David Vann Interviewed on February 2, 1995

HUNTLEY: This is an interview with former Mayor of Birmingham, David Vann, with the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute's Oral History Project by Dr. Horace Huntley at Miles College, February 2, 1995 at 2:30 p.m.

Mayor Vann, I want to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule today to come out and talk with us.

VANN: It's a pleasure.

HUNTLEY: We want to just start today by getting a little background like, who are you? We know that you've been around and you've been involved in really changing the whole concept of what Birmingham is about. But, let me just ask you about your parents. Tell me about your mother and father. Where were they born? Were they Birminghamians?

VANN: Well, my father was born on my great-grandfather's farm in the area we now call Huffman. Most of Huffman was a part of my great-grandfather's--Joel King's Rand's--farm. He was second generation in the county. His father brought him as a baby from North Carolina in 1822 and settled in the Trussville area.

My mother was from Minneapolis, Minnesota. She had a brother that was a mining engineer and came to Birmingham with a cousin and they started several businesses. But his wife died somewhere around 1907 or 1908 and my mother and her mother came to Birmingham to look after the daughter and help her brother, 00:02:00Walker. My mother taught school in the Birmingham school system. She taught at Ullman. She taught at Fox Lake and, at the time, my father had graduated from the North Alabama Conference College, I believe in 1902. That was the second graduating class on that campus.

HUNTLEY: That's Birmingham Southern now.

VANN: Well, it is now, and my grandfather, Felix Vann, was in the real estate business in old Elyton and family tradition is that he and a group of Elyton businessmen raised six thousand dollars ($6,000) and went to the Methodist church and said they wanted to start a college at Owington, which was an 00:03:00unincorporated area north of Elyton.

The Owens family apparently donated some land on top of the hill and the businessmen promised [that] if they would start the college, they would have the first building ready within a year. The argument was whether you should build a Christian college in a wicked, wicked place like Birmingham. At that time, there was a saloon on every corner downtown, about four (4) breweries. Jack Daniels whiskey was distilled on Second Avenue, I think.

There were brothels up and down the railroad tracks and it was sort of like a wild-west town, still. But, they said, this is out in the country, in the fresh air, so they started and opened in 1897 as the North Alabama Conference College. They changed the name to Birmingham College about 1910 and, then, I think it was 00:04:00in 1918, the Methodist Church was faced with the problem of having two colleges and not many students, because the young men were all going to war. They merged the two colleges and became Birmingham Southern.

Most of the history of Birmingham Southern they talk about the history of Southern University, which started, I think, in 1842. But I always thought they ought to put some emphasis on the North Alabama Conference College, because if it hadn't been for the efforts of those gentlemen that got that college started, there wouldn't be a Birmingham Southern College here.

My father stayed after graduation. They had everything from first grade through the fourth year of college and so they had a grammar school and high school and my father stayed as principal and stayed about until 1909 and then he went down to the university and got his law degree. I believe it was two-year law program 00:05:00in those years. I have his diploma in my wallet. I believe it's dated 1911.

HUNTLEY: Did he practice law here in Birmingham?

VANN: No. He had a brother that had tuberculosis and the doctor said he ought to go live in the mountains. My grandfather had become a Methodist minister after the business had started the college and that meant his children could go to the new college free. It was the first generation of my family to have a college education. I always thought that Grandpa was pretty smart to help start a college so his children could get a college education. But, they moved. The Bishop, he had my grandfather Felix' church at Fruithurst, Alabama in the mountains and Dad started his law practice in Heflin so he could be near his brother. Then, later, he moved to Roanoke, Alabama and I was born in Roanoke, 00:06:00which is the largest town in Randolph County. Wedowee is the county seat. Dad was elected Circuit Solicitor, which was the district attorney, in effect, to that era. Then, in 1931 he was appointed Circuit Judge by Governor Miller, and he died in 1934 about a week before election. He was running for re-election. I remember the house was full of campaign material. Two years later, my mother decided the best way to get a college education for her children was to move to a college town. So she picked up the family and sold the house and gave herself a little stake and moved to Auburn. My two older brothers went to Auburn. My 00:07:00sister had gotten married. She went to the University of Michigan.

HUNTLEY: So there were four of you.

VANN: There were four of us.

HUNTLEY: Where were you? You were the youngest?

VANN: I was the youngest, and my mother sold insurance and Reader's Digest and we had a boarding house--not a boarding house, but a rooming house. We would have four or five college students living with us. But, she finally got a job with a general accounting office that audited the federal farm programs through an office at Auburn. In the year I graduated from high school, her job got moved to Birmingham and she had to transfer the Federal Crop Insurance, so I was ready to be a boarding student.

I thought I'd go to Auburn always, you know. But mother said, 'I'd go to talk to the people down at the University [of Alabama]. Your dad went there.' I went 00:08:00down there and the Dean of Students fixed me up with one job for my room and another job for my food and some spending money. I waited on the football training table for the last Alabama Rose Bowl team. They made the pact with the Big Ten the next year and Alabama couldn't go to the Rose Bowl anymore. They had been there as much as any school in the country.

HUNTLEY: So you worked your way through college.

VANN: Well, at the end of June, 1946, right at the end of the war--. The war was over as far as the fighting was concerned, but it wasn't officially over and I thought I would be drafted in August when I became eighteen [years old], so a friend of mine and I decided to start in June. We volunteered and joined the Army. I had to have my mother's permission because I was only seventeen. I spent 00:09:00a year and a half in the Army in the occupation of Korea. The Japanese Army pulled out and the American Army went in and set up a military government until they could organize their own government. I was barely eighteen and they made me a criminal investigator because I had a year and half of college and I told them I was going to study law. I joined in June. By October I was in Korea and I had a jeep with a driver and two-way radio and a Korean interpreter.

HUNTLEY: This was at the time--

VANN: They put me out investigating cases.

HUNTLEY: This was at the time that the military was just then being integrated, right?

VANN: No it wasn't. It was segregated and I spent a year there and I qualified for the GI Bill, which assured me that I would be able to go to law school. I didn't use my GI Bill until I got into law school. I came back to Alabama and I 00:10:00had a job and I was the technical director of the university theater. As a high school student, I had worked with the Auburn Players in learning how to build scenery. They could find plenty of people that wanted to act, but not many people that wanted to use hammers and nails and painting to make the sets, so I did that for two years. Then I went to law school.

I got called to active duty in my senior year in law school, and I went back into the Army as a counter-intelligence officer. Now it was an integrated Army, and in that three to four year period I had Black agents that worked for me. I had gotten a commission. It was sort of interesting. They came from all over the country, but if they had personal problems, they always came to me. Somehow they trusted me, as a southerner, better than they trusted those Yankee boys.

HUNTLEY: How different was the military as a segregated institution than as an 00:11:00integrated one?

VANN: Well, [in] the segregated Army that I was in, all the Black soldiers were in trucking companies or laundry companies--supply. I really seldom saw a Black soldier.

HUNTLEY: But you did have Black investigators?

VANN: When I went back in 1951, I had Black counter-intelligence agents that worked under me, yes.

HUNTLEY: When you left the military the second time, what did you do?

