Jerome "Buddy" Cooper

HUNTLEY: This is an interview with Attorney Jerome "Buddy" Cooper for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute's Oral History Project. I am Dr. Horace Huntley. We are at Miles College, September 20, 1995.

Thank you Attorney Cooper for coming out and sitting with us today to talk about the history of Birmingham. What we are attempting to do at the Institute, of course, is develop histories that would lead us to understand from whence Birmingham has come. So again, I just want to thank you for coming out. I want 00:01:00to start with just a few sort of general kinds of questions about background. Tell me, where were your parents from? Are they Alabamians?

COOPER: No. Well, I consider them Alabamians, but actually my mother was born in Poland and came to Birmingham when she was three months old. So when she died in her 90s, we considered her as being an early settler of Birmingham. My father was a little older than she. He was born in Lithuanian, came to this area when he was 13 years old.

HUNTLEY: Where were you born?

COOPER: In a little village called "Brookwood" in Tuscaloosa County.

HUNTLEY: Was Brookwood a coal mining area?

COOPER: Yes. Brookwood was a site of some major coal mines but it was also an agricultural area, too. I remember one coal miner telling me one time when he 00:02:00testified before the United States Congress on legislation to help coal miners, he raised some questions about farming and one opposed senator, said "Well, you're a coal miner, you wouldn't know anything about farming, would you." He said, "Coal miners made so little working in the mines, we had to farm in order not to starve."

HUNTLEY: You had to do both in order to make ends meet, I assume. What was your father's occupation?

COOPER: He was a merchant. He had operated, he and his brother, a general store in Brookwood and another one in Surles, along with his brother-in-law, (Inaudible) Kellerman. Later he was in the wholesale business in Birmingham.

HUNTLEY: Did your mother work outside of the home?

COOPER: Yes. After the depression she did. She worked in my father's store. That was after the big collapse that took place in Birmingham.

HUNTLEY: Buddy, do you remember the depression years?

COOPER: Sure. I was in college before the depression actually struck. I went to college in the fall of 1929 and that year was the big stock market crash. By 1932, when I was a junior, I mean the whole country was flat.

HUNTLEY: Let's go back, just a bit. Tell me about your early days. Where did you start elementary and where did you graduate from high school?

COOPER: Well, we moved to Birmingham from Brookwood in 1919 and I started in grammar school, South Highland school, that year, either 1919 or 1920. I think I 00:04:00started in the middle of the year. I graduated from South Highland grammar school and went to Phillips High School.

HUNTLEY: And you graduated from Phillips High School?

COOPER: Yes.

HUNTLEY: Now, your family moved to Brookwood to Birmingham so your father was never a coal miner?

COOPER: No.

HUNTLEY: He was always a merchant?

COOPER: He was a merchant.

HUNTLEY: And, then, did he open stores here in Birmingham?

COOPER: Before we moved to Birmingham, in fact before I was born, he and his brother moved to Birmingham and opened one of the first department stores in downtown Birmingham.

HUNTLEY: What was the name of the store?

COOPER: It was Cooper Brothers, just like everywhere they went, it was Cooper Brothers.

HUNTLEY: Where was it located?

COOPER: It was located on Second Avenue between 20th and 19th Street, which the 00:05:00building was later occupied by Burger Phillips and it has recently been remodeled, I forget what it's for. But in 1907, I think, after that store had been operating for not a very long time, my father's brother, his partner, became and ill and had to go to Johns Hopkins or somewhere and a very serious, panic type of depression set in and so he just paid off all his debts and closed the store and sent back to Brookwood. He didn't come back until 1919.

HUNTLEY: What part of town did you live?

COOPER: Well, at that time, of course, this was before I was born. My grandparents lived on the northside on 8th Avenue somewhere, 15th or 16th Street.

HUNTLEY: In the vicinity of the Civil Rights Institute, now?

COOPER: Yes. Just 2-3 blocks from here. And the house which my grandparents on my father's side occupied was standing until a few years ago. It's been torn down now.

HUNTLEY: You grew up though, on the southside?

COOPER: Right. On 15th Avenue and 16th Street. Our house was 1601 15th Avenue South which was right at the foot of Vulcan.

HUNTLEY: So you graduated from Phillips High School, did you go to the University of Alabama?

COOPER: No, I did not. I went to Harvard College.

HUNTLEY: The Harvard College?

COOPER: I went to "the" college.

HUNTLEY: How did a young fellow from Birmingham, Alabama make that transition from Birmingham to Boston?

COOPER: Well, it was a little awkward at times. I was a lost ball in the high 00:07:00weed, really. I was 16 years old and I had never been out of Alabama except once over the line to Chattanooga. But my father had a dedication to education and to learning. He had never had any formal education except what he had by going to parochial and Hebrew school as a little boy. And, this same lady I think I talked to you today about, Ms. Claribel! Send, who taught me Latin at Phillips High School, she had a part in interesting me in Harvard and once my father heard about it and got to know what it really stood for, he was insistent, so I went. It was pretty difficult to make the transition the first year.

HUNTLEY: Well, that meant that your family then was pretty well off?

COOPER: Yes. My father was quite well off at that time. That was before the 00:08:00stock market crash and the depreciation of values in real estate which is where his funds were.

