.

Horton: I’d like to see how you [?] that.

Rabin: We have it under lock and key.

Horton: We’ve tried to work out things in terms of this material we have at Wisconsin, how do you deal with it, because . . .

Rabin: We want to make as much available to students and academics as we can. However, also understand that it’s also important to the individual to have control over this., and so what we do, we have these two forms, which we stole from the Air Force, who stole them from Columbia Oral History Program, and which I’d like to impose on you know. The classification system goes from the top, number one, where anyone with a worthwhile purpose – and that means not just anyone off the street, but a person who has the proper credentials, who wants to do a study in this area, can gain access. Then it goes to the second category, where only with the permission of the interviewee, orally. The third one is a written permission, and fourth is, the [?] is sealed.

Horton: I want the stuff used, but I don’t want – what I don’t want is somebody using it commercially.

Rabin: Right.

Horton: In other words, I don’t – if there’s any money on Highlander, I want the money to go to Highlander. If there’s no money involved, then I’m not interested. Then I want it used.

I’ll tell you the basis of this. I had to go through this with “We Shall Overcome,” which is a song that we got back in the ’40s from striking tobacco workers in Charleston, South Carolina. They came up and made [?] take an old black church song and changed it up a little bit for a union song. My wife Zilphia, who is a musician, worked with them and did what she thought to make it singable, take the ideas and make it easy for group singing. She did that with a lot of songs.

Then it was never used anywhere at that picket line. That strike was over. It was used at Highlander as a Highlander song for a long time. Then she taught it – she was – Pete Seeger asked her to sing on this Carnegie Hall program one time, and she did “We Shall Overcome” in New York. Pete got excited about it and put it on a record. That way it became known outside of Highlander, but just as a Pete Seeger song.

By that time the labor movement had stopped singing. There used to be a lot of singing in the labor movement. Highlander put out 1500 thousand song sheets and books.

Rabin: Are they still available?

Horton: Some of them are around. Some of the basic ones are around. She did one for the textile workers union. It had an introduction by John L. Lewis, which was the one [ ? ? ] 50,000, the textile workers songbook.

Anyway, she – that was just a local song. People like Pete picked it up. He liked it, after the labor union people stopped singing it, a Highlander song. A lot of people heard it at Highlander, but didn’t think about it being anything more than just a song sung at Highlander.

When the civil rights movement got started, Guy Carawan – Zilphia got him. Guy came to Highlander as a music director. Guy was in with the students at Nashville and other places. He was meeting with them and singing. Many of those people had been at Highlander. They knew him at Highlander, and they knew “We Shall Overcome” from Highlander.

So Guy was asked to come down to a rally in Nashville, because he was a musician, a professional musician, as well as a teacher at Highlander. He led singing, [ ? ? ] to sing it. Then King invited – at the conference for the SCLC, he invited Guy to be the song-leader there. Of course blacks were not into singing movement stuff at that time. They were singing religious stuff and popular stuff, but they hadn’t – [ ? ? ] a white school, that was into music. So we [?] “We Shall Overcome.” It was picked up then and written about and talked about as the movement sort of song.

Now of course it’s sung all over the world. It’s in Spanish. It’s in China, in Russia, everywhere. We had a French journalist come over the other day. He said he grew up as a child knowing “We Shall Overcome.” He didn’t – he thought it had always been around.

Anyway, what happened was, just when it started getting real popular, people said, somebody’s going to copyright that song. I said, no, Zilphia, she doesn’t believe in copyright. She thinks music ought to be for the people. She wouldn’t be a party to making any money off of anything or letting anybody else, if she could help it, out of music. They said, yeah, but somebody else is going to do it. I held out for a while, as her administrator. I held out. But Guy, Pete Seeger, some of the people, said, look, all of us who added a word here or a line, you get together and copyright that song, and we can keep somebody from getting it and making a lot of money on it. I said, I’ll agree with that on one condition, and that is that we set up a trust fund. Any copyright, the money is used for the movement. It doesn’t go to anybody, Highlander or anybody else. Then I could rest easily with Zilphia in her grave, because I feel committed to her, since she’s admittedly the chief owner of the song, if you have, if you put it in technical [ ? ? ]. So I agreed to that. They were interested – none of them were interested in any money. So we did that. We set up a trust fund and have a committee that people like Bernice Reagan, who was one of the original freedom singers, is on. People like that. They decide what to use with the money, and the money is given to people for music.