VANN: Well, I was about to finish my master's degree in law at George Washington. While I was in the Army I went to night law school and they had a two-year program that you could go to three nights a week. I didn't know anybody, didn't have any tie-ups or commitments, so I went five nights a week 00:12:00and did the whole program in one year. But I got out of the Army in April and got a job as general counsel in the National Labor Relations Board doing appellate briefs, so I was writing briefs all day and going to law school all night. It was pretty miserable the last two months. Then, about the early part of June, Justice Black's law clerk called me up and said Justice Black would like to meet me.

I hadn't worked for the government long enough to have any leave, but I said I could take my lunch hour anytime I wanted to. So, the law clerk came by. He had been a student at [the University of] Alabama with me and he took me out to Justice Black's home in Alexandria, and we chatted for a while. My father had been a supporter of him when he ran for the Senate and they had both been members of the Knights of Pythias, so he remembered my father.

After we talked for a little while, he said, 'Well, I've decided I want you to be my law clerk this year.' At the time, I didn't even know I was an applicant for being his law clerk. So, just out of the blue and two weeks later I was at the Supreme Court of the United States. He asked me what I wanted to do. I said I was going back to Alabama to practice law. The school desegregation case was pending, Brown v. The Board. He said, 'Well, maybe you don't want to be my law clerk?'

I said, 'Oh, yes. I want to be your law clerk.' I knew how the case was going to be decided. Anybody who had read Justice Black's opinion knew how that case was going to be decided as far as his vote. Then, in May...a sort of issue-- We had a deal, the law clerks and the Justices--it was really made by our predecessors--that the Justices would not discuss Brown v. The Board of Education with their law clerks. We didn't want to be blamed for a news leak and 00:14:00there were reporters all over that building every day just trying to get some inside information.

The day the case came down... I never discussed it with them, and the day the case came down... I lived with him [Justice Black]. We had breakfast together every morning and dinner together every night. I drove his car, drove him to the Supreme Court building. They met at noon in those days, and just before noon I stuck my head in his office and said, 'Judge, anything you need before you go on the bench today?' And he said, 'No, everything's fine.' So I said, 'I'll think I go to lunch.' He said, 'That's fine.' No hint, no indication of any kind that that was going to be an important, historical date. But, I went into Justice Jackson's law clerk's office. His name was Barrett Prettyman, Jr., and I said, 'Barrett, let's go to lunch.' Barrett said, 'I can't. My judge is here.' Now, 00:15:00that was right startling news, because Jackson had had a heart attack and had been out for at least two or three weeks in the hospital. I just said to myself, 'There's only one reason they would bring him from the hospital. They're going to hand down Brown today.' And I ran downstairs--not ran, but walked fast downstairs--where the law clerks had a dining room. They went through the public cafeteria line, but they had a place to eat that was private. I said, 'Let's go upstairs.

They brought Jackson from the hospital. They're going to hand down Brown.' Several of the clerks said things like, 'My judge would have given me a hint,' or 'I've got an appointment.' 'I've got this, I've got that,' and only six of us went upstairs to hear Warren read Brown v. Board of Education. It was sort of interesting, because I was looking up and down the bench as to who was going to dissent. I mean, this was such a controversial case, surely I would expect a dissent. I looked into the face of every one of those Justices: Justice Clark, Justice Brennan, Justice Reed, Justice Burton, William Douglas. I didn't expect 00:16:00him to dissent.

I looked at Frankfurter. I thought he might, and then I looked at Justice Wright and I couldn't read anything in his face. About two-thirds of the way through, well before the end of the opinion, the decision is announced. Warren read. He said, 'We, therefore, hold that segregation by race in public schools violates the Fourteenth Amendment.' But when he read it, he added the word-- He said, 'We, therefore, unanimously hold,' and everybody in the room relaxed. I saw the Chief [Justice] in the hall that evening and I said to him, I said, 'Chief, when you read that opinion today, you didn't read it like you wrote it.' His big Swedish face clouded up and he said, 'What do you mean?' I said, 'You added the 00:17:00word 'unanimously'.' He said, 'I thought it was getting kind of tense in there about that time.'

I have told that story many times, but somebody had recently written a biography of Strom Thurmond. I think the chapter was about how Strom Thurmond now has Black people on his staff. I think it was somehow...but, anyway, that story about me meeting the Chief Justice is in Strom Thurmond's biography, which I thought was sort of interesting.

HUNTLEY: Tell me, just for curiosity's sake, something about William O. Douglas.

VANN: One of the most brilliant men you would ever meet. He only used one law clerk. He had a second law clerk, but he used that law clerk to help him write books. Douglas was in constant motion. He never wasted a minute. He had 00:18:00something productive to do every minute. He was so smart. He would write an opinion and, then-- While in Justice Black's office, we might go over that opinion through fifteen drafts. We would have a comma draft. We went through to see if we could figure a way to get rid of commas. Justice Douglas thought commas messed up the English language. Shorten sentences. Then we had one draft... Justice Black never wanted to write quotable quotes. He had a feeling that in the past, judges had written decisions and included colorful words that got established as rules of law when he wanted you to have to read his entire opinion in one piece and look at the whole thing and not be able to pick out a 00:19:00quotable quote. Of course, he did write some quotable quotes, but he really intentionally did not want to do that.

But Douglas would just do, maybe, two drafts and out it goes. So, some of his writing, while he was a wonderful writer and an experienced writer, a professional writer, I think some of his opinions are a little unfinished compared to what we did. And, of course, his personal life was complicated. I think he married three times. But, he was an interesting... sort of taciturn. He came to dinner. When I lived with the Judge these other Judges would come to dinner, so I would get to spend the evenings with the other members of the court, in effect, which was a wonderful educational program, really 00:20:00unbelievable. But, Douglas was sort of taciturn. He didn't talk a lot.

HUNTLEY: He wrote, I believe it's a small volume entitled Quotes of Rebellion, that many of the young and ambitious revolutionaries of the [19]60s and the '70s looked at very favorably, and I always wondered what kind of individual he was.

VANN: Well, he was a very...you know, it's sort of iffy. You saw him... He was sort of a cold personality except with people who knew him real, real, well. I think... but at the same time, he was a very warm personality and was very conscious of the problems of people and the complications of life. You know, he wrote The Security Exchange Act. He was the head of the SEC, a very complex 00:21:00organizational structure. There was no limit to his mental capacities. But he also had a very, really warm.... You know, I understand that after he retired he tried to come back on the Court.

He wanted--he got upset and wanted to have his say. But, he made mistakes like everybody else. I think some of their early cases following Brown, particularly the Richmond case, where instead of treating the county as a whole with respect to racial segregation, they held the proper thing was to have a separate city school system, separate county school system and in the Detroit case, where the judge made his desegregation order to cover all the suburban schools as well as the Detroit schools and the Supreme Court overruled that, then it set a pattern. It really, in effect, condemned all cities of the United States to be poor 00:22:00Blacks in the core and the wealthier living in the suburbs around. Birmingham is not inconsistent with that.

HUNTLEY: How long were you in [Washington] D.C. and when did you return to Birmingham?

VANN: Well, I went there [Washington] probably in early 1952 in the Army. I spent a year in the Army and a year with the Judge and I came to Birmingham in the fall of 1954, probably August 1954, with the law firm of White, Berry, Layman, Arant and Rose, now Bradley, Arant, Rose & White.

HUNTLEY: So you were actually back in Birmingham during the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

VANN: Oh, yes.

HUNTLEY: Did you have any dealings with any one that was associated with the bus boycott?