HUNTLEY: Do you remember how that affected you and your family, the depression I mean?

COOPER: Oh, sure. Well, for one thing, my father had to go back to work 12 hours a day in a small retail store in Birmingham on Second Avenue. My mother went to work for $10 a week or thereabouts. We didn't have an automobile even after having driven big, fine cars, we rode the buses, or the streetcars still. I went to school the first year or two without much difficulty, but then, by the end of my sophomore year, I told the dean that I couldn't come back to Harvard, we were 00:09:00penniless. He said, "Well, there are many scholarships available, you'll have to make scholarship grades. If you do that, we don't want anybody to have to lose out here just because he is financially unable to pay." So I buckled down and was fortunate enough to get a scholarship. incidentally, they gave me a scholarship when I registered as a freshman, but I hadn't sought one, and, when I showed it to my father, he asked me what this was all about. I said, "I don't know." I think it was part of their program to maintain a national distribution in the student body. But he said, "We don't need that, give it back." He said, "That might keep some boy who really needs it from coming." So we gave it back and they gave me a little piece of paper instead. Which was fine, but two years 00:10:00later after his fortune had collapsed, as I said, I told him I couldn't come back. But, I got a scholarship and that's the way I continued my education. Now, I didn't come home. I went to Cambridge in September and came back in June. So you didn't come home every weekend like kids do now or even for Christmas. It cost money.

HUNTLEY: Well, Buddy, were you an only child?

COOPER: No. I have a sister. My older sister.

HUNTLEY: So was she off in college at the same time?

COOPER: Yes. That's right. She was ahead of me two years so she got out before the collapse had hit full bloom.

HUNTLEY: So you would graduate from Harvard in '33?

COOPER: 1933, yes.

HUNTLEY: What did you do after that, after graduation?

COOPER: Well, I couldn't get a job, of course. I tried to help my father in his store.

HUNTLEY: So you came back to Birmingham?

COOPER: I spent the summer here. I remember I did a lot of reading in the store and my father one day said to me, "Now, this is not a library." But he said, "I'm glad you want to read, if you want to, you can go to the library, but not here." I said, "Well, I didn't see anything to do, there are no customers in here." He said, "Well, work the stock."

HUNTLEY: So how long did you work for your father, was it just that summer?

COOPER: Just for the summer. I could do a little typing for him. He no longer had a secretary or anything like that and I could help him.

HUNTLEY: In the fall then, what did you do?

COOPER: I went back to law school. After I graduated, I went back to law school in Cambridge.

HUNTLEY: Back to Harvard?

COOPER: Harvard law. I got a scholarship there.

HUNTLEY: And you graduated from Harvard Law School?

COOPER: That's right. incidentally, I wasn't a football player and I was a fair tennis player, but I had to get the grades to get my scholarship and I've always had a strange reaction to these stories about scholarship holders in college these days who are scholarship only in the sense that they get money from the university, but they are hardly scholars. Some of them are, there are a few, of course.

HUNTLEY: There are some, but that whole idea of scholarship is probably changed since that time.

COOPER: Well, it's a misnomer. I think they ought to just call them paid athletes.

HUNTLEY: Do you think they should pay them?

COOPER: I would have no objection to that if it was done openly.

HUNTLEY: Because some are paid, I assume?

COOPER: Yes. But, it's illegal and improper and I don't know whether it would 00:13:00work even if it was legal, Horace, because there are professional leagues where people can go and work as athletes if they have the ability.

HUNTLEY: Right. Well, Buddy, after you finished law school, what does Buddy Cooper do?

COOPER: Well, I was recommended by the dean of Harvard Law School, who was then Roscoe Pound, famous figure up there. I was appointed law clerk, it was really secretary, but they didn't call us law clerks then, to David J. Davis. Judge David J. Davis who was the United States District Judge for the Northern District of Alabama. We only had one federal judge in the whole of north Alabama then and I worked with him for not quite a year. He was a grand man and a 00:14:00wonderful fellow. He was from somewhere in north Alabama from a farm, but he had worked his way through Exeter or one of those New England secondary schools. He actually rode in a covered wagon from Wedowee, I think it's been the same town that's been in the news so much, to Oklahoma.

His family went in a covered wagon from Alabama to Oklahoma and homesteaded a farm and did fairly well for a year or two, but they had a bad crop or something and they came back. And he went through this secondary school and directly to Yale Law School. I don't think he went to college. He got a scholarship to Yale Law School was on the law journal and he wrote. For a district judge, he handled 00:15:00some very important things. He wrote an opinion and judgment sustaining the Social Security Act, for example which started in a lawsuit here in the northern district of Alabama.

HUNTLEY: What role did race play in your life up to that point? You have come out of law school, and you had lived in Birmingham for those years.

COOPER: Well, Birmingham was still a frontier town really in terms of sociology and race.

Everything was segregated. We had some dear people, like the Black lady, who was our nurse in our home, who came with us from Brookwood and lived with us.

HUNTLEY: She didn't have a family?