This is my idea of how things of this kind should be used. This book is going to be – the money from this book goes to Highlander, [ ? ? ] individual.

Rabin: All.

Horton: That’s – I’m interested – this is – I’m using that as an example of what I’m interested – once that’s understood, that there isn’t somebody going to make money on it, then I don’t have any interest in protecting anything.

Rabin: Everything we do will be used for – it’s non-profit. There can’t be anything else. It’s put right back in. Furthermore, you can make a provision in there. I mean, there wouldn’t be any profit.

Horton: No, I don’t need to. I don’t mind. I . . .

Rabin: [ ? ? ]

Horton: [ ? ? ] I don’t have a problem. I just want to have an understanding about it.

Rabin: Let me get you to sign and date it. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Here. No, down – that’s for [?]. Sign here.

Horton: Oh, there. What’s this date?

Rabin: The 16th.

Then over here, this form will give us the right – publishers need that. Let’s say if we’re quoted, something in this interview. They’re going to want that. You can put any type of restrictions or anything else down along the bottom line. But when you get into – right now the – oh, how shall we put it? The rights on interviews are very [?] in the courts.

Horton: Yeah, I know. That’s a very – Guy Carawan and his wife are putting out a book on music in Appalachia. It’s ready. It’s already set to go. It’s going to come out the first of the year. They had all kinds of – they made a lot of interviews in there, pictures, interviews, and music.

Rabin: That can be . . .

Horton: They had a real hassle with the lawyers of the – some legal outfit. Highlander students and all. They’re glad to get in this. But there’s no money made. That book, the money on that book goes to Highlander.

Now Guy did a book on – did two books on the civil rights movement, two song books, and the money went to SNCC, to those folks. That’s what we always do. We work so the money’s not personal.

Rabin: We’re a chartered, non-profit foundation.

Horton: Yeah, but even a non-profit foundation could make a deal for somebody to take this and publish it, or give it to somebody and publish it, and make money.

Rabin: Then I think what you do, write it in there, the – if you want to say so. But I know that we . . .

[24 seconds of silent deliberation]

Horton: Now how? – I want to do this, because I want to say that if there’s any money made on it, that whoever – Highlander shares that money.

Rabin: Sure.

Horton: I don’t know how you say that.

Rabin: If any money is made on any book – if any money is made from this interview, donations should be made to Highlander – proportional donations should be made to Highlander.

We’ll be glad. We need access.

Horton: Yeah, I know about that.

The rights are reserved for Highlander. The – something is reserved for Highlander. If money is made on this interview, the proceeds are to be given to Highlander.

[20 seconds of silent deliberation]

Yeah, I just – I keep on getting – this thing just – it’s like our “We Shall Overcome” thing.

Rabin: You’re absolutely right.

Horton: I’m very concerned about that, not having people . . .

Rabin: No, I think . . .

Horton: . . . including us. I used the “We Shall Overcome” as an example of something we could have done, you see, and we tried to fix it so we couldn’t do it. We did fix it so we couldn’t do it if we wanted to at a later date.

Rabin: The problem – it’s a big problem, and [ ? ? ].

But we expect to take about 10 or more years.

Horton: I don’t care. I – this is just a kind of a routine thing I’m trying to carry along. It’s the same thing with Wisconsin. If the money’s to be made, we want it to be used – we want Highlander to get it, and of course “We Shall Overcome,” which we didn’t feel belonged to Highlander, we didn’t want Highlander to have it, or anybody else to have it. We wanted to be able to distribute it.

Rabin: What literature could we get from you when you go back? We would purchase or . . .

Horton: There’s been some books written about Highlander. There’s this manuscript of a doctoral dissertation. You can get – we can get things if you were there.

Rabin: I was thinking about songbooks or whatever.

Horton: We don’t have many songbooks. They’re in the archives.

[The tape runs out at this point.]