VANN: Not at that time. Justice Black's sister-in-law, Mrs. Clifford Durr, I 00:23:00knew her. Later, I became... And I knew--but I didn't know anything about what he was doing--Robert Hughes, a young Methodist minister that Bishop Clare Purcell had appointed, had given a special appointment to the Alabama Council on Human Relations. He and I had been students at the university at the same time and had gone to work through the Wesley Foundation Program at the university. He went to seminary and I went to law school.

He came to Birmingham shortly after the bus boycott and contacted me, and for several years I worked very closely with Bob. I couldn't do probate legal work and he knew that. But, I ended up on the Board of the Alabama Council [on Human 00:24:00Relations] and spent many weekends meeting at Alabama State [University]. Dr. McMillian of Tuskegee [University] was on our board and a delightful, wonderful man. Joe Lowery was on our board. He had a Methodist church at that time in Mobile. He had earlier been the pastor at St. Paul's in Birmingham, I think. He wasn't as active. Reverend Wilson is a minister at St. Paul's. I spent many hours with him. He later was the chaplain at Tuskeegee.

HUNTLEY: What board was this?

VANN: The Board of The Alabama Council on Human Relations. When the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] was outlawed, we became virtually the only bi-racial group in Alabama. Arthur Shores, John and Deenie Drew-- I knew them well.

HUNTLEY: Was this one of the organizations that sort of filled the void left by the NAACP?

VANN: No. I don't look at it in that manner. I think Reverend Shuttlesworth's Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights more nearly filled...and of course, the NAACP legal research continued to work with that group. We mainly were communicators. We met and we puzzled. I would say in 1959 and 1960, by that time, we had somewhat concluded that it was going to be very difficult to make social change in Alabama until you got the power structure to take that as a 00:26:00program. I worked with...

HUNTLEY: The business or the political side?

VANN: The business side. You know, the political side simply reflects things. Very little is created in the political side, I think. First, I worked with, I can't remember the minister's name right now. He's in Brooklyn now I think, but...Oliver, Reverend Oliver. There was a project that I worked with him on. Every time there was a police brutality incident that he heard about, he would go and take affidavits from the people that were involved, and I would reproduce those. We had a mailing list. We would send about fifty top business people in Birmingham copies of the affidavits every time we had one.

The thinking was that people that lived in Mountain Brook and over-the-mountain would come to work and go home and they really didn't know much about segregation. They didn't know what was going on in this city and we wanted to make sure they knew what was going on. What effect that had, I do not know. I think the critical, the most critical thing that happened, that turned things around, was the Freedom Riders coming to Birmingham. The bus being burned in Anniston, the other bus coming on to Birmingham, Conner refusing to give police protection to the Freedom Riders. His minister, who is still living, I think was at City Hall personally pleading with Conner to provide police protection. Conner said, 'They're looking for trouble. They're going to find it.'

When I was Mayor, I checked the radio tapes and there was a good five minutes between the time the first report [of violence against the Freedom Riders] came in on the police radio and the time any policemen appeared at the scene. Probably, things had been going on for five or so minutes before that. But you had this group of thugs meet that bus and beat up the people that got off the bus and they also beat up people that were simply waiting for a bus. People who had nothing to do with the Freedom Riders got beaten up just because they happened to be at the bus station.

For some reason, the national news people thought that the bus was coming to the Greyhound Station. Instead it came to the Trailways Station and Tom Langford, who is still a photographer at the Birmingham Post Herald, took the pictures of the beating. One of the smarter Klansmen grabbed at his camera and he knew about 00:29:00cameras. It's the lens that makes the picture, so he broke the lens and threw away the camera, and, of course, the pictures were all inside, undisturbed by his actions. The camera was recovered from a trash can, I think, in the alley, and the Post Herald was a Scripps-Howard paper and they immediately put that on the wire and it was on the front page of newspapers all around the world.

The City had been very defensive when other people came in and criticized us, whether it be Harrison Salisbury or CBS News or any writers that came through. But, this time, their own people were beaten up. Clancy Lake, newsman from WAPI television, was beaten up. I think they broke the windshield in his car. He was 00:30:00parked outside. And that picture I saw around the world. At that particular time, they were having an international Rotary convention in Tokyo, Japan and the incoming chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, Sydney Smyer, was there with a group and they looked at that picture and they said, you know, 'We can't take this anymore.' So Conner's action really stimulated the business community to start to figure out how can we get rid of this guy.

They came back and they formed a committee, a secret committee and called themselves the Senior Citizens. It was made up of top CEO's from Birmingham businesses, partners from big law firms. One of our partners was a member, but not active. [There were] bankers. They started planning and one thing they saw 00:31:00was that if they could change the form of city government, that might be a way to get through to Conner.

They asked the Birmingham Bar Association to make a study of what kind of government would be best for Birmingham. They were pushed on somewhat in that in the Fall of 1961 the federal judge, Judge Grooms, entered the order requiring the desegregation of Birmingham parks. The commission immediately said, 'Close the parks,' and they sent a message to the Birmingham Park Board to close the parks. Former Mayor Jimmy Morgan had been appointed to the park board and he didn't get on the park board to close the parks. He got on the park board to build a zoo.

The park board defied the commission, which had appointed them, and that was one 00:32:00of the most interesting things that happened. It was very rare for a city agency to stand up and just face down the commission, but the commission had a handle. The Alabama law required them to appropriate fifty thousand dollars ($50,000) a year to the parks--and that's an old law, when fifty thousand dollars was a lot more money. But the rest of their money was budgeted by the city, and, so, when the park board wouldn't close the parks, they repealed the budget of the park board and forced them to fire all of their employees. I'm told that they had concrete poured down the holes of the city golf courses so that nobody could sneak on and play a round of golf.

The Birmingham Bar Association made the study and in February 1962 they recommended a change to a Mayor/Council government. They also recommended about 00:33:00three or four amendments to the law [so] that, if you followed their plan you couldn't have had a changing city government for two or three years probably. I, frankly, thought that you couldn't get it. The legislature wasn't going to make changes if they were choosing sides, because Alabama politics for many years is run on what I call 'the law of the enemies'. If you don't make any enemies, you can get re-elected.

If you make enemies, you can't get re-elected and, so, the less a public official does, the less people he makes mad. I know they say that one Birmingham legislator served five terms and never introduced a bill, left the floor at every controversial vote and got re-elected five times because he didn't make anybody mad. He didn't do anything to make anybody mad. He didn't do anything to make anybody proud of him either, but that's beside the point.

HUNTLEY: Let me ask you a question about when you talk about the Freedom Riders coming in and, of course, they were attacked. In the Black communities there was 00:34:00the idea that the police and the Klan were one and the same. How would you react to that?

VANN: Well, I don't think they were one and the same, but I'll say this: If I went to a meeting at the Congregational Church on Center Street, which was a place where the Alabama Council meetings were frequently held, there might be a story in the Klan newspaper next week saying David Vann was out there, and I really think there were probably informers that informed for the police department and for the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation]. At the same time, 00:35:00in fact-- [In] the famous picture of the beating, there's a guy with a very close cut hair. His back is to the camera. His name was Gary.

Anyway, when I was mayor, Bill Baxley and I worked in support of each other to get the Justice Department to open the files on the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and the FBI had lost all of the physical evidence. There were some Birmingham police officers that really would love to be the one that broke the case. If that Birmingham police [officer] could solve the case, that would be a great cop. And so, they worked with them. But I got to read... The 00:36:00Justice Department had refused to give Birmingham that evidence for years and refused to give the district attorney that evidence for years and I supposed they thought they wouldn't prosecute.