COOPER: I think she did, but I think they stayed in Brookwood. I think she was quite elderly. That's my best guess and I think her children had married, but we were small. My sister and I, we were little kids. I was 6 or 7 years old and she was 7 or 8 years old. And this lady, it's kind of humorous when I think back, although it's a sign of the tragic way people had to live then, she would take us on a picnic from the southside. My mother would fix a big basket and she would take the two of us and we would get on the streetcar there on the southside and come to town and transfer. We would take the Tidewater line out to Avondale Park and spend the day. They had an elephant there, Miss Fancy, and a few other little animals and a pond of fish. Then we would retrace our steps. 00:17:00But on the streetcar, we sat in the White section and she sat with us. And once or twice the White motorman, I don't remember, it's been so long ago, but he evidently remonstrated, and she told him where to go. We were her children.

HUNTLEY: So she actually sat in the front of the bus?

COOPER: She actually sat wherever we sat. And that's where we found a seat.

HUNTLEY: She was never arrested? There was no commotion?

COOPER: No, there was no scene about it or anything.

HUNTLEY: So were those your first memories of race playing a part in your life?

COOPER: Yes. I remember her as she worked for my mother in Brookwood. But I just remember that she was there. I have no real impressions about it. For instance, 00:18:00one of the earliest things I can recall instruction wise, was my father and I loved to walk together on Sundays. We were out walking one day and I don't remember how the subject came up, but I said something about someone. I was quoting someone, it wasn't my language, who used the word "nigger." And, my father said to me, "Nice people don't use that word." And I said, "Well, what am I supposed to say." And he said, "You say, colored people." Now, of course, it's assumed another form. I understand some Black people don't care whether it's colored or Black, but other people are very sensitive about it. I never forgot 00:19:00that. "Nice people don't." And he never did. I don't ever recall.

HUNTLEY: As you grew up when you were at Phillips High School, for instance, were there any instances in your memory where race may have played a role?

COOPER: No, because there were no Black kids there. The one incident that I can recall, I've always been sort of a frustrated politician, and I'm glad I was frustrated in most instances. But, I ran for the secretary of the student body and it was a big political thing.

HUNTLEY: This is at Phillips?

COOPER: Right. I mean, I don't remember how many kids there were, 1,500 or 2,000. It was a big school. And the political campaign was one of the big events of the year. And one of my campaigners came up to me and said, "Buddy, so and so 00:20:00has put out the word that you're Jewish." And I said, "Well, I am." He said, "You are?" But I won anyway. I beat a very prominent, very fine lady from a very distinguished social family in Birmingham.

HUNTLEY: There were no other incidences as a result of you being Jewish as a result of the student body finding that out?

COOPER: I don't recall any. I do recall having a couple of scrapes. See, I never objected to someone referring to me as being Jewish. I'm backslid Jewish philosophically, but it depends on the circumstances. If someone said to me, 00:21:00"You Jew," I might dislike that. I might have taken them on. But, if someone just said, "I understand you're Jewish." Well, I am. Just as someone would say to you, well, you happen to be Black, you would say, "Well, yes I am." But if someone said, "You Black so and so," you'd have a different reaction. We had our problems.

HUNTLEY: Right. You went into the military, was that during World War II?

COOPER: It was in World War 11, I enlisted two days after Pearl Harbor, December 9,

1941.

HUNTLEY: How long did you spend in the military?

COOPER: Forty-four months. I went into the Army as a private and stayed a very short time. Things were in such a hectic mess, they hadn't changed the rules 00:22:00from peace time to war time, you know this thing fell on us. So after I had passed my physical by bribing a sergeant who knew I couldn't pass the eye test, I got his help and he said, "Sure, I'll get you by." They told me they couldn't keep me in the Army because I had dependents or something and they hadn't provided for that.

HUNTLEY: You were married at the time?

COOPER: Yes. I was married and had a kid and another one on the way. It was cruel thing I did, in a way, to my wife and kids, but I would do again. Because, while I was raised a pacifist, I had decided from what I knew then that I didn't want to live in a world run by Adolph Hitler.

HUNTLEY: So you spent 44 months in the military and after the military you came back to Birmingham?

COOPER: See, I had had a short period of employment. From law school I worked with Judge Davis and, then, I went to Washington with Justice Black. He kind of skipped that.

HUNTLEY: Tell me about that.

COOPER: Well, he was a former law partner of Judge Davis so he knew about me from Judge Davis, I take it and other people I guess that he knew in Birmingham. When he was appointed to the Supreme Court he had someone call me at the federal court where I was working. He said that Judge Black wanted me to come to Washington and be his law clerk. Frequently it happens that a law clerk from a 00:24:00court of appeals judge or district judge will be elevated. I mean, that was not unusual, I don't think. Of course, my heart stopped beating when the judge called me in the office and told me that. I said, "I'll have to ask my fa th er."

So the judge laughed and said into the phone, "He want's to talk to his Daddy first." So I ran up to my Daddy's store and told him this wonderful call had come and he thought a minute and he said, "Well, let me tell you something , J.A.." It so happens my judge that I worked for then had taken the place of a judge who had been sick for a year or more and the cases had piled up and he and I both were working day and night. He said, "You go back and tell Judge Davis that you won't take that job if it will in anyway inconvenience him and that you want to do whatever is in his best interest first." That was a pretty remarkable 00:25:00thing for him to say, as I look back on it. So I went back and I told the judge that and he laughed and he said, "I've got 100 applications."

HUNTLEY: What do you remember most about clerking for Hugo Black?

COOPER: Well, there are a number of things really. I remember the first day. I remember very sharply the first day or one of the first days when I met him. I went to Washington and met him. He was a very warm, genial man and, of course, one of my heroes. I confess to an honest bias about him. He is one of the great miracles of my life time .

HUNTLEY: Why do you look on him as one of those great miracles of your life time?

COOPER: Well, for this very simple reason. People ask me, you know he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, for example, which was a problem that many people saw. He had difficulty, if not an impossibility of being elected in those times without Klan support, because everybody was in the Klan, that is the judges, governors, the senators. Not all, but virtually everybody was.

HUNTLEY: As a political necessity?

COOPER: Yes. Just as a political necessity. But, he's a miracle. I can't explain how a man born into slavery, he lived on the frontier of Alabama in a slave 00:27:00culture. mean there had been no freedom of the Blacks, technically, they were no longer slaves, but the way they lived, the opportunities for them was still terribly, terribly limited. Now, how did it happen that this person born in that atmosphere, in that culture, had within him somehow the seeds of this international vision, this concept of mankind, of all men being able to walk erect, all men and women to live in freedom? How did that come about? It didn't happen to his brother. It didn't happen to the neighbor next door. It wasn't in his father . It's just a miracle, it just happened. I can't explain it. Now, all the historians and psychologists got all kind of reasons.

HUNTLEY: Sure. People are always attempting to explain how, in fact, he, in the 00:28:001920s could be a member of the Ku Klux Klan and, then, eventually make it into the Supreme Court and being one of those pivotal justices in creating what would eventually happen in the country.

COOPER: I often say to people, you know there were a lot of people who got ugly about that Klan business. "What are you doing here with the judge?" And I'd say to them, "Well, I'm sorry he was a member of the Klan. I don't try to defend the Klan in any way, it's contrary to all my inner instincts, but one thing I am grateful for, no one ever intimated that Hugo Black ever participated in any of the atrocities, the terrible things that the Klan did." He made speeches and went to their meetings and got their votes when he could. In fact, he used to 00:29:00like to say, "I didn't get their endorsement, but I got their votes." A man from Walker County, from Jasper was actually the technical Klan endorsee in 1926 when the judge was first elected to the Senate.

HUNTLEY: How long did you clerk with him?

COOPER: Three terms. Not quite three years, two and a half years.

HUNTLEY: And, after that, did you come back to Birmingham?

COOPER: I came back to Birmingham as a acting regional attorney for the Wage Hour Division of the U. S. Department of Labor. The minimum wage law, the Wage/Hour Bill had just become law and I was one of that bunch of communists who were trying to get the minimum wage, the average wage in

the textile industry, for instance, in this area up from .1o cents an hour to .25 cent.

HUNTLEY: That was communistic, I would say.

COOPER: Oh, yeah. We were destroying the country and all the underpinnings.

HUNTLEY: Well, upon your return you are then becoming a labor lawyer. You obviously started to have relationships with people who are looking at labor but also· race. And I know that in 1946 you were part of a group that started a religious and labor fellowship. Can you tell me something about how that all came about?

COOPER: Well, that was set up by Phil Murray, who was president of the steel workers and the CIO at that time who was dedicated to the principals that the CIO and the United Mine Workers had professed. That is to represent all people 00:31:00without discrimination of any kind based on race, creed or national origin. This was to be one of the stepping stones that Phil had in mind. He sent this fellow, John Ramsey, a very nice man, he was White, and he was a lay leader in the Presbyterian Church, I think. He came here and got this group together of union officers and ministers. A small group, maybe 20 or 30 people. I wish I could remember their names. One was a lovely man named Ware, who was a young Black minister.

HUNTLEY: Rev. Ware?

COOPER: Rev. Ware. He and I became good friends. He later was in the CAC committee. He was a militant in a decent persuasive sort of way. People loved him, I think. But anyway, we had luncheon meetings and I remember meeting at the Redmont Hotel and I can't remember...

HUNTLEY: Now, wasn't it against the law for Blacks and Whites to meet together in '46?

COOPER: Yes, indeed.

HUNTLEY: How did you carry that off?

COOPER: Well, we sneaked in and evidently there was a sympathetic manager of the Redmont who was cooperative, I can't recall exactly how that happened. But, we met a time or two and we had lunch. We were either in a basement or in a separate room somewhere where they kept it invisible to the public that we were 00:33:00segregating together. After we met a time or two like that, someone said, "We call ourselves a religion and labor fellowship. But, we never meet in a religious atmosphere. We meet in this basement or this room in the hotel.

Why don't we meet in some place that had some connection with religion." And we all agreed that that would be a good thing to do. So we went around the table to see how we could do it. Well, two or three of them said, "Gosh, I would like to do it at my church, but I have to be honest about it, I think it would cause all kind of commotion."

And, I said, "I know I can't get permission at my temple. That's disgraceful, 00:34:00but I can't do it. I'm not much influence there anyway on anything." So, there was a lovely young Episcopal minister named Mormian. I can't remember his first name. Dr. Mormian, he must have had a doctorate. He was at St. Mary's on the Highlands Episcopal Church. Now that's an old, established fashionable church. A lot of socially prominent people and business prominent people. He said, "We'll have our next weekly or monthly meeting at my church." Well, that sounded good. It was revolutionary. So we met there and we met in the rectory or whatever that side building is. We sat at tables and the White ladies of the sisterhood served 00:35:00us. The air was electric. They walked in like automatons and they were polite and they served us and nobody said a word. I guess Dr. Mormian said grace, I don't remember.