That might have been true if they had given it to them in 1962. But, Bill Baxley, that was the thing he wanted to do. He had promised Chris McNair he would do that and Chris' daughter, as you know was killed--[was] one of the four children that were killed.

HUNTLEY: This is in the seventies [1970s] that you are referring to now?

VANN: Yes. But, Carter's Justice Department did give us files and there was an interview with this guy whose picture is in there. It was a closed meeting of a congressional committee, so it was never published. But they asked him, 'Is that you in the picture?' And he said, 'Yes.' They said, 'Well, why have you always denied it?' And he said, 'The FBI told me to. The FBI said if I was asked is 00:37:00that you--I was given a name, and I was always supposed to say, 'no, that's William Jones' or whatever the name was.'

You see, he was supposed to positively identify by another name. Of course, that case was eventually broken because the niece testified. Howell Raines, in an article in the New York Times Magazine, said that one reason that he wasn't prosecuted was that the man's wife was an FBI informant and they were afraid that if he ever learned that, he'd murder her. And, to protect their source, there was no prosecution for over ten years.

HUNTLEY: Because you were active in those early years, in the fifties [1950s] and sixties [1960s] with the Council [on Human Relations], when you were called 00:38:00on by the businessmen to sort of interact with--

VANN: No, that really had little to do with it. The thing that gave me an unusual position was I probably knew... There really weren't but three or four White people that knew as many Black leaders as I did and had a personal relationship with them. But, the way I really got involved in the whole thing was, I was the organizer for Kennedy in the 1960 campaign. John Greenah and I were in the same law firm and he asked to be given some time to campaign for Goldwater, I mean for Nixon.

And, I said, if you're going to do that, let me campaign for Kennedy. And the law firm, being a great institution, freed both of us to work in that presidential campaign. And they made me the organization chairman and I 00:39:00organized a committee in every box in the county and when the election was over, Bob Vance, who later was a federal judge and was assassinated by the bombing, mail bomb, he and I and several young people, the official party had refused to support Kennedy. And not pass resolutions, they were just hands off. And so, a group of young guys managed to take over the campaign and the governor, Governor Patterson was a strong Kennedy supporter. And so, we had the governor's office and we had John Sparkman, George Huddleston, they supported Kennedy, but originally no state official wanted to do it. They would all scat. Don't make enemies. That rule of don't make enemies.

Well, Allison was one of the attorneys in the Alabama reapportionment case and I was aware of the Bar Association study but at that particular time, we were in court trying to get the first reapportionment order in the country, which we did in June. Bob Vance and I intervened and asked the court to delay a decision to give the legislature of Alabama one more chance. Patterson did call a special session and they did pass two reapportionment bills. And, they set up a special election in August to elect the new...they had increased the Senate to 67 so there were going to be a lot of new senators elected and they had made some rather conservative changes in the members of the House. But, I think this county was going to get two more representatives or something.

We got the federal court to hold those plans were unconstitutional. And, we had 00:41:00this special election in August, but the legislature had already called it. The court didn't have to call an election because the election was already called by the legislature. I was busy promoting that. We had worked hard to get that order. We were very proud to have the first reapportionment order in the United States and we wanted good people to be elected. We had had a committee persuade what we called good people to run and I was trying to promote the vote.

I'm riding down the road and Dave Campbell, who had a talk show in those days, came on with his morning editorial to try to stir up interest for his night program and Abe Berkowitz had been on the Bar Association committee and he had been making the rounds of civic clubs talking about changing the city government and Dave said, 'Well, we ought to get up a petition and have an election on it, 00:42:00or we ought to get behind the government we got. It's not good for a city to be split.' And, I said, "He can sit up on the mountain and pontificate easily, but get a petition.'

Glen Iris Civic Club on the southside had tried to get a petition and Mr. Conner had just sent plain clothes detectives around to pick up petitions as fast as they were signed. But I got to my office and said, 'You know, if I had me a petition booth across the street from every polling place, 10 days from now, when this special election was going to happen, I believe I can get up a petition in a single day.' We could have voting lists that are published in the newspaper. We could check people off, make sure the signatures were valid and we could send somebody around to pick-up petitions once an hour so if Conner tried to get some of them we'd have most of them because we would have a security 00:43:00system of our own.

And, I called up Abe [Berkowitz] and I said, 'Abe, you really want to change the city government? I have figured out how to do it.' And, I told him briefly what my plan was. He called me back and said the Executive Committee at the Chamber of Commerce would like to meet with me at 2:00 that afternoon. I said, 'Well, I'll be glad to meet with them, but I want to bring the president of the Birmingham Labor Council with me.' [He said], 'Oh, businessmen and labor don't talk together.' [I said], 'Look, this is a big decision. If you are going to do this and win it, you've got to have both business and labor for it and I believe I can bring the labor unions with me.'

And, I had known Don Stafford very well from the Kennedy election campaign and I called Don and he said yes he would come. So, we had this meeting in Mr. Smyer's office and I outlined my simple plan. Some of the businessmen said, 'This is too important a thing to do in ten days notice. It needs to be planned carefully.' 00:44:00My labor man said, 'I been sitting here thinking, yea, why hadn't we thought of this before? Let's go.' I always think my labor man talked the businessmen into doing it.

And they said we needed to get ten to twelve leading citizens that are non-controversial to head this up. I made a list of about 25 businessmen they thought fit that criteria. Some of them may have been other than businessmen but most of them were businessmen and we said we would meet the next day. Well, we came back the next day. All 25 had turned us down. They said, 'We'll donate money, but I do business with the city. I sell cars to the city. I have insurance with the city. I have all these things... '

And old Smyer, he had been a Dixiecrat politician. Members of the legislature knew government on its practical side and he leaned back and I'll never forget 00:45:00what he said. [He said], 'If we can't get twelve silk stockings, let's get 500 anybodies' His son and I went to law school together and went back mimeographed off this thing and it said, 'I hereby agree to be a member of the Birmingham Citizens for Progress. To sponsor a petition to give the people of Birmingham the right to decide for themselves what form of government is best for their city.' You could sign that without making any particular commitment.

We mimeographed these off and gave everybody a stack of them, because we didn't have Xerox. We had to run them off on a mimeograph machine. But, I then said, 'You know, you can talk to 25 businessmen and not get it into the paper, but you can't go out recruiting 500 people without it getting in the paper. I want your permission to go to the papers, tell them what we are doing, but get them to 00:46:00agree that it's not news until we get our committee.' I met with some of the editorial staff of the Birmingham News and they agreed that until we know whether you can get your committee, it's not news. I went to the editor of the Post Herald, Jimmy Mills, and he gave me the same commitment. That was a Thursday. Friday nothing in the papers. Saturday nothing in the papers. Sunday the whole edition, which I can't even find a copy of--

VANN: So the Birmingham News had this, I believe a front-page story to my recollection. I can't find a copy of it.

HUNTLEY: Sunday morning?

VANN: Sunday morning. The official copy in the library has a story on an inside page. But only one-- You know, the Birmingham News, in those days, printed about 00:47:00six or seven different editions and I can't find this one. Maybe there's somebody out there...and it'll turn up, so you can write. Anyway, it had my picture on the front page. [The headline read], 'Hugo Black's law clerk when the Court wrote the school desegregation case, trying to run Bull Conner out of City Hall.' And, I said, 'You know, they've got the knife in my back and they're twisting it." There was a telephone call and I said, 'Oh, here come the phone calls.'