HUNTLEY: Was the group about 50/50 Black and White?

COOPER: To my best recollection, we tried to make it that way.

HUNTLEY: What kinds of issues did you deal with?

COOPER: Well, we dealt with complaints in the mills and the mines. What can we do to improve the seniority situation. Of course, it was easy for the mine workers. They never had the variety of jobs that we had in the steel mills. But, John Ramsey would talk about spreading the feeling of brotherhood. After all, a union is a brotherhood and I can't give you any real agendas.

HUNTLEY: Many of the unions at that time, of course, were segregated unions?

COOPER: Well all the building trades were, just about.

HUNTLEY: Yes. All the AFL basically. Was the CIO sort of on the threshold with the southern organizing drive in bringing Black organizers in?

COOPER: Yes. But the steel workers, by 1946 and '47 when this was done, they had organized the basic steel industry and while there were complaints still that the minorities, Blacks and women, there were a few women who had gotten in during the war when there was a manpower shortage, they were in the union and they were receiving benefits. They got the same insurance, the same vacations 00:37:00and the same rates of pay for a given job. But, the problem was the top job were almost universally White jobs and they were actually separate lines of promotion. It was the policy of the steel workers to merge those lines of promotion and we did. We didn't really get it going too well until, I think it was President Truman issued an executive order which prohibited contracts with employers who discriminated on the basis of race, religion and so forth. So that gave us some legal status to move with. And we began merging. When Martin Luther King came to Birmingham, I think Mr. Shuttlesworth had persuaded him to come 00:38:00here. I'm not sure, if I'm correct about that. But he was somewhere else and he came here and out of that eventuated these crowds of students.

HUNTLEY: Before we get there, Buddy, I would like for you to just talk briefly talk about a couple of people. You knew Bill Mitch.

COOPER: Senior?

HUNTLEY: Yes.

COOPER: Yes. He's the father of my partner for 40 years.

HUNTLEY: Tell me about him as a person.

COOPER: Well, he came here as a union man. He was one of John L. Lewis' arms and his job was to organize the coal mines. He organized people, whoever they were, men, women, communists, White, Black, in the mine workers union. He really laid 00:39:00the foundation for what came about in the CIO later on. I'm not too sure about my history, but in the early strikes in the coal mines in the 20s, seemed like to me that I recall the employers brought in strike breakers, most of whom were Black, from the fields and they were pretty good jobs to a man who made .50 cents a day to make $2.00 a day. But Mr. Mitch was a brave man, a big man physically. He just told them that there wasn't going to be any Ku Klux Klan in the mine workers. That the constitution forbade it and he was going to organize people all on the same {Inaudible). He was a great influence and he was so 00:40:00impeccably honest. There were no issues. He didn't publish any books and make a million dollars off of it. He just got the job done. He was a great man.

HUNTLEY: How about Howard Streeville?

COOPER: Howard was a younger Bill Mitch. He took over. It was his job. He was sent here to answer the complaints that many Blacks were making that seniority was still discriminatory and needed to be cleared up. Howard started out doing that­

-merging the lines of promotion, getting threatened over the phone. Getting me threatened over the phone at night. Having people call and saying we know where you are. That's not a very pleasant experience. "We know where you are, you so and so and we're coming out there tonight. Streeville is a great big fellow. He 00:41:00didn't scare very easy.

HUNTLEY: You were surrounded by a lot of great big fellows.

COOPER: Right. I was very pleased to have them.

HUNTLEY: What about Asbury Howard?

COOPER: Well, Asbury unfortunately, my relations with him sort of broke off after that. got to know him when the mine and mill union was a going union here, a big union, and an important part of the CIO. It wasn't until 3-4 years after that that this warfare broke out between the steel workers and the smelter workers.

Asbury chose the side of the mine/mill. I was the lawyer for the steel workers. We were still friends.

HUNTLEY: He was one of the original organizers for mine/mill in the 30s.

COOPER: Right. I think so. It's a strange thing. One of the fellows, Travis, I 00:42:00think was his name, was the president of mine/mill was badly beaten up during the course of that campaign.

HUNTLEY: He was, I believe, on the board of directors, Maurice Travis and they had a big fight and he lost an eye.

COOPER: Yes. He lost an eye. After the election was over, he filed a lawsuit against the steel workers for the damages that he suffered in that fight, and maybe other things too, but I remember that. We represented the steel workers in that and I negotiated a settlement. If I do say so, I told the steel workers we can defend that sort of thing. The man's been hurt, he shouldn't have been and 00:43:00he should be paid, and they paid him. I don't remember what it was.

HUNTLEY: Asbury Howard...

COOPER: Asbury came to see me at that time, together, I don't know if Travis came with him, I think it was Cliff Durr, who was representing them. The fellow that later became an assistant general counsel of the steel workers, I can't recall his name. He had been in the labor board years before. The three of them came to me to discuss settlement of that case. I remember Asbury didn't have much to say, but I think he was probably negotiating at that time to get himself on the staff of the steel workers, I am not sure.

HUNTLEY: There was an effort by the steel workers to get the former mine/mill officialdom and their followers to join the steel workers and there were many 00:44:00that did because Asbury would eventually become an official with the steel workers.

COOPER: Right. But what I remember in that meeting, in my office, he didn't say very much. Asbury didn't say very much, but when they got up to leave, we shook hands and I told him goodbye, he was the last one to shake hands with me and he handed me a piece of paper. It said something like, "I want to talk to you." Whether we ever talked again or not, I don't recall. I think he and I remained friends.

HUNTLEY: He was attacked in the Bessemer Courthouse, I believe?

COOPER: I think it was right outside the courthouse, on the sidewalk, where I think the Registrars were sitting, as I recall. Asbury was leading a small group, of 5, 6, or 7 Blacks into register. Evidently they were told they 00:45:00couldn't go in and they tried to go in or something, and the cops just beat them.

HUNTLEY: Right. Even beat his son and some other people as well.

COOPER: There were several people, I don't remember.

HUNTLEY: Now, in 1956 the State of Alabama outlawed the operation of NAACP here in Alabama and as a result of that the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights was organized, Fred Shuttlesworth. Between '56 and '63 the Movement, the Alabama Christian Movement was involved in a number of different efforts to change the status quo. In '57 Fred and his wife attempted to, in fact, to enroll their children in Phillips High school.

COOPER: Oh, yes. There's a picture of Mr. Shuttlesworth leading his girl, 00:46:00holding her hand up at Phillips High School and on each sides of the steps there were these leering fellows with their sticks. I don't know if they had ball bats or something. But, that picture reminded me of the picture that appeared in the New York Times, I think it was before we got into the war, I guess it was 1940. It showed a young Jewish couple, a husband and wife, leading their little girl somewhere. Anyway, it was just like that picture and on the sides were mobs of people , storm troopers and ordinary civilians, just laughing and having fun seeing this little child's frightened to death. And I thought of how universal 00:47:00this hatred is.

HUNTLEY: ...to assist in changing the status quo between April 1 and...

COOPER: What year was this?

HUNTLEY: This was in '63.

COOPER: In '63, and the Civil Rights Law was '64.

HUNTLEY: Right.

COOPER: So this was the year before that, and it didn't become effective until '65, did it?

HUNTLEY: It was passed in '64. But, during this time, of course, there were many marches and many people were incarcerated. Children, thousands, and I know that 00:48:00you played some role in helping to facilitate bail money for these children. Can you tell me about that?

COOPER: Yes, I'm not turf tending here today, because I consider myself only as, Mr. Colonel likes to refer to, as a foot soldier in all this. But while Martin Luther King and this group of merchants were meeting here, the demonstrations, these crowds of school kids kind of swept through downtown, through the stores. I was working downtown, I don't remember too much about it, but I should have. But, Howard Streeville was in the midst of combining lines of promotion out at Fairfield. And, he and Mr. Far, the director, was standing there in the window 00:49:00of the office and they could see this great group of kids coming up the street or up the sidewalk and Mr. Far said, "We're halfway through this but you think we ought to slow up a little while because some of this..."

HUNTLEY: Who was Mr. Far?

COOPER: He was the District Director of the steel workers at that time. Howard was his assistant. And Howard said, "Hell, Mr. Far, we're up to our ears in it now, we'll go on ahead and we'll just finish it now." So while there was this great conflict between the merchants and (Inaudible) we were trying hard to get the job done where it really counted. In the meantime, Bull arrested a whole bunch of kids. I don't remember, it could have been several hundred. I don't remember the numbers. But, the jail was full and they had them corralled 00:50:00somewhere out at Fair Park or some place, and I got a phone call and I want to tell this very accurately, because I told it a time or two and try not to, I think I make some of my experiences sound a little bit too good, but this...about somewhere late at night, 11:00 or 12:00 my phone rang. It was the general counsel of the steel workers union, David Fellow. Arthur Goldberg had then gone to be Secretary of Labor. And Davy, we called him, said to me, "Buddy, President Kennedy has had Bobby, that was the Attorney General, contact Walter Reuther and Dave McDonald to put up the bond to get these kids out jail in Birmingham.

Now, the background of that is that the city, it used to cost a minimal amount to appeal a case from the City court to the circuit court, I don't remember, it was just a few dollars. They had passed some sort of ordinance to raise the cost to appeal a nuisance or interference with passage or whatever they had charged these kids with. Probably with illegal congregating or something. They passed an ordinance of some kind that raised the charge, the bond to something like $2,500 each as I remember. Anyway it was a total of over $200,000 that they wanted. It seemed like to me that they wanted $240,000 and the President had asked the steel workers, the AFL-CIO and auto workers to put up that money.

And I said, "But, Davy, I don't know whether we legally can do this. This is trust money that the unions own. Surely if a group of union members get arrested because they are doing something as members of the Klan, we're not going to put up money for them." He said, "Well, maybe not, but the President wants this done." And I said, "Well, then, we'll do it." But, I had to clear it with Mr. Far, the director and Howard Streeville. So I called them in the middle of the night, got them up and gave them this outline. I said, "We've got to do it.