Well, the phone call was from one of the Republican committee people from Roebuck. He said, 'That's a great idea. Can we help?' And so, all of a sudden, without any prior planning, we had the Kennedy for President people, the Nixon for President people, the labor unions and the Chamber of Commerce and the real estate board and the PTA Council.

HUNTLEY: And the Republicans?

VANN: Well, we had the Nixon for President people. In those days, the 00:48:00Republicans were a right tight knit group and their main objective was to control the patronage when they got a Republican president. They really were not very keen on letting all these strangers that just formed committees come in. So, in a sense, the Republicans at that point in time were outsiders just like our Democratic committee were outsiders to the official committee. But I had studied the election returns of the May primary and it was very interesting because for the first time that I could recall, the Black boxes and the southside boxes and the over-the-mountain boxes all voted against George Wallace together. George Wallace was unable to carry Jefferson County.

And I said, 'If we can put those forces together--the liberal Democrats, the 00:49:00Republicans and the Black vote--we can win.' And I had that pretty well fixed. Sure enough, ten days later we put out our petition.

Smyer had improved the plan a little bit. He said he'd print the petitions. But he printed them with snap out carbons so when you signed one you actually signed five copies. And, we needed 7,500 names. We got 12,000 in one day. Almost 12,000. I'm not sure anybody ever knows the full number, but... So we came from out of the blue. In one day, we had enough votes. There were almost enough votes to win the election signing the petitions.

HUNTLEY: People were really excited about the possibilities then?

VANN: Yeah, and we didn't put petitions in the Black boxes. We wanted to stay as far away from the racial problems as we could. [Takes a drink of water.] But the Klan people came and beat up one of our labor people out at Harrison Park. They beat him up early in the day, so we got his pictures on the final edition of the Birmingham News, blood running down his face. [It was] Lloyd Davis. I'll probably see him tomorrow. They sabotaged us. They had people volunteer to run booths and then not show up. We had to hire Kelly Girls. Some of the booths weren't really open all day. We'd probably have done better if we... if they hadn't done that. But that's one of the tricks of politics.

I then called the Mayor. I had met with him several times in that week 00:51:00beforehand because he had run an ad. Art Hanes had run an ad when he ran for mayor supporting a change to Mayor/Council government. I told him, 'We got over 11,000 names and we are going to hold a press conference for about 30 minutes and you've got really three choices. You can support us and you may be mayor of this city for the next fifty years. You can oppose us and I think that's a bad political position for you to take. And, if you can't take either of those, say, 'I'll call an election and let the people decide. This is a question for the people to decide.' Well, the morning paper came out. [The headline read], 'Mayor says he'll call the election and let the people decide.'

I understand that Bull Conner earned his name that morning. He came down the 00:52:00hall with flames virtually spouting from his nose 'cause his office was in the north end of the building and the mayor was in the south end. And when the Birmingham News came out with 'The Mayor refuses to call the election,' he said he had discovered that David Vann was a communist and he didn't call elections for communists. But the law provided if the mayor refused to call the election, the probate judge should call the election. It just happened that the probate judge had been in the legislature and had been one of the sponsors of the Mayor/Council Act. One of the things they did, they started attacking us because some petitions you file in the courthouse you have to pay, I think it was ten cents a name or a dollar a name. I think it was ten cents a name, and we were getting our petition free. I said, 'I'll deposit the money,' and I literally 00:53:00raised that money walking from Second Avenue to the courthouse. People stopped me, gave me $20 bills, $10 bills and by the time I got to the courthouse, I had $750, which is what I needed. I went in to see Judge Mead, and said, 'Here, I brought my $750.' 'Well, the law doesn't require you to.' [I said], 'Judge, I brought $750 I want to deposit with you to cover the checking of the petition.' And he said, 'Alright,' took it and gave me a receipt. After the election was over, he called me up and said, 'Are you ready to get your money back?' And he returned the $750 after we had won the election.

HUNTLEY: How were you pictured then? Were you ever under attack as a result of the role that you played?

VANN: Oh yes. People threatened to kill me. There were a lot of people making 00:54:00trouble for the law firm. I really had to resign from the law firm. They were very fair to me. In fact, they paid me my salary for a year after that.

HUNTLEY: You had to resign from the firm?

VANN: I resigned from the firm. You see, we won that election in November of 1962. The same day George Wallace was first elected governor of Alabama, the people of Birmingham voted to take me to course. And, then, I was one of a group that went to Boutwell and asked him to run. He was an outgoing Lieutenant Governor, a member of my church and a very good man. He was just part of the culture that we had and he had sponsored an amendment to the constitution to 00:55:00have freedom of choice on schools. But, he agreed, we had to change. And Tom King ran. Tom had run the year before. In fact, the Freedom Rider thing happened in the middle of the mayor's race in 1961. And, although Tom had led the first heat, he came in second in the runoff and Hanes was elected.

HUNTLEY: At this same time...

VANN: Tom ran and then Conner. I ran around like a big.... We had eight speakers and I was one of them. We ran around with charts, running like a civics class, talking about here's this form of government, here's how it works and here's this form. In the commission government there are no checks and balances. The same people who pass the taxes spend the money. Over here, you've got a council and a mayor and the council passes the laws and the mayor administers the laws.

HUNTLEY: Did you go to any Black communities during that time?

VANN: Look, I stayed away. I didn't even dare call a Black person on the telephone, because I was sure my telephone was tapped.

HUNTLEY: So then, these eight individuals never really went out to Black communities to get any...

VANN: As a matter of fact, we were trying to stay as far .... That's what Conner wanted to do... For instance, the first thing I did after it was clear that we were going to have a thing and I was in charge of running the campaign, I sent an ad man to both television stations to buy television time. I wanted a half-hour of television the night before the election. Both stations refused to sell me television time. They said change in the city government is not a matter of sufficient public importance to justify the opening of television time. And yet, about a week later, they both decided it was important enough for them to do a documentary.

Well, the election had to be a three-way election. Mayor/Council, Commission or City Manager with a run off between the top two. And the Commission's ace in the hole was to get enough people to vote for the Manager government to have a run off. And, that was our worst enemy. There was nobody in town campaigning for the City Manager [form of government]. Both television stations hired a political science professor, one from Montevallo and the other from the University of Alabama to come in to talk for ten minutes on how great the City Manager government was. At that time, most political science people thought the City Manager government was the best form of government and it is a good form of government for smaller cities, but in large cities it never really worked that well.

HUNTLEY: What was their motivation in having people come and talk about the City Manager form of government?

VANN: Well, I think-- I don't know, but I know I didn't like it because I wanted 00:58:00to win without a runoff and if enough people voted City Manager that would force a run off and in those days in politics for the run off you ran ads in the paper showing half of the Black people had voted at Legion Field and the Black people had voted at the Municipal Auditorium and scare all the White folks and you win the election. It was the opposite of the bloody shirt in Ohio, but it was a bloody shirt. I was.... and most people thought that if we had to have a run off, we'd lose. So...but it turned out that we won without a run off by about two votes in each box. If two people had voted the other way in each box in Birmingham, we would have lost. It was nip and tuck. And, then Conner.... When I'd go out speaking, I'd say, 'If you like Mr. Conner, elect him mayor, but we 00:59:00need a new form of government." He would, of course, say, 'No, I'll never run for mayor. I'll never run for mayor.' Of course, he immediately did run for mayor and there was a run off. But the run off didn't help them because the Black voters had voted for Tom King. Boutwell had a few Black votes but not a lot. Conner had none. So when they were in the run off together, they were unable to use the traditional bloody shirt politics to beat Boutwell, and Boutwell ended up winning very handily in the run off.