The President wants us. He thinks the interest of the country requires it and I think it does." Of course all three of us got to recognize as soon as this word gets out we'll be looking for a job. And, they said, "We know that. But, if the President says this is what's required, then this is what we'll do." So, I said, 00:53:00"Okay. I'll pass the word." So I called Davy back and told him that it would be done. I forget now how mechanically they transmitted the money, I think they did it by telegraph or something. Anyway there were only three people that

knew where the money was. That was a fellow named Smith, and I can't recall his first name. A young lawyer who was sort of representing these merchants, and the president of Birmingham Trust Bank, who later went from here to Montgomery, I've got his name somewhere. But anyway, he was going to open some kind of special account to segregate this money in and pay it into the court registry and they 00:54:00sent me some kind of wire and I took it up to this Smith boy's office and I said, "Now, the money is here, we three, you, this banker and I are the only ones that know about this or know how it's being handled." I'm sure others knew about it. "And we are the ones who will catch the hell for it, so welcome." And, I didn't hear anymore about that for a good while because Smith or somebody took the money up to the city court registry and put it on deposit with them and the kids got out. And I had to tell Mr. Far and Howard this. Fellow had said that Martin Luther Kings says if those kids are not out by, I don't remember the time, the demonstrations and everything are going to start all over again. So, 00:55:00it was something that had to be done immediately. It was a decent thing to do. I'm very glad to have been a small part of it. I won't say that I wasn't nervous.

HUNTLEY: That would not have been a popular thing to do at the time?

COOPER: Oh, it would have been horrible.

HUNTLEY: There was another situation also, when Wallace stood in the door with the steel workers being involved in one way or another. Can you tell me that story?

COOPER: I can't remember who was trying to get into Alabama? Was it Lucy or ....

HUNTLEY: No. This was after Lucy. This was Vivian Malone, I believe.

COOPER: Anyway, it was when one of those cases when some Black lady was going to register or something and Wallace had said he was going to stand in the door and 00:56:00prevent it. The Attorney General and the Federal Government was dispatching a body of troops down there. We had Henry Graham, General Henry Graham showed up and Wallace postured out there a minute or two in the doorway. But before that, what you were asking about, I think is Ace Trammel, who was then, I believe he was the secretary of the AFL-CIO at that time, (Inaudible). Ace had called me and had the president or the lawyer for the rubber workers, I think. No, it was a boy who was an Assistant United States Attorney General for Civil Rights.

HUNTLEY: We'll figure his name out.

COOPER: I'll figure it out in a minute. He had been counsel for IBM before he took this job, or later he became counsel for IBM. He called me, along with Wissel White, who later became some kind of attorney general, assistant attorney general, later went on to the Supreme Court. And, what they wanted to know was if we could get some White union people who would mingle out in the crowd and keep the Klan or anybody who got out of line quiet. They didn't want anything to happen is really what they wanted. And they had to be big boys and those who were committed to our philosophy that were willing to do it. And Ace said, "Yes, 00:58:00I'll do it."

Ace was a pretty big boy in those days. He said, "I can get two or three other fellows from the local union there. I think it was the rubber workers local union in Tuscaloosa which had a lot of Klan influence in it, unfortunately. But these 3-4 guys who were out in the mob, and their assignment as I understood, was if you see anybody getting too loud, quiet them down. Don't let anything happen. And nothing did happen. General Graham marched up the steps to the Governor and gave him a smart salute and said, "Set aside, Governor." And he stepped aside. Well, the thing that I can't remember too well is whether I was there or whether I heard this and talked about it so many times that I think I was there. But, I believe I was because someone told me in this money that was created in the last year or so that won all the prizes about the fellow going to 00:59:00Washington...do you know what I'm talking about?

HUNTLEY: No.

COOPER: Some very popular movie.

HUNTLEY: And you appeared in the movie?

COOPER: I think I'm in that movie. Now, I may be just imagining things. But I'm almost sure I was. But anyway, that thing went off without a hitch, you remember. She did register. Wallace backed down and the troops didn't have to do anything.

HUNTLEY: How would you characterize Wallace and Bull Conner during that period?

COOPER: Well, Wallace was a good deal smarter than Bull Conner. Bull Conner was a rather stupid fellow, I think in many respects. Wallace was a bright guy. The tragedy is his brightness and his intellect and his capacity to control people 01:00:00were not directed in the right directions. He made the wrong choice. I think it's one of the great tragedies of our lifetimes. Like I said earlier to you, if he had just come out and said, look folks, the Supreme Court has acted, we are law abiding people, I'm your Governor. I'm telling you it's tough, I know it's a difficult thing to do.

HUNTLEY: Do you think that would have made a big difference?

COOPER: I think the people would have done what he said. Of course it would have made a big difference, just as if...he was so popular, you remember. Just if Eisenhower, General Eisenhower is President, if he had come out and said the Supreme Court has acted, now let's don't have any trouble here, let's get the schools integrated, going on about building our country and building our 01:01:00communities , it would have gone like a charm. Instead, he went around grumbling and growling about what the Supreme Court was doing until he had to do something and, then, he acted the way a general acts. He sent in the troops. So, instead of having the solution, we had 3, 30 years of warfare. But those are two tragic things. Those two men had power, had control over people's minds.

HUNTLEY: Do you think Bull Conner had the same kind of power and control?

COOPER: No. I don't think so. I've heard big businessmen in Birmingham during his hey day like, Mervin Sterne, who was a good man in many respects, but he was in the White leadership that wanted things to remain as they were, White. I 01:02:00heard him say once in a group, "Bull is a crude sort of fellow, but he's honest." Which to me is absurd. What was he honest about? He was an honest racist. He believed he was the master. That episode, I think, I want people to remember that when they're told about, or when they read this stuff that the chamber of commerce has put out at times and Newt Gingrich and others put out about the labor unions and their wildness and unreasonable attitude about (Inaudible), remember I think in that one incident, if they didn't save Birmingham, they certainly preserved it a long time before it would have otherwise been preserved. They not only put their jobs on the line, they put 01:03:00their well being on the line. They put their family, they shot through Howard Streeville's house. His wife and kid were in there. My wife and kid were sleeping in the back room when I had the guy on the phone telling me they were on the way to bomb my house. That was a very unhealthy feeling.

HUNTLEY: Buddy, I'm sure that we could go on for another two days with the stories that you have about this particular period and maybe we will do that in another two days. Is there any other thing that we have not touched base on that you just can't hold that you would like to share? We have another five minutes or so.

COOPER: Well, this is a little bit of turf tending, I guess. You know early the Supreme Court held that a labor union that had collective bargaining rights had 01:04:00to represent all the members of the union fairly, without regard to race. That was Steelcase Steel v. L & N Railroad. That came out of Birmingham and it went to the circuit court that dismissed the case on the pleadings.

HUNTLEY: What was that '50 or '51?

COOPER: Somewhere in there. No it was before that. It was before the war. It went to the Supreme Court of the United States and they reverse, but nothing ever happened. I don't know what happened to that case and when we were trying the Jim and (Inaudible) case and the Central of Georgia cases which were based on the same thing, Hugo and I filed that in 1950, filed those two cases. We won job rights back for some hundreds of elderly Black firemen who had been firemen on the diesels, I mean the coal burners and when the diesels came in they gave 01:05:00that seniority all to promotables who were White. In the middle of that trial, and the decision that we got in that case, and it was affirmed, was the first actual judgment, certainly in this area, and possibly in the court in the country, where those rights, which the Supreme Court had declared, were actually implemented in concrete terms. That was (Inaudible) and Jones v. Central of Georgia. I wrote that down because I knew I'd forget it. Mitchell v. the GM & 0.He was one of the few young Black firemen. He was our principal witness in that case and we tried it in the Federal Court and it was in the winter time, I think, and it would be dark before we'd come out sometimes. And we'd be out 01:06:00there and I'd have 2-3 of these big White steel workers to meet me.

HUNTLEY: So you were obviously in the thick of things.

COOPER: We tried to be.

HUNTLEY: Well, thank you for taking the time out today out of your busy schedule.

COOPER: Thank you. I've got more time than money these days I've found in these golden years. I'm not physically able to keep up the pace I did, but I have resented the fact that they had nowhere publicized the fact that these three labor unions got these kids and enabled the negotiations to go on and gave Martin Luther King an honorable basis for talking further and I think, in a real sense, contributed to saving Birmingham.

HUNTLEY: Well, you are now on record. Straightening the record out, clearing the 01:07:00record up.

COOPER: Well, don't you think it strange. I've asked Bob Calvin at the ONB, I said, "Now, on this breakfast program, it's fine to talk about the merchants who negotiated this thing, I'm all for them. They didn't put up any money, but they did negotiated. But the people that put up the money ought to be recognized.

HUNTLEY: So Operation New Birmingham basically is dealing with the merchants rather than labor?

COOPER: Well, I joined Operation New Birmingham on the commitment from the business

manager of the Birmingham News, Vincent Townsend. I told Vincent, I said, "I have a lot of friends in the Chamber of Commerce and a lot of fine people and they do a lot of good things. But, they're so politically opposed to me, I can't 01:08:00be a member of that." And I have to oppose them so many times. And he said, "Well, now ONB is not going to be, it's separate from the Chamber and on that commitment, I became a member of it and set up this CAC Committee. He asked me to and I set it up along with Albert Smith.

HUNTLEY: CAC?

COOPER: That's the Community Affairs Committee. That's where we got Cecil Bauer and the president of this school, whose name we couldn't think of, and I can't think of it now. What was his name? Curry, no. That's troubling. Well, anyway, 01:09:00the two of them really made the Community Affairs Committee got us off the ground. And Vincent Townsend is entitled to a great deal of credit for it. Vincent and I used to break many a sword. When he was coming up, he was a scraper and he stepped up on a lot of people's backs getting up there, but when he got up there he wanted to use his power to aid this community to be a better place.

HUNTLEY: Buddy, you've obviously have played a tremendous role, and again I appreciate the role that you played and I appreciate you spending the time. We'll try to do this again at some later date.

COOPER: I hope we can. You will deal with matter appropriately.

HUNTLEY: Yes. I will. Again, thank you for coming.

COOPER: Well, thank you for asking me and I hope I can come again. I want to tell you and these good people here, it's a matter of great pride to me that, as 01:10:00the old baseball players say, "The shadows blinking and got the infield pulled in, that my name is on the Board of Directors of this great place." I'm very proud of that.

HUNTLEY: We appreciate the role that you are playing there as well, Buddy.