HUNTLEY: At the same time that this was going on, something else is taking place of significance in Birmingham.

VANN: I think the SCLC was having a national meeting here.

HUNTLEY: That's right.

VANN: They didn't want to interfere with what we were doing. They thought voting Conner out was a pretty good thing. Business people were having meetings. I had one meeting they invited me to at The Church of the Advent and that's the first 01:00:00time I met Shuttlesworth. Shuttlesworth came in to the room and said, 'Oh, that's David Vann. I've been wanting to meet him,' because he had read about me in the newspaper. They nearly had some things put together, but Conner's group sent word from City Hall that if you take those signs down you're going to jail and we will run a picture in the paper of Mr. Pizitz himself behind bars in the city jail.

HUNTLEY: Colored and White signs?

VANN: They were talking about taking down the Colored and White signs, yes. It was really pretty obvious that to make any rational resolution of our problem, Conner had to go. Remarkably, I know I had people that were my friends in the 01:01:00business community call me and say, 'David, you know you can't win this thing. Please be ready to protect...be careful what you say.'

HUNTLEY: How did you view SCLC coming in to town at the time?

VANN: Really I was so busy doing what I was doing, I didn't worry about it. Now, Smyer and his committee did worry about it. They met with some of them, I think and they sort of talked it out and decided not to... that they would be careful not to try to interfere with the political... You know, Black people got tired of being kicked around by politics, I'm sure.

HUNTLEY: There were efforts by the Movement to have meetings with this, I don't know if it was the Senior Citizens at that time..

VANN: Yes they did. There were some meetings.

HUNTLEY: In the initial stages though, was it true that the businessmen refused to meet with Shuttlesworth?

VANN: Yeah, I think they refused. Shuttlesworth was a firebrand and he no longer lived in Birmingham. He lived in Cincinnati and that sort of gave him .... They said, 'We'll talk with the local leaders, but we can't talk with you. You're from Cincinnati.' But I know I came to one meeting with the businessmen and Shuttlesworth was present there. Fred was always eager to stir things up, and I've told him, I said, 'Birmingham thought you were a trap.'

HUNTLEY: He was always eager to do what? To stir something up?

VANN: To get something in the paper.

HUNTLEY: Okay.

VANN: We always said that he could call Bull Conner and say, 'Bull, I'm going to get on the bus at Second Avenue and 19th Street at 2:00 this afternoon' and Conner would come arrest him. There's a newspaper story. It made Shuttlesworth a hero with his followers. It made Conner a hero with his followers. What's a poor 01:03:00city going to do when it's trapped in that kind of thing? So-- But, anyway, Barney Monahan was the president of Vulcan Materials. I know he headed up a group and they actually had some near agreement on some things and I've heard that said that they backed out. They agreed to do it and then backed out. But, they backed out because the city government threatened to use all the force it had to prevent it from happening and to arrest the businessmen.

After we won the election, Conner refused... Conner and his group refused to leave office. The city commission had actually announced a week or so before the new government was sworn in that they weren't going to leave office, and that 01:04:00gave King's people a chance to.... I remember I was on a program with Wyatt T. Walker, and he said, 'We talked about it, and there was a lot of pressure on us to wait and let the new government have a chance to deal with this thing.'

The President and the Attorney General, a committee of Black ministers... I heard that Andrew Young said, 'Why do you want to go to Birmingham? Even the Black preachers don't want you to come to Birmingham.' And, of course, there was a problem. The Black political people had worked their fingers to the bone to change the city government, to elect a new government and I sat in on some of Boutwell's meetings with them and Boutwell had made some pretty surprising, to me, commitments to them.

HUNTLEY: Like what, for instance?

VANN: About Black police officers and other things. I don't remember the details. But, they felt they had chips on the table and that King was going to come in here and pick up their chips and claim credit for them. Some of them 01:05:00felt that way, I think.

HUNTLEY: Who were these leaders that you met with?

VANN: I'm talking about the Black political leaders.

HUNTLEY: The political leaders here in town?

VANN: Yes, the ones that had worked so hard to win the election. Here is somebody coming from out of town, to claim credit for what we've accomplished. You know, if you work on something real hard, you feel like you got an investment in it. And, actually, until the children started marching, the Black community was really split. I remember I was talking to a Black businessman. I think it was the editor of The Birmingham World. Dr. Gaston said, talking to him, and I probably talked to both of them, is the truth of the matter. But, I can remember, I think the editor of The Birmingham World, I was talking to him and he was very anti-King.

HUNTLEY: Emory Jackson?

VANN: Emory Jackson. He said, 'You know, they said they don't get paid anything. Oh, yes, an expense account.' I says, 'Over at the motel.' [He said' 'Ooh, I'll swap my salary for that expense account any day.' Statements like that. But then 01:06:00he said, 'Lawyer Vann, I'm looking out my window.' He said, 'They've turned fire hoses on children. They're rolling a little girl down the middle of the street. I can't talk to you no more.' And the minute Bull thought about getting the dogs and hoses he stopped [the split in the Black community]. Actually, strategically, that was the worst thing [Conner] could have done. In an instant, if there was any dissent in the Black community, it disappeared. Instantly, everybody was behind it. And, the interesting thing is, you know, the Sheriff over in Albany, Georgia had pretty well defeated King. When King got himself arrested because he thought he wanted to be in jail and talk from the jail, the Sheriff put up his bond and wouldn't let him stay in jail.

HUNTLEY: In Albany?

VANN: In Albany, yes. When they arrested people, they sent them to jails in other towns and the strategy was to fill our jails and Conner just cooperated 01:07:00with it. Wyatt T. Walker says, 'This will be our last chance to march against Bull Conner,' and they knew him so well. They knew how he would react. I always tell people the hoses and the dogs, that was Bull Conner's show. That was not our show. Conner did not speak for Birmingham at that point. He had been rejected by the voters three times in the previous six months. The Circuit Court of Jefferson County held that he was no longer legally an official of the city and he was there only by virtue of an appeal pending in the Alabama Supreme Court.

HUNTLEY: Wyatt Walker obviously would suggest that Bull Conner was the best thing that ever happened ....

VANN: Oh sure. Well, if you go back, the thing that really persuaded the business community that Birmingham had to change, they had to find a way, using all the skills and pressure and power they had to make change was because of 01:08:00what Bull Conner did with respect to the Freedom Riders. It's interesting. Back in the '20s we had the largest Ku Klux Klan in Birmingham of any place in the United States. But the Birmingham business community did not support the Klan. The newspapers did not support the Klan. And, by 1932, the Klan was pretty well dead in this county.

HUNTLEY: How did the Klan get to be so important? Because, at that time it was basically a fact that a person who was running for office, if they were not a supporter of the Klan, they couldn't get elected. Is that true in the 1920s?

VANN: I'm told that. And I asked Justice Black about joining the Klan. He said, 'Well, I joined every organization that had members of the jury. I tried jury cases.' And, I think that's probably true. You know, they changed the form of 01:09:00city government in 1911 from a Mayor/Council to a Commission and the officials weren't elected. They were all appointed by the governor.

The first act of the new city commission was to appoint Hugo L. Black to be Recorder's Court Judge of the City of Birmingham. And I'm told that he refused to put Black people in jail for gambling until they started arresting the White people at the country club for gambling. He said, 'It's not right to treat one one way and the other another.' The only case he ever took to the U.S. Supreme Court was the Lewis case.

Lewis was a Black convict leased to a mining company and an accident broke his back or some serious injury. Black represented him and got a judgment against the mining company. The mining company filed bankruptcy to avoid paying the 01:10:00Black man his money. Black took it to court and he lost. He lost in the Alabama Supreme Court. But, he took his case to the... informal pauperous to the United States Supreme Court. He personally took it. He got on the train and personally took his papers.

And, when he got to the Supreme Court, at that time the Supreme Court actually didn't have a building. It had a... it heard its cases on the first floor of the Capitol Building. If you go there today, they'll show you the old Supreme Court building. The Justices had their offices at home, but there was a clerk's office and the clerk refused to accept the Judge's petition for [certiary]. And, the Judge said, 'Well, it's in the rules. A pauper can bring his case.' He [the clerk] said, 'Well, yeah, but we don't take those. If we ever started taking informal pauperous cases we'd be flooded.'

And Black said, 'Well, I want to speak to Justice Samford,' who was the Judge assigned to the Fifth Circuit. He said, 'You mean, Justice, that it says here in the rules I can file this paper but the marshall, the clerk, will not accept it? He says it's the policy not to accept informal pauperous cases.' Justice Samford called the clerk in and ordered him to allow Hugo Black to file his case. And he won his case. Reversed it and Lewis got his money.

But I think those things...I really take him at his word when he says, 'I joined every organization,' because, frankly, I don't think he would have been elected Senator without support of the Klan.

HUNTLEY: So the Klan was in fact very powerful?

VANN: Very powerful. But, between the [19]26 election and the 1932 election, the Klan had virtually disappeared from Alabama politics.

HUNTLEY: If they were not supported by politicians nor by the businessmen, who supported them?

VANN: Well, they made... You know, a lot of time people get to be too big for their britches. They would go into churches and make donations and make a to-do of it. Yeah, I don't think the politicians supported the Klan. I think you look at the democratic government again. The strength of the democratic government is also the weakness that the public is somewhat fickle. It can change its mind quickly from one year to the next. That's why we have a Bill of Rights---to protect people against those changes. The government, there are simply some 01:13:00things they just can't do to protect the individual freedom. And that's what the 14th Amendment ultimately did to protect the Black people of this country.

But it took it 100 years, because in 1901 there was enough racial prejudice on the Supreme Court itself. You know the Supreme Court owed it to correct that mistake because it made the mistake. If you look back in some of the history like C. Vann. Woodward's books on that period, [you'll learn that] immediately prior to 1901, the Populist Party was a bi-racial party. It had Black candidates and White candidates.

But the minute they took the vote away from the Blacks, the Populist Party virtually became the party of the Klan, because that's where their support was. A lot of people think Cobb was elected governor of Alabama on the Populist ticket and it was stolen from him. Of course, Black came from Clay County, which 01:14:00was a heavy Populist area. And Populism left an imprint on our mantel that practically every successful office holder for many years was basically a Populist.

As a Populist, he could be liberal or he could be conservative, depending on what the issue was. And, people look to this people to be very different. But really, Lister Hill, John Sparkman, George Wallace, Hugo Black, Bibb Graves, they all came out of the same basic political ideology. Some stressed one thing. Some stressed another. Of course, ultimately, George Wallace met with the Black leaders and said, 'Look, I did the wrong thing. I made a mistake. I shouldn't have done it.' Being good Christians, the Black voters accepted his apology and forgave him when we had a chance to get a bright, young, new-- Lo and behold, Wallace, the smart politician, figured how to get a large part of the Black vote 01:15:00and overcome McMillan.

HUNTLEY: David, throughout the history of the Black people in this country, there seem to be instances where seemingly what was good for Black people, was not good for the country and vice versa. Let me just ask you, what in fact would have happened in Birmingham if Bull Conner had not done what he did?

VANN: Well, let me say that at the time I sincerely believed that we had pulled off a political miracle, that we had proved that the democratic structure can successfully make changes. And, of course, I had won a victory. You know, people 01:16:00used to say, 'There's no way you can beat Bull Conner,' but we did. Partly, he beat himself. He did a lot of ridiculous things.

HUNTLEY: The point I'm raising is, what would that have done for race relations in this city? Would they have been any different? Would there be changes made?

VANN: Well, I think-- Let me say this: I think that that election had strange results. I think we had a decade of Black and White working together in unprecedented ways. In fact, the city was recognized as an all-American city because of the level of cooperation. One of the first things the city council did when it took power in July of 1963 was it repealed every segregation law on the books in the City of Birmingham in one sitting. And, that was essential 01:17:00because we had made agreements, unsigned.

You know, I see a lot of historical things. This was signed on such an such date. The racial settlement of 1963 was never signed by anybody. It was announced by Smyer and by King. It required the desegregation of lunch counters and the removal of the racial signs from elevators and restaurants and drinking fountains and all those things. It required the beginning of an employment program to hire Black clerks in downtown stores. All of those things were illegal under the laws of the City of Birmingham, and Bull Conner had hired every policeman.

The new government had a police department, all of whom were hired by Bull Conner. It was essential that before we began we had a sixty-day cooling off 01:18:00period. When that sixty days was over and the time came when we had to start actually doing those things, we didn't have those laws off those books or it's hard to blame a policeman for not enforcing the law that's on the books. We had to get those off. And the new mayor/council had the guts to do it.

We created about eleven bi-racial committees on every subject you could imagine--on taxation, recreation, schools. I think we called our school committee the Committee to Support the School Board, and Conner had appointed all members of the school board. The law firm that represented him represented the school board. So, we had to go into the desegregation of schools. I'll say Reed Barnes that was a lawyer from that firm...no lawyer ever performed a professional service any better than Reed Barnes. A lot of people are unaware of 01:19:00it. There was never a hearing on school desegregation in Birmingham. It was done by agreement from the very first day. Until this day there has never been a hearing, I don't think, because the NAACP lawyers and the lawyers from the school board have been able to work out the various steps along the way.

The first desegregation was in September of 1963 and the new government hadn't been in office but two months and handled the most emotional thing....

HUNTLEY: But there were also marches even after the new government was in....

VANN: Yes, yes there were.

HUNTLEY: So there are different interpretations of what the agreements were.

VANN: Yes, oh yes. As a matter of fact, some of the ACHMR [Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights] people tried to start them over again about ten days afterward. They put up handbills in the schools. I called Andrew Young and I 01:20:00said, 'These break our agreement.' Andy got on an airplane, came over, sat down. He looked at them. He said, 'You're right. It breaks the agreement.' He gets on the phone and calls Dr. King. He says, 'This is wrong. We agreed to do something and now they're...people are not going to honor the agreement.' King himself came. [He] got here about 2:00 in the afternoon that day and they got a group of the high school leaders over at the Gaston Motel.

I was not there, but I saw it on television. King said to them, he said, 'Look, we made this progress to open the doors of opportunity to you and I want you to go back to school, learn your lessons, prepare yourself for the opportunities that lay ahead of you.' Well, they weren't too enthusiastic. That sounded good, but they were young people and they thought marching was sort of fun. If you 01:21:00look at the pictures of the hosing, there are Black kids dancing in the hosing. It's obviously.... you're not going to have any standing among your peers unless you get arrested.

HUNTLEY: There are also disagreements between Smyers and Shuttlesworth in terms of how they interpreted the agreements. Smyer says that one person....

VANN: Oh, yes. Oh yes. Yes. Fred-- Fred-- Fred did not want it to stop.

HUNTLEY: But by the same token, Fred was raising a very serious question. He said, 'This is what the agreement says, but--' The disagreement was over how many people, how many Blacks would be hired in stores. Smyer had suggested that one person would be hired in one store. Fred was saying that the agreement was to have at least one person in every store.

VANN: Look, there's no doubt. As they say, the agreement was never signed. It was read by both. If you look at what King said, we would start a program of 01:22:00employment and we would start with at least three clerks in downtown stores. I'll be honest with you. I had a commitment from five stores to put on a Black clerk. But I said when push comes to shove and they start breaking the windows of the stores, some of those folks are going to back out. And, so, I only gave three. I promised three. Dr. King knew that. Now Shuttlesworth wasn't there, but I understand he had a press conference in New York. So he says, 'You mean you settled for three?' Well, I meant three in every store.' Well, once Fred commits himself to something, he is going to follow it down the line and he did. But King came back and stopped him. And, the children did not march again.

They took King at his word. I've always thought that it was very important that the last speech that King made in Birmingham as a part of this episode in his life was a speech to the school children in Birmingham saying, 'We are opening 01:23:00opportunities for you. You need to apply yourself. You need to get ready, because you're going to have better opportunities than any of the people of our race that preceded you.' I say I saw that on television. As to whether that tape exists any more, I do not know.

HUNTLEY: Obviously those were some very turbulent days and there was a period, a turning point, in the history of Birmingham.

VANN: I think it was a turning point in the history of America. A group of businessmen went and met with Kennedy. They had a fifteen minute appointment. He kept them two and a half hours. And, I believe up until that day, the Kennedys thought this was too hot an issue to raise until after the next election. But when he saw that Birmingham had made a voluntary agreement between its business community and its Black community, and had the guts to carry it out, and it 01:24:00wasn't easy. Parisian's had every piece of glass in Parisian's stores broken that night. Emil Hess, bless his heart, he called every glass company in the county. By the time the sun came up, every window was in tact. There was no broken glass. Whoever did it came back to admire his work and thought, 'God was I in another city or something?'

There were people-- Like the night that Dr. King was assasinated, I got a call very shortly afterwards from a Black businessman. He said, 'We've got to go to work. We can't let the sun rise on this.' And we got phone calls and both the Black and White communities going all over this city during that five hour period. By the time the sun rose, we were able to announce a memorial march from 16th Street Baptist Church with special services in honor of Dr. King on the 01:25:00steps of the courthouse.

The leaders of every denomination in this city, Black and White, met at 16th Street Baptist Church and they had a memorial march in honor of Dr. King and a service at the courthouse. This was virtually the only major city in the United States where no buildings were burned, no riots where held. You know what was happening in Detroit. They had to send two airborne divisions in Detroit to stop the protests! And you say, 'Well it's silly. Why do they burn down their own houses?' Well, people in emotional states do a lot of things that are illogical. But [in] Birmingham, we had Black and White people that kept that from blowing the top off. And, it could have. I doubt if there are very few cities in the 01:26:00United States where Dr. King was held in greater esteem by its Black community. Those things don't happen by accident. I always tell people that nothing happens unless somebody makes it happen.

HUNTLEY: How would you characterize Birmingham, then, in relationship to other cities where race relations is concerned today?

VANN: I think our race relations today are not as good as they were ten years ago. The two races have pulled apart in a lot of ways. The politics have something to do with it.

HUNTLEY: Is that because of Birmingham being now predominately a Black city?

VANN: That has something to do with it. You see, I insist that segregation was 01:27:00not a matter of laws. It was a matter of inbred customs. The thing that held the system together was not so much the Bull Conner's. They were people that responded to something and they made a political play out of it. George Wallace knew he could go to Chicago and find people that were very strong racists that would vote for him if he would go to Chicago. He found people in Wisconsin and he found people all over the country.

HUNTLEY: Minneapolis.

VANN: But, what I'm saying is that race relations are either getting better or they're getting worse all the time. It's an emotion... There are a lot of emotions attached to it. It's almost human nature for people that are different 01:28:00or who look different to be suspicious of each other, whether it be prehistoric tribes or be the middle east or be Armenia, Azhbarjhan or Croatia. You know, it takes a lot of civilization to deal with that. And, I think from 1960 on, through Jimmy Carter, whoever was President realized that to have good relations in America--race relations in America--it was very important that the President of the United States make it very clear that this is what we need to do.

After that, the Republicans really set about on a southern strategy that was 01:29:00begun, I don't think by Nixon but during the Nixon day. I think Nixon, for all his criticism, he stood well on this issue. But they saw that they needed to take the South away from the Democrats and they were very careful to actually raise racial issues and come down on what they considered to be the White side of the issue. And over and over..... And Bush did the same. I'm not saying they were mean spirited. I'm sure that they would consider me very unfair to say this was racist, but I don't think there's any question. For instance, I think the enthusiasm of the Bush Administration in setting up the gerrymandering of Black districts was in part a realization that every Black district would create four Republican districts by taking-- By reducing the Democratic vote in these 01:30:00districts, we can take over the Congress. I think a big part of taking over the Congress has very little to do with that 'Contract with America.'

It was mainly that they gerrymandered the districts to reduce the Democratic office holders and increase the Republican office holders and at the same time appeal to the Black because he's getting more Black congressmen. He might get-- The Black congressman will then vote his way, but lose three others that would have voted his way.

The world is full of unintended results. You know, it's like they're building prisons. They work with everybody in prison, but they don't want any education program in the prison. Well, let me tell you, young people are going to be learning something. I think we are creating crime universities. They are going 01:31:00to go to prison and learning how to be better criminals and the crime wave will get worse and worse and worse until we begin using prevention.

One of the best prevention programs is to take these kids--and most of them will test out about the third grade because they were socially promoted but they were never able to do the work after about the second grade--and you... I worked for the program in Draper Prison where we took those kids and in two and half to three years, qualified them for a GED. We actually got some scholarship money to send ex-criminals to college. One of those earned a PhD and has done a lot of good work. But, people say, 'I don't want to help them. I want to punish them.' Well, they are going to end up punishing their own families unless they approach the problem as rational. They are either going to teach them to be better 01:32:00criminals or teach them to be better citizens. I'd rather teach them to be better citizens.

HUNTLEY: David, I appreciate...

VANN: And this has a lot to do with the racial thing.

HUNTLEY: Absolutely. I appreciate you taking this much time out of your schedule. We are going to have to do this again because obviously you have so much to say and we'll just have to do this again.

VANN: Yeah, I have a few more stories.

HUNTLEY: I'm certain that you have and we will definitely get those stories on. We want to thank you for coming out today.

VANN: It takes a lot of soul searching.

HUNTLEY: Absolutely, you have been a leader in terms of just getting people to think. Again, I appreciate you coming.

VANN: Thank you very much.